The Wandering Ghost

12

J ill relieved Ernie of his. 45.

She didn’t touch mine but told me to keep it holstered and continue to keep my hands in plain sight.

“You have a vehicle,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Let’s go there.”

Up on the ridge on Camp Howze, roving headlights indicated that emergency units were starting to roll. I could imagine the notification over the MP radio: Shots fired. Bongil-chon.

We turned and walked, Jill Matthewson right behind us.

After all this time, I couldn’t believe we’d found her. Or, more accurately, she’d found us. But how had she known we were looking for her? How had she found us in Bongil-chon? How had she known to be waiting in that alleyway at that particular time?

These were all questions I wanted answered but all questions that would have to wait. In the distance, jeep engines roared. Probably more Camp Howze MPs pouring into the ville. I didn’t have a beef with the Camp Howze MPs but I knew that if they caught us we’d be transported back to Division headquarters at Camp Casey. That’s what I didn’t want. Warrant Officer Bufford and Staff Sergeant Weatherwax had already shown a willingness to shoot to kill. They were desperate now. They knew we were close to blowing apart their entire operation. Private Marvin Druwood and Mr. Pak Tong-i were already dead. I didn’t want Ernie and me added to the list.

Dirty streetlamps illuminated our way. I glanced back as we walked. The. 45 in Jill Matthewson’s hand continued to be pointed at our backs. It never wavered.

“How’d you find us?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I keep in contact with my friends.”

“But the women at the Forest of Seven Clouds swore to us that they didn’t know where you were.”

“They didn’t. I call them. Once or twice a day.”

I filed that one away. I hadn’t asked the right questions. Maybe, if I’d received some inkling that Jill occasionally called the women at the Forest of Seven Clouds, I could’ve convinced Blue Orchid to relay a message.

“But we stopped in Bongil-chon instead of driving straight to Seoul. How’d you know to look for us here?”

She smiled. It was a great smile, wry and wise and full of laughter.

“I hate to break it to you guys but you’re predictable. Anybody who knows you would know where you’d stop. The first GI bar district you came to.”

“But you don’t know us,” I countered.

She laughed. It was like a brass bell ringing. “I know you well enough.”

Ernie straightened his jacket, uncomfortable at not having his. 45.

“So you’ve been shadowing us,” Ernie said. “So you must’ve seen Bufford and Weatherwax. Are they alone or are there more MPs backing them up?”

“Alone. Come on,” she said, motioning with Ernie’s. 45. “No more talk.”

At the mouth of the alley, she motioned for us to wait and then stepped past us. She looked both ways and then entered the narrow pedestrian walkway. She trotted down the path, past brick-walled residences, until she reached a muddy thoroughfare. She waved for us to follow. When Ernie and I approached, she tossed Ernie’s. 45 back to him. He caught it in midair.

“Be careful with that thing,” she told him. “Are you sober enough to drive?”

“Always.”

She turned and we followed her through the alleys until we reached neon. Ernie’s jeep sat thirty yards away. Still padlocked. Still untouched. Between us and the jeep, rows of bars were still open, rock and roll blaring out of open doors. Korean women stood in front. Business girls. Now, less than an hour until the midnight curfew, they could no longer wait demurely for some GI to wander into their club and sit down next to them and start spending money on them. They had to parade along the street and hustle. The few GIs who were still out were being accosted by the girls. Some of the GIs stopped and chatted. Some allowed themselves to be pulled into a nightclub, maybe for a last drink, maybe to negotiate a night with a beauteous lady.

At a distant intersection, a Camp Howze MP jeep roared past. We took that as our cue to emerge from the shadows and jog toward the parked jeep.

The business girls backed up as we ran past. A few of them glanced at Ernie and me, but most of them kept their eyes riveted on Corporal Jill Matthewson. They’d seen uniformed MPs before, plenty of them, but they’d never seen one shaped like this. Jill seemed slighter than she had appeared in her official photo. Even beneath her bulky fatigues one could see that her waist was small and her ample bosom had to be firmly held in place. Most of the business girls would never have seen a female American soldier before because the few American women assigned to Division were all stationed at the headquarters at Camp Casey.

As soon as the Korean business girls realized what they were seeing, a murmur arose amongst them. They elbowed one another, pointed, and stared in awe as Jill Matthewson waded through them. Jill didn’t acknowledge their attention. Her focus was on the jeep. But it was clear to me that these young, put-upon, Korean business girls, had just seen something akin to a miracle. A woman in a position of power. A woman leading men. A woman wearing a pistol and a uniform, set on her own self-determined goal, not letting anything stand in her way.

