The Wandering Ghost (george sueno and ernie bascom)

by Martin Limon

  14

  The side of the cart scraped against brick then bounced over the cobbled lane, the lids of the earthenware jars rattling, and then another bump-presumably on the opposite side of the passageway- and then a groaning of wood and metal and finally, a crash. Earthenware smashing, vegetable matter and brine reeking of garlic and anchovies splashing onto the dirty stone roadway. The maid screeching, Korean men cursing. I imagined them hopping about, trying to keep their highly polished shoes away from the puddle reeking of fermented kimchee.

  “Now,” Ernie said.

  Ernie, then Jill and then I ducked through the small door. We turned right and the three of us barreled down the narrow alleyway.

  One of the Korean men behind us shouted, “Yah!”

  But we had a good lead on them and, I imagined, the maid was doing her best to block their passage with the cart. All the passageways were narrow, sometimes walled with brick, sometimes stone, occasionally thick wooden planks. Finally, we reached a wider alleyway and we knew we must be nearing a regular street. Koreans are used to living like this, with houses all jammed together. That’s why their interpersonal customs are so elaborate. If everybody follows the rules, it lessens the chance of someone getting on someone else’s nerves.

  Usually.

  Ernie was getting on my nerves now. He ran down one alley with plenty of space to maneuver-at least six feet on either side- with recessed doorways spaced every ten yards or so, reached the end of it, and then stopped. He stared at us, arms akimbo, palms open. Jill and I almost ran into him.

  “What?” I said.

  Ernie gazed around. “Dead end,” he said.

  Around the corner, shoe leather pounded on stone.

  Ernie reached for his. 45.

  If the man who identified himself at Madame Chon’s front door as Agent Sohn was indeed an agent of the Korean CIA, that explained a lot. First, it explained why he had been monitoring my interrogation at the KNP station in TDC. He wasn’t interested in me or Pak Tong-i, the person I was suspected of murdering. But, he must’ve had information that the person I was after-Jill Matthewson-had somehow made contact with student protesters and, of greater significance, with people in power who might back them up. Insurrection, or a military coup, was never completely out of the question in South Korea. In the early sixties, the Syngman Rhee government had been overthrown because of rioting in the streets. Not just demonstrations by leftist students, but massive movements of the people-shopkeepers, laborers, educators, the works-and the pressure had been more than the corrupt regime could withstand. Later, the current President of Korea, Pak Chung-hee, had taken power via a military coup. No wonder his government was paranoid. To Americans, the Korean student protestors seemed harmless. But the Korean government took them seriously.

  The KCIA used bribery and intimidation. If they offered you a stipend and you were poor, you’d accept it gladly. If you refused their money, they might explain that unless you played ball with them, your younger brother would never be accepted to university. People cooperated.

  I knew now that the highest echelons of the Korean government were taking recent events in Tongduchon seriously. Very seriously indeed.

  We were trapped, in a dead-end street lined with ten-foot-high walls made of stone. Then I heard shouts and the footsteps of the KCIA started toward us.

  “Each of you take a door,” I shouted. “Push the button. Pound on it.”

  At the end of the pedestrian walkway and on either side were thick wooden doors recessed in the stone walls. Koreans design their homes for security and don’t mess around. I pounded on the door nearest me, pushing the door buzzer next to the intercom speaker at the same time. Ernie pounded on another door and Jill still another.

  No answer.

  I couldn’t shout. The KCIA agents were only yards away from us, somewhere in the maze of little alleys. I didn’t want to make their job any easier. I was about to give up and try climbing the wall when Ernie hissed. His door had opened. He’d already stuck his foot inside so the frightened woman who peeked out around the wooden gate couldn’t slam it shut. Jill and I raced toward him. As we pushed through the gate I spoke in rapid Korean.

  “Mianhamnida,” I told the woman. “We just want to pass through your yard and go out the back. Please show us the way.”

