Nightmare Range

THE DRAGON’S TAIL

Strange asked us to meet him at the Snatch Bar.

Its official title was the Snack Bar, but Strange liked to call it the Snatch Bar because he claimed he always found some “strange” there. That is, lonely female dependents of officers and NCOs who were unable to resist his charms. What charms those were, though, was beyond me. He was overweight and balding, always wore wrap-around dark glasses and sucked on a greasy plastic cigarette holder that never left his lips. His real name was Harvey and he was the non-commissioned officer in charge of classified documents at headquarters, working directly with the Commander of 8th United States Army and the Chief of Staff and everyone who made the most important decisions for the United States forces in the Republic of Korea. So my partner, Ernie Bascom, and I put up with Strange. We listened patiently to his fantasies, no matter how perverted, and, as a quid pro quo, we fed him fantasies of our own. The information he provided was just too good to ignore.

At the stainless steel serving line, I purchased a thick porcelain mug of steaming hot black coffee, carried it through the crowded cafeteria, and plopped it down on the table in front of Strange.

“Nothing for me?” he asked.

“Not until we hear what you have to say.”

“I’ll take hot chocolate,” he replied, “with two marshmallows.”

Ernie joined us at the table. As he sat down, he flicked Strange’s cigarette holder with his forefinger. “How’s it hanging, Strange?”

“The name’s Harvey.”

“Yeah, I forgot. Harvey. What’ve you got for us?”

Strange frowned at my cup of coffee. “I want hot chocolate,” Strange repeated, “with two marshmallows.”

“Talk first,” Ernie said, “then the reward.”

Strange glanced between us. “You guys going cheap on me?”

“Not ‘going,’ ” Ernie replied. “We’ve always been cheap.”

Strange shoved a new cigarette into his holder, tossing away the one Ernie had bent. He never lit them, just kept them dangling. He said he was trying to quit. As far as I knew, he’d never started. The sunglasses, the slicked-back hair, the cigarette holder were all part of the apparatus that he thought made him look intriguing. Actually, it just made him look like what he was, a pervert gone to fat.

Ernie and I waited. Strange surveyed the busy snack bar, making sure no one was listening, and then he leaned forward, whispering.

“You CID assholes have your butts in a wringer,” he said.

“We always have our butts in a wringer,” Ernie replied.

“This time it’s different.” Strange leaned in even closer. I could smell some sort of cologne or aftershave, like musk. It made me want to throw up. I jolted back some of the hot coffee. It didn’t help much.

“This time,” Strange continued, “they’ve got you dead to rights.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Ernie asked.

Strange leaned back, startled. “The Officers’ Wives’ Club. Who else? They’ve been pissed off at you for years for letting all those yobos into the Commissary and PX.”

Yobo was GI slang for a Korean girlfriend.

“They’re not yobos, they’re wives,” Ernie said. “They have dependent ID cards and we have no choice but to let them into the Commissary and PX.”

“Maybe so. But the honchos at the OWC think you’re letting them off easy on the black marketing. You should be busting each one of those sweet little Korean dollies, one by one, and taking away their privileges.”

The US military in Korea meticulously controls the amount of goods a GI or his dependents can purchase each month out of the PX or Commissary. The official reason is twofold: to protect fledgling Korean industries from being swamped by duty-free US goods and to save the US taxpayer the expense of shipping excess consumer items across the Pacific. The real reason-the visceral impulse behind the mania to enforce ration control regulations-was because most Americans didn’t like seeing a bunch of Korean female dependents, the wives of lower ranking GIs, in “their” Commissary or “their” PX. Racism is a cleaner word for it.

“You know how many black marketers there are,” Ernie asked, “buying and selling every day? And do you know how many there are of us?” With his left hand Ernie indicated me and him.

“Mox nix,” Strange replied. “The OWC thinks that if you weren’t wasting your time on other assignments, you’d be able to do your job and clear the Commissary and PX of all those yobos.”

The “other assignments” Strange was referring to were cases involving murder, rape, kidnapping, torture, extortion and various and sundry other acts of mayhem. The Officers’ Wives’ Club, however, thought that having to compete with three Korean women for the last bunch of bananas was more important than dealing with felonies. We’d heard this criticism before. But the 8th Army CID was spread thin. Most of the other agents were assigned to chores like investigating the pilfering of supplies from transshipment points or breaches in internal security involving Top Secret documents. That type of work meant dealing with the 8th Army hierarchy and required a certain amount of tact, which left me and Ernie out. We went after crime and to hell with kowtowing to someone’s rank. Naturally, any shit detail-like the black market detail-devolved onto us.

Working crime out in the ville, which was GI-on-Korean crime mostly, took up most of our time: rapes, robberies, burglaries. Since I was the only CID member in the country who could speak Korean and since Ernie Bascom could blend in with the lowest dregs of any society, it was usually me and Ernie who were assigned to those cases. Therefore, fighting black market crime in the Commissary and the PX was left to twist slowly in the wind.

“Okay,” Ernie said. “The OWC has a case of the jaws. So what? They’ve had it before. What are they going to do about it?”

Strange leaned back and puffed on his cigarette holder as if he were actually smoking, which he wasn’t. “How about a little hot chocolate?”

Ernie glared at him, sighed, and pushed himself up from the table. As he stalked away, Strange said, “Don’t forget the marshmallows.”

I studied Strange. He was pleased with himself for having commanded our attention. A GI’s life is controlled, from the moment he wakes up in the morning until the moment he goes to sleep at night, by the officers appointed over him. They can leave him alone if they want to-leave him alone to do his job, leave him alone to live his personal life-or they can mess with him constantly. Having been in the Army for the better part of a decade, Ernie and I had each experienced both levels of control and there was no question about it, being left alone was better. This is why we were listening to Strange so intently, out of respect for the heat that the OWC could bring down on us.

Ernie returned with the hot chocolate. Strange frowned at the steaming concoction, picked up the little metal spoon and bounced the two marshmallows in the hot liquid, making sure they both became completely soaked. Then he levered one out of the mug, stuck out his tongue, and slid it wriggling into his mouth. Ernie and I grimaced. Strange had the odd talent of being able to make the most mundane action appear obscene.

The marshmallow muscled its way down his throat. Burping slightly, he turned and smiled. “What the Officers’ Wives’ Club is going to do,” he said, “is bust you two down.”

“Bust us down? For what?”

“For not busting enough yobos. But not right away,” he added. “They’ll give you a chance to get off your butts and start enforcing the ration control regulations.”

Ernie groaned.

“Who’s the OWC point man?” I asked.

Strange stirred his chocolate, watching the last marshmallow start to sink. “Who else?” he asked. “The Chief of Staff.”

“Colonel Wrypointe?”

“Bingo. His wife just got elected president of the OWC.”

Millicent Wrypointe. I’d run into her before. When she shopped she actually wore her husband’s rank insignia on the lapel of her blouse. One day, when I was in the Commissary’s accounting department checking purchase records, she’d barged through the big double-doored “Employees Only” entrance and asked, “Are you CID?”

When I’d nodded, she literally pulled me out onto the Commissary floor. In aisle number seven she pointed at a gaggle of Korean women loading up on a shipment of frozen ox-tail. The Commissary manager had taken the ration limit off. Usually, the shopper was limited to two packets of any given meat item per day. This batch of sliced ox-tail, however, had arrived from the States late because of a power outage on the refrigerated transport ship. If the Commissary didn’t sell it quickly, the meat would spoil.

Mrs. Wrypointe pointed at the women loading up their shopping carts. “You have to do something!”

When I explained why the ration limit had been lifted, she exploded. “Nobody can eat that much meat. They’re going to sell it on the black market.”

I nodded. “Probably.”

“That’s a crime. You’re a law enforcement officer. Do something!”

“I’d have to follow them off compound and catch them in the act of making the sale,” I told her. “Right now, I’m working on another case.”

“Then send someone else.”

“I’ll notify the Provost Marshal,” I told her.

She studied my face. “But you don’t think he’ll do anything, do you?”

I shrugged. “We’re short on manpower.”

She pointed to the silver eagle rank insignia on her lapel. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.

Her face reddened. When I made no further comment, she said, “My husband’s going to hear about this. There’s no excuse for this. None whatsoever!”

She’d stormed away, marching resolutely down the aisle, bumping into two Korean women who were so busy fumbling through the frozen ox-tail that they hardly noticed. As it turned out, I never heard about the incident again. Nor did I hear from Mrs. Wrypointe. Not, that is, until today.

“Has Colonel Wrypointe discussed this with the Provost Marshal?” I asked.

“Not yet. He’s getting his ducks in a row. Two clerks in his office are working overtime putting charts and graphs together, all pointing to the fact that black marketing has been exploding. He’s going to brief the Commander, explain the OWC concern, and put the pressure on the Provost Marshal to allocate more manpower to the black market detail.”

“Thereby giving us less time to investigate real crime.”

“They don’t care about real crime,” Strange said, “unless it happens to them.”

“When is this briefing going to be held?” I asked.

“Tomorrow. Zero eight hundred. Prepare for heavy swells.”

After devouring the second marshmallow, Strange seemed to be finished with his hot chocolate. He turned to Ernie, waiting patiently for his dirty story. Ernie told him one, making it up as he went along.

I stood up, walked back to the serving line, and pulled myself another mug of hot coffee. All I could think about was the rape case we’d been working on. Sunny, an innocent business girl out in the ville, beat up, tortured, and then raped by three American GIs who were still at large. And so far we had no leads.

When I returned to the table, Strange was gone.

“Where’d he go?” I asked Ernie.

“Who the hell knows? He thinks I screw half the women on Yongsan Compound.”

“Don’t you?”

“Not yet.”

That night, Ernie and I ran the ville.

We strolled past neon and the open doors of nightclubs where mini-skirted young women cooed with pouting lips and crooked painted fingers, beckoning us to enter. At the top of Hooker Hill we hung a right and then a left until we were strolling through a dark alley lined on either side with ten-foot-high walls made of brick and cement. At one opening we paused and Ernie pounded on the double wooden gate. Rusty hasps rattled.

“Nugu seiyo?” someone said from inside. Who is it?

“Na ya,” Ernie replied. It’s me.

His Korean was getting better. The door opened.

We stepped into a floodlit courtyard of flagstone circling a garden of scraggly rose bushes. An old woman closed the door behind us and then padded on plastic sandals up to the raised wooden porch that led into the complex of hooches. We slipped off our shoes, stepped up onto creaking wood, and walked down the dimly lit hallway. The place was quiet. Most of the young women who lived here had already left for the night, for their jobs as waitresses or hostesses in the dozens of bars and nightclubs and dance halls that comprised the red light district of Itaewon. The sliding paper door of the third room shone with golden light. The old woman slid it open.

Like a cloud, the odor of urine and rubbing alcohol rolled out of the room. On the floor, amidst a rumpled comforter, lay Son Hei-suk, or Sunny, as the GIs called her. She was a young woman, maybe eighteen, but she seemed younger because of her open smile and her naïve way of laughing at anything a GI said. Most of the American soldiers treated her gently, teasing her like a younger sister, but two nights ago while she was pulling a shift as a hostess at the Lucky Seven Club, three Americans who nobody recognized coaxed her outside the club, apparently to help them buy some souvenirs at the local Itaewon Market, supposedly to send back to their families in the States.

Sunny never returned.

A farmer pushing a cart full of turnips found her the next day before dawn, near the Han River, unconscious, bleeding, barely alive. The Korean National Police were called, a surgeon at the Beikgang Hospital reset her broken left arm, shot her full of antibiotics, and used twenty-three stitches to sew up tears in her vaginal and anal areas. The waitresses and hostesses and whores who lived in this hooch had chipped in to pay her hospital bill and have her carted back here by taxi. No family members had been notified. Sunny, when she regained consciousness, begged that they not be.

Ernie set the PX bag full of painkillers and antibiotic cream and an electric heating pad on the floor. The old woman said she’d take care of it for us. We sat on the warm vinyl floor and watched Sunny. She snored softly. Gently, the old woman poked her shoulder. Slowly, Sunny roused herself awake. Groaning, she rolled over. Big brown eyes popped opened. She focused on us and raised her head slightly. A pink tongue licked soft lips and then she said, “You catch?”

Ernie shook his head. “Not yet, Sunny.”

“I told you,” she said, “one GI big, curly brown hair. ’Nother GI skinny, short white hair …”

“Shush, Sunny,” Ernie said. “Don’t get excited again. We have your description. We wrote it all down.”

“Then why you not catch?”

Ernie looked down. “It’s not that easy.”

Her eyes widened. She looked at me and then back at Ernie. “But they GI. You GI. You supposed to catch.”

“We’re trying,” I said. When she continued to stare at me, I said, “They’re new here in Itaewon. Nobody we talked to at the Lucky Seven recognized them. Not the Korean women working, not the GIs we found who’d been there that night. Everybody agrees on one thing, they’re not stationed in Seoul. One girl said one of them had a jacket with ‘Second Division, Second to None’ embroidered on the back. So far, that’s all we have to go on.”

