Mr. Kill

6

Ernie and I had met Lieutenant Messler before, on a previous case. He must’ve extended his tour in Korea, because that previous trip to Pusan had been almost a year ago.

“Hot one this time, eh, Sueno?” he asked. “And you brought Bascom along with you. They got tired of him in Seoul?”

“You’ll get tired of me here,” Ernie growled.

The lieutenant smirked. Messler was a smallish man, a fact that he tried to compensate for by keeping his chest puffed out and his posture ramrod straight, so straight that he was practically leaning backward. He was wearing his dress green uniform because he was pulling the duty tonight, and his tie was knotted tightly and his hair combed straight back. He was chomping gum.

“There’s a report,” I said, “should’ve been sent down here by now, from the Chief of Staff’s office.” I kept my voice as even as I could. I didn’t like Lieutenant Messler any more than Ernie did, but we were going to have to work with him for as long as this thing lasted. I could at least encourage him to act professionally.

Mention of the 8th Army Chief of Staff made his eyebrows rise.

“I saw it,” he said. “Not much in it.” He tossed the paperwork on the counter in front of me.

“Thanks for reading it,” Ernie said. “Even though it’s classified and you don’t have a need-to-know.”

“The duty officer needs to know everything,” Messler replied.

“Yeah. You’re needy, all right.”

I grabbed Ernie by the elbow and pulled him away from the MP desk, pretending that I needed his help in evaluating the message. What I really needed was for him to quit needling Messler. Turning the young lieutenant into a yapping Chihuahua wouldn’t help us find the Blue Train rapist.

The report was from the Seoul RTO and listed the names of the G.I. s who’d been issued tickets yesterday for the Blue Train to Pusan. At the civilian ticket counters, all you needed was some hard cash, in won, the Korean currency, and anybody could buy a ticket. No names were recorded and no questions were asked. The military, on the other hand, issued tickets mostly to G.I. s who were on official business. And, as such, they had to present their identification and travel orders, and their names were then logged in and their train tickets were issued to them for free. A G.I. on leave orders-or even on weekend pass-could purchase a ticket at the RTO, but once again-it being the military-they would demand to see his identification and he’d be logged in with his purchase point and destination.

I studied the names.

“The courier,” Ernie said, pointing at the name Runnels.

“Figures he’d be on the train returning to Pusan,” I said. “It’s his job to carry classified information back and forth from Seoul.”

“He’s the one who talked to the guy who got off the first train in Anyang, isn’t he?”

“He’s the one.”

“So if the same guy was on this train, Runnels would’ve seen him.”

“Maybe. Whether he did or not, we need to talk to him.”

“I’ll find him,” Ernie said. He left me and spoke to the MP desk sergeant, who made a phone call.

While Ernie tracked down Runnels, I continued to study the list. The names were unfamiliar to me, except one. Specialist Four Weyworth, Nicholas Q. He hadn’t been on the first Blue Train but he’d been one of the G.I. s I’d identified as being stationed at Hialeah Compound and on in-country leave on the day of the first Blue Train attack. I underlined his name. Ten minutes later, Ernie and I had left our travel bags in the expert care of the Hialeah Compound Military Police. We were armed with information and directions, and we were off into the Pusan night.

Ernie and I made a quick trip to the barracks on the compound and rousted Private First Class Runnels out of his bunk. The courier who transported classified documents between Pusan and Seoul was less than thrilled.

“What the hell do you want?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “Didn’t you harass me enough when you questioned me in Seoul?”

“This is the army,” Ernie said. “There’s never enough harassment.”

I told Runnels to put his clothes on and follow us into the dayroom. I wanted him completely alert when we questioned him. He did as he was told, stopping in the latrine to splash water on his face. Finally, he joined us at the vinyl-covered chairs near the pool tables. The television was running, an old black-and-white movie that no one was watching. I knew it would be the last thing scheduled, because both the Korean stations and Armed Forces Korea Network stop broadcasting at midnight. Ernie switched the television off and returned to stand near me.

Runnels sat with his elbows on his knees. “What is it?” he asked.

“You took the five p.m. Blue Train back from Seoul yesterday.”

“That’s my job.”

