G. I. Bones

2

“Your black-market stats are for shit,” Staff Sergeant Riley growled.

He tossed a printout to Ernie Bascom, my partner, who caught it on the fly.

“So what else is new?” Ernie replied and tossed the printout into the trash.

“You’d better retrieve that,” Riley said. “The First Shirt has a case of the ass and later this morning he’s going to be reviewing your lack of performance.”

“Screw the First Shirt.” Ernie grabbed Riley’s issue of today’s Pacific Stars and Stripes and snapped the pages open.

The three of us sat in the headquarters of the 8th United States Army Criminal Investigation Detachment on the first floor of Building 306-A on Yongsan Compound Main Post. Riley, his skeletal body lost in the starched folds of his khaki uniform, glared at Ernie. As the Admin NCO, it was Riley’s job to make sure that our statistics looked good in the reports that wound their way up the labyrinthine corridors of 8th Imperial Army. But in the day-to-day grind of criminal investigation, not everything can be quantified. I had little patience for Riley’s reports. Ernie had none.

Miss Kim, the statuesque Admin secretary, did her best to ignore the three of us. She pecked away at her hangul typewriter, theoretically translating documents from English to Korean. Actually, I believed most of her attention was on Ernie. They’d been close once but after reading some of my reports, which often included Ernie’s dealings with the fair sex, she’d begun to pull away from him.

He didn’t seem to mind. Ernie Bascom was just over six feet tall, slender, with short sandy blond hair and green eyes behind round-lensed glasses and for some reason he drove women mad. I’m not sure why. I could only guess that it was because he was unpredictable; no woman ever knew if he was going to take a flying leap off a fast moving train or kneel and present her with a bouquet of spring roses. Ernie kept women guessing and once he had them confused he took his gratification where he found it.

Miss Kim had realized this and the realization made her furious at both of us. I tried to mollify her by being kind, occasionally placing a small gift on her desk, like a box of chocolates or a bottle of hand lotion from the Yongsan Main PX. It didn’t help. She blamed me, Ernie’s investigative partner, for leading him astray. Unfair. That was like blaming a canvas salesman for forcing Picasso to paint.

The time was now 0815. I clapped my hands. “Time to get cracking,” I said to Ernie.

He stared at me dully. He didn’t ask, Cracking on what?-not in front of Riley.

I half expected Riley to say that we had to wait for the first sergeant to return from his morning meeting with the provost marshal. He didn’t. That gave us deniability if the First Shirt later asked us where we’d been. Mentally, I rehearsed my line: “Nobody told us that we were supposed to wait around the office, Top.”

I rose from the gray, army-issue chair. Ernie stood too.

“Where the hell you two guys going?” Riley asked. “The commissary doesn’t open until ten.”

The 8th Army Commissary was where we monitored black-market activities. G.I. s, or more often their wives, bought goods from the commissary-bananas, maraschino cherries, instant coffee, soluble coffee creamer, sliced oxtail-all items difficult and expensive to obtain in Korea. Then they carted them out to Itaewon and sold them to one of the local black-market operators. The profit margin on most items was 100 percent, sometimes more. Despite the fact that there was a limit on how much a family could purchase each month, an industrious yobo-the Korean wife of an American G.I.-could pull down thousands of dollars per year; all of it strictly against Army regulations and strictly against the ROK- U.S. Status of Forces Agreement.

Black-marketing drove the honchos of 8th Army nuts. They didn’t like seeing all those Korean women scurrying around their PX and their commissary and they didn’t like the insolent attitude a G.I. developed when, for the first time in his life, he amassed ten thousand dollars in his bank account. That’s where the law enforcement officers of 8th Army CID came in. It was our job to bust black-marketeers. And at 8th Army staff meetings, the honchos considered this job just as important, if not more so, than solving assaults, rapes, murders, and other sorts of mayhem.

“We’ll be at the commissary by ten,” I replied.

“Yeah,” Riley said. “But where will you be till then?”

“At the SIR warehouse.”

SIR. Serious Incident Report. Riley didn’t ask us what we’d be doing there but, whatever it might be, it sounded like official business so he was satisfied. If he was questioned later by the First Shirt, his butt would be covered.