Ernie spread his hands. “There are twenty-seven compounds and thirty thousand GIs in the Second Infantry Division,” Ernie said. “We’re looking but we thought maybe you’d remember something more.”

Sunny’s stared at the ceiling, not at us, as if seeing something far beyond this little room. Although her facial features didn’t move, moisture, like water welling up from a spring, started to ball in her eyes. One by one, the tears fell.

We waited a little longer. The old woman brought in some seaweed soup and tried to coax Sunny to eat. She refused.

Ernie and I rose to leave. As we stepped out onto the porch, Sunny called after us.

“Smoke.”

We turned.

“One GI call ’nother one,” she said. “ ‘Smoke.’ ”

“Anything else, Sunny?” I asked.

She shook her head. And then the tears were flowing again. The old woman scowled at us and slid shut the door.

The next morning, Colonel Brace, the 8th Army Provost Marshal, called us into his office. He let us stand, completely ignoring us, while he puffed on his pipe and studied the folder in front of him-an old ploy that lifers use to let you know that, compared to them, you’re lower than dog shit. Finally, he looked up at us.

“Your black market statistics are abysmal,” he said.

“A lot of crime out in the ville, sir,” Ernie said. “It’s been taking up most of our time.”

“I know what you’ve been working on,” Colonel Brace said. “And I know how much time you’ve spent on the black market detail and it hasn’t been enough. From today forward, you drop all other investigations and concentrate on black market activities.”

“We’ve got a woman out in the ville who was raped and beaten,” Ernie replied, “by a gang of Division GIs who we haven’t been able to identify yet.”

“A prostitute, isn’t she?” the Colonel asked.

“A hostess,” Ernie replied.

Colonel Brace raised one eyebrow. “There’s a difference?”

“If you met her, sir, you’d realize there is. She’s an innocent kid with no family to speak of who came to Itaewon because she had no other choice.”

Colonel Brace shrugged. “Probably,” he said, “this ‘innocent kid’ believed she hadn’t been paid enough and started a hassle with our servicemen.”

“They broke her arm, sir. And she received twenty-three stitches for her trouble.”

Colonel Brace glared at Ernie and then at me. He wanted to say something but instead he puffed on his pipe, not happy with us contradicting him. Most of the other CID agents would never dare. “I appreciate your concern,” he said finally. “I’ll have Staff Sergeant Riley forward your report up to Division MPI.”

Ernie sighed. We both knew that the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police Investigators hated criticism of their troops, especially when it came from rear echelon pukes like the 8th Army CID. They’d see the rape of an Itaewon “business girl” as nothing more than their self-sacrificing soldiers letting off a little steam. The case would not only be ignored but probably suppressed.

“Meanwhile,” Colonel Brace continued, “Eighth Army has other priorities, especially with these black market stats spiraling out of control. Now listen to me, the both of you. From this moment forward, you are assigned to the black market detail and the black market detail only. You’re both capable of increasing your arrest rate. I know you are because I’ve seen you do it before.”

He was waiting for us to say “Yes, sir!” or shout something gung-ho or at least nod. Neither of us did.

Colonel Brace frowned and stood up, leaning across his desk. He said, “I want you to put the fear of God into those yobos in the PX. I want them to be afraid to even think about black marketing. Do you understand me?”

This time we both nodded. He asked if we had any questions.

“How about an increase in our petty cash allowance?” Ernie asked.

To my surprise, Colonel Brace didn’t flat out turn the idea down. Instead, he said, “What is it now?”

“Fifty dollars a month.”

“Tell Sergeant Riley to increase it to a hundred.”

“Yes, sir.”

With that, we were dismissed.

On the way out the door, Colonel Brace said, “I’ll be monitoring your results.”

Staff Sergeant Riley sat behind his desk. “How’d it go?” he asked.

Neither one of us answered. Ernie told Riley about the increase in the petty cash allowance and then headed for the coffee urn. I plopped down in the gray vinyl chair in front of Riley’s desk.

“Smoke,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s the nickname of one of the GIs who raped Sunny.”

“That business girl out at the Lucky Seven Club?”

“She’s not a business girl, she’s a hostess.”

Riley shrugged. “Same difference.” He shuffled through paperwork and then paused. “Smoke. Isn’t that a term that’s used by the field artillery?”

That’s when I remembered. Each company-sized unit in the field artillery has an NCO who’s in charge of laying and firing the guns. His official title is Chief of Firing Battery but what GIs usually call him is Chief of Smoke-or just “Smoke.”

When Ernie returned with his coffee I ran the idea by him. He frowned. “But according to Sunny, these guys were young. A Chief of Smoke is usually an older guy.”

“All Americans look the same to a Korean,” Riley said. “They can’t tell our ages.”

Miss Kim, the statuesque administrative secretary, glanced up from her typing, a prim frown on her lips. When she noticed me watching, she turned away and resumed her typing.

“Maybe Sunny’s wrong about their ages,” Ernie said, “of at least one of them, this guy called Smoke. Or maybe he’s just a baby-faced guy who got promoted fast.”

“None of the faces Sunny told us about,” I said, “could be described as babies. They’re all monsters to her.”

“Still, it’s worth checking out,” Riley said. “There are four artillery battalions in the Second Division, with three batteries each.” He lifted the phone and dialed. Within seconds he was chatting with a buddy of his at 8th Army personnel, asking for a print out of every GI assigned to Division artillery. Riley said, “Thanks,” and slammed down the phone. “I’ll have the printout before close of business today.”

“Good. Another thing you can get for us.”

“What’s that?”

“The blotter report from the MPs up at Division.”

“Why would you need that?”

“Once GIs start raping women and kicking ass, they have a tendency to keep doing it.”

“Okay,” Riley said. “I’ll get that too. Meanwhile, you guys better get some black market arrests.”

“Screw that,” Ernie said.

“Don’t piss off the Provost Marshal,” Riley warned. “He’s serious about this. The shit’s rolling downhill big time.”

Ernie sipped again on his coffee, left the half-empty mug on Riley’s desk, and rose to his feet. Together, we headed outside.

Ernie and I sat in his jeep, sipping PX coffee we’d bought in the snack stand in front of the commissary. It was hot and tasted about as acidic as your average quart of battery fluid. We were watching customers, mostly Korean women, flow out of the commissary, trotting behind male baggers who pushed huge carts laden with freeze-dried coffee, soluble creamer, mayonnaise, concentrated orange drink, bottled maraschino cherries, and just about anything else that was imported and therefore highly prized on the black market. After the groceries were loaded into the trunk of one of the big black Ford Granada PX taxis, the women tipped the baggers and climbed into the back seat.

“Which one should we bust?” I asked.

“Let’s finish our coffee first.”

“Okay by me.”

We sipped on our coffee for a while and then Ernie said, “Whoa!”

I glanced up and realized immediately what had gotten his attention.

She was a tall Asian woman, with a willowy figure and raven hair piled high atop her head. She wore a long blue dress that clung to her curves like wet tissue paper moistened by a tongue. Silver earrings dangled from the side of her heart-shaped face and her slender arms were lined with bracelets.

“Who’s she?” Ernie asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Never seen her before.”

Ernie poured his remaining coffee out the door of the jeep and tossed the empty cup into the back seat. He started the ignition.

“I think we’ve just found our culprit,” he said.

“I think we have.”

He slammed the jeep in gear, jolting forward. Coffee splashed on the front of my shirt.

The PX cab containing the tall woman didn’t leave Yongsan Compound right away. Instead, it crossed the Main Supply Route, heading for Main Post and came to a halt in front of the Class VI Store. “Class Six” is the old army supply designation for items such as beer, wine, and hard liquor. The cab waited while the tall woman went inside. A few minutes later she reemerged with a man in a gray smock following her, pulling a flat cart laden with two cases of American beer, two cases of soda, and a large paper bag containing what appeared to be bottled liquor.

“Max purchase,” Ernie said. “Four bottles of hooch, two cases each of beer and pop.”

Under 8th Army ration control regulations, that’s all a GI was allowed to buy in one day and four bottles of liquor was all that he, or his dependent, were allowed for a month. When everything was safely stored in the trunk, the woman tipped the man with the cart and climbed back into the cab. We followed her out Gate Number Five. Ernie swerved into honking traffic. She continued east along the Main Supply Route heading toward Itaewon but before she got there, the driver hooked a quick left toward the Namsan Tunnel.

“Where the hell’s she going?” Ernie asked.

“She’s a downtown woman,” I said.

“Downtown woman with a figure like a lingerie model.”

“But not skinny.”

“No,” Ernie agreed. “Not skinny.”

The cab slowed at the booth to pay the toll for going through the tunnel and Ernie hung back, swerving toward the extreme right lane reserved for military and government vehicles. When the PX taxi entered the tunnel, we followed.

Namsan tunnel stretches about a mile through Namsan Mountain in the southern section of Seoul and, along with the Pusan-to-Seoul Expressway, it is the pride of the country. Both projects had been completed just a few months ago and high-rise buildings were popping up throughout downtown Seoul. President Pak Chung-hee had recently proclaimed that the Seventies would be the decade when Korea would begin to take its rightful place amongst the great economic powers of the world. After the devastation of the Korean War a little more than twenty years ago, the country had gotten off its back and was now rising. On paper, things looked better. Unfortunately, this new economic prosperity hadn’t spread to everybody. In fact, in the red light district of Itaewon it had spread, as far as I could tell, to exactly nobody.

When we emerged from the tunnel, I spotted the cab. “There,” I said, “she’s taking the Myong-dong turnoff.”

Honking and bulling his way through the tightly packed traffic, Ernie stayed with her. Then we were in narrow downtown streets. Myong-dong was the area of Seoul famous for the Cosmos Department store, chic boutiques and, at night, upscale nightclubs and Scotch Corners, the fashionable term for barrooms.

The PX taxi seemed bulky down here, surrounded by all the smaller Hyundai sedans. Ernie had no trouble following. We passed through the fashionable area and entered a section of town that had not yet been selected for gentrification. Most of the buildings were the brick and cement slab three- and four-story buildings that had been slapped together haphazardly after the war. Sandwiched between them were tin-roofed shops and eateries supported by walls of rotted wood. Finally, the cab veered into a narrow lane that rose upwards at a slight incline and after about a hundred yards ended in a cul-de-sac at the top of a hill. Ernie didn’t turn into the lane but came to a stop just past it. As the cabs behind us honked, he said, “I’ll circle around the block.”

“Okay.” I hopped out.

We’d done this before, plenty of times. Once we were close, Ernie would either find a place to park or circle the area while I followed on foot. The pedestrian traffic was practically wall-to-wall but composed mainly of working people hustling to and from small factories or hauling loads of charcoal briquettes or hemp sacks on wooden A-frames strapped to their backs. Vendors with large carts lined the walkway, shouting for passersby to stop and enjoy some fried meat dumplings or a nice warm bowl of cuttlefish soup.

At the mouth of the alley, I peered at the PX cab parked on a slant in front of a double iron gate in a stone wall. There was a small courtyard and beyond that a brick building that loomed above the others in the area, three stories high. A huge sign, faded now, had once been painted in bright red letters on the highest floor on all four sides. I could still make it out: Tiger Kang’s.

No wonder this woman looked so elegant. She was a kisaeng. I’d heard of the place before. Tiger Kang’s had once been the most famous kisaeng house in Seoul, a playground for the rich and powerful.

Kisaeng are female entertainers and their tradition is at least as old, and probably older, than the ancient geisha tradition in Japan. But the polished skills of plucking the twelve-stringed kayagum or performing the swirling drum dance or composing sijo poetry are reserved now for specially trained students. The so-called kisaeng of Tiger Kang’s-and of the other joints that were popping up all over the city-were reduced to pouring scotch and lighting cigarettes and laughing at rich men’s jokes. Still, it was work. Maybe not the most honest work, but it paid well.

Ernie came running up behind me.

“Where the hell’d you park the jeep?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I pushed one of the carts out of the way.”

“That will make friends and influence people.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “An international ambassador for peace.”

The iron gate was open and apparently the tall woman had gone inside. The white-gloved PX cab driver was busy hauling the grocery bags out of the trunk and handing them inside.

“Tiger Kang’s?” Ernie asked.

“That’s right.”

He whistled softly. “An upscale bust for once.”

“We haven’t made the arrest yet,” I said. “We have to sneak inside somehow and witness the money exchange.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, Sueño. You worry too much. She brought the stuff here, that’s enough. The sale is implied.”

“What if she lives here?”

Ernie paused. “You mean maybe she’s a kisaeng herself?”

“Right. She could claim that she brought the stuff here for her personal use. Not to sell.”