Ernie noticed the reaction and said to a couple of the business girls, “Hey, what about me?”

They ignored him.

As we climbed in the jeep, I folded myself into the tattered back seat; Jill sat up front next to Ernie. The business girls approached the jeep, as if mesmerized. Still, Jill Matthewson acted as if she hadn’t noticed their reaction.

For a moment, sitting in the back seat, I thought of pulling my. 45, disarming Corporal Jill Matthewson, and placing her under arrest. But then what would I do? Take her back to Seoul? Charge her with being AWOL? Eventually, I’d be forced to turn her over to the Division provost marshal. No way. First, I was going to encourage her cooperation and hear what she had to say. Then we’d make a decision as to what our next move would be.

Ernie started the jeep, jammed it into gear. He rolled forward slowly because of the awestruck business girls surrounding us. Finally, when he was clear of them, he gunned the engine to the next intersection and started to turn right, toward the main paved street that led to Reunification Road.

“Not right,” Jill told him. “Left. Back to the Bunny Club.”

“Why?” Ernie asked.

“You’ll see. Just do as I tell you.”

Ernie shrugged and turned the wheel to the left. As we approached the Bunny Club, the glow from the neon out front illuminated the jeep that Bufford and Weatherwax had driven up in. Still sitting there, untouched.

“Pull over!” Jill shouted.

Ernie did. Before the jeep had come to a full stop, she leaped out, running, and for a moment I thought she was escaping. She ran toward the front of the Bunny Club. The designation stenciled in white lettering on the jeep’s bumper said: HQ CO, 2ND ID PMO. Translation: Headquarters Company of the 2nd Infantry Division Provost Marshal’s Office. I pulled my. 45, fearing that Bufford and Weatherwax might appear at any moment.

Jill Matthewson approached the jeep, drew her. 45, and took aim. She fired six rounds; two into the radiator, one each into the four tires. Satisfied, she reholstered her pistol, trotted back, and jumped into the passenger seat next to Ernie.

“We ain’t left yet?” she asked.

Ernie stared at her for a moment, immobile. Then he seemed to come to his senses, nodded grimly, let out the clutch, and jammed the little jeep into gear. We lurched forward. He gunned the engine, twisted the steering wheel, and after a few hairpin turns, the three of us sped off toward Reunification Road.

When we told her that Private Marvin Druwood was dead, Jill Matthewson slammed her fist into the wall of the hooch. The entire building shook.

“Damn!” she shouted.

She wouldn’t look at us. She stared at the floor, shaking her head, and then she gazed out the open sliding double doors of the little hooch.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she said. “Private Marvin Druwood, United States Army Military Police Corps. Innocent little Marv Druwood.”

I thought of asking something like, You knew him well? But every sentence I composed mentally sounded lame, so I kept my mouth shut.

After leaving Bongil-chon, Jill had instructed Ernie to turn north on Reunification Road, guiding us farther away from Seoul. A mile later, she had us turn left onto a two-lane highway running east. For twenty minutes, we drove through rice paddies and wooded hills barely illuminated by a rising moon. Finally, we reached the town of Wondang. There were no U.S. military compounds anywhere near here and, as far as I could tell, no ROK Army compounds either.

We’d parked the jeep near the city center in front of a Buddhist temple. According to Jill, the temple held an ancient bronze bell that was sounded by bald monks every morning at dawn. Two blocks farther on, we reached a walled compound into which were crammed about a dozen hooches, including Jill’s.

Inside the hooch, we sat on an ondol floor. It was a comfortable little hooch, old but well maintained; Jill Matthewson seemed to have mastered all the intricacies of Korean housekeeping. As soon as we arrived, she’d unlaced her combat boots and slipped on a pair of rubber sandals. She used metal tongs to reach into a subterranean stone furnace at the base of the outer wall of the hooch. She pulled out one flaming charcoal briquette and replaced it with a new one. Next, she carried the spent briquette over to a cement storage space tucked away from the other hooches so as to prevent fire.

