G. I. Bones

9

It was oh-dark-thirty, right smack dab in the middle of the midnight-to-four curfew, when Ernie and I arrived back in the red-light district of Itaewon.

“Seems like we just left,” Ernie said.

“Yeah.”

Itaewon was a different world. A dark world, all the flashing lights shut off, windows shuttered tight, swinging double doors padlocked and barred from the inside. Unlit neon drooped from dirty brick walls like cheap earrings dangling from a prostitute’s ear.

Only law enforcement personnel and emergency vehicles are allowed to operate during the midnight-to-four curfew. A couple of times “white mice”-the white-clad curfew-enforcement police- stopped us and inspected our CID badges. Each time I spoke in Korean and asked if they’d seen a young American woman in the area. They shook their heads.

Jessica Tidwell had arrived in Itaewon just before the midnight-to-four curfew took effect.

“We’re not going to find her out here now,” Ernie said.

“Maybe not,” I answered. “If you were her, where would you go?”

Ernie thought about it. “To see Paco.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s what I thought to. So maybe Paco Bernal didn’t leave Itaewon after all. Maybe he’s been hiding here the last few days and maybe he found a way to get word to Jessica Tidwell.”

“And as soon as she had a chance, she flew the coop.”

“Right again.”

“So they’re together. And Paco found a hideout in or near Itaewon that we haven’t been able to snoop out. A lot of good that does us. We still don’t know where they are.”

“There’s one other thing.”

“What?” Ernie asked.

“Paco has some business to conduct, remember? With that thousand dollars.”

“Sure,” Ernie said. “he was going to buy some drugs in bulk, move them quickly, make a profit, and return the thousand dollars to Colonel Tidwell’s safe.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. The perfect plan, other than a few minor factors. He didn’t know that when Jessica stole the money she’d leave the safe unlocked and the door to her father’s den open just to piss off her mom. Only thing he hadn’t counted on, the dumb shit. But other than drugs, what else could he buy and make a quick profit? Had to be drugs.”

Paco could have bought expensive items at the PX-like imported cameras or stereo equipment-to sell at a profit. The problem was that all such items are recorded by 8th Army Data Processing and at the end of each G.I.’s tour you have to either produce the item or, more often, produce a receipt that it is being shipped back to the States in your hold baggage. Paco would want something untraceable. Therefore it had to be something illicit, like drugs.

“So if he were going to do that,” I said, “in Itaewon, who would he see?”

Ernie thought about it a moment. “Nobody deals drugs in the open in Itaewon. Not if we‘re talking something other than marijuana.”

In Korea, the penalty for dealing in hard drugs-heroin or cocaine-is death. And it’s strictly enforced. More than one culprit, foreign and Korean, had been hanged for the offense. The military government of Pak Chung-hee was trying, by force of will, to pull Korea out of poverty and they weren’t going to allow drug dealers to corrupt its youth and thereby hold the country back.

“So if Paco’d set up some sort of exchange,” I said, “it was probably a one shot deal with somebody who was willing to take a big chance. Who would that be?”

“Somebody desperate,” Ernie said.

“Which, in Itaewon, doesn’t narrow it down much.”

“No.”

“So when it comes to money, who knows everything that goes on in Itaewon?”

Ernie thought about it a moment. “Haggler Lee.” Then he smiled and said, “We ain’t there yet?”

An alley not much wider than the width of my shoulders led up a steep hill. We followed it and took a right and then a left and another left. No electric lights shone behind the ten-foot-high stone and brick walls that lined the narrow lane. Orienting ourselves by moonlight, we finally stopped and pounded on an ancient wood-plank door.

We kept pounding for ten minutes, taking turns when our knuckles grew raw. After another five minutes, the big door squeaked open.

An old woman wearing a traditional Korean dress bowed to us and motioned for us to follow her across the narrow courtyard. She shoved open a heavy wooden door that squeaked on rusty wheels and then closed it behind us. Ernie and I entered a vast, two-story-high warehouse. In the center of the warehouse, guttering like a fading ghost, flame flickered from a fat wax candle.

Haggler Lee sat cross-legged on a kang, a platform raised about two feet off the floor and covered with thickly layered oil paper. After wending our way around mountains of crated goods, Ernie and I took off our shoes, stepped up onto the platform, and sat across from Haggler Lee. Between us stood a foot-high round table with mother-of-pearl dragons inlaid in its black lacquer surface.

Haggler Lee smiled.

