Nightmare Range

THE OPPOSITE OF O

“Never the twain shall meet,” a wise man once said.

He was referring to the Occident and the Orient but as a criminal investigator for the 8th United States Army in Seoul, Republic of Korea, I can assure you that the two worlds often meet. And in the case of Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg and Miss O Sung-hee, the two worlds collided at the intersection of warm flesh and the cold, sharpened tip of an Army-issue bayonet.

Ernie and I were dispatched from 8th Army Headquarters as soon as we received word about a stabbing near Camp Colbern, a communications compound located in the countryside some eighteen miles east of the teeming metropolis of Seoul.

Paldang-ni was the name of the village. It clings to the side of the gently-sloping foothills of the Kumdang Mountains just below the brick and barbed wire enclosure that surrounds Camp Colbern. The roads were narrow and farmers pushed wooden carts piled high with winter turnips and old women in short blouses and long skirts balanced huge bundles of laundry atop their heads. Ernie drove slowly through the busy lanes, avoiding splashing mud on the industrious pedestrians. Not because Ernie Bascom was a polite kind of guy but because he wasn’t quite sure where, in this convoluted maze of alleys, we would find the road that led to the Paldang Station of the Korean National Police.

Above a whitewashed building, the flag of Daehan Minguk, the Republic of Korea, fluttered in the cold morning breeze. The yin and the yang symbols clung to one another, red and blue teardrops embracing on a field of pure white. Ernie parked the jeep out front and together we strode into the station. Five minutes later we were interrogating a prisoner: a thin and very nervous young man by the name of Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg.

“They were sisters,” Private Rothenberg told us.

“Who?” Ernie asked.

“Miss O. And the woman she shared a hooch with, Miss Kang.”

“Sisters?”

“Yeah.”

Ernie crossed his arms and stared skeptically at Rothenberg. Rothenberg, for his part, allowed long forearms to hang listlessly over bony legs. The three-legged stool he sat upon was too low for him and his spine curved forward and his head bobbed. He looked like a man who’d abandoned any hope of receiving a fair shake.

“Didn’t it ever trouble you,” Ernie asked, “that the two women had different last names?”

Rothenberg shrugged bony shoulders. “I figured they had different fathers or something.”

I asked the main question. “Why’d you kill her, Rothenberg?”

He tilted his head toward me and his moist blue eyes became larger and rounder. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“What’s to believe? You haven’t told us anything one way or the other.”

“I told them.” He pointed to the three khaki-clad Korean National Policemen standing outside the cement-walled interrogation room. Their arms were crossed, fists clenched, narrow eyes lit with malice. Rays from a single electric bulb illuminated the interrogation room, revealing cobwebs and dried rat feces in unswept corners.

“What’d you tell the KNPs?” I asked.

“I told them I couldn’t have killed Miss O.”

“Why not?”

Rothenberg, once again, allowed his head to hang loosely on his long neck. “Because I love her,” he said.

Ernie smirked. Virtually every young GI who arrives in Korea and finds his first yobo down in the ville falls in love. The US Army is so used to this phenomenon that they require eight months’ worth of paperwork for an American GI to marry a Korean woman. What with a twelve-month tour of duty, a GI has to fall in love early and hard to be allowed permission to marry. Why all the hassles? Simple. To protect innocent young American GIs from the sinister wiles of Asian dragon ladies. At least, that’s the official rationale. The real reason is flat-out racism.

“Where were you last night, Rothenberg?”

“You mean after curfew?”

“Yes. But let’s start from the beginning. What time did you leave work?”

I dragged another wooden stool from against the wall of the interrogation room and sat down opposite Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg. I pulled out my pocket notebook and my ballpoint pen and prepared to write. Rothenberg started talking.

Ernie leaned against the cement wall, arms crossed, and continued to smirk. The KNPs continued to glare. A spider found its web and slowly crawled toward a quivering moth.

Our first stop was the Full Moon Teahouse.

Miss O had worked here. And, according to Rothenberg, she was the toast of the town, the tallest, most shapely, and best looking business girl in the village of Paldang-ni. The front door was covered with a brightly painted façade; a replica of a gateway to an ancient imperial palace. The heavy wooden door was locked. Ernie and I strolled around back. Here the setting was more real. Piled cases of empty soju bottles, plastic-wrapped garbage rotting in rusty metal cans, a long-tailed rat scurrying down a vented drainage ditch.

