Ping-Pong Heart

– 4-

The next morning in the Office of the 8th United States Army Provost Marshal, Colonel Brace asked me, “Who translated this?”

“I did, sir.”

“Did Miss Kim check it?”

“Yes. She made a couple of changes.” She hadn’t, but I wanted to make sure she received credit.

Colonel Brace nodded and placed the statement on his desk. “That’ll be all.”

In the Admin Office, Ernie sat in front of Staff Sergeant Riley’s desk reading this morning’s Pacific Stars and Stripes.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“He’s not happy.”

“How could he be? A field grade officer lying to him, sending his agents on a wild goose chase. You’d think he’d show the Provost Marshal of the Eighth United States Army a little more respect.”

“How come you never show him any respect?” I asked.

“I work for him,” Ernie replied. “That’s different.”

Staff Sergeant Riley stuck a pencil behind his ear and leaned forward. “Maybe you two ought to get off your butts, move out smartly, and make your way over to the commissary and start doing your job.”

The words came out as a growl. Even though he had the physique of Tweety Bird in khaki, Sergeant Riley always tried to sound like he was the toughest guy south of the Demilitarized Zone. Still, he was a hard worker. A two-foot-high pile of reports teetered on one side of his desk, completed memos stacked on the other.

“We worked late last night,” Ernie told him, “until almost curfew. Don’t we get any consideration for that?”

“A soldier’s on duty twenty-four hours a day,” Riley replied.

“Unless you’re not,” Ernie said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that some guys have cushy office jobs and don’t have to go running around Itaewon at night until all hours.”

Riley puffed out his chest, but his uniform still hung off him like a starched shirt on a hanger. “I work overtime here.”

“You work overtime all right. You and your bottle of Old Overwart.”

“That’s Overholt!” Riley said. “Premium rye.”

“The cheapest rotgut in the Class VI store.”

“At least I don’t drink soju.”

Miss Kim snatched another tissue from the box in front of her, stood, and sashayed out the door. As she left, we all watched her shapely posterior. When she was out of sight, I said, “There you go. You two have upset her again.”

Riley grumbled. Ernie snapped the newspaper and pretended to be reading. The intercom buzzed. Riley pressed a button and said, “Sir.”

“Contact Major Schultz. I want him here in my office immediately if not sooner.”

“Yes, sir.” Riley buzzed off.

As he was dialing, Ernie and I glanced at one another. He slipped the newspaper into his jacket pocket and we walked out of the building to the jeep.

Attempting to obstruct the illicit flow of duty-free goods from the PX and commissary was a fetish within the command structure of the 8th United States Army. Groceries, clothing, stereo equipment and American consumer goods of all kinds were shipped to Korea at US taxpayer expense for exclusive use by servicemen and their dependents. However, there was an acute demand for these items in the Korean economy. Twenty years ago, at the end of the Korean War, the country’s industrial capacity had been totally destroyed. Even now it was still recovering, and exotic items like freeze-dried coffee, granulated sugar, imported bananas and jars of maraschino cherries still commanded a high price on the black market. GIs could buy a cartload of groceries at the commissary and sell them to Korean black market honchos for twice what they paid for them. Certain items, like Johnny Walker Black Scotch and Kent cigarettes, had an even bigger markup. Under the Status of Forces Agreement, 8th Army is tasked with stopping this illegal flow of goods. The rationale was that if fledgling Korean industries had to compete with a flood of cheap US consumables, they’d never get off the ground.

The real reason 8th Army was so obsessed with the black market was pure and simple: racism. Most of the purchasers of these goods were the Korean wives of American GIs-derisively called yobos. They flooded both the PX and the commissary, especially after payday, and made it hard for “real Americans” to shop. Also, most of these Korean women were married to enlisted men, not higher-ranking officers. So race and class came into the disdain with which the command treated them.

Our main job, more important than investigating murder, mayhem, robbery, and rape, was to arrest as many yobos as possible for trafficking on the black market.

“Tools of the power structure,” Ernie said.

“That’s us,” I replied.

We were sitting in his jeep, parked in the last row of the lot in front of the Yongsan Commissary, watching yobos exit with cartload after cartload of duty-free US goods.

“Who should we bust?” he asked me.

“Take your pick.”

“Riley said we had to make at least four arrests today.”

“Four? He can forget it. Give ’em two and they get spoiled.”

“So what excuse do we use for just making one?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“That’s what I like about you, Sueno. You’re creative.”

A Korean woman exited the Commissary. She wore a long green dress that clung to the higher-altitude points of her figure. Loose flesh jiggled beneath. Behind her, a Korean man wearing the smock and pinned-on identification badge of a bagger pushed a cart fully laden with groceries. He loaded them into the trunk of a Ford Granada PX taxi and accepted a two-dollar tip from the fancy lady.

