Mr. Kill

10

National Geographic sometimes runs articles about the mysteries of the underground world, the caves and rivers and lakes that human eyes have never seen. The photographs are beautiful and the caverns they depict breathtaking, but spelunking was not a pastime that I thought would ever appeal to me. Crawling through the moist dirt in this narrow tunnel, holding a flickering lantern in front of me, was anything but my idea of fun. After about ten yards, Ernie scrambled forward. We emerged into a tomblike cavern. I held the lantern aloft.

To our right, atop a stone shelf about four feet high, was an indentation large enough to hold a seated man. We climbed up on the shelf. I poked the lantern into the room-like space. Straw mats had been arranged carefully on the dirt floor, and above them a bronze effigy of the Maitreya Buddha sat serenely on a stone pedestal. Sticks of burnt incense drooped out of a bronze holder. Ernie and I checked the rest of the chamber. There were no exits except the way we’d entered.

“The son of a biscuit took off,” Ernie said.

“Wouldn’t you?”

Ernie spit on the dirt floor. “I wouldn’t come in here in the first place. Not unless I had to.”

“Careful, Ernie. This is a holy place.”

Ernie nodded toward the carved Buddha. “Sorry,” he said.

As fast as we could, we crawled back out of the tunnel.

We pushed through the bead curtain covering the front door of the Chonhuang Teahouse.

“This is more like it,” Ernie said. “Our kind of joint.”

The problem was that they didn’t want to let us in. A middle-aged man stood at the end of a short hallway, waving his palm at us negatively. “Migun andei,” he said. G.I. s not allowed.

“What’d he say?” Ernie asked me, incredulously staring down at the little man.

“He says American soldiers aren’t allowed.”

“Is he out of his freaking mind?”

Ernie reached out and shoved the man aside.

We paraded into the main room, which was mostly booths and a small serving counter, illuminated by the pink shaded light of table lamps. We wandered toward the back and used their bathroom to clean up. When we seated ourselves at a corner booth, we looked fairly presentable-we’d batted most of the dust off our trousers-and, better yet, there were two pretty hostesses waiting for us. Three or four of the other booths were occupied by middle-aged Korean gentlemen, all of them smoking and being served coffee or tea by attractive young ladies. The elderly man who’d tried to stop us from entering puttered around behind the serving counter, shooting us evil stares. The Korean customers didn’t acknowledge our existence. The hostesses assigned to us, however, had no choice.

“Anyonghaseiyo,” one of them said to me, bowing.

I acknowledged the greeting, and, after she asked me what we wanted to drink, I told her coffee for both of us. Out of a stainless-steel pot, she poured boiling water into two porcelain cups filled with Maxwell House instant. She stirred the concoction with a slender spoon and then offered sugar and cream. I took neither. Ernie took two heaping spoonfuls of granulated sugar. Neither of the hostesses spoke English, so I took the conversational lead.

“The Chonhuang Teahouse is very famous,” I said.

“Famous?” The hostess seated next to me opened her eyes wide.

“A G.I. who I know, Robert Pruchert, told me about this place. He said the women who work here are very beautiful.”

It wasn’t such a long shot that Pruchert, after he made good his escape from the monastery, would stop here. This village, known as Chonhuang-ni, was by far the closest village to the temple. And the Chonhuang Teahouse was the only place in the tiny settlement that had a public toilet. The only place where somebody like Corporal Robert Pruchert could clean up after a long walk, and the only place where he could buy a cup of coffee or something to eat before bargaining with a cab driver to drive him the hell out of here. Still, when I mentioned his name, both girls stared at me blankly. I persisted.

“He is studying at the Dochung Temple,” I told them. “He shaved his head. He wants to become a Buddhist monk.”

One of them smiled and placed both her slender hands in front of her mouth. “Oh,” she said. “Bob-bi.”

“Yes,” I replied. “That’s right. Bobby. Bobby Pruchert.”

They exchanged words and then they both turned back to me and started chattering happily. Bobby had come in here more than once, always wearing his russet-colored Buddhist robes, which is why the owner, Mr. Roh, allowed him to come in, because Mr. Roh was devout and would never deny entry to a monk of the Dochung Temple.

“Why doesn’t Mr. Roh usually allow G.I. s?” Ernie asked.

I translated the question. The girls almost cheerfully explained that in the past G.I. s passing through in convoys had occasionally stopped and used the latrine and made a mess. They’d ordered Oscar-the Korean-made sparkling burgundy-or brought in their own soju and gotten drunk and argued with the regular customers.

