The Wandering Ghost (george sueno and ernie bascom)

by Martin Limon

  Finally, after a sharp turn, I almost plowed into Ernie.

  Breathing heavily, he gazed down a slope at the shuttered environs of the TDC bar district. The lanes were a little wider here, with shops and bars and coffeehouses, their neon signs switched off.

  “Anybody following?” he asked.

  “I think we lost ’em.”

  I bent forward and placed my hands on my knees, trying to regain my breath.

  Ernie pointed. “There’s an alley off to the left, behind that line of bars. It leads to the railroad tracks and beyond that the main gate.”

  “We can’t go there,” I said.

  GIs passing through the main gate of Camp Casey this late would be arrested by the MPs for curfew violation and turned over to their unit commanders in the morning. With our 8th Army CID badges, Ernie and I were amongst the elite few in Korea who were exempt from the midnight to four curfew. The MPs wouldn’t arrest us but they would note the time of our arrival in the duty log. Under the circumstances not an entry we wanted made.

  And the KNPs would almost certainly be waiting for us in front of the main gate. Even though they hadn’t been able to identify us specifically, the Korean cops knew-by our height and by our clothing-that we were foreigners. And only one type of foreigner lived in Tongduchon: American GIs.

  “So where to?” Ernie asked.

  In the Seoul bar district of Itaewon, our home turf, there were plenty of business girls and nightclub owners who would take us in. At least until curfew was over. But up here we were strangers. Mostly. Ok-hi and Jeannie knew us. But the Silver Dragon was on the far side of the bar district.

  I was about to respond to Ernie’s question when he shoved me against the wall.

  “White mice,” he whispered.

  A few yards in front of us an American-made jeep, painted white, cruised by slowly. We stepped back farther into the shadows of a recessed gateway. Crossed beams from the jeep’s headlights caressed the brick in front of us. We held our breath. The lights never faltered. They continued illuminating the brick wall, skipped over us in our dark enclave, and moved on.

  When the sound of the jeep’s engine faded, we started to breathe again. It figured that the curfew police would patrol the bar district more diligently than they patrolled other parts of town. Trying to make it all the way to the Silver Dragon was too risky. So where could we go? There was only one other person in town that we knew.

  “The Black Cat Club,” I said. “It’s closer. And some of the girls have hooches out back.”

  “Maybe they’re busy.”

  “Maybe. But maybe Brandy lives there.”

  Brandy, the buxom bartender at the Black Cat Club.

  “You asked for her address earlier,” Ernie said. “They wouldn’t give it to you.”

  “Maybe it’s because she lives right there. On the premises.”

  Ernie snorted, unconvinced. “Well, the Black Cat Club is safer than standing out here all night,” he said. “Which way?”

  I pointed right. Together we slouched through the shadows.

  The back of the Black Cat Club was as dark and as silent as a Yi Dynasty tomb. The double-doored wooden gate was barred from within and the stone wall protecting the back courtyard was topped with shards of broken glass embedded in cement.

  “Looks like they don’t welcome visitors,” Ernie said.

  “At least Koreans don’t keep a big dog behind the wall,” I said. “Our choice is to pound on the gate and make a racket until someone wakes up and comes out to talk to us, or else climb the fence.”

  “Raising a racket doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  The curfew police could pass by at any time. And if we made too much noise, a neighbor with a phone-although phones were rare in Tongduchon-might call and turn us in. Better to climb the fence. I cupped my hands in front of me. Ernie didn’t hesitate. He stepped into my cupped hands and I hoisted him over the wall. Once inside, Ernie opened the small door in the large metal gate. I ducked through and he shut the door behind me.

  It was your typical Korean courtyard lined with maybe eight hooches, sliding oil-papered doors facing inward, earthenware kimchee jars against the walls, and a rusty water spigot in the center of the courtyard with a plastic pail hanging from the valve. More hooches on the other side and then, I supposed, the back door of the Black Cat Club. We were about to slip past the hooches when the sound of human voices-harsh whispers-floated across tile roofs. Ernie waved his hand to signal danger and we crouched.

  “Somebody’s awake.”