“You remember that guy you sat next to the first time we questioned you? The guy who disappeared after the train stopped in Anyang?”

“Yeah. You think he’s the rapist.”

“You don’t?” Ernie asked.

Runnels shrugged. “How the hell would I know?”

“So, yesterday,” I continued, “on the Blue Train from Seoul, did you see the same guy again? Was he on that train?”

Runnels looked away from me, scrunching his forehead. I held my breath. Ernie held his too.

“No,” Runnels said finally. “Can’t say I did see him.”

“Were you looking?” I asked. “Did you get around the train much? Or did you just stay in your seat?”

“I’ve seen the train,” Runnels said, exasperation in his voice, “too many times. These days I just stay in my seat. Especially when I have a good book to read. The Last Detail, by Darryl Ponicsan. It’s about military life. Real military life. You ought to try it.”

“Maybe I will. Did you see anybody else you know on the train? Or anything unusual?”

Runnels thought again. “No. Not that I remember.”

I checked my notes. “Do you know a guy named Weyworth, Nicholas Q.? He’s a Spec Four and he’s stationed here on Hialeah Compound.”

“What’s he do?”

“Supply.”

Runnels took his time thinking over the question. “No. The name doesn’t ring a bell. I might recognize his face if I saw him, though.”

“Did you recognize anybody on the train? Anybody who you thought might be stationed on Hialeah Compound?”

Runnels thought again and shook his head.

“Did you see anything strange? Anything at all unusual?”

Again he said no, he hadn’t seen anything that he thought was worth remarking on. Finally we gave up, thanked him, and told him he could return to his bunk. On the way out of the dayroom, Runnels turned and looked back at us. “That guy did it again, didn’t he?”

“What guy?” Ernie asked.

“That guy. The Blue Train rapist. He did it again, didn’t he?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because you guys are here. If he hadn’t done it again, you probably would’ve just stayed in Seoul. It’s about that checklist, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I told you before. The last thing he told me before he walked away was that he had a checklist. A checklist to correct deficiencies. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

Runnels studied our faces, saw nothing, shrugged, and walked in his flip-flops down the dark corridor that led to the open bay that housed two long rows of military bunks.

The lights of the Kit Kat Club flashed brightly. The midnight curfew was less than a half hour away, but you wouldn’t have known it from the relaxed atmosphere of the customers and waitresses in the G.I. bar. They looked as if they were camped out forever.

“Curfew must not be such a big deal down here,” Ernie said.

In Seoul, or especially up north near the DMZ, the Korean National Police will arrest anyone out even five minutes after the midnight curfew. Down here, the G.I. s were only a hundred yards from the main gate of Hialeah Compound. If they ran, they could make it there in a few seconds. And my guess was that down here in Pusan the local cops weren’t as frantic about shutting off all lights and closing down all businesses by exactly twelve o’clock. We were a couple of hundred miles from the DMZ; a couple of hundred miles from the 700,000-man-strong North Korean Army. Life seemed more normal down here. More cosmopolitan.

Ernie and I strode into the Kit Kat Club.

Bleary eyes looked at us, some of the hostesses with interest, puffing on their cigarettes. The G.I. s stared at us with dull surprise. Two Americans they didn’t know, near a small compound like Hialeah: that was an event.

Ernie stepped to the bar and ordered two beers.

“OB or Crown?” the bartender asked.

“You have draft?” The bartender shook his head. “Then OB”

The bartender popped the tops off the bottles for us. I asked for a glass. Ernie didn’t bother.

“Where’s Nick?” Ernie asked the G.I. sitting next to us.

“Huh?” The guy’s head was about to droop to the bar.

“Nick,” Ernie repeated. “Nick Weyworth.”

“Hell if I know,” the guy said, and allowed his nose to droop even farther toward the suds puddled on the bar.

I waved down one of the hostesses. “Weyworth isso?” I asked. Is Weyworth here? “Nick Weyworth.”

“You buy me drink?” she asked.

I nodded. Ernie stared at me, surprised.

The bartender took his time mixing some colorful concoction and finally slapped it on the bar. “One thousand five hundred won,” he said. Ernie whistled.

