She waved her arm.
Some of the women nervously lit new cigarettes or poured themselves more hot water. One of them whispered, “Aiyu, mali manta.” You talk too much.
Lucy ignored the comment.
“So Lucy, will you help us find him, or not?”
She pointed at the wrinkled photocopy. “Pruchert, he not do.”
“So you do know him?”
“We know.”
“What makes you so sure he didn’t do anything?”
“Lucy know.”
“Maybe you should let us decide that,” Ernie said.
Most women love Ernie and his irreverent attitude. For some reason, Lucy didn’t.
“Okay,” she said, “you decide. Hurry up, find out.”
“Where is he, Lucy?” I asked. “When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday. He come do black market.”
“What did he sell?”
“Wristwatch. Good one. G.I. only can buy one each year, so he sell good one.”
Under the 8th Army ration-control system, only one each of certain expensive items can be purchased by any given G.I. during a one-year tour. Only one stereo set, only one television, and only one wristwatch. At the end of the year, before he’s cleared to leave the country, the G.I. must either produce the item or produce a document showing he shipped it legally back to the States. There are ways around that, such as claiming the item was stolen, and some G.I. s are foolish enough to just sell the item on the black market and worry about justifying it later. They often get away with it because some units are not as diligent about checking on the rationed items as they should be.
“After he sold it, where did he go?”
“Same place he all the time go. You don’t know?”
“No. I don’t know. Tell me.”
“He go casino. You know. Down in Pusan.”
“He makes money selling on the black market, and then he takes that money and throws it away in a casino?”
“Lotta G.I. do.”
“What casino did he go to?”
“In Pusan only one. Beautiful place. Haeundae Beach.”
I’d heard of it, but I’d never been there. Maybe Pruchert went to the Haeundae Casino, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe that’s what he told Lucy. Maybe instead he took a cab over to the train station and hopped on the Blue Train.
“How do you know he went to the casino?” I asked.
“He all the time need money. All the time worried about honcho find out he black market. All the time worried honcho find out he go to casino.”
Signal sites deal with a lot of top-secret traffic. People into various types of depravity, including compulsive gambling, are considered to be security risks and, as such, lose their clearances. The U.S. Army Signal Corps is a hothouse of pressure; a difficult job to perform and everyone watching everyone else. It figured that Pruchert would want to get away; and if he were black-marketing and gambling, he’d want to concoct a good cover story, such as meditating at a Buddhist monastery. Of course, he’d also need a good cover story if he were the Blue Train rapist.
I asked Lucy and the other women a few more questions, but it soon became obvious that if Ernie and I wanted to know more about Corporal Robert R. Pruchert, we’d have to find him ourselves.
We thanked the women and left. Lucy followed us to the front gate.
“Pruchert good boy,” she told us. “Dingy dingy but good boy.”
She whirled her forefinger around her right ear, indicating that Pruchert was dingy dingy. Nuts.
“So you don’t think Pruchert is the Blue Train rapist?” I asked.
“No,” Lucy said, crossing her arms. “He not.”
“If you’re so smart,” Ernie said, “then tell us who is.”
“I tell,” Lucy replied. “Blue Train rapist bad man. Very bad man. But when anybody see any day, he look like good man. Lucy, any woman in G.I. Heaven, we all before trust good man. We all before tricked by good man. We all before, rape. Now, we anybody no trust.”
We ducked out through the gate into the stinking pathway that ran in front of G.I. Heaven. Back on the pedestrian lane running through the bar district, Ernie shook himself like a golden retriever shaking off rain.
“Creepy,” he said.
“It takes a lot to creep you out.”
“That it does,” he replied, “but G.I. Heaven managed.”
We jogged across the main supply route. At the front gate of Camp Henry, the MP guard said, “Where in the hell you guys been?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night in Waegwan, weren’t you supposed to be guarding that USO show? The Country Western All Stars?”
Ernie stepped close to the MP. “What happened?”
The guy told us. Or at least he told us part of it. We ran to the Camp Henry Medical Dispensary.
11
Ernie pointed to the rubber tube sticking up the MP’s nose.
“That must hurt,” he said.
“Only when I yodel,” the MP replied.
His name was Dorsett. He was the MP assigned last night to guard the Country Western All Stars after we’d left Waegwan. His hospital bed had been cranked up so he could watch the soap operas playing on AFKN. It was an open bay, and about a half dozen other G.I. s lounged in beds in various states of repose.
“So who popped you?” Ernie asked.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” he said.
Dorsett told the story. He’d been assigned to guard the rear of the Camp Carroll Female BOQ., bachelor officers’ quarters. The Quonset hut assigned to the Country Western All Stars was deserted except for them, and they each had their own room, but they had to share a communal bathroom. Through the high windows, Dorsett could hear the showers running.
“Did you let your imagination get the best of you?” Ernie asked.
“No way. I was plenty alert. Whoever hit me hid himself inside the closet that holds the water heaters. He must’ve been in there for over an hour, because that’s how long we’d been there, even before the band finished their show. As I passed by, the door creaked open and before I could turn something hit me. I went down.”
“Did you see anything?”
“Nothing. It happened too fast.”
“What about your. 45?”
“They found it later. In a trash can toward the front of the BOQ.”
“What’s the doc say?” Ernie asked.
“He says I’m a stupid butt for not checking inside the room that held the water heaters.”
Marnie wasn’t as excited to see Ernie this time. She seemed distracted and, for the first time since I’d known her, she was puffing away on a cigarette. As we strode up onto the stage of the Camp Henry NCO Club, the other girls greeted us. Cymbals clanged and the bass guitar plunked as Ernie sat down in front of Marnie and asked her what was wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, turning her head, blowing out smoke.
“None of you were hurt last night, were you?”
“No. Nobody hurt. Scared shitless, but not hurt.”
“Tell us what happened, Marnie,” I said.
Marnie shook her head, making her stiff blonde locks rustle beneath the cowgirl hat. She sighed and started talking. “Shelly was taking a shower. The rest of us were in our rooms. I heard footsteps tromping down the central aisle, you know, man’s footsteps, those big combat boots that the G.I. s wear, but I didn’t think anything of it. I figured it was just the MP patrol or the base commander coming over to thank us or something like that. The footsteps went down the hallway, past my room toward the bathroom.”
“The latrine,” Ernie said.
“Whatever you call it. So I thought that was sort of weird, some man walking toward our bathroom, but before I could do anything about it, somebody screamed.”
“Shelly?” I asked.
“None other. I threw on my robe and I was about to step out my door when I heard the same heavy footsteps coming back down the hallway, and I was looking for my shotgun and then I realized I’d left it back in Austin and suddenly I was afraid to open the door. Finally, when the footsteps subsided I ran to the bathroom and found Shelly. She was okay. She said some man had been there rummaging in her bag that was sitting on the bench in front of her shower stall.”