Nightmare Range

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. KIM

The old woman tugged so fiercely on my shirtsleeve that I almost toppled off of my barstool.

“You save my son!” she screamed.

Ernie set down his frothing brown bottle of Oriental Beer, swiveled, and grabbed the elderly woman by the worn cotton of her loose Korean tunic. I regained my balance and grappled with her for a moment, and soon Ernie and I wedged her between us, me waving my open palm in front of her nose and telling her, “Choyong hei.” Calm down.

Ernie and I were off duty, bar hopping through the red light district of Itaewon and, as we were wont to do, hoisting a few wets. About the last thing we expected was to be assaulted, for no apparent reason, by a hysterical old woman.

The out-of-tune rock band twanged their last note and then stopped playing, their mouths open, gawking at us. The GI customers also stared, as did the “business girls,” their nightly work interrupted in mid-hustle.

The old woman stopped screeching long enough for Ernie and me to walk her over to a corner table. I sat down next to her, patting the back of her bony hand.

She had to be in at least her early sixties. Most of her teeth were missing. The strong brown eyes in the center of her face were enveloped by the burn wrinkles of someone who had spent the better part of her life toiling in muddy rice fields. When it seemed that she wouldn’t start grabbing on me again, Ernie returned to the bar and brought over our drinks.

Now that she had our attention, she spoke in rapid Korean. Breathlessly, so fast that I had trouble following and asked her to repeat herself more than once. Finally, I managed to absorb the outlines of her story.

Her son had been arrested, tried, and convicted of that most horrible of crimes: murder.

The case wasn’t exactly unknown to us. In fact, it was the biggest flap to hit 8th Army in years.

A US Army doctor, Captain Richard Everson, had been stabbed to death in one of the narrow back alleys behind the flashing neon of Itaewon. An ice pick was found at the scene, and smeared blood confirmed it as the murder weapon. The apparent motive? Robbery. Captain Everson’s wristwatch, fraternity ring, and wallet were all missing.

Since the crime occurred outside of a military reservation, jurisdiction for the case fell squarely on the capable shoulders of the Korean National Police. With the international spotlight on them, the KNPs wasted no time. All known thugs in the Itaewon area were rounded up, and soon-after interrogations involving rubber hoses-a suspect was identified. Choi Yong-kuang was his name, the son of the woman sitting in front of us. He had accomplices. Three other young men who were members of his gang, according to the KNPs, but all three of the men had testified that it was Choi Yong-kuang who had actually done the stabbing of Captain Richard Everson.

Why had they killed Everson when they’d already had him outnumbered and disabled? Sheer meanness, according to Choi’s former comrades. Choi Yong-kuang had just wanted to watch an American die.

Although Ernie and I had monitored the case-as had everyone else in 8th Army who worked in law enforcement-we hadn’t actually worked on it. No Americans had.

I explained this to the old woman. She would have to talk to the KNPs.

Of course she already had.

“They told me to leave them alone, and when I refused, they did this to me.” She pointed to a puffed blue welt on the side of her face.

I had been translating for Ernie as we went along. He turned to the old woman and said in English, “What the hell do you want us to do?”

She understood and answered in broken English. “My son rob American doctor,” she said, “but he no kill American doctor. His friend, they all lie because Korean police beat them up. Somebody come later, after my son take money, go and stab doctor with ice pick. You Americans. Everybody in Itaewon say you CID. You can find out about American doctor. Find out who want kill him.”

Ernie shook his head. “There’s no reason in the world, Mama-san, to think that the killer was anyone besides your son.”

“Yes. There’s reason,” she answered. “Korean police, they know. Ice pick come from drink place up top hill. The Silver Dragon.”

The most expensive nightclub in the Itaewon bar district.

“How do they know that?”

“They know many things, but they no say.”

“Why not?” Ernie asked.

“I don’t know. You ask them. You find out.”

Ernie shook his head again. “This isn’t our case.”

The old woman leaned forward and grabbed his wrist in a white-knuckled clench. “If I have money, I give you, but I no have money. Next week, they kill my son.”