I reached deep into my pocket, pulled out the money, and took my time counting out two thousand-won notes, the equivalent in U.S. dollars of about four bucks. The bartender returned with my change. I pocketed it and turned back to the hostess. Through a straw, she was demurely sipping her drink.

“Show me,” I said.

Her eyes widened.

“Show me Weyworth’s yobo hooch.” His girlfriend’s house.

“I finish my drink.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t finish your drink.”

Ernie stepped next to the woman, grabbed the frothy red drink out of her hand, and set it carefully on the bar. “Kapshida,” he said. Let’s go.

She looked up at us with her heavily lined eyes, trying to make up her mind. Finally, she shrugged, stood up, and spoke to the other women seated against the wall.

“Jokum itta dora wa,” she said. I’ll be right back.

She grabbed her coat and sashayed toward the door.

The three of us wound through a couple of hundred yards of narrow pedestrian lanes. Sewage ran through open stone-lined gutters reeking of ammonia and filth. High walls made of brick and stone lined either side of the passageway, studded on top with brass spikes or shards of embedded glass. An occasional streetlamp glowed yellow at the intersection of two lanes, but mostly we were guided by the dim silvery rays of a half moon. Finally, the hostess crouched through a door in a larger wooden gate. Ernie and I followed. The hostess hollered, “Jeannie Omma, issoyo?” Is the mother of Jeannie here? Apparently a child was involved.

We stepped into a courtyard of swept dirt. Kimchee pots lined one wall. A byonso-an outhouse-behind us smelled of lime and human waste. Across the courtyard, light glowed behind a latticework door stretched with oil paper. The door slid open and a woman’s face peeked out. “Nugu-syo?” she said. Who is it?

As soon as she saw the hostess, with Ernie and me looming behind her, she slid shut the door. A metal latch clicked into place.

Weyworth’s hooch wasn’t much. Just a large ondolheated room with a cement-floored kitchen on the side.

“I’ll check the back,” Ernie said.

As he marched off into the darkness, the hostess who’d brought us here surreptitiously retreated toward the entranceway. I ignored her until I heard the door in the large gate shut. I stepped up to the latticework door and knocked. The wooden frame rattled.

“Weyworth,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

When there was no answer, I said, “I’m Agent Sueno from Seoul. You won’t be able to hide from us, might as well talk now.”

Words were mumbled inside and clothes rustled.

Ernie returned at a trot.

“No way out the back,” he whispered. “The only exit is through the front here and that side door off the kitchen.”

We could keep an eye on both exits from where we stood.

I stepped closer to the door. “Last chance,” I said, “or we’re kicking the door in.”

More frantic mumbling, something being dropped, a heavy object of some sort, and then a shadow appeared in front of the oil paper. I backed up, keeping my hand on my hip where my. 45 would’ve been if I’d been armed. That’s one thing that Ernie and I hadn’t thought of: to check out weapons from the Pusan MP station. Suddenly it seemed like a tremendous oversight.

Ernie stepped to his right, into the darkness. I stepped to my left.

The oil-paper door slid open.

Yellow light flooded into the courtyard. Ernie and I tensed. A face peeked out, the same woman who’d peeked out earlier. This time, I caught a good look at her. She was cute, young, maybe in her early twenties, with a bemused expression and braided pigtails hanging down from either side of her round head.

Ernie stepped forward, grabbed the edge of the door, slipped off his shoes and stepped into the hooch. The woman screeched. Ernie shoved her aside.

I followed him into the hooch.

Ernie searched the kitchen and the tiny storeroom out back.

“Nobody here,” he said, returning to the main room.

Nobody except a little girl who was squatting next to an inlaid mother-of-pearl armoire. She had a face and hairstyle just like her mother’s, except for her coloration. She was very light-skinned and her hair was dirty blonde.

“This must be Jeannie,” I said.

The little girl’s eyes widened. Blue fading to green. Her mother stepped away from us and clutched her arms in front of her ample breasts. She wore only a set of PX thermal long johns, no bra underneath. The woman reached into the armoire, pulled out a winter coat, and wrapped it around herself. She squatted down next to Jeannie and placed a protective arm around her.

“Weyworth not here,” she said.