“Hell with that. If she knocked back all that beer and liquor, she’d be as fat as the kitchen god. We bust her anyway. Let the JAG office figure it out.”

He was right. We’d come this far, might as well get credit for the arrest. If JAG dropped the charges, that was on them. Mrs. Wrypointe could fuss at the Judge Advocate General and leave us alone. Still, it would be better if we waited awhile, to give them a chance to unpack and start exchanging money.

The last of the grocery bags were passed through and the iron door clanged shut. Ernie went back to check on the jeep.

At the bottom of the incline, I waved the PX cab driver to a halt. He blanched. Actually, it wasn’t his fault. All he did was transport a passenger to her destination. Still, in a society totally controlled by the military and the police, any run-in with a cop was enough to worry a Korean. Especially when he held one of the few unionized jobs in the country-working for the American PX-and a compensation package with decent benefits. I wrote down the driver’s name and cab number and chatted with him a while. No, he didn’t know the passenger, he’d never seen her before. And no, he’d never driven a fare to Tiger Kang’s before either. In fact, she’d had to direct him here or he would’ve had trouble finding it. I asked him how much his tip was. He reached in his pocket and showed me. A crisp, US five dollar bill. Exorbitant. He thought so too. I thanked him for his cooperation and told him he could leave.

Five minutes later, Ernie returned.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

“I gave the cart lady a thousand won.” Two bucks US. “She was all smiles.”

“Everybody’s a big spender,” I said.

“Except you,” Ernie said.

He always accused me of being cheap but I didn’t think I was. Thrifty, yes. But that was because I knew what it was like to be poor, and hungry.

We climbed up the hill and approached the iron gate of Tiger Kang’s. Ernie stood with his back against it. “Ready?” he asked. I shoved my notebook into my jacket pocket and said, “Ready.”

At first there was no answer but Ernie kept pounding. Finally, we heard footsteps on the other side of the wall and the door creaked open. The chubby face of a Korean man peered out. Without asking permission, Ernie shoved his way in.

“Weikurei?” the man said. Why this way?

Ernie ignored him and crossed the small courtyard. A rusty bicycle leaned against a cement brick wall. No outhouse, I noticed, so they had indoor plumbing. And no garden. This area was strictly used for storage. Two to three dozen wooden crates were piled against the back wall filled with empty brown OB Beer bottles. Next to that were smaller crates of crystalline Jinro Soju bottles, bereft now of their fiery rice liquor. A metal pail held a few empty bottles of imported scotch.

Ernie scampered up cement steps that led into the back door of the building.

The little man ran after Ernie, his face reddening now. “Weikurei!” he shouted again, clenching and unclenching his fingers. I stayed close behind him.

We entered another storage area, this one filled with more crates of beer and soju, these bottles unopened, and then into a large tile-floored kitchen.

It looked like something out of a historical magazine. Heavy iron pans hung from thick metal hooks, an ancient gas stove was covered with a gleaming metal canopy, and two geriatric refrigerators were hooked to rusted transformers, buzzing and wheezing like old men on life support.

“The place is clean, anyway,” Ernie said.

It was that. Old but clean.

A dozen oddly shaped appliances lined a wooden counter, the functions of which I couldn’t fathom, and beyond that, like stout soldiers, a short row of rice cookers. In the next room a huge mahogany dining table was covered with lace doilies. Slanting sunlight revealed swirling mites from a recent dusting. The tall, elegant woman was nowhere in sight.

The enraged man was still sputtering so Ernie stopped and pulled out his badge. This halted him. As he studied the shiny brass in the open leather folder, I spoke to him in Korean.

“Kiga ko-nun yoja,” I said. The tall woman. “Where’d she go?”

He seemed to have trouble speaking, and at the same time he was struggling to swallow. Without answering, he glanced at the doorway leading out of the dining room. I showed him my badge and, speaking softly, I pointed back toward the kitchen.

“Chogi kiddariyo.” Wait there.

When he didn’t move, Ernie shoved him back into the kitchen and slid shut the wooden door.

We headed deeper into the plush environs of Tiger Kang’s.

The place smelled of must and cigarette smoke and spilled liquor. Ernie inhaled deeply, a smile suffusing his lips. He felt exactly the way I did; an old dive, dark, quiet, comfortable and filled with expensive liquor and cheap women. Exactly the type of place we both loved.

I stepped into the entrance foyer. The front door was locked from the inside. A cloak room was filled with thick wooden hangers but otherwise empty. Down the hallway, we ran into a dividing wall of fish tanks bubbling with blue water. Elaborate coral reefs and sunken pirate ships loomed beyond the murk and exotic sea creatures gaped at us in goggle-eyed amazement. On the far side of the tanks, a cocktail lounge opened before us, lit by soft red light and lined on one side with plush leather booths and on the other by a polished mahogany bar. The odor of cigarette smoke was overpowering now and seemed to emanate from every padded barstool and from every brass fixture lining the wall. A few tables in the middle were covered with white linen.

“Have we gone back in time?” Ernie asked.

I didn’t answer. The murmur of soft voices drifted downward from upstairs. We climbed thickly carpeted steps.

“Up here must be where the action is,” Ernie said.

A wrought-iron railing circled the entire second floor and opposite it, every few yards, dim sunlight projected through double sliding doors covered with embroidered silk. The elaborate designs depicted silver dragons and flaming orange tigers and pale blue flowers and bubbling green waterfalls; all elegant scenes of ancient Asia. One of the doors was slid open. That’s where the talking was coming from. We padded down the carpet.

Ernie stood at the edge of the door and nodded to me. I’d go in first. I entered the room, pulling my badge out as I did so, and stuck it forward like a shield.

“Eighth Army CID,” I said. “Black market violation. Nobody move.”

A group of about a half-dozen Korean women sat around a low table, all of them leaning over metal bowls of steaming soup. Mouths hung open. Chopsticks clattered against porcelain.

“Where’s the tall woman?” I asked in English. “The one who just came from the PX?”

Two or three of the women were young and the others not so young, but trying to look that way. Their hair was in disarray and their eyes sleepy but they were all attractive. Very attractive. Ernie entered the room, grinning.

“Yoboseiyo,” he said. “Where’s the stuff from the commissary? Come on. Bali, bali.” Quickly.

None of the women seemed to understand him although I knew that if they were hired as hostesses to the rich and famous, they must speak English, and probably Japanese. I scanned the room. No sign of the contraband.

“Come on, Ernie,” I said. “Let’s keep looking.”

Before he followed me out of the room, he stopped and waved at them. “Goodbye, girls.”

We slid open every paneled door but each room was filled only with flat cushions for sitting and low mother-of-pearl inlaid tables. Downstairs, I lifted the countertop on the end of the bar and searched back there. Nothing. Ernie found a storage room and managed to pry it open. Fumbling around in the darkness, he finally located a light and switched it on.

“Here it is,” he said.

The walls were lined with wooden cupboards holding neatly arranged bottles of liquor, wine, champagne and various decanters filled with liqueurs and aperitifs the names of which I couldn’t pronounce. Some of the containers had the Korean customs import stamp on them, some didn’t.

Atop a raised wooden pallet sat the two cases of soda, the two cases of American beer and about a half-dozen paper bags. I rummaged inside the bags. Stuck between four bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label, I found the receipt from the Class VI Store, dated today, time-stamped less than an hour ago. I lifted it out and shoved it into my pocket.

“Where’d she go?” I asked.

“Hell if I know,” Ernie replied.

We stepped out of the storeroom and back into the cocktail lounge. Someone was waiting for us. A middle-aged Korean woman, tall, full-figured, with an elaborately coiffed black hairdo, her body wrapped in a flower-patterned blue silk dressing robe. She stared at us for a moment, her face dour, the brow wrinkled.

“Koma-ya!” she said. Boy!

A slender young man appeared out of the shadows, wearing black trousers, a pressed white shirt, and a black bow tie. He bowed to the woman.

“Kopi, seigei,” she said. Coffee, three.

He bowed again and backed away.

Then she motioned toward the largest linen covered tables in the center of the room, her eyes never wavering from ours. “Sit,” she said.

“No time to sit, mama-san,” Ernie said. “Where’s the tall woman? The one who brought you the Johnny Walker Black?”

“She go,” she said.

“Where?”

“Not your business.”

“It is our business,” Ernie said, pulling out his badge. “We’re from Eighth Army CID and you’re in violation of Korean import restrictions. We can call the Korean National Police and we will, if you don’t tell us where to find the tall woman with the dependent ID card.”

“Sit!” she said, pointing a polished nail at two upholstered wooden chairs.

Ernie walked forward. “Why the hell should we?”

“Because,” she said, “I am Tiger Kang. I know every honcho at Eighth Army and every Eighth Army honcho know Tiger Kang!”

She pointed her red-tipped forefinger at Ernie’s nose. “And you two are in deep kimchi.”

“We been there before,” Ernie replied.

The boy reappeared, this time holding a tray with a silver pot of coffee and three saucers and cups. He placed them atop the immaculate tablecloth, along with tiny silver spoons, a container of cream and a bowl of sugar. He bowed once again to Tiger Kang and departed. The coffee smelled good. I sat down. So did Tiger Kang. Finally, reluctantly, so did Ernie.

In the Army, when you break a regulation, even a foolish black market regulation, it is tantamount to disobeying a direct order-and, therefore, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, serious stuff. Abusing one’s Commissary and PX privileges by either reselling purchased items or giving a gift of more than twenty-five dollars value to an unauthorized person was a breach of United States Forces Korea Regulation 190-2 and a violation of the Republic of Korea’s customs laws.

On small black market cases, people would be adjudicated guilty on the preponderance of evidence, which sometimes came down to nothing more than the word of me and Ernie. In addition, American GIs were deemed by the military to be responsible for the activities of their dependents. More than one GI had been denied promotion because his wife had been caught black marketing. A few were even busted down in rank. A small handful, depending on the extent of the black marketing operation, were court-martialed, spending weeks or even months in the Army Support Command stockade.

Ernie and I wielded a lot of power in this regard. Usually, we were reluctant to use it and sometimes we gave people a break. But we both figured that anyone making good money at the oldest kisaeng house in Seoul could afford a little inconvenience. Besides, Mrs. Wrypointe was breathing down our necks. Even from where I sat, in the middle of Tiger Kang’s kisaeng house, I could still feel the hot breath of the President of the Officers’ Wives’ Club. We needed a bust and we needed a bust soon. To get Mrs. Wrypointe off our backs, to get the Provost Marshal off our backs, but more importantly to free up some time so we could hunt for the men who had raped and brutalized the innocent Itaewon bar hostess known as Sunny, we needed to proceed with this arrest-despite Tiger Kang’s threats.

“Where is she,” Ernie asked, “the woman who bought that stuff out of the Class Six?”

Tiger Kang glowered at him. “Why you bother her? She good woman.”

“She works for you?” I asked.

“Sometimes. Sometimes we have big party. Need more girls. I call. Sometimes she come. Sometimes she no come.”

“What’s her husband think about this line of work?” Ernie asked.

Tiger Kang shrugged again. “Not my business.”

“We want to talk to her,” I said.

“She go.”

“So quickly?”

“She think you follow her, so she go.”

That was pretty brazen. She could’ve taken the stuff home, wherever that was, and then we’d have no case against her. Instead, she’d brought it here to Tiger Kang’s, as if to taunt us into making the arrest; figuring we wouldn’t because of Tiger Kang’s connections.

“Wherever she’s gone,” Ernie said, “we’ll find her.”

I had the receipt. That and the ration control record at the Class VI would be enough to trace her.

“Maybe,” Tiger Kang said.

“No maybe about it,” I replied. “We’ll find her. And we’re going to confiscate that stuff in the storeroom.”

“No,” Tiger Kang said. “You no take.” Tiger Kang poured cream and ladled sugar into her coffee. “You no take,” she repeated.

“Why the hell not?” Ernie asked.

“Honchos get angry. Your honcho, Eighth Army, they all the time come here.”

“They drink your black market scotch?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Anything they drink. They all the time want American beer. That’s why I buy.”

Ernie sipped on his coffee. “Not bad,” he said.

“Tiger Kang no use Folgers,” she said. “I buy from Colombia.”

“Nice,” Ernie replied. “You must have some rich dudes coming in here.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Many rich dudes.”

Ernie glugged down the last of his coffee and stood up. “Let’s get that stuff, Sueño, and load it into the jeep. We still have time to make a couple more black market busts today and get old Mrs. Wrypointe off our butts.”

Tiger Kang was studying him as he spoke.

“You leave here,” she said, “then you don’t have to take to MP Station, get hand receipt. Save you time.”

Ernie eyed her suspiciously. “You know a lot about how this works.”

“Tiger Kang know,” she said, pointing at her nose. “All the time I talk to honchos.”