  She was a petite Korean woman, maybe in her early thirties; her mouth hung open and her lower lip quivered. She’d opened her front gate to three giant, big-nosed, sweating foreigners. We entered a neat courtyard with a few shrubs, mostly paved with cement. As Jill closed the gate, I heard footsteps and shouts. They’d spotted us but the locked front gate would slow them down. I grabbed the frightened woman by the arm and steered her around the edge of her house, through the narrow passageway between the wall of the home and the side fence. The area in back was even smaller than the courtyard out front: the strong biting smell of an outdoor byonso; a discarded stove starting to rust; no back exit.

  Ernie didn’t hesitate. He hopped on top of the stove and climbed atop the fence. Then holding out his hand he helped Jill up, then me. I waved goodbye to the frightened woman and we hopped down into another alleyway.

  We ran. This time I heard no footsteps. We’d lost them. But what would they do to Madame Chon and her maid? No time to think about that now. We had to hide. Jill had told us that the Samil demonstration was scheduled to start at noon tomorrow in front of Camp Casey’s main gate. It had become clear to me that the reason Colonel Han Kuk-chei had helped Jill Matthewson to escape from the Forest of Seven Clouds was because he wanted her in Tongduchon for this demonstration. He had some function for her. Would she speak again? Jill only had two more days until her thirty days of AWOL was up and she officially became a deserter. If she let that happen, she’d receive a general court-martial. For twenty-nine days of AWOL she’d only get a summary court-martial. As a returned AWOL, she’d face forfeiture of pay, restriction to compound, reduction in rank. Not good. But as a deserter, she’d face time in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.

  Ernie and I made our way to the bar district. We were like homing pigeons. We felt comfortable near business girls and booze. We passed the Black Cat Club and kept going. In an alley behind the Silver Dragon Nightclub, we paused to catch our breath. I looked back, thinking this would be a good time to talk to Jill about turning herself in somewhere safe before she became a deserter. I opened my mouth to speak.

  She wasn’t there.

  I went back and searched the alleyways. No dice. Ernie helped me and together we retraced our steps. No sign of Corporal Jill Matthewson.

  “Why’d you let her go?” Ernie asked.

  “I didn’t let her go. She just went.”

  “Why?”

  Ernie couldn’t figure it out. Neither could I. But maybe Corporal Jill Matthewson was on a mission.

  Ernie and I found shelter in Ok-hi’s hooch. That night, after the ville patrol passed through the Silver Dragon Nightclub on their regular rounds, Ok-hi trotted up and told us that the coast was clear. About two minutes later, Ernie and I were sitting at the bar of the Silver Dragon, sipping on cold draft OB, exchanging theories as to where Jill Matthewson might have gone.

  “She used us,” Ernie said. “Let us escort her back to Tongduchon so she could attend Mrs. Chon’s kut, and when she had no more use for us, she dumped us.”

  The band on the Silver Dragon’s elevated stage hammered out a rock song. On the small dance floor, a battalion of voluptuous Korean business girls jitterbugged with one another. A handful of GIs lurked amongst cocktail tables, leering at the girls on the floor, nursing cheap drinks, generally acting like the Cheap Charlies they were.

  If Ernie was right, and Jill had dumped us, we were up kimchee creek without a paddle. We were absent without leave, didn’t have enough evidence of 2nd ID’s black-marketing to force a prosecution, and the entire local military police corps was searching for us.

  “I don’t think she used us,” I said finally
.

  Ernie stared at me as if I were dumb enough to play catch with mortar rounds.

  “Then what?”

  “She’s investigating.”

  “Investigating what?”

  “Investigating the murder of Private Marv Druwood.”

  “On her own?”

  “Yes. She can be more effective on her own. A couple of big ugly Eighth Army CID agents tagging along would make people nervous. Both Koreans and GIs.”

  Ernie scoffed. “She’s probably back in Wondang by now. Her and Miss Kim Yong-ai, packing up and moving on. Probably on their way to Seoul where we’ll never find them. I’m telling you, Sueno, we’ve been had.”

  “Maybe.”