The back door was open. Ernie and I walked in. The odor of ammonia and soapy water assaulted our nostrils. After a short hallway, light from a red bulb guided us into the main serving room. Wooden tables with straight-backed chairs covered most of the floor. Cushioned booths lined the walls and behind a serving counter a youngish-looking Korean woman sat beneath a green-shaded lamp, laboring over heavy accounting ledgers. When she saw us, she pulled off her horn-rimmed glasses and stared, mouth agape.

I flashed my ID. Ernie found a switch and overhead fluorescent bulbs buzzed to life. The woman stared at my Criminal Investigation badge and finally said, “Weikurei nonun?” No bow. No polite verb endings. Just asking me what I wanted. A Korean cop would’ve popped her in the jaw. Being a tolerant Westerner, I shrugged off the insult.

“What we’re doing here,” I said, “is we want to talk to Miss Kang Mi-ryul.”

She touched the tip of her forefinger to her nose. A hand gesture not used in the West. She was saying, that’s me. I started to explain why we were there but she’d already guessed. She said, “Miss O,” and pulled out a handkerchief. After a few tears, she calmed down and started to talk. In Korean. Telling me all about her glorious and gorgeous friend, the late O Sung-hee. About Miss O’s amorous conquests, about the job offers from other teahouse and bar owners in town, about the men-both Korean and American-who constantly pursued her.

Miss Kang closed the accounting books and after shrugging on a thick cotton coat, walked with us a few blocks through the village. It was almost noon now and a few chop houses were open. The aroma of fermented cabbage and garlic drifted through the air. Miss Kang led us to her hooch, the same hooch she and Miss O had shared. She allowed us to peruse Miss O’s meager personal effects. Cosmetics, hair products, a short row of dresses in a plastic armoire, tattered magazines with the faces of international film stars grinning out at us. Kang told us that Miss O’s hometown was Kwangju, far to the south, and she’d come north to escape the poverty and straight-laced traditionalism of the family she’d been born into. When I asked her who had killed Miss O, she blanched and pretended to faint. It was a pretty good act because she plopped loudly to the ground and a neighbor called the Korean National Police, a contingent of which had been following us anyway.

In less than a minute they arrived and glared at us as if Miss Kang’s passing out had been our fault. One of the younger cops stood a little too close to Ernie and Ernie shoved him. That caused a wrestling match and a lot of cursing until the senior KNP and I broke it up.

So much for good relationships between international law enforcement agencies.

As we left, Miss Kang was still crying and two of the KNPs, God bless them, were still following us.

Camp Colbern wasn’t much better.

Rothenberg worked in the 304th Signal Battalion Communications Center. Electronic messages came in over secure lines, then were printed, copied, and distributed to the appropriate bureaucratic cubby holes. Apparently, Camp Colbern had two functions. First, as a base camp for an army aviation unit, boasting a landing pad with a dozen helicopters and associated support personnel and second, as a relay station for the grid of US Army signal sites that runs up and down the spine of South Korea. When I asked the signal officers a few technical questions, they clammed up. I didn’t have a “need to know,” they told me.

“How do they know what we ‘need to know’?” Ernie asked me. “This is a criminal investigation. We don’t know what we need to know until after we already know it.”

I shrugged.

Private Rothenberg had been a steady and reliable worker, I was told. A good soldier. He had no close buddies because his off duty time was spent out in the village of Paldang-ni, apparently mooning over Miss O Sung-hee.

Ernie pulled a photograph from his pocket, one he’d palmed while we rummaged through O’s personal effects at Miss Kang’s hooch. It was of Miss O and Miss Kang standing arm in arm, smiling at the camera, in front of a boat rental quay on the bank of a river. The sign in Korean said Namhan-kang, the Namhan River, not far from here. Miss O was a knockout, with a big beautiful smile and even white teeth and a figure that would make any sailor-or any GI-jump ship. Miss Kang, by comparison, was a plain-looking slip of a girl. Shorter, thinner, less attractive. Her smile didn’t dazzle as Miss O’s did, Rather it looked unsure of itself, slightly afraid, wary of the world.

Atop her head, at a rakish angle, Miss O wore a black baseball cap. Using a magnifying glass, I examined the embroidery on the front. It was a unit designation: 545th Army Aviation Battalion, Company C. In smaller print on the side was a shorter row of letters. It took stronger light for me to make them out. Finally, I did: Boson. I handed the photograph back to Ernie.

Ernie took another long look at the gorgeous Miss O and then slipped the photo back into his pocket. Something told me he had no intention of letting it go.

