by Martin Limon
“Some places serve beer warm,” I told Captain Prevault as the waitress popped off the bottle cap.
“Have her keep the soda,” Captain Prevault told me. “I’ll have beer, too.”
The waitress took the soda back to the counter and brought us another glass. After pouring the frothing hops, I raised my glass in a toast.
“Thanks for your help on the investigation,” I said.
“My pleasure.”
We clinked glasses and drank.
I was greatly enjoying Captain Prevault’s company. She was a pleasant-looking woman, and intelligent and determined to make something of herself in this world; all traits I admired. But also things that made me feel guilty. Doctor Yong In-ja was in hiding, sheltering our son. But as Ernie had so often told me, I couldn’t spend the rest of my life waiting for someone who had turned the page on me and entered another chapter of her life. I had to live.
When her soup arrived, Captain Prevault was somewhat nonplussed by the mackerel staring up at her, but she got over it quickly. I showed her how to use her chopsticks to split the already gutted mackerel in half, pick out the bones, and drop them on the polished tabletop.
“It’s okay to drop food on the table?” she asked.
“Sure. The parts you don’t eat. They come by with a cloth and clean it up after we leave.”
“Everything’s so different from the States.”
“Yes, very.”
If she hadn’t been out into Seoul much, she might not have understood how truly different things are. People on the compound interact mainly with Koreans who are fluent in English, who are familiar with American customs and polite enough to show respect for them.
Captain Prevault made me show her the drawing again.
“It’s so strange,” she said. “I can’t figure out what it is.”
“Neither can I.”
“Maybe you should show it around.”
“To who?”
“To anybody. Somebody, somewhere will have an idea of what it is.” She used her flat metal spoon to sip broth out of her metal bowl. “Maybe you could have it printed in the Stars and Stripes.”
The Pacific Stars and Stripes was read by virtually every GI and every American civilian in country. We were all starved for news from the States and the Stripes provided it. It was a single-fold newspaper with major news starting on the front page and extensive sports coverage starting on the back. In the center were editorials and letters to the editor. One thing it didn’t cover, however, was crime. In the military, crime is classified. If the Commander believes you have a need to know, he’ll let you know at morning formation, not in some damn newspaper. The only time the Stars and Stripes ever covered crime was if the story had already been broken by one of the major news services. Then they covered it as briefly and as noncommittally as possible.
“I doubt the Provost Marshal would go along with that,” I said.
“Why not?”
“They’re keeping a lid on this thing, as tightly as they can. So far, none of the wire services have picked up on it.”
“And the Korean newspapers?”
“They can’t print a thing until the government gives them the go-ahead.”
“It seems that in a case like this what you need is the public’s help.”
I shrugged. “What we need and what we get are two different things.”
She set her spoon down. “I can’t believe you’re so passive about this.”
“I’m not passive. I’m trying to find this guy. But if I spend all my time and energy trying to get the honchos of Eighth Army to do what they should be doing, I wouldn’t have time for anything else. Also,” I said, “it would be futile. They’re more worried about keeping the American public happy about our presence overseas than they are about a few slashed throats.”
“Protecting the empire,” Captain Prevault said.
I hadn’t thought of the 8th United States Army in Korea as an empire but maybe she had something there. After all, even GIs call it “Eighth Imperial Army.”
I found Ernie where I figured I’d find him. On Hooker Hill. He stood in the darkness on the narrow road a few yards away from a yellow street lamp. Three or four Korean “business girls” stood near him, poking him in the ribs.
“I see you’ve found your usual fan club.”
“They can’t stay away from me.”
Without taking his eyes off me, Ernie lunged to his right and caught one of the girls by the wrist. As she squealed with delight, he pulled her close, turned her around, and swatted her firmly on her round butt. Then he let her go with a warning, waggling his finger at her. She bounced away laughing, pretending to pout.
“You give me money, GI,” she said, rubbing her rear end. “Apo.” It hurts.
“I’ll show you apo,” Ernie replied. “A whole world of apo.”
Most of the girls on Hooker Hill were teenagers, not much younger than the American GIs. The reason they lurked back there in the darkness was so they could escape into the narrow pedestrian lanes if any Korean cops came by. They were under eighteen, the legal age to apply for a “VD card” in Korea. And without an updated VD card, stamped and approved by the Itaewon Health Service, they couldn’t enter the brightly lit bars and nightclubs that lined the main drag of Itaewon.
“What’d you find out?” I asked.
“I’ve been talking to business girls all night,” Ernie said, “here and in the clubs, and to the bartenders and the waitresses. So far, nothing. Nobody saw a Korean man in a black suit, holding something under his coat, with a puffed lower lip and the sniffles, and a funny walk.”
Unless they worked there, the bars and nightclubs of Itaewon were off limits to Korean civilians. The ROK government had designated them as for “foreign tourists” only. Since Korea had little or no tourism, the “tourists” were all Amercian GIs.
“We know he passed through here,” I told Ernie, “maybe on his way to the pochang macha and almost certainly during his escape. If he stopped, he would’ve been noticeable.”
“Apparently he didn’t stop,” Ernie said. “He just kept moving.”