“Too much trouble,” one of the girls said, summing up the entire American experience.

I turned the conversation back to Pruchert.

He came in here wearing his robes, the girls told me, but he always brought a bag slung over his shoulder. He’d go into the bathroom and change into civilian clothes, and then he was very polite and kind to the girls and he’d order a plate of pork fried rice; and when he was finished, the cab driver would come and take him away.

“The cab driver?” I asked.

“Yes,” the girls replied. There was only one in town, the same man who even now was sitting outside in his hack.

“Where did Bobby go?” I asked.

The same place every time, one of the girls told me. They knew because Kwok the cab driver bragged about the large fare he was paid.

Ernie was leaning forward now, his coffee finished, catching much of what was being said.

“And where was that?” he asked in English.

I translated.

The girls answered in unison.

“Taegu,” they told us. “Bobby always went to Taegu.”

“Where in Taegu?” I asked.

At that, they shrugged their slender shoulders. We’d finished our coffee and exhausted the totality of their knowledge concerning Corporal Robert R. Pruchert. I slipped them a thousand-won note, thanked them, and left.

Kwok, the cab driver, made me bargain for his information.

“Business is not good,” he told me in Korean. “Nobody takes a cab anymore. Rich man has his own car now. Not like before. G.I. no come no more. Maybe sometimes I carry pigs or chickens from one village to next. That’s it.”

“What about Pruchert?” I asked him. “Bobby Pruchert.”

“The monk?”

I nodded.

“He all the time go same place.”

That’s when we haggled over a price, settling on four thousand won. I handed him the money.

“He go to Taegu.”

“The train station?”

Kwok’s eyes widened. “No. Never go train station.”

“Then where?”

“Mekju house,” he said. “G.I. mekju house.” Mekju is beer.

“Where is this mekju house?” I asked.

“Outside G.I. compound.”

There was more than one American compound in Taegu: Camp Henry, Camp Walker, and, equidistant between them, an aviation compound.

“Which one?” I asked.

Kwok scratched his head. “I don’t know. I forget how you say.”

“What district of Taegu is it in?”

That he knew. “Namgu,” he said.

Namgu means the southern ward. With a map, I should be able to figure out which compound it was. But outside of both Camps Henry and Walker there were dozens of joints catering to G.I. s.

“What was the name of the mekju house?” I asked.

Again Kwok scratched his head, and when he was done with that he rubbed his chin. I handed him another thousand-won note. He grinned and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

“Migun Chonguk,” he said.

“Did it have an American name?”

“Maybe. But I couldn’t read it.”

It is common for nightclubs or chophouses catering to G.I. s to have two names; one in English, the other in Korean. Often, the two names have no relationship to one another. I didn’t bother to thank Mr. Kwok. He’d been well compensated for his trouble. In fact, he’d been paid too much. Five thousand won was the equivalent of ten US dollars.

As we walked away, Ernie said, “He held you up.”

“At least we know where Pruchert went.”

“Maybe. Unless he’s lying to us.”

“He’d better not be.”

“Why? What could you do to him?”

I didn’t answer.

“You’re not the type,” Ernie said, “to come back and punch him in the nose.”

We climbed in the sedan and Ernie started the engine. He’d been intrigued by his own question and wouldn’t let it go. We pulled out on the two-lane highway and Ernie peeled off down the road, anxious to reach Taegu before we caught the brunt of the late-afternoon traffic.

“So if it turns out that this cab driver, Kwok, is lying to us, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll tell Kill.”

Ernie turned his attention back to the road, satisfied with my answer. “Right,” he said. “That would do it.”

What we both knew, without talking about it, was that if we told Inspector Kill that someone had information that might lead to the Blue Train rapist, and that person had lied to us, they’d be spending quite a few uncomfortable hours sweating it out in a Korean National Police interrogation room. Ernie and I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.

Ernie was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Who do you suppose is on this ‘checklist’?”

We both knew that whoever it was might not have much time left to keep on breathing.

“So far,” I said, “the only people who’ve been on the list have been two Korean women with children.”

“On trains,” Ernie added.

“Yes. Passengers on the Blue Train.”

“So you think he’ll stick with that?”

“Maybe not. The KNPs have increased their presence not only on the Blue Train but also on local lines with both uniformed officers and plainclothes. Whoever this guy is, he’ll probably figure that out.”