Then she observed as Ernie and I slipped off our shoes and stepped up onto the wooden porch. After we had entered the hooch, she used a moist rag to wipe down the porch’s immaculate varnished surface. In the cement-floored kitchen-adjacent to the one-room living space- she had used a wooden match to light a single butane burner. Then she’d gone outside to fill a brass teapot with water from an outdoor spigot. Fifteen minutes later she’d unfolded the legs of a one-foot-high, mother-of-pearl serving table and Ernie and I were sipping Folgers instant coffee ladled from a short bottle with a Korean customs duty stamp emblazoned on it. We sat on flat, square cushions covered with silk.

“Where’s Kim Yong-ai?” I asked, once Jill had settled down.

“At work,” Jill replied.

“Where does she work?”

Jill eyed me suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

I raised two open palms in mock surrender. “Just curious.”

“I know you’re curious,” she replied. “That’s why you spent so much time looking for me. You want to find out what’s really going on in Division.”

I did. But first I thought I’d show her something. I pulled out the photocopy of the letter that her mother had sent to her congressman. I handed it to her. While Jill read, Ernie stirred more sugar into his coffee, content for the moment to let me handle the interview. Anything touchy-feely, Ernie held no truck with.

Jill read the letter, then read it again. She began to cry. Angry at herself, she wiped the tears from her eyes.

“It’s understandable why you didn’t write your mom. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said.

“It’s not that,” Jill replied. “It’s just that she pulled it off so well.”

“ ‘Pulled it off’?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Mom’s not real good at writing letters. But I called her from a pay telephone on Camp Casey. Told her what I was planning to do.”

Now it was Ernie’s turn to be amazed. “You told your mom that you were planning to go AWOL?”

“Right,” Jill said calmly, stirring more sugar into her coffee. “And I told her why.”

Ernie and I glanced at one another. Waiting. Both of us afraid to interrupt Jill Matthewson.

“I told my mom to write the letter to her congressman,” Jill said. “And I told her what to say, and I told her when to send the letter.”

“Why?” I ventured to ask.

Jill stopped stirring her coffee and stared at each of us in turn.

“To get you guys up here,” she said. “I need help. From Eighth Army or the Marines or the FBI or somebody.” She waved her arms in a broad circle. “I can’t do all this on my own. And somebody has to put a stop to what’s happening in Division.”

Neither Ernie nor I responded. Maybe we were both too dumbfounded by this turn of events. Or maybe it was because once a principal in an investigation starts answering questions you didn’t ask, the best thing to do is keep your trap shut. Jill examined the cover letter from the office of the congressman from the district that encompasses Terre Haute, Indiana. She snorted a laugh.

“Finally, somebody up top is interested in what goes on in Division.”

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

“‘Finally,’ because first I went to the IG.” The Inspector General.

“The Division IG?”

“Yes. I told him about the black marketing, the whole thing, from A to Z. Then he called the provost marshal.”

“They called the very guy you were complaining about?”

“Right. Told him I needed some ‘extra training’ as they put it.”

“What about the IG report?”

“There was no report. Not that I ever saw anyway.”

Any 2nd Division IG report would’ve made its way to 8th Army. Ernie and I’d checked before we left Seoul. No reports concerning Jill Matthewson existed. In addition, a copy of any IG complaint should’ve been attached to the Division serious incident report. It wasn’t.

“So they buried your complaint?” Ernie asked.

“What else?” Jill replied. “The Division IG is one of the colonels who attends their mafia meetings.”

The inspector general is, theoretically, an independent ombudsman who examines all aspects of the operational capability of military units. This includes reports of wrongdoing that can’t be handled through the normal chain of command. This independence is theoretical. In fact, he lives cheek by jowl with the rest of the officer corps and you can bet the Division commander watches his every move. It takes a lot of nerve to be a truly independent IG. Most of them don’t have enough of what it takes.

Someone knocked on the gate outside. Jill jumped up, slid open the oil-papered door, stepped outside the hooch, and, wearing big plastic slippers, clomped across the small courtyard to the outer wall. There, she unlatched a small door in the larger gate.

A woman ducked through. A Korean woman. Her hair was long and curly and she kept a thick cloth coat wrapped around her slender body to ward off the chill of the cold Korean night. She started to walk across the courtyard but stopped when she saw Ernie and me sitting in the well-lighted room. Jill held a whispered conversation with the woman. As she did so, I studied her features. Kim Yong-ai. The stripper pictured on the locket we’d found on a chain around the forearm of the booking agent, Pak Tong-i.

