The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

Martin Limón PX CHRISTMAS ^{from The Usual Santas}

Staff Sergeant Riley slapped his pointer against the flip chart and barked out the title of today’s training session. “Suicide Prevention,” he shouted. Then he lowered the pointer and paced in a small circle as if contemplating all the burdens of the universe. He looked up suddenly and aimed the pointer at me.

“Sueño. How many Eighth Army personnel committed suicide during last year’s holiday season?”

I shook my head. “Molla the hell out of me.”

He growled, glancing around the room. There were about thirty GIs in various stages of somnolence slouched listlessly in hard wooden seats. About half were 8th Army criminal investigation agents and the other half MPI, Military Police investigators.

Riley slammed his pointer on the table in front of him. “On your feet!” he shouted.

Slowly, every student rose to a mostly upright position. The last person up, as usual, was my investigative partner, Ernie Bascom.

“Okay, Bascom. Do you know who General Nettles is?”

“He’s the freaking chief of staff,” Ernie replied.

“Outstanding,” Riley said. “And do you know how many ways he can screw up your life if he takes a mind to?”

“About thirty?” Ernie ventured.

“At least,” Riley said. “He can mess up your life and the life of every swinging dick in this room in about as many ways as you can imagine.” Riley paused to let the dramatic tension grow. “And there’s no doubt in my military mind that that’s exactly what he’ll do if the 8th Army Christmas suicide rate doesn’t come down and come down fast. Is that understood?”

A few bored voices said, “Understood.” Then someone asked, “Can we sit back down now?” Riley barked, “Take your seats!” Which everyone did.

My name is George Sueño. I’m an agent for the 8th United States Army Criminal Investigation Division in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Riley wasn’t telling us anything we didn’t know. When you’re stationed overseas, pretty much constantly harassed by the pressures of military life, and Christmas rolls around and you’re pulling patrol along the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, life can become pretty depressing. Some guys fire a 7.62mm round into their cranium. Others eat a hand grenade. This, of course, causes quite a bit of consternation back home. Not only do the moms and dads and wives and brothers and sisters complain about the suicide rate, but, more importantly—as far as the honchos of 8th Army are concerned—Congress complains about it. And Congress controls military funding. So the Department of the Army rolls the shitball downhill from the Pentagon to the Pacific Command to 8th Army headquarters to the provost marshal’s office until it splats into those of us working law enforcement on the front lines.

Now that Riley had our attention, he said, “You’re probably wondering what law enforcement personnel have to do with suicide prevention.” Then he grinned, taking on the visage of a death’s head. “The chief of staff is initiating a new program. We’re going to be proactive. All personnel who seem to be displaying evidence of depression or suicidal thoughts will be placed in the new twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week Suicide Prevention Program. They’ll be provided counseling and psychiatric treatment if necessary and they’ll be kept under observation at all times.”

“They’ll be locked up,” Ernie said.

Riley glared at him. “Not locked up. They’ll be provided extra care. And extra training. We want to make sure they make it through the season without harming themselves.”

Another of the investigators raised his hand. “Once they’re stuck in this Suicide Prevention Program, will they be allowed to leave?”

Riley looked embarrassed and turned to his flip chart. After tossing back a few sheets, he found his answer. “They’ll be allowed to leave upon release by medical personnel and the OIC.” The officer in charge.

“So they’ll be locked up,” Ernie repeated.

“Can it, Bascom,” Riley told him.

“What about us?” another guy asked. “What are we supposed to do?”

“You’ll be picking them up.”

“You mean, taking them into custody.”

Riley shrugged. “It’s thought that since CID agents and MP investigators work in civilian clothes, it will be less obtrusive if you take them in rather than having armed and uniformed MPs make the pickup.”

“You want to make it look as if we’re not treating them as criminals.”

“Which we are,” Ernie added.

“I told you to can it, Bascom.”

Riley flipped through the sheets until he found a map of the Korean Peninsula. Assignments were made based on geography, starting in Seoul, then working south and north. We’d be receiving a list daily as to who to pick up, the name of the unit they were assigned to, and where they worked. Then we were to transport them over to the new Suicide Prevention facility behind the 121st Evacuation Hospital here on Yongsan Compound South Post.

“Any questions?” Riley shouted.

Ernie raised his hand. “What about me and Sueño? You didn’t give us an assignment.”

“You two are staying on the black market detail.”

A guffaw went up from the crowd. Some wise guy said, “Somebody has to protect the PX from the yobos.” The derogatory term for the Korean wives of enlisted soldiers.

Ernie flipped him the bird.

As everyone filed out of the training room, somebody murmured, “Lock ’em up. That’ll help lift their spirits.”

We sat in Ernie’s jeep outside of the Yongsan Main PX, the largest U.S. Army Post Exchange in Korea. With only ten shopping days until Christmas, the place was packed.

“I don’t get it,” Ernie said. “What the hell are they buying?”

“Presents,” I said.

“Like what?”

Ernie stared at me, honestly wanting an answer.

“Like toys for kids,” I told him, “or clothes for the family or decorations for the house. How the hell would I know?”

We were both single, in our twenties, and we both lived in the barracks. About the only things we ever purchased were laundry soap and shoe polish for the Korean houseboys to make our beds and keep our uniforms looking sharp. And consumables, like beer, liquor, and the occasional meal of kalbi, marinated short ribs, or yakimandu, fried dumplings dipped in soy sauce. That was about all we ever went shopping for.

Here in the mid-1970s, in the middle of the Cold War, one would’ve thought that the honchos of 8th Army would’ve been primarily concerned about the 700,000 Communist North Korean soldiers just thirty miles north of here along the Korean DMZ and the fact that war could break out at any moment. One would’ve been wrong. What seemed to obsess the 8th Army bosses most was stopping the black marketing out of the PX and the commissary.