The Korean judicial system doesn’t tolerate endless appeals or long waits on death row. Within a month or two of arrest, convicted murderers are on their way to the gallows.

“If my son die,” she said, “then I die.” She sliced her thumb across her throat.

Ernie glanced around at the swirling interior of the smoke-filled bar. The business girls had become bored with us and were back to hustling GIs. The rock band was blaring again. Waitresses were busy slamming down bubbling bottles of Oscar, a locally fermented sparkling burgundy.

Ernie crossed his arms. “No can do,” he said.

With that, the old woman closed her eyes, fighting back tears. A moment later she started rocking back and forth, mumbling some Korean folk song.

Her singing grew louder, so loud that I could no longer hear the hubbub of the voices that surrounded me. I could only hear her ancient song of death.

Later that evening, after the old woman left, Ernie and I walked up the hill to the Silver Dragon Club.

“What the hell,” Ernie said. “Won’t hurt to look.”

The joint was more elaborate than the other dives in Itaewon and the chairs even had upholstered seats. Also, club policy was to hire only waitresses with straight legs. With all these amenities the Silver Dragon Club was twice as expensive as the other local bars and as such was mostly patronized by civilian businessmen and American officers.

The bartender wore a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up and his collar held close by a black bow tie. I leaned over the counter. With a glistening metal pick, he chopped into a blue-white block of ice.

“What happened to the old ice pick?” I asked.

He looked up at me, as if he’d been shocked by electricity. “You policeman?” he asked.

I showed him my badge.

He pointed down the hall. “Then you go ask Korean policeman. They know everything about ice pick.”

“Maybe you can explain it to me,” I said. Ernie fondled a delicate glass goblet, tossing it up in the air, catching it, while keeping his eyes riveted on the bartender. The young man swallowed.

“Miss Tae, she took it.”

“Who’s Miss Tae?”

“A waitress. She used to work here. Same night GI doctor killed, she take ice pick go. Never come back.”

“You told the Korean police this?” Ernie asked.

The bartender nodded.

“Did Miss Tae know Captain Everson?” I asked.

The bartender looked puzzled.

“The GI who was killed,” I explained.

The bartender shrugged. “How I know? Miss Tae take ice pick, she go, she never come back. That’s all I know.”

“You saw her take it?”

“Yes. She told me she bring right back. So I say okay. She lie.”

Ernie returned the bartender’s goblet-unbroken. We walked down the hill toward the Itaewon district office of the Korean National Police.

Lieutenant Pak Un-pyong had handled the investigation into the homicide of Captain Richard Everson. He wasn’t in at this time of night, but when I flashed my identification and told the desk sergeant what we wanted, he called Lieutenant Pak at home.

Fifteen minutes later Lieutanant Pak walked into the big concrete bunker of the Itaeown Police Station. He was a tall man, thin even by Asian standards, with a hooked nose and a no-nonsense cast to his sharp features. He waved to us, and without a word we followed him down the hallway to his office.

We sat on two metal chairs in front of his desk, pulled out a pack of Turtle Boat brand cigarettes and offered us each a smoke. When we turned him down, he struck a wooden match, lit up, and leaned back in his rusty swivel chair.

“We’ve been waiting for one of you Americans to ask this question,” he said.

I hoped he’d explain, but instead Ernie spoke up. “This Miss Tae took an ice pick from the Silver Dragon Club,” Ernie told Pak. “She disappears. Captain Everson turns up murdered by an ice pick. What’s the connection?”

Lieutenant Pak let out a plume of smoke. “She’s the girlfriend of Choi Yong-kuang.”

The convicted killer and the son of the old woman who’d harangued us into looking into this case.

It came together quickly for Ernie.

“So Captain Everson is hanging out at the high-class Silver Dragon Club,” Ernie said. “Spending plenty of money because doctors make more than regular officers. This Miss Tae spots him, fingers him to her boyfriend, and Choi Yong-kuang and his partners jump him and rob him. She delivers the ice pick so Choi can silence Everson for good.”

