Nightmare Range

PUSAN NIGHTS

“The last time the USS Kitty Hawk pulled into the Port of Pusan, the Shore Patrol had to break up a total of thirty-three barroom brawls in the Texas Street area. Routine. What we didn’t expect was the fourteen sailors who were assaulted and robbed in the street. Six of them had to be hospitalized.

“From eyewitness accounts, the local provost marshal’s office ascertained that the muggings appeared to have been perpetrated by Americans, probably the shipmates of the victims. However, no one was caught or charged with a crime.”

We were in the drafty headquarters building of the 8th Army’s Criminal Investigation Division in Seoul, two hundred miles up the Korean Peninsula from Pusan. When the first sergeant called me and Ernie into his office, we expected the usual tirade for not having made enough black market arrests. What we got was a new assignment. The first sergeant kept it simple.

“First, make sure you take the right flight out of Kimpo. Then, when you land in Pusan, infiltrate the waterfront area and find out who’s been pulling off these muggings.”

Ernie adjusted his glasses and tugged on his tie.

“Maybe the gang who did it has left the navy and gone on to better things.”

“Not hardly. The Kitty Hawk was here only six months ago. The tour in the navy is four years, minimum. Not enough time to break up the old gang.”

Ernie got quiet. I knew him. He didn’t want to seem too anxious to take on this assignment, an all-expenses-paid trip to the wildest port in Northeast Asia, and he was cagey enough to put up some objections, to put some concern in the first sergeant’s mind about how difficult it would be to catch these guys. That way, if we felt like it, we could goof off the whole time and come up with zilch, and the groundwork for our excuse was already laid.

I had to admire him. Always thinking.

“And you, Sueño.” The first sergeant turned his cold gray eyes on me. “I don’t want you running off and becoming involved in some grandiose schemes that don’t concern you.”

“You mean, stay away from the navy brass.”

“I mean catch these guys who are doing the muggings. That’s what you’re being paid for. Some of those sailors were hurt badly the last time they were here, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

I nodded, keeping my face straight. Neither one of us was going to mouth off now and lose a chance to go to Pusan. To Texas Street.

The first sergeant handed me a brown envelope stuffed with copies of the blotter reports from the last time the Kitty Hawk had paid a visit to the Land of the Morning Calm. He stood up and, for once, shook both our hands.

“I hate to let you guys out of my sight. But nobody can infiltrate a village full of bars and whores and drunken sailors better than you two.” His face changed from sunshine to clouds. “If, however, you don’t bring me back some results, I guarantee you’ll have my highly polished size twelve combat boot placed firmly on your respective posteriors. You got that?”

Ernie grinned, a little weasel-toothed, half-moon grin. I concentrated on keeping my facial muscles steady. I’m not sure it worked.

We clattered down the long hallway and bounded down the steps to Ernie’s jeep. When he started it up, he shouted, “Three days in Texas Street!”

I was happy. So was he.

But I had the uneasy twisting in my bowels that happens whenever I smell murder.

By the time we landed in Pusan I had read over the blotter reports. They were inconclusive, based mainly on hearsay from Korean bystanders. The assailants were Americans, they said, dressed in blue jeans and nylon jackets, like their victims and like all the sailors on liberty who prowled the portside alleys of Texas Street. The Navy Shore Patrol had stopped some fights in barrooms and on the streets, but they were unable to apprehend even one of the muggers.

By inter-service agreement, the army’s military police increased their patrols near the dock areas when a huge naval presence moved into the port of Pusan. The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, with its accompanying flotilla and its over five thousand sailors, more than qualified as a huge naval presence.

The MPs were stationed, for the most part, on the inland army base of Hialeah Compound. They played on Texas Street, knew the alleys, the girls, the mama-sans. But somehow they had been unable to make one arrest.

Sailors and soldiers don’t often hit it off. Especially when the sailors are only in town for three days and manage to jack up all the prices by trying to spend two months’ pay in a few hours. It seemed as if the MPs would be happy to arrest a few squids.

