Ping-Pong Heart

– 5-

The next morning, Doctor Park was gruff with us. “She pay nothing. Who is going to pay for her?”

He was a middle-aged man with grey streaks running through his hair. His white coat was so fresh, I figured he’d put on a new one just to talk to us.

“She’ll be filing a Status of Forces charge,” I told him. “She should make enough to pay her hospital bills and more.”

“How long will that take?”

I shrugged. “Maybe a couple of months.”

He sighed. “And once she gets the money, she’ll run away.”

I handed him my card. “I’ll put you in touch with a SOFA Liaison Officer. Maybe he can arrange for her bill to be paid directly.”

He gazed at me skeptically but stuck the card in his shirt pocket. The three of us walked to her ward. Down the long cement corridors, Ernie kept swiveling his head, checking out the nurses.

Miss Jo was in a dimly lit room with about a half-dozen other patients, asleep, a tube down her nose and a hanging bottle feeding liquid into her arm.

“When will we be able to question her?” I asked.

“If you want, we’ll wake her now.”

I glanced at Ernie. He nodded. “No time like the present.”

The doctor called for a nurse and one scurried in. She must’ve been hovering just outside the door. He barked an order that I couldn’t understand, and in less than a minute she came back with a syringe and a bottle of fluid. Doctor Park administered the shot himself. Within seconds, Miss Jo Kyong-ja’s eyelids fluttered and then popped fully open.

The doctor checked her pulse once again and left us alone.

I patted her forearm. “Hello, Miss Jo.”

She nodded weakly.

“We’re here to help you. Tell us who did this to you.”

There seemed to be little understanding in her eyes. “Miss Jo, last night, who came to your hooch? Who hit you? Who beat you up?”

Her lips moved and it was as if she were trying to coax long-rusted machinery to crank over. Finally, she spoke. “You know who.”

“Was it Major Schultz?”

“Who?”

“Fred Schultz.”

“Freddy? Yes, Freddy.”

“A big blond guy,” I said. “Red face. Fat cheeks.”

She nodded. “Yes, him.”

“Did he say why he was doing this to you?”

“He wanted me to say not true.”

“Not true what?”

“What I told you.”

“About him not being able to do it?”

She nodded.

“Did he ask for his money back?”

“He say no, keep money. He just want me change story.”

“And you told him no.”

“I told him never hachi.” She gazed around, as if examining the ward for the first time. “How much this cost?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who pay?”

It wasn’t our job to advise her about filing a SOFA charge. Ernie and I glanced at one another.

“He pay,” she said. “Right?”

“Maybe,” I replied, “if you file a SOFA charge.”

She knew what it was. As a business girl in Itaewon, it was one of the first things you learned.

“Okay,” she said, satisfied. “I sleep now.”

“One more question.”

She reopened her eyes.

“Was Freddy alone?”

“No, one other man with him.”

“Did he hit you also?”

“He hit. Freddy no hit.”

“He didn’t?”

“No. Other man do everything.”

“Do you know who this other man was?”

She shook her head. “Molla-yo,” she said. I don’t know. “I sleep now.”

“But he was a GI?”

She nodded drowsily. “Yeah. Big GI.” Her eyes closed and her breathing became slow and steady.

The written report of our findings was signed by both me and Ernie. It created somewhat of a furor at the Provost Marshal’s office, since it directly accused a field grade officer of being party to a felonious assault, which the 8th Army honchos weren’t happy with.

One of the first consequences, other than placing both me and Ernie firmly back in the doghouse, was that Major Frederick Manfield Schultz withdrew his complaint with the KNPs for the missing fifty dollars. He also denied in writing that he had been in Itaewon or anywhere near the home of Miss Jo Kyong-ja on the night on which she was assaulted. Ernie and I were not allowed to interrogate him. As a field grade officer, Colonel Brace allowed him the courtesy of responding to the accusation through a written statement, vetted by a lawyer from the 8th Army Judge Advocate General’s Office. The statement went on to say that Miss Jo had probably accused him of the assault in order to qualify for a larger SOFA settlement. If she had been assaulted by a Korean, as the statement speculated, she would receive nothing. Even if she’d been assaulted by an American GI of lesser rank, it would not be as embarrassing to 8th Army and she would probably end up with a smaller settlement.

Ernie and I reviewed the evidence gathered by the KNPs at the scene, but there wasn’t much. Nobody called out the forensic investigative team when an Itaewon business girl was beaten up. In fact, the KNPs had allowed the landlady to clean up the blood while they were still at the scene. She’d also washed the bedsheets and tidied up the room, hoping to sign a new tenant up soon if Miss Jo didn’t make rent.

The statements from the neighbors were pretty much uniform. When the commotion started, they’d been frightened and just stayed in their rooms. When asked what exactly they had heard said during the melee, they all said they weren’t sure.

So that’s where it stood. A classic he-said, she-said case.

Still, Miss Jo might make some money out of it if she hired a Korean attorney familiar with SOFA claims procedures. Keeping the incident quiet, even if it meant paying out a little money, would be 8th Army’s main goal.

And that was where it stood for almost three weeks. Miss Jo, I found out later, was released from the hospital two days after we’d seen her. I also found out that she hadn’t yet filed a SOFA charge, though she had six months to do so.

Ernie pestered me with questions about my conversations with Miss Kim. I told him what I could-our talks hadn’t been confidential-and he kept asking me how I thought she was holding up. It seemed that the sight of Specialist Fenton following her, touching her elbow and whispering rude comments in her ear had upset him more than he’d originally let on. In the office, he started being nice to her: making sure she got a cookie whenever somebody received a care package from the States and walking Riley out into the hallway when he let loose with too much profanity.