  That didn’t seem too surprising to me what with the noise we’d made climbing the wall and opening the front gate.

  “I have to convince them not to call the police,” I said.

  Ernie nodded. I edged through a passageway between the line of hooches and the stone wall, then emerged into another open area that led to a door with a brightly painted wooden sign bearing a picture of a black cat. I was about to reach for the handle when the back door of the Black Cat Club burst open. Ten men emerged, all of them in various stages of undress, some with silver picks wedged in their hair, others with silk stockings knotted tightly over their skulls. Moonlight glistened off black flesh. Lips twisted into scowls. Cudgels were raised: a baseball bat, a pump handle, an army-issue entrenching tool.

  “Hold it!” Ernie shouted.

  He stood behind me, his. 45 out, pointing at the group of men.

  “What you doing here?” one of the men asked. “T-shirts ain’t allowed.”

  A few of the men guffawed. None of them seemed concerned about Ernie’s. 45.

  “Looking for Brandy,” I said. “We need to talk to her.”

  “People need a lot of shit,” the same man said. “Don’t mean they get it.”

  He was one of the tallest of the men and, clearly, their leader. I was trying to think of a way to talk my way out of this confrontation but there were a lot of hard feelings between black GIs and white GIs. In the early seventies, the good fellowship of the civil rights movement had long been forgotten. Black GIs no longer waited patiently for the white power structure of the U.S. Army to reform. They were fighting back. Demanding equal promotions, an equal shot at choice assignments. Actually, I agreed with them. But there was a whole other element of the black experience-aside from the legitimate aspirations-that I, as a cop, had to deal with. The draft had been stopped a couple of years ago. To fill the ranks the army had lowered enlistment standards and young men with juvenile records a mile long-and even adult felony convictions-were being allowed to join up. The thinking was that the strict discipline of military life would straighten them out. Any MP could have told the geniuses at the Pentagon that they were wrong. Instead of going straight, career criminals continued their nefarious ways inside the ranks of the U.S. Army. That didn’t mean that all the GIs standing in front of me were criminals. But you could bet that some of them were. And those few were the ones who would urge on their fellow soldiers to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Like, for instance, beat the crap out of two 8th Army CID agents.

  More black GIs appeared in the courtyard behind us. Ernie swiveled, arms extended, his. 45 rotating as if on a gun turret.

  “Look,” I said, “we just want to talk to Brandy for a few minutes. That’s all. Then we’ll be on our way.”

  A few of the doors of the hooches slid open. Women appeared, Korean women. Some with Afro hairdos, most wearing silk see-through robes. All of them skinny. None voluptuous enough to be Brandy.

  A propeller twirled through the air. I tried to dodge it but it clipped my shoulder and clattered to the flagstone steps below. A mongdungi, a wooden stick used to beat dirt out of wet clothing.

  The women jeered.

  The guy in front of me raised his baseball bat. Ernie swiveled, fired the. 45, and the bat splintered into a thousand shards. Women screamed. Ernie shouted, “Get down!”

  The men standing in the doorway of the Black Cat Club cursed and took cover in the courtyard.
/>
  “Come on!” Ernie said. “Enough of this bullshit!”

  We ran past the splintered baseball bat, through the back door of the Black Cat Club, past the byonso, until we reached the main ballroom. A fluorescent bulb beneath the bar provided the only light. Keeping the. 45 rotating, Ernie made his way to the door. He grabbed the iron handle and pulled. Locked. Barred from the inside.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  I stepped past him, fiddled with the latches, and finally lifted a long metal rod. The door creaked open. A cold breeze drifted through the open crack.

  Black men stood at the back exit, glaring.

  “Tell Brandy,” Ernie said, “that we’re sorry we missed her.”

  With that, he fired the. 45 into the rafters above the men’s heads. They scattered. We pushed through the front door of the Black Cat Club and scampered out into the deserted streets of the Tongduchon bar district.

  The gunfire had alerted the Korean National Police. Whistles shrilled and jeep engines roared, all zeroing in on the Black Cat Club. Ernie and I raced through back alleys.

  “Why’d you have to shoot?” I asked.