It actually wasn’t going to make any difference if we confiscated the commissary and Class VI items. We already had the receipt and even without that, through the ration control records, we’d soon know the name of the woman who’d purchased them, and the name of her husband. As far as proof of the fact that she’d delivered them to Tiger Kang’s, our testimony was good enough. Usually we took both the woman and the black market items back to the MP Station-mainly just as a show to humiliate her more than anything else-but since she was gone, it was too late for that.

We could’ve contacted the Korean National Police liaison and turned Tiger Kang in for a customs violation but that would’ve been a waste of time. The KNPs wouldn’t do anything to someone who hobnobbed with the rich and powerful. Mrs. Wrypointe and the 8th Army Provost Marshal wanted volume, a lot of black market arrests. If the details of the police work were a little sloppy, that was besides the point. The purpose was to scare the hell out of the yobos and thin out their ranks in the commissary and PX. Ernie and I knew the game. We’d played it before.

Ernie turned to Tiger Kang. “What’s her name?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The woman who brought the liquor and beer.”

“Kokktari,” Tiger Kang replied. Long Legs.

“That’s it?” Ernie asked. Even he knew that wasn’t a proper Korean name.

Tiger Kang shrugged. “That’s what we call her.”

“Where does she live?”

Tiger Kang shrugged her silk-clad shoulders. “Moolah me.” I don’t know.

“All right,” Ernie said. “No name, no address, no Johnny Walker Black.”

He rose from the table and we walked back to the storage room. We left the two cases of pop but Ernie hoisted the beer and I hoisted the liquor and we carried it out past Tiger Kang, through the kitchen, and out to the jeep. All the while, I kept thinking Tiger Kang would jump us and try to scratch our eyes out, or at least have her boys do it. Other black market mama-sans had attacked us before in attempt to protect their ill-gotten contraband. But Tiger Kang did nothing. She just crossed her arms and glared at us.

I kept thinking of her curse. Maybe that’s why she didn’t lift a finger to stop us. Maybe somebody else would. Maybe somebody in our own chain of command. And maybe Tiger Kang was right. Maybe we truly were in deep kimchi now.

But like Ernie said, we’d been there before.

Back at the Class VI Store I made the Korean manager come out and unlock the green metal ammo can that held the ration control punch cards. With him watching, I shuffled through the thick stack and compared each one of the cards to the purchase receipt I held in my hands. Finally I found it: two cases of soda, two cases of beer and four bottles of Johnny Walker Black.

The name imprinted on the punch card was Mei-lan Burkewalder, dependent wife of Captain Irwin Burkewalder, US Army. Her first name didn’t sound Korean to me. Maybe Chinese. Since Red China was our avowed enemy and therefore no-man’s land for American GIs, I figured she must be from somewhere else. Hong Kong or Singapore, maybe. More likely Taiwan. Back at the CID office, I asked Staff Sergeant Riley, the Admin NCO, to use his contacts at 8th Army personnel to find out more about the Burkewalders.

Later that afternoon, Ernie and I made two more black market busts, these out in Itaewon, and we figured that would take the pressure off of us, at least temporarily.

Early the next morning, Ernie gassed up his jeep at the Twenty-one T (Car) motor pool, picked me up at the barracks, and we wound our way off compound, through the still-quiet streets of Seoul, past carts being pushed and glimmering piles of cabbage being unloaded, and headed north on the Main Supply Route. At the outskirts of the city, the sign said UIJONGBU, 15 KM. What we were looking for was a lead on the GIs who’d gang raped Sunny.

Fallow rice paddies lined the road. Ernie stiff-armed the big steering wheel around broad curves. Off to the east, the sun was just beginning to peek over distant hills.

“It feels good,” he said, “to be investigating real crime for once.”

I inhaled the crisp autumn air. Wisps of smoke rose through metal tubes atop tile-roofed farmhouses. Men in straw hats and women huddled in linen hoods balanced wooden hoes and scythes across their backs as they trudged toward distant fields.

“What’d Riley find out about that kisaeng we busted yesterday?” Ernie asked.

“She’s a third country national,” I told him, “from Taiwan. Mother’s Korean, father’s Chinese. They fled mainland China with the Kuomintang to Taiwan a couple of years before she was born. Somehow she met this Captain Burkewalder. They got married.”

“Where’s he stationed?”

“Vietnam. MAC–V advisory group.”

Ernie whistled. “Lucky dog,” he said.

Ernie’d spent two tours in Vietnam, loving every minute of it. The first tour he drove big trucks up and down Highway One and spent his off-duty hours smoking pungent hashish in his sand-bagged bunker. By the time he returned on his second tour, things had changed. No hashish available. The only way for a GI to get high was to buy pure China White from snot-nosed kids through the concertina wire.

“Uncle Ho used it as a weapon,” he always said, “and it worked.”

For Americans, the war had wound down. Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization program had succeeded and the few thousand American GIs still left in-country were mostly advisors to ARVN troops. Still, it was a dangerous job, maybe more dangerous than being part of an American combat unit, and I didn’t envy the assignment.

“So you think they’ll notify Captain Burkewalder about his wife having her PX privileges revoked?”

“They have to,” Ernie replied. “He’s her sponsor, theoretically responsible for everything she does. Helluva thing to have to worry about when you’re concentrating on staying alive.”

We reached the outskirts of the city of Uijongbu and Ernie downshifted the jeep.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Turn right up there, toward Songsan-dong.”

We were headed to Camp Stanley, headquarters of the Division Artillery.

I riffled through the printout Staff Sergeant Riley had collated for me yesterday: the names and ranks and DEROS (date of estimated return from overseas) of every Chief of Firing Battery in the Second Infantry Division. Two battalions of artillery were stationed at Camp Stanley, another battalion of 155mm howitzers nearby at Camp Essayons, and a final battalion closer to the DMZ up at Camp Pelham, about thirty miles northwest of here in the Western Corridor. There were three batteries per battalion so that made a dozen NCOs who held the official designation of Chief of Firing Battery or, in GI jargon, Chief of Smoke.

If taking these guys down involved violence, that would be fine with us. Ernie’d brought his brass knuckles. I’d brought my.45.

“Smoke?” the young GI asked. “You want to talk to the Chief of Smoke?”

“That’s right.”

“Hold on.”

He trotted away.

We were on Camp Stanley, in the motor pool of Bravo Battery, 1st of the 38th Field Artillery. Six 105mm howitzers were aligned in a neat row, leather-sheathed barrels pointing toward a crisp blue sky. Next to them, in geometrical counterpoint, sat six square equipment lockers; everything air mobile, everything ready to be airlifted by chopper into a combat zone at a moment’s notice.

Ernie unwrapped a stick of ginseng gum and popped it into his mouth. “This is man’s work,” he said. “Not all that sissy paper-pushing like back at Eighth Army.”

“Nothing sissy about Eighth Army,” I said. “You think it’s easy busting housewives who purchase too many packages of sanitary napkins?”

“No, I guess not,” Ernie replied. “I’ve got the scars to show for it.”

A man wearing the three-stripes-up and two-down insignia of a Sergeant First Class strode toward us. Using a red cloth, he cleaned grease off his hands.

“You looking for me?”

I showed him my badge. “You’re the Chief of Firing Battery,” I said.

“Chief of Smoke,” he corrected.

He didn’t bother to shake hands because he was still cleaning them, which was okay with us. His nametag said Farmington. We asked about leave policy and if a senior NCO had to sign out on pass.

“No,” he replied. “In the Division if you’re E-6 or above, your ID card is your pass. What’s this all about?”

“Where were you this past weekend? On Saturday night to be exact.”

He crinkled his eyes. “Why do you want to know?”

We told him about Sunny, and how she’d been brutally raped.

“The guys who did it,” he asked, “they were in this unit?”

“We don’t know yet,” Ernie said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Sergeant Farmington told us that he had a steady yobo out in the village of Songsan-dong and that was where he’d been. “I don’t see the point of taking the bus all the way down to Seoul and then paying too much for pussy. I’d rather stay up here where things are cheap.”

“Can you prove that you were here?”

Farmington thought about it. “Yeah, I suppose I can. First, I bought a case of beer at the Class VI on Friday night, that should be in their records. And Saturday morning I checked in with the CQ about two of my soldiers who were assigned to weapons cleaning duty.”

“The Charge of Quarters put that in his log, you suppose?”

“I suppose.”

“What about Saturday night?” Ernie asked.

“My yobo can vouch that I was there. And by Sunday night all the beer was gone.”

Farmington grinned.

I took notes and knew that if we had to, every step of Sergeant Farmington’s alibi could be checked out, but I also knew that, for the moment, we wouldn’t bother. Farmington’s long record in the service and his easy-going attitude left little doubt that he was telling the truth. Time was everything. We’d move on to the other names on the list.

“Anyone else from your unit went to Seoul recently? Maybe a group of three guys?”

“Not that I know of. Nobody was bragging about anything. And they usually do when they come back from Seoul.”

When we told him more about Sunny, and what had happened to her, his face clouded with concern. He volunteered to go into the Bravo Battery Orderly Room and check the sign-out register. This was a big help because we didn’t need any hassles from some Battery Commander suspicious of 8th Army investigators from Seoul.

After about ten minutes, Farmington returned. “Nobody in the unit went to Seoul last weekend.”

“At least not that they admitted to,” Ernie replied.

“Right, at least not that they wrote in the pass register. But I’d be surprised if anybody did. We were out in the field last week, came in late Friday. There was still a lot of maintenance to do Saturday morning. So they wouldn’t have been able to get away until mid-afternoon Saturday at the earliest.”

“How long does the bus to Seoul take?”

Farmington shrugged. “Maybe an hour. Hour and a half when the traffic’s bad.”

“So still possible.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Definitely possible.”

Ernie and I conducted the same type of interviews at Alpha Battery and then Charlie Battery and then at the other three batteries on the far side of Camp Stanley and then three more 155mm howitzer batteries at Camp Essayons. Each one of the Chiefs of Firing Battery was suspicious at first but then cooperative when we described what had been done to Sunny.

It was mid-afternoon by the time we were finished.

“A lot of alibis,” Ernie said.

“One for each Chief of Smoke.”

“We have to check them out.”

“No time,” I replied. “The Provost Marshal will be busting a gut by now.” I checked my watch. Our whole trip up here had been a long shot. We thought maybe, with the knowledge that one of the rapists had been called “Smoke,” that we might be able to stumble on a Chief of Firing Battery without an alibi. Of course, things are not usually that easy. “If we leave now,” I said, “we’ll still have three or four more hours to bust people at the commissary.”

“Screw the commissary,” Ernie said. “Let’s go direct to the source.”

I knew what he meant. We could get a couple of easy busts by working with a man we knew in Itaewon. A man by the name of Haggler Lee.

We hopped in the jeep and headed toward the MSR.

“They owe me money,” Haggler Lee said.

Haggler Lee was substantially older than us, maybe forty, but in some ways he seemed younger. He had a baby face, kept his black hair neatly coiffed, and he wore the sky blue silk tunic and white cotton pantaloons of the traditional outfit of the ancient yangban class who ruled Korea during the Chosun Dynasty. He seemed soft, patient, averse to violence. A hell of a thing for the man who ruled the Itaewon black market operation with an iron fist.

When we entered his warehouse, he sat on a flat square cushion in the middle of a raised floor heated by charcoal gas flowing through subterranean ondol heating ducts. Swirling mother-of-pearl phoenixes and snarling dragons were inlaid into the black lacquered table in front of him. As we approached, he lay a horsehair writing brush on an inkstone and looked up at us.

“Anyonghaseiyo?” he asked. Are you at peace?

We lied and told him that we were, slipped off our shoes, and stepped up on the warm ondol floor. We grabbed a couple of cushions and sat. Out of the darkness, a young woman, wearing a full, flowing chima-chogori traditional gown, appeared and, using two hands, poured steaming hot water into porcelain cups. She hefted a small tray onto the table that was laden with sugar, soluble creamer, Lipton tea bags and a jar of Maxim instant crystals. Ernie and I both stuck with the coffee. We ladled it into the hot water and swirled it around. It tasted good after our long drive back from Division.

“It has been too long since I’ve seen my good friends,” Haggler Lee told us, sipping on a handle-less cup of hot green tea.

“You know why we’re here, Lee,” Ernie said. “Eighth Army’s going nuts on the black market statistics again.”

Haggler Lee nodded and set his cup down. “Mrs. Wrypointe,” he said.

“You know her?”

“Oh, yes.” He smiled his pleasant smile. “A fine lady.”

“You like her?” I asked.

“Yes, very much.”

“But if she gets her way, she’ll kick every Korean woman out of the commissary and the PX. That would be the end of your business.”

“If she gets her way. Right now, she’s merely driving up prices, which of course is good for my business.”

“But she hates Koreans,” Ernie said. “That’s why she wants them all out of her commissary and her PX.”

“That’s one way to look at it,” Haggler Lee said. “Another way to look at it is that she’s a woman of principle. She actually believes that black marketeering is bad. One has to admire such a steadfast attitude.”