Many people who aren’t hookers or nightclub workers or American GIs do pass through Itaewon—little old ladies walking with canes, commuters on their way to work, kids on their way home from school wearing black uniforms with huge book bags strapped to their backs—but like Ernie said, they just keep moving. If that’s what the man with the iron sickle did, it’s possible no one noticed him.
I was quiet, thinking over the possibilities, when Ernie said, “How was your date with Captain Prevault?”
“It wasn’t a date.” He raised an eyebrow. “We went to a mental sanatorium, north of the city.” I told him who we’d talked to and what we’d done.
“Did you walk her home?” Ernie asked.
“No. She got off at Gate Five. She insisted she was fine and she’d make her way back to the BOQ on her own.”
“You should’ve walked her to her room. Who knows? Maybe she would’ve invited you in. A medical doctor over here on a thirteen-month tour—must get lonely for her sometimes.”
I was trying to think of a retort, but I gave up and pulled the drawing out of my pocket. I handed it to Ernie.
“What’s this?” he asked, twisting it to catch the dim light. “The dead rat?” he asked. “The one we saw tied to that contraption in the Itaewon Market?”
“The same.”
“Who drew this?”
“I did.”
“Not bad.”
“It took a lot of tries.”
I took the drawing back from him and showed it to the business girls who had wandered over, curious. One of them crinkled her nose. “Igot myoya?” What the hell is this?
“An boasso?” I asked. You never saw it before?
“An boasso.” They all shook their heads. Patiently, I described the man in the black coat, but they claimed never to have seen anyone matching the description.
We had
about a half hour left before curfew. In that time, Ernie and I canvassed the area in front of the road that leads to the Itaewon Market and beyond that the spot where the pochang macha was still parked. All we got for our work were negative responses. On the way back to the compound I showed Ernie the alleyway where I’d seen someone who matched the description of the man with the iron sickle.
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” Ernie said.
“Maybe not.” But I didn’t really believe that.
We kept walking. The Main Supply Route was almost deserted, metal shutters pulled down and locked in front of all the shops. On the road that veered off toward Namsan Tunnel, a white military jeep cruised slowly by.
“White mice,” Ernie said.
They were the branch of government security that patrolled the city from midnight to four, making sure no one violated the national curfew. During that time, they had the authority to stop and arrest anyone on the streets, and if the person tried to flee, they had the right to shoot to kill. After the white mice passed, I turned and gazed back down the road toward Itaewon. A dark sedan, its lights off, sat on the edge of the road across from the Hamilton Hotel.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Ernie turned around. “Don’t know. A government sedan of some sort or they wouldn’t be out this late.”
We hoofed it all the way to Gate Five and once there had to flash not only our military identification to the guard but also our Criminal Investigation badges. It was already fifteen minutes past midnight. CID agents are allowed to break the curfew. If we were regular GIs, we would’ve spent the night in the MP station.
Once inside the gate, I glanced back through the chain link fence. The same sedan, or one that looked very much like it, cruised past.
I was up early the next morning, even before the chow hall opened its doors. I slipped into the big military kitchen through the back loading dock and talked one of the cooks into letting me fill my canteen cup with coffee from the big metal urn. He waved me away, too busy dumping potatoes into a greased pan to argue. With my hot java, I walked downhill in the darkness through the quiet, tree-lined streets of the 8th Army headquarters compound. The air was cool and calm and the world seemed fresh. I love mornings, especially in this country the ancients had called the land of the morning calm.
At the 8th Army CID office, I used my key to get in and switched on the overhead fluorescent lights. While they were still buzzing, I walked down the hallway to the Provost Marshal’s conference room. Records from the Claims Office were stacked on a huge table.
I pulled up a chair, set my tin of coffee down, and started going through them. The CID agents in charge of the search had been thorough. They’d created a master list of the various claims sorted by date, type, and resolution. They were most interested in the claims processed in the last few years that were amongst the twenty or so percent that had been denied. Almost all of the denied claims had been appealed to the full Status of Forces Committee, the final arbiter in 8th Army Claims cases. The vast majority of those appealed had been denied again. I read that stack first, the failed claims, the ones most likely to have left the initially optimistic claimants frustrated, stymied, and maybe outraged.
The claims read like Greek tragedies, almost all of the suffering caused by the collision of cultures between 8th Army GIs and Korean civilians. There were complaints about straw-thatched roofs set on fire by stray mortar rounds, crops flooded by breached irrigation channels, farmers injured by careening American jeeps, underage school girls becoming pregnant at the hands of Americans, old men being assaulted and robbed by bands of rogue US soldiers. And these were the ones that hadn’t been sustained. The evidence wasn’t there to substantiate the claims so they were turned down. It figured these people would be the most aggrieved, that they would be the most likely to seek revenge. There must’ve been fifty cases in the pile.
The list was being turned over to the KNP Liaison office. They would further task local KNP precincts to hunt down these frustrated claimants and investigate them to see if they had any participation in the murder of the 8th Army Claims Officer or the throat slashing of Corporal Collingsworth. I riffled through the files, each and every one of them. Nothing jumped out at me.