Two teeth poked out of red gums, both of them brown. Haggler Lee had been a youngish-looking man, probably in his mid to late forties, but lately he’d been sick. In the flickering candlelight, his skin looked yellow, shading toward orange. Nobody knew exactly what disease he was suffering from but my guess was something endemic to Korea, like hepatitis.

“Paco Bernal,” Haggler Lee said, without any hint of weariness in his voice. “He’s a good boy.”

I did my best not to show surprise. But when I thought about it, I shouldn’t have been startled that Haggler Lee already knew why we were here. People watch everything G.I. s do in Itaewon, especially two G.I. s who happen to be agents for 8th Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Through his black-market business, Haggler Lee would have dealings with business girls and cocktail waitresses and bartenders and just about everyone else who keeps the nightclub district of Itaewon humming. What else did Haggler Lee know? Did he know about Colonel Tidwell and Jessica? I’d soon find out.

“Does Paco work for you?” Ernie asked.

“He run errand sometimes.”

“What kind of errands?”

“On compound.” Haggler Lee shrugged his narrow shoulders. The hand-stitched white cranes embroidered onto his silk tunic made a rustling sound, as if flapping feathered wings. “Deliveries,” Lee said.

“Of dope?”

The flushed skin of Haggler Lee’s face grimaced in pain. “Not dope. Only natural product.”

“Like marijuana?”

“What grows from the earth no can hurt body.”

Also, it can’t get you in trouble with the Korean National Police. The Korean authorities are much more tolerant about mildly hallucinogenic plants that grow from the soil. Korea is an ancient agricultural country. Farmers need to supplement their income between harvests. If G.I. s want to smoke some weed, what harm could it do?

I pushed the candle-holder forward, trying to throw more light on Haggler Lee’s face. “Did Paco make a big buy recently?” I asked. “Like a thousand bucks?”

Haggler Lee looked pained again, as if his small stomach were churning razor blades.

“Paco has some problems,” Haggler Lee replied.

That was the understatement of the week.

“What kind of problems?”

“Like bad people hear about thousand dollars stolen on compound,” Lee said. “Same bad people also hear that good boy, Paco, he the one stole thousand dollars.”

“So Paco’s money is gone,” I said, “stolen by hoodlums. And he never had a chance to make the deal he was going to make.”

Haggler Lee splayed his bony hands. “So sad story.”

“Yes,” I answered. “So sad story.”

“Where is Paco now?” Ernie asked.

“He run away. With that American girl. She come to get him tonight. She have some more money so Paco can hide.”

“Where’d they go?”

Haggler Lee breathed deeply and then let the air out slowly between clenched teeth, a traditional sign of painful indecision. When he didn’t answer, Ernie rapped his knuckles on the inlaid mother-of-pearl table.

“What do you want, Lee?” he asked.

Haggler Lee’s eyes shone. “Who on black-market detail now?”

“Burrows and Slabem,” Ernie answered.

Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem, our fellow agents at 8th Army CID, not friends of ours.

“Can you make sure,” Haggler Lee asked, “that they no visit me tomorrow?”

Although they had no direct jurisdiction over Haggler Lee, Agents Burrows and Slabem routinely showed up to scare G.I. s away and disrupt Lee’s black-market operation, costing him money. Ernie and I seldom did. He was too valuable a source of information.

“What time?” Ernie asked.

“Noontime until four o’clock.”

“We’ll make something up,” Ernie said. “Our case is top priority. We’ll tell the first sergeant we need their help to research something.”

Lee nodded in agreement. “Good. Then I tell you where Paco and colonel’s daughter go.” He clawed his long fingernails on the edge of the small table. “But you no like.”

“We like, no like. No make difference,” Ernie said. He was beginning to sound like a Korean himself.

“Paco Bernal go someplace hide. Nobody know where. But before he go, colonel’s daughter say goodbye to Paco. Say she go back to American compound. But she no go compound. She go Golden Dragon Travel Agency.”

“To buy tickets to leave the country?” I asked.

“No.” Lee said. “To earn one thousand dollars. To give back to her father. To get Paco out of trouble.”

Ernie’s eyes widened. “How in the hell is she going to make a thousand bucks at a travel agency?”

Lee waited for us to figure it out. I already had. A few seconds later, so did Ernie.

“Japanese tourists,” he said.

Lee nodded. The pain in his stomach must’ve hurt something fierce. His wrinkled face twisted in anguish.

“Not good,” Lee said. “Eighth Army, any honcho, my friend. They loose face, Haggler Lee loose face.”