“Two bucks,” Ernie said. “A high-class yobo. I think we should bust her.”

The drill was that we’d follow the cab to the ville, where she’d unload part of her haul in front of one of the many black market operations, and when she accepted her payment we’d swoop in for the arrest. We’d done it so many times it had become routine. Usually, we escorted the woman to the MP Station, wrote the report, and waited for her husband to show up and sign for her release. According to Army regulation, a soldier is responsible for the actions of his dependents, even to the point of court-martial if he doesn’t control their errant behavior.

“Might as well get it over with,” I said.

Ernie reached for the ignition, but stopped when we heard the roar of an engine approaching. A jeep rolled in front of us. The MP in the passenger seat hopped out and walked toward us, hoisting his web belt as he did so.

“You Bascom?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ernie replied, “what’s it to ya?”

“Not a goddamn thing, except I have to relay a message.”

“So relay.”

“Colonel Brace wants to talk to you. ASAP!”

“Okay, Charlie,” Ernie said, tossing the MP a mock salute.

“The name’s Wilkins,” he said, but Ernie had already fired up the jeep and we were rolling away.

“Why do you have to aggravate people like that?” I asked.

“Like what?” Ernie said.

“You treated him like he was your servant.”

“I did?”

“Yes, which is maybe why Miss Kim won’t talk to you anymore.”

“What’s she got to do with this?”

“It’s your attitude, Ernie. She’s a catch. You ought to treat her better.”

Ernie seemed puzzled by this. “I treated her as good as I’ve ever treated any woman.”

That, of course, was the crux of the problem.

Colonel Brace kept us standing at attention. He shoved the translated statement across his desk.

“He says it’s a lie,” he told us.

“Of course he says that,” Ernie replied. “He’s not gonna admit that he can’t get it up.”

“He can’t get it up, sir,” Colonel Brace replied.

“Yes, sir.”

Flustered, Colonel Brace continued. “It’s not about not getting it up. Major Schultz still claims that she took off with his money. He wants to make it official. He wants to file a complaint with the KNP Liaison Office.”

“He’ll be laughed out of Itaewon,” Ernie said.

“He’ll be laughed out of Itaewon, sir.” Colonel Brace was reaching the limit of his patience.

“Yes, sir!” Ernie replied again.

“I know,” the Colonel said, “it doesn’t make sense. This will destroy his reputation.”

Yongsan Compound had about 5,000 soldiers. Since it housed 8th Army headquarters, its personnel roster was top-heavy with brass, with almost half of those soldiers being officers. Gossip swirled fast, not only here, but throughout the military community. Even all the way back at Fort Hood, Texas, it seemed almost certain that if Major Schultz pressed this case, his wife would eventually catch wind of it.

We were all thinking the same thing. Major Schultz was having an emotional meltdown. He was destroying his military career, maybe his marriage. I’d seen it before: the vagaries of military life, the separation from home and family, the intense peer pressure not only to conform, but to paradoxically be in constant competition for promotion with the people you lived and worked with. Sometimes it was all too much for even experienced soldiers. Many of them turned to drink, a few to drugs, and occasionally some acted out by breaking the law.

“Can someone talk sense to him, sir?” I said. “Even if he’s telling the truth, all he’s out is fifty dollars.”

“I’ve tried. But he just left on his way to the Liaison Office. Do you have a contact over there?”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Pong, the officer in charge.”

“Speak to him. See what can be worked out.”

“You want us to quash the report?” I asked.

“Maybe. Let’s talk it over with them. See if they have any ideas.”

We did. And the KNPs were more than happy to set Major Schultz’s report aside and take no action. A few days went by and we expected him to calm down and forget the whole thing. Unfortunately, he didn’t.

Three days later, Ernie and I were making our customary rounds of the Itaewon gin joints when Captain Kim, the commander of the Itaewon Police station, sent a runner. The young cop found us at the bar of the Seven Club and escorted us to the hooch near the old oak tree. Miss Jo had been beaten, and badly. Blood smeared the vinyl floor. The neighbors said they thought they had heard someone speaking English, probably American soldiers. Two attackers, that’s the one thing they all agreed on. But the night had been dark and no one had seen them clearly. And as soon as they could, they all shut their doors firmly, hiding from the unwanted presence of the Korean National Police.

Miss Jo had already been taken to the hospital. The deed had almost certainly been done by American GIs. It would be up to us, Agents George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, to find the perps and bring them to justice, or at least what passed for justice in these parts.