The Iron Sickle

— 12-

We parked the jeep near a pochang macha. I half expected to see Mrs. Lee, the owner from the Itaewon pochang macha, when I peeked through the hanging flaps. Instead, I saw a startled Korean man with a square face and a wispy beard, and I offered him a thousand won if he kept an eye on our jeep. He readily agreed and pocketed the money like Houdini palming a playing card.

Mia-ri seemed more lively than ever. Maybe it was the contrast to what we’d seen in the signal truck and what we’d read in the Bogus Claims File, but Ernie was about as animated as I’ve ever seen him, which was plenty animated. He kept stopping as we trudged up the narrow road, grabbing hold of the heavily made-up young women in the clinging silk gowns, wrapping his arm around their slender waists, cooing into their ears. They laughed and toyed with him, happy to see a young GI but at the same time wary; being warned off by their mama-sans in favor of large groups of businessmen in suits.

“Tone oopshi,” one of the old mama-sans went so far as to say. He doesn’t have money.

Still, the girls liked Ernie and his playful attitude-they weren’t much more than kids themselves-and he seemed to have an ample supply of ginseng gum, which he handed out to the red-tipped fingers of the laughing young prostitutes. I kept him moving up the hill. Finally, we stopped at a stand that had a supply of Jinro soju bottles, and Ernie bought a half-liter. The vendor popped the top off and Ernie downed about a fourth of the fiery rice liquor on the first swallow. He gasped and handed the bottle to me. I wiped off the lip and took a modest sip. My throat convulsed. Rotten stuff. I handed the bottle back to Ernie. He took another large swig.

“Easy, pal,” I said. “We have a long night.”

“Maybe you have a long night. I’m going to have a drunk one.”

Ernie always acted like the things we saw didn’t faze him. He would hold everything at bay for a while but finally, as if a dam broke, he’d go on a bender. If he was going to get drunk tonight there was nothing I could do to stop him. Besides, now that I’d managed to hold down the shot of soju I’d taken, it was starting to warm my stomach and feel pretty good. I took the bottle from Ernie and held it a little longer this time.

We rounded the corner to the Inn of the Crying Rose, the bar Mr. Ming had brought me to before. It was dark, the neon sign turned off, looking sad and forlorn amongst all the blinking neon surrounding it. I tried the wooden door.

“Locked,” I said.

“Try knocking.” Ernie pounded on it. While we waited for an answer, he drank down the last of his soju. Then he pounded again, and we gave up and walked to a dark crack between the buildings.

“Can you fit through that?” Ernie asked.

“Sideways,” I said.

Ernie motioned with his open palm. “After you.”

I slid into the narrow passage first. The ground below was muddy and pocked with rocks and broken glass and other types of filth I didn’t want to think about. Finally, I popped out in back of the building. Ernie appeared right after me, brandishing his empty bottle of soju.

“Let me at ’em,” he said.

The alcohol was already doing its work.

The back door of the Inn of the Crying Rose was locked just as tightly as the front. “Looks like she closed up shop,” Ernie said.

“Apparently.”

We went back around to the front but this time took the long way, walking down to the end of the block, turning toward the main drag, and then doubling back.

“This is where they caught you?” Ernie asked.

“Back a few blocks,” I said. “I had to run up here and then with all these people walking around, they left me alone.”

“We could go back there and try to find ’em,” Ernie said.

“Maybe later,” I said.

He whooshed a left hook into the air. “I’m ’bout to knock me somebody the hell out.” The booze was hitting him hard because we were tired. After returning to the barracks this afternoon and cleaning up, we’d gone right back to work.

I stopped in a noodle shop near the Inn of the Crying Rose. When I started asking questions, the owner waved his hand in front of my face and refused to answer. I tried a ladies’ boutique a couple of doors down that was just closing up for the night. This time, the well-dressed owner was more willing to talk.

“She sell everything,” she told me in heavily accented English. “Go away. Say her brother come back. Want her leave Mia-ri.”

“Her brother came back from where?” I asked.

She shook her head. She didn’t know. She also didn’t know where the woman known as Madame Hoh had gone.