I believed he meant it. Haggler Lee had grown rich off of the 8th United States Army and anything that cut them down a notch, cut him down a notch too.

My gut wasn’t feeling too good at this news. If something awful happened to Jessica Tidwell, if she wasn’t saved from hurting herself, the lowest-ranking enlisted men standing near the disaster would be blamed. In this case, that would be myself and Agent Ernie Bascom.

I asked Haggler Lee about Two Bellies. He recoiled at the name and claimed he knew nothing about her murder. Ernie started to ask follow-up questions but within seconds the maid came back in and the candle was snuffed out. By the light of a flashlight, we were ushered out of the warehouse.

We could’ve raised hell, tried to force more information out of him, but I knew from experience that Haggler Lee, despite his frail appearance, couldn’t be intimidated. But if you remained on his good side, and played the game the way he expected it to be played, he’d parcel out information the same way he parceled out money: one coin at a time.

With nothing more to go on, Ernie and I returned to the MP Station on Yongsan Compound and reported that, so far, we’d been unable to find Jessica Tidwell. I did my best to catch a couple of hours sleep before reveille.

Shortly after the morning bugle sounded, Ernie and I were up, hunched over our favorite table at the 8th Army snack bar, slurping on bitter coffee and munching bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. The big question we faced was whether or not to report what we’d learned from Haggler Lee up the chain of command. Plenty of waste had already hit the fan but now even more of that waste was liable to splatter back on us.

“Before I report anything,” I said, “we should talk to Jesssica’s mom.”

“Her mom?” Ernie said. “What about the colonel?”

“First, we start with his wife,” I said. “The real power in 8th Army.”

“No way,” Ernie replied. “Not yet. She’ll have a conniption fit and be all over us like a she-cat.”

Ernie was right. Once Mrs. Tidwell knew what her daughter might be facing, she’d demand that all the resources of 8th Army be diverted to save her precious offspring. The first sergeant, or more likely the provost marshal, would be directing our every move. In some ways, that would get us off the hook. If something went wrong-and it most likely would-the blame would be shared. But Ernie just thought of solving things and for him the direct way was the best way.

But there was one other thing Mrs. Tidwell might be able to do for us. So far, Ernie and I were still stripped of our investigative powers. If Mrs. Tidwell demanded that we be fully reinstated, it would probably happen. Then, in addition to searching for the precious Jessica Tidwell, Ernie and I would be in a better position to investigate the death of Mori Di and, just as importantly, the recent brutal murder of Two Bellies.

“We need to get our butts out to this Golden Dragon Travel Agency,” Ernie said. “Find Jessica, and drag her ass home.”

Something told me it wouldn’t be that easy. Still, it was worth a try.

After finishing our sumptuous 8th Army repast, we walked up the hill to the CID Admin Office where I used the Korean phone book to look up the number and address of the Golden Dragon Travel Agency. I called but there was no answer. At this time of the morning, it figured. Travel agencies in Korea are full service affairs- not just shops that sell airplane tickets-and they do most of their business late in the day and especially at night. The Golden Dragon Travel Agency might not even open its doors until noon. Still, it wouldn’t do for Ernie and me to sit around the office waiting to be harangued by questions and giving every little Napoleon a chance to instruct us as to what action to take.

I left a note for Staff Sergeant Riley telling him that Ernie and I would be in Itaewon, searching for Jessica Tidwell.

We took some time gassing up Ernie’s jeep and having some maintenance done on it, so it was almost noon by the time we found the right neighborhood. Ernie stood in front of an open-fronted store that sold Korean fast-food items: packaged dried noodles, discs of puffed rice, canned guava juice, and the corpses of dried cuttlefish nailed to a wooden rafter. Ernie had loaded up on two double packs of ginseng gum and offered me a stick. For once I took one, unwrapped it, and stuck it in my mouth. The stuff tasted bitter, like a powder of dried aspirin, but was sweetened by some sort of sugary mint flavor. All in all, nauseating. But “good for the metabolism” as Ernie was fond of saying.

Why he felt he needed something to fire up his metabolism, I never did figure out.

He said, “What’s the address of that Golden Dragon Travel Agency?”

“One-two-five dong, three-six-four ho, in Hannam-dong,” I replied. “That’s it across the street.”

Ernie wasn’t able to read the sign but he was able to make out the sinuous dragon painted gold and red.

“We ain’t there yet?”

