by Martin Limon
I could’ve maneuvered them into shoving Ernie out the back door but I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to search for Brandy again.
The reception we received wasn’t friendly. Two white GIs- drunk white GIs-wrestling with two Korean cops. Not exactly what the soul brothers of the Black Cat Club wanted to see while they were trying to relax and socialize. They reacted with hostility.
Ernie bumped into a group of GIs standing with their arms around Korean business girls. Drinks splashed out of cups. Men cursed. They shoved Ernie and he reeled toward me.
As I held him, I whispered in his ear. “Brandy’s here.”
Ernie sobered. The show was over. Jill had yet to emerge from the men’s latrine. Apparently, she was still having her heart-to-heart talk with Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.
Brandy stood wide-eyed behind the bar, glancing this way and that, searching for a means of escape. The last time we’d seen her she’d spent the early evening in a yoguan with Ernie, and then he’d almost been killed at fish heaven by a rifle round aimed his way.
Ernie lunged toward her, ramming into two GIs sitting on stools at the bar. They shouted. Ernie leaned across the bar, stretching out his hand, but Brandy ducked, barely escaping his grasp. She broke for the end of the bar, but I was already moving. I would’ve cut her off easily but by now all eyes in the club were on us. Curtis Mayfield was moaning sweetly from the jukebox. Two men blocked me. I plowed into them; they reeled backward. I’d reached the end of the bar but Brandy kept moving, heading for the front door. In two steps I would’ve had her but a punch to my ribcage threw me off stride and then three more bodies plowed into me. I punched back. As I did so, I heard the big double front doors open and then slam shut. I tried to move forward but more screaming bodies were in my way. Ernie was behind me now, cursing and punching and kicking, and for the first time I stopped worrying about Brandy escaping and started worrying about surviving.
I was just about to grab a chair and hit somebody when the blast of a pistol shot filled the room, followed immediately by an explosion of glass and metal accompanied by electrical sparks and the screeching halt of Curtis Mayfield’s smooth falsetto. Corporal Jill Matthewson stood at the back of the room, holding her. 45 in front of her with both hands gripped firmly around the hilt.
“Make a hole!” she shouted.
She moved forward through the crowd until she reached Ernie and me and together the three of us backed toward the front door. The mumbling started again. Cursing now about the jukebox and screaming invective from the old woman behind the bar. But before anyone could retaliate, we were out the door, down the steps, and running.
“What’d Weatherwax tell you?”
We were running through dark alleys, heading northwest, away from the TDC bar district.
“Never mind about that now,” Jill told me. “You saw Brandy? Right?”
“Yes. She hightailed it out the door before we could stop her.”
“Have you ever been to her hooch? Either of you?”
I glanced at Ernie. He shook his head negatively.
“No,” I said.
“Then she’ll think she’s safe there. She didn’t see me.”
“You know where Brandy lives?”
“I sure do.”
After a couple more blocks we slowed to a walk, all three of us breathing heavily. Since Ernie and I were wearing civilian clothes, we scouted out front, watching for KNP patrols. Jill led us to a district of TDC very close to the area Ernie and I had recently become familiar with.
“The Turkey Farm,” Ernie said.
Jill nodded. “Convenient for black-marketing.”
“Brandy was into black-marketing?” I asked.
Jill nodded again. “Up to her pretty little neck.” She held out her hand. “Quiet now. We’re getting close.”
It was a nice hooch. Old but well kept up, with bright blue tile on the roof that must’ve been recently replaced. Moonlight shone down into an immaculately clean courtyard with a metal-handled water pump in the center and neatly tended bushes and a row of earthen kimchee jars.
Ernie and I balanced on top of the ten-foot-high cement-block wall, gingerly placing our hands so as to avoid shards of jagged glass sticking out of plaster. With her. 45 pointing at the moon, Jill Matthewson stood in front of the main gate, waiting for us to jump down and open it for her.
“You see any movement?” Ernie asked.
“No.”
All the hooches were dark.
“She’s in there,” Ernie said.
“How do you know?”
“I smell her. Brandy’s close and she’s overwhelming.”
