G. I. Bones

6

We found Sergeant First Class Hilliard at the 8th Army NCO Club, sipping on a bourbon and Seven and dropping coins into a pinball machine. In the cocktail lounge, a Korean go-go girl danced on a well-lit stage to music blaring from a jukebox. G.I. s ate their lunch and drank beer, mostly ignoring her. As soon as Hilliard sensed our presence, he took his hands off the machine and turned slowly.

“Didn’t you get everything you want?”

“Not everything. I wanted to talk to you about this report.” I waved the copy of the three typed pages in front of him.

“Nothing to talk about,” Hilliard replied.

He turned back to the pinball machine and launched a metal ball into play. Lights lit up and bells clanged as the tiny silver sphere bounced back and forth. Finally, the ball slipped past Hilliard’s flippers and dropped, exhausted, into a dark hole. Hilliard was ready to launch another ball when Ernie placed his hand over Hilliard‘s knuckles.

“Talk to the man, Sarge,” Ernie said, leaning close. Then he grinned.

Hilliard turned again, anger flaring in his eyes. “I told you, there ain’t nothing to talk about.”

“You’re the one who filed this complaint,” I said.

“Yes. I filed it but on behalf of the brothers.”

“It’s your name as complainant.”

“Only because I was there at the time. They be racist out there at the King Club. They discriminate. When a black soldier want to talk to a woman, want to get to know her, she move away from you fast. Just ’cause you black. They be racist out there because the white G.I. taught the Korean woman how to be racist.” Now he was waggling his forefinger at us, preaching. “It ain’t enough that you racist yourself but you have to export it to every country you go to.”

Ernie rolled his eyes.

I kept my face impassive. Koreans are smart enough to form their own opinions about people and they don’t need any help from American G.I. s. Instead of arguing with him, I pointed at the report. “It says here that you requested Miss Kwon’s company and she refused. When you asked her why, she told you that it was because you were black.”

Hilliard thrust his shoulders back. “That’s what she said.”

I shook my head.

“Why you shaking your head?” Hilliard asked. “You calling me a liar?”

“Miss Kwon,” I replied, “doesn’t speak English.”

“How you know? You the one taught her to be racist?”

“I didn’t teach her nothing. She’s shy, just in from the country, she’s afraid of G.I. s. All G.I. s. Black or white.”

“She friendly enough with the white ones.”

Now we were getting down to it. Hilliard was jealous that Miss Kwon had been going with other G.I. s but not with him.

“Maybe they were kind to her,” I said. “Maybe they took it slow and easy.”

“Maybe they be white and maybe they told her if they saw her with a black man, they wouldn’t talk to her no more.”

“Maybe,” I said. He seemed surprised at me agreeing with him. I continued. “But maybe she’s also just a frightened young girl from the countryside and it takes time for her to get to know someone.”

“You trying to make this complaint go away. Well, it ain’t going to happen. Black G.I. s got a right to be treated like anybody else. Whether it be here on compound or out there in Itaewon. And the King Club is racist. Whites only. They might as well put up a sign. And this Miss Kwon, she going along with the program.” He crossed his arms, thinking it over. Then he said, “What makes the CID so interested in all this anyway?”

“I’m worried about putting Miss Kwon under too much pressure. Her family’s poor, she needs the job. She’s just trying to get by.”

Hilliard’s eyes narrowed. “Snake sent you, didn’t he?”

“Snake?” The name electrified me.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You kissing his butt.” Hilliard was smiling now, sure he was on to something. “He sent you out here to make sure that my complaint don’t go through. To make sure that the King Club ain’t put off-limits for being racist.”

Hilliard slugged down the last of his bourbon and Seven, checked the coin return of the pinball machine to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, and then pulled his cap from his belt.

“You can tell Snake,” he said, “that if he wants this complaint pulled, he gonna have to deal with Q himself.” Q for Quinton, Hilliard’s first name. “And tell Snake not to send out anymore whitey CID agents to try to push this black man around.”

“You’re a moron, Hilliard,” Ernie said.

Once again, Hilliard waggled his forefinger at Ernie’s nose. “You mess with Q, you find out who be a moron.”

Ernie slapped his hand.

