The Ville Rat

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The Ville Rat Page 21

by Martin Limon


  A group of black GIs burst out of the back of the Black Cat Club. They glared at us ominously. Three of them held pool cues and one held a blood-soaked handkerchief to his nose.

  “Thanks for the info, Brandy,” I said.

  “Ain’t no bag,” she replied.

  Ernie and I hustled out the back gate.

  “Inchon,” Ernie said.

  “That’s what Brandy says.”

  “But why would the Ville Rat want to go there? Like Brandy said, there’s no black GIs stationed in Inchon.”

  “Hardly any GIs at all. Just that small transportation unit.”

  We were driving through country roads. The sky was overcast, and streams of water and mud occasionally crossed the blacktop. Ernie slowed when we passed through villages lined with brick homes thatched with straw.

  “This road will get us to the Western Corridor,” he said. “I take the Reunification Highway south from there, but what’s the best way after that?”

  “Before we hit Seoul, we turn right toward Wondang.”

  “More country roads,” Ernie said.

  “Maybe. But we’ll miss the outskirts of the city. Less traffic.”

  Ernie sped around a cart piled with turnips. A tired horse shied away, his grey-streaked rump whipped listlessly by an old man in a broad-brimmed hat.

  “How does the Ville Rat expect us to track down a single hideout in Inchon?”

  “I guess he thinks we’ll figure it out.”

  “Why’s he being so secretive?”

  “If everything collapses, he doesn’t want to be fingered as the guy who blew the whistle on the Central Locker Fund operation.”

  “You mean if our investigation collapses because Eighth Army doesn’t take these allegations seriously.”

  “It could happen.”

  “And the same crooks would be back in charge of the Non-Appropriated Fund.”

  “They’re in charge now.”

  “But a woman’s life is at stake.”

  “According to Mr. Kill, other women have disappeared and nobody’s done anything about it.”

  “We didn’t know.”

  “Somebody knew.”

  “And that’s who the Ville Rat’s afraid of.”

  “Right. They could turn on him next.”

  “Not if we catch them.”

  “No. But the Ville Rat’s hedging his bets.”

  “You think he’ll be here?”

  “Not a chance. If we take down Demoray, the Ville Rat will want to be as far away as he can.”

  “Inchon is a big city. Where do we look?”

  “The port,” I said. “Where the booze comes in.”

  Ernie nodded. Made sense to him.

  Like so many complexes in the Republic of Korea, the main row of warehouses along the Port of Inchon had been constructed by the Japanese. That is, during the colonial period, the warehouses were designed and built under their auspices, although I’m sure the bulk of the labor force was Korean. For over a mile, two- and three-story brick warehouses lined the wharf. All of them had at one time been occupied by the US Army. Inchon was the main port for bringing in supplies to the city of Seoul during and after the Korean War. However, in recent years, a four-lane highway had been built to the much larger Port of Pusan and the transshipment point had changed. Consequently, most of the warehouses in Inchon had been turned over to the Korean government. They in turn had parceled them out to private Korean enterprises. As such, the warehouses run by the US military were down to about a half dozen, all of them huddled on the northern end near the buildings housing the 71st Transportation Company.

  Ernie and I cruised down the row of buildings.

  “Demoray wouldn’t want to operate too close to the military,” I said.

  “But he has to be near the warehouse that processes the shipments for the Non-Appropriated Fund.”

  On our way to Inchon, the sun had set into the Yellow Sea and small red bulbs glowed atop the double doors of the brick warehouses that stretched away for almost a mile.

  “So which one?” Ernie asked.

  “Can’t read the signs from here,” I said.

  Ernie pulled up to the gateway. The Korean contact guard pretended to read our emergency dispatch, but I don’t think he understood the jumble of red stamps and printing. I flashed my CID badge and told him impatiently that we only needed to park somewhere safe for a few minutes. Relieved to hear Korean, and to be given an excuse for letting us in if he needed one, he waved us through.