Something told me they weren’t trying.

We caught a cab at the airport outside of Pusan and arrived at Hialeah Compound in the early afternoon. We got a room at the billeting office, and the first thing we did was nothing. Ernie took a nap. I kept thumbing through the blotter report, worrying the pages to death.

There was a not very detailed road map of the city of Pusan in a tourist brochure in the rickety little desk provided to us by billeting. Hialeah Compound was about three miles inland from the main port and had gotten its name because prior to the end of World War II the Japanese occupation forces used its flat plains as a track for horse racing. The US Army turned it into a base to provide security and logistical support for all the goods pouring into the harbor. Pusan was a large city, and its downtown area sprawled between Hialeah Compound and the port. Pushed up along the docks, like a long, slender barnacle, was Texas Street. Merchant sailors from all over the world passed through this port, but it was only the US Navy that came here in such force.

Using a thick-leaded pencil I plotted the locations of the muggings on the little map. The dots defined the district known as Texas Street. Not one was more than half a mile from where the Kitty Hawk would dock.

Ernie and I approached the MP desk.

“Bascom and Sueño,” Ernie said. “Reporting in from Seoul.”

The desk sergeant looked down at us over the rim of his comic book.

“Oh, yeah. Heard you guys were coming. Hold on. The duty officer wants to talk to you.”

After a few minutes, a little man with his chest stuck out and face like a yapping Chihuahua appeared. He seemed lost in his highly starched fatigues. Little gold butter bars flapped from his collar.

“The commanding officer told me to give you guys a message.”

We waited.

The lieutenant tried to expand his chest. The starched green material barely moved.

“Don’t mess with our people. We have a good MP company down here; any muggings that happen, we’ll take care of them; and we don’t need you two sending phony reports up to Seoul, trying to make us look bad.”

His chest deflated slightly. He seemed exhausted and out of breath.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

Ernie walked around him and looked back up at the desk sergeant. “How many patrols are you going to have out at Texas Street tonight?”

“Four. Three MPs per jeep.”

“Three?”

The desk sergeant shrugged. “We’d have four per jeep if we could. The advance party of the Kitty Hawk’s arriving tonight.”

“All patrols roving?”

“No. One in the center of the strip, two more on either end, and one patrol roving.”

“You must put your studs in the center.”

“You got that right.”

“Who performs your liaison with the Shore Patrol?”

The desk sergeant shrugged again. “The lieutenant here, such as it is. Mainly they run their own show, out of the port officer’s headquarters down by the docks.”

“Thanks. If we find out anything-and there’s time-we’ll let your MPs make the arrest.”

“Don’t do us any favors. Those squids can kill each other for all I care.”

The lieutenant shot him a look. The desk sergeant glanced at the lieutenant and then back down at the comic book on his desk.

We turned to walk out. Ernie winked at the lieutenant, who glared after us until we faded into the thickening fog of the Pusan night.

Texas Street was long and bursting with music and brightly flashing neon. The colors and the songs changed as we walked down the street, and the scantily clad girls waved at us through beaded curtains, trying to draw us in. Young American sailors in blue jeans and nylon jackets with embroidered dragons on the back bounced from bar to bar enjoying the embraces of the “business girls,” who still outnumbered them. The main force of their shipmates had not arrived yet, and the Kitty Hawk would not dock until dawn. But Texas Street was ready for them.

We saw the MPs. The jeep in the center of Texas Street was parked unobtrusively next to a brick wall, its radio crackling. The three MPs smoked and talked, big brutes all. We stayed away from them and concentrated on blending into the crowd.

Ernie was having no trouble at all. In bar after bar we toyed with the girls, bought drinks only for ourselves, and kept from answering their questions about which ship we were on by constantly changing the subject.

One of the girls caught on that we were in the army by our unwillingness to spend too much money and by the few Korean words that we let slip out.