  Ernie answered as if I were nuts. “We have to maintain respect.”

  “I was talking to them,” I said. “We could’ve worked something out.”

  “Bull. We’d broken into their hooch. The law was on the brothers’ side for once. They were going to do what they do best. Kick the crap out of a couple of T-shirts.”

  Ernie had a dim view of human nature. Maybe he was right. There was a reason that 8th Army CID issued us. 45s and it wasn’t because people were reasonable. We rounded a corner and off to our left, from another alley, came the sound of a herd of footsteps stampeding toward the Black Cat Club. We hid in the shadows and watched.

  On the main drag of the bar district, Korean cops, holding billy clubs at port arms, trotted in military formation.

  “Dozens of ’em,” Ernie whispered.

  Going to the Black Cat Club hadn’t done us any good. Instead of finding either Brandy or refuge, we’d called down the fury of Korean officialdom. We crouched in the dark alley, sweating, breathing hard, trying to calm down.

  When the footsteps passed, Ernie said, “Where to now?”

  “There are some brothels next to the bars. Maybe we can sneak into one and find some business girl who’ll take us in.”

  Ernie didn’t have a better idea.

  We reached the main street of the Tongduchon bar district, about a long block east of where we’d seen the platoon of cops. A joint called the Seven Star Club loomed across the street from us. If the back doors were open, we might be able to gain access to the building and climb the stairs to the hooches above. No lights shined in any of the windows but it was the only plan I had. If we could hide until morning, we’d be able to reenter the compound amid the mass of GIs returning to Camp Casey. No one would be able to connect us with either the break-in at Kimchee Entertainment or the disturbance at the Black Cat Club.

  I stared at the empty street, calculating our odds of avoiding the KNPs until dawn.

  “Maybe we should stay here,” I said.

  “The patrols will be by eventually,” Ernie replied, “as soon as they figure out what happened at the Black Cat Club. Besides, there’re warm hooches in the Seven Star Club and pee pots and business girls. All the comforts of civilization.”

  Ernie was right. We had to chance it. I looked both ways. All quiet. I waved for Ernie and together we slouched across the road.

  Looking back, I should’ve realized that the Korean National Police would figure out where we’d go next. The bar district. Where else would American GIs be welcomed in the middle of the night? Where else would a couple of miscreants like Ernie and me seek refuge? So when we stood behind the Seven Star Club, pleased with ourselves for having sneaked across the main drag, trying to decide whether to open the back door or climb through a window, suddenly, as if materializing out of the dark mist, KNPs converged on us from both ends of the alley.

  Ernie elbowed me. “Don’t look now.”

  I looked anyway. They wore riot-gear helmets and held three-foot-long wooden batons. About a dozen of them plugged each end of the alley.

  Ernie reached for his. 45.

  I grabbed him, wrapped him in a bear hug, and held on. He realized the wisdom of what I was doing and didn’t struggle. Without further incident, the Korean National Police took us into custody.

  8

  Torture is a relative term.

  A person can consider himself to be undergoing torture simply by being denied something he craves. Cigarettes for a smoker. Caffeine for a coffee drinker. Take me for instance. I started drinking coffee during my first tour in Korea in the middle of the frigid winter. Now it’s a habit. Every day on the way to work I stop at the 8th Army snack bar and guzzle two mugs of steaming hot coffee that’s brewed in huge stainless steel urns. Then and only then do I feel ready to face the day.

  Korean cops don’t drink coffee. Too expensive. Usually, they have a pot of barley tea brewing somewhere in the station. The lieutenants and other higher-ups might brew a pot of green tea on hot plates behind their desks. But no java. And even if there had been coffee available, the KNPs wouldn’t have offered me any. Nor Ernie, who kept raising hell and cussing them out.

  I tried to reason with my interrogator. He wasn’t a bad guy, actually. Captain Ma was his name and he was a friendly cop with a skinny, chain-smoking body and a wrinkled, smiling face that, since it was always grinning, was totally unreadable. I couldn’t tell if he was about to honor me with an award for lifetime achievement or slice out my spleen. I sat on a wooden chair, barefoot, wearing only a T-shirt and pants. The rest of my clothing had been taken from me. Also, in case I forgot to mention it, my wrists were handcuffed behind my back. Tightly. Part of the torture.

