G. I. Bones

11

The next morning, Doc Yong pulled me out of her office and into the back hallway. “No time now, Geogi,” she said. “Too many girls sick.”

Influenza was storming its way through Itaewon. G.I. s on compound were coming down with it too, especially the ones who had avoided taking the mandatory annual vaccination. So far, neither Ernie nor I had any symptoms; we’d taken our shots.

Doc Yong waited for me to say what I’d come to say. I asked her about health certificates. Specifically, the one belonging to the Grand Ole Opry bartender.

Of course, he had one. Everyone who worked in a food or beverage establishment was required to be checked for communicable diseases, particularly tuberculosis, a scourge that ran rampant after the Korean War. She looked it up in her files. His name was Noh Bang-ok. Then she gave me his local address here in Itaewon and his home of record, an address in Mapo. Next, I asked if Horsehead had a county health certificate.

Doc Yong stared at me, her eyes wide. She knew something, I’m not sure what. Maybe she’d heard of our altercation last night. While she stared, I studied her soft flesh and hungered for its touch.

“Horsehead doesn’t need a health certificate,” she finally said.

“Why not?”

She looked at me as if I were dumb.

“He own Itaewon,” she said. “Owner don’t need nothing.”

She was busy and exasperated with me and exhausted by the full waiting room in her little clinic. That’s why her English was deteriorating.

“How’s Miss Kwon?” I asked.

“Better.” Then she shook her head. “Everywhere hurt but anyway she start work last night.”

“Still at the King Club?”

She nodded.

I wondered if Miss Kwon had been involved in the white-on-black fighting last night. I hoped not. I thanked Doc Yong for the information and started to leave. She grabbed my elbow. I was surprised at how cool her fingertips felt on my skin.

“Last night,” she said, “everybody say Horsehead punch you.”

I nodded. He did more than that. He also threatened my life but I didn’t tell her that.

“Chosim,” she said. Be careful.

Once again, I nodded, almost a bow this time, and left.

As I made my way through the waiting room, business girls, their puffy faces splotched and naked, stared at me. I wondered why but probably they’d heard of Horsehead’s threats too. Maybe they were studying someone who they expected, any minute now, would be dead.

Ernie and I checked the bartender’s address in Itaewon. His landlord told us that early this morning he’d packed his few belongings and moved on. No, he hadn’t left a forwarding address. I had to believe that Noh Bang-ok was a clever young man. He’d spotted us last night, following him, and he’d taken evasive maneuvers. He’d also realized that from here on out things were going to get rough. We’d want to interview him and whoever was behind the murder of Two Bellies might decide that he knew too much to be allowed to go on living. Whatever his motivation, there was no doubt he was scared. Nobody in this country leaves a good paying job on a lark. Noh Bang-ok was running. To where? I could only hope he’d act like most frightened people and return to the place where he felt safest. In this case, his hometown of Mapo.

We returned to Yongsan Compound, gassed up the jeep, and then drove over to the CID office. I told Staff Sergeant Riley where we were going.

“All the way to Mapo? he asked. “What the hell for?”

“This guy ran,” I replied. “That means he knows something that he doesn’t want to tell us.”

“What about the Tidwell girl?”

“Don’t tell Top anything, or the provost marshal, but we might have a lead on her tonight.”

“And you’ll be back in time to follow it up?”

“Sure.”

“You been listening to the weather report?”

“Not lately.”

“Maybe you’d better.”

The Armed Forces Korea Network is a television station that broadcasts from a small hill in the center of Yongsan Compound. During duty hours there is no programming but at night they broadcast reruns of Stateside shows, whatever they can buy cheaply.

AFKN also, of course, does plenty of news and weather. The news show comes on in black-and-white and is pretty bland. A couple of uniformed G.I. s sit behind desks and read wire service reports. Things pick up when the weatherman comes on. He’s a zoomie, a sergeant in the air force, and as such he’s zany-at least when compared to the army automatons who read the regular news. He points at a huge map of Korea and moves cutouts around the board representing a shining sun or a storm cloud or wind blowing in the shape of an arrow.

Exciting stuff.