“You admire that old witch?” Ernie asked.

“Oh, yes. An admirable lady.”

“Where did you meet her?” I asked.

“At Hannam House. She’s quite taken by traditional Korean music and dance.”

Hannam House was a cultural center sponsored by the Korean Ministry of Education. Foreign dignitaries, even American soldiers, were invited to periodic performances in order to better introduce them to the world to Korean culture. Of course, most GIs avoided the place like a bad case of the clap.

We told him that we needed to make a couple of black market busts and we needed to make them fast. The quid pro quo, of course, was that generally speaking, when 8th Army wasn’t putting too much pressure on us, we’d leave his operation alone. Mostly we did anyway. Black marketing, compared to rape and assault and theft and extortion and even the occasional murder, was not high on our personal priority list. Haggler Lee hated violent crime as much, if not more, than we did. And his contacts throughout Itaewon were extensive. He knew every mama-san, every business girl, every bar owner, every chop house proprietor and every Korean National cop in the entire red-light district. As such, he was a great source of information and, more often than not, we cooperated with him.

Of course, 8th Army and especially the Provost Marshal knew nothing about this cozy relationship and if we had anything to say about it, they never would.

Haggler Lee told us about the two women who owed him money.

“They can pay,” he said, “but they keep doing business with me, keep saying they will pay next time. I know their plan. When they and their husbands pack up to return to the States, they will leave me with a fat bill. Many have tried this before. Many fail.”

“If we bust them,” I said, “they’ll lose their ration control privileges and no one will make any money. Not them. Not you.”

“Yes,” Haggler Lee replied. “But if more women believe they don’t have to pay me, then more won’t pay me. I must punish these two women to set an example.”

The women in question were black marketing and that was against 8th Army regulations. It was our duty to bust them for it. If it happened to coincide with Haggler Lee’s business model, so be it. He gave us their names and addresses.

On the way out, Haggler Lee escorted us to the door. The plan was that his pick-up man, Grandfather Han, would peddle his bicycle over to the homes of the two women who were our marks, pretending to make his weekly pickup. He’d find some excuse for arriving earlier than scheduled. Normally what he did was enter the home, box up the PX goods, and strap the cardboard load to the heavy-duty rack on his bicycle. This time, as he made the transaction, Ernie and I would follow him in and make the arrest.

The entire operation went off without a hitch and by early evening Ernie and I had two more black market busts.

“Where do you two get oft,” Riley said, “nosing around Camp Stanley after the Provost Marshal told you to lay off?”

We were back in the CID office. The cannon for close-of-business had been fired and the flags of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations Command ceremoniously lowered. We returned to the office thinking we’d be congratulated on our black market arrests. Instead we were being reamed out because of a phone call the DivArty Adjutant made to the 8th Army Provost Marshal. Apparently, someone in the 2nd Infantry Division chain of command found out that we’d been interviewing soldiers in their area of operations and had pitched a bitch.

“Colonel Brace had to apologize to the man,” Riley said, his face red. “Do you understand what that means?”

“Yeah,” Ernie replied. “It means he doesn’t have the balls to back us up.”

Miss Kim, the admin secretary, plucked some tissue out of a box, held it to her slender nose, and rose from her desk. She didn’t like it when voices were raised or when American vulgarisms were used. She once told me that when she started work here she hadn’t understood any of our four-letter words. As she learned them, looking them up one by one in a Korean-English dictionary, they often made her cry; especially when GIs accused one another of doing horrible things to their mothers. As she clicked in her high heels across the office and turned out into the hallway, all of our eyes were riveted to her gorgeous posterior.

Riley started in on us again. “The Provost Marshal says you are not to return to the Division area until he has a chance to talk to you, personally.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“On the Eighth Army golf course.”

“Oh, Christ,” Ernie said.

“He left a half hour ago,” Riley said. “His foursome includes the Chief of Staff.”

“Sure,” Ernie said. “Just because three GI gang rapists are on the loose is no reason to delay your tee time.”

“Can it, Bascom,” Riley told him. “The Provost Marshal gets a lot of mileage out of these golf dates.”

“Like what?”

“Like briefing the Chief of Staff on your excellent increase in black market arrests.”

“Two days’ worth,” Ernie said.

“You’ll get more.”

“Not today,” I interjected.

Riley glanced at his watch. “The commissary doesn’t close for another hour. You still have time.”

I stood up. “Black marketing isn’t the only crime we have to investigate.”

Riley said, “You’re not dumb enough to go back to Camp Stanley, are you?”

“No,” I said. “You can count on that.”

Ernie and I started out the door.

“Where are you going?” Riley shouted after us.

Neither of us answered.

The Western Corridor is sometimes called the bowling alley.

It is a natural invasion corridor running up and down the spine of the Korean Peninsula, mountains on either side divided by a long lush valley. Armies have trod down it since ancient times: Chinese infantry, Mongol hordes, Manchurian cavalry and, heading the other way, Japanese samurai warriors. Most recently Communist North Korean armored battalions backed up by two hundred thousand of Mao Tse-tung’s “volunteers” streamed down the Western Corridor until the ROK Army and American GIs managed to stop them and push them back at least as far as the Demilitarized Zone, some thirty miles north of Seoul. All in all, the Western Corridor has a colorful history, a history soaked in blood.

There are checkpoints along the Main Supply Route. American GIs and ROK Army soldiers, all holding rifles propped against their hips, all waving with gloved hands for the motorist to slow and then stop, peering into the jeep, checking ID cards, examining vehicle dispatches, then waving us on into the deepening fog-shrouded night. After passing the third Western Corridor checkpoint, there was nothing but countryside surrounding us. In the lowering gloom, I spotted it, a little white sign with an arrow pointing to the right.

“There,” I said. “Sonyu-ri.”

Ernie turned right. A half-mile in, we passed a VD clinic. I knew we were close. Three quarters of a mile further, floodlights shone atop the chain link fence surrounding the small American compound known as RC-4, Recreation Center Four. Beyond that, a neon strip lined the narrow two-lane road: the Sexy Lady Club, the Black Cat Club, the Kimchi Rose Club, the Playgirl Club, the Sonyu River Teahouse. The bars and nightclubs were interspersed with legitimate businesses: Mr. Cho’s Tailor Shop, Aimee’s Brassware Emporium, Fatty Pang’s Chop House. Business girls in short skirts and tight halter tops peered through beaded curtains. Rock and roll blared from tin speakers. Gaggles of GIs wearing blue jeans and sneakers and nylon jackets prowled from bar to bar, sniffing the air like small packs of jackals.

“My kind of village,” Ernie said.

After a quarter mile of non-stop debauchery, a well-lit wooden arch rose into the sky standing like a rainbow above a chain-link fence and a wooden guard shack. The arch was painted white with black lettering that said WELCOME TO CAMP PELHAM, HOME OF THE 2ND OF THE 17TH FIELD ARTILLERY, SECOND TO NONE.

We pulled up to the MP at the guard shack and showed him our dispatch. After checking our identification, he pulled the gate back, creaking on iron rollers, and we coasted into the dimly lit field of Quonset huts known as Camp Pelham.

We’d been here on an earlier case so Ernie knew exactly where to find the Battalion Ops Center. It was a big tin Quonset hut painted olive-drab like all the rest of the buildings on the compound. A fire light shone over the main entrance. Ernie parked on gravel and we climbed out of the jeep. The Staff Duty Officer was Lieutenant Orting. As we explained why we were here, he at first seemed concerned and then proved to be cooperative. Two of the Chiefs of Firing Battery were easily located. One was in his quarters, the other having a few beers with his buddies in the NCO Club. The interviews went smoothly and both seemed to have alibis that would preclude them from having been in Seoul on Saturday night. Once again, we didn’t have time to check out the details of their alibis but, for the moment, we’d take them at face value.

The final Chief of Smoke was from Charlie Battery. His name was Singletary and according to everyone we talked to, he lived off compound with his yobo. They had a couple of kids, we were told.

“A homesteader,” Lieutenant Orting told us. “He’s been here over five years.”

“Five years?” Ernie said. “I thought that was the max.”

Army regulation doesn’t allow any soldier to stay in Korea for more than one year at a time and if you want to stay longer a request for extension must be submitted and approved annually. Five years is the max.

“Singletary is an outstanding soldier,” Lieutenant Orting said. “His sixth year was approved by the Division Commander himself.”

And probably by 8th Army, I thought, but I didn’t say so. These Division soldiers think that God Himself has set up shop in the Division head shed and there’s no higher authority than Headquarters 2nd ID.

He didn’t have the address of Singletary’s hooch. Instead, Lieutenant Orting called the CQ runner, a young Spec 4, and told him to alert Singletary. Before we could object, the young man hatted up and trotted out the door. Lieutenant Orting grabbed a paper and pencil, drew us a map, and handed it to us.

“Singletary lives right off compound,” Orting explained. “He’s always the first in on an alert.”

Ernie studied the map. “It’s right outside the main gate.”

“Hang a left,” Orting said, “a few yards down past the Crazy Mama Club and then follow the path toward Shit River.”

Actually, it was called Sonyu River, but I didn’t correct him.

I stuffed the map into my pocket and we shook Lieutenant Orting’s hand. Ernie and I left the jeep on compound and walked back toward the main gate. Outside, as we walked along the strip, the rock and roll and the shouts of laughter and the cooing of the business girls assaulted our ears. A hint of marijuana smoke wafted on the air.

Ernie gazed admiringly at the long, glittering row of neon. “Everything a GI’s greedy little heart could desire.”

Before we left 8th Army we’d changed into our running-the-ville outfits: blue jeans, sneakers, nylon jackets with fire-breathing dragons on the back. Still, we didn’t blend in with this crowd. Everyone up here knew everyone else. The fact that we were strangers escaped no one’s attention. From deep inside the open doors of the barrooms I felt eyes assessing us, both GI and Korean.

Ernie studied the map. “It’s back here,” he said, pointing.

Behind the bright neon that lined the strip, the night was pitch black. No street lamps, not even any single bulbs that I could see. Only tightly packed tile roofs jumbled on top of one another, gently descending toward the river below.

We found a muddy path. It was only wide enough for us to walk single file. We entered the darkness. Walls made of rotted wood lined the alley. Through cracks, candlelight glimmered, and now I could make out an occasional single light bulb glimmering through oil-papered doors. The pathway veered to the right and then sharply back to the left.

That’s when we saw them, a herd of apes lurking in a jungle. There was no mistaking their height and bulk. GIs. A small squad. Whether they were black or white or Hispanic or Asian was impossible to tell. Like a dying comet, a flaming ember arced toward the mud, sizzled briefly, and died. The stench of burnt marijuana permeated the air.

One of the shadows growled. “Rear echelon mother fuckers.”

Another voice said, “Come to mess with us.” In the distance, yellow bulbs glimmered atop the concertina wire-topped fence that surrounded Camp Pelham.

Then one of them stepped forward and shouted, “Don’t mess with my people!”

In the darkness, I bumped into Ernie. If I’d thought fast enough, I could’ve grabbed him and told him not to say anything. But I wasn’t fast enough.

Instead, Ernie stepped forward and said, “Fuck your people.”

And then something flew at us from out of the dark.

Ernie dodged and launched himself at the pack of men, as if he were born to assault vermin. One by one, the GIs stepped back, shadowed faces registering surprise, resentment. I hurried after Ernie down the alley, scowling, my shoulders hunched, my fists clenched but luckily none of the men reacted. They were too startled by Ernie’s bold action. We scurried toward where the alley opened on the pedestrian walkway and then turned to parallel the narrow channel of the Sonyu River. It wasn’t much of a river, nothing more than a creek really, running about knee-deep through clay. We were clear of danger, or so it seemed.

Ernie marched down the path, whispering over his shoulder to me, “pussies.” Just as he said that something clattered out of the darkness-a chunk of plaster, or a brick. It tumbled through the air and landed ineffectually in the stream, splashing against pebbles.

They hurtled down the alley, the entire pack of them, emerging out of darkness into moonlight. Some of them held what looked like clubs in their hands. Ernie swiveled and crouched, scrabbling in the creek bed until found what he wanted-a rock the size of his head, which he tossed at them. I scrambled toward a chunk of driftwood.

“Use your forty-five,” Ernie said, pulling out his brass knuckles, slipping them on splayed fingers. The GIs kept running toward us, screaming like banshees.

“Not yet,” I said.

One of them plowed into me. I absorbed the shock, sidestepped, swung my driftwood bat and clunked him on the head. He went down. Another came at me and I swung again, missing. And then he was inside my defenses, clawing at my face. I warded him off and popped him with a left jab and then a sharp right. As he staggered, another GI flung himself on me. We grunted and wrestled and struggled, ankle-deep into the muddy creek, until finally a voice bellowed out of the darkness.

“At ease!”

