“Kei-sikki,” he said finally. Born of a dog.
Ernie came alert at that. I speak Korean, at least conversationally. Ernie’s vocabulary is limited mostly to cuss words. Captain Peik caught our alarmed expressions and said, “Not you. My duty officer last night. He should’ve listened to you. Or at least called me at home.”
“Why?”
Captain Peik sighed heavily. Then he stood up and grabbed his cap off the top of his coat rack.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
General Douglas MacArthur, floppy hat atop his head, corncob pipe gripped in his teeth, hands on his hips, stared out across an expanse of lawn and over a cliff that fell off into the misty expanse of the churning Yellow Sea.
“Doug, baby.” Ernie slapped the back of MacArthur’s shin.
South Korea is one of the few countries in the world, outside of the United States, to have located about the landscape statues of famous Americans. Up north at Freedom Bridge just south of the DMZ stands a statue of White Horse Harry Truman. In June of 1950, if he hadn’t made the decision to fight to save South Korea, this country wouldn’t exist today. MacArthur’s contribution was the invasion of Inchon, cutting North Korean supply lines so U.S. forces could manage to break out of the Pusan Perimeter, retake Seoul, and push the North Korean Communists all the way north to the Yalu River, bordering China.
But Captain Peik hadn’t brought us here to this place known as Jayu Gongyuan, Freedom Park, for a history lesson. While MacArthur stared thoughtfully at the Yellow Sea, Peik led us into the heavy brush beneath a line of elm trees.
“Chosim,” he said.
I understood and managed to avoid the two mud-covered stone steps that led downward into the brush. Ernie hadn’t understood and he stumbled over the hidden masonry. I caught him before he fell.
“Chosim means ‘be careful,’ ” I told Ernie. “When are you going to start taking those Korean language classes on post?”
“When you stop bugging me about it.”
Ernie pushed away my hand and straightened his jacket.
Some of the bushes in front of us had already been cleared and strips of white linen surrounded the area, the Korean indication of a place of death.
The body of Lee Ok-pyong lay in a muddy ditch.
“Shit,” Ernie said.
Lee had changed out of his T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Now he wore slacks and an open-collar white shirt that had been spattered with dirt. His head had been bashed in with something long and heavy. All I could think of was an M.P.’s nightstick.
Blue-smocked technicians milled around the body. Ernie and I tried to think of something to say to one another, or something to say to Captain Peik, but there was nothing to be said. We’d screwed up royally this time. If only we’d collared Dubrovnik last night when we’d had our chance.
A KNP sedan pulled up to the edge of the park. Two officers climbed out and one of them held the back door open. A woman dressed in black emerged. Holding both her elbows, the two officers escorted the woman across the damp lawn. She kept her head bowed; a veil of black lace covered her face.
As they approached she glanced up at me, and even through the flimsy shroud I recognized the beautiful face of the wife of Clerk Lee. The look she gave me would have cooled hell by about twenty degrees.
Keeping her eyes on me, she navigated the stone steps with ease and then paused in front of the body and turned her attention to what lay before her. The escorting officers backed up and Captain Peik approached. He stood silently next to her for a few moments and then began to whisper soft words. When he finished, she nodded slowly. Captain Peik thanked her and the two officers escorted her back to the waiting sedan.
When she was gone, Captain Peik turned to us. “That’s her husband, all right. She says he left the house shortly after midnight. Had to meet someone, she doesn’t know who. Now, you fellows want to tell me what you know about this?”
We nodded and walked back to General MacArthur. As Ernie explained about Sergeant Dubrovnik and our screwup last night, I studied the granite statue and noticed that it even had shoelaces. Doug seemed to be listening to Ernie and Captain Peik. I strode across the expanse of lawn to the cliff and gazed down at foamy breakers crashing against rocks a hundred feet below. From here, I guessed I could throw something a quarter mile out into the Yellow Sea.
When I turned around, General MacArthur was staring at me, reading my thoughts.
Ernie and I caught hell back at 8th Army.
The Foreign Organization Employees Union had lodged a formal protest about our conduct. Harassing one of their employees at his home and later not protecting him when he went to his rendezvous with death. Of course, everyone assumed that Sergeant Dubrovnik was the man who had summoned Clerk Lee to the park overlooking the Yellow Sea and there proceeded to bludgeon him to death. Why had he done it? Maybe because Sergeant Two wanted to keep Clerk Lee quiet about the nefarious activities they had engaged in together. Maybe. More likely they had an argument. Maybe Clerk Lee threatened to rat Dubrovnik out. Right now we could only speculate. What we needed to do was catch Sergeant Dubrovnik.
Ernie and I checked with his M.P. company. The man hadn’t shown up for morning formation, and according to the commanding officer, no one in the unit knew where he had disappeared to.
That remained to be seen. Ernie and I were about to start searching for Dubrovnik when the CID first sergeant pulled us aside.
“You’re off the case,” he told us. When Ernie started to protest, the first sergeant held up his palm. “Your first suspect escapes right from under your noses. And then your second suspect, a Korean national whom you shouldn’t even have been messing with, turns up dead.”
Ernie’s face flushed red and he started to sputter.
“Keep your trap shut, Bascom,” the first sergeant barked. “The provost marshal is still deciding whether or not to bring you two up on charges. A Status of Forces violation. Harassing a Korean civilian and misuse of your military police powers. Not to mention gross incompetence.”
With that, we were assigned to the black market detail.
Two weeks passed by. Two weeks of watching Korean dependent housewives to make sure they didn’t sell duty-free liquor or cigarettes down in the ville. Clerk Lee was buried, Sergeant Dubrovnik was still at large, and the provost marshal was still holding the threat of charges over our heads. Then we got the call.
Stiff found in the village of Songtan-up.
The corpse belonged to Sergeant Ivan Dubrovnik. He’d been shot once through the heart at close range, apparently with his own military police-issued .45 which was found beside him. He lay in a cobbled alleyway lined with nightclubs and beer halls and cheap room-rent-by-the-hour yoguans of Songtan-up, which served the five thousand or so U.S. airmen stationed at Osan Air Force Base. The sun was just rising above the rooftops of the two- and three-story buildings that surrounded us.
The Korean cop who’d found the corpse at two in the morning told us that no one in the neighborhood had heard or seen anything. Five hours more of canvassing the neighborhood didn’t change that story. The security police at Osan classified Dubrovnik’s death as a suicide.
Ernie didn’t like it. Neither did I. The only other person who’d been involved in the plot was the driver who’d been long since locked up. He couldn’t have been the killer. That left suicide.
And that also closed the case neatly. Now that justice had been done, the Foreign Organization Employees Union dropped their formal protest against Ernie and me. Everyone had suffered enough, they figured. The provost marshal put us back on regular duty status and signed off on the finding that no charges would be brought against us. Still, he kept us on the black market detail.