CYA. That’s what army bureaucracy is all about. Or as the Koreans say, cover your kundingi.

The warehouse was musty and the wooden door leading into the main storage area creaked when it opened. Fred Linderhaus, the NCO-in-charge, pointed us in the right direction.

“First thing in the morning,” he said, “two CID agents want to look at some old files. Must be something big.”

“Nothing big,” I said.

“Then what?”

Ernie stopped and turned to block Linderhaus’s way. “Do you have a freaking need to know?” he asked.

Since I’d first started working with Ernie Bascom, he’d been confrontational. This is a good thing in a criminal investigation agent and more than once his belligerent attitude had helped us gather information we needed or, more importantly, escape unscathed from a tough situation. Ernie’s temper also had its downside, like unnecessarily earning us enemies when what we needed was friends. His hometown was Detroit, the white suburbs not the black inner city, and I often thought that maybe it was something in the way he was brought up that caused him to be such a hothead. Or maybe it was the two tours he’d spent in Vietnam, under fire, buying pure China White from the snot-nosed boys on the other side of the concertina wire. Whatever the cause, lately Ernie had been more temperamental than usual. Almost anything would set him off. For the last few days, the chip on his shoulder teetered there like a claymore mine ready to explode. I hadn’t asked him about it. I hadn’t had the nerve.

Linderhaus’s eyes widened. “Hey,” he said, shrugging his big shoulders. “Just asking.”

“We’re doing research here,” Ernie continued, “because we’re writing a book. That’s all you need to know. You got it?”

“Got it,” Linderhaus replied. He stuck his hands in his pockets, turned, and shambled back down the dusty corridor.

After he’d left, I said, “You really know how to encourage voluntary cooperation, don’t you?”

Ernie snorted and grabbed his crotch. “He can voluntarily cooperate this.”

The warehouse was a large Quonset hut on a cement foundation divided by a series of plywood walls painted a shade of green the army calls “olive drab.” G.I. s call it “puke green.” Fluorescent lights, hanging from wooden rafters, buzzed overhead. Wooden shelving reaching ten feet high bearing cardboard boxes teetered above us. Each box was labeled. We were in a section marked SIRs, June 1962. Each box contained anywhere from thirty to a hundred SIRs for that month, statements concerning incidents that military police units throughout the Korean Peninsula considered important enough to report up the chain of command. If the 8th Army provost marshal agreed that the incident was serious, he included it in the blotter report that was presented daily to the commander, 8th United States Army. Once an incident was classified as a SIR, a file would be created, assigned a number, and an investigation launched, its progress tracked. The SIR remains open until the case is solved or otherwise declared closed.

Black-market cases usually don’t get SIR treatment, not unless the case is particularly egregious like the wholesale pilfering of a few tons of army-issue copper wire. Normally, SIRs are made about assaults, thefts, rapes, and murders involving US Forces personnel. Often, a Korean citizen is also involved-sometimes as the perpetrator, more often as the victim.

With 50,000 American G.I. s stationed in Korea since the war ended more than twenty years earlier, there had been plenty of serious incidents to report. Eighth Army’s purpose, according to military press releases, was to protect “Freedom’s Frontier.” That is, to deter the 700,000 North Korean Communist soldiers positioned just north of the Demilitarized Zone from invading their brethren in South Korea. Our real purpose, I believed, was to hold on to our empire. And many G.I. s who came to Korea and suddenly found themselves living in the lap of luxury-with houseboys to do their laundry and business girls to satisfy their needs after duty hours- took on the airs of potentates. And sometimes these petty potentates abused people they saw as their servants, which is why this SIR warehouse was stuffed full of box after box of paperwork reporting criminal activity.

The military, always mindful of its choirboy image, likes to keep this information under wraps. That’s why Fred Linderhaus doesn’t allow anyone in here unless they have a “need to know.” And the outside world-the world the military considers to be its enemy- never has a “need to know.”

We kept walking down the dusty hallways. Fleas flew in tight formations. I knew it was just my imagination but from within the boxes it seemed as if I heard the sobs of victims and the muffled screams of those who would never again draw the sweet breath of life.

“Doesn’t Linderhaus ever sweep up around here?” Ernie asked. He wasn’t listening to the same voices.