We crossed the street, ducked through the open door, and breezed past the secretary. At the back office we pushed open the door. A plaque in front of his desk said his name was Kim. When Ernie pulled his. 45 and shoved the barrel up into Mr. Kim’s nostril, the middle-aged travel agent couldn’t talk fast enough.

Unfolded on his desk was a huge album featuring wallet-sized snapshots of dozens of Korean women. His sales portfolio. Japanese businessmen arrived in country in organized junkets, usually paid for by the company they worked for. Before they left their home country, each participant had already picked out a Korean girl to act as his “hostess” upon arrival.

I didn’t see Jessica’s photo but when I mentioned her name he knew who she was quick enough.

“She go with Mr. Fukushima.”

“Fuku-whatta?” Ernie asked.

“Ondo Fukushima. Very powerful man.”

“How powerful?” I asked.

The manager of the Golden Dragon Travel Agency stared into the barrel of Ernie’s. 45 and swallowed. “Yakuza,” he said.

The Japanese mafia.

“What hotel is he staying at?”

“Not there yet. He arrive airport in Pusan one hour ago. Has many business meetings in many places: Kuangju, Taegu, Taejon. I don’t know where.”

Ernie punched him. The travel agent howled in pain. I checked to make sure that his secretary hadn’t reached for the telephone. She hadn’t. She sat at her desk, hands flat on the lacquered wooden desk in front of her, shaking like a frightened rabbit. I felt bad about this treatment, but we had no choice but to scare the hell out of them. If I’d asked Mr. Kim questions without using intimidation, he would’ve either told me to take a hike or stalled and demanded money. Neither of which I had time for. Would he turn us in to the Korean National Police for using threats and intimidation? Probably not. Because that’s what the KNPs use themselves. In Korea, it’s an unofficial-but accepted-law-enforcement technique. I assuaged my guilt by reminding myself that many of the women in Mr. Kim’s portfolio- the lost young faces staring out at me-were forced into prostitution by threats and intimidation. This was a nice office, and Mr. Kim wore a clean pressed suit, but from wall to wall the place stank.

“I don’t know where Mr. Fukushima go,” Kim said. “Yakuza don’t write down… how you say?”

“Itinerary,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yes. Itinerary.”

“Is Jessica with him now?”

“Not yet. His driver pick her up this morning, take her someplace south. She will greet Mr. Fukushima tomorrow morning and stay with him during all meetings. Tomorrow night, maybe late, they come back Seoul.”

That was unusual. Usually the Japanese sex tourists hide their girls in their hotel rooms. Sometimes they take them to the casinos or the nightclubs, but that’s about it. Never to official business meetings.

Kim responded to my questioning look. “Fukushima get good face,” he said. “He want everybody see American girl. Daughter of G.I. honcho. He show her to everybody.”

“How much is he paying her?” I asked.

“One thousand dollars. For whole weekend.”

“What does she have to do?”

Kim’s eyes widened. “What you mean?”

“What service does she have to perform for the thousand dollars?”

A look of confusion clouded Kim’s face.

“Does she have to sleep with him?” I asked.

Then he understood. “Of course,” he answered. “She woman. He man.”

Ernie slapped him. Not hard. Just with his left hand.

“When he arrives in Seoul,” Ernie asked, “what hotel will he be staying at?”

“White Crane Hotel,” Kim answered. “New one. Best in Seoul.”

Kim didn’t know what time they’d be arriving at the hotel. Like he said, a yakuza doesn’t advertise his itinerary. But late, he figured. Late tomorrow night.

Before we left, Ernie pointed his. 45 once more between Kim’s eyes.

“No phone calls,” Ernie said, “to this yakuza or to any of his buddies. Or to the police. You got that?”

Kim nodded frantically.

“If you forget,” Ernie said, “I’ll be back.”

Kim sat frozen as we left. The secretary was still shaking.

Korean television news broadcasts use language that is too difficult for me to understand. The stories are read by a dignified-looking Korean man in a well-pressed suit who alternates with a gorgeous Korean woman wearing an expensive Western-style dress. As they drone on, I can pick out a few words and phrases but one thing I’ve noticed in the months I’ve been in Korea is that they seldom report on the 50,000 American soldiers stationed in their country. When they do, it is only with footage of big ROK-U.S. joint maneuvers showing ships and planes and tanks moving over hilly countryside. They never show individual G.I. s close up. And they certainly never report on American soldiers tearing through their towns and villages, drunk, on a Saturday night. So I knew that the indiscretions of Jessica Tidwell, no matter how egregious, would never be allowed to be aired on a Korean television news broadcast or on the radio or even in a newspaper. But nevertheless people would know. Everyone at 8th Army, all the thousands of members of the Korean National Police, and most importantly, officials at the top levels of the U.S. and South Korean governments; they would all know. The embarrassment would be massive: the daughter of the 8th Army J-2 selling herself to a Japanese mobster. Colonel Tidwell would lose his job, Mrs. Tidwell would never be able to show her face at the Officers’ Wives’ Club again, and the entire family would probably be run out of the country.

