Ping-Pong Heart

by Martin Limon

  “Will you write that down for me?” I asked. “What you just said.”

  She shook her head negatively and hugged herself as if she were suddenly cold.

  “We’ll protect you,” I told her.

  Once again she looked at me as if I were an idiot.

  “If you’re worried about someone hurting you,” I said, “then why are you telling us this?”

  “No matter,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter?”

  “No more,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  I was confused. “What exactly doesn’t matter?”

  She spent a few seconds planning her English sentence and then she said, “It doesn’t matter if you know. Doesn’t matter. No more.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant. Maybe she meant she’d just broken up with Nam and nothing mattered to her anymore, so she’d sold him and the entire operation out. Or maybe she meant that the people involved were beyond prosecution.

  I was about to press her further, but apparently the thugs who’d allowed me back here had decided I’d had enough time with Miss Lee. They came up behind me and said it was time to leave. She scurried off. I could’ve resisted and had Ernie back me up, but what was the point? For whatever reason, they’d allowed me to talk to Miss Lee, and she’d dropped a bombshell. Were these guys involved? Maybe not, but they weren’t about to let me spend more time with a girl who made money for them by the hour. Fisticuffs weren’t likely to change that, and they might even make things worse.

  The smart move was to notify Mr. Kill. He had jurisdictional authority—and plenty of it.

  I tipped an imaginary hat to the three dour-faced gentlemen and found Ernie waiting in the hallway. We trotted down stone steps to the parking lot.

  “You find her?” Ernie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “First,” I said, “let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Ernie could tell that whatever she’d told me had freaked me out. He didn’t ask more questions. We jumped in the jeep; he started it up and drove us away, gravel spitting out from behind our wheels.

  -25-

  At the yellow sign in front of the river embankment, Ernie turned left. By then I’d briefed him.

  “She says it didn’t matter,” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Ernie veered left, taking the sharp turn with more authority now that he knew what to expect.

  “It doesn’t sound good,” he said.

  “No. Did you bring a gun?” I asked.

  “I should’ve. You’re always the one talking me out of it.”

  “They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t mind one now.”

  I shrugged.

  “The whole case against Arenas is phony,” Ernie said. “He ought to be released from Leavenworth.”

  “This information won’t do much good though, if she doesn’t recant her previous testimony.”

  Ernie shifted into low gear and churned up the slippery road. His high beams flashed on dark branches.

  “All we need is her statement,” I continued. “As soon as we find a pay phone, I’ll call Mr. Kill. He’ll be able to take her into custody and convince her to write one.”

  Ernie thought about it for a while. “Why was it so easy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, this gal Miss Lee must’ve been threatened and been placed under tremendous pressure when she testified against Arenas. Why would she suddenly tell us the truth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And why’d that rich guy, whatever his name is, drive her all the way out here to have her switch jobs? Why tonight? Just because we showed up?”

  “What other reason would they have? She was about to start a shift at the Cherry Girl Club, but when she saw us she ran to Nam, and then he made a phone call and drove her out here.”

  “And she said that it didn’t matter if she told us the truth.”

  “That’s what she said,” I replied.

  Ernie thought about this for a while. He swerved around a dark corner, too fast, I thought, but I knew what he was relying on. If another vehicle was on the road, he’d see the flash of their headlights long before he saw the vehicle itself.

  I thought about it, too. Miss Lee had claimed that it wasn’t Arenas who’d contacted the North Koreans, but Captain Blood. What sort of double-agent game was being played? Were Ernie and I stumbling into something that could foil a long-planned sting operation? I didn’t know—we didn’t have clearance for anything pertaining to counterintelligence. What I did know was that the more I learned about the agents of the 501st MI, the more I thought it plausible that they were covering up something much bigger than an inflated budget. They had fabricated evidence that had resulted in more than one innocent man’s court-martial and conviction, and if Miss Lee could be believed, Captain Blood was on the take from North Korea. This was one hell of a motive to murder the man who was about to expose them, Major Frederick Manfield Schultz.

  Ernie screamed.

  Out of the narrow road in front of us, a boulder emerged from the darkness, but it didn’t keep to its lane. Instead it veered to our right, rolling directly into our path. Ernie slammed on the brakes, but the boulder kept coming. What most drivers would’ve done was plow over into the safety of the ditch on the right, but Ernie Bascom wasn’t most drivers. Instead he veered to the left, across the boulder’s path. It was then that I realized that it wasn’t a boulder, but a truck. A truck with its headlights off. Whoever was driving adjusted to Ernie’s surprise maneuver. Before we could veer into the safety of the far left lane, the truck turned back toward us. We were on a collision course. We’d be clipped by the front bumper of the truck right where I sat, in the passenger seat.

  Unexpectedly, Ernie stepped on the gas. His little jeep was kept finely tuned by the mechanics at the 21 T Car motor pool, all of whom received a cut of the money realized from the quart bottle of Johnny Walker Black that Ernie paid to the Head Dispatcher each month. The jeep leapt forward. The bumper of the truck headed straight for me, but because of our sudden increase in speed, it missed the front and slammed into the rear.

