The Wandering Ghost

3

I remember the day I hit five feet.

I was eleven years old and proud after I measured myself because I was taller than most of the kids in my elementary school. I was proud because now I had a chance to protect myself. And protect the kids who I lived with while being shuffled around to various foster homes.

Some kids were more vulnerable than others. When they were shoved or spanked or shouted at, they took it to heart. They identified with the criticism and little by little the life in their eyes began to fade, and that’s when they began to die. I remember Fausto. He was a cute kid always ready to smile, but the foster father who was raising us wouldn’t stop badgering helpless little Fausto. This foster father saw the entire world as conspiring to keep him down and he not only resented the food and space that Fausto took up, he also resented Fausto’s cheerful attitude. So from the day Fausto arrived in our home, the guy started in on him. Day by day, I saw the life dying in Fausto’s eyes. I tried to stop it and as a reward for my efforts, I was slapped myself. But I was older than Fausto. And three years had passed since I’d hit five feet. I was fourteen now, and five foot ten. The football coach measured me in the high school gym and I was surprised that I’d sprouted up so much. There was something about the magic number. Five-ten. I felt like an adult. Like a man.

One day I arrived home from school and my foster father was already slapping Fausto-enraged because he’d been caught stealing a slice of bread from the cupboard. But it wasn’t stealing. Fausto was hungry because he’d been forced to skip breakfast and then lunch. It was the foster father who was stealing, from the money provided to him by the County of Los Angeles. He slapped Fausto one more time.

I dropped my books, strode into the kitchen, and slammed a straight left into my foster father’s nose. Blood flowed and from the way he squealed you would’ve thought I was the worst killer since Attila the Hun. And, of course, he refused to fight back. Instead, his wife called the social workers and two days later I was escorted from the home.

Fausto stayed. I remember the look in his eye as I left. Later, Dante taught me the words for it: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

In the next three years I grew six more inches-to six foot four-and at the age of seventeen nobody wanted me around. I cramped too many people’s style. After a brief stint in an orphanage, I dropped out of high school and joined the army. An army that included obstacle courses.

I was halfway up the 2nd Division tower. Perspiration poured from my forehead. My arms were straight out, clinging to the flat, smooth surface of the middle platform. These towers were designed by diabolical minds. No protrusions, no handholds, not so much as the head of a bolt sticking out of the smooth wooden surface. Still, you had to hold on somehow, by the pressure of your limbs on flat surfaces and the occasional grip of an edge. The trick was to shinny up from one smooth platform to the next.

Finally, I stood at the top of the tower.

Below sat the jeep. It was too dark to see if Ernie was still in it. Farther to the west stretched the dark Quonset huts and sporadic firelights of Camp Casey. At the far edge of the compound the twenty-foot-tall MP stood as we’d left him. Silent. Staring mindlessly toward the main gate. Beyond the gate, across the MSR, Tongduchon blazed. Blinking lights, flashing neon, rotating yin and yang symbols promising an endless nirvana of entertainment. Even from this distance I could hear taxi horns and the low murmur of rock music and the occasional shout from a drunken GI. Then, in counterpoint, the startled shriek of a Korean business girl.

A cold wind from the north picked up and chilled the perspiration that swathed my body. I hugged myself, staring down at the obstacle course below. The square platform I stood on was about fifteen feet across. If I stood with my back to one edge and ran full tilt to the other I could probably leap about twenty-five or thirty feet out. Just far enough to reach an obstacle on either side of me. One was a row of elevated logs, the other a sandbagged tunnel. No cement. And yet there’d been cement in Private Druwood’s head wound. I’d touched it myself, felt the dried cement crumble in my hand.

I pulled out my flashlight, knelt down, and studied the platform. Smooth as a baby’s complexion. Designed that way and kept that way by the constant rubbing of GIs in fatigues lying up here, face down, hugging the platform. Resting. Grateful to have made it safely to the top but wondering how in the hell they were going to survive the climb back down.

I clicked off the flashlight and stood. But I wasn’t seeing Camp Casey or Tongduchon or feeling the cold Manchurian wind. I was seeing the pale face of Private Marvin Z. Druwood. His corpse. And then his eyes popped open, staring at me, but although I’d never met the man I knew those eyes didn’t belong to Druwood. I’d seen them before. But where? The wind whipped up and slashed cold fingers across my face. And then I knew. Fausto. The little kid I’d left alone. The little kid I’d abandoned to his fate. Those were his eyes in that corpse.