Twenty years ago, at the end of the Korean War, the economy of the ROK was flat on its back. In Seoul and almost every other city in the country, hardly a building remained standing. Even the rice paddies, which had been plowed out of the fertile earth millennia ago, were fallow and overgrown with weeds. During the fighting that raged up and down the peninsula, virtually everyone had become a refugee. And those were the lucky ones. Estimates varied, but it was believed that between 2 and 3 million Koreans had been killed during the war, this out of a population of about 25 million. Things were getting better. People for the most part had roofs over their heads and were employed. However, wages were desperately low, and if you cleared a hundred bucks a month you were doing just fine.

Still, the demand for imported products was growing. Such things as American cigarettes, blended scotch, maraschino cherries, freeze-dried coffee, instant orange juice, and powdered milk. The Korean economy wasn’t producing those things. Not yet. And it was a crime for GIs to buy such items on base and sell them off base. The official reason was supposedly so fledgling Korean industries wouldn’t have to compete with cheap foreign products, thereby giving them a chance to grow.

The real reason was more visceral. On a crowded shopping day like today, American officers and their wives hated to stand in long lines behind the yobos, the Korean wives of GIs. Once legally married, the Korean wife was issued a military dependent ID card so she could come on base, and a ration control plate, which allowed her to buy a specified dollar amount each month in the PX and the commissary. Some of the wives resold what they purchased to black marketeers for twice or even three times what they paid for it. The extra money, for the most part, wasn’t wasted. Often they had elderly parents to take care of or younger brothers and sisters to support. The money garnered from black marketing could often be the difference between continued misery for a family versus having a sporting chance to rise out of poverty. However, the 8th Army honchos didn’t look at that side of it. They only knew that their PX and their commissary were being invaded by foreigners.

It was my job, and Ernie’s, to arrest these women for black marketing and thus keep the world safe for colonels and their wives to be able to buy all the Tang and Spam and Pop-Tarts their little hearts desired.

“So who should we bust?” Ernie asked.

We were watching the women parade out of the front door of the PX, pushing their carts toward the taxi line.

“Those illuminated nativity scenes seem to be popular this year,” I said.

“What?”

“Those.” I pointed. “In the large cardboard box. Cheap plastic replicas of a manger and three wise men bowing before Baby Jesus. Just screw in a bulb and plug it into the wall.”

“Koreans buy those?”

“Yeah. It makes sense. They can keep it indoors. Makes them seem modern.”

“Modern? That happened two thousand years ago.”

“Christianity came to Korea less than a century ago.”

“They consider that modern?”

“Korea’s four thousand years old, Ernie.”

“Damn. People have been eating kimchi and rice all that time?”

I ignored him and studied the line. “Let’s make one bust this morning and another this afternoon. That should keep the provost marshal off our butts.”

“How about her?” Ernie said.

A statuesque young Korean woman wearing her black hair up in a bun and a blue dress that clung to her figure pushed a cart toward the taxi stand. The wait wasn’t long. A black-jacketed Korean cabdriver helped her put her bags in the trunk of his big Ford Granada, including one of the illuminated nativity scenes. After she was seated in back, the driver drove off. Ernie and I followed.

The driver wound his way through the narrow lanes of the district known as Itaewon and finally came to a stop in front of a wooden double door in a ten-foot-high stone fence. Keeping well back, Ernie stopped the jeep and I climbed out and crept up to the alleyway and peered around the corner. The trunk remained open as the statuesque woman conferred with an elderly woman whom Ernie and I both recognized as a well-known black market mama-san. Money changed hands and then some product. I motioned to Ernie and he started the jeep’s engine and rolled forward, blocking the taxi’s escape. I hurried forward, showed the woman my badge, and told her she was under arrest for the illegal sale of PX-purchased goods. Even in the U.S. it’s illegal to resell PX goods. The idea is that the shipment and the warehousing of the goods is subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer, to keep prices low for servicemen and their families. To resell under those conditions would be to rip off the taxpayer who is footing much of the bill.

We had no jurisdiction over the mama-san who purchased the goods. We could’ve reported her to the Korean National Police, but they already knew about her operation and were probably receiving a cut of her profits. We didn’t bother. The younger woman was nervous and close to tears but willing to comply. Ernie pulled forward and allowed the cabdriver to leave. Then we sat the distraught woman in the back of the jeep and drove her to the 8th Army MP station.

While I filled out the arrest report, Ernie called her husband, one Roland R. Garfield, specialist four, assigned to the 19th Support Group, Electronic Repair Detachment (Mobile). When he arrived his face was grim. His wife, whose name I’d determined was Sooki, nervously fondled a pink handkerchief and dabbed tears from her eyes.

He was a slender man, with moist brown eyes and a narrow face that was filled out by surprisingly full cheeks. I didn’t bother to shake his hand. He didn’t seem to be in the mood. I showed him the arrest report, had him sign it, and turned over an onion-skin copy.

“You’re responsible at all times for the actions of your dependent,” I told him.

“I know that.”

“You’ll retain PX and commissary privileges, but the amount of the monthly ration will be reduced.” By about ninety percent, but I saw no reason to rub it in. “Take this form over to Ration Control and they’ll issue you and your wife new plates.”

He nodded but said nothing. His wife continued to stare at the floor.

“Kuenchana,” he said to her. It doesn’t matter.

That made her cry more.

After coaxing her to stand, he held her elbow lightly, and they walked out the door.

The Suicide Prevention Program was going swimmingly. After only two days, according to Riley, the original facility was full and more Quonset huts had to be identified to provide housing for the “inmates,” as he was now calling them. In fact, the program was going so well that Ernie and I were taken off the black market detail and handed a list of a half-dozen GIs to pick up.