“They don’t allow Korean cleaning crews in the warehouse,” I replied. “The material’s too sensitive.”

“OK. So Eighth Army doesn’t want anybody nosing around in their dirty laundry. But they ought to allow a fumigation team in once in a while.” Ernie swatted at the swirling insects. “What the hell we looking for, anyway?”

“I told you. A G.I. who was murdered in 1953.”

“And for what again?”

I told him about Auntie Mee.

“You say she’s good looking?”

“Not bad.”

“But you couldn’t tell much beneath those thick robes.”

“I wasn’t looking that close,” I said.

“Because you’re stuck on Doc Yong. That’s the problem with you, Sueno. You like those smart chicks, the kind who wear glasses.”

I was about to tell him that not all women who wear glasses are smart but decided against it.

“So this fortune teller,” Ernie continued, “this Auntie Mee, is ranting about something that happened twenty years ago?”

“Right.”

“You didn’t pay her, did you?”

“No. She just asked me to check this out as a favor. Really, I’m doing it for Doc Yong.”

“Of course you are. You getting any of that?”

I ignored him.

I’m six foot four, Hispanic, with dark hair and dark eyes and some people have told me that I present a good appearance. But I have never had the success with women that Ernie has. I suppose I’m too serious. Growing up as an orphan in East L.A., as a foster child farmed out from family to family, I was forced to be serious. And observant. And cautious. Qualities that most of the silly girls we met in nightclubs didn’t prize but qualities that I hoped Doctor Yong In-ja would respond to. I wasn’t about to brief Ernie on my romantic progress-or lack thereof-with Doc Yong.

The boxes above us had reached the late fifties now and the color and sturdiness of the cardboard was rapidly deteriorating. We reached 1953, December, and then September and finally, after shifting a few boxes, July.

It was on the top shelf, the cardboard crumpled and the rectangular shape distorted. Probably because the box had been dripped on through a porous roof at one time and then dried out. According to Linderhaus, this tin-roofed Quonset hut had been built only a few years ago. Who knows where they’d stored stuff before that? We used a small stepladder. Ernie steadied me as I grabbed hold of the big box, slid it to the edge of the wooden shelf, and let it drop onto the cement floor with a thump.

A squadron of fleas swirled into action. Ernie cursed and swatted.

“Christ, Sueno. You and your freaking fortune teller.”

After the insects calmed down, I opened the box. It held a jumble of papers, some of them in brown folders, some not. I thumbed through the names typed on white labels at the top of each folder. Occasionally, I pulled a folder out and glanced at it.

Doravich, Peter T., Corporal, had been the perpetrator of an assault in the barracks up at the old 1st Cavalry Division, when the 1st Cav had been stationed near the DMZ. Doravich had beaten up another G.I. using an entrenching tool and the victim had lost an eye. Hardenson, Arthur Q., Staff Sergeant, had been tried and convicted for pistol whipping and then robbing a Korean bus driver. The bus driver’s family had also filed a claim against the United States government for the then princely sum of $5,000. Marcellus, Oscar S., Private First Class, had been accused of raping a Korean business girl. The military court found that he’d merely been guilty of not paying her as agreed in their preexisting verbal contract. The court martial ordered him busted down two stripes to Private E-nothing and had him shipped back to the States.

None of the men had been murdered. So, presumably, their bones wouldn’t be found in Itaewon.

The Korean War ended when a cease-fire was signed between North and South Korea-and their respective allies, Communist China and the U.S.A.-in July of 1953. Auntie Mee claimed that Mori Di had been murdered “at the beginning” of the reconstruction period. That is, shortly after the end of the war. I left the box marked July, 1953 and moved on to August, 1953. Ernie switched on a flashlight because the glow from the overhead fluorescent bulbs didn’t reach down here very well.

“You don’t believe any of this fortune teller shit, do you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Let me search these files,” I said, “then we’ll talk.”

August didn’t seem to have anything that matched Auntie Mee’s words. Neither did the box containing the SIRs for September, October, nor even November. Ernie was becoming antsy and the time was close on to ten o’clock, when we would have to make our appearance at the commissary. I decided to at least finish the box marked December, 1953 and then, like a sharp slap across the face, I spotted a thick manila folder.