A shot blasted and something tiny and evil whizzed past me, not ten feet away. I dropped to the platform and flattened myself. Unmoving. Hoping that by stillness I would become just a shadow and not a target. I waited ten minutes. Nothing more happened.

Quickly, I climbed down the tower.

When I reached the jeep there was just enough moonlight for me to see that Ernie was dozing. I shook him awake.

“Did you hear that shot?”

“What shot?” he asked.

“When I was on top of the tower, someone took a potshot at me.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Ernie started the jeep. “How much did you drink out in the ville, Sueno?”

“Not much.”

Ernie snorted. “I’m going to have to get you into rehab.”

I didn’t answer. I was wondering who had shot at me and where the shot had come from and why they’d shot at me. From the sound of the bullet as it whizzed past, the shooter must’ve been a few hundred yards away. Rifle, almost certainly. He could’ve been firing from the shrubbery surrounding the obstacle course, or from a vehicle back on the main road, or even from one of the guard posts on the hills surrounding Camp Casey’s perimeter. If he was trying to kill me, why hadn’t he fired again? Once he’d gotten the range, the second shot would’ve been more accurate.

Our reception here at Division, so far, had been miserable. First, the atmosphere of hostility at the PMO. Then an avalanche of entrenching tools. And now this. Had the same person been behind both incidents? And if so, what was he trying to tell us?

Ernie admitted that he’d actually heard the shot but hadn’t thought anything of it. Just a late-night combat-training exercise, he presumed. Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s what it was. A bullet gone astray.

But also, maybe not.

The next morning, using the address Brandy had provided, Ernie and I located Jill Matthewson’s hooch in a back alley on the west side of East Bean River. Children ran through narrow lanes and street vendors pushed rickety wooden carts, chanting out the nature of their wares. The area teemed with life, primarily because the economy of TDC was booming. Not only was there a steady flow of U.S. dollars from the local GI village, but also agriculture in the surrounding valleys was more productive than ever. President Pak Chung-hee’s Sei Maul Undong, the New Village Movement, was paying off. Government investment in small family farms had improved life throughout the country. Straw-thatched roofs were disappearing, being replaced by weather-resistant tile. TV antennae were springing up. After two decades of drudgery following the devastation of the Korean War, life was improving in Frozen Chosun. Slowly.

The woman who owned the property was surprised to see two GIs duck through her front gate and enter her courtyard. She’d been squatting in front of a tub of laundry but as we approached she stood, holding her lower back. At first, she was startled when I spoke Korean to her. A lot of Koreans are. They don’t expect it from a GI. My Korean is far from perfect but I can communicate and, as long as they keep it simple, I can read and write the language. The U.S. Army makes it easy to learn. Free classes are offered on base and a free textbook is provided, along with a personable young Korean woman to do the teaching. However, on a compound of five thousand GIs only two other guys showed up regularly. Still, I enjoyed studying. Deciphering a sentence was like solving a puzzle, and I’ve always loved puzzles.

Once I told the woman what we were there for, she didn’t hesitate. She led us along the raised porch surrounding the courtyard and pulled open one of the oil-papered doors. This, she told me, was the hooch that Jill Matthewson had lived in. Other GIs had been here before, along with the Korean National Police, examining the place and questioning her renters.

It was a tiny single room. Like most of the hooches in Korea, its dimensions were only about twelve feet by twelve feet. It did, however, have an overhead fluorescent light, a vinyl-covered ondol floor- heated by charcoal gas running through ducts in the stone foundation-and a beat up wooden armoire. There were five hooches in the horseshoe-shaped compound. Two of them empty: Jill’s and the one next door. I asked what had become of Jill’s personal effects.

The landlady told me that all Jill had kept here were civilian clothes. That jibed with the MP report and what Ernie and I had observed in the barracks. In order to be ready for emergency deployment, all 2nd Infantry Division GIs were required to keep their uniforms and combat gear in the barracks, even if they maintained an unauthorized hooch out in the village. Other than civilian clothing, the woman told us, Jill had kept only toiletries and a few books and magazines here. About three weeks ago, without saying anything, Jill had packed up her few belongings and left. As the landlady told the Korean police, she had no idea where Jill had gone. She’d left without warning. Was she friendly with anyone here or in the neighborhood? No. After learning how to change the charcoal that heated her hooch and how to pump water from the well and where the byonso was located, she’d kept to herself. By mimicking the other renters, Jill Matthewson had learned to remove her shoes before stepping up on the wooden porch and then she’d mastered the most tedious Korean housekeeping chore of all: using a moist rag to keep the warm vinyl floor of her hooch scrubbed and free of soil.