“Don’t let the mama-san hear you speaking Korean,” she said. “If she does, she will know that you’re in the army, and she will not let me talk to you.”

“What’s wrong with GIs?”

I could answer that question with volumes, but I wanted to hear her version.

“All GI Cheap Charlie. Sailors are here for only a short time. They spend a lot of money.”

We filed the economics lesson, finished our beers, and staggered to the next bar.

Periodically we hung around near one of the MP patrols, within earshot of their radio, waiting for a report of a fight or a mugging. So far it was a quiet night.

Later, a group of white uniformed sailors on Shore Patrol duty ran past us, holding onto their revolvers and their hats, their nightsticks flapping at their sides. We followed, watched while they broke up a fight in one of the bars. A gray navy van pulled up, and the disheveled revelers were loaded aboard.

We found a noodle stand and ate, giving ourselves away as GIs to the wizened old proprietor by knowing what to order. Ernie sipped on the hot broth and then took a swig of a cold bottle of Oriental beer.

“Quiet night.”

“No revelations yet.”

“Maybe tomorrow, when the entire flotilla arrives.”

“Flotilla. Sounds like the damn Spanish Armada.”

“Yeah. Except a lot more powerful.”

Just before the midnight curfew the Shore Patrol got busy again chasing the sailors back to the ship or off the streets.

We had taken a cab all the way back to Hialeah Compound before we heard about the mugging.

“One sailor,” the desk sergeant said. “Beat up pretty bad. The navy medical personnel are taking care of him now.”

“Any witnesses?”

“None. Happened right before curfew. Apparently he was trying to make it back to the ship.”

In the morning, before our eggs and coffee, we found out that the sailor was dead.

The buildings that housed the port officer’s headquarters were metal Quonset huts differentiated from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Quonset huts only by the fact that they were painted battleship gray while the army’s buildings were painted olive drab. Slightly less colorful than Texas Street.

The brass buttons on the old chief’s coat bulged under the expanding pressure of his belly. We showed our identification.

“Who was the sailor who got killed in the mugging last night?”

The chief shuffled through some paperwork. “Petty Officer Third Class Lockworth, Gerald R.”

“What ship was he on?”

“The USS Swann. One of the tenders for the Kitty Hawk. They say he was carrying a couple months’ pay.”

“Nothing left on him?”

“No.”

“Maybe the girls got to it first.”

“Maybe. But I doubt it. He was three-year veteran of the Pacific Fleet.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“Massive hemorrhage of the brain.”

“Have you got your eyes on any particular group of sailors that might be preying on their shipmates?”

“Not really. The brass tends to think that it’s some Korean gangs working the streets. Maybe they’ve developed a taste for the Seventh Fleet payroll. That would explain why there haven’t been any arrests made.”

“The police here want to protect the sailors. There’s a lot of pressure from the ROK Government to make the US Navy feel welcome.”

“Maybe. But at a lower level, policies have a habit of being changed.”

“Do you buy all that, Chief?”

“Could be. I keep an open mind. But in general I tend to go with the scuttlebutt.”

“What’s that?”

“That it’s some of your local GIs that got a taste for the Seventh Fleet payroll.”

“If the average sailor starts to believe either one of those viewpoints, it could cause a lot of trouble down here on Texas Street.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to be a dogface on liberty in this town tonight.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“You’re welcome.”

The Kitty Hawk finally pulled in at noon, and standing by the dock were the mayor and the provincial governor and the US Navy’s 7th Fleet band. The sailors lined the deck of the huge gloating edifice, their bell-bottoms and kerchiefs flapping in the breeze. The ship’s captain and his staff, in their dazzling white uniforms, bounced down the gangplank to the tune of “Anchors Aweigh,” and were greeted by a row of beautiful young Korean maidens in traditional dresses who placed leis over their necks and bowed to them in greeting.

The governor made a speech of welcome and the captain answered with a long rambling dissertation on the awesome firepower of the Kitty Hawk. Greater, he said, than the entire defense establishments of some countries.

