“I did it once. Some buddies took me over. They thought it was fun. I didn’t. I lost all my money, everything I had in the bank.” He leaned forward and grabbed the cuff of Inspector Kill’s coat. “Don’t you see? It took me years to save it, years of hard work. I had to get my money back.”
The compulsive gambler’s famous last words: I have to get my money back.
Kill told Pruchert about the Blue Train, accusing him of traveling north toward Seoul, committing the rape, and leaving the train near Anyang. Pruchert vehemently denied it. Kill continued, claiming that when Pruchert returned from Seoul and arrived at the Pusan Station, he followed Mrs. Hyon Mi-sook to the Shindae Tourist Hotel and, while her two children cowered in the bathroom, he raped her; and when she resisted, he stabbed her to death.
Again Pruchert denied it. “The only time I’m ever on the Blue Train,” he claimed, “is when I travel from Taegu to Pusan, after I’ve black-marketed with Lucy.”
Lucy. The woman who was the leader of Migun Chonguk, G.I. Heaven.
After the interrogation, Inspector Kill had Pruchert locked in a cell, alone, to ponder his fate. He told Ernie and me that he was going to contact the Walker Hill Casino with a description of Pruchert to see if he was a regular there and, if so, when he’d last been there to gamble. Casinos in Korea keep records of the exchange of foreign currency to won, the Korean currency. These records are required by the government. If we were lucky, they might have Pruchert’s name in those records.
For my part, I promised to spend the morning back on Hialeah Compound checking Pruchert’s ration-control records, to see if we could get a handle on how much he’d been black-marketing and from where he’d made the purchases. Inspector Kill dispatched a patrol car to pick up the vendor who’d sold the rapist the purse in front of the Pusan train station and the cab driver who’d driven him to the Shindae Hotel. Once they were brought in, they’d see if the two witnesses could identify him.
I thanked Inspector Kill and told him I was returning to Hialeah Compound. Once more he insisted that I travel in one of his police sedans. I told him that I had my own wheels this time, although actually I could use a ride to the Haeundae Casino to retrieve the army sedan.
He consented and, after being dropped off near the vehicle, I made my way through the early-morning Pusan traffic, heading toward Hialeah Compound.
In the sedan, on my way to Hialeah, I thought about my latest conversation with Sergeant Norris. After we’d delivered Corporal Pruchert safe and sound to the Pusan Police Station, Norris had pulled me aside and said, “I talked to him again.”
“Who?”
“That sailor. The one who wants to talk to Sway-no.”
“What’d he say?”
“He wants you to meet him. The safest place is along the docks, at the end of Pier Seven. There’s a chophouse there that East European sailors sometimes use. He doesn’t want to meet you there. ‘Too many eyes,’ he said. But behind the chophouse about twenty yards, there’s an overlook along the water.”
“When?”
“Twenty-three hundred hours, any evening. He’ll be there waiting every night.”
“He sounds serious.”
“He is.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No one,” Norris replied. “Not even my partner. There’s something about the guy. He’s nervous, worried. I think it could be something important.”
“Any idea what?”
“He wouldn’t spill. He only wants to talk to you.”
“How long will he be in port?”
“Until Thursday.”
That gave me four nights. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
Before I walked away, Sergeant Norris grabbed me by the elbow. “He said for you to come alone, but I think you should take some backup with you.”
“That might scare him off.”
Norris thought about it. “At least be armed,” he said finally.
“You’re suspicious of this guy,” I said.
Norris frowned. “Not of him so much, but of the people he might be dealing with.”
“Like who?”
“I wish I knew. He hasn’t told me anything. He only wants to talk to you. It just seems odd, though.”
“What does?”
“That he knows you by name.”
Norris was right. That did seem odd.
The Hialeah Compound Data Processing Center said they’d work on gathering Pruchert’s ration-control records for me and I could pick them up that afternoon. At the MP station, I called Riley.
“Where the hell have you been?” Riley screamed.
I held the phone away from my ear. “Chasing criminals,” I said. “What the hell do you think?”
“Do you consider your partner, Bascom, to be one of those criminals?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Taegu. Camp Henry. At oh two hundred hours this morning. MP report sitting on the Provost Marshal’s desk this morning. Looks like your buddy Ernie punched out a captain in the United States Army.”
“Embry?”
“Aha! I knew you’d know what I was talking about. There was a fight at the…” Riley rustled through some paperwork. “… the New Taegu Tourist Hotel in downtown Taegu. The KNPs were called, along with the MPs, and then a medical unit ambulance from the compound. It looks like Captain Frederick Raymond Embry was roughed up royally. He’s in the dispensary on Camp Henry right now.”
“How badly was he hurt?”
Riley looked at the paperwork again. “He’ll live. A few stitches. And maybe his nose will be a little twisted.”
“How about Ernie?”
“Scratches and bruises. Nothing serious. He was treated and released to the tender mercies of the Camp Henry MP station.”
“They have him locked up?”
“What else? You can’t go beating up officers for no good reason.”
“No good reason? Captain Embry was stalking one of the women in the band, Marnie Orville. Ernie was assigned to protect her. We even have reason to believe that Embry might’ve been the one who attacked that MP.”
As usual, instead of rewarding us for doing a tough job, 8th Army was berating us for doing what they’d told us to do.
“Marnie?” Riley asked. “She’s in the report here too.”
“And you’re the one,” I said, “who helped her locate Freddy Ray Embry, so she could contact him and get this shit started.”
Riley ignored me. “Let me see,” he said, shuffling through more paperwork. “Yeah, here it is. Marnie Orville says that Agent Ernie Bascom attacked Captain Frederick Raymond Embry without provocation.”
“‘Without provocation’? I’m on my way.” I slammed the phone down.
By the time I’d made the two-hour drive to Taegu, I was so tired that I was starting to hallucinate. Still, I made my way to the MP station, parked the green army sedan in the gravel lot, and walked inside and asked the desk sergeant about Ernie.
“No one’s allowed to talk to him,” the desk sergeant told me.
“By God, I will,” I said. “I didn’t drive all the way up here for nothing.”
“I don’t give a damn how far you drove. Nobody talks to him.”
“By whose orders?”
“Major Squireward.”
“Where’s his office?”
“You don’t have a need to know.”
I was about fed up with everybody’s attitude around here. I grabbed the desk sergeant by the collar of his fatigues and hauled him part way over the counter.
“You get Agent Bascom out here, and you get him out here now! You got that?”
The desk sergeant clawed at my arms, and I kept pulling. Soon he was on top of the counter, kicking with his combat boots. He rolled off of the counter and hit the wood-paneled floor with a thud. By then, other MPs had run in from the back rooms. One of them grabbed me, and I swiveled and punched him. Then nightsticks came out. A couple of them swung, and I dodged and grabbed more green material. I felt myself falling, and a huge pile fell on top of me. Somehow, someone clamped handcuffs on one wrist; two men held the other wrist steady as the second cuff was clamped shut.
They dragged me into a back room.
It was another twenty minutes before I stopped cursing. And kicking the bottom of the door with my foot, smashing the hell out of my toe.