The air traffic controllers at the Camp Colbern aviation tower told us that Chief Warrant Officer Mike Boson was due in at sixteen thirty-four thirty P.M. civilian time. Ernie and I were standing on the edge of the Camp Colbern helipad when the Huey UH-1N helicopter landed. As the blades gradually slowed their rotation, a crewman hopped out and then the engine whined and the blades slowed further and finally the co-pilot and then the pilot jumped out of the chopper. Chief Warrant Officer Mike Boson slipped off his helmet as he walked toward us and tucked it beneath his arm.

“The tower told me you wanted to talk to me,” he said.

Ernie and I flashed our identification. I asked if there was a more comfortable place to talk.

“No,” Boson said. “We talk here. What do you want?”

The chopper’s engine still buzzed. The crewman and the co-pilot hustled about on various errands, all the while listening to what we were saying. Boson, apparently, wanted it that way. We asked Boson where he had been last night, the night of the murder.

“In the O Club.” The Officers’ Club here on Camp Colbern. “For dinner, a couple of beers, and then to the BOQ for a good night’s rest.” The Bachelor Officer’s Quarters.

“You didn’t visit Miss O Sung-hee?” Ernie asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Boson shrugged. “I don’t run the ville when I have duty the next morning.”

“You were scheduled to fly?”

“Yes. To Taegu to pick up the Nineteenth Support Group commander. And then south from there.”

“When did you hear Miss O was dead?”

“Just before I left out this morning. Everyone was talking about it.”

“Did you realize you’d be questioned?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I knew her but a lot of other guys knew her too.”

“Like who?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know their names.”

We continued to question Warrant Officer Boson and he finally admitted that he’d spent more than just a few nights with Miss O Sung-hee and that he’d also escorted her and Miss Kang to the Namkang River the day the photograph Ernie showed him had been taken. They’d rented a boat and rowed to a resort island in the middle of the river and a few hours later returned to Paldang-ni where Boson spent the night with Miss O.

“In her hooch?” I asked.

Warily, Boson nodded.

“It’s tiny,” Ernie said. “So where did Miss Kang sleep?”

For the third time, Boson shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“But she lived there too, didn’t she?”

“Yes. But every time I stayed with Miss O, she’d disappear. I figured she bunked with the landlady who owns the hooch.”

“But you weren’t sure?”

“Why would I care?”

We asked if he knew Rothenberg. He didn’t.

“You didn’t know a lot of things,” Ernie said.

Boson bristled. “I’m here to fly helicopters. Not to write a history of business girls in the ville.”

“And not to murder anyone?”

Boson dropped his helmet and leapt for Ernie’s throat. I thrust my forearms forward, blocked him and managed to hold Boson back, although it was a struggle. The chopper crewman and the co-pilot ran over. I shoved Chief Warrant Officer Boson backward, they held him, and I dragged Ernie off of the helipad.

Night fell purple and gloomy over the village of Paldang-ni. But then a small miracle happened. Neon blinked to life: red, yellow, purple, and gold. Some of it pulsating, some of it rotating, all of it beckoning to any young GI with a few dollars in his pocket to enter the Jade Lady Nightclub or the Frozen Chosun Bar or the Full Moon Teahouse. Tailor shops and brassware emporiums and drug stores and sporting goods outlets lined the narrow lanes. Rock music pulsated out of beaded curtains. A late autumn Manchurian wind blew cold and moist through the alleyways but scantily clad Korean business girls stood in mini-skirts and hot pants and low-cut cotton blouses, their creamy bronze flesh pimpled like plucked geese.

The women cooed as we passed but Ernie and I ignored them and entered the first bar on the right: The Frozen Chosun. They served draft OB, Oriental Brewery beer, on tap. We jolted back a short mug and a shot of black market brandy, ignored the entreaties of the listless hostesses scattered around the dark enclosure, and continued on to the next dive. At each stop, I inquired about Miss O Sung-hee. Everyone knew her. They all knew that she’d been murdered brutally and they all assumed that the killer had been her jealous erstwhile boyfriend, an American GI by the name of Everett P. Rothenberg. But a few of the waitresses and bartenders and business girls I talked to speculated further. Miss O had Korean boyfriends-a few of them. Mostly men of power. Business owners in the bar district. But one of the men stood out. It was only after I’d laid out cash on an overpriced sweetheart drink that one under-weight bar hostess breathed his name. Shin, she said. Or that’s what everyone called him: Mr. Shin. He was a dresser and a player and had no visible means of support other than, she’d heard, playing a mean game of pool and beating up the occasional business girl that fell under his spell.

“A kampei,” I said to her. A gangster.