When the two women stopped whispering, they approached the hooch. Jill entered first. Sullenly, Kim Yong-ai followed but rather than speaking to us, she kept her eyes averted, ducked through the small entrance to the cement-floored kitchen, and shut the door behind her.

Jill sat and picked up her tea. “She’s not comfortable with men. Not yet.”

“You want us to leave?”

“Where would you go? Curfew hits in five minutes. You’re stuck here tonight.”

And so we were. Jill continued to talk and heated more water for coffee; Kim Yong-ai stayed in the kitchen. Pots and pans rattled, so apparently she ate some kimchee and rice. Eventually, Jill took a couple of silk comforters into the kitchen for her.

Jill and Kim Yong-ai were two terrifically good-looking women. Ernie and I had been known, from time to time, to be attractive to the opposite sex. But there was no orgy in that small hooch that night. After talking until she was exhausted and answering all my questions as best she could, Jill lay down against the far wall of the hooch, bundled herself in blankets, and slept with her back toward us. Ernie and I lay on the warm ondol floor, our necks propped on cylindrical cloth pillows filled with beads.

We’d found her at last.

When I dozed off, Ernie was already snoring.

It wasn’t a sound so much as a vibration. A vibration that traveled through the air and the stone wall outside and the wood of the hooch and through the soil of the earth beneath us. I felt it before I heard it and when I sat up it was still vibrating. A deep, profound, low wail of a sound. Soft but rich. Powerful. Unstoppable. The gong of the bronze bell of the Buddhist temple.

I was fully alert. But calm. Reassured, somehow, by the deep low sound that had awakened me. Ernie still snored. Jill Matthewson had already folded up her blankets and piled them in the far corner of the hooch. Inside the small kitchen, brass pots and earthenware jars bumped against one another, making the gentle sound of early morning activity.

I rose and made my way to the outdoor byonso and, after squatting there for a while, I used the water spigot and a metal pan in the center of the courtyard to wash up. Jill provided soap and small towels and even a razor blade so I could shave. Ernie was up shortly thereafter and performed the same ablutions, what the Koreans call seisu, the washing of the hands and face.

Kim Yong-ai prepared a breakfast of rice gruel and dried turnip and while we ate, I became less surprised that Jill Matthewson had lost so much weight. On this diet, anybody would. She looked great, by the way.

Ernie noticed, too. Jill wore blue jeans and a T-shirt with a tight- fitting sweater. Her hair was tied up in the Korean style with a pair of wooden chopsticks holding the topknot in place. Kim Yong-ai looked terrific also but we barely saw her. She refused to come out of the kitchen.

What was their relationship, these two? Ernie and I were wondering the same thing, occasionally casting one another knowing looks. Kim and Jill were constantly whispering to one another and seemed as close as twin sisters.

I was still collating all the information Jill had given me last night, trying to see it from the perspective of a trained investigator. What should I go after first? How could I make a case that would stand up not only before a panel of judges in a court-martial, ultimately, but also to the honchos at 8th Army who would have to give the green light to go ahead with such a prosecution?

It wasn’t going to be easy. Both Ernie and I were keenly aware that this was the start of our second day of being absent without leave. And we also both knew that if we returned to Seoul, 8th Army would take over our investigation and although some people might be prosecuted and some things might be changed, for the most part the nefarious activities Jill Matthewson had reported to us would be corrected bureaucratically, not by criminal proceedings. 8th Army would never tolerate the bad publicity that would come from admitting that the leadership at the 2nd Infantry Division was rotten to the core.

While Ernie and I sipped more coffee and pondered our next move, Jill Matthewson made up our minds for us.

“First,” she said, “we kick some serious butt.”

Ernie looked up from his coffee.

“Starting,” she continued, “with the asshole who offed Marv Druwood.”

“Maybe Druwood’s death was an accident,” I said, “like Division claims. Or suicide.”

“No way. I go AWOL, Marv Druwood goes nuts and becomes dangerous to them, a few days later they find a way to kill him, making it look like an accident. That’s what happened.”

She reached inside the plastic armoire, the only piece of furniture in the room, and pulled out what GIs call an “AWOL bag.” A traveling bag, smaller than a suitcase. Carefully, Jill packed her combat boots and her web belt and her MP helmet, along with a few more civilian “health and welfare” items. Finally, she packed her most prized possession, her army-issue. 45 automatic pistol.

She stood and said, “Time to move out.”

“You could go back to Seoul,” I told her. “You’d be safe there.”

