The Wandering Ghost

9

It was too dangerous to drive Ernie’s jeep back into the Division AO. The MPs would’ve taken note of the unit designation and jeep number stenciled on the bumper. Instead, Ernie left it in the care of a buck sergeant with grease-stained fingers at the Camp Red Cloud motor pool, promising him a free pizza dinner at the Papa-san Club upon our return.

Staff Sergeant Riley made us promise once more that we’d be back at 8th Army headquarters for duty Monday morning. “Tonight and Sunday,” he said. “That’s all the time you’ve got. If you don’t find Matthewson by then, you’re back in Seoul where you belong.”

We agreed. Then he nodded goodbye to Brandy and drove his sedan back to Seoul.

In front of the Camp Red Cloud main gate, Ernie, Brandy, and I waved down a kimchee cab. Brandy gave directions to a village east of here known as Koyang. We traveled on back roads, avoiding the MSR. Our goal was to dodge all 2nd Infantry Division checkpoints, to sneak back into the 2nd Infantry Division area of operations without being noticed.

Koyang was a small cluster of buildings, one of which featured the Chinese characters for sokyu-“rock oil”-overhead: a gas station. The little town also had a noodle shop and a transshipment point for produce. We climbed out of the cab, shivered in the cold February wind, and after we paid the driver, we watched him make a U-turn and speed back toward Uijongbu.

The shadows of quivering poplar trees began to grow long; evening would soon be upon us. Ernie and I checked our pockets. We each had about forty bucks on us, plenty to last us until we returned to Seoul Monday morning.

Brandy entered the noodle shop, chatted with the owner, and within five minutes another local cab pulled up, ready to transport us north to Bopwon-ni. Legal Hall Village. We climbed in and the little sedan sped north. The two-lane road followed a meandering valley. Fallow rice paddies spread on one side and elm-covered hills rose on the other. Swaths of snow clung to the hills although, since we’d arrived, there’d been no new snowfalls. Unusual for February. Atop many of the hills were burial mounds and atop one of them was an elaborate stone-carved statute of an ancient king of the Yi Dynasty.

“It’s like another world back here,” Ernie said.

I knew what he meant. Even though we were only some twenty miles north of Seoul as the crow flies, there was a mountain range between us and Seoul and smaller ranges of hills on either side of this valley. Few modern amenities existed back here. Telephone and electrical lines paralleled the road and that was about it. Gazing in any direction, one could imagine that he’d been transported back in time to the ancient kingdom known as the Land of the Morning Calm. The sun sank behind the hills to the west, darkening straw-thatched roofs.

There were few military installations in this valley. No U.S. bases and only one or two small ROK Army compounds specializing in communications. Although we were only fifteen or so miles south of the DMZ, we were tucked snugly between the two main invasion routes known as the Western Corridor and the Eastern Corridor. We were slipping into 2nd Infantry Division territory stealthily. And if the KNPs interviewed either one of our cab drivers, neither would be able to give them our entire route.

I still didn’t know how Brandy had hooked up with Staff Sergeant Riley. I asked and she told us.

“When you come look for me last night, taaksan trouble.” A lot of trouble. “All kimchee business girl, all GI soul brother, taaksan kul-laso.” Very angry. “Why I bring MP T-shirt Black Cat Club? they ask me. I say you not MP, you CID.”

I’m sure that calmed them down.

“So I go checky-checky KNP police station. Nobody outside. I wait. Pretty soon, GI car come. Not jeep. Not tank. Not big truck.”

“It was a sedan,” Ernie said.

“Right. So must be Eight Army. Skinny GI get out, crooked teeth, I go talk to him. He like me. He buy me drink before go in KNP station, pretty soon he tell me everything about you two guys, so I tell him I need to talk to you so he let me hide in back of GI car.”

“That’s Riley,” Ernie said. “Spills anything to a pretty face.”

“After a drink or two,” I added.

As we sped along the narrow country lane, we spoke freely, assuming that the driver couldn’t understand English. A safe assumption. The dark shadows of night continued to roll in and by the time we reached Bopwon-ni, the small town was bejeweled with shining light bulbs. No neon. But at the main intersection there was a teahouse and two-story beer hall. SSANG-YONG, the sign said, A Pair of Dragons. It portrayed two enormous reptiles entwined in battle. We ordered the driver to pull over, paid him, and climbed out of the cab.

Inside the beer hall, the odor of salted octopus assaulted our nostrils. It was a nice fishy smell, interlaced with the sharp tang of red pepper powder and raw nakji, squid, another specialty of the house. The three of us each ordered a mug of draft OB. We turned down the raw squid, which most of the other customers were pecking away at with their chopsticks. In order to save face, I instead ordered a plate of anju, dried cuttlefish with a pepper sauce dip and a couple dozen unhusked peanuts on the side. Koreans believe that it’s unhealthy to drink alcohol on an empty stomach and bar owners capitalize on this belief by overcharging for plates of sliced fruit and dried cuttlefish and other snacks. Not to mention the raw squid.

