“Getting rid of everybody involved,” Ernie said.
“That’s no way to look at it, Bascom. This is an ugly situation and now it’s over.” The first sergeant fidgeted in his chair. ‘The CG talked to Colonel Stoneheart about you two. He says to let you know what a good job you did and he’s proud of your tenacity in going after the case. And he’s sorry that you were held while we tried to unravel everything. I’ve been authorized to give you some time off, too, to sort of unwind.” The first sergeant stood up. ”Take off the rest of today. That will give you a long weekend and then be back here Monday ready to go to work.”
He shook both our hands and we stumbled down the hall.
“Can you believe these assholes?” Ernie said.
“Yeah. I can believe’em. But they forgot one thing.” I patted my coat pocket. “I still got the negatives. We make a few more prints, a cover letter, and I bet there’s a few congressmen around who’d love to ask some questions up at the Pentagon.”
“It means they’d shaft us,” Ernie said.
I shrugged. “I never wanted to be a first sergeant anyway.”
Ernie looked at me. “Me neither.”
Ernie dropped me off at the barracks and I got on the horn and after a few tries I got through to Ginger at the American Club. Her voice was flat as she told me that Miss Lim was in the hospital.
“Which one?”
‘The Peik Sim Byongwon. Near East Gate.” She paused and I thought I could hear her swallowing. “Take care Georgie.”
I held the receiver away from me and then I dropped it and then I was out the door.
The receptionist in her crisp white uniform looked down the list of patients for people with the last name Lim.
“She’s young,” I said, “and beautiful.”
“Lim Hong-su, Lim Chong-kyu…” Finally she looked up at me. “Miss Lim Mi-hua, age twenty-nine, room 334.” The unblemished oval of her face was impassive. ‘That is in the trauma center,” she said.
An old woman in a heavy overcoat sat in a chair at the side of the bed. When she looked up at me, I could see through the dried tears and the wrinkles that she was Miss Lim’s mother.
“I am Georgie,” I said.
She stared at me for a long time, as if by looking she could somehow figure out how I had brought so much grief to her daughter.
Miss Lim was in traction. One arm broken, two legs. Bandages surrounded her face, a tube ran into her nostrils, and there were stitches along her forehead, her cheek, and her chin. Her eyes were puffed and closed.
I heard some murmuring down the hallway. The nurses had noticed the big American walking the ward. A dapper Korean man in rimless glasses and a white coat walked in.
“Good morning,” he said. “I am Doctor Ahn.”
We shook hands.
“Are you a friend of hers?” He nodded towards Miss Lim.
“Yes.”
“I am afraid the news is not good. Most of her hip has been shattered. She will not walk again.”
I looked at the doctor.
I looked at Miss Lim. She didn’t seem to be breathing. The big cold cement walls of the hospital closed in on me but I fought the blackness and somehow remained standing.
I thanked the doctor and walked out of the room.
Miss Lim’s mother had never taken her eyes off me.
Riley used his lunch hour to help us print more photos. He had a lot of experience in photography. Ernie and I fidgeted outside the darkroom. Finally Riley poked his head out.
“Did you guys do something unusual to the chemical bath when you were developing these prints?”
We shrugged.
“Well, the negatives have gone funny. Come in and take a look.”
We went into the darkroom and, after our eyes adjusted, he held up one of the wet photographs. A big halo emanated from Miss Pak’s head and from General Bohler’s and they were bright enough to leave barely a trace of facial features. That was the best print. All the others were totally ruined.
“You guys need a little work on your lab techniques.”
“Yeah,” Ernie said. “We need a little work on a lot of things.”
“Where is the first set of prints you made? You can just make more from those.”
“We turned them over to the provost marshal’s office.”
“History, huh?” Riley said.
“I’m sure they’ll have an honored spot in the Eighth Army archives.”
“Where’s that?”
‘The incinerator.”
“Hey!” Riley said. “One piece of good news-the initials of the party who signed out the marriage packets?”
“Yeah?” I said. “Who?”
“Bohler’s secretary.”
The first thing I did was go back to my room and get a whole lot of sleep. Or at least I tried to. The houseboys kept bustling around the barracks, making a lot of noise, and my head kept popping off the pillow with a new thought of how I should have handled the case. A couple of times I shuffled down the hallway in my shorts and shower shoes and got myself a can of Falstaff out of the big PX vending machine. Finally I gave it up and took a shower, shaved, and got dressed.
I went to the ville.
The reason for all the changes at the Korean Procurement Agency was that General Bohler had been using his influence to get new companies, under the auspices of Mr. Kwok, the lucrative Eighth Army contracts that had routinely been going to another group of entrepreneurs. Lindbaugh had been the facilitator for this at KPA, and since he was in the right place at the right time-and willing to go along with the program-he made a lot of money. Bohler, meanwhile, got what he wanted-an organization headed by Mr. Kwok that would do his bidding. If he spotted a woman he wanted, he got her, and I could only guess what other sorts of services were provided.
For some reason he got a perverse pleasure out of coercing young women who were about to marry servicemen from his own command into doing his sexual bidding. Maybe he made his choices from the photos and something interesting he saw in the marriage packets. Maybe it was just the safety of medically screened brides-to-be. However he made his choices, the women I knew about were exceptionally beautiful.
Li Jin-ai looked good even in the poor-quality black-and-white photograph in her marriage paperwork. The Nurse was a knockout and, of course, there was Miss Pak. Probably there had been others.
The ville on this late Friday afternoon was subdued. No hustle. No bustle. Just the smell of fish and fresh vegetables from the Itaewon market and the feeling that bars and whores and GIs were as inevitable and eternal as the slow changing of the seasons.
The early-morning sun had melted some of the ice but now the sky was overcast again and a slight wind had picked up and the ice on the roadway had refrozen into a smoother, slicker consistency. I slipped two times trudging up the hill to Itaewon.
The doors of the American Club were barred and locked. The King Club was open. Instead of my usual beer, I had a straight shot of Korean-made bourbon. It was rough but I held it and then I had another. The stuff can grow on you.
The jukebox spun out some good sounds and a couple of girls at one of the tables were giggling and looking at me and trying to get up the courage to talk to me or hoping that, better yet, I would talk to them. The place was warm and cozy and, as the bourbon started to seep into my body, I wondered what I was worried about. I told myself that I had no reason to feel anxious.
I wished that Miss Pak Ok-suk were here, to dance for me, in her tight blouse and miniskirt. But the Jade Lady was relegated to my dreams.
Freezing air burst into the room, trailing a bustling little woman, hair in disarray, eyes wide. She spotted the two girls at the table in front of me, sat down, and immediately launched into breathless exposition.
Something had happened. Something big.
I tried to pick out the words but she was running them all together and waving her hands for emphasis. The girls ignored their Cokes and sat with their mouths open, all their attention focused on the ranting woman. The young man behind the bar and the adolescent girl who was the daytime cashier also stopped what they were doing and listened.