She shook her head vehemently. “No. Not that big. He small. How you say?” The overly made up young woman thought for a moment and then came up with the appropriate phrase. “He small potatoes.”

In addition to buying her a drink, I slipped her a thousand won note-about two bucks. The tattered bill disappeared into the frayed waistband of her skirt.

When Ernie and I entered the King’s Pavilion Pool Hall, all eyes gazed at us.

There was no way for two Miguks to enter the second-story establishment surreptitiously. It was a large open room filled with cigarette smoke and stuffed with green felt pool tables from one end to the other. Narrow-waisted Korean men held pool cues and leaned over tables and lounged against walls, all of them puffing away furiously on cheap Korean cigarettes and all of them glaring at us, eyes narrow, lips curled into snarls, hatred filling the air even more thickly than the cloud of pungent tobacco smoke. This pool hall wasn’t for GIs. It was for Koreans. The GIs had their bars, plenty of them, about two blocks away from here in the foreigner’s bar district. Nobody, even the man who collected money at the entranceway, wanted us here.

Ernie snarled back. “Screw you too,” he whispered.

“Steady,” I replied.

In Korean, I spoke to the bald-headed man collecting the fees. “Mr. Shin?” I asked. “Odiso?” Where is he?

The man looked blankly at me. Then he turned to the men in the pool hall. From somewhere toward the back, a radio hissed and a Korean female singer warbled a rueful note. I said it again, louder this time, “Mr. Shin.”

The snarls turned to grimaces of disdain. Korean cuss words floated our way. A few men laughed. More of them turned away from us, lifting their cues, returning their attention to eight balls and rebound angles and pockets. Nobody came forward. Nobody would tell us who Mr. Shin was or, more importantly, where to find him.

Ernie and I turned and walked back down the stairway. At the next pool hall, we repeated the same procedure. With the same result.

Later that night, we stood at the spot where Miss O had been murdered.

The site was located atop a hill overlooking both Paldang-ni and Camp Colbern. On the opposite side of the hill, to the north, moonlight shone down on the sinuous flow of the Namhan River. One or two boats drifted in the distance, fishermen on their way home to straw-thatched huts. On the peak of the hill stood a tile-roofed shrine with a stone foundation and an enormous brass bell hanging from sturdy rafters. No one was there now but I imagined that periodically Buddhist monks walked up the well-worn path to sound the ancient-looking bell.

“When did they find her?” Ernie asked.

I pulled out a penlight to read my tattered notebook.

“Zero five hundred this morning,” I said. “Just before dawn. Two Buddhist monks who came up here to say their morning prayers. She was laying right here.”

I pointed at the far edge of the stone foundation, nearest the river.

“Stabbed in the back once,” I continued. “And then four or five times in the chest. She bled to death.”

“And the murder weapon?”

“Never found. The KNPs assume it was a bayonet for two reasons, the size and depth of the entry wounds and the fact that Rothenberg, being a GI, would’ve had access to one.”

“His bayonet was found in his field gear.”

“He could’ve stolen another one. Happens all the time.”

“Or,” Ernie replied, “the killer could’ve bought one on the black market.”

I nodded. Ernie was right. The KNPs were taking a big leap in locking up Rothenberg. So far, they had no hard evidence linking him to the murder. Still, public opinion had to be mollified. When a young Korean woman is murdered, someone has to be locked up, and fast. Otherwise, the public will wonder why they’re spending their hard-earned tax dollars on police salaries. Someone has to pay for the crime. Like the yin and the yang symbols on the national flag, harmony in the universe must be restored. Someone is murdered, someone must pay for that murder. Everett P. Rothenberg wouldn’t be the first American GI convicted in Korea of something that there was no definitive proof he’d actually done. But if that was the case, harmony would come to his defense. If there was little or no evidence proving that he did it, Rothenberg would receive a light sentence, maybe four years in a Korean jail and then deportation back to the States. So far, no one-including me and Ernie-had any real idea who’d murdered Miss O Sung-hee.

Rothenberg’s alibi was sketchy. After finishing the day shift at the 304th Signal Battalion Comm Center, he’d eaten chow, showered, changed clothes and headed to the ville. At about eighteen hundred hours, he’d arrived at the Full Moon Teahouse. There, he’d sat in a corner sipping on ginseng tea while Miss Kang and Miss O Sung-hee worked. Miss Kang did most of the actual serving and preparation. Miss O sat with customers-Korean businessmen, small groups of American officers-adding beauty and charm to their evening. Before the midnight curfew, according to Rothenberg, Miss O convinced him that she was too tired to see him that evening and he should return to Camp Colbern. He did. Since he returned to his base camp before the midnight-to-four curfew, the MPs at the main gate didn’t bother to log in his name. Lights were already out in the barracks. In the dark, he’d undressed, stuffed his clothes and wallet in his wall locker, and hopped into his bunk. None of the other GIs in the barracks had any recollection of his arrival.