The rest of the table was stacked with more files, like a small mountain range. These were the hundreds of cases that had been adjudicated in the complainant’s favor. So far, there weren’t any plans to investigate any of these. But wasn’t it possible that someone who’d won their case was still aggrieved because the compensation they received didn’t match their loss? Possible, but the ones who’d been turned down seemed the logical starting point.
I sighed and returned to the admin office. Staff Sergeant Riley was in early, as usual, and he’d already plugged in the percolator, and it was busy brewing a couple of gallons of PX-bought coffee. We listened to it bubble.
“You getting anywhere in your investigation?” Riley growled.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You better. Your butt is on the line here.”
“How so?”
“The Provost Marshal didn’t like being pushed into appointing you and your screw-off buddy to this investigation. He wants results. Otherwise, he’ll replace you faster than it takes to type up reassignment orders to the DMZ.”
The DMZ is like purgatory, neither heaven nor hell. Just a long line of machine guns, concertina wire, and land mines with 700,000 North Korean Communist soldiers on one side and 400,000 ROK and US soldiers on the other.
“The DMZ? Why would he send us up there?”
“To teach you a lesson about how to follow orders.”
“We’re following orders.”
“But when you’re out there,” Riley said, pointing at some unknowable distance, “investigating crime, you’ve got to be able to understand the meaning behind the orders.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t embarrass the Command. And make sure your investigation comes out where they want it to, which means make sure the man with the iron sickle is a North Korean agent.”
“Even if he’s not?”
“Anybody who does what he’s done has to be a North Korean agent.”
“How so?”
“Because he’s screwing us up,” Riley said. “He’s messing with the Eighth United States Army.”
I should’ve said something rude back to him. He expected me to. GI etiquette. Instead, I sat silently until the coffee was done and poured myself a large cup. I was halfway through when I realized what I’d missed. I returned to the conference room, pulled out my pad and my pen, and wrote down an address.
The phone rang on Riley’s desk. His whiskey soaked voice said, “Yeah?” He paused for a moment and then, “What crime site?” He pulled a pencil out from behind his ear and started jotting something on a piece of paper. “They destroyed a pochang whatta?”
I set down my coffee cup and had already reached the door before he finished.
“Near the Itaewon Market,” Riley shouted after me. “At the crime site.”
The pochang macha was trashed.
I examined the wreckage. Not only had it been tilted over on its side and then turned upside down, but many of the cooking utensils had been bent and the porcelain serving bowls smashed. Pulverized drinking tumblers lay in glassy circular piles.
Mr. Kill picked his way through the wreckage.
“Someone took their time,” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “They not only turned over the cart, they then used some sort of club to systematically smash everything that was breakable.”
“And stomp on the smaller items.”
He nodded, agreeing with me. “They must’ve worn thick-soled shoes.”
Like Army jump boots, I thought. “What about Mrs. Lee?”
“She was in a safe place,” Mr. Kill replied.
Ernie drove up in his jeep, screeched to a halt, and jumped out. “What the hell?” he said.
“Exactly,�
� I replied.
“Anybody hurt?”
I shook my head.
“The ville patrol must’ve seen who did it,” he said.
We looked at Mr. Kill. He stared steadily back at us. “Your American military ‘ville patrol,’ as you call it, made no such report. Neither did the KNPs. It wasn’t until a citizen walked into the Itaewon Police station about zero five thirty this morning that a report was filed.”
“We came by here,” I said, “a few minutes before curfew. The stand was intact.”
“So this happened sometime between midnight and zero five thirty in the morning,” Mr. Kill said. He waited for it to sink in. Then he continued. “Who would be most likely to be out during the curfew?”
“Law enforcement,” I said.
Mr. Kill nodded. “Law enforcement,” he agreed.
“Where, again?” Ernie asked.
“Sogye-dong,” I said. “Behind Seoul Station.”
Ernie knew where the main train station was. It was a landmark in the city, a beautiful domed building that had been a gift around the turn of the century from the Russian Czar to the Korean King, back before the Japanese had attained full dominance on the peninsula.
I had the address written in my note pad: Sogye-dong, 3-ku, 105-ho. Once we looped around Seoul Station and behind the big railroad yards, I had Ernie slow and pull over. On a greasy wooden board holding up a bicycle repair shop, someone had written, 2-ku, 36-ho.
“Keep going,” I said.
The road was lined with lumber yards and spare parts warehouses. We reached a cross street that seemed a little more prosperous. Off to the right were two-story brick buildings, so I told Ernie to turn right. When we slowed I saw we’d reached 3-ku and the numbers were rising rapidly. Across the street I spotted it: a clean, three-story brick building with a placard that said SAM-IL PEIKHUA SAMUSIL. Literally, March First Hundred Products Office. In Korea, March first was like the Fourth of July in America. It was the day in 1919 when the entire country spontaneously arose in opposition to the Japanese cccupation of their country. Not that it did them much good. The world ignored their uprising and hundreds of protesters, including all the movement’s leaders, were summarily executed. Beneath the hangul sign smaller English letters said SAM-IL CLAIMS OFFICE. This was common practice with Korean businesses. Their