  Ernie parked the jeep out of sight behind a wooden trash bin. He padlocked the steering wheel and, with my trusty flashlight in my pocket, we got out to walk. Mostly, we stayed in the shadows reading the signs, searching for something that indicated we’d be near either 8th Army Non-Appropriated Funds or the operations of the Central Locker Fund. But not all of the warehouses were clearly marked. The signs were old and faded, and I was beginning to believe that they hadn’t been updated in quite a while.

  A night watchman approached us. When he came closer, I could see in the glow of one of the red bulbs that he was Korean. I could also see that an M1 rifle was slung over his right arm. I greeted him and asked, “Where are the Eighth Army warehouses?”

  We could’ve flashed our CID badges and probably been all right, but we didn’t even need to do that. American officers had become so much a part of the daily working life of Koreans over the years that most of them never questioned our motives. He pointed toward the end of the row. I thanked him and nodded slightly, and he returned my nod and continued his rounds. Between the warehouses and the wharf was a long expanse of about twenty yards of blacktop. Canvas-covered pallets were laid out like square checkers on a board. Ernie started pulling up the canvas and checking the writing on the boxes underneath. Finally, he stopped and called me over.

  “Look,” he said.

  I shone my flashlight on the cardboard boxes beneath the canvas.

  “Falstaff,” I said.

  “Our favorite,” Ernie replied. “Need we go further?”

  “Yes,” I said. We went down a row of pallets, lifting canvas, seeing all kinds of imported American beer: Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, Miller High Life. What we weren’t seeing was Colt 45.

  I switched off the light and studied the warehouses around us. “Anything?” I asked.

  Except for the dim red bulbs, all was darkness. Behind us, the smell of the sea crept across the blacktop, picking up the scent of burnt diesel before seeping into our nostrils. Nothing moved. We listened.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “It sounded like a moan.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there. That fenced area.”

  A smaller building, like an administration annex for the warehouses, was separated off by itself. Surrounding it was a four-foot-high cement-block wall topped by chain-link and, above that, rusted concertina wire. Staying as far from the glow of the dim light as possible, we approached the fence.

  Then we heard it again, a faint moan, almost like the sighing of the wind.

  When we reached the fence, we glanced at one another, coming to an immediate unspoken agreement. Ernie crouched, cupped his laced fingers in front of me, and I stepped my right foot up into his hands. I grabbed the top of the fence and pulled as he hoisted me over. I slid over as quietly as I could and, once on the other side, slid as unobtrusively as I could along the edge of the fence and unlatched the small gate. Ernie slipped through, closing the gate behind him.

  A small courtyard was lined with what appeared to be rusted moving equipment. The front door of the small building was made of heavy wood. We slipped quietly through the darkness.

  And then we heard a scream.

  -14-

  Ernie kicked the wooden door in.

  At firs
t we couldn’t see anything in the darkness but I pulled out my flashlight and pointed it toward a stairway that disappeared into the darkness. We clambered down the narrow passageway. At the bottom, another door was shut tight. We twisted the handle and shoved but it wouldn’t open. Ernie stepped backed and kicked.

  “Ow!”

  It rattled some but didn’t open. I shoved him out of the way, braced myself against the opposite wall, and raised my foot and lunged forward with the same movement. The door slammed open.

  Moonlight streamed in through a window above us.

  I waved the flashlight back and forth. We were in a basement, the walls lined with stacks of cardboard boxes that almost reached the ceiling. Some were rectangular with jazz city ale logos printed on them and others labeled colt 45. Nearby were yet more square boxes with the logos of various American-made brandies. Ernie stepped off to my right, still searching the dark, his hand on the hilt of the .45 inside his jacket. So far, nothing moved. Ahead of us sat a rumpled bed with ropes that had been cut. Beyond was a short flight of steps leading to an open window.