“Maybe you ask owner.”

“The building owner?”

She nodded.

“Who is it?”

She pointed across the street. The man who owned the noodle shop.

Ernie and I sat down and ordered a bowl of noodles. We were famished. When Ernie was about to order a bottle of soju to go with it, I told him to wait.

“Wait for what?”

“Let’s get this job done first,” I said. “Then we can kick out some jams.”

“I’m ready to kick out the jams right now,” he replied.

But he went along with my program. A rotund teenage girl, probably the owner’s daughter, served us two bowls of kuksu, steamed noodles with scallions and some sort of sea life floating around. We ate quickly. After slurping down the last of the broth, I told Ernie the plan.

He nodded enthusiastically. “And then we can drink, right?”

“Right.”

When it was time to pay up, I flashed the girl my CID badge and demanded to see the owner. Her eyes widened but without a word she turned and fled to the kitchen. In less than a minute, the owner, the man who had waved his hand negatively before when I asked about the Inn of the Crying Rose, strode up to the counter.

“Over here,” I said in English, pointing at the area beside our table.

The man hesitated.

“Bali,” I said. Quickly.

He scurried over. Apparently the waitress had told him about our badges. He stood narrow-eyed, staring down at us.

“How long had they been selling it out of the bar across the street?” I said in Korean.

“Selling?”

“Don’t act dumb. You know what they were selling. I asked you how long?”

He shook his head.

I sighed elaborately. “You must’ve known.”

“I knew nothing.” He was getting worried.

“Everybody knew,” I said, “The whole neighborhood knew. How is it possible you didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know,” he said stubbornly.

Ernie slammed his fist on the table, the empty bowls rattled, and he leapt to his feet. “What kinda bullshit is this?” he said, glaring at the smaller man. I stood also, sticking out my arm as if to hold Ernie back.

“You say you didn’t know about it,” I said. “Then show us. Give us the keys.”

I held out my open palm. The man looked confused. “Do you want us to call the Korean National Police?” I said.

That seemed to make the decision for him. He whipped off his apron. “Jom kanman,” he said. Just a minute.

Within seconds he returned with a set of keys clutched in his fist. We followed him outside and down the two doors to the Inn of the Crying Rose. I held a penlight for him as he shuffled through the keys. Finally, he located the right one and stuck it in the lock. He turned, and the door popped open. Together, we entered.

It was quiet in there, and musty.

“Where are the lights?” I asked in Korean.

“In the back,” he replied.

We made our way past empty booths and cocktail tables with chairs upturned on top of them. Finally, we reached the bar.

“What were they selling?” he asked.

“It’s better you don’t know,” I said. “Why did she leave in such a hurry?”

“Something to do with her brother,” he told me.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Her hometown. She didn’t tell me where it was.”

Koreans, through accent and mannerisms, can always tell what part of the country another Korean is from. “What part of the country?” I asked.

“The east coast, I think. Kangwon-do.”

Ernie slid open the beer cooler. “Shine that light over here,” he said.

I did. Empty.

“Nothing but tin,” he said. The shelves behind the bar were similarly bereft of any liquor.

The owner found the lights and switched them on. They weren’t bright, just a low red glow suffusing the main ballroom. I groped my way toward the back, past the empty storeroom, and finally to the door that opened onto the office. I stepped inside, to a small wooden desk, and searched the drawers. Empty, except for a few wooden matches, some awkwardly-sized Korean paper clips, and two broken pencils.

I returned to the bar.

“She cleaned out totally,” I told Ernie.

“Yeah. Not so much as a tumbler of mokkolli.”

At the mention of the Korean word for rice beer, the owner glanced at Ernie curiously.

“There’s one spot we haven’t searched,” Ernie said.

“Where?”

“The cloak room.”

He pointed toward the Dutch door next to the entrance. It had been dark when we walked past it.

“Come on.”

The owner followed.

I shoved the top part of the door open and groped inside for a wall switch. There wasn’t one. I fumbled with an inner latch and pushed open the lower part of the door.

“Above,” the owner said.