“She very clean,” the landlady told us, “for an American.”

On the way back to the bar district, Ernie and I stopped at the real estate office Brandy had tipped us to. Having already been questioned by the Korean police, the Korean agent was very cooperative, providing all the particulars about Jill’s rental. Then I put the question I’d really come to ask: Why did Jill Matthewson’s landlady have two vacancies?

The real estate agent seemed surprised and thumbed through his records. Jill’s hooch had remained unoccupied because the Korean police told the owner not to rent it out until they gave her permission. They had already examined it, finding nothing, but it was still, theoretically, a crime scene. Until the case was closed they didn’t want anyone moving in. The other hooch had also been recently vacated.

The real estate agent handed me a five-by-seven card and I studied the hangul script. Kim Yong-ai had been the tenant of the hooch next to Jill’s. A woman’s name. I jotted it down, along with her Korean national identification number. She’d moved out three weeks ago, the same day Jill Matthewson disappeared.

Why hadn’t the landlady told us that?

The real estate agent had no idea.

I asked about Kim Yong-ai’s occupation.

Entertainer, he said.

What type of entertainer?

Apparently, there was no Korean word for it. Instead, he mimicked dancing and removing articles of apparel.

“Stripper,” Ernie said in English.

The real estate agent nodded his head vigorously.

At our request, the Korean National Police arrested Jill Matthewson’s landlady.

At the Tongduchon Police Station, she was more voluble. Yes, Kim Yong-ai was a stripper and, yes, she worked the GI bar district of Tongduchon. Yes, she had become good friends with Jill Matthewson and, during the day when they were both off duty, they talked for hours. The MP and the stripper. Both worked the night shift and they’d become fast friends. When Jill Matthewson left, she’d left with Kim Yong-ai.

Why hadn’t the landlady told us this? Jill and Miss Kim made her promise not to say anything. They knew the MPs would try to follow them and, she believed, there might be someone else following Kim Yong-ai also.

Who? She didn’t know. But she had the impression that Kim Yong-ai owed a lot of money. Paying her rent had been a struggle for the young stripper and sometimes she’d been so broke that she’d gone hungry. So hungry that the landlady had fed her from time to time.

Where had the two women gone? This was the question that the KNPs, with no regard for the landlady’s civil liberties, pounded home hour after hour. Finally, we realized that the landlady was telling the truth. She really didn’t know.

The stripper, Kim Yong-ai, and the military policewoman, Jill Matthewson, had disappeared together and they purposely had not told anyone where they were going.

Why? That was the question.

“At least she’s alive,” Ernie said.

It was early evening now; the sun had just gone down. We sat at the bar in a joint called the Silver Dragon Club, drinking cold draft OB, Oriental Brewery lager. It had taken a few hours to elicit the cooperation of the KNPs, and then a few more hours for them to conduct the interrogation. They’d taken their time. Watching the landlady cry hadn’t been easy, but sometimes a cop has to frighten people to pry information out of them. The Korean cops are experts at it.

“Maybe,” I said.

“What do you mean ‘maybe.’ Of course she’s all right. Jill Matthewson was healthy and strong when she packed up and left TDC, and she had a Korean friend by her side to help watch out for her.”

“A friend who owed money. And if this Miss Kim Yong-ai was so frightened that she had to disappear, who do you think she owed money to?”

“Kampei,” Ernie said. Gangsters.

“Exactly. So maybe Jill Matthewson isn’t so safe after all.”

A business girl wearing hot pants and a halter top came up and threw her arms around Ernie’s neck. Then the rock band started and more GIs flooded into the club. They’d just gotten off duty. I knew the routine. After work they hot-footed it over to the mess hall, wolfed down chow and then, after a quick shower, threw on their blue jeans and their sneakers and their nylon jackets. Finally, assuming their pass hadn’t been pulled, they flooded toward the main gate and out into the ville. Freedom.

The jackets they wore were made of black or dark blue nylon with a layer of cheap cotton for insulation. They were easily available at the stalls throughout Tongduchon and it seemed virtually mandatory for every GI to own one. On the back, the jackets were hand embroidered with one of three things: a flame-breathing dragon, a map of Korea, or a scantily clad Asian siren. Sometimes they crammed all three onto one jacket. Usually there was a motto beneath. Maybe the designation of their unit, like the “502nd Military Intelligence Battalion.” Or the dates of their tour, “June 1972-July 1973.” Or some stupid saying like, “When I die I know I’m going to heaven because I’ve already served my time in hell.”