While we nibbled, I studied the crowd. Most of the heavy drinking was being done by Korean businessmen in suits. They had bottles of Scotch in the center of tables and were busy toasting one another, round glasses raised to red faces. At other tables there were young Koreans, college-age, sipping slowly on beer. And a few women in groups, none alone. At the pool tables, at least a dozen men in ROK Army fatigue uniforms. The patches on their left arms showed a globe with a lightning bolt running through it, which led me to believe that they were probably assigned to one of those communication compounds we’d passed.

Not a GI in sight. Nor a Korean business girl. The influence of foreigners had yet to defile the Pair of Dragons beer hall. Therefore, Ernie and I caught a lot of stares. But most of the gawking was reserved for Brandy. Not for her pulchritude. Here, in a Confucian society, she was stared at for her brazenness. For her huge Afro hairdo, for nonchalantly sitting with two foreign men, for guzzling draft beer rather than sipping something more ladylike, like a glass of pineapple juice or a cup of ginseng tea. She created quite a stir. After we finished our beers, I suggested we leave before one of the drunken Korean businessmen said something to her, she snapped back, and Ernie became involved.

To avoid trouble we had to keep moving.

Outside, we flagged down another cab. This one drove us east from Bopwon-ni, down dark country roads, through quiet straw-thatched farming villages. The three-quarter moon still loitered in a dark sky. Then, just as we all were about to become drowsy, we reached our first ROK Army checkpoint.

The driver slowed, turned off his headlights, and we stopped while armed Korean soldiers peered into the cab. Both of the young men did a double take when they saw Brandy but then they regained their stern expressions and demanded everyone’s ID. The cab driver fished out his license first and then Ernie and I showed our regular military ID cards-not our CID badges. Finally, Brandy handed over her Korean national identity card. I figured it would be unlikely that these two Korean soldiers, out here standing alone in the frigid night, would go to the trouble of notifying the 2nd Infantry Division of our presence. The ROK Army and the 2nd Infantry Division coordinated major troop movements at the Division level but they didn’t cooperate on day-to-day routine. As I suspected, the Korean soldiers barely glanced at our IDs before waving us on. What they were concerned with were North Korean commandos. Not a couple of GIs with a Korean woman who was marked both by her hairdo and by the company she kept, as a business girl.

After we drove on, I mentally started to list the people who might have a reason to murder Pak Tong-i. I started with Jill Matthewson. Would she have a motive? To retrieve her two thousand bucks? Maybe. To make sure that-if he knew where she was hiding-he wouldn’t reveal her secret? Maybe. How about the stripper, Kim Yong-ai? Maybe the same two motives. And maybe another one: Pak Tong-i had been instrumental in her degradation. He’d taken her to the mafia meeting and then done nothing to protect her from what Brandy described as gang rape. And the amulet that sat in my pocket indicated that Mr. Pak and Miss Kim had had a thing going. How could he allow his own girlfriend to be abused like that? Certainly Miss Kim had a motive.

How about someone in the 2nd Division Provost Marshal’s Office or the provost marshal himself? Pak Tong-i knew about the free black-market goods and the free women, and maybe someone had heard that one of Pak’s strippers had taken some photographs. Where were the photos now? With Kim Yong-ai, according to Brandy. But someone had searched Pak’s office. Were they looking for those photos? Were they willing to kill to obtain them? Or were they looking for the whereabouts of Corporal Jill Matthewson and Kim Yong-ai?

Maybe the Korean National Police had murdered Pak Tong-i. Maybe they’d been questioning him, asking him about the whereabouts of Kim Yong-ai or Corporal Jill Matthewson. Maybe he’d refused to tell them. Maybe.

I was using the term murder in its legal sense. I’m no doctor but it appeared to me that Pak Tong-i had died of a heart attack. Still, if an intruder broke into his office, frightened him, questioned him, maybe tortured him, and this had caused a weak heart to burst, then he would be responsible for his death. According to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it would be murder.

Maybe gangsters had murdered Pak Tong-i. Maybe he hadn’t turned the two thousand dollars over as promised. Maybe they came to collect and Pak no longer had the money or refused to pay.

Maybe the mystery man who’d witnessed my interrogation at the Tongduchon Police Station had murdered Pak Tong-i. Why? All he had told me was that powerful people were somehow involved in this case. Who they were or why they were involved? That, he failed to mention.

Finally, I admitted to myself that I had no idea who had murdered Pak Tong-i. I didn’t have enough information. Maybe I’d never have enough information. Our goal up here was still to find Corporal Jill Matthewson, not to solve a Korean civilian’s murder. But something told me that before we found her we’d have to solve not only the murder of Pak Tong-i but also resolve the mysterious death of Private Marvin Z. Druwood. And, incidentally, we’d have to put to rest the wanderings of Miss Chon Un-suk’s hungry ghost.