“So what do you care about them?” Ernie asked. “What have they ever done for you?”

We were in Ernie’s jeep now, heading back toward Yongsan Compound.

“They deserve to know,” I replied. “At least Mrs. Tidwell does.”

“Before we report it up the chain of command, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

Ernie shrugged. “What difference does it make? We’ll have to report it eventually.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“If we take Jessica away from this Fukushima, return her to her mom, then nobody needs to know. But if we make it official, Eighth Army’s going to lose face.”

“Are you nuts, Sueno?”

“Eighth Army’s done a lot of good in this country,” I said, “despite the crime we see every day. Look at what Moretti did twenty years ago, built an orphanage, fed people who were starving. Eighth Army has built roads and aqueducts and-”

“And we saved the south from the horrors of Communism,” Ernie said, “just like we’re going to do in Vietnam.”

“That too,” I replied.

Ernie sighed. “So you want to keep this quiet?”

“Why not?”

“Because it could be dangerous, that’s why not. If Jessica Tidwell gets seriously hurt, or disappears, it’ll be on us. The provost marshal will come down on us with both feet.”

“A little danger never bothered you before.”

That challenge finally brought Ernie Bascom over. “If you’re game, so am I,” he replied.

“I’m game.”

When we reached Yongsan Compound, Ernie turned left into Gate Number 9, the easternmost entrance to 8th Army South Post. As we approached Colonel Tidwell‘s quarters, Mrs. Tidwell stood at her front door, arms crossed.

“Apparently,” I told Mrs. Tidwell, “Jessica believes that if she can raise the thousand dollars and return it to your husband’s safe, he will drop the charges against Corporal Bernal.”

Ernie and I sat on a leather sofa in the front room, two cups of hot black coffee in front of us on a glass-topped table. Mrs. Tidwell sat on a straight-backed chair opposite, her manicured fingers folded on her lap. Her hair was combed, her face made up, and she wore a blue print dress that lay across her knees in stiff pleats.

Mrs. Tidwell rose, turned away form us, and strode toward a plate-glass window that looked out over a row of tightly pruned cherry trees.

“Jessica might be right,” Mrs. Tidwell said. “My husband brought the charges against Corporal Bernal. He can also drop the charges.”

What she was telling us, I believed, was that if Jessica raised the money she would make sure her husband dropped the charges. Good. But what she needed to know now was how Jessica planned to raise the money.

Ernie glanced at me. I swallowed and opened my mouth.

“I think you’ll agree, Mrs. Tidwell,” I said, “that Jessica’s plan to raise the money is not a wise one.”

Mrs. Tidwell turned away from the garden scene outside, returned, and sat down facing me.

“Just what is her plan?”

I spread my fingers. “According to the information we’ve uncovered, Jessica plans to engage in a business deal sponsored by the Golden Dragon Travel Agency.”

Mrs. Tidwell stared at me blankly.

“To be frank, ma’am,” I continued, “their practices are somewhat unsavory. Trips arranged for wealthy Japanese businessmen. Introductions made.”

Her eyes widened. “Sex tours,” she said.

“Not always,” I answered. “Sometimes the women act as escorts only.”

Mrs. Tidwell kept her green eyes on me, allowing the heat of her stare to linger on my face. “Don’t lie to me,” she said.

I didn’t answer.

“This Golden Dragon Travel Agency is going to set Jessica up with some rich Japanese businessman here in Seoul?” Mrs. Tidwell leaned forward, intent. Somehow, the tiny muscles in her face hardened. “What fun for him,” she said. “A beautiful redheaded American girl. Only seventeen. And what good face for him. The daughter of the intelligence chief of the 8th United States Army.”

She glared at me as if I were Jessica Tidwell’s pimp. Ernie studied the floor, not breathing.

“That’s why we came to you first,” I said, stammering. “Before reporting anything… officially.”

She sat back, breathed deeply, and turned her head as if seeing the intricately designed wallpaper for the first time. Then she snapped her attention back to me.

“Can you find her?”

“With the help of the Korean National Police and possibly with the-”

“Not with them. Alone.”