“Weyworth?” Ernie said. “Don’t you call him Nick?”

The woman didn’t answer.

“Where’d he go?” I asked.

“He go someplace,” she said, waving her free arm. “I don’t know. All the time big deal, he gotta do. Business, he say. Where, I don’t know.”

“You moolah?” Ernie asked. Moolah is the Korean word for “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “I moolah.”

“What time does he come back?” I asked.

“Now?” she replied. “Maybe don’t come back until morning time. After curfew.”

“He catchy girlfriend?” Ernie asked.

The woman knotted her slender fist. “He catchy girlfriend, then most tick he catchy knuckle sandwich.”

“So he’s doing business?” I said, more gently.

She nodded warily, worried now that she might have revealed too much.

Ernie knelt to the warm ondol floor; I did the same. He smiled at the woman and then he smiled at Jeannie. Both of them were still nervous. I guessed from the age of the girl-about four-that Weyworth wasn’t the father. G.I. s pull a one-year tour in Korea. There hadn’t been time for him to sire this beautiful four-year-old child.

“Who’s Jeannie’s daddy?” Ernie asked.

The woman didn’t get angry. “Long time ago,” she said, “’nother G.I.”

“Picture isso?”

I knew what Ernie was doing. He was trying, in his own way, to relax Jeannie and her mother. And showing pictures was something few Korean business girls could resist. Especially pictures of old boyfriends, and especially if those boyfriends had left them with a child.

She rummaged beneath silk-covered comforters in the bottom of the armoire and pulled out a thick photo album. She set it on the floor and flipped quickly through the pictures. Jeannie slid closer to her mother. Finally, Jeannie’s mother found a photo of Jeannie on Beikil, her Hundredth Day celebration. In ancient times, so many infants succumbed to childhood diseases that it was thought wise to wait a hundred days, until their chances of survival looked somewhat promising, before welcoming them into the human family.

Jeannie’s mother turned the photograph toward Ernie and then me. The infant Jeannie was dressed in a brightly colored silk suit, surrounded by ripe fruit and fat dumplings. Ernie and I oohed and aahed and told Jeannie what a beautiful baby she’d been. Jeannie buried her face beneath her mother’s armpit, embarrassed by the attention. Then Jeannie’s mother flipped the pages to a photo of herself, a few years younger, wearing a colorful chima-chogori, the traditional Korean dress with a high-waisted skirt and a short vest. She looked beautiful, and I told her so.

“Ipuh-da,” I said. She beamed with happiness.

Some Koreans are trained to hide their emotions, but not all. By now, Jeannie’s mother was delighted, and all thought of Weyworth had been banished from her mind. Ernie and I studied the photograph, paying particular attention to the G.I. standing next to her. He wore a dress green uniform with three yellow stripes sewn on a well-pressed sleeve. A buck sergeant. His nameplate said Bermann.

“Did you get married?” Ernie asked.

She shook her head. “Supposed to. But he change mind. Go back States.”

An old story.

Jeannie’s mother filled the silence by saying, “The only thing he teach me is how to smoke, how to drink… ” Then she hugged Jeannie, adding, “And how to make baby. Tambei isso?” she asked. Do you have a cigarette?

Ernie and I both shook our heads.

“Next time I’ll buy some,” Ernie said.

She smiled at that.

“Where is Weyworth now?” I asked.

“Somewhere,” she said, reaching for a pack of cigarettes in the armoire. “Somewhere, I don’t know. Maybe down on Texas Street.”

Texas Street was the notorious bar-and-red-light district along the Pusan waterfront. This late, there’d be no time for him to return from Texas Street before the midnight curfew hit.

“Why is he staying on Texas Street all night?” Ernie asked.

“Business,” she said.

“Business with who?”

“I don’t know. Not G.I. How you say? Shi-la.”

“Greek,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding vigorously. “Greek.”

“In a Greek bar?” Ernie said.

What with so many merchant marines flooding Texas Street-many of them from Greece-there were special bars set aside for them so they wouldn’t have to mingle with Americans or other English-speaking sailors.

Jeannie’s mother lit her cigarette, puffed, and snuffed out the wooden match. “Yeah,” she said. “Someplace he call some funny name. Mean ‘makey-love’ in Greek language.”