“That’s what we think,” Pak said.

“But why kill Everson?” I asked. “He was down. They had his money and his watch and his ring. Why make things worse for themselves?”

Pak continued to puff for a moment and then finally spoke.

“Maybe they wanted to make sure that he couldn’t identify them. Maybe they thought he would have more money on him than he did and they would all leave Seoul together, and they didn’t want us following. Maybe Choi Yong-kuang hates Americans. Maybe he was jealous because Miss Tae had been having an affair with Everson. Maybe a thousand things. Who can say?”

“And Miss Tae disappeared?”

“We haven’t been able to find her. Her mother lives alone in Masan. We checked. No sign of her daughter. The local police are keeping an eye out for her in case she shows up. So far, nothing.”

The way Ernie was fidgeting, I could tell he didn’t like Lieutenant Pak’s explanation any more than I did.

“There has to be more to this case,” I said.

Pak shrugged.

“If you don’t find Miss Tae and if this guy Choi is executed, we’ll never know for sure.”

Pak shrugged again. “The government is happy.”

I knew what he meant. The Korean government receives millions of dollars from the United States each year to help in their defense against the communist regime up north. When a Korean kills an American officer, that special relationship is at risk. The way to save grief is to have the case closed quickly. Hanging Choi Yong-kuang would make a lot of government bureaucrats breathe easier.

“What is Choi’s story?” I asked.

“He says that he and Miss Tae had originally planned to murder Captain Everson. That’s why she brought the ice pick. They thought he was going to be bringing a lot more money. Supposedly, so he could buy Miss Tae out of her contract with the Silver Dragon Club, so she’d be free to quit work and live with Everson. An old trick. But Everson didn’t bring the money; he was using Miss Tae just as she was trying to use him. Choi say that when they realized Everson didn’t have more than a few dollars, he was furious. His partners ran away, Choi claims, but finally he didn’t have the heart to murder a helpless man. He dropped the ice pick and left while Everson was still breathing.”

“Miss Tae had already left?” I asked. Pak nodded. “And a few minutes later, one of your officers found Everson’s body.”

“A routine patrol.”

“How long had he been lying there?”

“Hard to say. It was a dark walkway, seldom traveled. Could’ve been as much as an hour.”

“Plenty of time for someone else to come along, grab the ice pick, and murder Everson,” Ernie said.

“That’s what Choi told the judge. Nobody believed him.”

“Plus,” I said, “it’s more convenient for the government not to believe him.” Pak shrugged once again. I leaned across the desk and stared into Lieutenant Pak’s dark eyes. “There’s a reason you came out here at night to talk to us. You’re not certain Choi is guilty.”

Pak stubbed out his cigarette. “If I had jurisdiction, I would search further into Captain Everson’s background. But I don’t have jurisdiction on your American army compound, and besides, my superiors are satisfied with the resolution.” He raised his open palms toward the ceiling. “What more can I do?”

“But we can do more,” Ernie said.

Lieutenant Pak smiled at him like a teacher indulging a bright student.

“Yes,” he answered. “You can do more. You can do much more.”

The next day at the CID office, I looked over what records were available concerning the Everson case. Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem, two of our fellow CID agents, had been assigned liason duties. They’d studiously regurgitated the translated record of the Korean police version of events but had done no investigative work themselves.

Their reason for showing so little curiosity was simple. In the army, the less you know the safer your career prospects.

Ernie and I performed our routine black market detail duties that day, but when I found a spare moment, I made a few phone calls. What I was trying to determine was the identity of Captain Richard Everson’s best friend. I found him: Bob Quincy, an engineering officer who had shared quarters with the late Captain Everson on 8th Army’s South Post.

Early that evening Ernie and I paid Quincy a visit.

He was a portly man with a round face and round spectacles and a pugnacious air. He stared straight up at Ernie’s pointed nose.

“You had to have some idea of what his social life was like,” Ernie said.

“I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead.”

“ ‘Speaking ill?’ What the hell are you talking about, Quincy?”