Reflexively, I froze, holding my fist cocked in mid-air, my left hand still clutching the ripped shreds of somebody’s shirt. Everyone else froze also. In the middle of a fight, in the middle of a blood ritual familiar to every young man, we froze. Why? It was our training. Each one of us had spent hours responding to shouted orders-on the parade field, during physical training, as part of combat simulations-and when a command was bellowed at us with enough conviction, enough un-self-questioning authority suffusing the voice, all of us-me, Ernie, and the nameless GIs hassling us-immediately responded to the order.

A pair of combat boots tromped rhythmically through the mud.

“Who’s that?” the same voice shouted. “Is that you, Quigley?” When there was no answer the voice said, “Is that you, Conworth? What the hell you doing back here? Smoking that shit again? Let me see your face.”

A flashlight shone. The pale, beard-stubbled face of the GI called Conworth stood illuminated in the light. Hairy nostrils. Blood-shot eyes.

“What’d I tell you about that shit?” the man holding the flashlight asked. “Didn’t I tell you about getting burned in the next piss test?” Thick black fingers gently slapped the white face. “Didn’t I?”

“You told me, Sarge.”

“And still you come out here smoking that reefer.” The light lowered and then rose back to the face. “You taking any other kinda shit?”

“Nothing, Sarge.”

The light switched to the next GI, this one with a longish face the color of swirled milk chocolate.

“And you, Quigley? You out here thinking you’re going to kick some rear echelon ass? What I tell you about fighting? Come on, what I tell you?”

“You said to take it to the gym, Sarge.”

“That’s right. They got gloves down there. You practice hard enough maybe you get out of the artillery into one of those Special Service units. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“You told me, Sarge.”

“All right.” The light lowered to the mud. “Now apologize to these two gentlemen.” No one said anything. “They come all the way up here from Seoul just to do something good and you treat them like this. Come on, now. Apologize.”

A few surly voices mumbled something that sounded vaguely like the word “Sorry.”

“Anybody hurt? Anybody need to go to the aid station?” When no one responded, the man with the flashlight said, “All right now. Nobody has an overnight pass. I know that. Get your butts out of here and back to the barracks. And put down that reefer. You hear me?”

Again, a few more mumbles. Something like, “We hear you.”

Their heads down, hands shoved deep into their pockets, the GIs filed past us. Five of them, I counted. There were a few cuts and bruises and at least one of them would wake up tomorrow with a serious knot on his head, but apparently there were no serious injuries.

When they were out of sight, the man with the flashlight said, “How about you two? Either one of you hurt?”

“Not a chance,” Ernie said. “Lucky for them you stopped us when you did.”

In the reflected light, a large black face smiled wryly. “Yeah, they lucky. Come on then, follow me.”

He turned and, fanning the beam of the flashlight in front of him, tromped off down the pathway. Ernie and I followed. The narrow walkway rounded a bend and the floodlights from Camp Pelham suddenly illuminated our way. The man in front switched off his flashlight and kept walking, head down.

“Lucky you came along,” Ernie told him, repeating himself, still angry. “I was about to kick me some serious ass.”

The man didn’t respond. He was thick-shouldered and broad-hipped and walked with a pronounced bow-leggedness; it would be impossible to knock him off his center of gravity. He wore fatigue pants and combat boots but no headgear and only a green t-shirt covering his upper torso.

At a wooden gate facing the river, he stopped and knocked and shouted out, “Rodney Ohma.” Rodney’s Mother.

Footsteps pounded on earth. A small door in the gate creaked open. The man motioned with his flashlight for us to enter.

“Who the hell are you?” Ernie asked.

The man seemed surprised. “I’m Singletery. The CQ runner told me you was looking for me.”

“That’s why you came looking for us?” I asked.

“Dangerous town,” Singletery said. His face kept its flat, earnest expression as he spoke. There was no hint of irony in his voice. Immediately, I understood why the officer corps thought so highly of Sergeant First Class Singeltery and why his tour in Korea had been extended beyond five years. He knew how to handle the troops, which was more than most of the officer corps could say, and he got the job done without the customary smirk of superiority or taunting tone of voice that many NCOs used to mask their resentment of authority.

Ernie crouched through the small door first. I followed.

It was a surprisingly large courtyard for the crowded village of Sonyu-ri. The wall on the left was lined with earthenware kimchi pots and the wall on the right featured two cement-walled byonso, outdoor toilets. One wooden door was slashed with black paint spelling yo, woman, and the other nam, man.

In the center of the courtyard was a small swing set, rusty but sturdy with shiny new bolts at the metal joints. In front of us were two hooches forming an L shape and running along their front was a low, varnished wooden porch. In the awning overhead, bright bulbs shone, illuminating the entire scene. Behind the porch some of the oil-papered doors had been slid open. A small pack of children squatted on a warm ondol floor watching cartoons with various anthropomorphic creatures squawking and growling in high-pitched Korean.

A woman emerged from one of the hooches. She was Korean, wearing a thick woolen housedress, long, unkempt hair sweeping back from a high forehead. She was a big woman for a Korean, husky. She flashed us a crooked smile that moved only the lower half of her long face and then she bowed slightly, motioning for us to enter the hooch opposite the one where the children were watching television.

“That’s my wife,” Singletery said, but he didn’t attempt any more formal introductions.

We slipped off our shoes and stepped up on the porch and Mrs. Singletery dealt flat cushions out on the floor. The room had sleeping mats rolled against one wall and a large inlaid mother-of-pearl armoire against the other. She folded down the legs of a small table, set it in front of us, and hurried out toward the kitchen. Singletery, after slipping off his combat boots, sat down opposite us. With moist brown eyes he stared at us, his legs comfortably crossed, his big hands relaxed in his lap. He didn’t say anything. Neither did we. We just listened to the bang, slap, roar of the cartoon next door. The children were enraptured but they weren’t laughing.

Finally, Singletery’s wife brought a brass pot of hot water and we helped ourselves to Folgers instant coffee. Ernie took sugar in his, I took mine black. Singletery sipped on a strawberry soda.

The cartoons ended. The children filed out of the room, slipped on their shoes, and bowed to Singletery’s wife, who stood on the porch to see them off. In a small pack they trotted across the courtyard, pushed through the gate, and tumbled shouting out into the street. A little boy of about four came over and sat in Singletery’s lap. He was obviously his son, with both the dark skin and curly hair of his father and the smooth Korean features of his mother.

“The wife likes the kids to play here,” Singletery said. “That’s why she lets ’em watch TV.”

Many of the poor families in Sonyu-ri, and throughout the country, could not afford televisions.

“That’s nice of her,” I said.

Singletery didn’t answer. He held the bottle of pop while his son drank from it. His wife didn’t join us. A pot clanged in the kitchen.

Ernie and I already figured we were in the wrong place. The likelihood of this guy, a lifer with well over ten years in the Army, traveling to Seoul with a couple of buddies and raping a business girl on the banks of the Han River were slim to non-existent. Still, we were here. Might as well ask some questions.

“Your boys seem a little over-exuberant,” I said.

Singletery stared at me blankly.

“They’re anxious to kick some REMF ass,” Ernie translated.

Singletery smiled, brown eyes shining. “They some tough boys.”

“In your platoon?”

“In my battery,” he corrected.

“Right. Your battery. Do you get down to Seoul much?”

“Every payday,” he said proudly.

“Get a kitchen pass?” Ernie said, smiling. “So you can run the ville down in Itaewon?”

Somberly, Singletery shook his head. His son was growing bored with our adult conversation, his eyes drooping. He snuggled up closer to his dad. “No,” Singletery replied. “Every payday me and the wife and the boy jump on the bus out of RC-Four. Go to the commissary.”

He was referring to 8th Army’s big Yongsan Commissary in Seoul. Whole families from the Division area mob the place shortly after end-of-month payday, and mob the free military buses going back and forth. Most of them carry empty Army-issue duffel bags down with them, then load them up with imported merchandize and lug the heavy load all the way back up north.

“How about last weekend?” Ernie asked. “Did you or anybody in your unit go to Seoul?”

Singletery shook his head. “We was out on alert.”

“Where?”

“Nightmare Range.”

I knew where it was. A military reservation set aside for war games, at the top of the Eastern Corridor, sandwiched between the Imjin River and the Demilitarized Zone.

“The whole battalion?” I asked.

Singletery nodded his head.

That was that. We’d checked on every Chief of Firing Battery in the entire 2nd Infantry Division, every NCO who could conceivably be called “Smoke,” and we’d come up with nothing. Still, Singletery had been living and working in the Division area for over five years. I decided to level with him.

“There was a rape,” I said, “down in Seoul. A business girl named Sunny was hurt badly.”

Singletery patted his son on the butt and told him to run off to his mother. The sleepy boy did. Singletery sipped on his strawberry soda and studied me with his brown eyes. I filled him in on the details and told him that we were up here because one of Sunny’s attackers had been referred to as “Smoke.”

“Smoke,” Singletery repeated.

“So we thought,” Ernie said, “that the guy might be a Chief of Firing Battery.”

“Have you heard anything?” I asked. “About three guys going to Seoul last weekend, maybe one of them coming back with some scratches on his face or on his arms? Maybe bragging about the women they’d met? Something like that?”

Slowly, Singletery shook his head. He set down his soda. “That’s fucked up,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Very fucked up.”

He shoved his soda away, as if it had turned sour. His wife returned and offered us more coffee. We declined. Singletery continued to think about what we’d said, as if we’d upset him deeply. When he offered no further information, we thanked him and his wife for their hospitality, went to the porch, slipped on our shoes, and escaped into the cold night.

A thousand lights reflected off the rotating glass disc. Rock and roll blared out of the juke box and I had to lean close to Ernie to make myself heard.

“We should drive back tonight,” I shouted. “Make some more black market arrests in the morning.”

“Why?” Ernie asked. “Five arrests in two days. That’s enough to hold ’em for a while.”

“Not with Mrs. Wrypointe on the warpath.”

“Screw Mrs. Wrypointe.”

“Not with your dick,” I told him, although my heart wasn’t in it. Ernie’d glommed onto a buxom young woman wearing hot pants and a halter top. Her name was Miss Kim or Miss Lee or Miss Pak, I don’t remember which, and when the midnight curfew approached Ernie told me that he’d be staying with her at her hooch and he’d meet me in the morning.

“Where?” I asked.

“At the jeep. There’s a PX snack stand in front of the Battalion Ops Center. Zero eight hundred.”

“That late?”

“You worry too much, Sueño.”

Patting Miss Kim or Miss Lee or Miss Pak on her tight butt, he strode out the back door of the Kit Kat Club and entered the dark maze of alleys that pulsed through the village of Sonyu-ri like purple veins through a heart.

I finished my beer and wandered out into the street. Standing in shadow, I watched GIs, many of them arm-in-arm with business girls, scattering toward refuge before the oncoming midnight-to-four curfew. Lights in many of the shops had already been turned off, metal shutters rolled into place. Up and down the strip, neon flickered, buzzed, and then shut down.

A woman stood next to me. “We go, GI?”

She was older than me. In her thirties, maybe forty. I couldn’t stand here all night. I asked her how much. She told me. It seemed reasonable.

She was surprised, I suppose, that I didn’t bargain. Most GIs would. But I didn’t believe in bargaining with business girls. They were desperate and only did what they did because of poverty. I knew about desperation and I knew about poverty. But these days I had money coming in every month, whether I needed it or not. And I had no wife to spend it on, and no son. Not that I could find, anyway.

She took me by the hand and her flesh was warm. I held on tight as she led me into the night.

In the morning, I was up with the PT formations. PT-that’s the army’s acronym for physical training. Or, as drill sergeants love to say, “physical torture.” Before dawn, each unit falls out in the company (or battery) street and does the daily dozen. Calisthenics, civilians call them. Jumping jacks, squat benders, leg thrusts, push-ups, sit-ups, the usual. When done with that, the next order of business is the morning run. Years ago, a mile was deemed to be an appropriate distance. But these days, longer distances are in vogue and no self-respecting firing battery would bother with a run of less than two miles. Each of the three Camp Pelham firing batteries exploded, in formation, yelling their lungs out, from beneath the arched main gate. An NCO led them, shouting out cadence, the men chanting in response, and the unit wound like a very noisy caterpillar down the main street of Sonyu-ri. “Wake up! Sonyu-ri! Wake up! Sonyu-ri!”

No unit in the States could get away with running past a residential area and making that much noise. The civilians would complain. In Korea, the local populace doesn’t even think about complaining. Who would they complain to? The military dictatorship that runs the country? The local police who take orders from that dictatorship? The Commander of Camp Pelham? All futile. Instead, they put up with the shouting and the pounding of feet and when the sound fades away they roll over and go back to sleep.