“So would you,” she said. “But you won’t. You want these ass-holes as bad as I do.”

“Once we start arresting people,” Ernie said, “it could get hairy.”

For the first time since I’d known her, Jill Matthewson’s face flushed with anger. “I’m an MP! Don’t tell me about danger.”

I glanced at Ernie. He stared at her with a look of goony admiration. Not insulted in the least. I wondered if we were doing the right thing. As Ernie had said, once we started arresting people, the stuff would really hit the fan. And as dangerous as that would be- up here alone in the Division area with no backup-it would be even more dangerous if 8th Army decided not to sanction our investigation. If they decided to actually carry us as AWOL and therefore pull our jurisdictional authority. Then we’d be wallowing in deep kim-chee up to our nostrils. Ernie knew all this. Still, he looked at me and nodded his approval.

Now it was up to me. Should we actually go through with this? Start arresting men of higher rank than us while standing on jurisdictional ground that could turn into quicksand? Take the risk of accruing another day of AWOL? Another day of time that would never count toward our twenty? Or should we just handcuff Jill Matthewson and transport her back to Seoul?

I thought of Marv Druwood’s lifeless body, the pale coldness of his flesh. I thought of Madame Chon, bowing her forehead to the ground before a row of flickering candles. I thought of the open mouth of Pak Tong-i, gasping for a last gulp of air that would forever be out of reach. I thought of the haunted, hunted look that festered even now in the exotic, dark eyes of Kim Yong-ai.

“Okay,” I said finally. “Let’s do it.”

For the first time since last night, Kim Yong-ai emerged from the kitchen. She and Jill embraced. As we crossed the courtyard Kim Yong-ai followed us and then stood at the gate, holding the door open, watching as we ducked through and made our way down the narrow pathway. At the end of the pathway, Jill stopped and turned and waved to Kim Yong-ai. The frightened Korean woman bowed, lowering her head all the way to her waist.

What Jill had told me last night, during our long conversation in her little hooch, matched what Ernie and I had picked up since arriving in Division. The honchos were black-marketing; they were using the money to have mafia meetings; women were being abused; but it was in the details, as they say, that the devil lurked.

When she first arrived in Division, Jill Matthewson was familiar with the catcalls and lewd remarks and gestures that GIs make whenever they see a female soldier. She’d suffered it innumerable times in the two years she’d already spent in the army. But what she wasn’t used to was the intensity. Up here in Division, GIs are far away from home, far away from their families, far away from their churches, and so far away from their normal way of conducting their lives that they might as well be stationed on another planet. And like men adrift anywhere, they’d lost all sense of proportion. In Korea-especially in Division-anything goes. GIs could hoot and howl and rub themselves to their heart’s content when Jill Matthewson was around and nobody did anything about it. The Division honchos wanted American GIs to be on time for military formations, on time for alerts, and on time when they reported to work every day. Other than that, GIs in Tongduchon could do whatever in the hell they wanted to do. Why not? The honchos were doing the same damn things.

As one of the first females in Division, and the very first to be assigned to the military police, Jill didn’t have to be a genius to figure that she wasn’t wanted. Camp Casey-and especially Tongduchon- had been an all-male American enclave for decades. A GI playground. Nobody needed a stuck-up American female around to ruin things. No matter how Jill tried to conduct herself, whether in a professional manner or as one of the “boys,” she was never accepted. She was always the odd woman out.

Jill told me, while we sat sipping coffee in the middle of the night in her cozy hooch in Wondang, that she could have lived with all that. It was to be expected. If she wanted to succeed in her military career, if she wanted to make her mother proud of her, she’d known from the day she enlisted that it wouldn’t be easy. She’d deal with it. She was determined to do so.

It was corruption that pushed her over the edge.

At first it seemed innocent enough. Go over to the main PX and purchase a new wristwatch using the provost marshal’s open ration control plate. Every GI in Korea is issued an RCP and he is severely limited as to what he can or cannot buy in the PX. For example, a male GI is not allowed to purchase perfume or nylon stockings. Because the worry is that he’d give them-illegally-to an unauthorized Korean yobo down in the ville. He could, however, buy a wristwatch, but only one per year. And, upon leaving the country, he had to produce the wristwatch, to prove that he hadn’t sold it on the black market.