The little cab bounced over a hill and then, spread out before us like a sudden gift from the gods, lay the neon-spangled city known as Tongduchon.

The main reason Ernie and I had decided to risk coming back was to find Corporal Jill Matthewson. The second reason was because of what Brandy had promised us: a rendezvous. With a man who knew Pak Tong-i and claimed to have information on the whereabouts of Jill Matthewson and Miss Kim Yong-ai. He’d contacted her early last night, while she was tending bar at the Black Cat Club. Of course he hadn’t come in himself, no self-respecting Korean man would enter a GI nightclub. Instead, a boy came in, a raggedy street urchin, and he’d asked for her by name, Bu-ran-dee. When Brandy acknowledged who she was, the boy handed her a note and waited hopefully for a gift of food or money. When Brandy had read the note she asked him who had sent it but, frightened, he scurried back into the street.

While we’d sat at that cocktail table in the Papa-san Club in Uijongbu, Brandy showed us the note. Scribbled hangul script. I had to read it two or three times to make it out. The writer wanted to meet with the two American cops from Seoul. Tomorrow night- which would be tonight-at eleven p.m. in the Tongduchon City Market at Mulkogi Chonkuk. Fish heaven. They must come alone, the note emphasized, they must bring money, and they would be provided with information on the whereabouts of Kim Yong-ai and- then the script switched to English-MP WOMAN

I’d kept the note and now, sitting in the front seat of the cab entering Tongduchon, I pulled it out of my shirt pocket and read it again by the dim glow of the instrument panel. It didn’t say how much money to bring. Apparently, the guy was willing to bargain. Was the information worth anything? It could be a hoax set up by someone trying to make a quick buck. How many people in TDC knew that we were looking for the MP woman? In the bar district, at least half the population.

We had three hours until eleven p.m. Brandy knew of a yoguan, a Korean inn, where we could wait-and hide from the 2nd Division MPs. As we entered the environs of Tongduchon proper, she instructed the cab driver as to what road to take. After a few minutes, she had him pull over and we climbed out. The weather was cold and it threatened to rain. I paid the driver the agreed-upon fare.

We stood in a narrow road on the southern edge of Tongduchon, not too far from the open-air Tongduchon City Market. But what the hell was mulkogi chonguk? Fish heaven? A few splats of drizzle hit my face.

“Where’s the yoguan?” Ernie asked.

“I don’t want driver to see,” Brandy said. She waited until his red brake lights disappeared around a corner and then said, “Come on.” She led us down a block and turned right until we found the yoguan in a narrow alley. Brandy was catching on to this fugitive stuff real quick.

Maybe too quick.

It’s not like I wasn’t used to Ernie chasing skirts. He never tried to hide his nocturnal activities and he certainly wasn’t bashful. But what bothered me was the lack of consideration Ernie and Brandy showed me.

The yoguan was a wooden-floored, traditional place, with sliding oil-papered doors and warm ondol floors. Small rooms featured cotton-filled mats to roll out on the floor as mattresses and thick silk-covered comforters instead of blankets. Immaculately clean and quite comfortable. But after the three of us settled in and ordered Chinese chop from a restaurant in the neighborhood, Brandy and Ernie immediately started playing grab-ass. It was as if they’d been denied one another for so long-about three hours-that they could no longer restrain the heat of their mutual passion.

Luckily, the food arrived before they’d ripped one another’s clothes off and since we were all famished, we ate heartily. But then, once Brandy set the tray and the bowls and the chopsticks out in the hall, instead of becoming sleepy and catching some shut-eye before our eleven o’clock rendezvous, Brandy and Ernie started necking. They didn’t even bother to turn the light off. Of course, I could’ve sat there and watched. Neither one of them would’ve minded. Brandy was proud of her voluptuous body and her smooth golden flesh. I couldn’t blame her for that, but I didn’t feel comfortable in the presence of all that heavy breathing.

I slid open the door and stepped into the hallway. Neither one of them acknowledged my good-bye.

When I reached the front landing, a soft rain had started to fall. In Korea there are many names for rain, probably because rain is important to Koreans. Without rain, rice doesn’t grow and without rice, people starve. Some of the names for rain actually sound like rain. For example, bosulbi means a light drizzle. Busulbi, with a soft bu as the first syllable, means a slightly lighter drizzle. But the name I always remember, the one that seems most poetic to me, is danbi. Sweet rain. The ajjima who owned the yoguan loaned me an umbrella.