When the last battery exited Camp Pelham, it made its way, like the others, down the main drag of Sonyu-ri. About two hundred yards on the other end of the strip, another unit emerged from the compound called RC-4, Recreation Center Four. In addition to their regular sweatpants and sweatshirts, each member of this unit wore a red pullover cap. The lead runner carried a guidon, a pennant fluttering atop a pole that identified them as combat engineers. As the two units approached each other they both started the same chant, even louder than the chants before: “On your left! On your left! Sick call! Sick call!”

The ultimate insult. Instead of doing your job, you spend your time running to the dispensary, claiming to be one of the “sick, lame, and lazy.”

The units passed each other, trading barbs and descriptive hand gestures, and continued on their runs. I strode to the Camp Pelham gate. An American MP stared at me with a bored expression. I flashed my identification and passed through the narrow pedestrian entrance. A few yards inside, I found our jeep still parked in front of the Battalion Ops Center. I sat in the passenger seat, crossing my arms across my chest for warmth, waiting for Ernie. About half an hour later, the snack stand across the street opened for business. I bought a Styrofoam cup filled with acidic coffee and a cinnamon roll made of dough that had the consistency of chewing gum. Still, the breakfast warmed me and filled my empty stomach.

I thought of the woman I’d spent the night with. Already, I could hardly remember her face. What I did remember is how deferential the landlady had been to her because she’d landed a customer. She brought us a metal pan of hot water and hand towels and soap and asked us to play the radio low so we wouldn’t disturb the children sleeping in the hooch next door. The landlady bowed to her when she brought the pan of hot water and called her “ajjima.” Aunt. It may sound crazy but I thought I’d helped the old business girl in more ways than one. I’d given her money, of course, which she clearly needed, and maybe just as importantly I’d given her face. It may not seem like much but in a lifetime filled with hardship and a constant gnawing sense of desperation, it’s something.

Ernie always told me I was a nut case. “You can’t save the whole freaking world,” he used to tell me. I knew he was right but that didn’t make things any easier.

I was about to purchase another cup of coffee when Ernie showed up, right at zero eight hundred like he’d promised. He jumped behind the steering wheel and started the engine.

“You get your ashes hauled last night?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Okay,” he said. “Be that way.”

He backed the jeep out into the battalion street, jammed the gearshift into first, and a few seconds later we were outside the main gate of Camp Pelhem. Across the street stood a boxy whitewashed building with the flag of the Republic of Korea fluttering in front.

“Pull over,” I said.

“Why?” Ernie asked.

“I want to talk to them. They might have something for us.”

He groaned but pulled over and came to a screeching halt.

I climbed out of the jeep and walked into the Sonyu-ri Korean National Police Station. Once the desk sergeant saw my badge, he became cooperative. I asked him if there’d been any incidents involving GIs this weekend, particularly on Sunday afternoon or evening. He thumbed through a ledger and finally pointed to an entry written in the neat hangul script. He read it to me. I occasionally slowed him down while I translated and made notes. When we were through, I thanked him and asked if there’d been anything else.

Nothing, he replied, other than that one incident. It had been a quiet night. I thanked him and returned to the jeep.

“What’d they have?” Ernie asked.

“GIs ripping off a cab driver.”

Ernie grunted. “So what else is new?”

“Apparently they were local GIs,” I said. “They had the driver let them off in the middle of the Sonyu-ri strip and then they ran into the alleyways, disappearing before the driver could catch them.”

“They knew their way around.”

“Right. The driver was from Seoul,” I said. “Picked them up in Itaewon.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re our boys,” Ernie said.

“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t. All three of them were Caucasian. At least the driver thought they were.” Sometimes Koreans aren’t so sure about race. For many of them there are only two races. You’re either Korean or you’re not.

“Descriptions?” Ernie asked.

“Big. Wearing blue jeans and sneakers and nylon jackets. They smoked a lot and were very noisy.”

“That narrows it down.”

“Right.”

Ernie shoved the jeep in gear and we pulled away from the police station and started rolling through the main drag of Sonyu-ri. At the Kit Kat Club Ernie downshifted, gunned the engine, and honked his horn. The front door was open. Through a beaded curtain, three pairs of manicured hands waved gaily, brightly colored bracelets dangling from slender wrists.

Ernie grinned and waved back. “My fan club,” he said.

And then we were on the Main Supply Route, heading south toward Seoul. I shivered and wrapped my arms tighter across my heart, sheltering myself as best I could from the cold wind of the Western Corridor.

When we returned to the 8th Army CID office, Miss Kim looked up from her typewriter and smiled. Staff Sergeant Riley was just finishing up a phone call.

“All right,” he said. “Got it.” He slammed down the receiver and looked up at us. “You’re here,” he said. “Officers’ Wives’ Club. Disturbance. The Provost Marshal wants you two over there immediately, if not sooner.”

“A disturbance at the OWC?” Ernie said.

“That’s right.”

“What happened? Somebody stole the knitting fund?”

“I don’t know what the hell happened,” Riley growled. “Other than that the MP patrol says there’s an ambulance sitting outside and Mrs. Wrypointe is hysterical. Now get the hell over there.”

Ernie set his empty coffee cup on the edge of Riley’s desk and we ran outside toward the jeep.

MP Sergeant Unsworth stood next to his MP jeep in front of the big green Quonset hut set aside for the Officers’ Wives’ Club. A green army ambulance was parked behind him. Both Ernie and I have worked with Unsworth before. He’s a grown man and a responsible adult and a hell of a good Military Policeman, so seeing tears welling up in his eyes was downright terrifying. Ernie and I strode up to him.

“What the hell happened?” Ernie asked.

Unsworth jammed his thumb over his should. “Mrs. Wrypointe. I just can’t talk to her.”

His hand was shaking.

“Why?” Ernie asked. “She hurt?”

“No,” he answered. “I mean, yes. She says she is.” The tears were already running down his face. “She threatened me,” he said. “With what?” I asked.

“Demotion.” Then his eyes widened and he stared at us as if begging. “I can’t take the cut in pay. My wife and my kids back in the States are barely getting by as it is.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about demotion,” I said, not sure if I believed it. We realized we weren’t going to gather much more information here so we left him and ran to the open door. Above the entranceway an engraved wooden sign was bolted: EIGHTH UNITED STATES ARMY OFFICERS’ WIVES’ CLUB, YONGSAN BRANCH.

Ernie and I entered.

Mrs. Wrypointe sat on a metal chair, covering her eyes with her left hand, the right being held by another American woman, who was comforting her. A half-dozen women swiveled to stare at Ernie and me as we entered. I pulled out my CID badge.

“Agent Sueño,” I said, “and Agent Bascom.”

They all started talking at once. Out of the hubbub the name that kept getting repeated was “Burkewalder.”

The convoy left the compound about twenty-two hundred hours that evening, or 10 P.M. civilian time. Colonel Brace, the 8th Army Provost Marshal, was at the lead, riding in his green army sedan with his Korean civilian driver. Two jeeps full of MPs came next, followed by me and Ernie. We emerged from Namsan Tunnel and gazed down at the bright lights of downtown Seoul. Colonel Brace’s driver took the familiar turnoff toward Myong-dong.

“So she popped her a good one,” Ernie said.

“So they claim,” I replied. “Mei-lan Burkewalder interrupts the meeting of the OWC and reads off Mrs. Wrypointe for being behind the crackdown on black marketing and now her husband’s been notified and he’s in the middle of combat operations as part of the remaining US military advisory group in South Vietnam.”

“So Mrs. Wrypointe calls her a black marketing whore and Mei-lan karate chops her in the nose.”

“What Mrs. Wrypointe called her is in dispute,” I said, “but everybody agrees about the punch. Not a karate chop, a straight right. Knocked off Mrs. Wrypointe’s glasses and bloodied her nose.”

“So now we’re going to bust Tiger Kang for black marketing.”

“Mrs. Wrypointe insisted.”

What worried me were the people riding up front in Colonel Brace’s sedan. Lieutenant Pong, the Korean National Police Liaison Officer to 8th Army, I could understand. He was a law-enforcement professional and his presence was required to coordinate the arrests of any Korean civilians. The other person was along for the ride strictly because of who she was married to and because of her proven ability to intimidate: Mrs. Millicent Wrypointe.

“Colonel Brace might as well turn over the authority of his office to the OWC,” Ernie said.

“Might as well,” I agreed.

Colonel Brace’s driver took a wrong turn and Ernie and I waited at the intersection for them to figure it out. Ten minutes later they were back, the two jeeps full of MPs trailing behind, and they pulled up next to us. Colonel Brace rolled down his window.

“Where is this damn place?” he shouted.

“Follow us,” Ernie said and without further discussion we took off. Once again, we parked at the foot of the hill leading up to Tiger Kang’s. It took some time for the MPs and Colonel Brace’s driver to find safe places to park. When the entire party was assembled, Ernie said, “We have to approach on foot.”

Colonel Brace, wearing a starched set of fatigues, nodded. “So they won’t have time to destroy the contraband.”

Mrs. Wrypointe wore pressed slacks and sneakers and a warm pullover sweater. Her nose was bandaged with white gauze. “Come on then,” she said. “The more time we give all these Koreans to gawk at us, the more time they have to warn this Tiger Kang.”

Apparently, she thought all Koreans worked together.

With Ernie at the lead, we trudged up the hill. As we passed each streetlamp, I fell back further and further. Something told me not to get too involved in this; it wasn’t going to turn out right, and if things went wrong, Mrs. Wrypointe would love nothing more than to blame me and Ernie.

But Ernie couldn’t resist the excitement. I believe he’d fallen in love with Tiger Kang’s kisaeng house, and maybe with Tiger Kang herself. And he certainly had a crush on Mei-lan Burkewalder. The hand-carved front door was lit by a floodlight and Ernie pressed the buzzer and in seconds the door popped open. Reflexively, two beautiful young women in tradition chima-chogori Korean gowns held their hands clasped in front of them and bowed so deeply they exposed the jade pins knotting their ebony hair. Ernie bowed back but as he did so Lieutenant Pong pushed past the women, followed immediately by Colonel Brace and Mrs. Wrypointe. The MPs milled around outside, thumbs hooked over their web belts. I told two of them to watch out back and two more to wait here at the front entrance. The other four followed me into Tiger Kang’s.

Ernie was already upstairs. That’s where the parties were going on, the noise and the laughter, and that’s where Lieutenant Pong, Colonel Brace and Mrs. Wrypointe headed first. When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw a startled group of Korean businessmen, seated next to beautiful young Korean hostesses inside one of the raised-floor party rooms, faces flushed by imported scotch. Lieutenant Pong looked inside, then proceeded down the row. All the rooms were empty until he reached the party room at the end of the hall. Lieutenant Pong slid open the oiled-paper door and stood there as if he’d been turned to stone. Colonel Brace and then Mrs. Wrypointe were following on his heels so closely that they practically bumped into him.

Ernie studied the expressions on their faces and then turned and grinned at me.

Mrs. Wrypointe screamed.

“What the hell did they expect to find?” Ernie asked. We were back in his jeep, winding our way through the brightly lit district of Myong-dong. “Eighth Army honchos out for a night on the town, where the hell else are they going to go? Tiger Kang’s.”

“She didn’t expect to find her husband,” I said, “with his tongue down the throat of Mei-lan Burkewalder.”

“Mei-lan probably made sure that he picked her for the evening.”

“Out of revenge?”

“What else?”

“Maybe they’d been an item for a while,” I said. “Maybe that’s why she wasn’t worried about us busting her for black market.”

“Maybe.” Ernie zipped up onto the expressway and half a mile later we entered Namsan tunnel. “Anyway, they got their black market arrest. And a historic moment it was. Tiger Kang arrested and taken down to the local KNP station.”

“They’ll treat her like a queen.”

“You can count on that.”

When we emerged from the tunnel, Ernie turned left on the MSR. After zigging and zagging through a quarter mile of heavy traffic, he turned down a dark lane and parked the jeep in one of the back alleys of Itaewon. We should’ve gone back to the MP station to file our report but somehow I needed to cleanse myself of 8th Army for a while. What better place than Itaewon, the greatest red-light district in Northeast Asia?

We found two empty barstools at the Lucky Seven Club. Sunny still hadn’t returned to work. We asked about her and the barmaid said she was improving. She didn’t sound too convincing. We ordered two cold OBs and two shots of black market bourbon. Within seconds we’d jolted them down and ordered two more.

“What the hell happened to you?” Riley growled.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You look like dog shit.”

It was zero eight hundred. At some point last night I’d staggered back to the compound, made it up the hill to the barracks and collapsed in my bunk. The houseboy, Mr. Yim, shook me awake in time for me to shower and shave before dragging myself to the CID office, but I’d made it. I touched my face. “I look all right.”

“Except for your eyeballs spurting blood.”

“They’re not bleeding.”

“No. They just look that way.”

I made my way to the counter and poured myself a cup of coffee.

“Where’s your partner in crime?”

“I don’t know.”

“You better find out.”