  I jabbed my finger toward the dim light. Ernie nodded and moved forward. But before he did, a stack of boxes near the steps started to tilt, and that was when I realized that all the crates of liquor and cases of beer were stacked like gigantic dominoes. The top box fell and crashed toward the floor.

  “Watch out!” I shouted.

  Ernie leapt back out of the way, but a large figure darted across the top of the stairwell and the stack on the opposite side of the steps began to topple too. Suddenly, tons of cased beer and brandy and malt liquor were crashing down upon us. I leapt for the center of the floor. A small desk sat off to the left; I grabbed the closest leg and jerked it toward me. As one case fell onto my leg, I coiled up beneath the desk, and within seconds Ernie was crouching there next to me. Inkstones and coils of paper and writing brushes rolled on the floor beneath us.

  What seemed like huge pyramidal stones thundered down around us. The little desk was hit hard more than once but held up admirably. Within seconds, the last case of beer had tumbled onto the floor, and Ernie and I pushed the desk away and stood up.

  Amidst the dim light of the red bulbs outside, shadows moved through the window above us. I tried to climb toward it, but there was too much of a jumble beneath me and every time I hoisted my weight forward, more crates fell down around me. By the time I reached the stairwell, whoever had climbed out the window was gone.

  Ernie returned to the doorway but it was blocked with crates of liquor. He started to shove some of them out of the way but stopped when he realized it would take an hour or more to clear a pathway. Meanwhile, climbing over the cardboard jumble, I had made some headway toward the window. Ernie followed. Outside, a heavy truck engine—maybe a quarter-ton—started up and roared away.

  By the time I’d clawed my way over half a dozen crates, I shoved the window fully open and peered outside.

  Nothing moved.

  “Son of a bastard,” Ernie said.

  With some effort, we were able to climb out the window. A back door in the fence that circled the small annex building was wide open. We passed through into the open space between the warehouses and ran back to our jeep. When I asked the gate guard, he said someone had left—“Migun,” he said, American soldier—but he didn’t know who. And no, he hadn’t jotted down the truck’s unit designation because that wasn’t part of his job. He did confirm, however, that it was a quarter-ton truck, US Army–issue. A GI was driving, but he hadn’t seen anyone else in the cab.

  “Then who screamed?” Ernie said.

  We returned to the annex building for one last quick search. No one there. No trap doors, no secret closets, no dungeons beneath the floor.

  “He took her with him,” I said.

  “Crouched down in front of the passenger seat,” Ernie said.

  “Easy,” I said. “The gate guards wouldn’t have seen her because they weren’t looking.”

  All they wanted was to get through their shift and draw their pay. Whatever the crazy Americans did was up to them.

  When we drove off from the 71st Transportation Company warehouse area, the gate guard was glad to see us go.

  “Demoray aced us on that one,” Ernie said.

  We were already back on the main highway between Inchon and Seoul, exceeding the posted speed limit by at least fifteen kilometers per hour.

  “How can you be sure it was Demoray?” I asked.

  “Who else? The girl screaming, the writing desk with the ink and brushes, a Chinese wall of Colt 45. The Ville Rat sent us down there, but Demoray was probably tipped off by that damn gate guard. And he had his little escape plan set up for just such an eventuality.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Yeah. So we’re headed back to Seoul because I don’t know where else to go. Got any ideas?”

  “Keep going. Back to Seoul.”

  “Right. Good thinking.” Ernie took his eyes of the road and twisted his head toward me. “Why?”

  “He knows he’s not going to get away with this.”

  “Okay.” Ernie sped around a ROK Army military convoy.

  “Even if he ditches the little kisaeng and we have trouble pinning Miss Hwang’s murder on him, he knows we know about the game with the extra inventory.”

  “With the Colt 45 and the brandy and the other stuff.”

  “Right. That’s over. And a record of all of it is on paper somewhere. Hard to find, maybe well hidden by the Comptroller’s Office, but once we know it’s there—and we do know—we’ll be able to dig it up.”