Quincy turned away and stalked down the long hallway of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters toward the dayroom. We followed. A green felt pool table and a TV sat unused. The room was empty. He plopped down heavily in a padded chair.

“I thought it was all over,” Quincy said. “I thought no one would come around asking me questions.”

I grabbed a three-legged stool and sat opposite Quincy. “A man’s life depends on your truthfulness, Captain Quincy. Anything you say will be held in a file classified Secret.”

He nodded, sighed, and let out a long burst of air. “Dick Everson jogged,” he told me. “He was in good shape, and that’s part of the reason he was popular with the ladies.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“He’s a pediatrician. You know how women love pediatricians.”

I didn’t but I let him talk.

“So he gave a few speeches at the Officers’ Wives Club. You know, on the welfare of children in the Command, on what the OWC could do to help, things like that.”

Ernie pulled out a stick of ginseng gum and unwrapped it. “So Everson hooked up with a couple of the wives,” he said.

Quincy swiveled his round head and frowned at Ernie. “Only one wife.” We waited, the silence growing longer, hoping he’d tell us who. Finally he answered the unspoken question. “I don’t know who she was. Dick Everson was a gentleman. He’d never talk. But every night when he put on his jogging suit and went out for a run, it always lasted a lot longer than it should have. At least an hour. More often two. And he came back smiling.”

“How can you be sure he was meeting this woman?” I asked.

“He told me. I could tell something was up. I didn’t pry, but he told me that she lived with her husband in quarters on post and he reassured me that this woman had no children.”

“That was important to him?” Ernie asked.

“Very,” Quincy replied. “He would have no part in traumatizing kids.”

“Decent of him,” Ernie said.

“But he didn’t give you her name?” I asked.

“No. Like I said, Dick Everson was a gentleman.”

“Boffing a fellow officer’s wife,” Ernie said. “Is that in the manual?”

Quincy’s face flared red. “He broke up with her,” he said. “She didn’t want to, but he knew it had to be done.”

“When?” I asked.

“Two months ago. Maybe three.”

After that, Ernie shot some pool. I asked a few more questions, but they didn’t go anywhere. When I finished with Quincy, we left.

Nothing else in Captain Richard Everson’s military life seemed in any way unusual. Ernie and I weren’t exactly sure where to take this unofficial investigation. At least we weren’t sure until that night in Itaewon when we ran into Choi Yong-kung’s mother again. She had been waiting for us on the road that leads from 8th Army headquarters to the nightclub district.

She grabbed my sleeve, pleading with me. Telling us she had someone she wanted us to talk to.

Miss Tae, the former waitress at the Silver Dragon Club, did indeed have long, straight, beautiful legs. She showed them off by keeping them crossed under her short skirt at the table in a Korean teahouse where we met.

After having escorted us to the teahouse, Yong-kuang’s mother made a discreet departure.

“When I left Everson,” Miss Tae said in Korean, “the ice pick was still on the ground, the GI doctor was alive, and Choi Yong-kuang had run away too.”

“Why don’t you tell this to the Korean police?”

“They would beat me. Make me tell them what they want to hear. So they don’t lose face and have to admit that they were wrong.”

I wasn’t so sure if that was true. Not for Lieutenant Pak Un-pyong, anyway, the chief investigator in the this case. But it was probably true for the institution he represented.

“So who killed Everson?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then who does?”

Ernie couldn’t take his eyes off Miss Tae’s legs. I concentrated on her face. Too heavily made up for my taste, but I could still admire the darkly lidded narrow eyes and the gentle curve of the smooth white flesh beneath her high cheekbones.

She sipped on a porcelain cup of green tea, set it down, and then spoke. “To find out the truth, there is a man you must talk to. He paid us to murder Captain Everson.”

I almost choked on my tea. When I recovered, I translated for Ernie.

“Paid you?” he asked.

She turned to him, speaking in English now. “Yes. But we no do. We no can do.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Someone paid you and Choi Yong-kuang to kill Everson, but you couldn’t go through with it?”

She nodded. “After we left, someone else kill Everson.”