“I thought he wasn’t supposed to confirm or deny that they have nuclear capability,” I said.

Ernie smirked. “He’s also not supposed to confirm or deny that he’s a jerk.”

After the tedious ceremony was over, the sailors-free at last-poured like a great white sea into the crevices and alleys of Texas Street.

The night was mad. The Shore Patrol ran back and forth, unable to keep up with all the explosions being ignited by the half-crazed sailors. Even the MPs had to keep on the move. They were tense. Alert.

I saw different faces in the jeeps tonight and asked one of the MPs about it.

“We’re on twenty-four hour alert while the Kitty Hawk is here, but we have to get some rest sometime.”

“Twelve-hour shifts?”

“Or more, if needed.”

Ernie and I wandered away from the bright lights, checking the outskirts of the bar district. Like all beasts of prey, the muggers would look for stragglers, strays who’d wandered from the main herd.

It was mostly residential area back there, high walls of brick or stone and securely boarded gates.

There were a few bars, however, and a few neighborhood eateries. Some sailors were wandering around, those who wanted to get away from the hubbub.

A couple of big Americans about a block in front of us turned a corner. They looked familiar to me somehow. We trotted after them, but by the time we got to the dimly lit intersection they were gone.

“Who was it?”

“I’m not sure.”

We walked into a bar closer to Texas Street proper and ignored the girls until they left us alone with only two cold beers for company.

“We’re not getting anywhere,” Ernie said.

“Something’s got to break soon.”

“It better. It’s not just muggings any more. It’s murder.”

I felt my innards sliding slowly into knots.

“We got to stay out tonight. Through curfew if we have to.”

“Yeah.”

I looked at Ernie. “Could it be the Koreans?”

“It could. But if the Korean National Police really believed it, they’d be cracking down on every local hoodlum hard, trying to squeeze the truth out of them.”

“What if the local police are in on it?”

“Then we’re in trouble. But I don’t believe it. Too much pressure from up top. The Koreans need us to ensure that their Communist brothers to the north don’t pour down here like they did two decades ago. And maybe more important nowadays is that they need the foreign exchange the fleet brings in.”

“And if the navy seriously believes that the Koreans aren’t doing everything they can to stop the assaults on their sailors, they could stop coming into port here.”

“They’d lose dock fees and re-supply money …”

“Not to mention tourism.”

We both laughed.

“Somebody in the navy then. In the advance party.”

“Could be that, since the Kitty Hawk was still at sea last night.”

I thought about the map I had made and the blotter reports. “The last time the Kitty Hawk was here, there were no muggings until they had docked.”

“So?”

“We’ve been assuming that it’s probably a gang of sailors aboard the Kitty Hawk that have been preying on their own shipmates.”

“Yeah, but maybe there’s more than one group. Ideas like this are catching.”

“That’s possible. But maybe it is somebody in the advance party or maybe it’s somebody who’s here all the time. Somebody who knows the terrain, the lie of the land, the ins and outs of all the back alleys.”

“And if it’s not Koreans …”

“That’s right. GIs. GIs who spend a lot of time down here.”

“Village rats.”

“All the GI village rats have gone into hiding until the fleet leaves.”

“So it seems.”

I took a sip of my beer. I didn’t like what I was going to say. “That leaves the MPs.”

Ernie thought about it for a minute. “That would also explain why there were no arrests made in the past.”

“It sure would.”

He looked at me. “But why do the muggings only occur when the Kitty Hawk is here? And not other navy ships?”

“That I don’t know yet.” I looked around. “Let’s find a phone.”

“A phone?”

“Yeah. I got a call I want to make.”

The desk sergeant didn’t want to answer any of my questions at first because he could see what I was getting at, but I reminded him that this was an official investigation and he would be obstructing that investigation if he didn’t cooperate in every reasonable way.