I staggered into the narrow flagstone lane. Not from drunkenness but from exhaustion. Last night, I’d spent the evening in a Korean National Police interrogation room. Not the best place to sleep. Now, I had to stay up until eleven to meet someone who might or might not have useful information. A light shined from within a noodle shop. The glass windows were painted over with red lettering advertising neingmyon, cold noodles, and solnong-tang, beef soup. The small panes were heavily fogged and squeals of laughter erupted from the crowd inside. I thought of entering. It would be a cozy place to sit, indoors, out of the rain. But I knew that as soon as I slid back the wooden door and ducked inside, every pair of eyes in the joint would be on me. And then, after the few seconds of shock at seeing a GI in a place where he doesn’t belong, the crowd would turn back to their own business, studiously ignoring me. I wouldn’t be able to find a seat. I’d stand there awkwardly until finally the female owner would acknowledge me and maybe ask someone to share a table with me. And then things would start to relax. I’d order food, maybe a glass of soju, and eventually someone would speak to me in English. But the awkward period from first walking in the door until first making friends was too much to endure.

I walked past the noodle shop, through the sweet rain, through the cold night air of the city of Tongduchon.

When I was a youngster, East L. A had been a wonderland to me. Full of vitality, I rode my first bike through town, running errands for the foster family I was currently living with. Picking up milk at an Anglo market-and speaking English. Buying pan dulce, sweet bread, at a tortilleria-and speaking Spanish. Sometimes I was tasked with stopping at the local Japanese market to buy fruit or vegetables, although the owner spoke to me in gruff English, never Japanese. I enjoyed running errands. I enjoyed the freedom of speeding around town on my bicycle. And mostly I enjoyed evading, for at least a while, the hard stares of the foster father who seemed constantly surprised that I wanted to eat meals at the same time as his natural kids.

I was an errand boy par excellence. That is until the cholos caught me. It was bad enough that they stole my bike-and the few dollars in my pocket my foster mother had provided for shopping-but then they stole, or attempted to steal, what they really wanted. My dignity.

They shoved me to the ground and spit on me. And when I tried to rise, one of them kicked me and then another joined in. I lay still. They laughed. When they started to argue about how to divide the money they had stolen, I leaped up and punched the leader in the left kidney.

It was a good punch. Even then-at the tender age of ten-I was strong. His right knee buckled and the other punks laughed and this enraged him. Although I fought back for the first few seconds, he was five or six years older than me and in the end he pulverized me good. When he was through, he kneeled over me to see if I was breathing; I was. He punched me one more time, on the side of the head, hard, and then rose to his feet, dusting off his loose khaki trousers, turned and strutted away. He could’ve killed me but he didn’t.

Kids were decent back then.

The Tongduchon City Market, partially lit by overhead fluorescent bulbs, was deserted. Wooden stands stood empty, some of them folded and laying on the ground. Canvas roofing vibrated from the steady susurration of sweet rain. The air smelled of green onions and fish, overlaid with a hint of rust. I wandered through the stalls, meandering, heading for a blue light that glowed at the far end.

Brandy’s note said that whoever wanted to talk to us would meet us here at eleven this evening. I had come early because I had nowhere else to go. Besides, I wanted to survey the meeting place. Make sure it was safe. Make sure there were no boulders waiting to fall on us or trapdoors ready to open and swallow us whole.

Within the blue glow, shadows shuffled. When I stepped closer, I could see that the blue and now greenish glow came from enormous tanks of live fish. Various-sized creatures wriggled and squirmed through the murky blue waters. More tanks were propped on tables, arranged at odd angles. Was this fish heaven? It looked more like fish hell to me.

The shadows I’d seen in front of the tanks were a Korean woman and her three children. I greeted the woman. “Anyonghaseiyo,” I said.

She stared at me, wide-eyed. I explained that I was here sheltering from the rain and that later I would meet a friend. Korea is a trusting society. She nodded and proceeded to fuss with her children.

The toddler waddled toward me, holding a red rubber ball that was almost as big as his head. He smiled and let go of the ball, thinking he was throwing it to me. Instead, the ball fell to the ground, bounced once, and rolled listlessly in my direction. I stooped, picked up the ball, and bounced it gently back to him. The toddler squealed with glee and chased the ball, which had somehow managed to slip past him.

The little family’s living quarters consisted of sleeping cots and a small hot plate that held a brass bowl of steaming rice. They lived here. For economic reasons, undoubtedly. Probably also to protect their fish. Where was her husband? I asked. She told me. He was a fisherman and once she had sold their share of the fish, she would return to her village on the shores of the Yellow Sea. Why come all this way? To avoid the middlemen. To pull down a larger share of the profit.

I would’ve liked to have asked her more questions, to pry into her personal affairs. Because I’m curious about things. And I’m especially curious about people who are different. Ernie tells me I’m nuts. Still, I would’ve liked to have talked to this woman, to find out more about her life. But there was no excuse. I wasn’t a reporter and she wasn’t under criminal investigation, so I continued my stroll through the market.

After a few yards, I reached the noodle stands, the same spot where Ernie and I’d eaten lunch just the day before yesterday. The stands were deserted now. No loose pots and pans sitting on the stoves, all bowls and chopsticks and bottles of soy sauce and vinegar locked up in wooden cabinets. Not so much as a napkin left unguarded.