I showed the list to Ernie. “Look at this,” I said, pointing.

“Garfield, spec four,” he read. “Yeah. What of it?”

“That’s the guy whose wife we busted for black market a few days ago.”

“Oh, yeah. The tall gal in the blue dress.”

“Yeah. Her.”

“Garfield didn’t seem so depressed then. Pissed off, sure, but not depressed.”

“Guess you never know.”

“No, I guess you don’t.”

We picked up everyone on the list, saving Garfield for last.

When he emerged from the back of the electronics truck, his fleshy cheeks were covered with bruises.

“What the hell happened to you?” Ernie asked.

Garfield glanced around. No one seemed to be within earshot but he said, “Not here.”

We’d already given the paperwork to his commanding officer, so we had him hop in back of the jeep and we drove him over to the 121st Evac. In the gravel lot in front of the new Suicide Prevention Center he said, “I need your help.”

I turned in my seat and looked at him. “What is it?”

“My wife.” He hung his head for a few seconds and looked back up at me. “She took the black market bust pretty hard. I told her to forget it, but it means a lot to her. The money she was making she was sending to her family. I knew about it, but I didn’t put a stop to it. Her father’s sick and her mother still has a son and a daughter of school age, and they can’t even afford uniforms, much less the tuition.”

Ernie and I sat silently, waiting.

“She went to Mukyo-dong,” he said. “Do you know where that is?”

“Sure,” Ernie replied. “The high-class nightclub district in downtown Seoul.”

“Most GIs don’t know about it,” Garfield said.

“Most GIs can’t afford their prices.”

“Right. Sooki’s resourceful, and good-looking. You saw that. She landed a job. Dancing, I think. Maybe as a hostess. Serving drinks and lighting cigarettes for those rich Japanese businessmen. I told her to stop, but she said she had no choice. If she stopped sending money home, her brother and sister would have to drop out of school, and worse, they’d probably go hungry.”

“How about your paycheck?” Ernie asked.

“We’re barely making the rent as it is. We can send some, but not enough.”

“You’re not command-sponsored?”

“No.”

Officers and higher-ranking NCOs often are assigned to billets that are considered “command-sponsored.” That is, although Korea is generally considered an “unaccompanied” tour, if you are command-sponsored you can bring your wife and children over here and you’re given a housing allowance to help you make the outrageous downtown Seoul rents. Low-ranking enlisted men, like Garfield, are seldom offered command sponsorship—especially if they have Korean wives.

“Okay,” I said. “Things are tough. I get that. What do you want us to do?”

“She didn’t come home,” he told me. “For two nights in a row. Last night I went down there, to the nightclub where she works. The sons of bitches wouldn’t let me see her. I tried to push my way in and the bastards did this to me.”

He touched the bruises on his cheek and then unbuttoned his fatigue shirt. Red welts lined a row of ribs.

“When the CO saw me this morning, he asked me what had happened. I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t want the entire unit to know what she’s doing.”

“So he called Suicide Prevention,” Ernie said.

“Seems like the popular thing to do these days.” He shook his head and rebuttoned his shirt. “I’ll break out of this place,” he said, nodding toward the Suicide Prevention Center. “And this time I’ll take something with me.”

“You mean like a weapon?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. For all I know, they’re holding Sooki against her will.”

“Unlikely,” I said. “She’s probably fine.”

“Says you.”

Ernie and I looked at each other. He grinned and said, “Hell, I haven’t been to Mukyo-dong in ages.”

Garfield’s eyes lit up. “You’ll check on her for me?”

I was of two minds. Getting between a husband and wife always spelled trouble. But we couldn’t let Garfield go down there with blood in his eye. By getting beaten up, he’d already proven that he didn’t know what he was doing. “All right,” I said, “my partner and I will go down there for you. Tonight. We’ll check on her and make sure she’s all right. But that’s it.”

Garfield patted his pockets. “I don’t have much money. It’s expensive down there.”

“Don’t worry,” Ernie replied. “My partner here is rolling in dough.”

Inwardly, I groaned.

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Wait until tomorrow,” I said. “Thank us then.”

According to Specialist Four Garfield, the name of the nightclub Sooki was working in was the Golden Dragon. He didn’t know the Korean name, which is sometimes different than the English translation, but I made a guess and asked our cabdriver to find a place called the Kulryong or something with a similar name. Mukyo-dong parallels a bustling main road lined with two huge department stores and smaller boutique shops catering to the upwardly mobile elite of South Korea. Down the side streets, barely wide enough for a Hyundai sedan, is where the action is. Especially at night. First open-air chophouses serving noodles and live fish in tanks and various delicacies such as octopus marinated in hot pepper sauce. Then, down even narrower lanes, stone pathways lead to bars and underground nightclubs. Some of them blare rock and roll for youngsters, others are designed for the packs of businessmen in suits wandering drunkenly from one flashing neon sign to another.

The driver stepped on his brakes and pointed down a flight of steps. “Kulryong Lou,” he said. The Chamber of the Golden Dragon.

Ernie spotted a shimmering golden serpent. “This must be it,” he said.

I paid the driver and we climbed out. Just as we did so, a black sedan pulled up below in a narrow road on the far side of the Golden Dragon. A liveried doorman in white gloves opened the back door and out popped three businessmen in what appeared to be expensive suits.

“Class joint,” Ernie said. “They’re going to be happy to see us.”

Down here GIs are considered to be Cheap Charlies, and our presence only upsets the more free-spending Japanese and Korean clientele, who don’t necessarily want crude barbarian GIs intruding on their space.

“Front door?” Ernie asked.

“No,” I said. “Let’s try the back.”