  No bamboo beneath the fingernails. Not yet.

  Without having talked it over, Ernie and I arrived at the same alibi. Of course we were separated immediately after our arrest and were not allowed to communicate in any way-a basic tenet of Interrogation 101. But the fact that our stories dovetailed wasn’t miraculous. It made sense if you understood the first rule of lying: Stick with the truth, until it becomes inconvenient. Then say as little as possible.

  So we each told the KNPs the same story. We were in Tongduchon searching for leads on the disappearance of Corporal Jill Matthewson and, in particular, we were searching for a woman known as Brandy, a bartender at the Black Cat Club. Why had we been out after curfew? Because we weren’t able to find her before curfew.

  Why had we fired a weapon at the Black Cat Club? Simply to convince a few local citizens not to interfere with an ongoing police investigation.

  Then the big question: Had we been in the western district of Tongduchon earlier this evening, at the office of a man known as Pak Tong-i? This is where the truth became inconvenient. We both answered no.

  Had we ever talked to Mr. Pak? I didn’t know. The name didn’t ring a bell.

  Had we ever visited the office of Kimchee Entertainment? I couldn’t be sure. I’d have to review my notes. And on it went like this. No violence. Only the threat of it. While Captain Ma grinned, another cop paced the room, cussing in vulgar Korean and slamming his black leather-gloved fist into his open palm.

  Of course the Korean cops weren’t stupid. They’d spotted two foreigners at the scene of the Pak Tong-i murder and they knew those two foreigners were most likely me and my partner, Ernie Bascom. But they also knew that the body of Pak Tong-i was as cold as a KNP’s heart. He’d been dead for hours and it wasn’t likely that we’d have hung around that long if we were the ones who had murdered him. That’s why Ernie and I could afford to stonewall. Eventually, they’d realize they had no evidence against us and they’d let us go. Discharging a firearm within city limits and being out after curfew were crimes for normal citizens but not for law enforcement officers. Still, the KNPs wanted whatever information we had and they wanted it ba
dly.

  But I’d developed a certain level of skepticism since I’d arrived in Tongduchon. I wasn’t sure who was responsible for the disappearance of Corporal Jill Matthewson or the stripper, Kim Yong-ai, nor for Pak Tong-i’s death, for that matter. Until I knew more, I didn’t feel like trusting anyone.

  Captain Ma, under the Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and the Republic of Korea, was required to notify the 2nd Division MP duty officer concerning our arrest. That much he promised. Nothing more.

  Through the entire interrogation a third man sat in a chair behind me, off to my left, observing. The foul odor of his cigarette smoke permeated my nostrils. Kobukson, I figured. Turtle Boat brand. I couldn’t see him clearly; he was careful to avoid my line of sight, but using peripheral vision, I formed a picture of him. Korean. Older, maybe mid to late forties. Wearing civvies. Jacket and tie, overcoat, even a cloth porkpie hat that he kept on the table next to him. He smoked occasionally, only half as much as Captain Ma, and he held his cigarettes in some sort of holder. Plastic? Ivory? I couldn’t tell. He wore gloves that he slipped on and off. He gave the impression of a man who performed every movement, even the tiniest act, with precision.

  Captain Ma and the other cop in the interrogation room ignored him. For them, he wasn’t there. And for his part, the mystery man didn’t say a word.

  Just after dawn, representatives from the 2nd Infantry Division arrived. August personages both: Lieutenant Colonel Stanley X. Alcott, the 2nd ID Provost Marshal and Military Police Investigator, Warrant Officer One Fred Bufford. Colonel Alcott shook hands all the way around-but not with me-and grinned a lot. Warrant Officer Bufford stood awkwardly in a corner, shaking hands with no one, studying me.

  I sat up as straight as possible in my chair-as straight as the handcuffs would allow-and thrust my shoulders back as far as they would go. As I did so I checked my peripheral vision. The mystery man had disappeared.