Colonel Alcott, however, was buying a wristwatch every week. That is, Jill Matthewson was taking his RCP to the PX and purchasing it on his behalf. Before the purchase, she was handed cash by Warrant Officer Fred Bufford and a handwritten note with the exact model and brand of wristwatch to buy. This one’s for Colonel So-and-so, Bufford would tell her, a ROK Army officer, the Commander of the Such-and-such Infantry Battalion, and Colonel Alcott is providing the watch to the Division chief of staff so he can present it as a gift to the Korean colonel in return for the support his battalion has provided to the Division during Operation Freedom’s Shield. At first, Jill told me, it seemed innocent enough. It was for contingencies such as these that the open ration control plate was provided to high-ranking officers in the first place. But week after week, Jill purchased more wristwatches, for one Korean colonel after another, until she thought the entire ROK Army would soon be outfitted with the latest in timekeeping instruments.

Eventually, Alcott and Bufford had her buying other things: radios, expensive clocks, stereo equipment, toaster ovens, even television sets. And other MPs were performing the same services, including Private Marv Druwood. The amount of marketable goods and the amount of cash needed to purchase them was enormous. Jill started wondering where the cash was coming from. And she won- dered why some of the male MPs weren’t wondering the same thing. She asked Marv Druwood about it. He was the one who told her about the Turkey Farm.

“They even had live rock bands up there on the roof,” Jill told me, “especially on Saturdays and holiday weekends. And the beer and liquor were provided free along with food. All of it procured by that old woman who ran the place, the one they called the Turkey Lady.”

Even the yobos, the Korean girlfriends, were provided with gifts. The largesse of the military police corps, according to Jill, was common knowledge amongst the business girls in Tongduchon. And it went a long way in making a young MP appear a lot more attractive than he might normally be.

In addition to buying black-market goods in the PX, MPs were also tasked with transporting the merchandise, in MP vehicles, to the Turkey Farm. There it would be logged in and sold and the money, supposedly, returned to Colonel Alcott.

“He was pocketing the money himself?” I asked.

“No,” Jill said. “He was only the front man. The group of colonels controlling the Division, the ones who attended the mafia meetings were behind it. Alcott presented formal reports to them during those meetings, accounting for every penny made and spent. All such business was conducted before they brought out the strippers and the business girls.”

“You’ll testify to this?”

“I was there, supposedly providing security for them. Actually, just running errands. They liked the way I kept the business girls calm.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I didn’t, actually. I just talked to them, treated them like human beings. At first I had no idea why they were there.”

I didn’t press Jill further on this because I knew from other sources that it was at one of these mafia meetings that her friend, Kim Yong-ai, had been raped. Not only raped, but apparently gang raped.

“You were seeing bits and pieces of what was going on,” I said, “but how did you know for sure how the operation was run?”

“Fred Otis told me about it one night.”

“Sergeant Otis?” I asked. “The guy who works desk sergeant?”

“Yeah. Him. He told me that all the black-marketing had start- ed innocently enough. Years ago, when he was first stationed at Division, the ROK Army colonels were constantly inviting the American honchos over to their compounds for meetings and shows of traditional Korean dancing and Taekwondo demonstrations and stuff like that. The American officers could hardly refuse and while they were there they were treated to food and drink and even, once they were away from the compound, offered girls at kisaeng houses. Of course, the American officers were flattered and enjoyed the attention, but after a while they started to feel guilty that they never gave anything back to the ROK officers.”

Korean hospitality can be prodigious. And when an honored guest is invited to your home, it is expected that you will do your best to entertain him. Even if that means going into debt. However, I doubted that these ROK Army officers were going into debt, personally, while entertaining the American officers. The U.S. government provides millions of dollars every year to the Korean defense establishment. Most of the money is earmarked for spending on contracts with the U.S. arms industry, but some of it is for discretionary spending. My guess is that some of those U.S. dollars filtered down to a level as low as battalion commander, especially when he needed an entertainment budget to provide good face for his country. Ironically, the American officers were probably being entertained with American tax dollars. However, they’d still felt obligated to reciprocate.

“So they started black-marketing,” I said.

Jill nodded.

In order to reciprocate, the American officers didn’t want to pull that much money out of their own pockets. Even though an American colonel is well paid-especially from the point of view of a corporal who clears 140 dollars a month-they often don’t have a lot of spending money while stationed in Korea. Their family is back in the States. They have a house payment, a car payment, a household budget, maybe one or two kids attending college or getting ready to start college. After all that, even a full-bird colonel might only have a hundred dollars a month to spend on himself, if he was lucky.