“What is it?” Ernie asked.

I pointed.

There, typed neatly across a yellowed label affixed to the folder, was a name and a rank: Moretti, Florencio R., Technical Sergeant, (Missi ng, Presumed Dead).

I pulled the folder out, rubbed the flat of my palm across its smooth surface, and felt a thin coat of dust trickle through my fingers. I thumbed quickly through the folder, every new fact confirming what I’d known from the moment I’d seen the name Moretti.

Ernie waited, hardly breathing.

Finally, I looked up at him and said, “We’ve found Mori Di.”

We spent the rest of the morning sitting in Ernie’s jeep in the parking lot out front of the Yongsan Commissary. People went in and people came out: G.I. s, officers, American female dependents, Department of Defense civilians, but mostly Korean wives. I paged through the Serious Incident Report and made notes. Ernie chomped impatiently on ginseng gum.

The Koreans would have called him Mori Di because that’s how they would’ve heard his last name. There are too many syllables in American names for them so they try to pare them down somewhat. The Koreans wouldn’t have called him by his first name, Florencio or Flo, for two reasons. First, G.I. s refer to one another by last names; the Koreans would’ve mimicked that. Second, Koreans have trouble pronouncing the English letter f. The sound doesn’t exist in their alphabet. The closest they can come is to couple a hard p with a u and then continue on with the word. For example, when you hear a Korean refer to France, if you listen closely, you will hear them say “Pu-ran-suh.” Said quickly enough it sounds almost like “France.”

So “Mori Di” would’ve been what they called him.

The next question was how had Auntie Mee known about him? I didn’t believe for a minute that the ghost of Technical Sergeant Florencio R. Moretti had visited her from the spirit realm. Also, why did she care about his bones or where they were buried? At this point, the answers to these questions didn’t really matter. I’d promised Doc Yong I’d try to find the remains of Mori Di and, for her sake, I would.

By noon the commissary was bustling and one Korean woman in a tight-fitting dress caught Ernie’s attention. She was filling up the trunk of her PX taxi with every imaginable black-market item, from Tang to Spam. When she was finished, she hopped in the back seat of the taxi and gave the driver instructions. They pulled away from the long line of vehicles waiting in front of the Yongsan Commissary.

“That’s our lady,” Ernie said.

I looked up from the SIR. “You’re just choosing her because she’s the best looking you’ve seen so far.”

“You’ve discovered my criterion. Are you a detective or something?”

Ernie started the engine and was just shifting into first gear when, in the distance, we heard a siren. The sound grew louder. Within seconds a canvas-sided MP jeep with a flashing red light atop its roof swerved into the commissary parking lot, hesitated for a moment, and then headed straight toward us.

“What the-” Ernie said.

Tires screeched and the jeep pulled up in front of us, blocking our way. Two armed MPs jumped out. Each kept his right hand atop the grip of his. 45.

Ernie shouted at them. “You’re blocking my way, morons!”

“Tough shit, Bascom,” one of the MPs said. He was a buck sergeant and his name tag said Pollard. I knew him. He was a good MP.

Sergeant Pollard stood in front of Ernie and told him, “You’re off the black-market detail.”

“So what took you so long?” Ernie replied.

“Break-in,” Pollard said. “Field grade officer’s quarters. You and your partner have caught the call.” He pulled a small notebook out of his breast pocket, thumbed through it, and said, “Yongsan South Post, Unit 43-B, Artillery Drive. Assigned to the J-2, Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell.”

This is where two guys with less savoir faire would’ve whistled in awe. J-2 meant military intelligence. The J stood for “joint command”: the United Nations, U.S. Forces Korea, and the 8th United States Army. So Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell was in charge of military intelligence on the Korean Peninsula and answered only to the commander, 8th United States Army. In army parlance this is the equivalent of sitting at the right hand of god.

“Anybody hurt?” I asked.

Pollard studied his notes. “Not that’s been reported so far. But Mrs. Tidwell is hysterical.”

“Why?”

“Her daughter is missing. Hasn’t reported in since fifteen hundred hours Tuesday.”

“You mean Jessica?” Ernie asked.

Pollard checked his notes again. “Right. That’s her name.”