I borrowed paper and pencil from the mama-san and wrote furiously, trying at the same time to keep one finger in my ear to drown out the insane rock music. I seriously considered asking Ernie to hold his finger in my ear, but he was busy flirting with a couple of the girls.

Besides, there are limits to a partnership, even for crimebusters.

I had what I needed. Ernie looked at the sheet. A bunch of names, ranks, and times scribbled across the wrinkled paper.

“What’s that?”

“No time to explain. Let’s go.”

The girls pouted on our way out.

The MP jeep that held the central position on Texas Street was cruising slowly down the crowded block. I waved them down, and they came to a halt. I looked at my notes and read off thee names to them.

“Have you seen any of these guys? Tonight? In civilian clothes?”

I’m not too good a judge of whether someone is telling the truth or lying, but this time I had an edge. The young buck sergeant on the passenger side let the muscles beneath his cheek flutter a couple of times. Then he blinked and said, “No.”

I thanked him for the information. He’d given me more than he knew.

We walked off into the darkness away from the men, heading from the center of Texas Street toward the place a few blocks away where I had seen the two big Americans turn down a dark alley and disappear. We wandered around for a while, and in order to cover more ground we split up, agreeing on our routes and where to meet in fifteen minutes.

A couple of blocks later I saw the big guy I had seen before, standing at the mouth of an alley. He looked into the alley at something and then back at me, as if undecided what to do.

I shouted, “Hey!” and started running toward him.

He hesitated for a second and then ran. I let him go and turned down the alley he had been protecting. It was dark. I could see nothing. Then I tripped, sprawled, and something hit me from behind.

When I came to, Ernie was looking down at me, surrounded by some sailors in their dress whites and Shore Patrol armbands. I was never so happy to see squids.

They got me into their van and took me somewhere. Ernie told me, but it didn’t register. Nothing much did. On the way there, I passed out again.

The next morning when I woke up I waited for a while and then asked the medic when he walked into the room.

“Where am I?”

“The dispensary. On Hialeah Compound. Had a pretty nasty bump on the noggin last night.”

“What’s my condition?”

“Hold on.”

The medic left the room, and after a few minutes a doctor came in. He looked at my head, checked some X-rays up against a lightboard, and then pronounced me fit for duty.

No shirkers in this man’s army. I could’ve used a few days off.

While I was getting dressed, Ernie showed up. He consoled me by reminding me about the Happy Hour at the Hialeah NCO Club tonight.

“Exotic dancers, too,” he said.

I smiled but it hurt the back of my head.

The bright sun of southern Korea was out. In force.

“Personnel? Why personnel?”

“I want to check something out. Leonard Budusky.”

“Who?”

“An MP who I think is an acquaintance of mine.”

After we showed him our identification, the personnel clerk got Budusky’s folder. “He came to Korea over six months ago,” I said.

The bespectacled clerk ran his finger down a column of typed entries.

“Seven,” he said.

“What state is he from?”

“Virginia.”

I held up my hand. “Wait a minute. Let me guess. Norfolk.”

The clerk looked up at me, his eyes almost as wide as his mouth. “How the hell did you know that?”

Ernie tried to pretend that he was in on the whole thing, but when we got to the Main Post Snack Bar, he bought me some coffee and threatened me with disembowelment if I didn’t tell him what was going on. Considering the pain I was in, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it much if I’d let him go through with it. Instead, to humor him, I explained.

“First of all, to find the culprit, we’ve got to figure out motive and opportunity.”

“I remember that much from CID school.”

“The motive seemed to be money. Now, that narrows our list of suspects down to anybody in the Seventh Fleet, any GI stationed near Pusan, or any of the Korean citizens of this wonderful city.

“The next step is figuring out opportunity. That brings us closer because that narrows it down to the four thousand or so sailors who had liberty during the stopover, the three hundred or so GIs who had passes, and again, all the Korean citizens of this fair city.”

“So it’s a tough job. We knew that.”