  We drank a couple more beers in silence. I knew what we had to do. Bust into Lieutenant Colonel Alcott’s office and grab his black- market records. But what if they weren’t there? What if he’d moved them? Even if we found them, without Jill Matthewson’s corroborating testimony our case would be weak. So weak that 8th Army might decide not to prosecute. Especially when we’d been granted no legal authority to bust into his office. But what was the alternative? We were toast here in Division. And if we caught the first train back to Seoul tomorrow, what would we have to show for our efforts? Nothing except four days of bad time on our records. And an Article 15 in our future for being AWOL. And fond memories of the murdered Marv Druwood and the murdered Pak Tong-i and the rape victim, Miss Kim Yong-ai. Maybe Ernie could write off Jill Matthewson, but I couldn’t. I simply could not believe that she’d cut out on us. There had to be a reason.

  I peered into the bottom of my empty beer mug and searched for it. It wasn’t there. I switched to bourbon. Maybe that would help. It did. What had we been talking about just before the Korean men in suits barged into Madame Chon’s home? How to gain access to Camp Casey. As fugitives, we couldn’t waltz through the main gate anymore. Something told me that Jill had left us in order to tackle that problem.

  Had she gone by herself onto the compound? Unlikely. She’d gone to seek help. Help that would assist us in gaining access to Camp Casey. I told this to Ernie. He admitted that it was possible, but he wasn’t optimistic that it was true.

  The rock band had just stopped clanging when a hubbub broke out toward the back of the Silver Dragon, beyond the pool tables. People, both Korean business girls and American GIs, were crowding around someone, like fans begging for autographs. Some of the women squealed. GIs laughed.

  I elbowed Ernie. “At zero-three-hundred. Altercation brewing.”

  Ernie sat up and stared greedily toward the back door, ready to invest all his frustrations in a fight.

  The crowd parted and someone walked through. A shiny black helmet bobbed and, for a second, Ernie and I prepared to run. MPs. And then I realized that there was only one. The helmet bobbed through the crowd until I could see strands of blonde hair peeking from beneath its edge, and suddenly a face that I recognized appeared: Corporal Jill Matthewson. Still surrounded by admirers, she strode out of the crowd onto the center of the dance floor. All of the Korean business girls gasped and cooed and “aahed.” Jill was outfitted in full MP regalia: spit-shined jump boots, pressed combat fatigues, embroidered leather armband, polished black helmet, canvas web belt cinched tightly around her trim waist, and finally a holstered. 45 caliber automatic pistol, her palm resting lightly on the hilt.

  The business girls squealed and some began to applaud. And then, like an avalanche of flowers, they surrounded Jill. All of them giggling, laughing, patting her on the back and shaking hands, holding out two of theirs to clasp one of hers. Many of the business girls stepped back and bowed as she approached and then embraced her.

  Ernie gazed at me, eyebrows raised.

  What were these young Korean prostitutes so happy about?

  I thought I knew. Finally, after all the decades of foreign men parading in and out of these bars and brothels and clubs, parading in and out of their lives, men who had no respect for women in general and Korean business girls in particular, finally, after all these years of suffering during and after the Korean War, here was a woman, a GI woman, and, better yet, an MP woman. Someone who would listen to them. Someone who could understand them. The business girls called her by name, “Jill! Jill!” warbling like a flock of doves.

  Jill smiled and waved and embraced and shook hands and returned fond greetings with the good grace of a woman to royalty born. I had to remind myself that she was a fatherless Hoosier teenager who’d grown up in a trailer park. But tonight, at this moment, in the village of Tongduchon in the nightclub known as the Silver Dragon, she conducted herself like a queen.

  When she approached the bar, I stood. She hugged me. I hugged her back.

  Ernie slouched on his barstool. Jill stared down at him.

  “You’re late,” Ernie said.

  Jill grinned. “Had some work to do.”

  “Like ironing your fatigues?”

  “And other things.”

  “Like what?”

  Jill glanced around the Silver Dragon. “Not here. The ville patrol’s liable to double back. Outside. We’ll talk.”

  It took her almost as long to walk out of the Silver Dragon as it had taken her to enter. And this time even the band members roused themselves and lined up to shake her hand, as if it were their last chance to meet face-to-face with someone famous.

  Outside in the cold February wind, some of the luster faded from Jill’s face. The alley was lit by the yellowish glow of a street-lamp and a smattering of fluorescent rays that leaked out the back door of the Silver Dragon.