I reached up and waved my hand around until I found a string. Gently, I pulled down. A bulb ignited the room. There were no coats on racks, not even any coat hangers, but sitting in the center of the room, perched on a wooden stool was something Ernie and I had seen before.

The totem. The same one we’d seen in the Itaewon Market on the day when Corporal Collingsworth had been murdered. The same wooden stand, the same wire rectangle rising above, but this time there was no dead rat dangling by it’s feet. This time there was something else tied to the wire. Something that took a while for my eyes to bring into focus. Something slathered in blood, blood that had dripped down the rectangular wire and further along the wooden base of the contraption and puddled in a yard-wide lake of gore at the bottom of the stool.

It was a head.

The head of Mr. Ming, the man who had once been the top-earning field agent for the Sam-Il Claims Office.

We didn’t return to 8th Army until noon the next day.

By that time, the compound was alive with trucks and jeeps and vans, all ferrying personnel and equipment back from the field, away from 8th Army Headquarters South and back to the civilization of the Yongsan district of southern Seoul. The field exercise had been called off. Ernie and I were more exhausted than we thought possible. We drove straight to the 8th Army snack bar and parked the jeep.

The place was packed. A lot of people were after some hot chow. Ernie and I stood in line at the grill, and he ordered a hamburger and fries, and I ordered two bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. When we finally paid for our lunch, it took us ten minutes of waiting to squeeze into a vacated table up against the wall. We were only a few feet from the jukebox and somebody had put on “Break It to Me Gently,” which was one of my favorite songs.

Ernie said, “You like that?”

I nodded.

“You would,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but I didn’t really care because I was too busy eating to pay him much attention. I’d just chomped into my second sandwich when a pair of combat boots appeared next to our table. Small combat boots. I looked up.

Captain Leah Prevault stood next to us. I started to smile but then caught myself. The look on her face was more than grim, it was enraged.

I started to say something but before I could even get out a greeting, her small hand swung from her side and landed on the side of my face. The sound bit into the air around us and all activity stopped. No more murmuring of voices, no more clang of porcelain on tableware. For some reason, even the jukebox chose that moment to shut off and whirr between records.

All eyes turned toward us. Even Ernie seemed shocked.

“You betrayed us,” Captain Prevault said.

“What?” I stammered.

“Doctor Hwang,” she said. “And the patients at the Mental Health Sanatorium. You betrayed them all. All!” she shouted.

I was dumbstruck. I had no idea what she was talking about. “What?” I said.

“They arrested them all!”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know! You know. They came with trucks and arrested Doctor Hwang and rounded up all the patients and took them away and now the entire valley is empty. I stopped by there on the way back from the field. There are military guards out front. They wouldn’t let me in until I insisted and finally they showed me. They’re all gone. For purposes of national security, they told me. You had them arrested!”

“Wait a minute, lady,” Ernie said, standing up and holding out his hands. “My partner didn’t have anybody arrested. I was with him all last night, and we didn’t go near this place, this ‘sanatorium’ you’re talking about.”

“Then his friends did it!” she said. “You have to do something about it. They’re not criminals!”

And then she was crying. I finally stood up and tried to comfort her but she slapped my hand away, staring at me with a face full of rage, and turned and trotted out of the snack bar, knocking over somebody’s coffee on the way out.

As we were about to climb into the jeep, Strange appeared.

“Had any strange lately?”

“Can it, Harvey,” Ernie said. “We’re in no mood for your bullshit.”

“Who’s talking about bullshit? I’ve got the real deal for you.”

“What deal?”

Strange looked both ways. “Keep this under your hat,” he said. “You two were busy at Eighth Army headquarters last night.”

“So?” Ernie said.

Strange stepped closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They know about the Bogus Claims File. They know you have it. They want it back.”

“They’ll have to ask nice,” Ernie said.

“They know that,” Strange said. “Technically, the file doesn’t exist so they know they can’t arrest you for taking it. But there are all sorts of other charges they can bring you up on. Entering a restricted area, for one.”

“The SOFA Secretariat’s Office?” I said.

“Exactement,” Strange said. “Not to mention anything else they feel like making up.”