Actually, I thought Ernie might be right. Not about how he sensed her but about the fact that Brandy must be home. There were shoes lined up in front of the hooch, women’s shoes spangled with sequins. But they weren’t neatly aligned. One pair lay on its side, as if it had been rapidly kicked off. And earlier, as we had approached the main gate down a dark alley, I thought I’d glimpsed a dimming of light. As if someone was listening and when they’d heard the tromp of combat boots, they’d clicked off the electric light. A lace curtain breathed in and out inside the hooch, pulsating through the narrow opening left by the partially closed sliding door.
“She’s watching us,” I whispered.
“Yeah. And we make good targets perched up here.”
With that, Ernie hopped down into the courtyard, hitting the ground and rolling as he did so. I kept my eyes riveted on the door. Movement? Or was it my imagination? As Ernie hurried to unbolt the front gate, I leaped down into the courtyard, jarring my knees and ankles, rolling, and quickly coming to a squatting position. The sliding door that a second ago had been partially open was now completely shut.
I ran forward, keeping my head down.
When I reached the low wooden porch in front of the hooch, I leaned forward, grabbed the sliding door, and pulled. It trembled but didn’t open. Inside, a metal lock rattled.
Ernie and Jill ran up behind me.
“Someone’s in there,” I said. “They just locked the door.”
Ernie stepped past me and kicked the door in. Oil paper and fragile wooden latticework shattered. He reached in, unlatched the door, and ripped it off its hinges.
Jill Matthewson shone her flashlight inside.
Ernie and I entered, he found the overhead bulb and switched it on. The entire room was bathed in light. No Brandy. An expensive armoire with mother-of-pearl inlay, silk-encased comforters folded in a corner, a hand-painted porcelain pee pot, a dressing table with a mirror and various lotions and cosmetics. No sign of anything masculine. This, I guessed, was Brandy’s refuge from the world of GIs.
But these observations were made primarily to avoid focusing on the first thing I’d seen. It sat in a corner by itself, still partially encased in wood framing, cradled atop straw, glowing like an endless sky of blue and green. Chon Hak Byong. The Thousand Crane Vase.
I kneeled and examined it. The flock of white cranes floated into the celadon sky, their black eyes pointed toward heaven. Except for one, on the upper bulge of the vase. His eyes stared straight out. Straight into the eyes of the observer. And this crane’s feet were deformed. Deformed into a shape that appeared to be a Chinese character: bok. Good luck. Very probably the name of the artist. I was sure this magnificent piece of art was the same vase that had been stolen by gangsters from the burning inferno of the grain warehouse just yards from here in the heart of the Turkey Farm.
Wood bumped against stone.
“Out back,” Ernie shouted.
He ran out the front door and zipped around the edge of the hooch. I continued deeper into the dwelling, into the cement-floored kitchen and exited a side door. The three of us-Jill, Ernie, and myself-met at the narrow opening between the back of the hooch and the cement-block wall. Brandy stood atop a short ladder, trying to get a handhold on the top of the glass-covered wall. Jill shone her flashlight on Brandy’s cute round butt.
Brandy turned, her shoulders slumped, and she gingerly retreated down the ladder. Staring at the three of us she said, “Ain’t no bag, man.”
A few minutes later, the four of us sat in a circle on the floor of her comfortable hooch, under the glow of a bright electric bulb, facing one another. The story Brandy told us was interesting and, I had to assume, laced with lies.
She claimed to be holding the Thousand Crane Vase for a friend. Who was this friend? She wasn’t at liberty to say. She knew nothing about the fire at the grain warehouse in the center of the Turkey Farm other than that she’d heard about it and it was a great tragedy, but she had no idea how such a thing had happened. And also, she was unaware that the Thousand Crane Vase had been stolen by gangsters. She thought that it might’ve been a different vase. When I pointed out to her that it was the same vase and I explained why, she thought that her friend must’ve been very careless in paying good money for a vase that had been stolen.
“How much did he pay?” Jill asked.
Brandy shrugged. “I know nothing about these things.”
Ernie asked her about mulkogi chonguk, fish heaven.