To blend in, Ernie and I wore similar jackets. His featured a naked Asian woman being embraced by a fire-breathing dragon. The dates beneath touted his two tours in Vietnam. My jacket featured a map of Korea and the start and end dates of my first tour here. When we’d had them made, Ernie asked me why I didn’t buy something with a little more flare. I’m not sure why I didn’t. A time and a place seemed good enough to me.

OB draft is what the Silver Dragon served; it came from a venerable brewery in Korea that had supposedly been established by Germans just after the turn of the century. The business girl hanging off Ernie’s neck was named Ok-hi. She was tall and buxom and besides the hot pants and halter top wore black leather boots that enveloped her thick calves all the way to the knee. She had a girlfriend and a few minutes later I was introduced to Ji-yon, who called herself Jeannie. Jeannie was slender, willowy compared to full-figured Ok-hi, and her personality was polite and reserved. She told me she was from the southern province of Cholla-namdo. Ernie and I continued to drink the draft Oriental Brewery lager and we bought the girls drinks. They seemed fascinated by us. We were from Seoul, not “Cheap Charlies” like the Division GIs. Ernie winked and said, “Wait until they get to know me better.”

Even amidst the mad swirl of women and booze and rock and roll, I continued to think about the case. I wanted to explain to Ernie that I thought the death of Private Druwood hadn’t happened the way Colonel Alcott and Mr. Bufford said. And I wanted to speculate with him about the various reasons that Jill Matthewson might’ve decided to go AWOL. If we could figure out her motive, maybe that would help us break a lead. But Ernie was too busy with Ok-hi. Instead, I asked Jeannie who booked entertainment in Tongduchon. She was helpful and when the band took a break, Jeannie introduced me to their leader, a young Korean man with straight black hair hanging over his ears. He was surprised that I could speak Korean and after a little hesitation, he gave me the name and address of his booking agent.

Ernie and I put away about a six pack each. Ok-hi suggested that the four of us adjourn to a chop house and have something to eat. Drinking on an empty stomach, the Koreans believe, is bad for the health. Ernie and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we readily agreed. The girls asked us what type of food we wanted. Neither Ernie nor I could tolerate the Miguk-style chicken houses or hamburger joints that infested the bar district. The chow in those joints was routinely horrible and sometimes caused dysentery. We told them we wanted Korean food. The girls left and returned wearing warm coats and the four of us paraded onto the main drag of Tongduchon.

The Division GIs were drunk now. Raucous crowds of them shoved their way from bar to bar: the Oasis Club, the 007 Club, the Players Club, the Kimchee Club. Rock and roll erupted from open double doors and young Korean women stood outside, trying to coax GIs into their establishments.

The narrow walkways were jammed with pedestrians: American GIs, Korean business girls, old ladies in shawls pushing wooden carts laden with bean curd soup, even the occasional uniformed student humping a backpack, trying to make her way home without being molested. Ernie breathed deeply, savoring the aroma of diesel and garlic and stale beer. A smile crossed his chops and I knew what he was thinking. The ville! Life! A beautiful woman clinging to his arm. How could it be better than this?

As we walked, Ok-hi chattered happily, using the combination of broken English and Korean that passes as the lingua franca in every GI village in Korea.

“Ok-hi taaksan ipo. Kujiyo?” Ok-hi’s very pretty. Isn’t she?

“So-so.” Ernie replied.

Ok-hi pinched him. “You number ten GI.”

Number ten: the worst. As opposed to number one: the best.

“Kuenchana,” Ernie replied. It doesn’t matter.

But after we’d passed a few bars, Ernie was no longer listening to Ok-hi. Instead, his eyes began to dart from side to side. Whenever he swerved in the flow of the pedestrian traffic, he glanced back. Surreptitiously. Jeannie walked casually next to me, not noticing what I was noticing. Ernie had spotted someone-or something-behind us. I didn’t swivel my head to look. That would’ve tipped whoever was following us that we were on to him. Instead, I watched Ernie. Over the months we’d worked together, we’d developed hand signals for simple instructions like “danger” or “let’s go” or “you first.” They’d helped in tight situations, but Ernie wasn’t flashing me any signals. And he wasn’t happy. As we wound through the crowded alleys of Tongduchon, Ernie seemed to become more agitated. I checked beneath my armpit, making sure my. 45 was snug in its holster. It was.

