I guess I knew from the day out at Freedom Park overlooking the Yellow Sea. Maybe General MacArthur had made me aware of it. Or maybe it had been the hidden stone steps that Ernie and I had stumbled on, as had almost every Korean cop who approached the scene: She had breezed past as if they were an item of furniture in her front room. She’d been there before, and recently, to the murder site of her husband.
Sergeant Dubrovnik, an experienced M.P. and a man on the run for his life, had either shot himself in the ribs with his own .45 or he’d allowed someone he trusted to stand very close to him. Who else but a woman? And a woman he knew well?
And the job she’d received on compound. Sure, the union would work very hard to make sure that as a widow of one of their deceased members she found employment, but starting as a billing clerk? That was a relatively high-paying job that required extensive experience. The union usually gets people jobs at the lowest entry level, and the person who lands it is happy to get it. The work is steady, the benefits better than most jobs in Korea, and advancement will depend on how hard they work.
The Widow Lee had started near the top. Somebody, probably a man, had cleared the way for her.
And now me. I was next on her list. She’d learned from her husband’s mistakes; Sergeant Dubrovnik, an M.P., was no longer in the picture, so a CID agent was her next step up.
I held the duplicated bills of lading in my hand. The proof I needed. Ernie was waiting in a nearby teahouse, the jeep outside.
But could I do it?
Her eyes widened when I told her.
“A drive? Why should we go for a drive?”
“Because I say so.” I ripped her coat off the peg in the wall and tossed it to her. “Kapshida,” I said. Let’s go.
She refused, so I slapped her once. Something I never do to a woman. But she was no longer a woman to me. She was a criminal.
At the police station in Inchon, Captain Rhee studied the bills of lading and listened patiently to my explanation. She wanted me to go into the scam with her. She had taken her husband’s job and now I would take Sergeant Dubrovnik’s place. And working in the CID headquarters, I’d be in even a better position to cover things up. Captain Rhee nodded, understanding what I said.
He held the Widow Lee overnight for questioning.
In a way I was proud of her. Captain Rhee told me later that she denied everything.
The Korean National Police went over the ground they’d covered before but this time they were asking different questions. Between the home of Lee Ok-pyong and the park overlooking the Yellow Sea, they canvassed residents who’d been out on the night Clerk Lee was murdered. Previously they’d said they hadn’t seen two men walking together, one of them a Korean, the other an American. This time the police asked if they’d seen a Korean man walking with a woman. A few of them had. One of them, a sweet potato vendor, even mentioned that she’d seen the couple, deep in conversation, pass the statue of General MacArthur and disappear into the brush. Later, the woman had come out alone, stood by the sea for a moment and had then thrown something over the cliff. A stick maybe. Maybe a mong-dungi, a heavy club that women in Korea use to beat dirt out of wet clothing. Then the woman had hurried out of the park.
In Songtan-up, bar girls and local shop owners who had not noticed an American matching Sergeant Dubrovnik’s description remembered a robust American G.I. walking arm in arm with a beautiful Korean woman. Both of them were strangers in these parts. They’d entered a narrow back alley and one of the bar girls assumed it was for a late night tryst. After only a minute or two, the woman had left alone, in a hurry, and the bar girl assumed that she’d changed her mind about her affection for the big G.I.
Had the bar girl heard a gunshot? No. The rock music blaring from the outside speakers that lined the narrow lane was much too loud.
Captain Rhee personally interviewed the local union leader. As an experienced cop, he knew enough to be circumspect in his questioning and didn’t press the union overly hard. There was too much power involved. Too much chance for the union and therefore all Korean employees to lose face. And, after all, how could you prove such an allegation? That a union leader had allowed a beautiful young widow to influence him and land her a better-than-average job. The union leader, however, was smart enough not to stonewall the Korean National Police completely. He confirmed to Captain Rhee that what he suspected, that the Widow Lee had received extraordinary assistance, was within the realm of possibility.
“You knew it was coming, didn’t you?” Ernie asked me.
Once again we were sitting in the 8th Army snack bar on the morning after the Widow Lee was convicted of the murder of her husband and Sergeant Dubrovnik.
“I guess I knew. Somewhere. But I didn’t want to know.”
“I don’t blame you.” Ernie nibbled on his bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. “She was a goodlooking woman.”
I sighed.
“Unlucky in love,” Ernie said.
“You got that right.”
“You could’ve gone along with the plan,” Ernie told me. “Made some money for yourself. And you’d still have her.”
I set my coffee down and looked into his green eyes. “I never thought of that.”
“Sure you didn’t,” he said.
The Case of the Chinese Santa Claus
by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
It had been a quiet Christmas Eve in Connaught Mews. Lady Sara attended church services with her mother, the Dowager Countess of Ranisford, and afterward returned to the Countess’s home in Connaught Place for supper and a sedate Christmas Eve party with a few of the Countess’s friends. Lady Sara’s two footmen, Charles Tupper and Rick Allward, were spending the evening with their families in their own apartments, which were next door to Lady Sara’s headquarters. All over London, families were gathered in anticipation of a joyful Christmas Day.
I had no family except my adoptive father, Old John Quick, who was Lady Sara’s coachman. He had driven her and the Countess to church and then back to Connaught Place, after which, since Connaught Mews is just behind Connaught Place and a quick walk, she dismissed him. We exchanged our gifts when he returned home; then, since he’d had a long day taking Lady Sara through the ordeal of last-minute Christmas shopping, he decided to retire early. I busied myself in Lady Sara’s office, bringing records of her extensive network of agents up to date.
Lady Sara returned home shortly after midnight. Neither of us had anything to report, so I wished her good night and was about to return to my own quarters next door when her door pull emitted a timid chime, almost as though it had decided to celebrate the arrival of Christmas Day in its own fashion.
Lady Sara and I exchanged questioning glances. “See what it is, Colin,” she said, and added, “if it is anything.” I opened the door. A bundle of clothing, noticeably smaller than adult-sized, flung itself out of the cold night into my arms. I exclaimed, “Why, it’s Madam Shing!”
The little Chinese woman was so elderly and small she looked like a shriveled monkey. She was panting in exhaustion, and her inscrutable face was, for once, scrutable. She was terrified. Lady Sara took charge of her and sent me to prepare hot tea. By the time I returned with it, she had helped Madam Shing to remove some of the robes that enveloped her, got her positioned comfortably on a sofa, and was massaging her arms and legs.
“Would you believe — she walked all the way!” Lady Sara exclaimed.
I echoed her astonishment. From Madam Shing’s Chinese neighbourhood in the East End to Connaught Mews was between six and seven miles as the crow flies and much further than that following London’s meandering streets, which no sensible crow would have attempted. On that frigid Christmas Eve, the woman had walked herself almost to death.