Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 8

Four boxes were in my room when I got back. I called room service and told them to send up a fresh pot of coffee every hour, on the hour. Then I dug in.

It went down like this.

At five o’clock in the morning on May 3, First Sergeant Carl Moran called the desk sergeant at the Yongsan Military Garrison MP station and reported there was a dead body located in Apartment 13C, Building 1345, Namnoi Street, Itaewon. Then he abruptly hung up.

Ten or fifteen minutes of confusion erupted. The apartment building was on Korean territory, not American military property. The MP station shift officer was new to Korea and uncertain of the proper protocols. He finally reached the colonel in charge of the MP brigade and asked for guidance. The colonel ordered him to call Police Captain Nah Jung Bae, the commander of the Itaewon station, to notify him of the report and request a joint investigating team.

Itaewon is a fairly famous place. It is located right outside the back gate of the Yongsan Garrison, and one thing it’s famous for is its thousands of tiny, cramped, goods-laden shops that cater to foreign shoppers. This is where tourists and soldiers go when they want a leather jacket, or a pair of Nikes, or a knockoff polo shirt. What it’s also famous for is a red-light district that also caters to foreign shoppers, only this is where foreigners go to pick up nasty cases of syphilis and gonorrhea. Because alcohol, whores, and soldiers are a notoriously flammable combination, the Itaewon Police Station and the MP brigade do lots of business together.

The shift commander did what his colonel ordered. He called the Korean police chief and then dispatched two military police officers to the apartment building. By the time the MPs got there, some twenty South Korean policemen, headed by a detective, were already on the scene.

Sergeant Wilson Blackstone was the ranking member of the MP team. He immediately got antsy and therefore radioed back to his shift commander and requested to be reinforced by somebody from the Criminal Investigation Division, or CID.

Sergeant Blackstone’s written statement pointedly failed to explain what bothered him at the crime scene, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to make a few logical deductions. American police methods are the most advanced in the world. Fingerprint and fiber analysis, which have been used extensively by American police departments for over half a century, are only now working their way into the police arsenals of developing nations. More elaborate wizardry, such as chromosomal tracing or more sophisticated pathological techniques, is still vastly beyond the grasp of all but a handful of very wealthy, scientifically advanced nations.

When these tools aren’t available to your police departments, you don’t train your flatshoes to treat a crime scene like a hospital operating room, the way American cops get taught. What I guessed Sergeant Blackstone might’ve observed was twenty gloveless, low-tech cops scurrying around the apartment, disturbing crucial evidence, touching things they shouldn’t have been touching, dropping their own hairs all over the place, and just generally contaminating the crime scene with all kinds of impurities. It was only a guess. However, it would be extremely helpful to our case if I was right.

It took thirty minutes for the MP station to roust a CID investigator from his bunk, for him to get dressed and drive to the apartment building.

His name was Chief Warrant Officer Michael Bales, and the instant he arrived he became the lead American investigator. I read his statement with great care. It was well written, highly descriptive, and very concise – all signs he was likely to be a highly observant, fairly bright flatshoe.

When Bales arrived, he observed Sergeant Blackstone in a heated argument with Chief Inspector Choi, the lead Korean investigator. Blackstone wanted the Korean inspector to make his folks back off. Choi wanted Blackstone to shut up. Choi was insisting this was his country, and his murder case, and a Korean victim, and he didn’t like being told how to do things on his own turf.

We defense attorneys love this kind of thing. It’s often said that more cases have been blown on cop territorial disputes, and the confusion that results, than on proof of innocence. I marked this as yet another possible vulnerability in the prosecutor’s case.

Bales then approached Choi. Bales wrote that they knew each other and had a strong rapport. I guessed Bales sweet-talked him for a while, because things suddenly turned warm and friendly.

Choi led Bales to a bedroom where three American servicemen with nervous countenances were leaned up against a wall. Two Korean policemen stood guard to prevent them from confiding and building common alibis.

