The Ville Rat

by Martin Limon

Actually it was nothing more than a utilitarian flat wooden bridge, similarly lined with chain-link fence and concertina wire. It led from Camp Pelham’s main entrance onto the compound proper. We climbed to our left toward the walkway that lined the river, slapping mud off of our hands and off the sides of our trousers.

  “She could’ve emerged from any of these pathways,” Ernie said, “run down to the river and fallen in.”

  “Or been pushed.”

  “If it was nighttime and nobody witnessed anything, she could’ve been held under in the center of the river where there isn’t much ice, and she could’ve floated downstream.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if that’s the case, if the perpetrator was a GI here in the village, somebody would’ve seen something.”

  “People around here are frightened of all the things that go on at night. They keep their doors shut and their windows locked. And more importantly,” Ernie added, “they don’t trust the KNPs.”

  When the Korean War ended with a ceasefire more than twenty years ago, Korea was economically flat on its back. People were desperate for food and shelter and medical supplies, and to make matters worse, the Syngman Rhee government was notoriously corrupt. That corruption included the Korean National Police, the one police force in the country. The citizenry didn’t trust them, and for good reason. The average cop on the beat was underpaid and looking for ways to supplement his income and support his family. Bribery was endemic. But with the advent of the Pak Chung-hee military dictatorship, the KNPs were trying—albeit slowly—to change their image. Trust was growing between the average citizen and their national law enforcement agency, but it still had a long way to go.

  The KNPs were working their way up the river, knocking on every door, interviewing every farmer and housewife they could find. Within an hour or two they would reach the village of Sonyu-ri. Mr. Kill had called for more cops, but it would probably take them the better part of the day to interview all the people who lived along the banks of the river. North of Camp Pelham was nothing but a couple of other small military compounds and then countryside, so chances were good that the Lady of the Ice had entered the river somewhere around here.

  “They have MP patrols here at night, don’t they?” Ernie asked. He meant in the village of Sonyu-ri.

  I nodded.

  “We’ll have to look at their duty logs and talk to them. Especially the gate guards.”

  “That’s why Mr. Kill asked for us. He knows we can get that information a lot easier than he could.”

  “Maybe,” Ernie said. He was staring up at the bridge. I turned to follow his gaze. An MP jeep had stopped in the middle of the bridge, and two MPs climbed out. They were facing out through the chain-link fence, staring at us, hands on the hilts of their .45s.

  Ernie grinned and waved.

  Neither of them returned the greeting. In fact one of them kept his hand low, just in front of his web belt, and flipped us the bird.

  “Same to you, Charley!” Ernie shouted. Then he turned to me, still grinning. “Welcome back to the Second Infantry Division.”

  “Second to none,” I replied.

  -2-

  The main drag of Sonyu-ri was lined with tailor shops, brassware emporiums, nightclubs, and chophouses, all catering to American GIs and most sporting neon signs in both hangul script and even larger letters in English. It was mid-afternoon by the time we met with Mr. Kill again, this time at the Red Dragon Tea House. He ordered a green tea. Ernie and I both stirred cups of Folgers instant crystals.

  “What did you find out?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Ernie replied. “The Camp Pelham MP commander chewed our butts for even asking questions.”

  Kill frowned. “My superiors have contacted the Eighth Army commander.”

  “It takes a while,” Ernie said, sipping on his coffee, “for shit to roll downhill.”

  “You mean your Eighth Army commander hasn’t yet ordered the Second Infantry Division to cooperate with our investigation?”

  “That’s exactly what he means,” I said. “And even though Division knows they’ll have to go along eventually, what they’re probably doing is trying to convince Eighth Army to assign their own MPIs to the case. Not me and Ernie.”

  Mr. Kill set down his handle-less cup of tea. “That way they’ll have more control.”

  “Exactly. If it turns out a Division GI was involved in this death, they’ll be able to present whatever evidence they have the way they want it presented.”

  “How do you think this will turn out?” Kill asked us.

  Ernie shrugged. “It’s up to the honchos.”

  “When will we know?”

  “Probably before close of business. They won’t want us staying up here if we’re off the case.”

  “Tonight,” Kill said, “some of the MPs who were on duty last night will be on duty again, won’t they?”

  “Most likely.”

  “And the same gate guards?”

  I nodded again.

  “And the same dollies at the nightclubs,” Ernie said. “They stand at the front doors and watch everything that goes on.”

  “They’ll trust you,” Mr. Kill said, “more than they would trust me. You know how to get them to open up.”

  Ernie drained his coffee. “We can try,” he said.

  “I’ve watched you work,” Mr. Kill said. “You two are better at that than any of your colleagues. The other American investigators are . . . How do you say . . . ?”

  “Stiff,” I offered.

  “Exactly,” Mr. Kill said.

  “Corncobs up their butts,” Ernie added.

  Mr. Kill gazed at him, puzzled.

  “An old expression,” I said. “So you want us to stay up here tonight and investigate, whether we’re recalled or not?”

  “Yes. I’m asking that favor of you.”

  We could get in trouble for it, but Ernie and I had been in trouble before.

  “How soon will you have the autopsy report?” I asked.