But hold on to your hat because next comes sports, the only part of the news that G.I. s pay attention to. It doesn’t matter how monotonously the latest sports statistics are droned out, G.I. s focus all of their attention on such things as batting averages and yardage gained and historical rates of fielding errors. This information is reported in minute detail and soldiers absorb these facts with the intense concentration of actuarial accountants.

But for the last few days the air force weatherman had been in his glory, outshining even the sports announcer. According to his map of Korea, a huge front was bubbling out of Manchuria, from deep within unclimbed mountains and uncharted forests. The front had begun rolling south down the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang, in North Korea, had already been swallowed up by every storm cloud cutout the airman had. And he kept shoving those storm clouds south, in a jumble that looked like an invasion of chubby snowmen. But the report was no joke. Barometric pressure was dropping, the temperature was dropping, precipitation was increasing, and within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours the capital city of Seoul could expect anywhere from six to fifteen inches of precipitation, in the form of thick, slushy snow.

The worst storm the republic had experienced in over ten years.

Electricity would go out, roads would be closed, tree branches would snap, power lines would be sheathed in tubes of ice, heating fuel would become difficult if not impossible to obtain, and water pipes would most likely freeze. Finally, once the storm hit full force, food shipments would stop.

The airman predicted the cold front would linger over the peninsula for three to four days before it moved slowly out to sea. And then he grinned a big toothy grin and pulled out a fur-lined cap and slipped it on over his head.

“Gonna be cold, folks,” he said into the microphone.

Off-camera, a stagehand barked a laugh.

Military humor.

What the airman hadn’t mentioned was that the last time a cold front of this size moved in from Manchuria over three hundred people, most of them elderly citizens or children not yet in school, had died within the city limits of Seoul. Despite the attempt at levity, a few score people were now marked for death-in Seoul, in Itaewon, and throughout the country.

The only question was who, when, and how painfully.

We were making good time. The engine of Ernie’s jeep purred like the well-oiled machine it was and the little heater under the metal dashboard was churning out a steady flow of warm air. I sat in the passenger seat, my nose pressed against the plastic window in the jeep’s canvas canopy, watching rice paddies roll by. Out here, most of the farmhouses were thatched in straw. President Pak Chung-hee’s New Village Movement had yet to provide tile roofs for all the families that tilled the soil.

“What if we don’t find him?” Ernie said. “We could get stuck out here.” Snow covered the countryside like a sheet of white silk.

“Not if we hurry,” I said. “The zoomie on AFKN claims that the worst of the storm won’t hit until tomorrow morning.”

Ernie snorted. AFKN weather reports were notoriously wrong. When we’d departed through the main gate of Yongsan Compound, the MP shack had already taken down the yellow placard, meaning “caution, dangerous road conditions” and replaced it with red for “emergency vehicles only.”

Luckily, our CID Dispatch qualified us as an emergency vehicle. Or maybe not so luckily, depending on how you looked at it.

“Maybe he’s not even here,” Ernie said.

I didn’t bother to reply. Ernie was becoming increasingly morose. Maybe it was the fact that the KNPs still considered us to be suspects in the murder of Two Bellies. Whatever the reason, I figured it would be best to get our business over with and return to Seoul as quickly as possible.

On the outskirts of Mapo, a policeman in a yellow rain slicker stood on a circular platform directing traffic. Ernie pulled the jeep right up next to him and I climbed out and showed him my badge. Then I asked him in Korean if he could guide us to the address Doc Yong had provided.

He crinkled his nose, giving it some thought. Then he pointed with his gloved hand and told me, “The Small Stream District is on the northern edge of town, near the Gold Mountain Temple.”

That was as close as he could come.

We drove on. I glanced back at the young cop and pitied him, standing there exposed to the elements, snowflakes drifting down on his slickly clad shoulders.

Gold Mountain Temple was easy enough to find, an old stone edifice dedicated to Buddha. Once there, I stopped a couple of housewives on their way back from the open-air Mapo Market and showed them the address I’d written in hangul. They conferred for a moment and pointed me toward an alley that led up a hill behind the temple. Ernie locked the jeep and together we trudged up the steep lane.

At the top of the hill, I asked a man working inside a bicycle repair shop if he could direct me to the address and this time he was even more specific.

