by Martin Limon
“So that’s no kind of credible evidence. How come we never heard about this?”
“The proceedings are conducted in camera.”
“What’s that mean?”
“In secret. Classified. And CID didn’t have a need-to-know.”
Ernie shook his head. “The court-martial boards went along with this?”
“Not always. Sometimes they let the guy settle short of criminal prosecution. Take a bad discharge, leave the service. Most of them jumped at the chance. A few of them fought it and ended up serving time.”
Ernie took a deep breath, his hands clutched on the steering wheel. We stopped at the main gate of Camp Coiner and I handed the MP our dispatch. He glanced at it.
“Destination?” he asked.
“None of your freaking business,” Ernie growled.
The MP stared at him, bug-eyed. His right hand slid toward his holstered .45. “Destination,” he repeated.
I grabbed the dispatch back. “Five Oh Worst MI,” I said.
Suspiciously, the MP stepped back and waved us through. Ernie wound through the tree-lined lanes. “What it looks like,” he said, “is these counter-intel losers were setting up bogus arrests just to make their stats look good, so they could keep on drawing their per diem and living in the lap of luxury.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
“But that’s where Major Schultz was headed,” Ernie said.
“No question about it,” I replied, “if the J-2 has the balls to follow up the report.”
Ernie gunned the engine and rolled up a ten-foot incline into the small parking lot in front of a long wooden building with a white placard out front that said headquarters company, 501st military intelligence battalion. We climbed out of the jeep and walked toward the double front door. The firelight beneath the awning shone yellow. A man in fatigues and highly spit-shined jump boots opened the door before we could get there. Massive arms were folded across a broad chest.
“Get the fuck off my company street,” he said.
The embroidered nametag on his fatigue blouse said Blood, rank insignia Captain. From around the edge of the building, four more GIs appeared. Two of them held M-16 rifles.
Slowly, I pulled out my badge and held it up to what little sunlight filtered through the overcast sky. “Eighth Army CID,” I said. “Agents Sueño and Bascom, here on official business.”
“I don’t give a fuck who you are. Get off my company street.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” Ernie said. “We’re here conducting an official investigation.”
Captain Blood motioned with his forefinger. All four GIs rushed us. One of them I recognized. Specialist Four Fenton, the guy who’d been harassing Miss Kim, the one who Ernie’d called a twerp. He didn’t seem like a twerp now. Reinforced with backup, he took the lead and reached out to shove Ernie, but Ernie sidestepped him and cracked a left hook into the side of his head. His black helmet liner flew off his skull, but then the other three were on top of us; screaming and shouting, trying to overpower us with their sheer weight. It was foolish for two of them to be carrying rifles if they didn’t intend to use them. They tried to shove me with the weapons, but I lowered myself and rammed one fist, then another into their unprotected midsections. After a few seconds of cursing and grunting, first Fenton, then two more of them went down. The last one stepped back, unsure of himself, and aimed the M-16 rifle at us. This focused our attention. Ernie and I stepped back and raised our hands. Captain Blood continued to stand on the porch, feet shoulder-width apart, arms crossed. During the entire fracas, he hadn’t moved.
“You’d better have him put that rifle down, Captain,” I said.
In the dim light, I thought I saw a smile crease his broad cheeks. After a pause, he said, “Stow it, Benson.”
Private Benson lowered his rifle.
Two of the men on the ground shoved themselves back to their feet. The twerp, Specialist Fenton, appeared to be out cold.
“Get Fenton out of here,” Captain Blood said. The three of them picked him up and carried him over to the back of a three-quarter-ton truck. They tossed him unceremoniously in the back. Once they drove off, Captain Blood said, “If you wanna talk that bad, then we’ll talk.”
He turned and strode back through the building entrance.
Ernie and I glanced at one another. Captain Blood had known he’d eventually have to talk to us; he’d just wanted to put us through some sort of macho “test” to see if we’d stand our ground and fight, or run back to the head shed for reinforcements.
I wasn’t sure if we’d passed or not. But frankly, I didn’t give a damn what he thought. We trudged up the steps and pushed through the big double doors.
-17-
The hallway was floored with cheap brown tile, Army-issue. After passing three or four closed doors, we went through an archway into what appeared to be your typical Orderly Room. Grey desks in the center, even greyer filing cabinets lining the walls, telephones and in-trays scattered around the room. A bulletin board with a white organizational chart and yellow carbon-paper duty roster, bristled with stainless steel thumbtacks. Off to the left, a sealed door with a double-paned glass window in the center was marked secure communications. It was dark, but the room behind it appeared small, like a phone booth.
“A direct line to DC,” I whispered to Ernie. Secure satellite communications with the Pentagon.
Another door was open in the right corner, and Captain Blood flicked on its overhead fluorescent light and strode into the small office. As we caught up with him, he was pulling shut a long curtain over a huge map on the wall. He turned and glared at us.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked.
I told him.
“CID,” he said, shaking his head. “Criminal freaking investigation. Whoop-dee-doo.”