The Division brass had to come up with an alternative source of income. Back in the sixties, local commanders controlled the nonap-propriated fund budget, the profits of the NCO clubs and the officers’ club on base. Although prices were purposely kept low and little was made from club operations themselves, the shortfall was more than made up for by slot machines. The one-armed bandits produced plenty of money for everyone. But in the late sixties, Congress got wind of widespread corruption and banned slot machines from military bases. After that, the 2nd Infantry Division brass was desperate for a source of off-the-books revenue. That is, money not available for inspection by government auditors.

Open ration control plates, and the Korean black market, was the answer.

Human nature being what it is, soon the operation expanded far beyond what was necessary to host a few Korean officers four or five times a year. The mafia meeting came up with new projects to fund. Some of them were good, according to Jill. Equipment like electrical generators and imported refrigerators were donated to Korean orphanages. A Christmas party, complete with an NCO dressed up like Santa Claus, was thrown every year for the few American dependents who lived outside Camp Casey. Medical supplies were provided to farming villages in the Division area of operations that had been hit by fire or flood or other disasters.

But once those things were taken care of, there was the free booze and food and entertainment for the MPs at the Turkey Farm, and the fee to rent a hall and provide refreshments and entertainment at the mafia meeting. Then, when a ranking American officer completed his tour of duty in Korea and was on his way back to the States, a going-away party had to be thrown in his honor. And a gift had to be provided. Not something routine out of the PX, but something that would be a true memento of his time in Frozen Chosun, like a valuable Korean antique. The fact that it could be shipped back to the States in the officer’s hold baggage, and was not likely to be checked by U.S. Customs, and the fact that he could legally resell the item once it was in the States for ninety days, was only incidental, supposedly, to the sentimental value of the gift. An overworked and underpaid American colonel could clear a few thousand dollars by reselling that antique back in the States. And who said he didn’t deserve it? After protecting his country selflessly as he’d done? And the money would go for a good cause. To remodel his retirement home or pay for junior’s college tuition or allow a harried military wife to have that plastic surgery that she’d always dreamed of. So what’s wrong with feeling good about yourself?

Jill became so passionate about this subject that I had to slow her down. Ernie still snored. Kim Yong-ai still hid silently behind the door leading to the kitchen.

“Okay, Jill,” I said. “They broke you in buying wristwatches and then larger items and having you transport them from the PX out to Tongduchon. You were working nights on the ville patrol. Then one morning, as you were getting off duty, something bad happened. Something involving a deuce-and-a-half.”

Her face soured. She sipped her lukewarm coffee, composed herself, and then resumed. The outline of what she told me, I already knew, having been briefed by Sergeant Bernewright, the Division Safety NCO. Two GIs were coming back from the Western Corridor, hungover and driving too fast and the road was slick with intermittent rain. As they approached a group of middle-school girls waiting for a bus, the driver lost control of the truck on a slippery curve and slid into the crowd, injuring two and mortally wounding young Chon Un-suk.

“I wanted to shoot the bastards,” Jill told me. “I even pulled my. 45 and held it to the driver’s head. He believed I was gonna do it, too, and I almost did.” She barked a short, mirthless laugh. “The silly bastard wet himself.”

“And then you gave the girl first aid?”

“I tried. But someone had informed her father and he showed up, absolutely in a panic, and he started to lift her up and people were helping him and I told them to stop, that the medics would be here any minute and if she had a spine injury that they could cripple her for life. But they weren’t listening and when I tried to stop them, her father shoved me. I kept trying to reason with him but other men in the crowd helped him carry the little girl and I could see her head lolling backward and her tongue hanging out, pink, and I was afraid they might snap her neck. I tried again to interfere and this time someone smacked me and I smacked him back and then we were fighting, and a jeep full of MPs arrived firing their weapons into the air and everyone backed off. Except me. I ran after the father, followed him to his home and, without anyone asking me to, I went through the gate. Her mother was hysterical. Tearing her hair out. Moaning over her daughter. I pushed my way through and felt the carotid artery and there was nothing left and I knew that Chon Un-suk was dead. She’d died on the way over, while being carried by her father.”

A long silence ensued. I sat cross-legged on the ondol floor, trying to picture the scene, trying to feel what Jill Matthewson must’ve felt. Finally, she spoke again.