“It would be difficult.”

“But not impossible?”

“No,” I answered, “not impossible.” I spread my fingers again. “But we’d need to be reinstated back to our full investigative status.”

“Reinstated?”

I explained to her what had happened, about our search for the bones of Mori Di and about the unexpected discovery of the death of Two Bellies. I left out a lot of the details.

“So the ROKs think you murdered this overage prostitute?” Mrs. Tidwell said.

“They know we didn’t,” Ernie replied. “They’re just keeping the charges open to keep pressure on Eighth Army.”

“And to save face,” she said, getting the picture immediately.

I nodded.

“Who’s your boss?” she asked.

“Colonel Brace,” I told her. “The provost marshal.”

When she rose again, she walked over to the mantelpiece. Atop it sat pictures of Jessica: when she was a baby, on a Girl Scout camping trip, laughing with other teenage girls and waving pompoms.

“We’ve spoiled her,” Mrs. Tidwell said. “You know that.”

Neither Ernie nor I answered. Instead, we stared into our cold coffee.

“If we make Jessica’s… uh… indiscretions official,” Mrs. Tidwell said, “my husband would be embarrassed. The Korean government would know of our shame, and eventually the U.S. ambassador. My husband might even have to resign from his position as J-2 for 8th Army.” She shook her head. “That would kill him. The thought that every Korean policeman in the country would know that my daughter planned to sell herself to a rich Japanese, is not tolerable.”

She walked quickly across the thick carpet, entered the den, and slid the door shut behind her.

“What’s she doing?” Ernie asked.

“Probably making a phone call.”

“To who?”

“Not to her husband, you can count on that.”

Five minutes later she returned.

“I just talked to Meg Waldron,” she said. “Do you know who she is?”

I nodded. “The wife of the CG.”

The wife of the commanding general of the 8th United States Army. Also the president of the Officers’ Wives’ Club.

“She says that she’ll put a call in to Colonel Brace immediately. Consider yourselves reinstated. And she says that if you rescue Jessica, there is no way that the U.S. or Korean authorities are going to touch you in any way.” Mrs. Tidwell strode forward and sat back down in front of us. “You must find Jessica. You must find her right away, before she does this horrible thing. Meg Waldron and I and all the women of the Officers’ Wives’ Club will be here to protect you.”

I believed that she meant it. But I didn’t believe it would do us much good. If somebody got hurt-really hurt-the situation would be beyond her control.

Ernie and I rose from the sofa. She shook my hand.

“And one more thing,” she said. “When you find Paco, don’t hurt him. Jessica would never forgive me.”

“We’ll try not to hurt anybody, ma’am,” I said.

We walked down the long driveway to Ernie’s jeep. Mrs. Tidwell stood at the huge entranceway to the J-2’s quarters and watched until we drove away.

Ernie glanced at me as he rounded a corner. “Sticking our necks out for the brass. I’m not sure I like it.”

“I figure we’re doing it for Eighth Army.”

Ernie raised one eyebrow and asked again. “What has Eighth Army ever done for you?”

We were just leaving Yongsan Compound South Post and crossing the MSR, the Main Supply Route. I waved my hand toward Itaewon.

“Eighth Army’s given me all this,” I said. “And this.” I plucked the front of my white shirt and tie.

Ernie grunted and wheeled the jeep between the barricade that led to main post.

At the Yongsan Compound Military Police Arms Room, Staff Sergeant Palinki, the Unit Armorer, presented me with a well-oiled. 45 automatic and matching shoulder holster. Ernie was already carrying. He was supposed to have turned the weapon in when we were stripped of our investigative duties but he hadn’t bothered. Ernie handed over his weapon and allowed Palinki to perform a quick maintenance check and cleaning.

“Bad boys,” Palinki said. “This will make them think twice before messing with you two.”

“Nobody messes with us, Palinki,” Ernie said.

“Nobody. Sure, boss. Nobody mess with Sueno and Bascom. In case they do though… ” He pointed a big finger at the business end of the. 45. “This is the part you point at them, brother. Make them think twice. If they don’t be good boys, you blow their fucking heads off, OK brother?”

Ernie offered Palinki a stick of ginseng gum. The big man took two. He chomped on them both and grinned as we slipped into our leather straps, holstered the. 45s with the grips pointing out, and then put on our jackets over them.

“Nobody know you packing,” Palinki said.

Nobody except somebody who might wonder why we had two-inch-wide bulges under our armpits.

We saluted Sergeant Palinki and left.