Ernie walked over to the bell and rapped it with his knuckles. A low moan reverberated from the sculpted bronze, like the whispered sigh of a giant. We started back down the trail. It was steep. Boulders and thick brambles of bushes blocked our way on either side. We stepped carefully, inching forward, watching our step in the bright moonlight.

“Why’d we bother coming up here?” Ernie asked.

As he spoke, the earth shook-just slightly, as if something heavy had thudded to the ground. I looked back. I could see nothing except Ernie staring at me quizzically, wondering why I had stopped. Then two more thuds, one after the other, shallower this time, as if something were skipping forward, becoming louder, rolling toward us.

It emerged from the darkness above Ernie’s head, looking for all the world like a steam roller from hell.

“Watch out!” I shouted.

I leapt to the side of the trail and Ernie, not yet fully understanding, followed suit. He dove into a thicket of branches and I landed atop a small boulder and scrambled over it to the opposite side away from the trail.

The noise grew deafening, one crash after another, and then an enormous metal cylinder flew out of the night, rolling down the trail, careening to the right and then left; barreling down the trail and smashing everything in its path. It clipped the edge of the thicket and missed Ernie by a couple of feet. I crouched. The huge metal rolling pin crashed against the boulder and the cylinder flew over, only inches above my head. After it passed, Ernie and I sat up, staring at moonlight glistening off the cylinder. The careening monolith continued its pell-mell rush down the side of the hill, smashing an old wooden fence outside a small animal shelter and then hitting the shelter itself. Lumber flew everywhere. The cylinder kept rolling until it slowed and finally landed in a muddy rice paddy with a huge, sloppy splat.

“What the hell was that?” Ernie asked.

I rose slowly to my feet, checking uphill to make sure nothing more was coming at us. “The bell,” I said.

“The what?”

“The bronze bell. Come on.”

We ran back up the pathway. At the top of the hill, the shrine stood empty. Using my penlight I examined the weathered ropes hanging beneath splintered rafters.

“Sliced,” I said.

“With what?” Ernie asked.

“Can’t be sure but with something sharp. Maybe a bayonet.”

Mr. Shin found us.

So did about five of his pals. Light from a yellow streetlamp shone on angry faces, all of then belonging to young punks with grease-backed hair and sneers on their lips.

“Why are you looking for me?” Shin asked in Korean.

We stood in an alley not far from the King’s Pavilion Pool Hall Ernie and I had stopped in earlier today.

“Your girlfriend,” I told him, “Miss O Sung-hee, was murdered last night. Where were you while she was being killed?”

Shin puffed one time on his cigarette-overly dramatically-and then flicked the flaming butt to the ground. Ernie braced himself, about one long stride away from me, his side to the Korean man nearest him. He was ready to fight. Five to two were the odds, but we’d faced worse.

“Not my girlfriend,” Shin said at last, switching to English. “No more. Break up long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Maybe one month.”

A long time all right. “Miss Kang didn’t mention your name to the Korean police. Why not?”

“She no can do.”

“ ‘No can do?’ Why not?”

“She my … how you say?… sister.”

“She’s your sister?”

“Yes. Kang not her real name. Real name same mine. Shin.”

“So you met Miss O through your sister?”

“Yes.”

“Why’d you break up with Miss O?”

Shin shrugged. “I tired of her.”

I didn’t believe that for a minute. Shin was a tough guy all right and like tough punks all over the world there would be a certain type of woman available to him. Women who thought little of themselves. Women who, in order to build up their self-esteem, flocked toward men who were on the outs with the law. Men who they considered to be exciting. Korea, like everywhere else, had its share of this type of woman. But from everything I’d heard about Miss O Sung-hee, I didn’t believe she was that type. She went for cops and attorneys and helicopter pilots. Men of power. Men of real accomplishment. Not men who were broke and hung around pool halls.

“She dumped you,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Miss O. She think, ‘I no like Shin anymore.’ She tell you karra chogi.” Go away.

Shin’s sneer twisted in anger. “No woman tell Shin go away.”

Ernie guffawed and said to me, “Is this guy dumb or what?” He stepped past me and glared at Shin. “So you took Miss O to the top of the hill and you used a knife and you killed her.”