  “So if he doesn’t want to go to the Federal Pen,” Ernie said, “he has to destroy those records.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But that’s impossible. It would take him days, maybe weeks, to go back and pull all those invoices. Like Rick Mills said, this has been going on for years. Even if Demoray only goes back to when he got involved, it’s a massive task.”

  “You’re right about that.” I waited for Ernie to say more, but his face was twisted in consternation. Still, he wound through the much slower traffic with the consummate ease of a driving virtuoso. “Unless Demoray takes a shortcut,” I said.

  Ernie glanced at me. “Shortcut? There’s no shortcut. This is the fastest route to Seoul.”

  “Not that kind of shortcut.”

  “Then you mean with the records?”

  “Yes.”

  I could see his expression change as he pieced it all together.

  “I’ll take the back gate,” he said.

  The back gate into South Post Yongsan Compound led us past the 121st Evacuation Hospital, along the edge of the 8th United States Army Golf Course, through the Embassy Housing Area, and finally into the main 8th Army Headquarters Logistics/Supply Command.

  We pulled up in front of the 8th United States Army Non-Appropriated Fund Records Repository. A side door was wide open. Beyond it, a quarter-ton truck was parked. Holding his .45 at the ready, Ernie checked the truck and then shook his head. Empty. We entered the warehouse.

  The lights were off, but there was enough moonlight streaming in through the windows and the doorway for us to realize that we were in the main office clerical area. We pushed past the same grey desks we’d seen recently with what appeared to be the same stacks of onionskin paperwork in their wire in-baskets.

  When we stepped into the main records area, we stopped for a moment and listened. Above, moonlight filtered through the overhead windows, dimly illuminating the seemingly endless rows of metal stanchions and neatly aligned cardboard boxes of records. At first we heard nothing, but then Ernie motioned toward his right.

  I listened carefully.

  Splashing. The sound of liquid being poured, punctuated by intermittent gurgling. Vast quantities of liquid. And then, for the first time since we
’d entered the warehouse, I took a deep breath.

  “Gas,” Ernie whispered.

  He motioned for me to go left as he moved toward the rows of records on the right. As I stepped deeper into the warehouse, I realized that many of the cardboard boxes on the wooden shelves were wet with gasoline. The air was saturated with its pungent smell. I reached into my pocket, wishing I had a handkerchief to tie around my nose. But I didn’t. I thought of the .45 I hadn’t checked out from the arms room. At a supply closet, I stopped to search with my flashlight and pulled out a broad-brushed broom, US Army–issue. I’d used millions of them in my day and knew how to detach the handle. I unscrewed it and when I left the supply closet, I had a sturdy walking stick in my hands. I held it with both hands, pointing it forward like I’d done with my rifle during bayonet drill.

  When I reached the far end of the row, I squatted and listened.

  Whimpering. The little kisaeng. She was just a few yards away. I stood up and walked toward the sound.

  “Hold it!”

  I froze. There was Demoray. Moonlight from the storm windows above shone down on him, and sitting next to him on a stool was the little kisaeng, her head bowed, her hair drenched with liquid. Gasoline.

  Demoray held a lighter just above her head.

  “Back off!” he shouted. “I want you both out of here now!”

  Ernie was crouched about ten yards behind him, both fists aiming his .45 automatic dead into the center of Demoray’s back. But the air was drenched with gasoline fumes. Certainly, if Ernie fired, this entire warehouse would explode into flame. The little kisaeng, Demoray, me, and Ernie with it.

  “Hold it, Ernie,” I said.

  Ernie lowered his .45.

  “What is it you want, Demoray?” I asked.

  He stood up straighter, lowering the cigarette lighter slightly. “That’s more like it,” he said. “Showing a senior NCO a little respect for once.”

  “You don’t deserve any respect,” Ernie growled.

  I waved him down.

  “Name it, Demoray,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “First, I want you two assholes out of this warehouse.”

 

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