“The next alley,” he told me. “Turn left. About twenty paces beyond.”

The bicycle shop guy stared after us, as did everyone we met here in the Small Steam District of Mapo. There were no American military compounds within thirty miles and this was a working-class agrarian area. No reason for foreigners to come out here. Judging by the stares directed our way, you would’ve thought Ernie and I were two men from Mars. And at the moment, that was exactly how we felt.

I knocked on the front gate. The wood was rotted and old. The brick wall also appeared to be ancient but it had been built solidly. No answer to my knock. I pounded again. Finally, from the other side of the wall, plastic sandals slapped against cement. The small door in the wooden gate creaked open. A face peeked out. The face of an elderly woman. Her eyes widened so much that the creases on her forehead scrunched up like an accordion.

I said the bartenders name. “Noh Bang-ok isso-yo?” Is he here?

The old woman screamed.

Ernie figured that must mean we had the right address so he barged through the open door. The courtyard was small and barren except for a row of earthenware kimchee pots lining the inside of the brick wall. Footsteps pounded from within the darkened hooch.

“Nugu siyo?” a man’s voice said. Who is it? Then, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and pajama bottoms, he appeared at the open sliding door of the hooch. Ernie and I both recognized him immediately, the bartender from the Grand Ole Opry, sans white shirt and bow tie. At first, he flinched, as if preparing to run. But Ernie was across the courtyard in three steps and Noh must’ve realized the futility of trying to flee. Instead, his shoulders slumped and then he squatted on his haunches, staring at us thoughtfully, wondering what he was in for.

When the bartender realized who we were and why we were there, it was as if he’d resigned himself to some horrible fate. He didn’t invite us in and so I started questioning him on the low porch that ran along the front edge of the hooch. What had he seen on the night Ernie and I sneaked into the basement of the Grand Ole Opry? Had he discovered the hole we’d made in the wall? Did he look inside and see the bones of Mori Di? Who’d come in that night and taken those bones and then replaced them with the corpse of Two Bellies? Had she been alive when she’d been brought in? Who, exactly, had done the killing?

He didn’t answer any of my questions, not at first, but he promised that he would, just as soon as he changed clothes. As Noh Bang-ok rose to his feet, I asked him why he’d left Itaewon. His eyes widened, making his forehead wrinkle much as the old woman’s forehead had.

“Because,” he replied, as if talking to a child, “I was afraid.”

He turned and walked back into the hooch. Ernie and I stood in the courtyard. With my eyes, I motioned for Ernie to go around back to make sure that the bartender didn’t try to slip away from us.

Then the old woman, still looking worried, slipped off her shoes, climbed up on the wooden platform and entered the hooch. She waddled back into the darkness and seconds later she screamed again.

Ernie and I were inside the hooch before the sound faded. He entered through the back door, me through the front. In a small bedroom we saw the bartender kneeling on the vinyl-covered floor. The old woman was clutching him, still screaming. Blood poured from the young man’s wrist. He held his arm up for us to see. A huge gash leered at us.

I applied first aid as best I could and soon a neighbor who owned a cab was helping us bundle the young bartender into the back seat and telling me in Korean that he was taking him to the big hospital downtown. Ernie and I ran back to the jeep parked in front of the Gold Mountain Temple and managed to follow the cab across slippery, snow-covered roads to the hospital.

By the time the bartender had been checked in and attended to by a physician, Ernie and I were surrounded by angry relatives. Apparently, he was part of a large clan here in Mapo. The snow outside was falling faster and we weren’t about to obtain any useful information from him now.

I knew the wound was superficial, inflicted to avoid being taken to the KNP station. Noh Bang-ok would live. But Ernie and I didn’t contact the local Korean cops and have him arrested because they would contact the Itaewon cops and something told me that the Itaewon cops weren’t too interested in investigating the murder of Two Bellies. KNPs have a habit of sticking together. If we talked to the local cops, they might end up arresting us instead of the Grand Ole Opry bartender, on trumped-up charges like hounding him and forcing him to become distressed and attempting to commit suicide. Best for us to say goodbye to Mapo.