Brandy seemed shocked that we’d been shot at. “Who would do such a thing?” she asked.
I pointed out to her that she probably knew exactly who, since her handwriting matched the writing on the phony note that had set up the appointment. Now she seemed offended. It couldn’t be her handwriting, she claimed, since she hardly knew how to write.
Finally, Jill questioned her about Marv Druwood.
Brandy had no idea about who was at the grain warehouse that night or what had happened to Private Marvin Druwood.
Without warning, Jill leaned forward and slapped Brandy.
Her full cheeks quivered and then turned red; she held the side of her face. I expected tears to well up but instead Brandy’s eyes spit venom.
“You know who was there,” Jill said. “Otis told you.”
Otis. Sergeant First Class Otis. The desk sergeant who’d confided in me about the Turkey Farm and hinted at irregularities in both the disposal of Marv Druwood’s body and in the 2nd ID provost marshal’s ration control procedures.
“Otis, he no want you,” Brandy said. “He want me.” She jabbed her thumb between pendulous breasts.
Jill’s face turned crimson. “You little bitch. You know who killed Marv. You know!”
Jill flung herself on Brandy and the two of them rolled on the floor for a moment, scratching and butting heads, until Ernie and I ripped them apart. Ernie held Brandy while I escorted Jill outside the hooch. In the courtyard, Jill straightened her uniform. Inside, Brandy nursed cuts and bruises. We confiscated the Thousand Crane Vase. Brandy cursed as we left and swore revenge. Actually, we should’ve arrested her. But as fugitives ourselves, what were we going to do with her? We couldn’t turn her over to the 2nd ID MPs nor to the Korean cops because they’d arrest us at the same time.
As we stalked through dark alleys, I wanted to ask Jill about Sergeant First Class Otis and his role in all this. Jill knew more than she was telling me. But she was fuming, and I knew this was the wrong time.
When we reached the bar district, we paused. Ernie and I set down the vase. It was heavier than it looked. The time was half past eleven. In thirty minutes, curfew would start. Jill told us to hide the vase at Ok-hi’s hooch at the Silver Dragon. Tomorrow, we’d meet up and then enter Camp Casey and take possession of Lieutenant Colonel Alcott’s ration control records.
“How?” Ernie asked.
“How what?” Jill replied.
She was still distracted by her confrontation with Brandy.
“How in the hell are we going to bust onto the compound and confiscate the records?”
Jill waved her palm in the air. “Not to worry. I’ll take care of that.” She started to leave. “See you tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
She smiled. “You don’t have a need to know.”
“Where will we meet you?” Ernie asked.
“At the same place everyone’s going to be tomorrow,” Jill said, walking away into the darkness.
“Where’s that?” Ernie hollered.
“At the demonstration.”
After she left, I realized that she still hadn’t revealed what she’d learned from Staff Sergeant Weatherwax.
“Looks like we’re back where we started.”
After sleeping late the next morning, Ernie and I once again sat on the floor of Ok-hi’s hooch, a room on the third story above the Silver Dragon Nightclub. The Thousand Crane Vase stood alone in a corner. Ok-hi, as happy to see us as ever, served us tea on a foot-high varnished brown table, then switched the radio to AFKN, the Armed Forces Korean Network. There was nothing on the news about student demonstrations or the KCIA or the murder of Pak Tong-i. Nor about the death of Private Marvin Druwood nor about two 8th Army CID agents gone berserk north of Seoul. Plenty about the latest shenanigans in Washington and, of course, plenty of sports.
“Not back where we started,” I told Ernie. “We know what we have to do next. Bust a bunch a black-marketing field grade officers.”
“If we find the proof.”
“Jill will help us find the proof.”
“How?”
“She told us where to find the proof. In Colonel Alcott’s safe in his quarters. And she promised us that we’d be able to bust onto the compound.”
“Over some MPs’ dead bodies.”
Ernie and I sat silent for a moment, both pondering the implications of what he’d just said. Was today’s demonstration going to be violent? I mean truly violent? Not just a few stones thrown by overexcited students. But arms, Molotov cocktails, explosives? Ok- hi told us that most of the business girls had gone to the bathhouse early today because they’d heard about the student demonstration and they expected it to be bigger than any of those Tongduchon had seen in the past. I asked her why.