All I could do now was watch Ernie, pretend nothing was amiss, and be prepared to act.

When American GIs first arrive in Korea, they receive something commonly referred to as their “Kimchee Orientation.” It is a series of briefings given by NCOs and officers appointed by the 8th Army commander. The orientation room features a huge wooden map of Korea. The jagged line of the Demilitarized Zone slashes across the waist of the country and a falling line of circular targets indicates the locations of the major cities: Seoul, Taejon, Taegu, and Pusan. Unit patches the size of dinner plates-the 8th Army red-and-white cloverleaf, the 2nd Division Indianhead patch-are used to graphically demonstrate to young soldiers that 8th Army covers Seoul and the rear areas, while the 2nd Infantry Division is stationed right up along the edge of the DMZ. After the geography lesson, a medic is brought in and the young GIs are treated to a series of films showing men suffering from advanced stages of venereal disease. Most of the young GIs are frightened so badly that they vow never to venture off base into the ville. This vow usually lasts about twenty-four hours. Then a representative from the Judge Advocate General’s Office takes the stage to inform the GIs that their Constitutionally guaranteed rights have been totally abrogated by the U.S. ROK Status of Forces Agreement. The only reaction this usually engenders is the occasional yawn. Finally, the post chaplain takes over and leads the men in a nondenominational prayer. After the amen, the men are eligible to be issued a pass to leave the compound and mingle in Korean society. After two nights in the ville, they will consider themselves experts on Korean culture. This despite the fact that Korean culture is over 4,000 years old and is based on Confucian and Buddhist traditions that are, in many cases, diametrically opposed to Western traditions.

Once the GIs hit the ville, all hell breaks loose. These barely educated teenage Americans feel they can lord it over the Koreans. And with their abundant spending money, for the most part, they can. Until they go too far. Then the Koreans fight back, and that’s when the Korean National Police and the American MPs step in.

When I first arrived in Korea, I assumed that 8th Army had somebody monitoring the clash of cultures that occurs when obnoxious American teenagers are thrust willy-nilly into an ancient society. The more time I spent here, the more I realized that 8th Army and the American government were not only not concerned with this phenomenon, they were unaware that it even existed. In fact, when I occasionally mentioned this clash of cultures back at 8th Army headquarters, I was looked at as if I were mad. As long as the troops returned to the compound every day, still able to perform their duties, that’s all the U.S. Army cared about.

It was left for those of us in law enforcement to pick up the pieces. And it was left to those of us of a more reflective nature to marvel at the endless cornucopia of heartbreak and joy that was being churned out nightly on the streets of the GI village of Tongduchon.

Ok-hi still clung to Ernie’s arm and I was still watching him. We’d passed two dozen nightclubs when, suddenly, Ernie turned and charged back through the crowd.

Ten yards behind us, a black GI came to a sudden halt and pretended to be interested in the statuettes displayed in the front window of a brassware emporium. Ernie ran right at him. As he closed, the GI glanced at Ernie nervously, flexed his knees as if to flee, but before he could move, Ernie plowed into him with such force that the man reeled backwards, slamming into a cement-block wall.

I let go of Jeannie and ran.

Stunned, the GI staggered to his feet, cursing, and as he started to raise his hands to counterattack, Ernie punched him with a hard right cross. The man’s nose burst. He reached for his face but blood squirted through his splayed fingers.

Somehow, the man launched a low kick to Ernie’s groin. Ernie dodged it but at the same time the man’s right hand snaked out and grabbed the lapel of Ernie’s dragon-embroidered jacket. Using the leverage of his crouching position, the injured man managed to jerk Ernie off balance and pull him closer in until they both crashed to the ground. Even in the split second I had to think about it, I admired the move. Whoever this guy was, he was trained in hand-to-hand combat.

Ernie and the other man rolled and punched and grunted. Blood kept pumping from the man’s nose and now it was spread across Ernie’s hands and face and shirt. Shoving my way through the crowd, I reached Ernie and pulled him away. The black man sprang to his feet, waving his fists in the air. I stepped in front of him.

“Keep your damn hands off me,” he said, the voice muffled.

That’s when I realized who he was. Weatherwax. Staff Sergeant Rufus Q. The same MP we’d questioned last night while he worked on the ville patrol. He was not in uniform now; he was wearing civilian clothes: slacks, a sports shirt, and a waist-length leather jacket. All of it glistening with blood.

Ernie pushed past me. “You’ve been following us,” he said. “Picked us up after we left the Silver Dragon.”

