The Case

by Leopold Borstinski

  The door of the warehouse slammed shut and Bow Tie plus one vanished indoors.

  I scurried round the outside walls, trying to figure out how to get inside without opening the front door and slamming it shut. Like most warehouses, this building was not constructed for multiple entries. That was the bad news. The good news was that I found a couple of windows at ground level and desperately peered inside.

  Saw nothing. The room was totally dark, which meant, of course, that no-one was inside. Both windows opened outwards, so all I needed to do was to get the one open and crawl inside: they were man-sized windows.

  From my inside jacket pocket I pulled out a small set of metal implements, a Private Eye’s tool bag you might say, and selected a steel file to jemmy the window open. I pushed the file near the handle and started to slide-and-move the file up and down until the latch mechanism began to give. Eventually, it pinged apart and the glass swung out, nearly hitting me in the face in the process.

  File back in my tool bag, I slithered into the room and closed the window behind me.

  10

  THERE WAS A desk, some chairs, a few boxes and a filing cabinet. The room was probably called the office, but paperwork was clearly not the number one priority in this organization. Sneaking over to the door, I realized I had no idea what was the other side and no idea what I was going to do, apart from try to find Sofia.

  The door was made of solid wood and a glow of light came from the crack beneath it, so there would be no cover of darkness once I turned the handle and looked onto the other side.

  I flattened my ear to the door to listen for any noises the other side of the timber, but I heard nothing. With my ear still stuck to the wood, I turned the handle, hovering in a half squatting position in case I needed to make a bolt for it.

  Then I moved my ear away from the door as nothing appeared to be happening. All I could actually hear was a bunch of murmuring from a long way off. Peering round the door, I found out why the noise was muffled: this room was on a corridor with the top half made of glass on the opposite wall and the rest of the warehouse there for the viewing.

  Sneaking and hunkering down, I popped one eye above the opposite wall to see what was happening. There were rugs on the floors and comfortable sofas with a group of men lounging on them; some laughing, some looking nervous. And there were other guys, arms folded, stood at the various exit doors that led to other parts of the warehouse on the other side of this charming scene.

  Amid these dudes, all dressed in their finest, were a string of girls wearing nothing but their panties and bras. A brief look down the row told me they were all jailbait, but all old enough to have teenage curves in the right places.

  Staying exactly where I was, I watched as each man picked out a girl - by their looks or by grabbing their tits or asses - and then he was led out of this anteroom and off up some stairs to a similar corridor to the one I was in, which had a windowed corridor with a series of rooms and curtains in front of each door to make them seem so much more homely than they were. Bow Tie whispered in the ear of one of the serious looking guys and then went straight upstairs. Bow Tie’s Buddy stayed in the background, watching all that was before him.

  But no sign of Sofia. My guess was that she was in one of the second-floor rooms but to find her I’d need some help. Some British help with a crazy accent and a stiff upper lip.

  I SCOUTED ROUND the building some more, so that I was certain there was only one exit: the door I’d seen when I first arrived. My cabbie was waiting for me, meter running and we scuttled off to a nearby phone booth. I called Mumford and told him all I knew. Without waiting for an invitation, he told me he was going to be on the next plane to Boston. Good news. I told him where to meet me and promised I’d keep watch.

  We returned to the warehouse via a Seven Eleven, so I’d have some snacks and a cup of acrid coffee, and I paid up the fare and watched the white vehicle vanish into the darkness of the Boston night.

  Mumford would be at least two hours at best and there was only going to be a whole load of fucking taking place in the warehouse, so I found a dry piece of ground in the shaded doorway across from the honky tonk cathouse and settled in for the wait.

  Three hours later Mumford arrived, hot footing it out of his taxi, which sped away as soon as he’d placed both feet onto the ground.

  There was a steely darkness to his eyes and a deadpan expression all over his face.

  “In there,” I said, pointing to the cathouse without forcing him to ask the only question he wanted the answer to.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a sec. How are we going to play this?” I asked.

  “We go in like customers and get as close as we can to Sofia. Then we kill every last motherfucker in that building and leave.”

  The simplicity of his approach was astounding, but it had a level of risk and uncertainty I was not entirely comfortable with. By the time I realized that, it was too late. Mumford bowled over to the front door and knocked. I caught up with him just before the door was opened ajar and I repeated the password I’d heard earlier in the evening.

  We walked in and, not surprisingly, we were gently but professionally frisked. Luckily, we both knew how to hide handguns from prying fingers.

  And into the anteroom we went and a fresh crop of jailbait was brought out for our delight. None of them were Sofia and Mumford did the only sensible thing he could. He randomly picked one of them so he could be led up to the second-floor rooms and I did the same.

  I HAD TO walk past Bow Tie to get to the stairs but he didn’t appear to recognize me. The Asian girl, whose hand I was holding, wore white panties and bra and took me to the first door on the left after we walked up the stairs. Mumford was taken into the second room with three more further down the corridor.

  I turned to close the bordello door and Asian Alice had already taken what was left of her clothes and was lying on the mattress in repose for my coming. I smiled at her and shook my head.