Choi then took Bales to another small bedroom where a naked body lay on a sleeping mat. The body rested on its back. There was a long purple welt around the neck, a sign that powerful force had been applied. The tongue protruded from the mouth, and the eyes bulged outward. The skin pallor was gray, an indication that a great deal of blood had already drained out of the head, presumably because someone had removed the tourniquet that caused the strangulation. Bruises and bloody abrasions covered the victim’s arms, shins, and stomach. Bales hazarded the logical guess that the victim had put up a fierce struggle.

Choi informed Bales that when he and his investigators got there, the corpse was lying on its side. Something had been wrapped around the victim’s neck, but one of the three Americans had removed it before the Korean police arrived at the scene. The victim’s uniform was lying in a pile on the floor. Choi said the nametag on the uniform identified the victim as Lee No Tae. Choi said he had already called in that name to the Itaewon station for further identification.

A few minutes later came a call on the radio, and they all learned that Lee No Tae was the son of the minister of defense. That had a gut-tightening effect on the South Korean police officers, who until that point, according to both Blackstone and Bales, had been almost lackadaisical and haphazard in their activities. Murders were common enough in Itaewon, and South Korean police officers, like cops everywhere, adopt a kind of jaundiced, unhurried, seen-it-all approach, if for no other reason than to impress upon their peers that they’re emotionally callused.

The calluses suddenly disappeared. They all looked like their asses were on fire. Three more South Korean detectives appeared within minutes, then the station commander, then the chief of police, then the mayor of Seoul himself. Bales described it as a long procession of busybody officials with worried expressions, all shouting out instructions and trying to appear more important and commanding than the last.

Crime scene photos were shot, evidence was bagged and tagged, the corpse was rushed off to a Korean hospital, and an immediate autopsy was requested.

The three Americans weren’t interrogated until two hours after the first police officer arrived on the scene. They were first transported to the Itaewon Police Station, where they were booked, then to the American MP station at Yongsan Garrison. Bales handled the interrogation. Inspector Choi sat beside him and acted as the liaison.

Very interesting. There were some strong possibilities here – at least if you went with the strategy I’d advocated, of knocking holes in the prosecutor’s case. Assuming, of course, that Whitehall didn’t hang himself in his interrogations.

I was opening the folder that contained Whitehall’s initial statement when the phone rang. It was Carlson. She coldly ordered me to get my butt up to the office. I told her I was busy. She said she didn’t care if I was busy. I told her I was doing something vitally important. She said what she wanted to talk about was much more important. She hung up.

I just love it when somebody hasn’t got a clue what you’re doing, yet still insists that what they’re doing is more important. Maybe I was tying a tourniquet around a severed artery in my leg. I obviously wasn’t, but how in the hell did she know that?

Anyway, like a good soldier, I locked my room and headed up to the hair parlor with the HOMOS sign over the door. As before, I looked around and checked carefully to make sure nobody was watching.

Imelda was again ensconced on one of the big rotating chairs in the middle of the floor. A stack of legal documents rested on her stomach. Her nose was tucked inside a thick folder. I heard her snort with disapproval at something as I walked by.

I entered Carlson’s office, where Keith, Allie, and Maria were seated and listening to their boss jabbering to somebody on the phone.

“Uh-huh,” she was saying. “Good. The sooner the better.”

She listened for a moment, then said, “CNN today, then NBC and ABC in the morning. That’s the best order. CNN always presents flat news without editorial twist. Give ABC and NBC enough time and they’ll make it look like a minidrama.”

I listened as she continued coordinating details. I developed this real queasy feeling.

Finally Carlson finished. She triumphantly hung up the phone and then shared quick, satisfied nods with the other three.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

Before she could answer, the door swung open and in came a big, dykish-looking woman wearing way too much makeup, and hauling a microrecorder from a strap on her shoulder. She hugged Katherine, then they kissed. Uh-huh, I got that. Then a man with a big camera slung on his shoulder barged his way into the overcrowded office.

“Where do you want to do it?” the woman asked.

“Outside,” Carlson answered, standing up.

“What is this?” I stupidly asked. I mean, it was damned obvious what it was. A catastrophically bad idea was what it was.

The other three happily followed the camera crew out the door while I threw my arm across the sill and blocked Carlson. I gave her a hard look. “I don’t like being ignored. I’m going to ask one more time. What the hell is this?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’ve got a one-minute spot on CNN.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s already scheduled.”