She noticed. Of course, she’d always noticed what Ernie did, casting furtive glances at him even during the frostiest days of their busted relationship. The tension in the 8th Army CID Admin Office started to ease. Finally, what I thought was going to happen happened.

Ernie asked Miss Kim out on a date. She hesitated, but Ernie kept after her. Ignoring her unspoken cues, he forced her into giving him an answer. She stood up from her desk, looked him straight in the eye, and turned him down flat. Never, she said, would she go out with him again. Red-faced, she walked out of the Admin Office and marched down to the ladies’ room, where she stayed for almost half an hour.

“Will you quit harassing my secretary?” Riley said. “We have work to do in this office.”

“Paper,” Ernie said. “Nothing but paper.” But he disappeared too, for the rest of the afternoon. After the cannon went off at close of business, I wandered casually down the walkway toward Gate Five. I watched Miss Kim leave, along with hundreds of other Korean employees, and then outside I saw someone following her at a distance. This time, it wasn’t Specialist Fenton. If it had been, I would’ve busted his chops. Instead, it was who I’d expected it to be: Agent Ernie Bascom. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen him so determined, not when it came to a woman anyway.

On the main road outside of Gate Five, Miss Kim climbed onto a packed Seoul metropolitan bus. After about a dozen other customers clambered aboard, Ernie pulled himself up the narrow steps and wedged his way into the teeming mass of humanity. The bus pulled off in a cloud of exhaust.

I met Captain Leah Prevault at Hanil-guan, a restaurant in downtown Seoul that specialized in noodles. It was a large place with two floors and probably more than sixty tables, vastly popular with young Koreans. What Leah and I liked about it was that it was miles from the compound and, other than us, we’d never seen any foreigners there.

“You’re getting better with chopsticks,” I told her. Only about half the noodles were sliding back into the broth. She dabbed her lips with a folded napkin.

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Only you.”

We’d been seeing each other since we’d first worked on a case together some six months ago. Captain Prevault was a psychiatrist, and I often picked her brain about the cases I dealt with.

“Major Schultz has everything going for him,” I told her. “A wife, a family back at Fort Hood, a solid military career. Even after losing that fifty bucks to that business girl, he should’ve kept his mouth shut. Instead, he makes it worse.”

She’d heard about the beating Miss Jo had received.

Leah Prevault picked up the flat metal spoon and ladled broth into her mouth.

“Male pride,” she said. “Can’t admit that he can’t get it up.” She grinned devilishly.

“You think that’s it?”

“Yup. And when he can’t get it up, he has to blame somebody. Unfortunately, it’s usually the woman.”

“You’ve seen cases like this before?”

She nodded her head. “Often.”

“You think his wife has heard about it?”

“No question. So has his boss, the J-2.”

The J-2 was the staff officer in charge of military intelligence, who reported directly to the Commanding Officer of the 8th United States Army. The “J” stood for joint command-of both the ROK and US-and the “2” was the standard designation for military intelligence operations.

“Has the J-2 relieved him of his regular duties?” I asked.

“That’s not what I hear at the O Club.” She was referring to the 8th Army Officers Club. “In fact the J-2 is backing him up, keeping him on some important investigation he was in the middle of.”

“About what?”

She shrugged. “I’m just a lowly MD. You’ll have to talk to the honchos about that.”

When we finished our dinner, I took her hand. “Thanks for coming out here with me.”

She stared straight into my eyes. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Leah Prevault wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world, but she had brains and an outgoing personality that made most people relaxed enough to confess their innermost secrets to her. By Ernie’s standards she was plain: She wore no makeup, her long brown hair was usually knotted in the back of her head, and her horn-rimmed glasses often slipped halfway down her nose. But her full-lipped smile was generous, her complexion smooth, and I’d probably fallen for her the first time I met her.

“You like the brainy ones,” Ernie told me, without a tone of approval. “They just land you in trouble.”

“Trouble in what way?”

“They make you want to settle down.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Ernie looked at me like I was mad. “There’s a whole world of women out there.” He waved his arm. “How can you settle for just one?”

“How many do you need?” I asked.

“More than I’m getting,” he said.

Captain Prevault and I didn’t return to the compound that night. Fraternization between the ranks is a court-martial offense. We stayed at a Korean inn, away from the prying eyes of the 8th US Army.

Two days later, the word came down. Riley hoisted the phone to his ear, listened, and barked, “Roger that!” He slammed down the receiver. “You guys remember that Major Schultz?” he asked.

“What do you mean, ‘remember’?” I asked.

“He’s history.”

“What are you talking about, Riley?”

“That was the KNP Liaison. They found Schultz dead, at some dive out in Itaewon.” He jotted something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “Captain Kim’s at the scene right now.”

I looked at the paper. The Dragon King Nightclub.

“Dead?” Ernie asked.

“Deader than a ping-pong ball in a minefield,” Riley replied. “Better get your asses in gear.”

We did. Ernie grabbed his coat and I grabbed mine. Within seconds, we were in his jeep and speeding out Gate 7, waving at the MPs, swerving toward Itaewon. Ernie honked his horn and zoomed past a three-wheeled truck loaded with a small mountain of garlic. He held his nose.

“I’ll never get used to this country,” he said.

“Oh, bull, you love every minute of it,” I told him. “I’ve seen you pop down three orders of roasted garlic in one sitting.”

“That’s after a bottle of soju.”

“You like the smell of garlic better after a bottle of soju?”

“I like anything better after a bottle of soju.”