  “Where you been all day?” Ernie asked.

  “Making arrangements.”

  “Arrangements for what?”

  “For getting at Colonel Alcott’s records.”

  I knew it. Ernie didn’t stop to congratulate me for my insight. He continued to question Jill. “What kind of arrangements?”

  “You don’t have a need to know.” She thrust back her shoulders. “Tomorrow, you’ll find out. Until then, I need your help.”

  “Hey,” Ernie said, “who do you think’s running this show?”

  After all, Jill was merely an MP Corporal still on her first tour in the Army. And an AWOL corporal at that. Ernie and I were 8th Army CID agents. Seasoned veterans. At least that’s the way we thought of ourselves.

  Jill hooked her thumbs over the rim of her web belt, took a step closer to Ernie, and stared up at him. “In Division,” she said, thrusting a thumb at her chest, “I’m in charge. And if you want to find out who did a number on Private Marv Druwood, you’ll listen to me and do as I say.”

  Ernie glared at her, dumbfounded, not sure what to do. If she’d been a man, he might’ve punched her. Jill swiveled away from Ernie and turned to me. “Ville patrol,” she said. “Weatherwax is on duty tonight. You two divert the attention of the KNP and the Korean MP so I can corner Weatherwax and get the info I need. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Let’s go.”

  Jill turned and started trotting down the dark alley. We followed. She twisted through the narrow lanes as if she’d been through them many times before, occasionally pointing at a broken “turtle trap” and hollering at us to avoid stepping into the gaping hole. Ernie stayed a few feet behind, just close enough for me to hear him swearing under his breath, cursing all females. The narrow alley emerged onto a broader lane. Above us neon glared: a startled feline with red eyes. The Black Cat Club.

  Ernie groaned. “Not again.”

  Down the road, the ville patrol emerged from another night club. We crouched and Jill led us out of their line of sight and then around the back. The gate leading to the hooches behind the Black Cat was open. Ernie and I followed Jill past darkened rooms until we stood at the open back door of the club. The voice of James Brown wailed from the jukebox. Conversation and laughter floated out, on a roiling cloud of cigarette smoke.

  Jill peeked into the back door then ducked back out.

&nb
sp; “The ville patrol’s in,” she said. “When they come back here to search the men’s and women’s latrines, create a diversion.” She pulled her. 45. “While you keep them occupied, I’m going to have a little talk with my old friend, Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.”

  Weatherwax was the man who’d shot at Ernie and me in the alleyways of Bongil-chon. Ernie and I wanted to interrogate him, too, but Jill knew all the MPs up here. She’d be able to spot lies easier than we could. Still, I was worried about her state of mind. Was she out to gather information or was she after revenge?

  “Take it easy, Jill,” I told her. “All we want is information.”

  “Right,” she said. “Right.”

  Ernie interrupted. “Here they come.”

  Two uniformed Korean men marched down the narrow hallway. The ROK Army MP shouted a warning and then pushed his way into the female latrine. The KNP followed. A black American MP I recognized as Staff Sergeant Weatherwax entered the men’s latrine. Ernie charged forward, plowing his way into the women’s latrine. I followed, standing just inside the door, ready to help if needed.

  Behind me, Jill elbowed her way through the swinging door of the men’s latrine.

  “Weikurei?” Ernie shouted. What’s the matter?

  He was acting drunk. Staggering. The Korean cops stared at him, wide-eyed. Inside the open door of a stall, a young woman squatted over a porcelain-lined hole, her skirt up, terror filling her eyes.

  “What’s the matter you?” Ernie said. “Why you come GI club?”

  The KNP started to shove Ernie toward the hallway. Ernie spun away from him, staggering against the cement wall. Both of the Korean men turned on him.

  I stepped forward. Smiling. Nodding. “My chingu,” I said, pointing at Ernie. My friend. “Taaksan stinko.” He’s very drunk.

  The two cops let me step past them and grab Ernie. I started to pull him out of the latrine and into the hall but he resisted. I motioned for the Korean cops to help me. They did, pushing Ernie out the door and down the hallway toward the main ballroom of the Black Cat Club.