“Don’t,” I pleaded. “It’s a really bad idea.”

“Nonsense,” she said with an apathetic shrug. “It’s perfectly harmless. All they want is a quick puff piece on the defense team. Follow me. You’ll see.”

Some inner sense told me I shouldn’t. But to my everlasting regret, I ignored it. I put my arm down and she squeezed past me. I shuffled a few steps behind her. She preceded me out the front entrance and then mysteriously paused till I was walking beside her. To my immense surprise, she put her tiny right hand on the crook of my elbow, started waving her left hand in the air, and began flapping her jaw.

I didn’t pay any attention to what she was saying, though. I was too busy gawking at the cameraman, who had his lens pointed at the two of us. I felt like a spastic deer staring at the headlights of the thirty-wheeled semi roaring down on him. About five awkward seconds passed before I swiftly disengaged my arm and spun on her.

“What the hell-” I blurted.

“Major Drummond,” the CNN reporter asked, jamming her microphone in my face. “Is it true your client was beaten by the South Korean police?”

I gave Carlson a blistering stare, and she tilted her head in a challenging cant.

I looked at the reporter, my face clouded with anger, my jaws tightly clenched. “No comment,” I growled.

She paused, apparently confused, then asked, “Is that all you have to say?”

“No damned comment to that, either,” I roared, this time saying it with enough emphasis in all the right places that she had to get the message.

Carlson then took the reporter’s arm and the two of them casually strolled to a shaded spot underneath a big tree. The cameraman followed them and Carlson gave a three-minute impromptu interview. I watched and smoldered. You could tell Carlson was very practiced in the art of interviews, because she even helped arrange the cameraman to get the best angle – away from the sun – and her movements in front of his lens had that theatrical, picturesque quality of a born actress.

When she finally finished, she and the CNN crew warmly shook hands and parted ways. My hands were shaking, too, only in anticipation of getting themselves clenched firmly around her tiny neck.

She ignored me as she walked by. I didn’t ignore her, though. I moved like a lion going after its prey. Her trio of co-counsels kept their distance, because it was pretty damned obvious that Chernobyl was about to bleed radioactive dust all over the countryside.

When we got to Carlson’s office, I slammed the door shut behind me. There was a thunderous bang. The whole building reverberated.

“You’ve got a problem, lady!” I yelled.

She fell into her chair and looked up at me. Her expression was anything but receptive. “I’ve got a problem?” she yelled right back.

“Yeah. A big one.”

“No, Drummond, you’re the one with the problem.”

“Yeah?”

She nearly exploded. “You still don’t get it, do you? My job is to protect my client. That’s supposed to be your priority, too.”

“You don’t protect your client by yammering in front of a camera every chance you get.”

“When it comes to homosexuals, it’s the only way you protect them. You have no idea how despised they are. No, that’s not right. Maybe you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on, Drummond. I’ve seen how you look at Keith and Maria and Allie. What in the hell did they ever do to you to provoke that kind of disgust?”

There really was no way to answer that. She had me dead in the crosshairs. So instead I took the first resort of every able attorney: When caught with your hand in the cookie jar, point at the refrigerator.

“Look,” I said, “you won’t do our client any good by running your mouth on TV. You don’t know the Koreans. Don’t piss them off. Don’t back these guys into a corner.”

“You’re acting like I started this. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice those cameras at the prison this morning? They were publicly humiliating our client. I’m fighting fire with fire.”

Again, she was right. Only this time, she was also wrong. Horribly wrong.

“That was just for public consumption. They gave up jurisdiction so they had to save some face. This is Asia, lady. That’s how the game’s played over here.”

“They beat him,” she said, and her green eyes sizzled like tiny little hornet’s nests with thousands of furious insects buzzing around.

“Did you see them beat him?” I demanded.

“I saw them shove him. And I saw him come flying out the back of that van.”

“Maybe he tripped,” I countered. “I’ll ask you once again. Did you witness anyone beating him?”

“I didn’t have to witness it. I saw the look on his face.”

“You’re supposed to be a lawyer. You’re supposed to distinguish between assumptions and facts. You just told an international network that our client was beaten. Can you prove it? Can you back it up?”