“So he’ll branch out?”

“Maybe.”

“To what?”

“Don’t know,” I replied. “It depends on what his obsessions are.”

“Obsessions?”

“Yeah. Obsessions.”

“That could be anything,” he said.

“You’re right. That’s why the best bet is to catch him. Then he can tell us himself what his obsessions are.”

“That should be fun listening to.”

Ernie slowed at a railroad crossing but after checking that no train was coming, stepped on the gas again. We bounced across the tracks. On the far side, he said, “So, what was the name again of that mekju house?”

“Migun Chonguk.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You don’t know? Here, break it down. The first word is migun. What does that mean?”

Ernie thought about it a moment. “G.I.,” he said.

“Right. Literally, ‘American soldier.’ And what does chonguk mean?”

Ernie thought about this one a little longer. Finally he gave up. “I’ve heard the word. It’s just not coming to me right now.”

“It means ‘heaven,’” I told him. “Literally, ‘heavenly country.’”

Ernie slammed the sedan in low gear, slowed for a truck ahead of us, and when the road was clear, he slid the automatic shift back into drive and sped around the slow-moving truck.

“I get it now,” he said. “This signal site refugee, pretending to be a Buddhist monk, sneaks away from the monastery, stops in the Chonhuang Teahouse for a little refreshment and female companionship, and then he takes a cab ride all the way to G.I. heaven.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Why did he go to all that trouble?” Ernie asked. “Why not just check out on leave from the Horang-ni signal site, catch a ride to Hialeah Compound, and then take the bus to Taegu?”

“Alibi,” I said. “He was trying to establish one that might hold up.”

Ernie nodded, thinking it over. “As if we’re going to believe that he was meditating for ten days.” Then he chuckled. “G.I. Heaven. This place, I’ve got to see.”

It turned out that the district of Taegu that the cab driver, Kwok, told me about was the same district in which the U.S. Army’s 19th Support Group headquarters at Camp Henry was located.

“We finally caught a break,” Ernie said.

“What do you mean?”

“Camp Henry is where Marnie and the girls are playing tonight.”

After finishing up their performances near the Demilitarized Zone, the Country Western All Stars had been systematically working their way south. Last night Waegwan, tonight Camp Henry.

The Korean countryside is beautiful this time of year, with trees covered in red and brown and yellow, distant mountains capped with white, and miles of rice paddies dotted with piled straw. But we were both tired of driving all over hell and gone, and sick of taking leaks on the side of the road, finding nothing to eat other than a bowl of hot broth from a roadside noodle stand.

Camp Henry was about three miles south of the East Taegu Train Station, the place where Pruchert might have bought a ticket and climbed aboard the Blue Train. Ernie drove slowly through town, following my directions as I studied our army-issue map. Old ladies hustled across streets with huge piles of pressed laundry atop their heads. Children in school uniforms marched across intersections in military-like formations, finally heading home after their long school day. Empty three-wheeled trucks made their way back to the countryside, and taxicabs with their top lights on cruised slowly by, searching for passengers heading home after the end of the workday.

Ernie rolled down the window. “Garlic,” he said. “The whole city reeks of it.”

“A lot of agriculture around here,” I told him. “Pork bellies, rice, cabbage, garlic. It’s what makes the world go round.”

The front gate of Camp Henry was protected by a guard shack and a stern-looking American MP. We continued past the gate and then turned around, drove back past the gate again, and turned east across the railroad tracks. There were a few nightclubs we could see from the main road: the Princess Club, the Pussycat Lounge, the Half Moon Eatery. But most of the joints lurked back in the narrow pedestrian alleyways inaccessible by car.

When the G.I. village petered out, Ernie turned around and found a spot along the cement-block wall topped with concertina wire that marked the boundaries of Camp Henry. He pulled over and locked up the car.

We purposely didn’t drive into Camp Henry proper. Not yet. The MP at the gate would check our emergency dispatch and our CID badges, and in about five seconds he’d be on the horn to the Camp Henry Provost Marshal. Other military law enforcement agencies track 8th Army CID agents more carefully than criminals, worried that we might file a negative report that could reflect poorly on their command. I didn’t want the hassles. And I certainly didn’t want any nosy MPs following us around the village.

We trotted across the main supply route and after half a block entered a narrow alley that housed the dark world of bars and brothels and business girls that lurks outside every army compound in Korea. The air was moist, from the flowers that stood in pots along the cobbled lanes and from the panfuls of water that were tossed by shopkeepers to discourage floating dust. Ernie strode confidently down the street.