The motion was so fast and the crack of flesh on flesh so loud, that for a moment Hilliard just stood there, stunned. Then he said, “You keep your hands off me, you understand? You keep your damn hands off me!”

But he was no longer waggling his forefinger.

The morning after the Itaewon Massacre the nuns searched the ville.

“We want to prepare his body,” they told Cort. “For cremation or for return to America.”

“Why did you think he was dead?”

“Everybody say.”

They used their contacts in the ville, which were extensive, to ask questions. Most of the business girls were Buddhists and virtually all of them prayed and burned incense at the shrine atop the hill overlooking Itaewon. Many of them were there that morning, praying for the soul of Mori Di.

Rumors were flying. Most of them centered around Mori Di’s condition after his beating. Some said he was already dead when the Seven Dragons took him away, others said he was still breathing but just barely. No one had any doubt about why the Seven Dragons had absconded with the corpse. They wanted to avoid a criminal prosecution.

In addition to being concerned about Mori Di’s welfare, many of the families in Itaewon were concerned about Mori Di’s bank. Unheing is the word the nuns used. Literally, “silver storage.”

Cort was taken aback by this, suddenly on the alert for an illegal activity that Moretti might have been conducting. Was he changing money from won to U.S. currency? Possession of greenbacks was illegal both for G.I. s and Korean civilians and yet U.S. currency was highly prized and worth much more than either the G.I. Military Payment Certificates or the struggling Korean won. A healthy profit could be made on such transactions. Or was Moretti being paid by desperate Koreans to buy U.S. postal money orders on compound and mail them off to some relative living overseas? Also illegal, but profitable.

As it turned out, Mori Di’s silver storage was none of these things.

“Everybody robbed all the time in Itaewon,” was the way one of the nuns put it to Cort. There was no security. War refugees, of which there were millions, had long since taken to carrying their most precious possessions on their persons. But this was cumbersome. Especially once a family had stopped in Itaewon, set up a ramshackle home and maybe opened some sort of business. They couldn’t keep family heirlooms tied around their waist or taped to an inner thigh forever. So when people saw a trustworthy man like Mori Di, living in a solid building protected by himself and Buddhist nuns and three G.I. truck drivers, they started to ask him to store their valuables.

At first Moretti hesitated. He already had too many responsibilities: the construction operations, the orphanage, and the soup kitchen. He had more than enough to do. But people kept begging him and, finally, he set up a system whereby people could turn over family heirlooms to him, have them boxed up and numbered and a receipt would be provided. After that, Moretti stashed them somewhere, presumably in his headquarters building.

“Seven Dragons kick us out,” one of the nuns told Cort. “All orphans outside too. Winter that time. Cold. We have no money, no food. Seven Dragons no care. We take children, beg money, beg food, and ride on bus, train, whatever we can find and walk back up here in mountains to Temple of Constant Truth.”

Cort waited for what he knew would come next.

“After leave Itaewon, five children die. Two lose foot. One lose hand.”

Despite these hardships, the rest of the children, and all the nuns, arrived safely at the temple.

“The families,” Cort asked, “that left valuables with Moretti, what did they do?”

“They fight,” one of the nuns replied. “Nobody see. No American MPs, no Korean police. Only poor people of Itaewon and Seven Dragons.”

Then she raised her forefinger to her neck and sliced it across her neck.

“Chukin-da,” she said. Kill.

I explained to Ernie the options the Seven Dragons had when deciding how to dispose of Tech Sergeant Moretti’s body. Their ability to cover things up only extended to the cops the Seven Dragons had on their payroll in and around Itaewon; it didn’t extend to a mobile ROK Army surveillance patrol. Cort monitored U.S. and ROK Army blotter reports every morning but nothing had been reported. The remains of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti had vanished. They might be interred in one of the buildings.

“Do you think there might still be old treasures there?” Ernie asked. “Family heirlooms, things like that.”

“No. I’m sure that’s all long gone. But the body is different. Nobody would want to touch that. As long as it was well hidden, they’d leave it where it was. I believe that it’s right here.”

I pointed to a spot on the building plans. Ernie studied the sketch.

Two Bellies had told us that within days of the Seven Dragons kicking out the nuns and orphans, Mori Di’s headquarters had been transformed into a bar and brothel. And since at least one of the Seven Dragons seemed to like American country-western music, they’d renamed the place The Grand Ole Opry Club.