“Bull,” Weatherwax said.

“Just enjoying the weather then?”

Weatherwax launched himself at Ernie. The left jab was ineffectual. Ernie dodged it easily and I grabbed Weatherwax and held him.

“Calm down, Sarge,” I said.

“You calm the hell down,” he replied. Then he grabbed his nose again, trying to stanch the bleeding.

I let go of him but kept myself between the two men. A crowd of jerks had gathered. I knew the type. When a fight erupts they’re always there. It happened when I was a kid in school. They’d gather around like a pack of baboons, hopping and hooting. This type of behavior knows no ethnic boundaries. I’d seen it in blacks, in Anglos and, I’m not proud to say, in Chicanos. But this type of man, when challenged personally, finds a way to deflect the insult or, better yet, pretend it didn’t happen. Now, gathered safely around the glow of a fight, their faces gleamed. A few of them even hopped on the balls of their feet, pretending that they wanted to fight, too, searching for approval from their fellow gawkers.

How I despised them. If I could’ve, I would’ve pulled my. 45 and shot as many of them as I could until the rest scattered like the cowards they were. Instead, I kept my mind on business.

With his left hand, Weatherwax fumbled in his jacket for a handkerchief and held it across his nose. Gradually, the flow of blood subsided.

“MPs don’t run the bars,” I told him. “Too dangerous. GIs you’ve busted get juiced up and want to come after you. And I don’t really believe you’re interested in any of this brassware.”

Inside the display window, a brass index finger pointed toward the sky.

“So what?” Weatherwax said. “I’m off duty. I can go where I please.”

“Where you please,” Ernie said, “is where Warrant Office Bufford tells you to go.”

“He got nothing to do with it.”

“Then why are you following us?” I asked.

Weatherwax looked away, as if he were very tired, still holding the handkerchief to his nose. I could see it coming. I believed Ernie saw it, too. Weatherwax was still enraged and he was about to try something.

Men in the crowd hooted. One of them bounced too close and Ernie shoved him so hard the skinny guy reeled backwards, slammed into his buddies, and fell backward on his butt. More angry voices erupted.

Ok-hi and Jeannie stood behind the growing crowd, huddled beneath a plastic awning, looking worried.

That’s when Weatherwax tried it. I’m not sure where it came from. There must have been a stone or a brick lying on the ground and suddenly it was in his hand, then winging through the air, heading straight for Ernie’s head. Ernie flinched. The missile sliced his ear, barely making contact, veered to the right, and hit one of the GIs in the crowd.

It was as if a hyena had been thrown into a gaggle of chimps. The howling started. Ernie was trying to punch Weatherwax and Weatherwax was trying to punch Ernie and, as I strained to hold them apart, the same guy who’d been knocked backward onto his ass sneaked out of the pack of gawkers and slammed his puny fist into Ernie’s kidney. I lunged for him but he retreated into the crowd and then Ernie and Weatherwax were going at one another again. Brutally.

“MPs!” someone shouted and over their heads I could see, heading our way, bobbing black helmets.

I grabbed Ernie, ripped him away from Weatherwax. The front of his jacket was slathered in blood. Weatherwax wheeled drunkenly, unable to follow. I shoved through the gawking crowd. It wasn’t difficult because most of them were starting to back off now that the MPs were on the way. Ok-hi and Jeannie stood at the mouth of an alley about half a block farther down the narrow road. They waved us on. Together, the four of us-me supporting Ernie, Ok-hi and Jeannie leading-entered the darkness, Ernie still howling about how he was going to kick some MP ass.

The alley narrowed, the darkness grew, and the hooting voices behind us faded.

We spent the night with Ok-hi and Jeannie in a yoguan, a Korean inn. Sitting on the warm ondol floor Ok-hi did her best to nurse Ernie’s wounds, but Jeannie had to do most of the practical work: bringing in a pan of hot water; washing out the scratches and bruises; asking the middle-aged woman who owned the yoguan to loan her some antiseptic ointment. Ok-hi mainly cooed and rubbed Ernie’s shoulders and nibbled on the edge of his damaged ear.

“He was clumsy,” Ernie told me. “I spotted him before we entered the Silver Dragon Club and then, when we came out, he was standing down the street, staring our way. Don’t they teach MPs up here how to conduct a proper tail?”

“I don’t think Division needs to tail people too often.”