  The impact jolted me out of my seat, and I was overcome by the sensation of flying through darkness. A sensation that was abruptly replaced by a jarring slam, maybe into a tree trunk. Briefly, I experienced pain—plenty of it—and then, mercifully, oblivion.

  The first thing I realized was what Miss Lee Suk-myong had meant when she’d said it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what she told me because she and her boyfriend didn’t expect me to live through the night. All they wanted me to do was leave the kisaeng house and get back on the road, where my hash would certainly be settled.

  But because of Ernie’s expert driving, I was still alive, or at least I hoped I was.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious but I tried to raise myself, conducting inventory as I did so of my arms, legs, and the other appendages that are so important to a young man. All still apparently intact. What else did I need? Maybe a head that didn’t feel like it was being crushed by King Kong’s foot.

  I rose to my feet. Somewhere I heard groans. I pushed myself away from the adjacent tree and turned. It had suffered a large gash from the impact of the front fender of Ernie’s jeep. The roadway loomed a few feet above me, and on the far side a small fire glowed.

  The jeep? I looked around before spotting it upright in a shallow ditch just yards away. Unsteadily, I pushed myself from tree to tree until I reached it. Ernie was still in the driver’s seat, his head slumped forward. The dim glow from the distant fire shone on his face, and it appeared that his nose was bleeding. The back of the jeep on the passenger side had been caved in by the truck. But after be
ing hit, the jeep slid sideways down the incline and landed against another tree. The trunk stood indented into the chassis right behind Ernie’s head. I hobbled around to his side, reached in, and pulled Ernie upright. His eyes popped open.

  “What the . . .” he said.

  “Don’t talk now.”

  I felt his arms. They didn’t appear broken, and his legs seemed all right, too. But because of the odd angle at which he sat, his feet were twisted to the side. I pinched his nose and tilted his head back. Blood ran down over his lips and into his mouth. Oddly, his round-lensed glasses were still in place.

  I slapped him.

  “Huh?”

  If I’d had smelling salts, I’m sure I could’ve brought him fully awake. I didn’t, so I made do and slapped him again.

  “Knock it off!” he said.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “I am now.” He rubbed his cheek where I’d slapped him.

  “Can you climb out?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” He flexed his arms and fingers, then moved his legs. “Everything seems to be working.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  I kept one hand under his left armpit, and with the other I held onto the edge of the jeep. He lifted himself gingerly and climbed out. Once on solid ground, we continued to cling to tree trunks and branches and, like two old men using walking staffs, we made our way uphill to the road.

  On the far side, a military vehicle had plunged into the ditch. We walked unsteadily across pavement and peered down.

  “A three-quarter-ton,” Ernie said.

  I squatted down and read the white stenciling on the rear bumper. “Headquarters Company,” I said. “Five Oh First MI.”

  “For Christ sake,” Ernie said. “These boys play rough.”

  The engine still rumbled, low and threatening. Quickly, we dropped down the incline to salvage what life we could.

  At the first farmhouse we reached, I banged on the wood plank door, but the farmer who peered out told me there was no telephone in the village. He pointed down the road. When I asked him how far, he said three kilometers.

  I trudged back to the pavement, where Ernie sat hunched over.

  “Oh, great,” he said when I told him the news. He glanced around at the surrounding darkness. The only things that moved were the clouds drifting in front of the half-moon above. “Must be past curfew,” Ernie said. Then he thought to check his wristwatch. Broken. He slipped it off and tossed it away.

  During daylight hours, dozens of ROK Army and US military vehicles traveled back and forth between the Eastern and the Western Corridors. It would’ve been easy to catch a ride, or even use one of their field radios to contact the local MPs.

  “The driver was alive,” I said.

  “He won’t be much longer,” Ernie replied, “if we don’t get an ambulance out there.”

  We’d stopped the bleeding, cleared his air passage and did everything the Army First Aid Field Manual told us to do. We’d even treated him for shock by elevating his feet, loosening his belt and wrapping him in a tent-half of canvas—one half of a full pup tent—we found in the bed of the truck. But that had been all we could do, so we left to find help. He probably had internal injuries. Although we couldn’t see much in the dark, he seemed to be turning sheet-white.

  As if Ernie had conjured up a guardian angel, headlights appeared in the distance. We both stood in the middle of the road, waving our arms. We were blinded by the high beams but held our ground. When the vehicle stopped, two armed soldiers hopped out. As they approached, I could see that they were ROK Army—their helmets were stenciled with the word honbyong, Military Police.

  I told them what had happened. They radioed for an ambulance and told us to climb in. We didn’t fit very well. At the turnoff from the main road we had them stop, and they left one of their MPs at the roadway to guide the ambulance in. The rest of us bounced down the narrow road. When we reached the wreck, the driver was still breathing. For the first time since the accident, I finally had the presence of mind to take a closer look at his face. His nametag confirmed it—Fenton, Specialist Four. The same guy who’d threatened Miss Kim.