Shin realized that he was digging a hole for himself. “No. No way. I no take. That night, I in pool hall. All night. Owner tell you. He see me there.”

Shin mentioned the pool hall owner because even he knew that nobody would believe the testimony of him and his buddies. I crossed my arms and kept my gaze steady on Shin’s eyes. He was a frightened young man. And when he’d heard that Ernie and I were looking for him, he’d voluntarily presented himself. Both these points were in his favor. Could he have murdered Miss O Sung-hee? Sure he could have. But something told me that his alibi would hold up. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here anxious to clear his name. If he’d murdered her, he’d be long gone. Still, I’d check with the pool hall owner as soon as I could.

Ernie had his own way of testing Shin’s sincerity. He stepped forward until his chest was pushed up almost against Shin’s. Ernie glared at Shin for a while and then snarled. “Out of my way.”

Shin seemed about to do something, to punch Ernie, but indecision danced in his glistening black eyes. Finally, he sighed and stepped back, making way for Ernie and me. Grumbling, his pals made way too.

We ran the ville.

Shots, beers, business girls on our laps. Ernie was enjoying the rock music and the girls and the frenzied crowds and gave himself over to a night of mindless pleasure. Me, I sipped on my drink, barely heard the music, and ignored the caresses of the gorgeous young women who surrounded me.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Ernie asked.

I shook my head.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “What could possibly be wrong? We’re away from the headshed, on temporary duty, we have a pocket full of travel pay, and we’re surrounded by booze and bands and business girls. What more could you possibly want?”

“A clue,” I answered.

“A clue?”

“A clue as to who murdered Miss O Sung-hee.”

Ernie shrugged. “Maybe the KNPs were right all along. Maybe it was Rothenberg.”

And maybe not.

When the midnight curfew came along, GIs either scurried back to Camp Colbern or paired up with a Korean business girl. Ernie found one for me and the four of us went to their rooms upstairs in some dive. In the dark, I lay next to the girl, ignoring her. Finally, I slept.

Just before dawn, a cock crowed. I sat up. The business girl was still asleep, snoring softly. I rose from the low bed, slipped on my clothes and, without bothering to wake Ernie, walked over to the Korean National Police station.

The sun was higher when I returned. After gathering the information I needed at the police station, I’d walked over to Camp Colbern. There, in the billeting room assigned to me and Ernie, I’d showered, shaved, and then gone to the Camp Colbern Snack Bar. Breakfast was ham, eggs, and an English muffin. Now, back in Paldang-ni, I pounded on the door to Ernie’s room. The business girl opened it and let me in. Ernie was still asleep.

“Reveille,” I said.

He opened his eyes and sat up. “What?”

“Time to make morning formation, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Why? We don’t know who killed Miss O so what difference does it make?”

“We know now.”

“We do?”

I filled him in on the testimony I’d received this morning from Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg. When I finished, Ernie thought about it. “You and your Korean customs. Why would that mean anything to anybody?”

“Get up,” I told him. “We have someone to talk to.”

Ernie grumbled but dressed quickly.

We wound our way through the narrow alleys of Paldang-ni. Instead of American GIs and Korean business girls, the streets were now filled with children wearing black uniforms toting heavy backpacks on their way to school and farmers shoving carts piled high with garlic or cabbage or mounds of round Korean pears. We passed the Dragon Lady Teahouse and just to be sure, I checked the doors, both front and back. Locked tight. Then we continued through the winding maze, heading toward the hooch of Miss Kang.

What I’d questioned Rothenberg about this morning concerned his friendship with Miss Kang. How they’d both sat up nights in the hooch waiting for Miss O. But Miss O would stay out after curfew and then not come home at four in the morning and often Rothenberg had to go to work before he knew what had happened to her. But sometimes she’d be back early with some story about how she stayed at a friend’s house and how they were having so much fun talking and playing flower cards that the time had slipped by and she hadn’t realized that midnight had come and gone and she’d been trapped at her friend’s house until after curfew lifted at four in the morning.

“You knew it was all lies, didn’t you?” I asked.

Rothenberg allowed his head to sag. “I guess I did.”

“But Miss Kang knew for sure.”

“Yeah,” Rothenberg said. “Miss O had a lot of boyfriends. I realize that now.”

Private Everett P. Rothenberg went on to tell me that sometimes Miss O made both him and Miss Kang leave the hooch completely.

“She’d tell us that family was coming over for the weekend. And she didn’t want them to know that a GI like me was staying in her hooch. So Miss Kang helped out, she took me to her father’s home near Yoju. It was about a thirty-minute bus ride. When we arrived at her father’s home they were real friendly to me. I’d take off my shoes and enter the house and bow three times to her father like Miss Kang taught me. You know, on your knees and everything.”