I’d bought four cold liters of OB at a local shop and while the girls ministered to Ernie, I popped the bottles open and poured the frothing beer into porcelain drinking glasses, the type usually used for serving barley tea. Ok-hi downed hers almost as fast as Ernie. Jeannie left her beer for me.

“Bufford and Colonel Alcott put him up to it,” Ernie said. “You can bet on it.”

“Probably,” I agreed.

“Sure they did. They want to keep tabs on what we’re up to. The Division chief of staff is probably breathing down their necks.”

I’d heard stories about the Division chief of staff: Brigadier General H. K. Pacquet, a decorated veteran of combat in Vietnam. “Hong Kong” Packet is what they called him. Had something to do with a special type of antipersonnel explosive he’d devised while working with the Special Forces. Pacquet had been wounded in Vietnam. Wounded so badly that his face was hideously deformed but he was otherwise healthy, which is why the army decided to keep him on active duty. He’s a hard charger and a bad ass and everyone in Division is terrified of him. Even the honchos at 8th Army back off when “Hong Kong” Packet catches a case of the ass.

“So they send Weatherwax out to watch us,” I said. “And you beat the crap out of him for his troubles. That’s certainly going to help our position back at Division PMO.”

“Screw Division,” Ernie said. “They’re interfering with an official investigation.”

“All they were doing, Ernie, was watching.”

“Same difference.”

I wished Ernie would’ve talked to me before he punched out Weatherwax. Maybe there’s something we could’ve done to mislead him. Make him-and the Division honchos-believe we were doing one thing while we were actually doing another. Too late now. By punching out Weatherwax, Ernie’d given Division PMO ammunition to use when they approached 8th Army and asked-as I believed they would-that we be removed from the Jill Matthewson case. They’d wanted us gone from day one. Outside law enforcement nosing around in their territory would never sit well with the Division honchos. I didn’t bother to mention all this to Ernie. Bureaucratic infighting meant nothing to him.

Ok-hi ordered chop from the woman who owned the yoguan, and twenty minutes later a Korean boy of about twelve years of age brought in a square metal box that he set in the middle of the floor. As he shuffled into the room, the boy kept his eyes down. Respectful in the Confucian tradition, but it also gave me the impression that he was ashamed to look at us. Two debauched American GIs and two even farther-fallen Korean women. It was as if this delivery boy did- n’t want to be contaminated by evil. Without speaking, the boy slid open a side panel on the metal box and pulled out steaming bowls of pibim-bap, fried rice; meiun-tang, hot mackerel soup; and a plate of yaki-mandu, fried pork dumplings. Then he closed the box, bowed, and backed out of the room. All performed without once having actually looked at us.

Jeannie broke open my wooden chopsticks, unfolded a paper napkin, placed it on my knee, and motioned with her open palm. “Duh-seiyo,” she said. Please partake. It wasn’t quite as polite as “chapsu-seiyo,” which means the same thing but is spoken to one’s superior rather than to one’s equal. I was pleased to be equal with this Korean business girl named Jeanie, so I dug in.

After chop, Ernie and Ok-hi retired to their own room. Jeannie cleaned up, setting the empty dishes outside in the vinyl-floored hallway. Then she slid shut the oil-papered door and rolled out two down-filled sleeping mats. I was tired, but not tired enough to ignore her.

In the morning, Ernie and I were up just after dawn. We said our goodbyes to Ok-hi and Jeannie who lingered in the yoguan since both rooms were paid for until noon.

The narrow alleys of Tongduchon were quiet and cold in the early morning hours. All the shops and nightclubs and bars were padlocked and shuttered with heavy iron gratings. A low mist spread along cobbled lanes. As we walked, Ernie stuck his hands deep into his pockets and breathed deeply of the frigid air, pungent with the odor of fermented cabbage and stagnating beer and ondol charcoal gas floating from the hotels and yoguans that dotted the bar district.

Most of the GIs had already left. A mandatory PT formation was held at 0630 and it was now almost 0700 hours. In the distance, on the other side of the main gate of Camp Casey, we could hear huge groups of GIs doing jumping jacks while they shouted martial cadences.

The narrow walkway we were following bled onto the main drag of the bar district and soon Ernie and I were walking past the shuttered facades of the Oasis Club, the Montana Club, and finally the Silver Dragon Club. Then we crossed the railroad tracks, went through another narrow alley, and came out on the four-lane wide Main Supply Route. Down the road about a half mile we could see the illuminated arch of the 2nd Division main gate. Beyond that, the twenty-foot-high MP, still standing at the ready, still observing everything. When I thought of what we would face at the PMO today, after the Weatherwax incident last night, I groaned inwardly.