  “A few days, but preliminary conclusions tomorrow.”

  “And your canvassing so far?”

  “We’ve found one housewife. She heard something. A man and a woman arguing. They were in one of the alleys here, heading toward the river. She had the impression that the woman was trying to get away from him.”

  “Did she see anything?”

  “No. There are so many drunks in this village at night. The local people stay very much behind closed doors.”

  “What language were they speaking?” Ernie asked.

  “She thinks English but she’s not sure.”

  “Your men will keep working?” I said.

  “Yes. And depending on what you find tonight . . .”

  “By tomorrow,” I said, “you might have enough evidence to convince someone higher up to keep us on the case.”

  He nodded. “That’s the idea.”

  I was sometimes startled by Mr. Kill’s use of American colloquialisms and had to remind myself that he’d spent almost four years in the States.

  “Even if we stay on the case,” Ernie said, “Second Division isn’t going to want to cooperate with us any more than they are with you.”

  “But you know your way around.”

  We’d both been in the country for going on three years. I was the only American in law enforcement who could speak Korean and Ernie had a knack for communicating with the druggies and the business girls.

  Ernie grinned. “I guess we do.”

  I plopped a shiny hundred-won coin onto the counter of the Red Dragon Tea House, paying to use their phone. It was a big, bulky job, painted pink, and it sat on a hand-knitted placemat.

  I dialed. It took me fifteen minutes to get through to the 8th Army exchange. A Korean woman’s voice said in English, “Extension please.” I told he
r the number. Ten seconds later a gruff voice answered, “Eighth Army Criminal Investigation, Staff Sergeant Riley speaking.”

  “Riley,” I said.

  “Sueño! Where in the hell are you?”

  “Doing what we were told to do.”

  “You’re supposed to get your asses back here, right now. The provost marshal hasn’t decided whether or not you’re going to be assigned to the case.”

  “What’s the holdup?”

  I could almost hear the veins popping on Riley’s neck. “That’s none of your freaking business,” he yelled. “You get your asses back here and you get them back here now!”

  I thought of the beautiful, red-robed woman floating faceup in the Sonyu River. I took a deep breath. “Ernie’s jeep broke down.”

  “Don’t give me that shit!”

  “It’s in the shop now. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Sueño. You get your butts back here and you get them back here—”

  I hung up.

  When I returned to the table, Mr. Kill said, “You have the clearance to stay tonight?”

  I nodded. “They agreed wholeheartedly.”

  Mr. Kill paid for the coffee and the tea. He left the shop first.

  The main drag of Sonyu-ri stretches about two hundred yards from the front gate of something called RC-4, Recreation Center Four, all the way to the front gate of Camp Pelham. Ernie and I killed the next couple of hours on RC-4 at the tiny Quonset hut that housed the base library, and later at the RC-4 snack bar that featured a hot grill and a scratchy-sounding jukebox. RC-4 also housed a movie theater, a military credit union, a gym, and a small arts and crafts center. The idea was to have all the recreational facilities serving the scattered military compounds near the Demilitarized Zone in one place. A green army bus pulled up in front of RC-4 every hour or so, and GIs and any dependents—usually Korean wives—disembarked and made a beeline to the main attraction on RC-4, the post exhange. Once they loaded duffel bags full of freeze-dried coffee, soluble creamer, maraschino cherries, instant orange juice, cigarettes, and canned meat products, they climbed back on the bus and returned to whatever compound they’d come from.

  “Free enterprise is a wonderful thing,” Ernie said.

  He was actually referring to the black market. With the Korean economy still hurting, there was a huge unfulfilled demand for imported American products. A GI, or more often his Korean wife, could sell almost anything they bought in the PX at twice what they paid for it.

  We finished listening to a song called “Mandy” by some Stateside singer, swallowed the last of our cheeseburgers and coffee, and headed toward the front gate of RC-4. Already the sky was dark. On either side of the narrow two-lane highway, neon began flickering to life.

  Ernie inhaled deeply. “Do you smell it, pal?”

  “Smell what?”

  “Kimchi fermenting in pots,” he replied. “Honey buckets on their way to the field. Brown OB bottles chilling on ice.”

  “You can’t smell cold beer,” I said.

  “I can,” Ernie replied.

  He exhaled and we strode into the Sonyu-ri night.

  Our first stop was the Red Dragon Nightclub. The sound system was turned up so loud that we could hear the rock and roll from ten yards out. Scantily clad Korean women held the bead curtain parted and waved us in with polished nails. Ernie led the way, forced to duck a little to pass through the curtains. Both he and I were several inches taller than most of the GIs in the room, and a few looked up from their pool game, glancing in our direction. We took seats at the bar.

  “You buy me drink?” one of the girls asked Ernie.

  He stared at her as if she was out of her mind.

  “You Cheap Charley GI?” she asked.

  “That’s me,” Ernie replied. “Cheap Charley to the max.”

  “Where’s your compound?”

  “Itaewon,” Ernie said.

  “You come from Seoul?”