“It’s good to be back,” he said.

From the windows above barrooms, feminine eyes stared out at us. Ernie spread his arms, wanting, it seems, to embrace the entire debauched alley and everyone in it.

We walked up and down three narrow roads and six alleys and a dozen byways but saw no sign that said “G.I. Heaven”-or, for that matter, “Migun Chonguk.”

We stopped a couple of business girls on their way to the bathhouse. They both wore G.I. T-shirts without brassieres, and tight shorts enveloping their shapely posteriors; their straight black hair was tied up and clasped by stainless-steel clips. They balanced pans full of soap and washrags against slender hips. When I said, “Anyonghaseiyo,” they giggled and stared at us boldly.

“I’m looking for a club,” I told them in English. They seemed to understand, so I continued. “They tell me that its Korean name is Migun Chonguk.”

“Migun Chonguk?” they both asked, brown eyes opening wide.

I nodded.

They looked at each other, looked back at me, and broke into laughter. In a few seconds, one of them regained her composure, waved her arm to indicate the entire area, and said, “Da migun chonguk.” It’s all G.I. heaven.

I stood there sheepishly, realizing that the cab driver back in Chonhuang-ni by the name of Kwok had been pulling my leg. Then I saw a sign behind the girls. It was a rectangular stripe of red paper pasted onto ancient brick. Slashed on it in black ink were the characters mi for beauty, gun for soldier, chon for sky, and gook for kingdom.

I pointed. The girls swiveled to look. Their expressions remained blank. With only sixth-grade educations-the mandatory minimum in Korea-they probably couldn’t read the hanmun, Chinese characters. I walked over to the sign and pointed again and read it off for them. “Migun Chonguk.” An arrow on the sign pointed down the darkest and narrowest walkway we’d seen yet.

“There?” one of the girls said, crinkling her nose.

They both snorted, turned, and walked away from us. Under her breath, I heard one of them say, “Nabun nyon.” Evil bitches.

Ernie strode over next to me. “They didn’t seem too happy with the place.”

“Disgusted would be a better word for it.”

Ernie grinned. “We ain’t there yet.”

The entrance to the place known as Migun Chonguk, or G.I. Heaven, was a splintered wooden doorway at the end of a narrow pedestrian walkway lined with brick walls. In the center of the lane, filth flowed in an open sewer. Ernie and I hopped back and forth to either side of the path, finding precarious footholds on the moss-slimed rock.

“Stinks back here,” Ernie said, trying not to inhale the stench of raw sewage and ammonia.

I tried the door. Locked. I pounded with my fist. We listened. Nothing. I pounded again. Finally, the slap, slap, slap of plastic slippers. The door slithered open. A weathered woman’s face peeked out. The mouth opened. It spoke.

“Whatsamatta you? Too early. Anybody sleep time.”

“Too early?” Ernie said. “The sun’ll go down in an hour or two.”

He shoved the door open and crouched through the small opening. I followed. The courtyard was minuscule. Only enough room for a byonso made of rotted lumber, no bigger than a phone booth, and a half-dozen earthenware jars, each capable of holding about fifty pounds of cabbage kimchee.

The old woman closed the door behind us and slid a rusty bolt into place. She was less than five feet tall, hunched at the shoulders, her face marked with wrinkles and liver spots. Most of her teeth were missing.

“Anybody sleep time,” she said again.

“Mekju isso?” I asked the woman. Do you have beer? After all, Kwok the cab driver had told us that Migun Chonguk was a G.I. mekju house.

The woman studied me and squinted her eyes. “Nighttime mekju have,” she told me. “Now no have. Anybody sleep time.”

Ernie wandered around the courtyard, peeking into the gap between the main hooch and the courtyard wall. He must not have found anything out of order, because he wandered over to the opposite side.

“G.I.,” I told the old woman. “Mori oopso.” No hair. “Odiso?” Where is he?

She stared at me blankly. Out of my wallet, I pulled the photocopy I had made of Corporal Robert R. Pruchert’s personnel records snapshot. The copy machine needed toner, so it was not a clear copy; but the old woman snatched the paper out of my hand and studied it carefully.

“He no have hair?” she said, pointing at the photo.

“No. All cut off,” I said.

“Why?” She looked up at me quizzically.

“He want to be deing deingi chung,” I said. A Buddhist monk ringing an alms bell.