Ernie seemed completely unconcerned.

A unit of GIs emerged from the main gate. All of them wore sneakers, gray training pants, gray sweatshirts, and red woolen caps pulled down low over their ears. All fifty or so men ran in unison, a senior sergeant shouting out the cadence. One man ran in front of the formation holding the unit flag. The guide-on, he’s called. We could tell by the colors they wore, and by the unit designation on the flag, that they were combat engineers.

“Where are the MPs?” Ernie asked.

“Don’t be so anxious to see them,” I replied.

We trotted across the MSR until we reached the southwestern corner of Camp Casey. A ten-foot-high cement-block wall on our right, topped with concertina wire, stretched along the sidewalk all the way to the main gate. Ernie and I walked it quietly, both lost in our own thoughts.

Me, I was thinking about Jeannie. She was a slender woman, and tall for a Korean, but sweet and gentle and considerate. I’d had some good times since I’d been in country but last night had been one of the best.

Ernie heard it first.

“What the hell’s that?” he asked.

It was the typical shouted cadence of a military unit doing its morning physical-training run. The sergeant shouted something out and the men answered as if in one voice, almost like singing. But this sound was close and loud and garbled. Ernie and I glanced around, unable to figure where the noise was coming from.

It couldn’t be the combat engineer unit. They’d run off in the other direction.

And then I understood. It came from the narrow alleyway we’d just walked out of. It had been barely wide enough for Ernie and me to walk abreast, certainly not big enough for a company formation four-squads wide. But that’s where the sound was coming from, and that’s why Ernie and I were having trouble locating it. The narrow alley concentrated the sound, causing it to reverberate between its brick walls. And then the sound erupted onto the MSR and spread out every which way.

“Why in hell did they go down there?” Ernie asked.

“They came out of the main gate,” I said. “We know that. Then they must’ve entered the village and taken a left down the road running along the railroad tracks.”

“So close to the ville?”

Ernie meant that there’d be a lot of civilians woken up by their shouting and the pounding of their feet. In the States, that’s never allowed. Even in Seoul, it’s frowned upon.

Now it was my turn to shrug. “This is Division.”

“But why turn up that narrow alleyway?” Ernie asked. “They’ve hardly run a half mile.”

I didn’t know. But the question was answered almost as soon as it was out of Ernie’s mouth. The guide-on of the unit, holding the unit flag at port arms, emerged from the mouth of the alley. He wore a green cap pulled down low over his ears, the same gray sweat pants, same gray sweat shirt, same cheap sneakers. But the realization of the meaning of the designation on the flag fluttering in the breeze smacked Ernie and me at the same time. Right across the chops.

Crossed pistols.

The unit emerging out of the narrow alley-the men stumbling into one another, packed like sardines, and now redeploying on the wide expanse of the MSR-was none other than Headquarters Company of the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police.

“They’ve been hunting us,” Ernie said.

I didn’t want to believe it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “They’re doing their morning exercise.”

But even as I spoke, I realized Ernie was right. They had to be hunting us. Why else would they squeeze through the ville, run down dangerous railroad tracks, and then turn up an alley too narrow to hold them?

The MP company emerged from the gap in the dark red wall, all wearing bright green caps pulled down low over their ears, looking like a giant reptile slithering out of a cave. And then, without anyone barking orders, they re-formed into four columns behind the guide-on. The sergeant was shouting out the cadence now and the unit started its relentless trot, heading down the MSR toward the main gate. Heading directly toward us.

“Just keep walking,” Ernie said. “We’re not going to run.”

He shoved his fists into the pockets of his jacket, hunched his shoulders, and continued to march resolutely down the sidewalk. We had more than a quarter of a mile to go. The arch of the main gate of Camp Casey loomed in front of us. Above us, the glassy-eyed MP statue stared impassively at our dilemma. We’d never make it. The MP formation was already bearing down on us. The sergeant leading the formation had spotted us and he was shouting a new song:

“On your right!”

“On your right!” the MPs repeated.

“On your right!”

As if to get our attention.

“Sick call!”

There’s nothing lower than a GI who shirks his duty by riding the sick list.

“Sick call!” the MPs repeated. And repeated again. “Sick call! Sick call!”

The sound was thunderous and getting louder. Still, neither Ernie nor I looked back. Here it comes, I thought.

Feet trod on cold cement. Big feet. Dozens of them, breaking away from the formation, cantering toward us.