Toward the back of the dining area, shadows ruled. The only illumination to reach this area came from the blue glow of the fish tanks. I found an unvarnished wooden table with folding legs, unlatched the legs, folded them, and lay the table flat on the ground. No sense returning to the yoguan. Who knew how long Brandy and Ernie would be at it. Ernie knew we had to rendezvous here at the Tongduchon City Market at eleven p.m. He’d show up. Probably, so would Brandy.

I lay atop the table. The surface was splintered and unyielding, yet it felt wonderfully comfortable. Better even than the cement floor of a KNP interrogation room. With the soft blue glow of fish heaven in my face, I closed my eyes and, almost instantly, I was asleep.

The first thing I heard was a scream. A woman’s scream.

And after the scream, a crash. Then the even higher pitched shrieks of children. Terrified children. And water. Water crashing like a wave. In less than a second, I was on my feet, reaching for the. 45 in my shoulder holster.

Gunshots rang out. My military training took over and I leaped to the ground. Face first. When I looked up I realized that the blue glow of fish heaven was much weaker than I remembered. Across the vast cement floor, a sea of liquid spread toward me, an expanding tsunami less than two inches high. By a trick of light the liquid appeared violet and for a moment I thought it was blood. But then I stood and the light changed and the liquid became blue again; at least one of the huge fish tanks had been smashed to smithereens.

Another gunshot rang out. Closer this time. Children screamed and a mother’s voice tried to hush them. A bare bulb hanging from the rafters above was still intact and by its glow, I saw a man crouching in water amidst flopping mackerel and crustaceans and squid. He held an automatic pistol pointed straight out in front of him and seemed to be aiming and then, squeezing with his entire fist, he popped off a round.

“Ernie,” I hissed. “It’s me.”

He swiveled, pointing the gun at me, and I stood perfectly still for a moment. He lowered the gun.

“Where the hell you been?”

“Here.” I jerked my free thumb over my shoulder.

“Get down. Some sort of high-power weapon out there. Probably a rifle.”

I low-crawled through wriggling sardines until I crouched next to Ernie, behind a short pyramid of cement blocks that had recently supported a fish tank.

“Where’s Brandy?” I asked.

“Back at the yoguan,” Ernie replied. “Said she was too tired. When I entered the market there didn’t seem to be anybody behind me. I found this woman and her kids and I tried to talk to her, but she doesn’t understand English. One of her kids bounced his rubber ball at me and when I stooped to pick it up the entire goddamned fish tank exploded.”

“Could’ve been your head,” I told him.

“Thanks. You see anything out there?”

We both peered over the edge of the cement-block foundation down the long corridor that led past the empty produce market and, after about twenty meters, onto the streets of Tongduchon.

I cursed myself for not anticipating this. A guy sends us a note and sets up the rendezvous for an isolated area with plenty of space like fish heaven, with darkness on the outside and light on the inside so he can see us but we can’t see him. When Ernie walks into the market, the guy takes up a position behind the shrubbery outside and doesn’t fire right away because he’s wondering where Ernie’s partner is. When he figures I’m not coming, he decides to take Ernie out. And he would have, too, if Ernie hadn’t leaned down to pick up that little rubber ball.

Did Brandy have anything to do with this? She’d gone to extraordinary efforts to contact Staff Sergeant Riley and then us. And she’d been particularly nice to Ernie. But when the moment of truth came, she had decided not to accompany him to fish heaven. Something told me that if we returned to the yoguan, Brandy would be long gone.

How much had she been paid to set this up? Or had she been coerced? Either way, I would love to have a chat with her.

A whistle shrilled.

“The KNPs,” Ernie said.

“No way,” I said. “If they take us into custody for questioning again, we won’t be getting out anytime soon.”

Ernie backed away from the cement blocks. “Come on.”

I followed.

On the way I nodded good-bye to the female fishmonger and her children huddled protectively beneath her arms. “Mianhamnida,” I said. I’m sorry. She stared after me, eyes wide with fright.

Ernie’d already reached the noodle stand and was trotting across the dining area with his. 45 held in his right hand, zigzagging through the scattered tables and chairs. In back of the market, a large blacktopped delivery area stood deserted. The entire expanse was empty except for a couple of three-wheeled flatbed trucks.

No cops. Another whistle shrilled behind us. The KNP foot patrols seemed to be converging on the front entrance of the Tonduchon City Market. My guess was that the shooter was long gone.

Beyond the truck park, we reached a low wooden fence. Ernie clambered over it and I followed and then we were in the backyard of some sort of factory for pipe fittings. At the front, we climbed over another locked fence and we were on another street, and then a narrow pedestrian walkway, and then an alley. Ernie slowed to a walk. I caught up with him.

“Where the hell are we?” he asked.

“Somewhere in the south end of Tongduchon.”

In the hubbub, I’d forgotten the umbrella the yoguan owner had loaned me. Dollops of sweet rain splattered atop my head.