  Ernie nodded. There was no point in trying to hide it. Division GIs could spot a GI assigned to 8th Army headquarters in Seoul from ten kilometers away. For one thing, we didn’t spend all our time in the field, in the dirt and mud and snow, and we were soft, in their eyes, from all our luxurious rear-echelon living. “Rear-echelon motherfuckers” was what they called us, when they were being kind.

  “Why you come Sonyu-ri?” she asked.

  That’s what these bar girls were, little intelligence-gathering machines. Despite the hot pants and the halter tops that barely covered their bosoms and the heavily made-up faces, they were always gathering data and calculating odds, looking for ways to make money. I didn’t blame them. There were no safety nets in Korea. Once a young girl was of age and hadn’t made the cut to get into high school, the chances of her finding a job were slim to nonexistent. Her family needed her out of the house. But despite all this, many of these girls still sent money home to help support their parents and brothers and sisters. More than two thousand years ago, Confucius had demanded filial piety. Most of the business girls here at the Red Dragon Nightclub were still listening.

  Ernie answered her question with another question.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cindy,” she said.

  “Your Korean name?”

  “Not your business.”

  “How much you want for an overnight?”

  “Twenty dollars,” she said, without hesitation.

  Ernie feigned falling off his stool. “Twenty dollars? You think I’m a newbie?” New to Korea.

  “No, you rich GI from Seoul. Make lotta money.”

  “How I make lotta money?”

  It went on like that, the banter back and forth, and once the other business girls figured Cindy had Ernie cornered, they turned their attention to me.

  I asked the one standing next to me, “The girl last night, did you see her?”

  She didn’t understand and so the taller girl next to her translated. When she was done, they both turned to me. “What girl?”

  “The girl wearing the hanbok.” Korean clothes. “All red. Did you see her?”

  They turned away from me and conferred for a few seconds, whispering, and with the loud rock music I couldn’t understand what was being said. But the concerned looks on their faces told me that they weren’t completely baffled by my question. Finally the taller one turned to me and said, “We no see.”

  “Who did see?” I asked.

  The shorter girl glanced quickly toward the door, her eyes aiming across the street and about ten yards to the left.

  The taller girl shook her head in opposition. She grabbed the shorter girl by the arm and pulled her away. I was left alone at the bar, sipping on my bottle of OB beer. I decided not to finish it. Instead, I elbowed Ernie and we rose to leave the Red Dragon Nightclub. Cindy escorted us to the door and, as we left, instead of saying goodbye, she once again called Ernie a Cheap Charley.

  There were two bars across the street, so we tried them both. The first was a dead end, but at the other we found a barmaid willing to talk. She was an older woman, maybe in her mid-thirties, and went by the name of Angela. She spoke English with a voice ravaged by tobacco.

  “She run,” she said, pointing out the door toward the main drag of Sonyu-ri.

  “Running away from someone?” Ernie asked.

  “I don’t know. Just run. Then she go down alley across the street.”

  “Toward the river?”

  She nodded.

  “Where’d she come from?” I asked.

  “I no see. But somebody say she at main gate. MP say she gotta karra chogi.” Go away.

  “She was at the front gate of Camp Pelham and the gate guards told her to leave?” I repeated.

  The barmaid nodded.

  “Why was she running?” Ernie
asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe somebody chase.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody know.”

  “Had anyone ever seen her before?”

  “No. I no hear.”

  “And the dress,” I said, “the chima-jeogori, does anybody in Sonyu-ri wear those kind of dresses?”

  “On chuseok,” she said. Korean Thanksgiving holiday.

  “But in the bars,” I continued, “or in any of the nightclubs. Do any of the girls normally wear that kind of clothes?”

  She shook her head vehemently. “Not in Sonyu-ri. Any GI around here, they like hot pants, miniskirt. Maybe in Munsan. Korean soldier there. Maybe somebody there dress up like kisaeng, real nice. But not in Sonyu-ri.”

  Kisaeng were Korean female entertainers, a group that had faded in relevance since the advent of the profession in ancient Korean kingdoms. While modern kisaeng houses were often a front for prostitution, true kisaeng were high-class and expensive, not something likely to exist in a low-rent GI village like Sonyu-ri. Munsan was a larger city, about two miles away on the far side of the MSR, and since it was closer to the Imjin River and closer to the Demilitarized Zone, it was surrounded by dozens of ROK Army compounds. But the Lady of the Ice had been carrying a snippet of poetry in her sleeve. In classical times, kisaeng were educated women—musicians and performers—and some of the most famous sijo poetry had been written by them. I tried to relate all this to the current circumstances, but I didn’t get very far. Why would a high-class kisaeng wearing only her outer garments be running through the low-rent streets of a GI village?

  “So nobody knew her,” Ernie said, “or knew why she was running through Sonyu-ri?”

  “No. Nobody know.”

  “And now,” he asked, “now that everybody knows she’s dead, isn’t anyone talking?”

  “KNP ask anybody,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the entire village of Sonyu-ri. “Nobody see nothing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “In Sonyu-ri,” she said, lighting up another Turtle Boat cigarette, “nobody never see nothing.”

  I left her a tip—one thousand won, about two bucks—and told her how to get in touch with me if she heard anything. The money disappeared.