Her eyes widened, as if the answer was obvious.
“Chon Un-suk-i die,” she said. “GI supposed to go monkey house. Instead, GI go stateside. Everybody taaksan kullasso.” Everybody very angry.
Ernie seemed to have been listening to my thoughts. “The Division MPs must know there’s going to be a demonstration,” he said. “They’ll be prepared for anything.”
Ok-hi tilted her head. At first I thought it was to show off the hoop earrings she was wearing. Then I realized she was listening to something. Something faint and far away.
“You go,” she said finally.
“What?”
“You go compound. Alert.”
Ernie switched off the radio. The wail of a siren, coming from the direction of Camp Casey. Alert. All GIs were to report back to the compound.
“You’re right,” I told Ernie. “They are taking this demonstration seriously.”
Thirty minutes later, Ernie and I stood on the roof of the Silver Dragon Nightclub watching tanks, two-and-a-half ton trucks, and armored vehicles-by the dozens-roll out of the front gate of Camp Casey.
“Move out,” Ernie said. “Division wide.”
A Division-wide move-out alert meant everyone goes to the field, even the headquarters staff, as if an actual war had broken out. Still, since an alert is only training and not war, some people would be left behind to guard and maintain the compound. Even though all MPs in the Division area are considered to be combat MPs-that is, they can assume a combat role if actual hostilities break out-you could bet that enough MPs would remain behind to protect the compound from the student demonstrators. Even now, we could see bunches of MPs milling around the towering MP statue in front of the Provost Marshal’s Office, slipping on their riot-control helmets, playing grab ass, donning their protective vests.
“Probably glad they don’t have to go to the field,” Ernie said.
Field duty-days and even weeks in the rain and the mud- grows old fast. Still, it seemed odd to me that a move-out alert had been called only an hour before a well-publicized studen
t demonstration was to begin. Who had called the alert? Eighth Army? The United Nations Command in Seoul? I had no way of knowing. Maybe someone thought that calling an alert at such a time would replicate real-world situations and therefore provide realistic training. After all, war can break out anytime, even when it’s inconvenient. Maybe. But I didn’t believe it. My mistrust of coincidence made me think that something was up. Maybe something bigger than anyone imagined.
More troop transports full of infantry soldiers rolled out of the main gate of Camp Casey, followed by heavy artillery pieces and jeeps and commo vehicles and mess trucks and vehicles of all shapes and descriptions.
“Look.” Ernie pointed down the MSR about a mile at a gas station near the outskirts of town. Buses pulled in. Vans, taxicabs, all sorts of civilian conveyances. Students wearing black armbands and carrying picket signs written in both English and Korean were starting to gather. A steady stream of vehicles snaked down the MSR, heading toward Tongduchon. As we watched, the crowd grew larger. To the west about three blocks, at Tonduchon Station, the local train from Seoul pulled in. When it stopped, like a centipede shedding eggs, a jillion students popped out of the ten or so cars. Leaders with megaphones formed them into groups, shouting instructions, handing out black armbands and signs.
“Christ,” Ernie said, “half of Seoul is coming up here.”
“And a train is due every thirty minutes.”
“They’re really serious. Not like that paltry little group last time.”
We went back downstairs. Ok-hi fed us: steamed rice, kimchee, bowls of dubu jigei, spiced bean curd soup. She also found us two strips of white cloth that she helped us tie around our heads. Then, while we kneeled in front of her, she used red paint-mimicking blood-to write in hangul the name Chon Un-suk. Thus outfitted, Ernie and I thanked Ok-hi and, though she tried to refuse, I paid her for her time and the food and the effort she’d expended to help us. She promised to guard the Thousand Crane Vase with her life.
Ernie and I bounced out into the street, keeping a wary eye out for both the MPs and the KNPs. It was easy enough to avoid them. The Korean National Police were preoccupied with protecting the TDC police station and with setting up an assault position near the railroad tracks across from Camp Casey’s main gate. The American MPs were on compound, bracing for trouble.