“You took gifts?”

“Right. Miss Kang made me buy fruit. She said it’s against Korean custom to go ‘empty hands.’ ”

“And you prayed to her ancestors?”

“Some old photographs of a man and a woman.”

“And you went to their graves?”

“How’d you know? To the grave mounds on the side of the hill. We took rice cakes out there and offered them to the spirits. When the spirits didn’t eat them, me and Miss Kang did.” He laughed. “She always told me that food offered to the spirits has no taste. Why? Because the spirits take the flavor out of it and all you’re left with is the dough.”

“Is that true?”

“It was for me. But I never liked rice cakes to begin with.”

I stared at Rothenberg a long time. Finally, he fidgeted.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “If you think there was something between me and Miss Kang, you’re wrong. Sung-hee is my girl. Miss O. I was faithful to her.”

“You were,” I said softly.

His head drooped. “Right,” he said. “I was.”

Miss Kang wasn’t in her hooch.

“She go pray,” the landlady told us.

“At the shrine at the top of the hill,” I said, pointing toward the Namhan River.

Her eyes widened. “How you know?”

I shrugged. Ernie and I thanked her, walked back through the village and started up the narrow trail that led out of Paldang-ni, over the hills, and eventually to the banks of the Namhan River. On the way, we passed the bronze bell. It still hadn’t been moved and sat amongst a pile of rotted lumber.

At the top of the hill, we found her. She squatted on the stone platform of the shrine, just below where the bell would’ve been. Ernie walked up to her quickly, shoved her upright, pressed her against one of the wooden support beams, and frisked her. He tossed out a wallet, keys, some loose change and, finally, an Army-issue bayonet.

Miss Kang squatted back down, covering her face with her hands. Narrow shoulders heaved. She was crying.

Ernie backed away, rolling his eyes, exasperated.

After she shed a few more tears, maybe she’d open up to us. I was about to whisper to Ernie to be patient when, behind me, a pebble clattered against stone. Ernie was too busy staring at the quivering form of Miss Kang to notice. As I turned, something dark exploded out of the night.

Ernie shouted.

For a moment, I was gone. Darkness, bright lights, and then more bright lights. I felt myself reeling backward and then I hit something hard and I willed my mind to clear. The darkness gave way to blurred vision. Ernie slapped me on the cheek.

“Sueño, can you stand?”

I stood up.

“Come on. He hit you with some sort of club and when I lunged at him I tripped on this stupid stone platform. He and Kang took off.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Shin.”

I followed Ernie’s pointing finger. Fuzzy vision slowly focused. The early morning haze had lifted and more sunlight filtered through bushes and low trees. In the distance, two figures sprinted down the pathway, heading back toward Paldang-ni.

“Come on!” I shouted.

“My sentiments exactly,” Ernie said. “But watch out. She took the bayonet.”

And then we were after them.

A crowd had gathered in the central square of Paldang-ni. It was like a small park, surrounded on either side by produce vendors, fishmongers, and butcher shops. No lawn but a few carefully tended rose bushes were ringed by small rocks. Under the shade of an ancient oak tree, old men-wearing traditional white pantaloons and blue silk vests and knitted horsehair hats-squatted on their heels, smoking tobacco from long-stemmed pipes. Groups of them gathered around wooden boards playing changki, Korean chess.

Halabojis, they were called. Grandfathers.

One of the halaboji’s horsehair hat had fallen into the dust. So had his long-stemmed pipe. Shin held him, his back pressed firmly against the trunk of the old oak. Miss Kang stood next to him, the sharp tip of her bayonet pressed against the loose flesh of the grandfather’s neck.

“Get back!” she screamed at me in English. “We’ll kill him.”

I stood with my arms to my side. Ernie paced a few cautious steps away to my left. I knew what he was thinking. Could he pull his.45 and take a clear shot at Kang’s head before she could slice the old man’s throat? But at that distance, over ten yards, it would be risky.

“Put the knife down,” I told Miss Kang.

“Go away!” she shouted. “My brother and I will leave Paldang-ni. We’ll never come back.”

A crowd of local citizens had started to gather. Their mouths were open, shocked at what they were seeing. Elders were revered in Korea, never abused like this. Mumbled curses erupted from the crowd.

“The KNPs are on the way,” I said. “Put the knife down.”