She ran a hand through her hair. She knew I had her.

I said, “Call CNN and tell them not to run it.”

She swallowed once, hard. “I won’t.”

“Do it. You were talking out your ass. We both know it.”

“If I was, the Koreans can take it as a warning shot. They’ll keep their hands off my client or I’ll publicly pillory them every day of this trial.”

We stared at each other for a long, fruitless moment. I finally spun around and left. I went back to my room. I paced around like a big, grouchy bear in his cave. Eventually I got tired of that, but I was too emotionally worked up to return to my reading, so I flipped on the TV.

Say this for those CNN clowns: They’re damned quick.

The piece opened with a great shot of me and Carlson walking out a doorway under the word HOMOS in big, bold, black letters.

CNN’s editors are real quick, too. And slanderously selective.

The next shot was borrowed from a Korean station. It showed Whitehall, looking like a miserable, saturated noodle, being dragged through some double doors. The next clip showed Carlson with her hand on my elbow and we looked frantically friendly, like we were discussing something and were in complete agreement. Then came the shot with Carlson under the tree saying, “My co-counsels and I are outraged at the beating of our client. He was worked over by several South Korean policemen. When I tried to stop them, I was assaulted.”

Then came the cutout of me with the microphone stuffed in my angry, pouting face. I growled, “No damned comment,” only the way it came across was like I was so damn furious that my client got beaten that I was too tongue-tied to spit out anything but “No damned comment.”

The phone rang within two minutes.

“Hello, General,” I said, before Clapper, the chief of the entire Army JAG Corps, could even begin to identify himself.

“Drummond, what in the hell’s going on over there?” he belched.

“Hey, it wasn’t like it looked. I swear, General. I got ambushed. Carlson set me up.”

He paused for only a moment. “An ambush?”

“Right. She called me up to our office and I-”

“Office?” he interrupted, “Is that the goddamned building with that ‘homo’ word written on it?”

Feeling the blood rush into my face, I feebly answered, “That isn’t like it looks, either. See, you have to read that sign real close. First, it’s ‘homos,’ with an s at the end, and it actually stands for-”

The earpiece exploded. “Drummond! I don’t give a shit what it stands for. The whole world just saw a picture of an American Army officer walking out a doorway with that damned sign. Have you got any idea what that looks like?”

“Now that you mention it, sir, I guess it-”

“You said she set you up?”

“Right. See, she called me to come up there, and then I-”

“Jesus, have I got the wrong man in there? Are you telling me she’s too smart for you?”

That hurt. I mean, that really hurt. “I just wasn’t expecting it. I will be next time, though. I swear.”

“You better, Drummond. You really better.”

He hung up hard. I didn’t blame him. It was three o’clock in the morning back in Washington. He probably hadn’t been lying around in bed idly watching the late-night news. Somebody must’ve called him and frosted his ear. Probably somebody big, like the Chief of Staff of the Army. Or somebody bigger, like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Or maybe somebody even bigger than that.

My thoughts were interrupted when the phone rang again. This time it was General Spears. Personally. And he did this really excellent imitation of General Clapper. Next came Acting Ambassador Brandewaite, and I have to confide his imitation wasn’t nearly as good, because he was so florid and incensed all he could do was spit and sputter and curse. He hit all the octaves right, though, I’ll tell you that. Then Spears’s legal adviser, Colonel Piranha Lips, called, and he did the shorthand version. No barrage of questions, no rude interruptions, just a simple, abbreviated “Now I really don’t like you, Drummond. I’ll fuck you for this.”

It was really amazing. I’d been in Korea two days and already I’d managed to piss off every senior officer in the world, to get the acting ambassador so mad he couldn’t work up enough saliva to spit, and to get my face plastered on the international news in a way that was thoroughly revolting.

I owed all this to a short, skinny girl with malice in her heart and no sense at all about what she was unleashing.

To give her credit, she thought she was protecting her client. And back in the good ol’ U.S.A. what she’d just done might even have worked. Not here, though. Katherine Carlson was about to get a lesson in what the Asians call “face.” The Mafia has a word for it, too: payback.