Behind us, more whistles shrilled. The KNPs must be in the market now, interviewing the female fishmonger. How long would it take for them to realize that the two GIs with. 45s were Ernie and me? They wouldn’t know for sure, but they’d suspect. And they would certainly notify the provost marshal of the 2nd Infantry Division.

“We can’t wander the streets during curfew,” Ernie said. “Too risky.”

“So where do we hide?”

“They’ll check the yoguans. All of them. And the brothels in the bar district, too. They’ll find us and this time they won’t be so bashful about charging us with the murder of Pak Tong-i.”

Maybe. Maybe not. But at the very least, they’d turn us over to the 2nd ID and we’d be charged with violation of a direct order, the order to return to Seoul. Ernie’s claim that on the weekend we were off-duty and could go anywhere we wanted was really only meant to assuage Staff Sergeant Riley’s sense of responsibility. Once a commander orders you out of an area, you’re required to get out. Of course, we’d originally planned to keep a low profile and continue our search for Jill. We hadn’t expected to be shot at.

“You’re the smart one,” Ernie said. “Where do we hide?”

I thought of the rice paddies outside of town or one of the cemeteries I’d seen on a hill but neither of those options seemed inviting. After a few hours of standing in cold mud, sweet rain wouldn’t seem so sweet. And then it hit me.

“There’s one place,” I said. “The KNPs won’t look there and maybe-just maybe-we’ll be welcome.”

“Where?”

“Come on.”

I turned right into another dark alley, heading west. Above us, the sweet rain had stopped. The dark sky seemed to be holding its breath, trying to decide what torment to throw at us next.

Who had shot at us?

That wasn’t such an easy question to answer. By the sound and accuracy of the rounds, the weapon must’ve been a rifle.

Who had access to rifles?

The U.S. Army, the ROK Army, and the Korean National Police. Other than that, gun control is total in Korea. Special permission is required to own a rifle and, even if permission is granted, one has to keep the weapon under lock and key-not at home-but in a secure storage area of a licensed establishment, such as an approved shooting gallery or hunting club. Could gangsters obtain an unregistered rifle? If they really wanted to. But why bother? It would be risky and bring unwanted attention on themselves; they have other ways of killing people.

So who would try to kill us with a rifle?

Someone who had easy access to a rifle. Like a GI or a Korean National Policeman or a soldier from the ROK Army. Or a government official like the Korean mystery man who’d monitored my interrogation at the Tongduchon Police Station.

Whoever shot at us had set the event up. Using Brandy. Could Ernie and I storm into the Black Cat Club right now and find her and question her? Not likely. Not only were there still plenty of irate soul brothers there to hamper our operation but, even more dangerous, the KNPs-thinking we might’ve returned to town- would probably be watching the place. Questioning Brandy would have to wait.

For now.

As to why anyone would want to kill us, that seemed simple. Someone didn’t want us to find Corporal Jill Matthewson.

The upturned tile roofs of the Chon residence sat in darkness and the big wooden gate in the stone fence stood barred from within. In the recessed stone archway, I switched on my penlight and studied the brass nameplate. Etched onto the polished surface was the Chinese character for “Chon.” Next to that, a white button on a metal grille. The buzzer and the intercom system. I hesitated before pushing the button. How would I explain myself? I mentally rehearsed my lines in Korean and then pressed the button. A buzzer sounded deep inside the recesses of the residence. I waited. After a minute, I pushed again. It took three tries until a sleepy voice buzzed back through the intercom.

“Nugu ya?” Who is it?

A woman’s voice. Not Madame Chon. At least I didn’t think so. I phrased my Korean as precisely as I was able.

“I wish to speak to Chon Un-suk’s mother. It’s about the American woman MP. I’m still looking for her and I need help.”

I emphasized the words “Miguk yoja honbyong.” American woman MP.

There was no answer. But the woman hadn’t switched off. The intercom buzzed steadily like a broken transmission from the nether realms.

“What’d she say?” Ernie asked.

“She didn’t say anything. I think that’s the maid. She’s probably gone to fetch Madame Chon.”

“I hope the hell she hurries.” Ernie wrapped his nylon jacket more tightly around his chest. “It’s cold out here.” Our blue jeans, our sneakers, our T-shirts, and our nylon jackets were soaked from rolling in spilled water at fish heaven. Our overnight bags were back at the yoguan. They were history now because it would be too risky to go back for them. As we’d wandered through the back alleys of Tongduchon, searching for the Chon residence, our clothing had been further dampened by sporadic rain. As I’d suspected, the “sweetness” had long since gone out of the precipitation. Now the rain spurted from low-moving clouds, punching us when we least expected it, like a boxer softening us up with a left jab.

Finally, the intercom buzzed back to life.

“Nugu seiyo?” A softer voice. Sweeter. With the polite verb endings of a woman of culture.

“Nanun Mipalkun,” I said. I’m from 8th Army.

I went on to remind her that we had talked to her before about our search for Corporal Jill Matthewson and we’d run into some problems and we needed to talk to her and, quite frankly, we needed shelter from the rain and maybe something to eat.