Ernie and I fought our way outside. Ernie fired up the jeep and we wound through the narrow streets of the city of Mapo until we reached the main highway. A wooden sign pointed toward Seoul.

Ernie bulled his way into the flow of traffic and stepped on the gas.

The lobby of the White Crane Hotel was almost as big as an airplane hangar. The floor was carpeted in a red design that spread from the long sleek front desk toward a mock waterfall and a circular stairway leading up to chic restaurants and boutiques with French names. A European pianist wearing a tuxedo with tails tinkled out soft tunes on an enormous grand piano.

“This joint stinks,” Ernie said.

He was referring to the scent of roses permeating the air.

G.I. s weren’t welcome. I felt as out of place as a gorilla shuffling through a fashion show.

All the customers were Asian: a few Chinese from Hong Kong but mostly whole regiments of Japanese tourists. The not-so-rich Japanese tended to migrate in herds, arriving in heated buses. The rich ones traveled in sleek black sedans with white upholstery driven by white-gloved chauffeurs.

“I thought America ruled the world,” Ernie said.

“Americans only think they rule the world,” I answered.

We sat on frail metal chairs in a tea shop with a clear view of the entrance to the hotel. Flurries of snow drifted by sporadically-not enough to clog traffic. Not yet. When we first arrived from Mapo, we cased the joint, tipping a bellhop to find out if Mr. Ondo Fukushima had checked in. The bellhop said his suite was ready but he had not yet arrived. Then we ate chow in a workingman’s chophouse across the street and returned to wait.

“Where do you think she met him?” Ernie asked. He was referring to Jessica Tidwell.

“Probably somewhere south of Seoul,” I answered, “in Suwon or Taejon. The driver takes her down there, hooks her up with Fukushima and together they attend a few afternoon meetings, maybe a formal dinner, and then they drive up to Seoul.”

“Or check into a hotel down there and don’t bother to come out for a couple of days.”

I shrugged. “Anyway, this is the only lead we have. We wait here until they arrive.”

“Terrific,” Ernie said. He shifted his butt on the tiny chair and sipped unhappily on scented oolong tea.

It was almost midnight now. If Ondo Fukushima and Jessica Tidwell didn’t show up soon, they wouldn’t at all.

Ernie elbowed me. “Check out the armored battalion.”

A line of five black sedans pulled up outside the plate glass entranceway of the hotel. The liveried doormen scurried up and down the row, swinging doors open. Burly Japanese men in expensive suits and highly polished shoes emerged first. Their hair was slicked back, and if communication devices had been plugged into their ears, I would’ve thought they were Secret Service. One of them barked an all clear, and from the central sedan a diminutive Japanese man emerged wearing a pin-striped suit in a shade of green so dark that it glowed.

“The head honcho,” Ernie said.

As he strode through the door, his immaculately coiffed bodyguards arrayed themselves around him like a phalanx of ancient Greek warriors protecting their king.

Behind them, high heels clicked on marble.

Jessica Tidwell wore the same skimpy blue dress that had been crumpled on the floor of Paco Bernal’s room, but it was cleaned and pressed now. The freckled flesh of her decolletage peeked over the silk material like the prow of a sailing ship. Jessica scurried behind the formation of men, keeping her head down, ignored but nevertheless making it clear that she was a woman following her master.

Ernie snorted in derision.

“Come on,” he said. “Enough of this freaking tea. It’s showtime.”

Ernie and I had discussed how we’d approach Jessica. Our fondest hope was that the yakuza chief would treat her like a worthless woman and make her follow far behind. He hadn’t let us down. If we could, we’d move her away quietly, out the door, and into the army-issue jeep waiting around the corner.

At least that’s how I hoped things would turn out.

Instead, as soon as I moved forward and put my hand on Jessica’s elbow, two of Ondo Fukushima’s thugs stopped in their tracks and turned on us. Ernie slipped his hand beneath his coat, not pulling his . 45 but making it clear to the men he was armed. I tugged on Jessica’s elbow.

“Let me go,” she said.

“Don’t make trouble,” I told her. “We’re taking you home.”