He was the type of guy who liked to use plenty of obscenities so that no one missed the fact that he was tough. He backed that up with muscles so pumped up from lifting weights that his fatigue blouse could barely contain his shoulders. On his desk, where a photo of the wife and kids would normally be, stood a photo of Captain Blood almost nude, greased down and wearing the silk briefs of a body-builder, facing the camera, every tendon tensed, flexing and smiling with all the wattage he could muster.
Ernie pointed at the photo. “Did you win?”
Captain Blood seemed thrown by the question. “Win what?”
“That body-building contest.”
His forehead crinkled over bushy eyebrows. “Came in second. The winner had a fix in with the judges.”
I was going to ask him how he knew that, but decided to drop it. Instead, I asked, “When did you last see Major Frederick M. Schultz?”
Blood plopped down in his big leather chair, crouching first, then letting his entire weight fall from a height of three feet, as if his bulk were too much for his knees to bear.
“That asshole,” he said. “That’s why you’re here?”
“That’s why,” I said.
He grabbed a rubber ball about the size of a grapefruit and started to squeeze, his massive fingers straining, turning white, then red. Before he answered, he switched the ball to the other hand and squeezed again, ten times, as if wringing someone’s neck.
“Do you realize what that moron was trying to do?” he asked. His eyes were wide, his face grim. When we didn’t answer, he continued squeezing and grimacing. “To save a few dollars,” Blood said, “that moron Schultz was planning on eviscerating our hard-won ability to go after Communist agents. Eviscerating it! Do you know what that means?”
Again, we didn’t answer.
“It means cutting the guts out of our counterintelligence operation. Cutting the guts out of the very thing that is holding the line against those Commie bastards up north.” He pointed to the north, waving his forefinger
as if he were ordering a hot dog at a crowded ball game. “The GI villages in this country are crawling with Communist agents. All these Korean bitches have to do is spread their legs and the dumb-as-bricks American GIs tell the whore anything she wants to know. Anything. I’ve seen them bring reams of classified information out to their yobo just because she refused to give head. I mean they’re dumb, manipulated by every cunt who bats her fake eyelashes.”
He paused, studying us, his eyes so wide they were moist.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“What?”
“When did you last see Major Schultz?”
He stared at me, incredulous, and then slowly, like bubbling magma rising from his chest, his rage grew. “When did I last see him?”
“That’s the question,” I replied.
His eyes widened, and he ponderously lifted his tremendous bulk from his seat. He placed both hands on the edge of his desk and leaned toward us. “You think I did it, don’t you?”
“Did what?”
“Don’t play innocent with me. You think I killed the poor dumb son of a bitch.”
I shrugged. “We’ve come to no conclusions, Captain. We’re just investigating.”
“Just investigating? No, you’re not. You’re doing more than that. You’re messing with our operations here. You’re going to take up my time and take up the time of my counter-intel agents, and all because you think I’m the guy who offed that prissy asshole Schultz. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You think I killed the twerp.”
Twerp. The same thing Ernie had called Fenton, now being tossed around as an insult to a dead man.
Ernie took a half step forward. “Hold on there, Captain Blood.” He dragged out the name, letting him know that it sounded phony. “We’re here on an official investigation. A homicide investigation. Now, you can answer our questions here, or you can answer them down at the MP station. It’s up to you.”
I wished Ernie hadn’t said that. The fact of the matter was, we didn’t have the authority to take him in. At least not yet, because the Provost Marshal hadn’t signed off on this part of the investigation. He was still banking on pinning Schultz’s murder on the fugitive Miss Jo. So we had neither the legal authority, nor apparently the manpower to take him in. Especially if those three, still-standing GIs returned any time soon.
Captain Blood realized Ernie’s mistake.
“Have I been brought up on charges?”
“The investigation hasn’t reached that stage yet.”
“Then you have no right to take a commissioned officer into custody. Who do you think you’re bluffing?” He waggled his finger at us. “I could eat you two guys for lunch.”
I was getting a little tired of these tough-guy clichés. “You make that one up yourself?”
“What?” Blood seemed genuinely befuddled. He was so impressed with his own bluster that he probably wasn’t even hearing himself anymore.
“If you don’t cooperate,” I told him, “it’s not going to look good for you or for the Five Oh First.”
“What the hell do you know about what looks good? I’ve been dealing with this Command for the last three years. And dealing with it well. The Eighth Army Chief of Staff understands the importance of our mission, even if you two half-assed gumshoes don’t.” I was about to reply when he said, “Now get out of my office.”
I looked at Ernie, he looked at me. He shrugged. We hadn’t really expected any cooperation, but we’d had to stop here and put the 501st Commander on notice. Give him a chance to cooperate. Document that we’d asked him questions and he’d refused to answer. That’s the way Colonel Brace, the Provost Marshal, always insisted investigations be conducted. We’d done what we could. If Blood wanted to do things the hard way, that was up to him. We turned to leave.
“And one more thing,” Captain Blood said. “Don’t think you can go questioning my agents. It won’t do you any good. They’re loyal to me and the Five Oh First.”
That proposition remained to be tested.