“They slicky beer,” Two Bellies told me. Slicky, G.I. slang for steal.

Military two-and-a-half-ton trucks, laden with pallets of American-made beer, had backed down the alley behind the Grand Ole Opry Club. They unloaded case after case of beer, all of it imported at U.S. taxpayer expense and pilfered directly from the PX supply line. To streamline the delivery process, the Seven Dragons knocked a hole in the wall through which they shoved a ramp and slid the cases down from the back of the trucks into the basement for storage. The work had been expertly done. Bricks lined the delivery chute. To support the ramp, a portion of the wall had been extended out, forming a narrow room with an angled roof. There was no opening into that room. It had been walled-in using bricks. The entire construction had been the first modification made to the original building, the plans of which Ernie stared at intently.

“You think Moretti’s in there,” he said, pointing to the angled space beneath the loading ramp.

“I think it‘s possible. It would make sense for the Seven Dragons to hide him there. It would be safe, away from prying eyes, and they wouldn’t have to take the chance of transporting the corpse out of Seoul.”

“Wouldn’t it stink?”

I shrugged. “Not so much. Not sealed behind brick.”

I imagined a desiccated corpse, sitting in the darkness, fading away to bones.

Then Ernie looked up at me. “Oh, no. I know what you’re thinking.”

We had no jurisdiction in Itaewon. Officially, everything we did had to be done with the approval of the Korean government. Years ago an agreement had been signed so American MPs could police the ville but our jurisdiction extended only to our own personnel: G.I. s, the occasional American dependent, or U.S. civilian workers who happened to wander out there. But we couldn’t promulgate our own search warrant.

“You’re nuts, Sueno,” Ernie said.

“It could be done.”

One thing I’d learned here at 8th Army is that if you really want to do something, don’t ask for permission. If we presented a proposal to search the Grand Ole Opry Club to the provost marshal he would almost certainly say no. If we went ahead anyway, we’d be not only searching without a warrant but we’d also be directly violating an order. If, on the other hand, the PMO liked the idea of us searching the Grand Ole Opry Club, he would forward our request up the chain of command. There, it would be staffed to the ROK-U.S. governmental affairs committee, reports would be filed, questions answered, and great minds would cogitate. After a few weeks, if we were lucky, we’d receive an answer. Almost certainly no. But if by some chance the answer were yes, it would already be too late. By then, the rumors about a pending search of the Grand Ole Opry would have leaked out of 8th Army headquarters like rice wine from a broken soju bottle. Nobody keeps a secret for long in 8th Army headquarters. And if any hint reached Itaewon concerning a search, what we sought would either be moved or, more likely, destroyed.

Ernie kept staring at me. “You’re nuts,” he said again. “This is just a hunch. You don’t know for sure there’s anything there.”

“You’re right. But it makes sense, you have to admit that.”

“Maybe.” Ernie kept shaking his head, jiggling the copies of the building plans. And then he began to laugh. “Sueno, you never cease to amaze me. Why can‘t you just worry about getting your twenty years in like everybody else?”

“Moretti,” I told Ernie, “didn’t get the chance to retire.”

Ernie shook his head, a sardonic smile on his chops, knowing I was putting all the pressure on him I could. Finally, he set the paperwork down.

“Sueno, do you have any idea how embarrassing this is going to be if you’re wrong? A couple of Eighth Army CID agents knocking down walls, looking for old bones?”

I nodded.

“We could end up on the DMZ, trudging through snow in the middle of the night, searching for North Korean infiltrators.”

I nodded again.

Ernie rolled his eyes, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “How would we pull it off?”

I told him.

The members of about a dozen families-men, women, and even children-stood in front of the building that had once been Mori Di’s headquarters but now belonged to the gang of criminals known as the Seven Dragons. Wind laced with stray flakes of snow blew down the narrow Itaewon roadway, a roadway that would later become known by G.I. s as “Hooker Hill.” It was the middle of the morning, about nine or ten, and what had started with a small group of men loudly complaining to one another had grown into a crowd that the nuns estimated at a hundred people.