“Like hell.” With her free hand she reached inside the purse strapped to her shoulder. She pulled out a wad of blue bills, ten-thousand yen notes. “This is what he paid me,” she said. “More than a thousand bucks.” In a falsetto voice, she said, “You change money, G.I.?” Then she reverted to her regular voice. “But I have to stay with him for the whole weekend.”

“Is it worth it?”

“If it saves Paco, yes.”

“Why don’t you just ask your father to drop the charges?”

The smooth flesh of her face crinkled. “I wouldn’t ask him for anything! Especially something that would embarrass the great J-2. When he gets his money back, he’ll have to drop the charges.”

That wasn’t strictly true, but this was no time to argue the intricacies of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I tugged on her arm again. The two thugs closed in. Ernie stepped closer and pulled the. 45 from his holster.

The Japanese gangsters froze.

The yakuza have influence in Korea but gun control is absolute here, only military and law-enforcement personnel are allowed to carry weapons. The yakuza can’t bring weapons into the country. Still, the well-muscled men spaced themselves around the lobby, ready to pounce. I had no doubt that each one of them was an expert in one of the martial arts.

Ondo Fukushima turned. He approached slowly, surveying the situation. Gradually, his face achieved an expression as fierce as a carved mask. I worked at not letting it effect me, but it did. My gut froze into a fist-sized chunk of dry ice.

Jessica took advantage of my hesitation. She twisted quickly and kicked my knee, at the same time ripping her elbow out of my grasp. But instead of running toward her Japanese benefactor, she staggered backward toward the waterfall.

By now the tuxedoed pianist had stopped playing and around the lounge everyone had stopped moving. Behind the front desk, fingers tapped out a phone number.

If Ernie and I were ever going to be able to keep Jessica’s indiscretion quiet, we had to drag her out of here before the Korean cops arrived.

Two more of the Japanese thugs glided toward me. I pulled out my. 45. They stopped. But a half dozen of them had surrounded us now, waiting for a single mistake.

“Steady, Ernie,” I said. “Don’t fire unless you have to.”

“What are you doing?”

The voice roared out from the center of the Japanese thugs. And then I realized that the enormous sound had erupted from the small man in the glowing green suit: Ondo Fukushima.

I kept my voice steady. “She’s coming with us,” I said.

“She’s mine,” he bellowed. “I paid for her.” He jammed his thumb into his puffed-out chest. “Me. Ondo Fukushima. A boy who used to steal from your American compounds. I bought and paid for the daughter of one of your 8th Army generals. You’re not going to take her away from me now.”

His English was almost perfect; he had only a slight accent. Jessica Tidwell’s father was a colonel, not a general, but I didn’t bother to correct him. Ondo Fukushima was the right age to have picked up the language-and his familiarity with military ranks-as a hustler outside the American bases during the occupation at the end of World War II.

“We’re taking her,” Ernie shot back.

“You have no right,” Fukushima said.

Ernie waved the barrel of his. 45. “This says we have the right.”

The Japanese thugs inched closer. Ernie and I couldn’t possibly take all of them on hand-to-hand. Our only chance was to fire. But killing men here in the middle of Seoul?

Ondo Fukushima could smell our indecision. Before he could make his move, flesh slapped on flesh, ringing through the silent lobby like the sharp peeling of a bell.

“Cabrona!” I understood the Spanish curse word.

I turned to look, still keeping my pistol pointed at the Japanese mobsters.

Corporal Paco Bernal, wearing an ill-fitting black suit, had pulled Jessica away from us, right up to the edge of the waterfall. He slapped her again.

“You would go with him?”

Jessica pawed at his chest. “It was for you, Paco.” She pointed at the bills sticking out of her purse. “See? I have enough yen here to cover the thousand dollars we stole. My dad will drop the charges. He’ll have to. We’ll be OK.”

Paco Bernal looked like one of those heartthrobs I used to see in the corny old Mexican movies we used to watch in East L.A. when I was a kid. In the suit, with his hair slicked back, all he needed was a pencil-thin mustache to complete the picture. At the moment, he didn’t care about us. He didn’t care about the Japanese gangsters. All he cared about is what he perceived as Jessica Tidwell’s betrayal.

Ondo Fukushima turned his scowling face toward Paco. His lips were pursed so tight that I thought his face would burst.