“You haven’t found Jill yet?” she asked.

The reproach of the rich. Everything should be convenient. Simple.

“Not yet,” I replied.

There was another long silence. Then, like a jolt of lightning, a different buzzer sounded and the small wooden door in the main gate popped open. Without hesitation, Ernie and I ducked through.

The refuge provided by Madame Chon was sweeter than I had hoped. Hot baths were drawn for us by the old housemaid, a nourishing meal of turnip soup and steamed rice was served, and then a good night’s sleep on cotton mats with thick silk comforters in a private room. In fact, Ernie and I wallowed in comfort too long and it was almost ten a.m. when we left the warm confines of the Chon residence.

The maid had dried and pressed our clothes. I felt as fresh as a newly minted ten thousand won note.

Outside in a narrow alley, a young woman walked in front of us. She had already warned us sternly not to follow too closely and not to indicate in any way that we knew her. Of course, we didn’t know her. We didn’t even know her name. This morning she had appeared in the Chon family courtyard, bowing to Madame Chon. She was a slender young woman, probably in her early twenties, wearing blue jeans and sandals and a red-and-blue patterned blouse; her brown hair was just a little shaggier than a school girl’s pageboy cut. We weren’t given her name but Madame Chon told us to follow her.

Last night, in talking to Madame Chon, it became apparent to me that one area of Jill Matthewson’s activities that we hadn’t investigated was Jill’s participation in the demonstrations outside the main gate of Camp Casey. Jill had come to apologize to the Chon family for the actions of her compatriots and to say how saddened she was at the untimely death of their daughter. It took a lot of guts for an American MP to do that. And you can bet that the 2nd Division provost marshal didn’t approve of any such apology. The U.S. military is always loathe to take responsibility for mistakes. Jill had done it on her own. When she arrived, some of the demonstration organizers had been there, too. Jill was introduced to them and they began to talk.

“Later,” Madame Chon told me, “Jill left with them.”

I asked how Ernie and I could contact these demonstrators. She took care of everything and this morning our contact, the young woman we were now following through the twisting byways of Tongduchon, had miraculously appeared.

“Maybe,” Madame Chon told me, “she can help you find Jill.”

She also made me promise that, if I found Jill, I would bring her immediately to the Chon family home. “Any time, day or night,” she said. “When you arrive, you are welcome here.” A kut, a seance presided over by the mudang, a female shaman, would be arranged at once.

I just hoped we wouldn’t need a seance to contact Jill.

The young female student turned down one narrow pathway and then another.

“Student activists,” Ernie said.

I nodded in assent. Radicals, most people would call them. But it didn’t seem too radical a thing to want crimes committed in your own country to be tried in your own courts. Yet in Korea, under the current authoritarian regime, such an opinion was enough to get you thrown in the “monkey house.” Jail.

Occasionally, the girl leading us stopped and peered back along the road. When she was sure we weren’t being followed, she turned again and continued. She stayed carefully away from the Tongduchon City Market and far away from the GI bar district. We were in northern Tongduchon now, in alleyways neither Ernie nor I had ever seen before.

“Is she gonna take us all the way to North Korea?” Ernie asked.

Finally, after two quick turns down alleys running perpendicular to one another, the girl stopped in front of a splintered doorway in a brick wall smeared with soot. Ernie and I halted a few yards away and waited. She rang a buzzer. A man’s voice answered and she whispered into the speaker. The door in front of her opened. She waved for us to follow.

We stepped into a weed-infested courtyard strewn with broken bicycle parts and rusted charcoal stoves and metal detritus of all types. Bricks formed a walkway and we stepped up onto an unvarnished porch and then into a dark, wood-floored hallway with sliding oil-papered doors on either side, two of them open. The entire house reeked of mold and tobacco smoke. In the largest room, young people with shaggy black hair stared up at us warily, most of them puffing on cigarettes.

The majority were boys. It was difficult to determine sex since the boys had smooth faces unblemished by whiskers and the girls were rail thin and wore the same type of blue jeans and baggy shirts that the boys wore. No one greeted us, but a few students slid backwards on the floor until a space opened. I sat. Ernie did the same.

The girl who’d led us here disappeared into a back room.

A young man sitting directly across from us started speaking in English. No preamble. He immediately threw questions at us. It was an interrogation. I did most of the talking. Ernie was busy still sorting the students by gender.

The purpose of the interrogation was transparent. They wanted to know if they could trust us. A reasonable question since Ernie and I were criminal investigators working for the very institution they opposed: the United States 8th Army. I fired a few questions back at the young man. Some of the other students answered too, happy for a chance to practice their English.