Ernie and I stepped out of his office. Blood followed us down the hallway. Earlier he’d been reluctant to talk, but now he didn’t seem to want the conversation to end. “And one more thing,” he said again, “what was your name? Sween-o? We know about what you’ve done—and your contacts up north. You keep pushing this and we’ll find out more.”
In the middle of the hallway, I stopped and turned back to face him. “What are you talking about?” There was a low menace in my voice, one I hadn’t intended, but that was there nevertheless.
Captain Blood smirked at my discomfort and lowered his voice, too. “We’ll find out what we need to find out, Sween-o,” he said. “About you and your girlfriend.”
Ernie grabbed my elbow, as if to say don’t react.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“Sure you don’t.”
I turned and continued toward the exit. Outside, Ernie and I hopped down the wooden steps. Blood was standing on the porch. As we crossed the gravel parking lot, he said what I’d been fearing he’d say. “And your son. We’ll find out more about him, too. You can count on it!”
Ernie hustled me into the jeep, started the engine, and we backed up and sped away. On the way down the incline, the three-quarter-ton truck passed us in the opposite direction. The same three soldiers were in it, heading back to their lord and master.
-18-
We drove straight to the barracks. Ernie was quiet. He knew Blood’s words had rattled me.
“Don’t sweat the small stuff, Sueño. We’re going to take this puke down and take him down soon, before he can do any damage. You’ll see.”
“He knows about Doc Yong,” I said, “and about Il-yong.” My son.
Ernie snorted. “So what’s he gonna do about it? If he goes down there to South Cholla and starts sniffing around, he’s liable to end up in a dark alley with a knife in his back.”
“So he won’t go at all.”
“He doesn’t have the nerve.”
I hoped Ernie was right.
Back at the barracks, I didn’t feel like going to my room right away. Instead, I stopped at the CQ’s desk and said, “You need a break?”
“Yeah, I wanted to walk down to the PX and buy some smokes.”
“Go ahead. I’ll cover for you.”
The CQ took off, and I sat at the rickety field table in the main entranceway that served as his desk. When the hallway emptied, I picked up the phone and dialed. This time, she didn’t answer. It was a voice I was unfamiliar with. “Female BOQ. Lieutenant Norris speaking, sir or ma’am.”
In my most officious tone, I said, “Captain Prevault, please.”
“Can I say who’s calling?”
I remembered the name of the doctor who’d treated me at the 121 after I’d been beaned out in Itaewon. I used it.
“Hold on, sir.”
I listened to the footsteps down the hallway, the knock on the distant door and then a long wait. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I heard a door creak open, then whispered words, urgent, purposely hushed. The door closed and the footsteps returned.
“She’s not in, sir. Do you want me to leave a message?”
“No, thank you. I’ll contact her later.”
I set the phone down and stared out the front door of the barracks. GIs pulled up in jeeps or trucks and hopped out and ran inside laughing. A couple of them dropped thirty-five cents into the beer machine and out popped a can of cold brew. When they left, I bought one for myself. Falstaff. I didn’t know anything could taste so good. And it eased the pounding in my head that still throbbed right behind where the welt was most tender. After polishing off my first, I had another.
“Are you okay?” Ernie asked.
“Okay,” I confirmed.
It was early morning. We were walkin
g downhill, past the long brick 8th Army headquarters building, heading for the CID Admin Office.
“You look like you tied one on last night.”
“I did. When Riley came back to the barracks, we shared his last bottle of Old Overwart.”
“You’re down to socializing with that loser?”
“The rye whiskey worked fine.”
He studied me. “What the hell are you so worried about, Sueño? Captain Blood?”
“Nah,” I said. “We’ll get that puke.”
“That’s the spirit.” Ernie slapped me on the back. “So what is it?”
“Nothing,” I said, in an irritated tone of voice. That was enough to back Ernie off. I didn’t want to tell him or anybody else what I was really worried about.
We walked up the stone steps that led to the CID office.
I was worried about losing everything. By holding on to Il-yong and the possibility of being part of his future, I couldn’t let go of his mother, Dr. Yong In-ja, not completely. If by some miracle she returned to me and proposed that we establish a family, how could I say no? If I did, I’d be turning my back on my own child, something I’d promised myself I’d never do. On the other hand, I was being unfair to Leah Prevault, which she’d made abundantly clear last night by not taking my phone call.
I had to see Captain Prevault, and I had to be honest with her, I knew that. I’d do it today, as soon as I had the chance to break away.
Riley was already sitting behind his desk shuffling paperwork, looking none the worse for wear.
“You’re late,” he shouted.
Ernie glanced at his watch. “Two minutes.”
“That’s what I said. You’re freaking late.”
Ernie ignored him and breezed his way to the stainless steel coffee urn.
“The Colonel wanted to talk to you.”
“So we’ll talk,” I said.
“You’re too freaking late. He just left for the Chief of Staff briefing.”
I sat down, grabbed Riley’s copy of the Pacific Stars and Stripes, and opened it to the editorial section. On the left side of the page, the columnists were beating up on Nixon, and on the right side they were making excuses for him. I turned to the comics section: Andy Capp, my little island of sanity.