  Just at that moment, I heard gunfire: Mumford had wasted no time at all. I ran out the room, leaving Alice who had pissed herself on her bed.

  Between opening the door and entering the corridor, I put the gun in my hand and started shouting at any adult I saw. Sprinting down the corridor, I reached the third door, which was already open, and looked inside. Mumford had plugged a hole in the back of the head of the john inside but the dark-haired girl cowering in the corner was definitely not Sofia.

  Out of that room and Bow Tie was at the top of the stairs. I aimed squarely at his chest, used two bullets and he flew back down the stairs. On jobs like these, I always carried a Magnum.

  Turned my head to see Mumford leave the fourth room and head on to the fifth. Popped my head into the fourth to see a similar scene: a dead john and a freaked out underage hooker. This time the john was still alive but there was blood gushing out of his groin. Mumford had shot him in the dick.

  And on into the last room. I’d heard one shot come from here before I got in. There was Mumford slumped on the floor, weeping. Bow Tie’s Buddy was lying in the corner, half slumped on the bed with a knife in his hand and blood spewing out of his neck.

  Lying on the bed was a girl, Sofia’s age, build and height. It was too difficult for me to tell exactly what she looked like because there was blood streaming out of her neck, carotid sliced in two. She had fought to the end because one of her breasts was hanging by a thread and there were a couple of her finger tips lying on the floor in the lake of blood., where she had tried to ward off the knife.

  I turned round and managed to get into the corridor before I threw up. Returning to the room, I put my hand on Mumford’s shoulder. There was nothing else I could think of doing or saying that would make any difference in the world to him right now.

  Back down the stairs, I found a phone and dialed 911 to call it in. A day of questioning and they let me go. Mumford declared diplomatic immunity and vanished into the shadows by the time they let me out of the
station.

  I still have nightmares from that night and when I met up with Mumford a few years later, he told me he did too.

  PART FIVE

  KOREA 1950

  11

  THE REASON I threw up when I saw Sofia’s body was the sheer surprise and shock of seeing her there - like that. I’d seen worse bloodshed in Korea and I never threw up when I was over there. Pissed myself a couple of times, but never threw up.

  I joined up at the beginning of July 1950, a few days after Truman declared war on North Korea and after the fall of Seoul. I wouldn’t say I was particularly patriotic or anything, but the look in my mother’s eyes when she heard Truman on the radio meant I had no choice but to join up. Those eyes screamed out to me that my father had died only five years before to protect and save us from the foreign hordes and now it was my turn. There was an inevitability to the whole affair, which makes little sense now but we were living under the specter of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviets and we still felt the cold shadow of the last great conflict too.

  So off I trotted to the army with my ever-watchful mama trailing along to make sure I didn’t just go over the border to Canada or, god help her, Mexico.

  Basic training was as basic training is. I’d love to pretend that it made me a man, but it did not. Instead, it taught me how to fire a gun, kill the enemy and hide in camouflage with my face in the dirt. And some marching songs. “I don’t know, but I’ve been told ...”

  A HANDFUL OF weeks later and I was flying out to Korea: “Sir, Private Jake Adkins, at your service, sir!” and so on. You know the drill. The way I figured it the grunts were the ones most likely to be sent over the hill, so I made it my cause to find every way to not be that grunt. In this man’s army that meant I had to get myself promoted at the earliest opportunity. Most of the lunks could hardly string a whole sentence together and it didn’t take me that long to shine above the helmeted hordes on our own side. With a war to be won, Uncle Sam wasn’t too picky who he put in charge of his platoons, so I found myself as a Sergeant with my own bunch of guys to order about.

  A day or two after the Inchon Landing at the back end of September, a full month before we took Pyongyang, we were stuck by some river. It had a long name and all that mattered was that it was damn wide and had long reeds on the other bank and was virtually barren on our side.

  As soon as the first private stepped foot on the bank, a ripple of machine gun fire strafed through his body and he fell to the floor. Blood pouring from each bullet hole. Private Dachman bit the dust. Rest In Peace.

  We ducked down behind the palm trees Nature had kindly placed in a convenient location near enough to the bank.

  I took out my binoculars and swept the other side of the river, desperately trying to spot the sniper or snipers, but nothing.

  “Wilson!”

  “By your side, boss.”

  “Call base. Let them know what’s going down.”

  “Ten four that.”

  “And keep close.”

  “On your tail, boss.”

  Wilson was from Illinois and believed in God and Country. Tell him to do something and he’d walk across the whole of this sorry Earth to get it down. But never ask him a question. Not even “What’s your name?” Reliable, honest, dumb.

  Most of the men under my command were boys, green-horned boys, but that often meant they had guts and an unbelievable ability to not see the consequences of their actions. In many circumstances that would be a very bad thing, but in love and war - well, war anyway - not being able to see your impending death could be a real boon. They’d cross this river for me even if we weren’t able to knock out the Koreans on the other side of the water.