Behind the counter, hotel employees whispered the word kyongchal. Police.

Now it was Fukushima’s turn to wrestle with indecision. Time was running out. If he were to pull Jessica away from her lover just as the police arrived on the scene, he’d be arrested, and the whole world would know what happened here tonight. Not that he’d do any prison time. His money and his attorneys would see to that. But more important, much more important, he’d lose face. He’d be seen as the old man in a love triangle with two good-looking young foreigners.

The thugs were no longer planning to pounce. They seemed to sense their boss’s thoughts.

In the distance, a siren wailed.

Fukushima made his decision. He barked something in guttural Japanese.

As if their batteries had been turned off, the Japanese thugs relaxed. Moving like one organism, they backed away from us, surrounded their boss, and headed at a brisk pace toward the executive elevator.

Ernie turned his. 45 toward Paco.

“Move away from the girl, Paco. Assume the position against the wall. You must be familiar with it.”

As if waking from a nightmare, Paco seemed to see us clearly for the first time. Instead of pushing Jessica away, he hugged her closer and then, moving so quickly that she couldn’t react, he twirled her around, forcing his forearm up under her neck. From his pocket a gleaming blade of steel appeared.

The bayonet that had been missing from his field gear.

He pressed the tip of it lightly into Jessica’s neck.

“Paco?” she asked.

“Shut up!” He turned his attention to me and Ernie. “If you come any closer, I’ll slice her. I swear I will.”

Instead, Ernie moved to his side. Paco jabbed the bayonet a little farther into Jessica’s throat, warning me off. I lowered my. 45.

“You’re a smart man, Paco,” I said. “Up to now you’re only facing a theft charge. It’s only money. Nobody’s going to come down too hard on you. But if you hurt Jessica…” I let the thought hang.

While Paco stared at me, Ernie inched a little closer. I knew he’d take a shot at Paco’s head if he got a clear one. He had to. An innocent person’s life was in danger. And there was no way I could stop him.

Paco kept his eyes on me, pondering my words. A moment of clarity washed over his face. His anger at Jessica faded. He was starting to see the enormity of the mistake he’d made.

“Put down the bayonet, Paco,” I said.

At the same time, Jessica seemed to realize that she’d also made an error. Her big green eyes stared down at the glistening bayonet. But she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

The sirens grew louder. Ernie inched even closer, keeping his. 45 pointed at Paco’s head. That’s when I saw the decision in Jessica’s eyes. She raised her high-heeled shoe. I knew what she was going to do. I wanted to stop her. I wanted to cry out but no sound came out of my throat. She lifted her heel and stomped it down on Paco Bernal’s toe. Paco jerked back. Ernie lowered his. 45 and charged, ramming his shoulder into Paco’s side.

Paco spun away from the rock waterfall, kept his balance, and grabbed the collar of Ernie’s coat. With his free hand he raised the bayonet in the air.

I jerked my. 45 up in front of me, flexed my knees, and shouted, “No!”

Jessica dropped to the floor. Before Paco could chop the blade down on Ernie, the cold steel in my hand bucked and an enormous blast filled my ears and then the odor of burnt cordite billowed in the air.

Jessica screamed. A red hole burst open in Paco Bernal’s side. He reeled backwards toward the rock retaining wall of the waterfall like a yo-yo bouncing on a string.

More sirens, louder now, screamed behind me; car doors slammed. Ernie was up, crouching over Paco. Jessica had stopped screaming but her eyes were flooded with tears. She shoved Ernie out of the way, reaching for Paco. Ernie shoved her back.

She stumbled, rose to her feet, and charged at me. I was still holding the smoking. 45 pointed directly at her. She knocked it out of the way and rammed both of her small fists into my chest.

“What have you done? Why’d you shoot him?”

She punched me two more times, in the face. I held my. 45 pointed at the floor and didn’t resist. Suddenly, she kicked off her high heels, and ran in her bare feet back to Paco.

Ernie was trying to stop the bleeding that pulsed from Paco’s chest. He looked around for a compress, noticed the wad of bills sticking out of Jessica’s purse. He snatched them. “Here,” he told her. “Press these down on the wound. Press hard! So the bleeding will stop.”