Strange was right. The Uniform Code of Military Justice uses such vague language and covers so many broad areas of behavior that, when directed, the JAG office can charge just about anybody with just about anything.

“So maybe we’ll give it back,” I said, “after the investigation.”

“They want it now.”

“People in hell want ice water,” Ernie said.

“Then you better make yourself scarce,” Strange said. Like a hound sniffing danger in the air, he stepped away and turned his back on us. Within seconds, he was rounding the corner toward the snack bar and in the distance we heard a siren blaring.

Ernie jumped in the driver’s seat and started the jeep. I got myself in the passenger seat just as he shoved the little vehicle in gear. We spurted out of the parking lot too late. The MP jeep spotted us. I glanced back. Staff Sergeant Moe Dexter was at the wheel, one MP on his right and two more crouched in the backseat. All of them were armed with M-16 rifles, except for Dexter, but I’m sure he had a.45 on his hip.

Ernie slammed the jeep into high gear, and it surged forward. As we neared Gate Number Seven, a Korean guard marched out into the roadway, holding up his open palm, ordering us to halt. Ernie stepped on the gas. At the last second, the guard leapt out of the way.

Horns blared as Ernie skidded into the busy midday traffic. Kimchi cabs, three-wheeled trucks, and the occasional ROK Army military vehicle made way as Ernie careened out of Gate Number Seven and headed east on the Main Supply Route. Moe Dexter and his boys barreled after us, siren blaring, only a few yards back.

“Where are you going?” I shouted.

“Itaewon.”

“It’s too crowded,” I said.

“That’s why I’m going there.”

Ernie swerved past cabs, darting into and out of oncoming traffic, once even leaping up on the pedestrian walkway to get around a slow moving truck. I held on and prayed.

An old woman with a cane, impervious to the swirling machinery around her, tottered across the roadway. “Watch out!” I shouted. Ernie slammed on his brakes, swerved to his right, downshifted, and once past the elderly halmonni, surged forward once again.

Moe Dexter wasn’t nearly as deft. He slammed on his brakes in time to avoid murdering the old woman, but then he laid into his horn, thereby insulting a respected elder. I turned in my seat to watch. Pedestrians started shouting at him. One kimchi cab driver got out of his car as if to confront the four burly Americans, and a truck loaded with garlic nosed in front of Dexter’s jeep. Dexter ignored the taunts, backed up, and then slammed his front fender into the side of the kimchi cab. He twisted the little vehicle out of the way, the driver screaming and cursing at him all the while. And then Dexter was after us again.

“About two hundred yards back,” I said.

“He’s still coming?”

“Still coming.”

Ernie turned right and entered the narrow road that passed through the heart of Itaewon, past the UN Club, the Lucky Lady Club, the Seven Club, and finally the King Club. He hung a left up Hooker Hill. We passed a few middle-aged housewives with huge bundles of laundry balanced on their heads. They weren’t too mobile carrying that much weight and with only a few feet of clearance on either side of the jeep, Ernie had to slow to give them time to get out of the way. When we reached the top of the hill, Ernie turned right up a gradual incline that was even narrower than the road running up Hooker Hill. I looked back and glimpsed Moe Dexter barreling uphill after us.

“He’s still coming?” Ernie asked.

“Still coming.”

We passed one alley leading back down to the nightclub district and then another. On this second one, Ernie turned right. Immediately, our pathway was blocked by about three dozen young women milling about in front of an establishment with a sign that said Hei Yong Mokyok-tang, Sea Dragon Bathhouse. Caressing both sides of the Korean words were two brightly painted mermaids, smiling past long blonde tresses.