The chain-link fence behind the nightclub was locked. Inside, in an area about the size of a two-car garage, trash cans were lined up and stacked wooden cases held empty beer and soju bottles.

“After you, maestro,” Ernie said.

I grabbed a spread-fingered hold on the chain link and pulled myself up. The tricky part was at the top. I swung my leg over rusty razor wire and managed by stretching and then twisting like a ballerina to grab a toehold on the other side. Gingerly I swung my crotch and then my other leg after. Once I grabbed another handhold, I dropped to the ground. Ernie climbed over, performing the same procedure in about half the time.

I’m a land animal. Whenever possible, I keep two feet on the ground.

The back door to the Golden Dragon was locked.

“Apparently they’ve had unexpected visitors before,” Ernie said.

So we crouched on either side of the door and waited.

“Kokchong hajimaseyo,” I told the elderly cook as we pushed him down the hallway. Don’t worry.

He’d popped the back door open carrying a bag of garbage, and Ernie’d been on him before he could pull it shut. I continued speaking to him in Korean. “Do you know who Sooki is?”

He shook his head.

“Tall woman,” I said. “Only started work two or three days ago.”

He claimed ignorance, which figured, because an old man like this doing the drudge work in the kitchen would have little or nothing to do with the elegant young female hostesses.

When we reached the kitchen, I let him go and thanked him for his patience. He stared at me, completely befuddled. Some Koreans have had little or no contact with foreigners, and when they hear one of us speak their language, to them it’s like hearing a chimpanzee recite Shakespeare. Through a double door, the floor turned from tile to carpet and I knew we were close. Finally we entered a sizable hall with an elevated ceiling. On the right stretched a long bar; the wall on the left side of the room arced in a graceful curve lined with high-backed plush leather booths. In the center of the room were a half-dozen tables draped in white linen.

Ernie and I held back, peering over a paneled room divider. He scanned the left, I scanned the right.

“There she is,” I said.

“Where?”

I pointed. “In that booth. You can barely see her. She’s against the wall, behind those two businessmen.”

“We could wait until she goes to the ladies’ room.”

“No way. We’re lucky the bouncers haven’t spotted us already.”

“Then there’s no time like the present.”

Ernie stepped out from behind the divider and started walking across the room. A few people looked up from their drinks, and then more. The mouths of some of the elegantly dressed hostesses fell open. Apparently the elderly kitchen worker had dropped a dime on us, because hurried steps approached from the hallway behind me. Near the front entrance, two men peered in to see what was causing the commotion.

Ernie stood in front of the booth that contained Sooki, also known as Mrs. Roland R. Garfield, and started speaking to her in English. She didn’t look up at him but instead peered straight down at the table. Ashamed.

One of the businessmen seated next to her said, “Igon dodechei muoya?” What the hell is this?

The bouncers approached Ernie, and one of them grabbed his elbow. He swung his fist back fiercely and shouted at them to keep their hands off him. I hurried across the room, holding my badge up and shouting “Kyongchal!” Police.

Apparently they weren’t impressed. Another bouncer approached me from behind, and as I was explaining to him that we were here on police business, Ernie punched somebody. And then they were wrestling, two men on Ernie, and I tried to pull one of them off him and then somebody was on me and in a big sweating mass we knocked over first one table and then another. Women screamed and men cursed and soon I was on the floor.

Ernie managed to keep his feet and was winging big roundhouse rights when the front door burst open and a shrill whistle sounded. Cops. The next thing I knew I was in handcuffs and heading toward the rear door of a Korean National Police paddy wagon.

A crowd of upset customers gathered in front. Some of the hostesses were wide-eyed and clinging to one another. One of them was crying. But Sooki Garfield was nowhere to be seen.

Ernie was shoved into the back door of the wagon, and after cussing out his assailants he slid over on the bench next to me.

“Assholes,” he said. When they shut the door, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a liter bottle of soju. I stared at him with a puzzled look. “Grabbed it on the way out,” he said. Then he pried off the cap with his teeth, took a swig, wiped the lip clean, and offered the bottle of rice liquor to me. Grasping it with two hands, I tossed back a glug and then coughed, feeling it burn all the way down.

“At least we know Sooki’s all right,” Ernie said.

“Maybe,” I replied.

“Why? What are you worried about?”

“They’re pissed now. And they know she’s a yang kalbo.” A GI whore.

“She’s not a yang kalbo,” Ernie said. “She’s a wife.”

“Same difference to them.”

Ernie raised the soju bottle and sipped thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

Captain Gil Kwon-up of the Korean National Police allowed me to use the telephone on his desk. It took twenty minutes to get through to the Yongsan Compound exchange and two minutes after that I was talking to Staff Sergeant Riley.

“We’re going to be late,” I told him.

“Late? You’re supposed to be in this office standing tall at zero eight hundred hours.” I imagined him checking his watch. “You have fifteen minutes.”

“Like I told you,” I said. “We’re going to be late. We’re tracking down a lead.”

He sputtered, and before he could form words, I hung up the phone.

“Everything all right?” Mr. Kill asked me.

“Just fine,” I told him. “They’re very understanding.”

We called him Mr. Kill, a GI corruption of his real name, Gil. It made a certain kind of sense, since he was the chief homicide inspector for the Korean National Police. Ernie and I knew him well after working a number of cases with him.

After taking in a GI, normal procedure is for the KNPs to call the U.S. Army Military Police. Last night I headed that off by speaking to the desk sergeant in Korean and explaining to him that I knew Mr. Kill, and stretched the truth by claiming that we were currently working with him on a case. He was suspicious but didn’t want to risk irritating a superior officer, so he said he’d wait until the next morning to confirm my statement with Kill. Ernie and I spent the night in our own cell, segregated from the raving lunatics in the drunk tank. Special treatment for foreigners. True to his word, the desk sergeant contacted Gil Kwon-up first thing in the morning, and he’d immediately ordered that we be brought up to his office.