“Eros,” I said.

Jeannie’s mother’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. That’s it.”

An MP patrol gave us a ride to Texas Street. Ernie and I sat crouched in the back of the jeep, our knees almost touching our faces. The two MPs sat in the spacious seats in front. One of the MPs remembered me.

“Hard-to-pronounce name. Sueno, right?”

“You got it.”

He’d made the n sound correctly, like the ny in canyon. “I should’ve thought of that before.” He popped his forehead with his open palm.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The MP’s name was Norris, and he’d been on duty when Ernie and I made an arrest on that previous trip down here about a year ago.

“A guy asked about you,” Norris said. “Or at least I think he was asking about you. He mispronounced your name.”

Rain spattered against the windshield as we rolled over the broad, deserted Pusan roads. I leaned forward as far as the cramped space would allow. “So, who was this guy who came looking for me?” I asked.

Norris turned his face toward me slightly so I could hear better over the sound of the swishing tires. Mistladen wind slapped against the canvas sides of the jeep.

“A sailor,” he told me. “Some sort of foreigner. I don’t remember his name; I have it written down in one of my old notebooks, because he went so far as to show me his passport.”

“How’d you know he was looking for me?”

“He described you. Tall. Dark hair. And an investigator. He said he had a message for you.”

“Did he tell you what the message was?”

“No. He approached us one night while we were out on patrol, just sitting in the jeep smoking and shooting the shit. Not many ships in port that night. Still, he’d lurked around in an alley, watching us, and when he thought no one was paying attention, he came up and started talking.”

“He could speak English?”

“Not very well. He wasn’t Greek, but from somewhere in Eastern Europe. I forget what country.”

Eastern Europe implied the Communist bloc. This story was getting weirder.

“Then what did he say?”

“He said he had a book he wanted to sell and you might be interested. And no, he didn’t tell me what kind of book. Only that it was old, an antique, like that.”

Ernie and I glanced at each other, neither of us having a clue as to what Sergeant Norris was talking about.

“Also, there’s one more thing,” Norris said. “He said you’d understand the book he was trying to sell.”

“I’d ‘understand’?”

“Yeah. You’d be able to read it.”

“Was it in Korean?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell us exactly.”

We reached Texas Street and rolled slowly through the narrow alleys lined on either side with dark neon signs. The bars and the eateries and the hot-bed yoguans were shuttered and locked. Wind swept through the lanes like lost souls howling for one more breath of life.

We climbed out of the jeep and thanked Norris and his comrade. Norris promised to dig out his old notebook tomorrow and provide me with more information.

As they drove off, Ernie snapped a two-fingered salute.

The MP patrol had dropped us off two blocks from the Greek bar known as Eros. We didn’t want them to take us right up to the front door, because we wanted to reconnoiter the joint first. The streets of the half-mile square area known-even to Koreans-as Texas Street were empty now, almost a half hour after midnight. Plastic covers rattled in metal holders as unlit neon was being battered by a cold wind blowing in off the bay. The wind carried a salty mist. I stuck out my tongue and rubbed the salt along my lips.

“She’s a cute kid,” Ernie said.

“You mean Jeannie’s mother?” I asked.

“Who else?”

“But she’s betrothed.”

Ernie guffawed.

“She is cute,” I agreed. “I’ll grant you that.”

“Nice figure, too.”

“Calm down, Romeo,” I said. “We have work to do.”

Specialist Four Nicholas Q. Weyworth had been on leave when the first rape occurred on the Blue Train. We had no reason to believe that he’d been on the train, but he could’ve been-if he’d purchased a ticket at the Korean ticket counter and if he’d sat apart from the other Americans. When the second rape occurred, we knew for sure that he’d actually been on that train, returning from Seoul.

Still, Weyworth didn’t match the description of the perpetrator that had been given by both the first victim and the front-desk clerk at the Shindae Hotel. He was shorter, smaller, not as dark. But eyewitness accounts, particularly from people under stress, are notoriously unreliable. I still didn’t know what Weyworth’s blood type was, but if it was A-positive, we’d have our suspect.