Ernie could’ve avoided this alley, but he’d purposely slowed and inched forward into the crowd. Ernie tapped his horn playfully, waved at the girls, and blew kisses. Most of the girls carried metal pans containing soap and shampoo and other toiletries balanced against their hips. And they looked great. Their straight black hair was held up by metal clips, and many of them wore short pants with either T-shirts or pullover sweaters with no brassieres beneath, their full natural jiggle on fleshy display. Other than the bars and nightclubs themselves, the Sea Dragon Bathhouse was the main social gathering place for the Itaewon business girls. Here they could meet during the light of day, trade gossip, and catch up on which establishments were hiring waitresses or hostesses or barmaids and who amongst their exclusive clan had landed a rich boyfriend or, better yet, a GI who would marry them and carry them back to the Land of the Big PX. Still holding on to the steering wheel, Ernie leaned to his left, reached into his pocket, and pulled out an industrial-sized pack of ginseng gum. Quickly, he started handing out sticks to grasping hands.

Behind us, Moe Dexter and his MP cohort rounded the corner.

“Don’t let them through!” Ernie shouted. I repeated what he’d said in Korean, adding, “The MPs have arrested a Korean woman.”

As our jeep passed, the girls clustered helpfully behind us. Moe Dexter was honking his horn, but it wasn’t working. Angry business girls stood in front of his jeep and on the sides, taunting the MPs, shouting at them to go back to their compound. Pent-up rage at having been humiliated by members of law enforcement, of having always to show their updated VD cards, of being busted for selling the gifts GIs gave them on the black market-all of these emotions bubbled quickly into anger, and in this large gathering the business girls of Itaewon finally held the power. Cursing and red-faced, Moe slammed the palm of his big hand on the jeep’s horn and held it down, screaming at them to get out of the way. This seemed to make the girls even more determined. They pressed forward in front of the jeep, and Moe Dexter was forced by the growing crowd of female pulchritude to come to a complete halt.

At the bottom of the hill, we rounded the corner. Ernie stepped on it, and in a few seconds we’d reached the MSR. Ernie turned right and really let it rip, slamming on the brakes when he had to, giving it the gas when he could, showing the skills he’d developed during his years in Asia. Within seconds, we passed Hannam-dong and turned right until we reached Chamsu Bridge. Ernie crossed it heading south, and soon we were on the wide open roads running parallel to the Han River in the district known a Gangnam, literally River South. There were a few high-rise apartments along the waterfront but not many. Straw hatted farmers worked the fields that stretched on the long inland plains to distant hills. It was as if by just crossing the bridge, we’d been transported back in time. I even spotted a tired-looking ox pulling a plow.

I turned in my seat and studied the road behind us. From here, I had a clear view of Chamsu Bridge.

“No jeeps,” I said, turning back around.

“We lost ’em,”

“You lost them,” I said, “with the help of a few business girls.”

“I have always depended,” Ernie said, “on the kindness of business girls.”

We found Mr. Kill three stories below ground in the interrogation room of the Korean National Police headquarters. When he emerged, his tie was loose and his sleeves were rolled up. He looked exhausted.

“What do you want?” he said.

“The National Mental Health Sanatorium. What happened? Every patient there was arrested.”

“Not arrested,” he said. “They were just taken in for questioning.”

“Like the other witnesses were taken in for questioning?”

He shrugged.

“Have they been released yet?”

“Some of them.”

“How about the director, Doctor Hwang?”

“He’s been particularly uncooperative.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?” Ernie said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Mr. Kill looked down the hallway and then back at Ernie. “This isn’t the States. We do things the Korean way.” He pointed his forefinger at Ernie’s nose. “We do things our way.”

Ernie bristled. I stepped between them.

“Okay,” I said. “We can’t talk you into releasing these people but you can at least tell us what you’ve learned from them.”

“Not much. Other than they’re all a bunch of Communists.”

“You mean literally members of the Communist party?”

“No. I mean in the way they obstinately oppose the goals of President Pak Chung-hee.”

“That’s it?” Ernie said. “That’s why you’re holding them?”

Mr. Kill placed his hands on his hips and his face hardened. “How about your investigation? What have you found?”

“Not much,” Ernie said.

Mr. Kill nodded, as if that was the answer he expected. “So if you’ll excuse me.”

He returned to the interrogation room. We watched him go. Silently, we turned and trudged back up the steps.

“Nobody really seems to want to solve this thing,” Ernie said. “They’re just using the iron sickle murders as an excuse to resolve old grudges.”