“What’s her name?” Mr. Kill asked me. I didn’t know Sooki’s full Korean name. Sooki was a nickname, probably short for Sook-ja or Sook-ai, or something close to that. Her legal name now was Mrs. Roland R. Garfield. He jotted the information down and I gave him her general description.

Then he looked up at me. He’d been educated in the States and his English was excellent. “Why didn’t you contact me,” he asked, “before almost starting a riot in the Golden Dragon?”

“Sorry,” I said.

The truth was, I didn’t like to bother him unless I had to. He was too valuable a resource.

He pressed the intercom button on his desk and spoke to another officer. I didn’t understand everything that was said, but the gist of it was that he ordered two men to go over to the Golden Dragon and pick up the woman called Sooki and bring her in. It was going to take some time. While we waited, Ernie and I sat outside on two hard chairs in the hallway. Ernie was already snoring and I’d started to doze when Mr. Kill appeared in front of us. My eyes popped open.

“She’s disappeared,” he said.

Once he realized I was fully alert, he continued. “The thugs who own the Golden Dragon are well known to us. We took one of them in and we had Mr. Bam have a little talk with him.”

Bam was the lead KNP interrogator.

“According to what he told us, orders came down to pull Mrs. Garfield out of the Golden Dragon and send her to one of their subsidiary operations.”

Ernie was awake now. “Subsidiary operations?” he said.

“Yes. A brothel.” He handed me a folded sheet of paper. “I won’t be able to help you further.”

“Why not?” Ernie asked.

Mr. Kill just stared at him, saying nothing. He looked at me, seeing if I understood. I did.

“How high does it go?” I asked.

“Within the police hierarchy,” Mr. Kill answered. “Not higher. Which leaves you a certain latitude.”

I nodded. “Thank you, sir, for this information.”

Then he said, “One more thing. The man in charge of the operation is known as Huk. A Manchurian name. You are aware that Manchuria invaded us a few centuries ago?”

“Yes, sir. I know.”

“Be very careful when dealing with him. You’ll be on your own. My colleagues and I need to keep our hands off this operation for as long as we are able.”

Mr. Kill held eye contact with me until he was sure I understood, then swiveled on the cement floor and strode briskly away.

Ernie glanced at me. Confused.

“What just happened?”

I took a deep breath. “Mr. Kill can’t do anything officially,” I said, keeping my voice down.

“Why not?”

“Think about it,” I told him. “This guy Huk, whoever he is, not only runs the Golden Dragon but also has subsidiary brothels. He makes a lot of money and couldn’t be doing that unless he had protection.”

Ernie nodded, getting it now. “Somebody high up in the police hierarchy is protecting him.”

“Yes,” I said, standing up. “Mr. Kill doesn’t like it, but that’s the world he lives in.”

“So Huk’s protected,” Ernie said.

“Yes. He’s protected from the Korean National Police.” I paused, thinking it over. “But he’s not protected from us.”

Relations with the U.S. military are considered to be so impor­tant that they are reserved for the very highest levels of government: for President Park Chung-hee and his most trusted advisors. Whoever was protecting Huk wouldn’t have that much pull and therefore wouldn’t have a chance in hell of calling off American law enforcement. Mr. Kill was making it clear to me that although his hands were tied, Ernie and I had an open field for action.

I stuck the sheet of paper in my breast pocket, and Ernie and I hurried out of the police station.

Back at the CID office, I found the address Mr. Kill had given me on our wall-sized map of Seoul.

“Here,” I told Ernie.

“Why’d they send her there?”

“They’re pissed. She caused a disruption. Embarrassed them.”

“We caused the disruption,” Ernie said.

“Because of her. And she has a ration control plate. They’ll probably work her two ways. Not only in the brothel but probably by forcing her to buy beyond her ration at the PX and commissary.”

“She’ll be caught.”

“But not for a month or two. It takes that long for the reports to be collated. Only then will the ration control violations make their way to Garfield’s unit commander.”

“And he might not act right away.”

“That’s what they’re hoping for.”

“How can they do this?” Ernie asked. “Okay, I get it. The KNPs won’t touch this guy, Huk, but why doesn’t she look for her own chance and then run away?”

“Because now they know her situation and they know the jam she’s in. You can bet that they already have a bead on her mother and her brother and her sister and are using them to threaten her.”

“What kind of country is this?” Ernie asked.

I shrugged. “It’s like most countries. Big money talks. Women are expendable.”

“So are GIs,” Ernie replied.

Riley volunteered to be the first in.

“About time we kicked some ass,” he said.

“Easy, Tiger,” I told him. “We have a plan, remember? You need to follow it.”

“Sure. A commando raid. I get it.”

“No. We’re faking an MP bust. That’s it.”

The midnight curfew would hit in a little more than an hour, and the entire city of Seoul would shut down. We sat in the shadows in a neighborhood near the Han River known as Ichon-dong. Ernie’s jeep was parked about a half-block from a dilapidated three-story wooden building that looked as if it had been built on the cheap and would fall down during the next strong wind. So far we’d seen working-class Korean men go in, linger, and come out about a half-hour later, and we’d seen women’s silhouettes in the upstairs windows. Light from a dirty yellow bulb flooded down a short flight of steps at the entranceway.

Ernie sat behind the steering wheel, I sat in the passenger seat, and Staff Sergeant Riley and the fourth member of our “commando team,” Sergeant First Class Harvey, better known as Strange, sat in back. He had a reputation for being a pervert, but on this mission all I required was that he be dressed in fatigues and one of the MP helmets I’d borrowed—and that he be armed with an M16 rifle. Riley was similarly outfitted. Their job was not to shoot anyone but to back us up as we ran our bluff.