“But the mugger got anxious. On the first night, when only the advance party was in, he attacked. That eliminated all the sailors who were at sea with the Kitty Hawk. When Petty Officer Lockworth died, it also eliminated, in my mind, the Korean civilian populace. Because there is no doubt that the Korean authorities would take the mugging of American sailors seriously, but they realize the enormity of the bad public relations they would get back in the States if a Korean was found to have done the killing. The fact that they still didn’t launch an all-out manhunt meant to me that they must be confident, through their own sources, that it wasn’t the work of one of their local hoodlums.

“That leaves the GIs. When the fleet is in, soldiers tend to be conspicuous. They stick out, by virtue of their stinginess, from their seafaring compatriots, and the girls down in the village can spot them a mile away.

“We wandered all over Texas Street for two nights and didn’t see any, did we?”

“Not except for the MPs.”

“Exactly, and except for the two big guys we saw in that alley that looked familiar to me. After I called the desk sergeant and got the names of all the MPs who had duty on the first night, it started to click. The three big studs in the central patrol had all stayed on duty past curfew. Of the four patrols, theirs was the only patrol that did. Of the three of them, the desk sergeant told me that the biggest and meanest was Corporal Leonard Budusky. I remembered their faces. Two of them were the guys we saw scurrying down that alley. When the MPs on duty denied having seen them, I knew it had to be a lie. When MPs are in the village having fun, they will seek out the on-duty patrol, to let them know where they’re at or just to say hello.

“When that young buck sergeant on duty realized that the notorious out-of-town CID agents were asking about his partners, his first reaction was to lie and protect them.”

“So you know two MPs were on duty the first night, when the guy got killed, and you know they were out the second night, off duty, when you got beaned. You still don’t have any proof.”

“You’re right about that. And they’ll know it, too. Probably just go about their work as if nothing happened and if we ask them any questions deny everything. But the one thing I do have, that the killer doesn’t know about, is the motive.”

“Money?”

“Partially. But mainly his motive is something that abounds in a city with a big naval base like Norfolk.”

“What’s that?”

“Hatred.” I took a sip of the hot bitter coffee. “Hatred of the US Navy.”

It was a lot easier stalking Texas Street now that we knew who we were looking for. The desk sergeant had already told me, but I checked all four MP jeeps just to be sure. Leonard Budusky and his burly partner were not on duty tonight. They had pulled the day shift and got off about two hours ago.

Ernie had been disappointed when we missed Happy Hour at the NCO Club, and the exotic dancer, but I told him it would be in both our best interests if we remained sober.

The Pusan streets were filling again with fog. It was damp, cold, and dark.

This time we had weapons. A roll of dimes for me. Ernie had a short, brutal club, a wooden mallet, tucked into the lining of his jacket.

We patrolled methodically, keeping to the shadows. The Texas Street area is big, but not that big. Eventually we found them.

They were coming out of a bar, laughing and waving to the smiling girls.

“Spending money like sailors on shore leave,” Ernie said.

“Must have come into an inheritance.”

Budusky was tall, about six foot four, with squared shoulders and curly blond hair. His partner was the young guy who had enticed me into the mouth of the alley last night. He was tall, almost as tall as Budusky, and just as robust. I’m pretty big myself, and have had a little experience on the streets of East LA, but Ernie was a lightweight in this crowd, only about a hundred and seventy pounds.

We followed them carefully, one of us on either side of the street, hiding as we went. They weren’t paying much attention thought, still laughing and talking about the girls.

Finally, when the alleys ran out of street lamps, they stopped. They took up positions, one behind an awning, the other behind a telephone pole, as if they’d been there before. I wished I had brought my little map, to check the positions of the previous muggings. It didn’t matter much now, though. The opening to a dark, seemingly pitch-black alley loomed behind them. They had chosen their position well.

Ernie and I remained hidden. We could see each other from across the street, but the two MPs couldn’t see us.