“Mr. Kill could solve it if he wanted to,” I said. “He has all the resources of the Korean National Police at his disposal and yet he continues to concentrate on peripheral issues.”

“So what does that tell us?”

“It tells us that they want us, Eighth Army, to solve it.”

“Why?” Ernie asked.

“Because the KNPs don’t want to touch it.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because they’re afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“There’s only one thing in this world the Korean National Police are afraid of,” I said.

Ernie looked at me, waiting for the answer.

“Politics,” I said.

We passed the information desk in the main floor lobby. A few uniformed officers stared at us, and there was a lot or murmuring.

“I don’t like it,” Ernie said. “Maybe Eighth Army put the word out to be on the lookout for us. Let’s get out of here.”

I agreed.

Without incident, we reached the jeep in the parking lot and rolled into the busy streets of Seoul.

Ernie swerved past a careening kimchi cab. “Should we go see Major Rhee?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. For all we know Eighth Army’s charged us with the crime of absconding with classified documents.”

“The Bogus Claims File isn’t classified.”

“No, not officially. But they might be pissed off enough not to worry about legal niceties.”

“So what’s our next move?”

I thought about the totem we’d found at the Inn of the Crying Rose. KNP forensic technicians had removed the head of Mr. Ming and taken samples of the blood and other shreds of flesh that had fallen to the floor. The totem itself was made not of wood from produce crates, as I’d originally assumed, but of sturdier stuff. Unlike when we’d first seen it at the Itaewon Market, I had a chance, finally, to study it closely. The wood seemed old and brittle and it was stenciled with faded black lettering, in English: 4038 SIG BN (MOB), which meant, in military bureaucratese, the 4038th Signal Battalion (Mobile).

“Let’s make a few phone calls,” I said.

“Where?” Ernie asked.

In downtown Seoul there weren’t many places to park. And if we did find a public phone I’d need ten won pieces to pay for the call; the wait to be transferred to the 8th Army telephone exchange could be as long as twenty minutes.

“Let’s go to the RTO,” I said.

There, at the 8th Army Rail Transportation Office at the Seoul Train Station, we’d not only have access to phones that were already hooked up to the 8th Army telephone exchange, we’d also have access to Western-style toilets and a small PX snack stand where we could grab a cup of hot coffee.

Ernie nodded.

Five minutes later we rolled up to the brick facade of the 8th Army RTO just to the right of the huge dome of the Seoul train station. No one paid any attention to us as Ernie made a break for the latrine and I grabbed the receiver of the government phone on the ticketing counter. Next to it, chained to a metal pole, was the 8th Army phonebook. I didn’t need to look up a number. I dialed Riley.

“Where the hell are you?” he said.

“Who wants to know?”

“Whadda you mean ‘who wants to know?’ You know who wants to know. The freaking Provost Marshal.”

“We’re working on the Barretsford case.”

“You’ve got leads?”

“A few.”

“So what were you doing in the SOFA Secretariat’s Office last night?”

“Was that us?”

“According to Major Woolword it was.”

“That old drunk?”

“Hey, it’s in his log, and Sergeant Ervin and a couple of MPs are backing him up.”

“So why’s everybody so worried about us being in the Secretariat’s Office?”

“You weren’t authorized to be there.”

“Who gives a rat’s butt about that? You want this guy with the iron sickle caught, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but the Provost Marshal don’t like you two snooping around in places you’re not supposed to be.”

“So he sicced Moe Dexter on us.”

“He didn’t sic nobody on you. He put out the word that he wanted to talk to you.”

“So there’s no warrant for our arrest?”

“Not yet.”

“Doesn’t it seem odd to you they’re making such a big deal out of this when we have a killer on the loose?”

Riley was silent for a while. “I suppose it does,” he said, his voice subdued, sounding almost reasonable for a moment.

“I need you to look something up for me. The Forty Thirty-eighth Signal Battalion Mobile. Who are they? Where are they stationed? Anything you can find out about them.”

“Why?”

After he promised to keep it under his hat, I told him.

“A totem?” he said.

“That’s what I’m calling it.”