“Shit,” Ernie said.

He jammed the jeep in gear and swerved past Pollard and around the other jeep. The two MPs looked after us, shaking their heads, glad that they weren’t going to have to delve into the messy family life of Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell.

Jessica Tidwell was notorious in the 8th Army. Only seventeen, she’d already become a legend. Last year, when she was a junior at Seoul American High School, the Department of Defense school on post for military dependents, she’d become involved with some fast-talking G.I. who worked at the 9th Support Group, the personnel unit on post. She attended a party at the barracks and, apparently, she’d first turned her amorous attentions on the guy who invited her and then on at least a half-dozen other young soldiers. Word leaked out. Ernie and I hadn’t investigated the incident and I was grateful for that. Nobody thanks you when you air the dirty laundry of the family of a field-grade officer. But after the official report wound its way up the chain of command, the half-dozen or so G.I. s involved were brought up on charges-statutory rape and disrespect to the dependent of a field grade officer. Within days, they were not only convicted but two of them did some time in the stockade and all of them were summarily dismissed from the army.

But punishing the guilty wasn’t enough for the honchos of 8th Army, not when one of their own was involved. They went one step further. The entire 9th Support Group-personnel, offices, barracks, equipment, vehicles, everything-was transferred to a small logistics compound about twenty miles outside of Seoul. In other words, banished for their sins.

Since then, Mrs. Tidwell had been keeping a very tight reign on her willful teenage daughter. Ernie knew of her from reports and gossip but even he was smart enough to stay strictly away from Jessica Tidwell. Or at least I hoped he was.

The Tidwells lived in a sprawling split-level home on Yongsan Compound South Post. A squad of MPs had already secured the perimeter and I recognized a sedan parked in the driveway as belonging to Colonel Cosgrove, the Chief Chaplain of the 8th Army. Inside, the chaplain sat on a leather upholstered couch, comforting Mrs. Tidwell. She held an embroidered handkerchief to her mouth and rose to her feet when we walked in.

“Are you the investigators?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What took you so long?”

I didn’t know how to answer that one so I didn’t.

She held her body stiffly and wore a cotton dress that was shaped by petticoats and elastic undergarments.

“I don’t care about the money,” she said, waving her arm. “They can have all that. I just want you to find Jessica.” Her face wrinkled into a mask of rage. “And I want you to find her now!”

Neither Ernie nor I moved. The chaplain, a tall man with thick gray hair, moved toward her and grabbed her elbow. “Now Margaret,” he said, “these young men are professionals. Let them do their jobs. And don’t worry, they’ll find Jessica.”

We proceeded into the den, the room that Mrs. Tidwell told us was used by her husband as his home office. She explained what was missing. As we examined the evidence, she said, “I know you’re afraid to ask but you must want to know why Oswald isn’t here.”

Both Ernie and I gazed steadily as Mrs. Tidwell, not speaking. The chaplain grimaced.

“My husband is a very busy man,” Mrs. Tidwell said. “His responsibilities are massive. If he could, he’d be here right now, looking for his daughter.

“Don’t smirk like that,” she said to us. “I won’t have it! Not in my own home. There is such a thing as silent contempt, you know,” she screamed.

The chaplain stepped toward her. She lashed out at him with a fist. He dodged it easily, waited a moment, and then touched her shoulder. She turned and crumpled into his arms, where she stayed for a few minutes, sobbing.

None of the windows leading into Colonel Tidwell’s home office had been broken or jimmied in any way. He normally kept the door leading into the den padlocked from the outside. Mrs. Tidwell told us that when she checked the room shortly after her husband left for work that morning, she’d found it open. At the time she hadn’t thought much of it. But later, while airing out the house, she noticed that the door to the safe was open also. She called her husband and he told her to make sure that the thousand dollars in U.S. greenbacks he kept there for emergency use was still intact. It wasn’t. The envelope was gone. Colonel Tidwell called the MPs from his office.

Technically, no American personnel in Korea are supposed to be in possession of U.S. currency. When a G.I. or his dependents arrives in country, all cash is converted into blue or red Military Payment Certificates. The idea is that it will make it more difficult for the North Korean Communists to get their hands on U.S. currency which they could then use as international exchange. Despite this restriction, greenbacks are still available, illegally, on the black-market and fetch a higher price in won, the Korean currency, than MPC.