“Deing deingi chung.” She laughed. “How you know deing deingi chung?”

I shrugged and pointed at the picture. “You see that G.I. before?”

“Maybe,” she said. “All G.I. same same. All the time Cheap Charley. All the time argue mama-san.”

“How about the others?” I asked, pointing toward the hooch. “Do they know him?”

“Jom kanman.” Just a minute. “I checky checky.”

Still clutching the photocopy in her gnarled hand, she slipped off her sandals and climbed up on the raised wooden floor. She padded down the hallway, wood slid on wood, and then a woman’s voice erupted into moans of protest. Apparently, someone was waking up.

Ernie gave me the thumbs-up sign, slipped off his shoes, and stepped up onto the platform. In stocking feet, he tiptoed into the dark hooch. I had no reason to stand out here in this courtyard alone, so I took off my armyissue low quarters and followed.

Sliding wooden doors, made of latticework covered with oil paper, lined either side of the central hallway. Hazy sunlight oozed through the outside windows, blocked mostly by the taller buildings that surrounded us. At the end of the hallway, one of the doorways had been slid open; Ernie stood near it, listening.

I stopped and waited.

The voices were arguing. All female. Despite the late-afternoon hour, someone was very angry at being awakened. Another woman started protesting shrilly. Behind me, blankets rustled and then another door slid open.

“Weigurei?” someone shouted. Why this way?

A lot of other voices were grumbling, and naked feet started to slap on vinyl-covered floors; one by one, doors on either side of the hallway slid open.

“Wei-yo?” one voice shouted. Why?

“Sikkuro!” someone else hollered. Shut up!

And then a gaggle of women surrounded us, many of them in cotton nightgowns, some in silk. They paraded past us, heading for the byonso, rubbing their eyes, coughing, cursing beneath their breath. Matches sizzled, cigarettes were lit, and the narrow hallway started to reek of cheap tobacco. Ernie and I stood in the hallway, towering over the small flock of femininity, realizing for the first time that not one of them was young. Every woman here was middle-aged or older. One or two of them must’ve had tuberculosis, to gauge by the coughing and spitting going on into porcelain pee pots.

One of the huskier women, wearing a red terry-cloth bathrobe, stopped in front of Ernie.

“What you do, G.I.?” she said. “Why you come see mama-san so early?”

Ernie shrugged. “I was in the neighborhood.”

“Neighborhood? You likey this neighborhood?” She cackled and stalked off down the hallway.

After a few minutes, when the entire household was awake, pots and pans started to clang. Washrags and soap holders appeared, and the women vigorously scrubbed their faces and armpits, squatting in front of an outdoor faucet. When the ablutions were complete, the women returned briefly to their rooms, dried off, and changed into old housedresses and loose shifts.

The husky woman in a red robe was done first. She was wearing a green dress now, and she beckoned us toward the back, leading us into the largest room in the house, and told us to sit on flat cushions. Foothigh legs were unfolded and a five-foot-long mother-of-pearl table was placed in the center of the room. A brass pot of boiling water appeared, and women squatted near the edge of the table and stirred instant coffee or herbal concoctions into cups of boiling water. The husky woman, without asking, prepared us two cups of Maxim coffee crystals. She was about to shovel a heaping tablespoon of soluble creamer into mine when I stopped her.

“Just black,” I said.

“Black?” she asked. “Nomu jja.” Too bitter.

Sensibly, Ernie tasted the coffee first and then accepted a half teaspoon of the creamer and two tablespoons of sugar.

Most of the condiments being pulled out of cupboards were PX-purchased. Sugar from Hawaii, seedless jam from Ohio, even a tin of cookies from Denmark. Placed in opposite corners of the room were a stereo set with Bose speakers and a small Zenith television.

When most of the women were gathered around the table, sipping on various hot brews, I said, “Yogi ei Migun Chonguk i-ei-yo?” Is this G.I. Heaven?

At first all I saw were open mouths and wide eyes. Then the women started glancing at one another and then, simultaneously, they broke into laughter. The husky woman in the green dress, who seemed to be their leader, said, “Who teach you speaky Korean? ”

“He taught me,” I said, jabbing my thumb toward Ernie.

Ernie looked up from his coffee, in which he’d been totally absorbed.

“Him?” the husky woman said. Then she shook her head. “No. Not him. He dummy.”

The other women murmured in agreement.

I grinned at Ernie. “You going to take that?”