“Left at the site where Collingsworth was murdered and also this Chinese guy.”

“I told you to keep it under your hat.”

“Oh, I can do that. For now.”

I hung up on him. Ernie was back, rummaging around the PX snack stand, asking the cashier if they had any ginseng gum. They didn’t. I reached in my wallet and pulled out a slip of paper with Captain Prevault’s office number on it. It rang and rang.

I set the phone down, walked over to the snack stand and ordered a cup of coffee. Before I could pay for it, the big swinging doors burst open. Two ROK Army soldiers in combat fatigues entered, M-16 rifles leveled, both of them crouched, narrow-eyed, swiveling the barrels of the rifles from side to side.

The American NCO behind the ticketing counter burst out of his office.

“Hey!” he shouted. “No ROK personnel allowed in here. This is Eighth Army. You arra? Eighth Army. You bali bali karra chogi!” Leave quickly.

A half dozen more ROK soldiers burst through the door. Two of them hopped over the ticketing counter and shoved the irate American NCO back into his office. I heard scuffling, and then somebody went down.

Ernie and I were both armed but neither of us reached for the.45s in our shoulder holsters. Instead, we stood with our hands out to our sides. More ROK soldiers searched the latrine, the small waiting area, and the other offices of the RTO. Once the area was secure, the word was passed back and then two soldiers held the doors open. I think I had been half expecting it to be Major Rhee Mi-sook who strode into the room.

As usual, she looked smashing in her tailored fatigues and her highly polished combat boots. She surveyed the scene, grinned, and barked an order. Two straight-backed chairs were brought from the office behind the ticketing counter and set down in the center of the small waiting room. Major Rhee pointed a polished nail at them.

“Sit!”

A half dozen M-16 rifles were pointed at us, so we sat. Ernie crossed his arms and slouched. I maintained an attentive posture.

“You boys have been busy,” Major Rhee said.

“Idleness is the Devil’s handmaiden,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s good to be busy,” I replied.

“Yes, it’s good. What have you found out so far about the man with the iron sickle?”

“He’s a very bad boy,” Ernie said.

“I didn’t ask you,” Major Rhee replied.

Ernie shrugged and turned his head away. She looked back at me.

“We believe he killed a Chinese man named Ming,” I told Major Rhee. “Apparently a woman who owned a bar in Mia-ri called The Inn of the Crying Rose was an associate of the man with the iron sickle. She’s gone now. Disappeared.”

“What makes you think it was him?”

“The MO,” I replied. When she stared at me blankly, I said, “The method of operation. In the previous murders he cut the throats of his victims. This time, he sliced the head off completely.”

I didn’t tell her about the totem, nor about the Bogus Claims File. What I was telling her is what she could’ve found out from the KNPs on her own.

“What’s your next move?” she asked.

“Our next move,” Ernie said, “is to have a cup of coffee.”

She smiled at this, a radiant smile. “May I join you?”

“Naw. I like cream and sugar with my coffee. Not five fifty-six millimeter ammo.”

“Oh, sorry about that.”

Major Rhee barked an order. The combat soldiers arrayed around the RTO assembled in front of the swinging doors and then, as a unit, marched smartly outside.

“A beautiful woman,” Ernie said, “should always make an impressive entrance.”

Major Rhee ignored him. The three of us took seats at one of the two Formica-topped tables in front of the snack stand. The cashier, a middle-aged Korean man, scurried out from behind the counter, bowed in front of Major Rhee, and said, “Muol duhshi-gessoyo?” What can I get for you?

This is something he never did for GI customers.

She ordered green tea, but the man profusely apologized and told her they only had the American PX-bought tea called “Lipton.”

She told him that would be fine and the cashier hurried off.

“Hey!” Ernie said. “What about me?”

He ended up getting his own coffee at the counter as usual. I already had mine. Once the three of us were reseated, Major Rhee lifted her steaming white Styrofoam cup and said, “Here’s to justice.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ernie said. “Justice. That’s what we’re all about.”

She gazed at me steadily. “Eighth Army is upset with you.”