The ragamuffin Korean civilians wielded clubs and hoes and sickles and broom handles and any sort of weapon they could get their hands on. All of them were screaming, blood in their eyes. In most cases, every bit of wealth that their family retained, whether in the form of gold or jewelry or ancient artwork, had been entrusted to Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti. And with him gone, along with their wealth, and with no economic prospects in sight, all these Korean families could forget about any chance of a future, of education for their children or of being able to afford to set up a business. Instead, they faced poverty, misery, and-possibly-slow and agonizing starvation.

Every person in the mob was prepared to fight to the death.

When faced with this band of desperate people, the Seven Dragons were, at first, caught off guard. Within minutes, they regrouped. By now, the Seven Dragons had attracted dozens of shiftless young men to their ranks. Once these men realized what was going on, they armed themselves with knives and cudgels and prepared to attack.

While this fight was brewing in the middle of Itaewon the American MPs were back on the compound. Since most G.I. s work during the day outside of Itaewon, the MPs didn’t bother to patrol the ville until after regular duty hours. The KNPs were in Itaewon but not where the crowd was gathering. They were at their comfortable heated police station, staying put. The Seven Dragons must have warned them off. They’d known this fight with the families who’d entrusted their wealth to Mori Di was inevitable and wanted it to end quickly and decisively.

The nuns told Cort that the Seven Dragons envisioned a shining era of postwar corruption opening before them. They had money; they had power; they had influence and they didn’t want a lot of whining men, women, and children yapping at their heels, threatening their corrupt empire. They wanted to settle the issue now-in blood.

The families threw themselves at the front door of the Grand Ole Opry Club. Using improvised battering rams, they knocked it down. But the Seven Dragons were ready for them. As the mob poured in, from the wooden rafters above, men rained bricks down upon their heads. Still the crowd surged forward. At the far end of the open room, the Seven Dragons had locked the big double doors and barred them with metal rods. The crowd surged up against the doors, pushed against them, but could go no further. In confusion, the crowd turned back on itself but by now more people had pushed into the huge room and were milling around like cattle. Bricks kept falling.

Then a phalanx of Seven Dragon punks rushed down the stairs. Another group attacked through the side door that led into the kitchen. The crowd fought back on both fronts but that’s exactly what the Seven Dragons wanted. Upon a shouted order, the two groups of Seven Dragon fighters pulled back. Small groups of enraged men fighting for their families last possessions followed in small groups, pushed forward by the mob. They found themselves outnumbered by the Seven Dragon minions. One by one, the rioters were ground into mush.

The main body of rioters realized things were not going their way. More and more people had crumpled to their knees, victims of the vicious rain of bricks that had never relented. The bravest men, the ones who had taken the lead, had been knocked back down the stairs or had entered the double door of the kitchen never to return. Panicked, the crowd started surging back toward the front door.

A third squad of Seven Dragon lackeys, all holding sharpened broom handles, were waiting for them. The first rioters out the door tried to stop but they were pushed forward by the rushing mob and fell down the steep cement stairs. Many were impaled on the sharply pointed tips of the waiting broom handles. More screams. More blood. More panic. And then the Seven Dragons ordered their men on the stairs and in the kitchen to charge into the main room. They did and now the rioters were set upon from all sides.

Once the mob had been totally routed, the Seven Dragons and their vicious auxiliaries waded through the blood and the bodies. Some of the women, especially those with children, had not charged into the building but had waited outside. Now, the Seven Dragons’ lackeys turned on them. The women screamed and attempted to run away, children clinging to their skirts. The women were attacked from behind, clubbed, stabbed, and knocked down. Some of them were murdered immediately. Others were dragged into side alleys and gang-raped. Children wandered through the gore and the screaming crowd, crying and calling for their mothers.

The Seven Dragons laid out the unconscious and bloodied attackers in a huge pile in the street. Then the Seven Dragons ordered gasoline poured atop the bodies. Amidst the screams of the few relatives cowering in the distance, one of the men struck a wooden match, watched it sizzle, and then tossed it onto the pile. As the bodies began to smolder and then burn, some of the rioters actually roused themselves and stumbled away from the growing conflagration. Children dragged their fathers out of the pile. The bravest bystanders pulled bodies away from the flames but they were quickly beaten back. In the end, the children and the few still-conscious women managed to save only a handful of men from the fire.

Not a single Korean National Policeman appeared.