“Maybe this man who paid you,” I said.

She nodded again.

“What is his name?”

“He called himself Mr. Kim.”

I groaned inwardly. The most common name in Korea. More common than Smith or Jones in the United States. Miss Tae continued.

“Mr. Kim come in Silver Dragon Club. Quietly. Wearing hat and sunglasses. He watch me with Everson. When Everson leave, he talk to me. Find out I have boyfriend who is kampei.” Gangster. She was talking about Choi. “Later he meet us both and offer us money to murder Everson.”

“Did he say why?”

“No. He never say. But one thing …” Miss Tae ran her long fingers along the edge of her teacup. “He strange.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Kim. I don’t think he hate Everson. I don’t think he even know Everson.”

“Someone else wanted Everson killed?”

“I think so.”

“But you don’t know who,” I said.

Miss Tae shook her head. I kept asking questions but was unable to pull any further information from her. When his turn came, Ernie asked her questions having nothing to do with the Everson case. Before we left, Ernie had convinced her to go out with him. The date was set for next week, Tuesday. In her new job, in a nightclub downtown, Miss Tae wasn’t off until then.

Ernie was willing to wait. “You think she’s lying?” he asked.

We were walking down the brightly lit main drag of Itaewon.

“Probably,” I answered. “This mysterious Mr. Kim is a convenient scapegoat. But if she’s telling any part of the truth, it could mean that someone else actually did murder Captain Everson.”

“Like who?”

I had an idea. But I didn’t want to say anything yet. Not without proof.

The next morning I was on the phone again, identifying myself as a CID agent and asking questions. After about a dozen calls and a trip to the 8th Army housing office, I had the information I needed.

We sat at a table wedged against a side wall of the big Quonset hut that serves as the 8th Army snack bar. I sipped coffee. Ernie glanced at my notes. “Thorough,” he said.

“Thanks.”

What I had done was obtain a list from the Housing Officer of all the accompanied quarters on South Post along with the names of family members, and therefore I had a list of all the wives who lived on South Post. Almost two hundred names. First I crossed off all those who had children. The remaining list was about three dozen strong. I crossed off the enlisted families, and then I was down to twenty-six names.

“How’d you eliminate names after that?” Ernie asked.

“I made phone calls to their husbands’ units. Found out what shifts they worked.”

Ernie slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Of course. Everson used to visit her at night. So her husband had to work nights. Probably a swing shift.”

“Probably. That left us with three names.”

“So we go talk to them?”

“No. I’ve narrowed the list down to one.”

“One?”

“If I’m right, and if this woman were somehow involved in Everson’s death, she would’ve had to be able to persuade a Korean man, this mysterious Mr. Kim, to take the risk of approaching Miss Tae and Choi Yong-kuang and paying them to commit murder.”

“So she’d have to have a helluva a lot of influence over him.”

“Right,” I answered. “A helluva lot.”

Ernie glanced again at the three names. “Two of these women don’t work at all. What are they going to do? Offer their houseboys a pile of money to have somebody killed?”

I nodded. “But the third …”

Ernie whistled. “Big money,” he said.

The third entry was Gladys Hackburn, the wife of Colonel Orin Hackburn. She had her own career, a good one. Her current position was contracting officer for the 8th Army Procurement and Facilities Office. She was a woman who made the final decision on the disbursement of millions of US taxpayer dollars to local construction contractors.

She was a woman with power.

Before we approached Gladys Hackburn, I made a few discreet inquiries at the 8th Army Procurement Office. The biggest contract currently under construction was a Top Secret Signal Intelligence Facility actually being built into the side of a mountain south of Seoul. The dollar figures involved were staggering, and the Korean contractor with the most at risk was a wealthy businessman named Roh Ji-yun. From his background security check folder, I pulled his black-and-white mug shot. That afternoon I made a phone call, and a few minutes later Ernie and I drove our Army jeep out to the same teahouse where we had met Miss Tae before. She was already waiting.

When I pulled out the photo of Roh Ji-yun, her eyes popped wide.