He shrugged. “They know what I’m good at.”

Indeed, they probably did. These women had already figured us out. As the conversation progressed, I became even more convinced of the accuracy of their observations.

The husky woman’s name was Lucy. That’s the only name she would admit to; she refused to give her Korean name.

“Long time ago,” she said, “I stop using Korean name. My life as Korean over. Now I’m Lucy.”

The other women nodded in assent. They were all of a similar age, the youngest were in their mid-forties, the oldest well above sixty. What were they doing together? Why did they all live here and not with their families? Why did they call this place Migun Chonguk? G.I. Heaven?

Of course, Ernie and I had known the answer almost from the moment we’d stepped inside the courtyard. Or at least we’d known part of the answer. This place was-or at least appeared to be-a brothel. But how did these women, whom most G.I. s would describe as old hags, survive when they were surrounded by a sea of desirable young business girls? That was the question. As we sat there talking with them, I believed I was starting to figure it out. They might have once been an active brothel, but they’d changed with the times, or changed because of necessity. Now they were the nerve center for black-marketing in this area. They offered the best deals both for the G.I. s who chose to sell their PX-bought goods directly and for the business girls who sold what their G.I. boyfriends gave them.

When my coffee was almost gone, another of the women refilled my cup. By now, ashtrays had been pulled out of hiding places and the little room was awash in cigarette smoke. Normally, I would’ve sought the relief of fresh air, but I was here to gather information and I suspected that the women of G.I. Heaven were guarding a wealth of information. The oldest of the women, the one who’d opened the door for us, was the housemaid and the cook. She spread out on the table the paper I’d given her with the picture of Corporal Pruchert. He’d still had hair then, when the picture was taken, but I didn’t say anything more as they studied the sheet, passing it back and forth.

Finally, Lucy turned to me and said, “You CID.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Anybody know,” she replied. “Short haircut, wear coat and tie, come from Seoul. But you not worried about black market. You not bother us old ladies who only can live because of black market.”

“That’s not what we’re here for,” I said.

Lucy puffed on her cigarette, squinting behind the smoke as she studied the photo she held in liver-spotted fingers.

“What he do?” she asked.

“We’re not sure yet,” Ernie said. “Right now, we’re just tracking his movements.”

“Tracking?”

“We just want to see where he went.”

“Oh.”

“When was he here last?” I asked.

Lucy set the photo down and turned to face me. “We tell you, what you give Lucy? What you give my friends?”

“It’s not what we’ll give you,” Ernie said, “it’s what we won’t give you. We won’t pay attention to all this blackmarketing and we won’t give you a ride to the monkey house.”

“What you know about monkey house?” Lucy said, suddenly angry. “Lucy long time ago go monkey house.” She jabbed her thumb into her chest. “Lucy live. No die. Not like some people. That time Communist come. They tough. Not like KNP now. You send me monkey house? Huh! You send Lucy. Lucy not afraid.”

Ernie glared at her but didn’t say anything further.

Some of the other women started chattering about their experiences in the monkey house. None of them were strangers to doing time, but they hadn’t done any time lately. Probably, with a successful black-market operation, the local police were being paid to look the other way. That would explain Lucy’s bravado and her disdain for two CID agents from Seoul.

When they calmed down, I said, “People could get hurt, Lucy, if we don’t find Pruchert. Innocent people.”

She studied me once again, picking up her cigarette and puffing on it for a while, letting the silence grow.

“I know why you come,” she said finally. “You come because of G.I. on Blue Train. G.I. who do bad things to Korean women.”

“That’s right, Lucy,” I said. “I can’t fool you, can I?”

She spoke rapidly in Korean, explaining to her fellow denizens of G.I. Heaven what we were here for.

“This G.I.,” she said, finally. “G.I. on train, he hurt Korean women. Hurt them bad, kurei?” Right?

“Yes,” I replied. “One of them was raped in front of her children. Another was raped and then murdered, also in front of her children.”

Lucy repeated what I said. Some of the women looked sad, others showed no expression.

“We know about rape,” Lucy said. “Anybody here know about rape.” She pointed at the women surrounding the table, jabbing her forefinger at them one by one. “We all young during Korean War. G.I. come, Communist come, United Nations come, Chinese come. Anybody try find Korean woman. Any Korean woman run away. Sometimes hide. Most time can’t hide. Why? Need food. Need water. Need medicine. Otherwise no can live. Our mama sick, daddy sick, baby sick, how we let them die?”

