That was the type of uniform Moretti was wearing on the night of the Itaewon Massacre.
During his off-duty time, Cort searched the Korean open-air markets looking for Moretti’s uniform. It was a long shot, he knew, but what Cort was counting on was that in Korea at that time, nothing was wasted, not even a wool uniform stolen from a dead G.I.
Cort knew Moretti’s uniform size and, of course, Moretti would’ve had his name tag sewn onto the front of his fatigue blouse but that could’ve easily been removed. But what might’ve been overlooked by the person selling the garment would be the laundry tag, a strip of white cloth with the G.I.’s initials written on it, attached to every piece of clothing a G.I. owned so that during the massive laundry operation conducted each morning in the 8th Army barracks, each item could be identified. Even socks.
The old women dealing in salvaged clothing at the canvas lean-to stalls in the Itaewon Market must’ve thought Cort was a very careful shopper. In the weeks following the Itaewon massacre, Cort sorted through mountains of used clothing. Finally, his diligence paid off. He found a pair of wool pants with the silk lining ripped out, but with a small white patch sewn on the inside of the left cuff bearing the initials FRM.
Three spots of crusted blood had dried into the material.
Cort made a show of bargaining with the proprietress. In the end he paid too much for the garment but he didn’t mind. He immediately had the blood tested at the 121 Evacuation Hospital. The result was O-positive, the same blood type as Moretti. That didn’t prove it was his, not for sure, but it was indicative.
Cort indicated in his notes that this discovery gave him a certain sense of accomplishment. It also gave him a sense of sadness. Now hope of finding Moretti alive was all but gone.
Based on the new evidence, Cort asked for permission to upgrade the Moretti case from absent without leave to murder. Eighth Army thought it over but without a body, they wouldn’t upgrade the case. And furthermore, Cort was ordered to lay off. If he didn’t, his investigative specialty would be pulled from his personnel records and he’d be sent back to where he came from. The infantry. That meant walking the DMZ in three feet of snow in the freezing Korean winter.
In his notes, Cort speculated as to why 8th Army had refused. To him, the answer was obvious. For public relations reasons they wished the Itaewon Massacre had never happened. And if they ignored it, it would go away.
Cort saluted, said nothing, and, on his own time, continued to investigate the death of Technical Sergeant Flo Moretti.
The next morning, I sat in a teahouse in the Namyong-dong district of Seoul and watched as Doctor Yong In-ja studied the copies of the building plans I’d purchased from Seoul City Hall. She immediately absorbed the meaning of what I was trying to do.
“You compare these,” she said, pointing to the short stack of papers, “to the buildings today and see if you can find some place where they might have, a long time ago, buried Mori Di.”
“Exactly.”
“But they might’ve buried the body some other place.”
“Maybe not,” I said. I explained my theories of how crowded Seoul was in those days-and still is-and how digging a grave and dropping a body in it wouldn’t likely go unnoticed. And the culprits couldn’t take the chance that someone might spot them, report them, and an honest cop might be called. Or at least a cop who would then blackmail them for more money than they wanted to pay.
Doc Yong frowned at my implication that the Korean cops in those days were corrupt.
“Everybody was poor at that time,” she said.
I nodded in agreement. People were poor now too but, thankfully, not as desperate as they were then.
“Maybe they took the body to mountain,” Doc Yong said. By “mountain” she meant the countryside. Korea is a mountainous country and every square inch of arable land is either cultivated or used for human habitation. So when Koreans refer to the wilderness they often use the word mountain because only on craggy peaks does any sort of wilderness still remain.
“There were too many roadblocks in those days,” I replied. “Some by the Korean army, some by the American army. Everybody was looking for North Korean Communist agents. It would be too dangerous for the killers to rent a truck and take the body out of Seoul. If they were stopped by 8th Army MPs, they’d be toast.”
“Toast?”
“It means they’d be burned, like a slice of bread.”
She nodded, not quite sure what I meant. I also explained why I didn’t believe the Han River was a good place to dispose of a body. And no unidentified G.I. bodies, floating or otherwise, had been reported any time after the Itaewon Massacre. Cort had checked.
“So they bury him someplace safe,” she said.
“Exactly.”
“In the buildings they own.”
“They didn’t own the buildings on paper but they controlled them.”
“Same-same,” she said.
I agreed. “Same-same.”
In her agitation, Doc Yong was stooping to using business-girl slang. It figured she’d pick some up, working with them all the time. Probably she had picked it up unconsciously, what with the empathy she felt for those downtrodden women.
I’d already told Doc Yong about Miss Kwon packing up and leaving Itaewon. She took the news stoically but asked me to continue to check out the details of the complaint that had been filed against the young woman. I promised her I would.
She riffled through the photocopies of the old building plans, as if airing them out, and then slid the pile back to me.
“So where are you going to look?”
“Moretti’s headquarters,” I said, pointing on the drawing to the southwest corner of what is now the basement of the Grand Ole Opry Club. “Here. In the basement, where they make the beer deliveries.”
I looked into her black eyes. I longed to reach out and take her hand in mine but that would be inappropriate in this formal setting. Instead, I cleared my throat and said, “On your day off, when you’re not working, can I see you? We could go somewhere. We could talk.”
At first Doc Yong seemed puzzled, as if she was having trouble translating my words, mentally, from English into Korean. And then, once my full meaning sank in, she looked alarmed. Regaining control of herself, she smiled.
“That’s very nice of you,” she replied. “But I’ve been very busy.”
“We can go where you feel comfortable,” I said. “On the compound, if you like.”
I knew that being seen in public with a foreigner was not what most respectable Korean women wanted. On 8th Army compound we’d be away, if not from all gossips, at least from the Korean ones. She hesitated, thinking things over.
“Maybe some day,” she said finally. “But not now. Many things are happening.”
The disappointment knotted in my gut. I hoped my face showed nothing.
“When things quiet down,” she said, smiling.
But we both knew that in Itaewon things never quiet down.
The Yongsan Compound Facilities Command is located in a cement-walled building with Roman pillars out front that looks vaguely like the home of an old southern cotton plantation owner. However, it was built by the Japanese Imperial Army during the three-and-a-half decades after 1910 when they forcibly colonized what had been the Kingdom of Korea. The 8th Army Equal Employment Opportunity Office was one of the many bureaucracies housed here.
When Ernie and I walked into the EEO Office, a black female soldier at the front studying some paperwork didn’t bother to look up to greet us and ask, “Can I help you?” She kept her eyes glued to the paperwork.
She was an attractive young woman, a private first class. Her name tag said Wallings. Her shoulders were tense and she clutched the paperwork as if she were afraid it might make a break for freedom.
“Is Sergeant Hilliard in?” I asked.
She didn’t look up. Instead she said, “Who wants to know?” Racial tension was high in the early seventies in the army just as it was throughout American society.