Jessica knelt on the bloody floor and did as she was told. Ernie hurried over to me, grabbed my shoulders, and gazed into my eyes; he didn’t like what he saw. He moved me over to an upholstered bench against the wall, sat me down, and pried the. 45 out of my fist. He took out the clip, stuck it in his jacket pocket, and put the empty weapon back into my shoulder holster.

“Don’t move, Sueno,” he said. “You stay right here.”

Then he returned to Jessica.

Even from this distance I could see the blood seeping past Jessica’s splayed fingers and dripping down Paco’s side.

The next morning, veins not only protruded from the first sergeant’s neck but they also pulsed beneath the skin of his forehead.

“You didn’t report it?” he asked. “The daughter of the Eighth Army J-2 is being held by a Japanese mobster and you decide it’s not important enough to let anyone know?”

Ernie shrugged. “You guys would’ve just got in the way.”

“Got in the way?” The first sergeant gets like that when he’s angry; he keeps repeating whatever you say. He raised his forefinger and pointed it at me and then at Ernie. “You not only botch the operation but you end up shooting a suspect and then, to top it off, the J-2’s daughter ends up disappearing all over again!”

“We’ll find her,” Ernie said. “Piece of cake.”

We were in the CID Admin Office, taking our ass-chewing-a serious one this time. So far, no one had questioned my decision to pop a round into Corporal Paco Bernal. In the KNP report a number of witnesses testified that he had been about to stab Ernie with his bayonet. I acted to protect a fellow CID agent and everyone agreed I had no choice. Even I agreed, I think.

Staff Sergeant Riley sat at his desk, head bobbing over a stack of paperwork, attempting to stay removed from this conversation. As soon as the first sergeant raised his voice, Miss Kim disappeared down the hallway. She hadn’t returned yet.

“The provost marshal has gone ballistic,” the first sergeant continued. “He has to report to the CG and Colonel Tidwell, and tell them that two of his investigators didn’t let him know they had a lead on the whereabouts of Jessica Tidwell and then, on their own, they shot an Eighth Army G.I. and allowed Jessica Tidwell to escape again.”

Ernie didn’t say anything this time. I hadn’t said anything since the first sergeant started screaming. Actually, I didn’t feel as bad as when I thought that Paco Bernal would die from the bullet I’d blasted into him. As it was, Paco was currently in the Intensive Care Unit of the 121 Evacuation Hospital. Prognosis: guarded. Which, although not good, is better than dead. He’d lose a couple of ribs but the bullet hadn’t passed through any vital organs.

At the White Crane Hotel, seconds after Ernie sat me down on that bench, the KNPs swarmed in and took charge of the crime scene. An ambulance arrived and carted Paco away. The head KNP investigator requested an interview with Ondo Fukushima and after a few minutes, he was allowed an audience with the great man. In the opulence of Fukushima’s suite, the KNP investigator determined that the Japanese yakuza wasn’t involved in the shooting and, in fact, this entire mess was an American-style soap opera- not Korean or Japanese.

I sat pretty much stunned by what I had done-shot a man- and rejoiced inwardly when the ambulance took him away and it was reported that Paco Bernal was still breathing. Ernie, as usual, started in with the KNPs and there was a scuffle and finally a half-dozen of them cornered him on one of the couches in the lobby and questioned him without letting him go check on me.

Meanwhile, no one was paying much attention to Jessica Tidwell. I pieced it together later, mostly by talking to the bellhops and the doormen outside.

A Korean man, a large Korean man, had shown up shortly after the arrival of the KNPs. He seemed to know some of the KNP investigators but stayed studiously out of their way and finally, when he had a chance, he approached Jessica Tidwell. They seemed to know each other. He lit a cigarette for her and while she smoked and nodded he whispered in her ear. Jessica kept nodding in an absentminded sort of way. After the paramedics took Paco away, she left with the tall Korean man.

I asked the KNPs why they’d allowed her to leave. They told me the name of the man she had left with: Son Ryu-jon. I didn’t recognize it. And then, in response to my blank stare, one of the KNPs finally relented and explained, “Everybody call him Maldeigari.”

Horsehead. His influence was such that no one had stopped them.