A full colonel who is the 8th Army J-2 was not going to be criticized for keeping a small pile of American cash on hand; an enlisted G.I. would be locked up for it.

Clearly, the theft of the money had been an inside job. There was no sign of a break-in and whoever had entered the den had used a key. The safe had been opened by someone using the combination.

The household help consisted of a Korean maid and a Korean “serviceman,” what G.I. s would call a houseboy. I spoke to both of them. They were nervous they might lose their jobs. Neither admitted seeing anyone entering the den but they’d left the previous evening and hadn’t returned until dawn. There were also two contract Korean security guards outside, supposedly to protect the J-2 and his family from possible attack by North Korean commandos. I didn’t bother to speak to them because neither had entered the house. But I took note of which guards had been on shift the previous night in case I needed to speak to them later.

Mrs. Tidwell was less concerned about the theft of the greenbacks than she was about the whereabouts of her daughter, Jessica.

“She didn’t come home last night,” Mrs. Tidwell told us.

Mustering a neutral tone, Ernie asked, “Is that unusual?”

Slowly, Mrs. Tidwell shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“‘Not anymore?’” I asked.

“Not since she met that Mexican.” She spat the word out. Then she looked up at me. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re Hispanic, aren’t you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Who is the Mexican you’re referring to?”

“The driver,” she said. “Nothing but a damn driver, when she could be dating any of the young officers at the O Club.” Mrs. Tidwell’s words fairly sizzled. “I don’t know his name,” she continued. “Jessica and I never speak of him. About a month ago he was assigned to drive for the Officers’ Wives’ Club and I dragged her along to a meeting on Daughters’ Night, hoping that she’d hit it off with some of the other girls her age. Instead, she went outside to smoke and struck up a conversation with the driver.”

“How do you know she’s been seeing him?” Ernie asked.

“She tells me,” Mrs. Tidwell replied, “every chance she gets.”

Our first stop was the Orderly Room of the 21st Transportation Company, also known as Twenty-one T Car, the 8th Army motor pool. It wasn’t difficult for Ernie and me to narrow down our search given the clues we had: Hispanic, assigned to drive for the Officers’ Wives’ Club. The first sergeant had the answer for us in less than two minutes: “Bernal, Francisco, rank of corporal.”

“What’s he like?” I asked the first sergeant.

“Don’t know,” the gray-haired man replied. “Too many young troops coming and going for me to keep track of them all.”

“But that’s your job,” Ernie said.

“Screw you, Bascom.”

“Save that for your troops,” Ernie said.

I told the first sergeant we’d find our own way to the barracks. He didn’t protest.

Outside, as our footsteps crunched across a field of gravel, I asked Ernie, “Why are you messing with him?”

Ernie shrugged. “Just in a good mood, I guess.”

“But you’re making life more difficult for us.”

“I like flashing my badge and seeing first sergeants and field-grade officers squirm.”

“We haven’t even met Colonel Tidwell yet.”

“We will.”

He had that part right. And I wasn’t looking forward to it. According to what I’d been told, Colonel Tidwell was about as grim and hard-assed as it’s possible to be; which is very grim and hard-assed indeed when you’re an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.

The Twenty-one T Car barracks were Quonset huts, spray-painted green and hooked together by wooden passageways. We entered at the end of one Quonset hut and wound through a long maze of corridors, passing Korean houseboys in the latrine, standing in huge metal tubs, sloshing soap suds and laundry under their feet. Finally, we found Bernal’s quarters, room 463-C. I tried to open it with the master key the first sergeant had provided. The lock clicked but the door remained secure.

“Barred from inside,” Ernie said. He banged on the door with his fist. “Bernal! Open up!” No response. Ernie banged once more. When no one answered, he motioned for me to stand out of the way. I did. Ernie took a running start from the opposite side of the hallway and jammed his shoulder into the wooden door. It burst open and the two of us charged inside.

A dim bulb beneath a red lampshade illuminated a body laying in the bunk. A long slender body, glistening like polished ivory.

It definitely wasn’t Corporal Bernal.