  We hid in the undergrowth by the trees and waited. No-one was going anywhere. After ten, fifteen minutes there was still no movement, still nothing happening to give us even a slight clue where they were stationed. I sent two of the smaller men to climb a tree and see if they could spot anyone from on high.

  The answer came quickly: two bursts of gunfire and they both slammed back to the ground too damn fast. We dragged the bodies out the way and caught our breaths. We still had zero idea where the hell they were. The only thing we could be sure was there were at least two machine-gun nests because both were killed at the same time. The other thing we could be pretty certain was that they were placed quite a ways back from the river bank otherwise we’d have been able to spy them by now.

  Neither of these facts made me feel any better. Our orders were very clear: keep going until we reach Pyongyang.

  “Wilson. Call base. Tell them I want us to go half a click west and avoid this mayhem. We’re pinned down and there’s no easy way to get across here.”

  “Sir, yessir.”

  Crackle and squawk of the radio box and muffled conversation with Wilson and HQ. Then he turned to me and quietly relayed the message he’d received:

  “Get your head out your ass, grow a pair and get the men over the river now and stop fucking about.”

  SIMPLE: WE WERE going to have to take the snipers out one way or another. Asian vultures were already nibbling on the bits of body that had been shot through from our boys and left on the bank. I wasn’t happy about the way things were turning out and I knew it was going to get worse before the day was over.

  I called the boys over in a huddle and explained the situation. They nodded and ground their molars, some of them a little less gung-ho than the rest realized that some bad shit was going to go down and they were in it up to their necks.

  Georgie made a joke - something about shoving a machine gun barrel up a sniper’s ass - which got a much bigger laugh than it deserved, mainly because we knew some or all of us were going to die crossing that expanse of water. Georgie was from Florida and always wore sunglasses. Just habit I guess.

  We needed a plan. I needed a plan and one that was smarter than all of us running into the water, screaming and shouting and hoping that at least one or two of us managing to travel the thirty feet to get to the other side and take out the snipers with a couple of lucky bullets. That was the best plan available and I wasn’t going to share it with the men just yet. Somehow, they expected more of me than that.

  The way I figured it: the biggest problem we had was getting across the water without being seen. We couldn’t fly over the river as there was no helicopter support. We couldn’t float on the river as we weren’t Jesus Christ and, besides, even if we had a raft we would be riddled with bullets before we’d stepped onto the damn thing.

  The answer, therefore, was to go under the river. If we found some hollow reeds, we could send men swimming underwater to the other side without being seen - if they started a little further down the bank where there were grasses to hide in.

  Once they reached the bank, they could stay hidden in the reeds before the second part of my plan. This involved finding a way to get their rifles over the water without them becoming waterlogged. There’s always a weakness to any idea and I’d quickly found my own Achilles heel. I thought for a while, staring into the middle distance.

  Then it hit me. I was staring at a log, cracked and gnarled. But cracked. We put the rifles inside half of that log and cover them with leaves and twigs and shit. The swimmers pull the log, which’ll float, along with them using some string - or bootlaces if we need to. If the whole activity was done at night, or even around dusk, we might stand a good chance.

  I told the men my idea and asked anyone if they foresaw any problems. It never hurts to hear practical people spot practical problems, especially if you’re going to ask them to do something crazy in your name. But everyone thought it was the best plan they’d heard all day. Time was around three so we had a few hours to wait before the big push.

  12

  WE ALL SAT around, staring into space, lying flat on our bellies and generally staring out beyond the river and into the reeds and trees on the other side. Somehow, we all thought if we looked enough then something would appear. That so
mehow the enemy would just give up hiding, stand up and wave at us. Or something.

  Anyway, we all kept our eyes peeled hoping to catch some sort of glint in the scope of a rifle or the lens of a pair of binoculars, but nothing.

  The light started to fade and I could feel the men around me getting twitchy. They weren’t good at waiting; they were much better at doing. Over the past hour, I’d worked out who needed to be sent across. The decision was hardly inspirational. Two of our number, Vince and Sylvester, were state champion swimmers so that was a decision made. Before I spoke with them, they knew they were the ones. Stood to reason. An appropriate log had been found, gouged hollow and camouflage for the top had been procured. Again, this wasn’t exactly rocket science as we were surrounded by trees, branches, twigs, leaves and all manner of green and brown vegetation. We had US Army string in our provisions so the rifle float had been made ready within thirty minutes of the plan being hatched.

  Now was the time for action. Vince and Sylvester went off some ways down the bank, through the trees so they couldn’t be spotted. A few minutes later, we saw a log floating diagonally across the river and we knew they were underneath. Slowly, slowly.

  Inch by inch, the log headed towards the other side. The water was flowing rightwards and Vince and Sylvester were swimming against the tide so the log also floated upstream. But there was no way you could see any string coming out of it. The boys had done a brilliant job of hiding those rifles in plain sight.

  Five or six feet away ahead of the log, you could make out two reeds sticking out of the water: their air holes. The grass was only just about the waterline and you’d have thought they’d choke on the water as it splashed into the hollow lifeline, but they did not. Slowly, slowly.