Of course I had no idea if the KNPs had been alerted but they would be soon. Ernie was inching farther to the left, attempting to evade Kang’s direct line of sight. I had to stall for time, before Ernie chanced a shot or Miss Kang decided that one less grandfather wouldn’t be missed one way or the other.

“You had good reason for what you did,” I told Miss Kang.

Her eyes widened. Perspiration flowed down her wrinkled forehead, forming a puddle beneath her eyes. “Yes,” she said, surprised. “That’s what I told my brother. I had good reason. Miss O made me do it.”

People were shutting down produce stands now, running to the back of the crowd to stand on tiptoes to see what was going on.

Miss Kang kept talking. “She was using him.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Miss O. She was using Everett.”

She meant Private Rothenberg. “How so?” I asked.

“She tricked him. Took his money. Never slept with him. Only had fun, changing from one boyfriend to another. Making me leave my own room. Never paying her share of the rent. So I took Everett. I was nice to him. He met my family. He prayed at our grave mounds. He liked me.”

Using her free hand, the one without the bayonet, Miss Kang wiped flowing perspiration from her eyes and stared directly at me. “He liked me. I know he did.”

“But you talked to Miss O one night. Atop the hill at the shrine with the bronze bell. You argued.”

“No!” Miss Kang shook her head vehemently. “We didn’t argue. I told Miss O about everything she did wrong. She didn’t argue. She agreed. She knew she was doing wrong. But after I told her everything and told her she should leave Everett alone, she laughed at me.”

Miss Kang stood incredulous, lost in her own story. Lost in the memory of the unbridled temerity of the arrogant Miss O Sung-hee. “She said that she would take Everett’s money and use him for as long as she wanted to and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Shin looked about frantically, knowing that as the crowd grew his chance of escape grew less. He shouted at his sister to shut up. Her head snapped back toward him.

Ernie by now had the position he wanted, on the extreme left of Shin’s peripheral vision. He reached inside his jacket and unhooked the leather shoulder holster of his.45. Miss Kang’s head was bobbing around while the old man leaned his skull backward, trying to avoid the sharp tip of the bayonet that pointed into his neck. Tears rolled down the halaboji’s face.

Maybe it was the sight of these tears that enraged the crowd most. Whatever it was, suddenly a barrage of garlic cloves was heaved out of the crowd. They smacked the trunk of the oak tree, barely missing Shin and the old man. Enraged, Miss Kang shouted back at them to stop. The crowd roared. This time it was a head of Napa cabbage that exploded at Kang’s feet. She hopped. Ernie pulled his.45, held it with both hands in front of him. Still no shot. I took a couple of steps forward. Miss Kang swung the tip of the bayonet my way.

That was the signal for the crowd to unleash their rage. Amidst shouts of anger, more produce flew at Shin and the grandfather and Miss Kang. Garlic, persimmons, fat pears, even a few dead mackerel.

Then the enraged citizens of Paldang-ni surged forward. Ernie raised the barrel of his.45 toward the sky, holding his fire. I tried to run at Miss Kang but a woman bumped me and, to avoid falling on her, I slowed. The entire mob pushed forward, some of them brandishing sticks, some hoes, some with nothing more than their bare fists.

For a second, Miss Kang held her ground; eyes wide with fright, bayonet pointed forward. But then, like a swimmer being drowned by a tidal wave, the crowd enveloped her. Shin screamed and let go of the old man and tried to run. He didn’t get far.

Fifty people surrounded the old oak tree. Kicking, screeching, pummeling.

Ernie fired a shot into the air. No one seemed to notice. Rounding a corner at the edge of the square, a phalanx of KNPs ran across pounded earth. Wielding riot batons, swinging freely, they forced the crowd to disperse.

Only Miss Kang and Mr. Shin lay in the dust. Shin was hurt. Leg broken, compound fracture, maybe an arm. I knelt next to Miss Kang Mi-ryul. Her nose was bashed in, the one she’d pointed to only yesterday. Also bashed in was her forehead and the side of her skull. Using my forefinger and thumb, I pinched the flesh above her carotid artery. The skin was still warm but the flow of blood, the force of life-giving fluid, had stopped.

Back at 8th Army I typed up my report. Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg had already been released by the Korean National Police. Mr. Shin, the pool player, had been taken to a hospital and was recovering nicely, although he was facing hard time for the Korean legal equivalents of aggravated assault and aiding and abetting a murderess.

Miss O Sung-hee was scheduled to be buried by her family in a grave mound back in Kwangju. Miss Kang Mi-ryul, on the other hand, would be cremated. That’s all her family could afford.

What they did with her ashes, I never knew.