Ernie and I had come up with the plan this afternoon. We couldn’t go to the provost marshal and ask for a detachment of real MPs to help us, because what we were planning to do wasn’t only outside of our jurisdiction, it was illegal. Plenty illegal. So we had to enlist the only two guys we knew who were crazy enough to help: Riley and Strange.

“How about this guy Huk?” Strange asked. “He must be a pretty cool customer.”

“Not cool,” I replied. “According to Mr. Kill, he started as a petty thief after the war and worked his way up to becoming a pimp, and after he landed a few well-placed connections he graduated to becoming a nightclub owner.”

“How are we going to recognize him?”

“He has a disfigured nose. ‘Mangled’ is the word Mr. Kill used.”

“Lost it in a knife fight?”

“No. Nothing so glamorous. Not all of Huk’s girls knuckle under to him. Apparently somewhere along the line one of them fought back. According to Mr. Kill, she not only bit into his nose but almost chewed his face off.”

“Korean women are bold,” Riley said, almost in awe.

“What happened to her?” Strange asked.

I glanced toward the Han River. It was only two blocks downhill and glistened in the wavering moonlight. “What do you think?”

After a moment of silence, Riley spoke up. “You sure his office is here?”

“Yes. He never goes to the Golden Dragon or his other properties. Frightens the customers. He stays here in the slums, pulling the strings.”

“In the mud where he came from,” Ernie said.

“All right,” I said. “Everybody has a job to do. Let’s go over it one more time.”

We did. It was a simple plan, brutal but elegant. If we only had to grab Sooki and return her to her husband, life would’ve been easy. But it was more complicated than that. We had to assume that Huk and his boys knew about her family, knew where they lived, and they knew how to find them. That was their modus operandi and the secret of their control. Promise the women they trafficked that if they didn’t do exactly as they were told, their families would pay with their lives. So we had to liberate not only Sooki but also her family from the threat of Huk and his gang of thugs.

After the verbal rehearsal, I said, “Okay, everybody got it?”

Three nods.

“According to Mr. Kill, Huk’s office and his living quarters are on the third floor. That’s where I’m going. So don’t shoot me on the way down.”

Strange waggled his cigarette holder.

“And you better take off those damn shades,” I told him.

“What? And ruin my style?”

“To hell with your style,” Ernie said. “Do what the man says.”

Strange took off his sunglasses and stuck them in the breast pocket of his fatigue shirt. Now I understood why he wore them. His eyes were like desiccated green olives lost in a moist excretion of dough.

We climbed out of the jeep. Ernie took the lead, holding his .45 pointed at the sky. Riley and Strange ran after him across the street and the three of them burst into the entranceway to the Ichon-dong brothel. Once inside, Ernie blasted his whistle and started shouting. Riley and Strange fanned out upstairs to the second floor like we practiced. They were also shouting. It didn’t matter much what they said, because English would be incomprehensible to these people anyway. It was their job to make sure that everyone understood that this was a raid by the Military Police and to intimidate the customers and move them out while at the same time herding the girls into a safe place. It was Ernie’s job to find Sooki.

My job was to grab Huk.

The central staircase was made of cement. Korean men in various stages of undress flooded out, frantic to escape before we placed them under arrest. I pushed against the descending crowd, running upstairs two steps at a time. On the third floor, a long hallway greeted me. At first I didn’t see any doors. Just flimsy curtains and thin blankets hanging from a network of overhead wire. Inside these makeshift partitions, cots and mats were arrayed at odd angles and female clothing hung from metal hooks. At the end of the hallway loomed a wooden door. A cement wall partitioned this end of the third floor, and this had to be Huk’s office and living quarters.

I kicked the door in.

He was standing, arms akimbo, staring right at me. He was a small man, wearing blue jeans and sneakers and some sort of red-checked shirt with long sleeves and a collar. If he put on a Stetson, he would’ve looked like a short Asian cowboy. His face was square, almost wider than it was long, and the mangled scars on his face, from eyes to chin, seemed immobile. Dark eyes smoldered through squinting lids. His fists were clenched and he was slightly hunched over, as if prepared to take a blow.

And, to my relief, he was unarmed.

Behind him sat a rickety wooden desk and a diesel space heater and what appeared to be a pilfered army cot. The desk supported a large red phone atop a knitted pad. He reached for the phone. I fired a round into the wall.

Apparently that convinced him I meant business. He held perfectly still.

“Iriwara!” I told him, in very disrespectful Korean. Come here!

He hesitated but then stepped slowly toward me. I ordered him to turn around and I cuffed his hands behind his back. Grabbing a knot of his curly black hair, I pushed him outside his office and held the .45 against his back as we stepped downstairs. Ernie had located Sooki. She was crying and covering her face.

Strange and Riley joined us, both of them panting and sweating, their faces flushed red with victory. Mr. Kill had already warned the local KNPs to back off and not respond to any calls that might come from the Ichon-dong brothel. At least not too quickly. Still, I didn’t want to press our luck.

“Kapshida!” I said. Let’s go.

Everyone understood and we ran outside and down the stairs and across the dark street to the jeep.

Ernie drove. I sat up front with Huk kneeling on the metal floor in front of the passenger seat. Every time he squirmed, I kicked him. Riley had left his green army sedan parked near the Han-gang Railroad Bridge. When we pulled up next to the sedan, Riley and Strange hopped out. They took Sooki with them. I thanked them for their help. Ernie warned them not to shoot themselves with their M16s. As they drove off, Sooki sat in the back seat of the sedan, still crying.