Gently, I tried the front door of the Eros Nightclub and Bar. Locked. I’d expected it to be. But through the thickly glazed transom above the door, a dim light glowed-and when I pressed my ear against the wood, there were murmuring voices. Maybe it was the rumbling of the sea behind me, but I didn’t think so.

“Let’s try the back,” I told Ernie.

He nodded and led the way.

Greek sailors are notorious in Asian ports. First, there are plenty of them. The world’s merchant marine is largely dominated by their country, and they greatly outnumber sailors from more-affluent countries such as Japan or the Western European nations or the United States. Lately, however, the Filipinos had been giving them a run for their money. Second, Greeks like to party. In their own way. In their own nightclubs, where the bartenders and the waitresses and, most importantly, the business girls all speak Greek; and where Greek music is played and where they can dance their famous Greek dances and break as many plates as they see fit. Americans aren’t welcome in these places and seldom go in; for one thing, they can’t even read the signs. The word “Eros” in the sign above the front door was written in what I assumed to be Greek letters. At least, they were shaped weird.

I’d been in Greek bars once or twice, alone, and gotten along well enough with the sailors. On one occasion, a Korean business girl had approached me, speaking Greek. I spoke to her in Korean, and soon I was speaking, through her, to some of the sailors at the bar. They spoke Greek, she translated it into Korean to me, and we went back and forth like that; not a word of English spoken during the entire conversation. Nice fellows, actually, as long as they didn’t feel I was showing them a lack of respect.

Another thing Greek sailors are notorious for is fighting. Down here on Texas Street, the Korean National Police never travel alone. They travel in squads, with helmets and padded vests and lead-reinforced nightsticks. When an altercation breaks out among the Greeks, knives are usually pulled-another Mediterranean tradition-and the Korean cops don’t like to take chances. They come at the problem with overwhelming force.

Usually, since international trade is so important to the Korean government, the offending sailors are treated leniently. They are locked up overnight, they’re made to reimburse Korean citizens for any damages or medical bills, and they’re released. That is, unless someone’s murdered. Then the shipping company might have to cough up some serious reparations money.

All these things were running through my mind as I followed Ernie into the dark alley behind the Eros Nightclub and Bar. Once again, I regretted not having checked out a weapon from the armory at the Hialeah Compound MP station.

Ernie shoved me against a wall. I was startled at first but quickly realized he’d done it to hide us both in the shadows. I held my breath.

The back door of the club burst open. Two men stumbled out. Drunk. They shouted words to one another that were incomprehensible. Just as one was about to shut the door, I shoved past Ernie, saying “Wait here,” and trotted the few yards to the back door. I stepped past the surprised men and grabbed the edge of the door before it closed.

“Dikanis,” I said, waving my hand at them and keeping my head bowed. It was the only word I knew in Greek. A greeting.

“Kala,” they replied, somewhat surprised, but by then I was already past them and inside the bar. I shut the door behind me, making sure it was locked.

I stood in a narrow hallway. The first thing I saw, and smelled, was the men’s room. I used it. Then I went back to the door, opened it, peeked out, and saw that the two drunken sailors were gone. Ernie scurried up. I shut the door behind him.

“I didn’t know you spoke Greek,” he said.

“There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know.”

He snorted.

We turned and walked through a dark corridor. Steps led downward to a ballroom at a split-level a few feet below us. There were two pool tables, not in use, and a long bar opposite, about a dozen cocktail tables, and a small stage. Sitting at the bar was a blond man wearing blue jeans and a cowboy shirt. Three men who looked like Greeks were huddled around him. A half-covered neon light sat low behind the bar. No bartender or waitresses or business girls in sight. All the cabinets had been locked. Small tumblers filled with a dark fluid sat in front of the men.

One of them noticed us and looked up. The rest stopped talking and stared.

Weyworth-or the man I assumed to be Weyworth-turned on his stool, gaping.

The Greek sailors reached in their back pockets. I knew, from previous experience, that that’s where they kept their knives. I reached deep into my leather coat, as if reaching for a weapon-a weapon I didn’t have. Ernie scurried down the steps and grabbed a pool cue.

That’s him, more practical than imaginative.

The Greeks pulled their knives and stepped forward.