“That’s him,” she said. “Mr. Kim.”

She was so impressed that Ernie almost convinced her to spend the rest of the afternoon with him at a nearby inn. I frustrated his plans.

“We have work to do,” I told him.

Ernie pouted.

Miss Tae merely seemed amused.

We found Roh Ji-yun at one of his construction sites. He wore expensive slacks, a silk tie, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. An orange hardhat balanced atop his big square head.

When I told him what we suspected, his face turned crimson and spittle erupted from fleshy lips.

The punch was a surprise. Most Koreans swear a lot when they’re angry, but usually they don’t hit.

I managed to dodge the blow, and then three of his assistants were on him, holding him back. He continued to curse in Korean, Ernie hurling epithets in English. It was obvious to me that we weren’t going to coax much information out of him.

But for now we had enough.

At the 8th Army Procurement Office, Gladys Hackburn’s secretary kept us cooling our heels for almost twenty minutes. Finally we were allowed to enter the inner sanctum.

She sat at a large teak desk, the flags of the United States and the Republic of Korea draped behind her. She wore a powder blue business suit, and her reddish hair was cut short and curled up in a wave that framed a youngish-looking oval face. When she stood to shake our hands, I could see that she maintained her figure at least as well as had the late Captain Richard Everson.

She smiled brightly.

An intelligent woman. A caring woman. A woman willing to help.

“What brings the CID to the Army Procurement Office?” she asked.

Instead of answering, I tossed the black-and-white glossy of Roh Ji-yun onto her desk. A puzzled frown crossed her face. She glanced down at the photo but leaned back slightly as if she were afraid to touch it.

“You had him follow Captain Everson,” I said. “To set him up for murder.”

She stood perfectly still for a moment. Ernie and I both held our breath, wondering if she’d break down or tear the photo up or start screaming at us and call the MPs to escort us out of her office.

She did none of those things. Instead she sat down slowly and interlaced her well-manicured fingers atop the varnished surface of her desk as if composing herself to make a speech in front of the Parent-Teachers Association. She cleared her throat and then spoke.

“I loathed him,” she said, “for what he did to me. The lies he told me. The promises he made about our future together.” She shook her head as if trying to rid herself of a bad dream. “But we had no future together. He was just using me.”

“So things didn’t work out,” I said. “And the plan to pay someone to kill Everson slowly grew in your mind. But you weren’t sure if it would work. So you followed, to make sure the job was completed. And when you saw him lying there in that alley and you were all alone and the ice pick was lying beside him …”

“Yes,” she said calmly, staring directly into my eyes. “I killed him. I picked up the ice pick, and I stabbed it into his heart. And what’s more,” she said, her face as smooth as polished stone, “I’d do it again.”

It took a while for the paperwork to be completed at 8th Army, translated, and then formally transmitted to the Korean National Police. It took even longer for the KNPs to send their report to the judge in charge of the Everson case. So long, in fact, that they almost hanged Choi Yong-kung for the murder of Captain Richard Everson despite the fact that we had a confession from Ms. Gladys Hackburn.

Finally, though, a few hours before the sentence was to be carried out, Choi was released from prison. His mother was there to greet him, of course, along with Miss Tae.

When the sun went down, Ernie and I made our way to Itaewon. We were ensconced on our usual barstools in our usual club in the heart of the nightclub district. The band had just taken their break when Choi Yong-kuang’s mother tugged on my shirtsleeve.

This time she didn’t pull me off the barstool, but I turned around anyway.

Everyone watched. The bartenders, the waitresses, the business girls and even the GIs, because they were aware of the man who’d been spared from hanging this morning.

Choi Yong-kuang’s mother didn’t speak. Head bowed, she held three sticks of burning incense in front of the billowing folds of her red silk Korean dress. She knelt to the floor, leaned forward, and lowered her head three times to the dirty tile.

It was sort of embarrassing. Ernie tried to laugh it off. I kept a straight face. For decorum’s sake, mainly, but also so no one would notice the pressure building in my eyes.