“What pissed me off,” she said softly, “was why those two doo-fus MPs were sent to the Western Corridor in the first place. And why they were driving back so early in the morning.”

“Why?”

“Fred Otis told me the story,” Jill said.

Him again? Why was I surprised? He was a veteran NCO, well aware of what was going on around him, experienced, and it figured that a young MP as bright as Jill Matthewson would gravitate toward him for advice.

Otis told Jill that the two MPs had been sent to a notorious GI village in the Western Corridor known as Yangjukol. Spending the night there had been their reward for driving the deuce-and-a-half after regular duty hours and picking up an ancient vase from some Korean antiques dealer and transporting it back the next morning to Camp Casey.

“The Division honchos are busy black-marketing their butts off,” Jill said, “and little Chon Un-suk gets herself killed because of them.” Jill shook her head and whispered softly. “Bastards. And to cover it up, they let the two guys in the truck off easy. Sent them back to the States, out of harm’s way.”

“What type of antique were they transporting?” I asked.

“I caught a glimpse of it when I first approached the truck. Tied in the center of the bed of the truck, all by itself, partially encased in wood. Beautiful.”

“A celadon vase,” I said, “covered with white cranes.”

“How’d you know?” Jill asked.

“Just a guess.”

We talked about Pak Tong-i. Yes, he’d had a soft spot for Kim Yong-ai but the feeling was not mutual. She’d played along with him mainly because he was the only man who could provide her with steady work. “She’s been poor all her life,” Jill told me. “Born to a farming family down in South Cholla Province. Her father died when she was twelve. She had to quit middle school and go to work to help support her mom and her younger sisters.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

Jill frowned. “You don’t need to know.”

I dropped the subject.

What I needed was evidence of black-marketing. If the operation was as widespread as Jill Matthewson claimed it was, I should be able to get it. That, coupled with her testimony, which I had to admit was extremely believable, would nail them.

Just before dawn, we talked about Marv Druwood.

“He was sweet,” Jill told me. “A couple of years younger than me and still a kid, you know. I liked him but I didn’t like him that way. He had a crush on me so I tried to be nice to him. He was no happier about the black-market situation than I was and he told me that everything that went on at the Turkey Farm made him sick, but I noticed that he didn’t stop going there.”

“Did he have enemies?”

“No. He took a lot of ribbing because he was so mild mannered. He’s from some country town in Iowa. What must’ve happened is that after I left he stopped cooperating with Bufford about the black-marketing. If that happened, they’d immediately become suspicious. Probably afraid that because of his friendship with me, he might decide to turn them in, go above the Division IG, report the operation to somebody.”

“Reason enough to kill him?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s reason enough to start in on him. Start needling him. Start making him angry. He had a temper, you know.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It only flared up occasionally. It was kind of cute in a way, like a little boy throwing a tantrum. Nothing dangerous. But it might’ve been enough so that he said things or threatened things that maybe got him killed.”

“They’re that desperate that they’d kill a fellow GI?”

“They shot at you, didn’t they?”

More than once.

“These guys,” Jill told me, “are out of control.”

I thought of Marv Druwood’s corpse. I believed she was right.

Everything Jill Matthewson told me made sense. It all tied together. She wanted to put a stop to the corruption in high places within the 2nd Infantry Division and therefore she’d put her mom up to writing to her congressman. But why not just come to us directly? I asked her.

“Because then everybody at Eighth Army would know,” Jill told me. “They’d notify Division. The cover-up would start and be completed before you even got here. I had to lure you up here for another reason.”

“Like finding a missing female MP.”

“Exactly.”

One more thing was bothering me. Jill Matthewson had good reason for everything she was doing. Still, people don’t face charges of desertion and possible time in a federal penitentiary just to mollify their sense of right and wrong. Usually there’s a personal reason. A deep-seated personal reason. We were both tired. Both yawning. Both ready to go to sleep. I popped the question.

“I know you’re angry at these SOBs, Jill. And I know they deserve all the punishment we’re going to try to lay on them. But what about you? What made you go AWOL? What made you chuck your entire military career? What, exactly, did Colonel Alcott and Mr. Bufford and the honchos at Division do to you?”

She set down her coffee cup and stared at me long and hard. Finally, she spoke. “Never,” she said, “and I mean never, ask me that question again.”

With that she rose from her cross-legged position, opened the sliding door, and stepped out into the dark courtyard. She stood alone in the cold night air, arms crossed, head bowed.