I sipped my coffee and stared at her unblemished face, reminding myself what she’d done to me while wearing the uniform of a North Korean Army Senior Captain. It hadn’t been pretty, and it had nothing to do with justice.

“I understand you’ve been seeing a woman,” she said.

Ernie cast me a wry grin.

I stared at Major Rhee and raised one eyebrow.

“A highly educated woman,” she continued. “A doctor. You seem to be partial to them.”

“Why do you care who I see?” I asked.

She raised and then lowered her tea bag. “Who you see is important to this investigation. You believe the killer with the iron sickle might have been at one time a psychiatric patient. You’re investigating that angle. You’re also investigating the various claims processed through the SOFA Secretariat. Good thinking, I’d say. Once you find an intersection, you might find your man.”

“And we might not,” Ernie said.

It was Major Rhee’s turn to shrug. “That’s the risk one takes.”

“What do you want from us?” Ernie asked.

Major Rhee sipped from her cup, leaving a lipstick smudge along its edge. “I want to be there when you make an arrest. You’ll need me.” She jammed her thumb over her shoulder. “You’ll need the firepower I can provide. This killer has proven he is intelligent and ruthless. You need me and I need you to help me find him. I won’t take the credit. I’ll leave that to you. I just want to be there on the day when you take him down.”

“You want to kill him,” Ernie said.

Major Rhee jerked back in her seat. “Not necessarily,” she said. “If he comes peacefully, he won’t be hurt.”

“You don’t want him to come peacefully,” Ernie continued. “For some reason the ROK Army wants him shut up. They don’t want a trial. They don’t want to hear what he has to say. They want him dead.”

Major Rhee’s face flushed red. “Don’t you?” she shouted. “Don’t you want him dead? He murdered an American civilian, a fellow MP, and two innocent GIs in a signal truck. Isn’t that enough reason for you Americans to want him dead also?”

The ranking sergeant of her infantry squad pushed through the double doors, holding his rifle pointed toward the ceiling.

“Naka!” she shrieked. Get out! The man backed out the door.

She stood and loomed over us, pointing her red-tipped forefinger first at Ernie and then at me. “Someday you will need me. Someday soon. And then you will be groveling and begging for my help.” She lowered her hand, stared at us, and turned and stormed out the swinging door. As lumber creaked on rusty hinges, I glanced at Ernie. Saliva bubbled at the corner of his mouth.

“Whadda woman,” he said.

We finished our coffee and prepared to go, and the NCO in charge of the RTO peeked out of his office behind the counter. When he saw the coast was clear, he walked up to the counter and said, “Next time you guys need to make a phone call, go somewhere else, okay?”

I finally reached Captain Prevault at her office.

“Thank God you called,” she said.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Remember Miss Sim, the woman at the home for the criminally insane, the one who panicked when we showed her your drawing of the totem?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“She’s been taken.”

“Taken by who?”

“By a very forceful Korean man. He barely said anything, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. And a Korean woman was with him. ‘Flashy’ is how the staff described her.”

“They just walked in and took this woman who’d been there for years? Didn’t anybody try to stop them?”

“Yes, one of the male attendants confronted them. Grabbed the girl on the front steps and wouldn’t let her go.”

“What happened?”

“As soon as he touched her, Miss Sim dropped her rag doll and scratched his eyes so severely he had to be taken to surgery. Then the three of them left.”

“Have the KNPs been called?”

“Yes. So far they’ve done nothing.”

“I’ll go up there and check it out.”

“Take me with you!” When I didn’t say anything, Captain Prevault softened her voice and said, “I’m sorry about what I did in the snack bar. It was wrong of me. I realize now that none of the arrests at the Sanatorium were your doing.”

“What makes you so sure?” I said coldly.

There was a long pause. Finally, she spoke in the voice of a little girl. “I know you couldn’t.”

She was right about that.

I sighed, turning my head so the sound of it didn’t reach the receiver. “We’ll need to move quickly.”

Her voice brightened, becoming the old Captain Prevault again. “I’ll be waiting in front of the one-two-one.”

I told her we’d be there in twenty minutes and hung up.