“Why?”

He tossed a pink phone message on the front of his desk. “This came in for you last night, to the MP desk officer.”

After sipping my coffee, I staggered back to his desk, grabbed the message and sat down heavily in a gray Army-issue vinyl chair. I stared at the message but couldn’t focus.

“Some guy named Singletery,” Riley said. “The desk sergeant said the connection was bad but Singletery seems to think that you need to get up there real quick. He has a lead for you.”

I studied the note. It was garbled, written in pencil in a childish script. I willed the pounding in my head to subside and tried to concentrate. It was a long message, filling up the entire pink square, finally trailing off at the end, but I got the gist of it. I set the note down on Riley’s desk

“He’s in danger,” I said.

“Who?”

“Singletery.”

For once, Riley didn’t make a smart remark. “Where’s Ernie?” he asked.

“Not in the barracks.”

“Out in the ville?”

I nodded.

“I’ll call the MP duty patrol to take you out there.”

I nodded again.

I found Ernie with one of the Lucky Seven waitresses who lived in the same complex of hooches as Sunny. He came wide awake when he saw me.

“What is it?”

“Singletery. He identified the guy called Smoke.”

Ernie shoved back the silk comforter. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Very good. But according to his phone message, the guy called Smoke has identified him too.”

“He knows Singletery’s our snitch.”

“You got it.”

Ernie sprang to his feet and started searching for his pants. The waitress sleeping on the mat next to him pulled the comforter over her head and groaned. In about a minute, Ernie was dressed and we were outside and striding through the narrow lanes of Itaewon.

“You bring your forty-five?” Ernie asked.

“Got it,” I said, patting the shoulder holster beneath my nylon jacket.

“Do we have time to get mine?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out his brass knuckles. “At least I got these.”

Camp Pelham looked deserted. The MP at the gate emerged from the guard shack and said, “They’re on move-out alert.”

“Where’d they go?” Ernie asked.

The MP frowned. I pulled out my CID badge. “We’re on a case,” I said, “involving one of the guys in Charlie Battery.”

“Across Freedom Bridge,” the MP said. “That’s all I know.”

We thanked him and Ernie turned the jeep around. The village of Sonyu-ri looked deserted too, as did the compound at RC-4. No GIs to spend money, no business, no activity.

At the approach to Freedom Bridge we were waved to halt by another MP. This one wore a heavy parka with a fur-lined hood. The wind blew cold off the Imjin River. I showed him my identification.

“We’re looking for the Second of the Seventeenth Field Artillery,” I told him, “particularly Charlie Battery.”

“They’re all together,” he told us. “Turn right after Camp Greaves and follow the road back to the river. You’ll find them about four klicks upstream at Dragon Tail Canyon. That’s where they’re conducting the bridge-crossing exercise.” We started to roll away and he shouted, “Better hurry or they’ll be south of the river before you get there.”

We veered onto the wooden roadway, gigantic iron struts looming above us. Every few yards an armed American MP, wearing gloves and winter gear, stood guard watching the vehicles rolling slowly past him and searching below for any attempt at sabotage. The churning Imjin flowed rapidly, an occasional chunk of mountain ice crashing into the huge cement stanchions below.

On the far side, a long line of military vehicles, both Korean and US, waited to cross the river. We sped past them on the two-lane highway and soon Camp Greaves was on our right. Then the road divided. If we went left we’d continue north to Camp Kitty Hawk and the truce village of Panmunjom, which sat smack dab in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone. Instead we turned right, as the MP had advised. After about ten minutes the road swerved south and once again we could see the rapidly flowing waters of the Imjin.

The river was narrower here at Dragon Tail Canyon and therefore moving faster. The banks on this side were low and sandy, like a beach, but on the far side loomed three- or four-story high red bluffs. Already, the river crossing exercise had begun. Huge pontoons held flat wooden barges, large enough to hold two deuce-and-a-half ton trucks along with two 105mm howitzers. The guns and their crews were aboard the low-lying craft and being propelled forward by huge outboard engines. As powerful as the engines were and as much smoke as they were giving off, they still could not propel the barge straight across the river. The current was so strong that the barges were being swept about a half-mile downriver, where they abutted a wooden quay. They hit there with a heavy bump, then were tied up by another crew so the guns and the trucks could drive off onto dry land.

“Combat engineers,” Ernie said.

The same unit I’d seen running PT outside of their compound on RC-4. Upstream a thick bank of fog was rolling in like a huge cloud of mist.

“Our visibility won’t last long,” I said. “Do you see Charlie Battery?”

“Over there. They’re about to load up.”

“Come on.”

Ernie drove the jeep down a narrow dirt road that led to the beach. He pulled up in a cloud of dust. I spotted Sergeant Singletery’s huge hunched shoulders and his bow legs. “Over there.”

We climbed out of the jeep and trotted toward Singletery. He was supervising the loading of the last of Charlie Battery’s howitzers onto the last barge.

“Chief of Smoke,” I said.

He turned, startled. “About time,” he said, grinning.

“We came as soon as I got your message.”

He stood with his hands on his hips, facing us. “I was thinking about what you said. About three guys, about one of them called ‘Smoke,’ about them maybe wanting to brag about what they did and maybe wanting to do it again. I asked around. It ain’t just Chiefs of Firing Batteries.”

“What isn’t?”

“They ain’t the only ones called ‘Smoke.’ ”

“Who else?”

Singletery turned and nodded toward the barge. A crewman had thrown off the last heavy line. “Them,” Singletery said. “Come on.”

We didn’t have time to discuss it further. It was the last barge and it was leaving. Signletery trotted onto the quay and we followed. When the barge was about a yard from the end and floating free, the three of us leapt aboard.

The fog upstream was even closer, engulfing us like a giant nightmare.

“So who else is called ‘Smoke’?” I asked.

Singletery turned and, as if to answer my question, stared down at the far end of the barge. Three men stood there, three combat engineers. Next to them was a huge contraption that looked like an electrical generator with some sort of tubing attached, like a short-barreled mortar. As we stared at the men, one of them aimed the tubing at us.

“Is he gonna fire that thing?” Ernie asked.

“It don’t fire,” Singletery said.

“Then what the hell is it?”

Before he could answer, the full force of the bank of fog slid silently over the barge. Within seconds it swallowed up the wooden planking and the canvas-covered trucks and the glistening metal barrels of the 105mm howitzers. We were enveloped in darkness.

“We better get ’em,” Singletery said, “before they start that thing up.”

“What is it?” I asked but already he was moving away from us, just a dark shadow in the mist. I grabbed Ernie’s elbow and pulled him forward and together we followed Sergeant Singletery and then, before we could reach the end of the barge, we heard an engine coughing, choking, and then starting to life-and then roaring.

“Shit,” Singletery said. He stopped abruptly and we bumped into him.

“Gas!” he shouted.

All around us we could hear artillerymen popping open canvas holders and scrambling to pull out rubber protective masks, yanking them over their heads, adjusting the straps, blowing out forcefully to clear the air inside, and then lowering the protective rubber hood over their shoulders.

And then we saw it, dark and black and menacing. Smoke. Tons of it, roiling out of that metal tubing we’d seen a few seconds ago. CS-better known to the civilian world as tear gas.

“Come on.”

Ernie and I ran to the upstream side of the barge, toward the thickening fog, groping blindly. At least most of the tear gas was being swept south by the prevailing winds, which whistled loudly out of North Korea, following the southerly flow of the current.

“If that shit gets in our eyes,” Ernie said, “we’ll be helpless.”

“Blind, maybe,” I said, “but not helpless.” I pulled out my.45.

We’d both experienced CS gas before. It’s part of every soldier’s basic training; to step into a gas filled tent, take off your protective mask, recite your service number backward, and be shoved outside coughing and spitting by your Drill Sergeant.

We stood in the fog behind the lead truck on the barge. Ernie whispered in my ear, “They’re on the far side of the truck, next to that thing spitting out the gas. As soon as we hit land, they’ll skedaddle.”

“So we wait here,” I said. “When we land and this freaking gas clears, Singletery tells us who they are and we make the arrest.”

Ernie was about to say something when we heard a scream, then cursing, men grunting and the sound of bodies flailing against metal.

“Singletery,” I said.

We rushed around the front bumper of the truck. As soon as we stepped past the truck, the gas hit us. I kept my eyes closed, popping them open briefly and trying not to breathe. Amidst the fog and the pumping CS gas, I could see only shadows. Ernie surged forward, swinging at phantoms with his brass knuckles. I tried to aim my.45. A hunch-shouldered figure that I took to be Singletery was struggling with two of the combat engineers, the men I suspected had raped Sunny. Ernie had found the third and was holding him in a headlock and punching his face with the brass knuckles. Singletery staggered backward. It looked to me as if someone had ripped off his protective mask. I saw the hood go flying off the edge of the barge.

My eyes burned with pain. Tears flooded out of them, so fast I couldn’t see. I knew the worst thing you could do when under assault by CS gas is to wipe your eyes because that just makes them burn worse. But if I couldn’t see, I couldn’t fire. Using my sleeve I bent and wiped moisture from by eyes. Then, with an act of will, I opened them as wide as I could and through the fog and the gas I took aim with the.45 and fired at the two men assaulting Sergeant Singletery.

I didn’t mean to hit them, I only wanted to scare them, but it was too late. They’d finally managed to shove the huge man off his center of gravity. As I fired, he reeled, waving his arms in the air, and tilted backward. He fell away, tumbling off the end of the barge. The sickening sound of a splash hit my ears.

I fired again, this time aiming to kill. I hit something and the two men went down.

“Don’t move,” I shouted. “I’ll blow your heads off!”

The man wrestling with Ernie lay flat on the deck. Ernie backed away, staggering toward the two-and-a-half ton truck. When he was next to me, he knelt on the wooden deck. Down the barge I heard men shouting, their voices muffled by their protective masks. “Man overboard!”

There was no rescue craft that I knew of, and no Coast Guard to notify. What I did know was that the waters of the Imjin were freezing and the current not only flowed quickly but was also known for its treacherous undertows.

Ernie crawled toward the machine spewing out the gas and pawed at the controls. Somehow, he managed to get it turned off. A couple of minutes later we bumped against the quay on the opposite bank and the air started to clear, the gas and the fog flowing swiftly downriver. Although my eyes were watering way too much for me to read it, I managed to recite from memory a prisoner’s rights from the Uniform Code of Military Justice to the three men lying motionless on the deck.

A search was launched for Singletery. They spent two days looking for him. His body was never recovered. At 8th Army JAG, murder was added to the long list of charges against the three combat engineers.

Two months later Ernie drove his jeep and I rode shotgun, literally. I held an M-16 rifle across my chest while in the back seat sat a representative from 8th Army Finance. He carried a leather briefcase with a combination lock on it.

Mei-lan Burkewalder had long since lost her ration control privileges and her command sponsorship. This meant that she no longer received the cost-of-living housing allowance, which was apparent as Ernie drove us down bumpy lanes, splashing through mud, honking his horn at the crowds of taffy vendors and trash dealers and old ladies holding huge bundles of laundry atop their heads. Finally, we found the address: painted on a grease stained board: 21 bon-ji, 37 ho, in the Mapo district of Seoul. Ernie parked the jeep against a moss covered brick wall and we climbed out and tromped through the mud toward the splintered wooden gate. I pounded and we waited.

Mei-lan Burkewalder opened the gate herself. Her face was wan and gray, with no hint of makeup. The bracelets that used to dangle from her forearms were also gone. She didn’t bother to invite us into her hooch. She just let us into the courtyard and sat on the narrow wooden porch that ran in front of the sliding oil-papered doors. The guy from 8th Army Finance sat next to her. He unlocked the briefcase, pulled out a sheaf of paperwork, read it to her and asked if she understood. She nodded.

“Would you say that out loud please,” he said, “in front of these witnesses.”

He nodded toward Ernie and me.

“I understand,” she said.

Then he handed her a pen and she signed the paperwork. He kept the top white copy and the yellow copy, which was for her husband’s pay and earnings folder, and handed her the bottom pink copy.

Captain Irwin Burkewalder had been killed in action while on combat operations in a support role with the 2nd Ranger Group near Pleiku. Word had come down about a week ago. Mrs. Mei-lan Burkewalder had been notified and now, as spousal beneficiary, she was receiving her ten thousand dollar payout from Serviceman’s Group Life Insurance. The finance guy pulled the money out of the briefcase and counted the twenty dollar notes out in front of her. They made an impressive pile. Then he handed her some paper bands and let her bundle them up. She fumbled the job. He helped her finish.

When he was done, he shoved his signed paperwork into the briefcase and clicked it shut. He stood and nodded to her.

As he walked back to the gate, Mei-lan Burkewalder looked at Ernie and then at me. Her eyes were dry. Too dry. The eyes you see when there are no tears left.

We backed out of the hooch and returned to Ernie’s jeep.