  -26-

  The ROK MPs helped us back Ernie’s jeep out of the ditch, and after hoisting Fenton into the military ambulance, we drove back to Camp Casey. The steering was off, but Ernie managed to get us there in one piece. We were patched up at the Aide Station. No serious injuries, just bruises and superficial cuts. After a lecture by the on-duty doc about how lucky we were and a scolding on defensive driving, we were sent on our way.

  The next morning, as I sat at my desk at the 8th Army CID office, I spoke to Mr. Kill by phone.

  “Apparently,” he said, “the customers at the kisaeng house were directed by the staff to leave via another road out.”

  “Meaning they were in on it,” I said. “They knew what was going to happen.”

  “Yes, although they’re denying it, saying it was just the shortest route for customers returning to Seoul.”

  “What about Miss Lee?”

  “Nobody seems to have heard of her. She was gone by the time we arrived, as were most of the kisaeng. Management claims they’ve never heard of a Miss Lee Suk-myong.”

  “What about Nam?”

  “Unfortunately, they hadn’t heard of him either. However, thanks to your description of the sedan and, more importantly, the license plate number, we should locate this fellow, whatever his name is, soon.”

  Highest priority had been placed on the all-points-bulletin for that sedan. Mr. Kill was later able to confirm that the owner’s name was indeed Nam, so we knew our mystery man wasn’t using a pseudonym. Still, after two days of waiting, there was no sign of the vehicle. Miss Lee Suk-myong seemed also to have vanished from the face of the Korean Peninsula.

  Specialist Fenton’s injuries were serious enough that he was put on an air-evac chopper out of Division and was now recovering at the 121st Evacuation Hospital in Seoul. When we tried to interview him, Captain Blood interceded with the Provost Marshal, and after conferring in private session, Colonel Brace denied us permission to speak with Fenton.

  “A sting operation,” Staff Sergeant Riley explained. “The Five Oh Worst has been working on it for months, hoping to round up a North Korean agent, and you two stepped right in the middle and screwed everything up. Congratulations.”

  So all our work had come to nothing. Miss Jo was still at large, the clock ticking down to her unjust conviction. Vindication for Hector Arenas was dead in the water. No one at 8th Army wanted to hear about it, not without evidence more concrete than the alleged testimony of Arenas’s former yobo. Captain Blood rode high at 8th Army, and all our requests to examine other aspects of the case, including his inflated budget, were turned down by the Provost Marshal.

  “No probable cause,” Riley told us.

  The fact that the 501st had tried to kill us was written off as a figment of our overheated imaginations. I believed that Nam had called somebody from the Tower Hotel, who had in turn notified Captain Blood. Nam had led us on a merry goose chase to the isolated kisaeng house while Blood ordered Fenton up north in the three-quarter-ton truck with the express purpose of running us down and making it look like an accident. The only problem was, I couldn’t prove it. Not without interrogating Fenton. And even then, only if he slipped up or admitted what he’d done, which seemed unlikely.

  The only good thing we’d accomplished was bringing Miss Kim back to work. Her hand lotion, box of tissue, and Black Dragon tea were all on her desk where they were supposed to be. She quietly went about her business, typing up reports, translating memos into Korean, patiently filing the massive amounts of paperwork that spewed from Sergeant Riley’s desk.

  And no one was harassing her. At least, they didn’t appear to be.

  -27-

  Using a red cloth, the Korean me
chanic wiped grease from his fingers. “Andei,” he said. No good.

  We were at the motor pool of the 21st Transportation Company (Car), or 21 T Car. The Head Dispatcher had assigned his ace mechanic to check out Ernie’s jeep, but it was a total loss. The frame had not only been twisted, but cracked. It was beyond repair. According to him, we were lucky that we made it back to Seoul.

  I slapped Ernie on the back. “There’re more jeeps in the Yellow Sea,” I told him.

  “Yeah, but we’ve been through a lot with this one.”

  He was right. It had been almost two years now, and we’d used that jeep on more cases than I could remember.

  “All good things come to an end,” I told him.

  “For Christ’s sake, Sueño. Stop with the platitudes already. You’re making me feel worse.” He surveyed the vast expanse of the motor pool, inhaled and pulled his belt up. “Let’s get a drink.”

  So we did. In the Dispatcher’s Office. The Korean honcho kept a bottle of soju there; the imported scotch was reserved for resale only. But soju was good enough for us. We wiped out a couple of shot glasses with our thumbs and toasted the death of Ernie’s jeep, on its way to the great junkyard in the sky.

  When we returned to the CID office, there was more good news.

  “They’re slapping you with a Report of Survey,” Staff Sergeant Riley told us.

  “For what?” Ernie asked.

  “For reckless driving that resulted in the totaling of two military vehicles. Not to mention almost killing Specialist Fenton.”

  “Reckless driving?” Ernie said.

  Riley shrugged. “You were on the wrong side of the road.”

  “So was the other guy.”

  “Tell it to the judge,” Riley said.

  I poured a cup of coffee from the stainless steel urn and returned to Riley’s desk. “Was this Captain Blood’s idea?”