The first sergeant still hadn’t finished our ass-chewing. “They’re saying it’s your fault that Jessica is running wild,” he told us.

“Who’s saying?” Ernie asked.

“Colonel Tidwell, the CG, even the Officers’ Wives’ Club,” the first sergeant answered. “They’re saying if you had done your jobs and picked up Jessica, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Maybe it’s their fault,” Ernie said, “for raising her like they did.”

The first sergeant pointed his finger at Ernie’s nose. “Don’t you be showing disrespect to your superior officers, Bascom.”

Before Ernie could reply, I said, “We’ll find her, Top.”

Our ace in the hole was that, despite everything that had happened, Ernie and I were still the only 8th Army CID agents who had any contacts whatsoever in Itaewon.

The phone rang. It was for the first sergeant. He said, “Yes, sir” and then “Yes, sir” again and again. About a half-dozen times. He hung up the phone and looked at us.

“That was the duty officer over at the 121 Evac. A redhead in a short skirt was spotted in the intensive care unit, hanging around Paco. A medic tried to shoo her out. She threw a tantrum, told him to go to hell.”

“Sounds like Jessica,” I said, standing up from my chair. “Did she leave?”

“Not until he threatened to call the MPs.”

We ran outside and jumped in Ernie’s jeep. After he started the engine, Ernie turned to me and said, “You OK?”

I nodded. “I’m OK. And I’ll stay OK as long as Paco Bernal keeps breathing.”

Ernie jammed the jeep in gear and roared off towards the 121 Evacuation Hospital.

When we arrived, the redhead in the ICU had already left. I asked the medic how long ago she’d left and he said about ten minutes.

In front of the main entrance to the 121 was a PX hot dog stand and a turnaround for the big black Ford Granada PX taxis. I spoke to one of the drivers and he used the radio bolted beneath his dashboard and called dispatch. The driver and the dispatcher chatted for a while in Korean and the dispatcher contacted other units, eventually locating a driver who had picked up Jessica Tidwell. I took the mic and spoke to him, surprising everyone by using Korean. This driver said the woman he picked up in front of the 121 wore a short blue dress and had been quite agitated. She’d ordered him to take her to Itaewon. He let her off on the MSR across from the UN Club, at the front entrance to the Hamilton Hotel.

Had she entered the hotel? I asked.

No. She took off on foot, heading north.

Then I asked another question, still in Korean. What currency had she used to pay him? That was another odd thing, the driver replied. Although she was an American, she had insisted on paying her fare in Japanese yen. In fact, he told me that he was holding the thousand yen note in his hand right now and he wasn’t even sure how much it was worth. Another thing was odd. There was a brown smudge on the edge of the bill and it looked, almost, like dried blood.

Paco was still comatose. When I asked the nurse in the intensive care unit how he was doing, she stared at me with sad eyes and shook her head.

“You don’t think he’ll pull through?” I asked.

“He might,” she replied. She gazed in his direction. “Yes, probably. But he will never be the man he once was.”

Ernie patted me on the shoulder.

On our way out, the phone rang behind the emergency room counter. A medic picked it up and then called us over. “You guys Sweeno and Bascom?”

“That’s us,” Ernie replied.

“Somebody wants to talk to you.”

I took the call. It was Riley. He started talking without preamble.

“Do either of you guys know somebody named Mel Gardi?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Mel Gardi,” he repeated.

My eyes widened. “You mean ‘Maldeigari.’”

“Whatever.”

“That’s Horsehead,” I said. “What about him?”

“You better get your butts out to Itaewon.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“I ain’t repeating this shit,” Riley said.

I pulled out my notebook and jotted down directions: a block and a half up the hill from the Dingy Dingy Pool Hall.

“This is in Itaewon?” I asked.

“That’s what they tell me. Not far from the Hamilton Hotel.”

The front entrance to the Hamilton Hotel was the only authorized PX taxi stand in Itaewon.

“What about Horsehead?” I asked again. “Did something happen to him?”

“Go look!” Riley shouted and hung up.

“What is it?” Ernie asked.

I told him.

We ran outside of the 121 Evac, jumped in his jeep, and laid rubber halfway out the gate.