It ran about twenty yards, curving to the left out of sight, lined on either side by the backs of brick-walled homes. Finally it opened into an unkempt rose garden surrounding an open-sided pagoda. A fat bronze kitchen god smiled out at me. In a stand in front of the pagoda, incense glowed. I passed the kitchen god with his fragrant environs and entered another alley emanating like the spoke of a wheel from the round garden. It was a clear pathway running downhill toward the tourist hotels. About twenty yards away, beneath a tiled overhang, two men were standing. As I approached, they emerged from the shadows.
Pruchert, Corporal Robert R.; and, next to him, the somewhat taller black G.I., the one Pruchert had been talking to in the casino. Both of them were holding bricks in their hands.
I could’ve turned around. In fact, I seriously considered it. I was exhausted, my head throbbed with an exploding headache, my nose still hurt, and I was still perspiring from the long run down the beach. However, whatever decision I was going to make had to be made immediately. I made it.
Striding forward, I didn’t slow my pace. Everything in my face and my demeanor was meant to convey that I was here to kick some serious ass. Although in my current depleted condition I didn’t believe I could take these two guys, I had to give the impression that there wasn’t the slightest bit of doubt in my mind that I could turn them both into pulverized hamburger without even working up a sweat. As I strode forward, I reached in my jacket pocket and pulled out my badge. I held it up, pointing it at them like a shield.
“You!” I shouted. “You with the brick in your hand,” addressing the tall black man. “You are not in trouble yet, but if you continue on this course you soon will be. Do you understand me?”
I stared into his eyes, waiting for him to nod assent. He did.
“Now drop the brick,” I said, “and step aside.” Although he hesitated, I pretended I hadn’t noticed. “I’m Agent Sueno, badge number 7432, of the Criminal Investigation Division, Eighth United States Army. Any interference in this enforcement action will be considered a criminal offense. Is that understood?”
Neither man dropped his brick. Neither man stepped back.
I strode toward Pruchert, completely ignoring the other man with the brick, and shoved Pruchert on his shoulder. He stared at me dumbly. I ordered him to turn around. He did. Then I slipped my badge into my pocket and started frisking him. He hadn’t yet dropped the brick. The man behind me held his ground.
I frisked Pruchert as if it were the most routine operation in the world. As I did so, I slapped the brick out of his hand. It clattered to the ground.
I cuffed him. At any moment, I expected to feel something heavy and solid landing on the back of my head. Nothing happened. When Pruchert was securely handcuffed, I turned and stared at
the other G.I.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Bollington,” he replied.
“Rank?”
“E-4.”
“What unit?”
At this he balked. He looked away and said, “I don’t want to get into any trouble behind this.”
“So far,” I said, “you haven’t done anything to get in trouble for.”
I squinted at him, waiting. He glanced away from me and then looked back. He told me his unit, which, frankly, I wasn’t paying any attention to. All my attention was riveted on his right hand, the hand that held the brick.
“Let me see some ID,” I said.
Bollington’s long fingers loosened and the brick fell to the ground.
Before Pruchert and I were halfway back to the casino, I saw a red light flashing. And then another. Police vehicles, on the edge of town where the high-rise buildings of the Haeundae Beach area started. A blue KNP patrol car sat nearby.
Pruchert and I walked up to the MP sergeant. He turned, and I realized that I knew him. Sergeant Norris.
“Sueno,” he said. “I thought you were in Taegu.”
“I was, earlier today.”
“We received a report about a disturbance at the Haeundae Casino involving Americans.”
I shoved Pruchert toward him. “Here’s your disturbance.”
Norris handed Pruchert off to his partner, who frisked him again and shoved him into the backseat of the jeep.
“You’ll want to turn him over to the KNPs,” I said.
“Why?”
I explained.
Norris whistled. “The Blue Train rapist. Good collar for you.”
Pruchert leaned forward in the backseat of the jeep. “What?” he shouted in a reedy voice. “What’s this about rape?”
“Shut the hell up,” Norris said.
The other MP shoved Pruchert back against the seat.
We held a quick conference with the KNPs, with me doing the translating. We finally arranged for Norris and his partner to drive Pruchert over to the Pusan KNP Station. I rode with the KNPs. My stomach felt queasy, from the fried chicken and gravy I’d eaten earlier in the evening, from exhaustion, from the stress of the collar. I didn’t want to start interrogating Pruchert yet and somehow screw things up.
Besides, I trusted Inspector Kill.
He’d been notified and was on his way to the station.
The case against Pruchert was based strictly on the fact that he’d had the means and the opportunity to commit the murder. The means, simply because he was bigger and stronger than the women who’d been raped, although we hadn’t found the murder weapon yet. The opportunity, because he’d been away from his post of duty during the times the crimes had been committed. Furthermore, he’d taken elaborate precautions to cover his tracks; to make it seem as if he were studying Buddhism in a remote monastery when in reality he was black-marketing in the slums of Taegu and using that money to feed his gambling habit. Did he have another habit? A habit of rape?
Both of the victims had been robbed, their purses rifled for whatever bills were available. Certainly Pruchert was well known in the Haeundae Casino. Was he also well known in the Walker Hill Casino in Seoul, closer to where the first rape had been committed? That was something Inspector Kill would be checking out.
The interrogation lasted for two hours, and Pruchert was smart enough to stick to a simple story. If his gambling habit-and his black-marketing habit-were uncovered, he’d lose his top secret clearance. Without that, he’d no longer be able to work on the highly classified signal equipment at Horang-ni Signal Site. Pruchert wasn’t rich, he had nobody at home backing him up, and he needed his job in the army. He was good at what he did on that job, and he fully expected to make warrant officer some day if he stuck with it. Therefore he’d taken elaborate precautions to keep his extracurricular activities secret. In the army, with so many men living together in close confines, everyone knows everyone else’s business-and this is especially true at a remote signal site. So Pruchert came up with a cover story. He was studying Buddhism, and was so devout that he actually was giving serious consideration to becoming a monk. The teachers at the Dochung Temple didn’t take on novices who they didn’t think were serious. On the other hand, they were a trusting lot. When Pruchert told them that he wanted to meditate on his own, alone in a small cave, they gave him the privacy they thought he needed. He had betrayed that trust and told Inspector Kill now that he regretted having done it.
“I had to get away,” he told Kill. “Don’t you see? Everyone was watching me.”
“Why do you gamble?” Kill asked.
“I don’t like to gamble,” Pruchert responded.
“Then why do you do it?”