Lucy stared at me, expecting an answer. I had none.

“We do what we gotta do,” she continued. “That time, who have most money? American G.I. So we go, learn speak American language. Learn about G.I., learn how to make money. Learn how to black-market. So G.I. hurt Korean woman on Blue Train, we know. We know all about anything.”

She waved her arm.

Some of the women nervously lit new cigarettes or poured themselves more hot water. One of them whispered, “Aiyu, mali manta.” You talk too much.

Lucy ignored the comment.

“So Lucy, will you help us find him, or not?”

She pointed at the wrinkled photocopy. “Pruchert, he not do.”

“So you do know him?”

“We know.”

“What makes you so sure he didn’t do anything?”

“Lucy know.”

“Maybe you should let us decide that,” Ernie said.

Most women love Ernie and his irreverent attitude. For some reason, Lucy didn’t.

“Okay,” she said, “you decide. Hurry up, find out.”

“Where is he, Lucy?” I asked. “When did you last see him?”

“Yesterday. He come do black market.”

“What did he sell?”

“Wristwatch. Good one. G.I. only can buy one each year, so he sell good one.”

Under the 8th Army ration-control system, only one each of certain expensive items can be purchased by any given G.I. during a one-year tour. Only one stereo set, only one television, and only one wristwatch. At the end of the year, before he’s cleared to leave the country, the G.I. must either produce the item or produce a document showing he shipped it legally back to the States. There are ways around that, such as claiming the item was stolen, and some G.I. s are foolish enough to just sell the item on the black market and worry about justifying it later. They often get away with it because some units are not as diligent about checking on the rationed items as they should be.

“After he sold it, where did he go?”

“Same place he all the time go. You don’t know?”

“No. I don’t know. Tell me.”

“He go casino. You know. Down in Pusan.”

“He makes money selling on the black market, and then he takes that money and throws it away in a casino?”

“Lotta G.I. do.”

“What casino did he go to?”

“In Pusan only one. Beautiful place. Haeundae Beach.”

I’d heard of it, but I’d never been there. Maybe Pruchert went to the Haeundae Casino, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe that’s what he told Lucy. Maybe instead he took a cab over to the train station and hopped on the Blue Train.

“How do you know he went to the casino?” I asked.

“He all the time need money. All the time worried about honcho find out he black market. All the time worried honcho find out he go to casino.”

Signal sites deal with a lot of top-secret traffic. People into various types of depravity, including compulsive gambling, are considered to be security risks and, as such, lose their clearances. The U.S. Army Signal Corps is a hothouse of pressure; a difficult job to perform and everyone watching everyone else. It figured that Pruchert would want to get away; and if he were black-marketing and gambling, he’d want to concoct a good cover story, such as meditating at a Buddhist monastery. Of course, he’d also need a good cover story if he were the Blue Train rapist.

I asked Lucy and the other women a few more questions, but it soon became obvious that if Ernie and I wanted to know more about Corporal Robert R. Pruchert, we’d have to find him ourselves.

We thanked the women and left. Lucy followed us to the front gate.

“Pruchert good boy,” she told us. “Dingy dingy but good boy.”

She whirled her forefinger around her right ear, indicating that Pruchert was dingy dingy. Nuts.

“So you don’t think Pruchert is the Blue Train rapist?” I asked.

“No,” Lucy said, crossing her arms. “He not.”

“If you’re so smart,” Ernie said, “then tell us who is.”

“I tell,” Lucy replied. “Blue Train rapist bad man. Very bad man. But when anybody see any day, he look like good man. Lucy, any woman in G.I. Heaven, we all before trust good man. We all before tricked by good man. We all before, rape. Now, we anybody no trust.”

We ducked out through the gate into the stinking pathway that ran in front of G.I. Heaven. Back on the pedestrian lane running through the bar district, Ernie shook himself like a golden retriever shaking off rain.

“Creepy,” he said.

“It takes a lot to creep you out.”

“That it does,” he replied, “but G.I. Heaven managed.”

We jogged across the main supply route. At the front gate of Camp Henry, the MP guard said, “Where in the hell you guys been?”

“What do you mean?”

“Last night in Waegwan, weren’t you supposed to be guarding that USO show? The Country Western All Stars?”

Ernie stepped close to the MP. “What happened?”

The guy told us. Or at least he told us part of it. We ran to the Camp Henry Medical Dispensary.