Ernie and I sat alone in the quiet night with Huk, watching the string of lights that spanned the bridge. A slowly rising moon illuminated a few small fishing boats straggling back to their home ports.

“How soon until the next train?” Ernie asked.

“One last train comes in from Pusan just before the midnight curfew. Should be along soon.”

We pulled Huk out of the jeep. The expression on his face, such as it was, didn’t change. I spoke to him in Korean.

“Sooki doesn’t belong to you anymore,” I told him. When he didn’t answer, I continued. “You will not bother her in the future and you will not bother her family. Do you understand?”

Again he just stared at me, eyes squinting, mangled face impassive. Ernie slugged him in the stomach. When he came up for air, the only change in his face was a bubbling gasp from his small round mouth.

We walked him toward the railroad tracks. There was no one out here, just a few abandoned warehouses and what appeared to be cats prowling for rats.

“You understand,” I told him. “You can’t get to us. We live on the U.S. military compound. You have no power there. Your thugs can’t gain entry, and even if they could, it’s a big compound and they have no idea where to find us. We’re safe from you.” I shoved his narrow shoulders and he knelt into gravel. Deftly Ernie pushed the tip of a short bicycle chain beneath a crosstie and, using the jeep’s crowbar, dug a pathway for the chain under the thick plank. Once it was through, he locked the two ends together and then, as Huk stared at his work, he unlocked one of his cuffs and looped it through the bicycle chain and relocked it with a snap.

Huk now knelt in the center of the railroad tracks, like a worshiper waiting for the next train. Ernie switched on his flashlight to make sure Huk could fully appreciate his predicament. A trickle of sweat formed just above Huk’s eyebrows. He had yet to speak a word.

I knelt next to him.

“You must promise us not to hurt Sooki, not to hurt her husband, and not to hurt Sooki’s family. Once you do that, we will let you go.”

Huk said nothing.

“If you break your promise,” I continued, “then my friend and I will come after you. We know where your businesses are. We know how to find you. And the next time we won’t be so nice. We will shoot you with one of these.” I pressed the business end of my .45 up against the twisted mass of flesh that was his nose. “The Korean National Police won’t care. Not about you. And they won’t care about us. They don’t like to bother the U.S. Army. And their bosses in the Korean government don’t like to bother the U.S. Army. No one will investigate your murder. No one will come on our compound to bother me or my friend. You will be dead. Someone else will take your place at the Golden Dragon and at the Ichon-dong brothel. Do you understand?”

His oddly shaped face still remained impassive and he said nothing.

“Dumb shit,” Ernie said and kicked him.

I stood up. I had to admit that he was one tough cookie, and I could see why he’d risen to the top of the rackets. I was through wasting breath on him. Ernie and I walked back to the jeep. From this distance, about twenty yards, we watched Huk kneeling on the tracks.

I had no idea what was going through his mind. He didn’t yank on the handcuffs, trying to get away. He just knelt there without moving.

Ernie glanced behind us. “Maybe he figures somebody is going to come and save him,” he said.

“No way. He doesn’t have thugs at the brothel because he doesn’t need them. He’s protected by the money he pays at a high level.”

“Maybe those high-level people will catch wind of this and send the KNPs.”

“I don’t think so. My guess is that the KNPs are just as pissed about this setup as we are. Mr. Kill warned them off and they’ll stay away. Even if the word comes down from on high that they need to save Huk, they’ll hesitate. They can always claim that they didn’t know where he was; which is true, they don’t know.”

“So we just stand here and watch him die?” Ernie said.

“That’s the plan.”

He glanced at me. “Can you handle it?”

“You saw those girls in the brothel,” I replied. “Some of them still had their schoolgirl haircuts, just barely out of middle school. Did they have cigarette burns on their forearms? Bruises on their shoulders? I didn’t have time to look, but I bet they did.”

“They did,” Ernie said.

“So I can stand here and watch this creep be run over and smashed into pieces.”

Ernie grinned, staring at me, but said nothing further.

In the distance the train whistle sounded.

The train from Pusan emerged along the banks of the Han River on the western side of the district known as Yongdungpo. The name Yongdungpo is composed of three Chinese characters that mean, literally, Eternally Rising Port. Or, more poetically, the Port of Eternal Ascension. Eighth Army had a supply depot over there for many years, and there was a place GIs called the Green Door that old-timers told me was one of the raunchiest brothels in Korea. But that was controlled by a different organization, not Huk’s. Whether or not he was thinking about this while the train reached the bank of the Han River and turned east and then about two miles later made the left turn toward the railroad bridge, I didn’t know. But when the train did make the turn, we saw the front light of the locomotive shine almost halfway across the bridge. It was heading toward us at about thirty miles per hour, all the massive tonnage of it, and I calculated it would arrive on this side of the Han River in less than a minute.

Ernie and I leaned against the jeep, arms crossed, waiting. I’m sure he was expecting me to crack first, but as it turned out, it wasn’t me, it was him.

“Maybe we should unlock him,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“This is going to be messy. Blood and flesh and bone splashed all over the place.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I suppose it is going to be messy.”

Ernie studied me. “Are you serious? Do you really want to go through with this?” When I didn’t answer, he glanced at the approaching train. A whistle sounded. “We don’t have much time.”

I kept my arms crossed, my face impassive, and then we heard a choked yell.

“Okay!”

It was Huk. Just the one word, but that was good enough for me. I ran forward, reaching in my right pocket for the keys. They weren’t there. And then I remembered. I’d given them to Ernie.

I turned and shouted. “The keys!”

But Ernie was already on it. He ran past me and knelt next to Huk and started fumbling with the handcuffs. The train was only a hundred yards away now, its front light so bright that both Ernie and Huk were illuminated by its fierce glow. A screaming whistle sounded a warning, shattering the night.