They assured me that they didn’t hate Americans. In fact, they admired the American political system and they wanted to emulate it in Korea. But first the Status of Forces Agreement had to be abolished so Korean courts could have full jurisdiction in Korea. So GIs who drove recklessly and murdered innocent people wouldn’t be allowed to return to their home country without punishment. They spoke passionately. Whether or not the two GIs in the truck were guilty of negligent manslaughter was beside the point, they told me. The two GIs should’ve been tried in a Korean court. This was a fundamental demand of their movement: sovereignty of the Korean judicial system. And, incidentally, they wanted all American troops out of South Korea.

As an afterthought.

“Our army is strong,” one of the girls told me. “We can defend ourselves.”

From what I’d seen of the ROK Army, I had to agree. Their soldiers were dedicated and fierce, and a lot less beholden to the fleshly pleasures of life than American GIs. I told them that my main goal was to find Corporal Jill Matthewson. Suddenly they grew quiet. After a long pause, the most talkative young man said, “If we help you, we need something in return.”

Did they actually have information that could help us find Jill? Or were they bluffing?

“What?” I asked.

“Jill,” he said, “participated in one of our demonstrations.”

I nodded. I knew that. I didn’t say that if Ernie and I did manage to find Jill Matthewson alive, she could face court-martial proceedings for having participated in that demonstration. We’d worry about that later.

“Tonight,” he said, “after people get off work and before the sun goes down, we are planning another demonstration. A bigger one this time. In front of the Camp Casey main gate.”

I nodded. Understanding. Wondering what he wanted from me.

“You and your friend,” he said, pointing at me and Ernie, “must accompany us this afternoon. You must join our demonstration.”

Ernie stopped making eyes at the cutest of the female students and said, “Are you nuts?”

The students whispered amongst themselves. Not sure of what exactly Ernie meant by “nuts.”

“No,” the leader said finally. “We are not ‘nuts.’ You must join the demonstration and you must speak. You say you agree that Korean courts should try all people accused of crimes on Korean soil. Even GIs. If you say that at the demonstration, we will lead you to Jill Matthewson.”

There must’ve been over five hundred people in front of the Camp Casey main gate. Most of them were students who’d been bussed in just this afternoon from Seoul. But a surprising number were locals. Working people. Cab drivers, young women still wearing bandannas and aprons from their work in kitchens, an occasional vegetable vendor with a cart, even one or two shop owners who, much to my surprise, had closed up their tailor shops or brassware emporiums and walked down the street to join in the protest.

“Chon Un-suk mansei!” one of the protestors shouted through a bullhorn. Chon Un-suk ten thousand years! Which didn’t make much sense since she was already dead.

Some of the students held four-foot-high photographs of the young middle-school student, framed in black.

What must’ve been the entire contingent of Camp Casey MPs stood in front of the main gate, wearing fatigue uniforms and riot helmets, holding their batons at port arms. More MPs stood behind them with short-barreled grenade launchers cradled in their arms, for launching tear gas into the crowd. Finally, as if he was Camp Casey’s last line of defense, the twenty-foot-tall MP stood with his pink-faced grin, staring idiotically at the entire proceedings.

So far, everything was peaceful.

A KNP contingent stood along the railroad tracks, opposite the main gate, behind the protestors. They also wore riot helmets and thick chest padding and wielded long batons that they held in their hands impatiently. All in all, there were almost as many MPs and KNPs as there were protestors, although the cops were much better armed.

Ernie and I crouched in the center of the student protestors.

“If the MPs spot us out here,” Ernie said, “we’re toast.”

“What choice do we have?” I answered. “We were sent up here to find Jill Matthewson. That’s what we’re doing.”

“We’ll lose our CID badges.”

“We’ll tell them we were working undercover.”

“Eighth Army will never buy it.”

“Screw Eighth Army.”

Ernie shook his head. “You’re changing, Sueno.”

Maybe he was right. I thought about it. One of the protestors screamed through a megaphone at the top of his lungs in rapid Korean.

Finally, I replied. “I’m changing,” I told Ernie, “because finding Corporal Jill Matthewson should’ve been an easy assignment. Instead, at every step of the way someone’s tried to stop us. They stopped Private Marvin Druwood and then they stopped the booking agent, Pak Tong-i. Permanently. And last night, they tried to kill us. Why?”

Ernie shrugged.

“We have to find out,” I said.

“We could go talk to Brandy.”

“We’re too hot to enter the Black Cat Club. Or even the bar district. The KNPs are probably watching.”

“They’re watching us here.”

“They’re watching the crowd. Not us. This is the last place they’d expect to find us.”

“This is the last place I’d expect to find us.”

“It’ll only take a few minutes. Then they promised to lead us to her.”

“They might be lying.”

“Chon Un-suk’s mother believes them.”

Ernie shrugged again.

The leader of the protest shouted into his megaphone, speaking in Korean. Occasionally, he paused and the crowd shouted back their assent. Finally, he switched to English, turned, and directed his words at the main gate of Camp Casey.

“Now,” he said. “One of your own will speak to you.”

He motioned for me to stand. Ernie stared at me, wide-eyed. I rose to my feet. Like Adam accepting the apple from Eve, I grabbed the megaphone.