It took twenty minutes for three sailors, lost in their drunkenness, to wander down the road. They were little fellows, in uniform, hats tilted at odd angles. Two of them had beer bottles in their hands, and each had his wallet sticking out from beneath his tunic, folded over his waistband.

The navy’s into tradition. Even if it’s stupid. Or maybe especially if it’s stupid. No pockets.

We let the sailors pass us. I was glad Ernie didn’t warn them. Of course, he wasn’t the type to warn them anyway.

They didn’t see us as they passed. They were laughing and joking, and I doubt they would have noticed a jet plane if it had swooped down five feet over their heads.

What did swoop down was Budusky and his partner. Two of the sailors went down before the third even realized what was happening. He swung his beer bottle, but it missed its mark and he was enveloped by the two marauding behemoths.

Ernie and I slid out of our hiding places and floated up the hill, my roll of dimes clenched securely in my right fist. Ernie smashed his mallet into the back of the MP’s head, and I knew all our problems were over with him. But just as I launched my first punch at Budusky, he swiveled and caught the blow on his shoulder. I punched again, but I was off balance from having missed the first blow, and he countered and caught me in the ribs. It was hard, but I’ve had worse, and then we were toe to toe, belting each other, slugging viciously. It could have gone either way, and I was happy to see Ernie looming up behind him. I jabbed with my left and backed off, waiting for it all to end, but then, as if a trapdoor had opened beneath his feet, Ernie disappeared. I realized that one of the sailors had gotten up and, thinking Ernie was one of the enemy, had grabbed him and pulled him down. Another of the sailors came to, and now the three of them were rolling around on the ground flailing clubs and beer bottles at each other, cursing, spitting, and scratching.

Something blurred my vision, and Budusky was on me. I twisted, slipped a punch, and caught him with a good left hook in the midsection. He took it, punched back, and then we were wrestling. I lost my footing, pulled him down with me, and we rolled down the incline. I threw my weight and kept us rolling, I wasn’t sure why. Just to get us into the light, I guess. Our momentum increased our speed, and finally we jarred to a stop.

Blind chance had determined that it would be Budusky’s back that hit the cement pole with the full force of our rolling bodies. I punched him a couple of times on the side of his head before I realized that he was finished. I got up in a crouch and checked his pulse. It was steady. I slapped his face a couple of times. His eyes opened. Before he could pull himself together, I rolled him over on his stomach, pulled my handcuffs out from the back of my belt, and locked his hands securely behind the small of his back.

I heard whistles and then running feet. The Shore Patrol surrounded me and then a couple of MPs. The MPs stood back, as if they wanted nothing to do with this.

I lifted Budusky by the collar and pushed his face back to the pavement.

“Why? Why’d you kill Lockworth?”

His face was contorted, grimacing in pain. His eyes were clenched. I lifted him and slammed him back again.

“It was your dad, wasn’t it? Your dad was a sailor. And he left you, you and your mother.”

It was an old story and didn’t take a great leap of imagination. An illegitimate kid from Norfolk, growing up to hate the navy, joining the army as an MP, finding his opportunity to take his revenge. A few bumps, a few bruises, a few dollars, and a sailor would get over it. It was the least they owed him for what his dad had done to him and his mother. Until he went too far. And killed.

I heard Budusky talking. It was choking out his throat.

“He left us. So what’s it to you?”

“And when you last heard from him …”

“Yeah.” The tears seemed to be squeezed out of his eyes. “When the last letter came, he was on the Kitty Hawk.”

Ernie and I left the next day with the date for Budusky’s court-martial set for next month.

Back in Seoul the first sergeant requested that the venue be changed about sixty miles north, to Camp Henry in Taegu. Ernie and I had to appear in court as witnesses, and it wouldn’t be smart to give the MPs in Pusan a chance to get at us.

I could understand their feelings. They saw us as traitors to the Military Police Corps. Maybe we were.

But none of those MPs ever sat down to write a letter to the parents of the late Petty Officer Third Class Gerald R. Lockworth.

I did.