Ernie continued to fumble with the keys. I was just about to run forward and snatch them from him and unlock the cuffs myself when I heard the snap. Ernie leapt off the tracks and rolled toward the stanchions on the edge of the bridge. Huk pulled away but for a moment the cuffs caught on something, and then frantically he jerked them up and down until something released and, like the rat that he was, he scurried toward the stanchions next to Ernie. Mesmerized, I realized that I had to back away too, and stepped quickly toward the end of the bridge until I was safely out of the path of the train.

With a great whining and clattering, the train reached us and, like a monster of metal and steam, ground its great iron wheels past, parading the full length of its dragonlike body until it finally pulled away, shrieking regally, into the dark night.

I ran along the tracks, grabbed Huk, and retrieved my handcuffs. He remained kneeling on the edge of the tracks, facing the water below, his face and the back of his neck slathered in sweat. As a memento of our visit, I kicked him in the thigh. Hard. Like the tough little shit he was, he took it without a whimper.

We left him there, clinging to the stanchion, staring into the river.

On shaking legs, Ernie and I marched back to the jeep, jumped in, and drove away from the Han-gang Railroad Bridge.

“You’re kidding me,” Ernie said.

The next morning we had just stepped through the entranceway to the Yongsan Main PX and stood gazing past rows of consumer goods and milling crowds of shoppers. Against the far wall a dais had been set up for children to be introduced to Father Christmas.

“Not him,” Ernie said.

“Yes, him,” I replied.

“Not Strange.”

Sergeant First Class Harvey, also known as Strange, sat on a throne in the center of the dais dressed in a fake white beard and a bright red Santa Claus outfit, greeting the children one by one.

“I guess the Officers’ Wives Club doesn’t know he’s a pervert,” I said.

We pushed our way through the crowds of shoppers until we stood in front of the dais. After one of the children hopped off his red-trousered lap, Strange looked over at us and responded to the quizzical look in our eyes.

“I was volunteered,” he said.

One of the ladies controlling the tittering line of children sent another youngster up. Strange let out a “Ho ho ho!” and lifted the child to his lap.

“Watch his hands,” Ernie whispered.

We did. For about twenty minutes. Apparently he was on the up-and-up. So far.

“I guess children aren’t his particular perversion,” Ernie told me.

“Let’s watch him anyway.” I went back into the PX administrative offices and found a couple of straight-backed chairs. Ernie and I set them out of the way but close enough to the dais so we could keep an eye on Strange.

“So Sooki’s all right?” Ernie asked once we got settled.

“Yeah. She begged me not to tell her husband what had happened. I promised I wouldn’t. Not all of it, anyway.”

I had told Specialist Garfield that we’d broken Sooki out of the Golden Dragon, and that had been good enough for him. He didn’t ask more questions. Maybe because he guessed he wouldn’t like the answers.

“Huk is a complete shit,” Ernie said. “What makes you think he’ll keep his word?”

“He knows what I said is true. He can’t get to us, not without a hell of a lot of expense and trouble. Even if he managed to take you and me out, he’d face the wrath of the KNPs and the Korean government, neither of which wants a big-time racketeer messing up their cozy relationship with the United States. Not worth it for a single girl in one of his brothels.”

The United States government had not only provided South Korea with 50,000 troops to help in their defense against the Communist army up north, but we also gave them millions of dollars in economic and military aid annually. If there was one thing every faction in the South Korean government agreed on, it was keeping the relationship with the United States pristine, without the slightest blemish.

“So if we were bumped off,” Ernie said, “the KNPs and the 8th Army honchos would go after Huk.”

“Big-time.”

“It’s like in ’Nam,” Ernie told me. “The army treats you like shit when you’re alive. But once you’re dead, you become a hero.”

“Right. They’d probably dedicate a plaque to us.”

“The only way we’ll ever get one.” Ernie thought about it for a minute and then continued. “Okay, so Huk knows he can’t touch us. And after that performance on the Han-gang Railroad Bridge, he’s also convinced that if he messes with Sooki’s family, we’ll take him out. So he’ll leave her alone.”

“It’s the smart business decision,” I said. “What’s one girl, more or less? And besides, nobody in the Seoul underworld knows what happened. He doesn’t lose face. As far as they’re concerned, the MPs raided the Ichon-dong brothel and he shrugged them off and he’s back in business the next day.”

“He looks good.”

“Right. And if he’s smart, he’ll leave it that way. Sooki told me that as soon as her husband’s tour is up, they’ll go back to the States and she’ll put in the paperwork to have her parents and her brother and sister join them.”

“The sooner, the better.”

“Right. Because once we’re gone, who knows what Huk will do?”

“Once we’re gone? What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”

“You already have your request in for extension?”

“You better believe it. Riley hand-carried mine over to his pal Smitty at 8th Army Personnel. How about yours?”

“Already in.”

Ernie surveyed the crowd of shoppers, and we watched Strange behave himself as we listened to the schmaltzy Christmas music wafting out of the PX sound system.

“Everybody talks about being homesick at Christmas,” Ernie said. “They think that’s why GIs off themselves.”

“Isn’t it?”

“For some,” he said. “Maybe for most. For me, I’ll only off myself if I end up back in some trailer park in the States and somebody reminds me of Korea.”

“Or Vietnam?”

He nodded. “Or Vietnam.” He motioned toward the long lines at the cashier stations. “They think buying shit is living. It ain’t.”

“What is?” I asked.

“This,” he said.

I followed his gaze toward the entrance. Sooki walked in, paused, and glanced around the expanse of the busy PX. When she spotted us she smiled, waved, and headed straight toward us.