“The young captain would be out on his ass, and the old sarge would be lucky to hang on until retirement.” Ernie popped another stick of gum into his mouth. “So why the girl?”
“Whoever it was that popped me on the head thought it over later and decided that he should have killed me. Aware of Miss Ma’s charms, he decided that even with a bump on the head I’d make it out to her hooch last night.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No. So he was sitting there waiting for me, staring at her, and he realized that all she’d have to do is open her mouth once and I’d know who was behind the whole scene.”
“So he killed her?”
“Exactly.”
Ernie shook his head. “The guy should have taken the rap for the copper wire. Let it go at that.”
We flashed our identification to the MPs at the main gate, and Ernie stared up the hill.
“Who do we see first? Sergeant Rawlings or Captain Calloway?”
I thought about it. Captain Calloway was a young officer, the kind who cherished his army career maybe more than he cherished his left testicle. But still he was young. And he had a college degree. If he got kicked out with a bad discharge, he could get up, dust himself off, and continue with his life. Sergeant Rawlings, on the other hand, didn’t even have a high school diploma. And the skills he’d learned in the army-chewing out privates and pilfering supplies-don’t pay a lot on the outside. He’d probably end up driving a hack and working on systematically demolishing his liver.
I decided to go with the more desperate of the two.
“Sergeant Rawlings first,” I said.
We found Rawlings at the NCO Club, on his favorite barstool, having a shot of bourbon with his lunch. It looked like the Chef’s Special was pretzels.
He was a burly guy with wrists as thick as my biceps, so we didn’t bother with any formalities. Ernie slammed his head down on the bar, I pulled his left wrist back and cuffed it, and then we both wrestled him off the stool until his arms were cuffed behind his back. Ernie took his knee off his spine long enough to read him his rights.
“Why’d you kill the girl, Rawlings?”
“What girl?”
“Miss Ma. Out at the Golden Night Club.”
“Stuff it.”
He clammed up and said he would tell us nothing until he talked to a lawyer. That’s what I like about old NCOs. They always take a common sense approach to problem solving.
Captain Calloway’s neatly painted jeep sat in front of the logistics office. I checked the odometer, yanked the trip ticket off its clipboard, and compared the readings.
Everything clicked, like a bunch of zeros lining up at a hundred thousand miles.
When we went in, he was talking on the phone and thumbing through paperwork, acting way too busy to talk to us.
When he finally hung up, he said, “Who the hell are you?”
I showed him my badge. He smirked.
“Undercover, huh? Well, you won’t find anything missing here at Supply Point Fourteen. And all that copper wire, that can be explained.”
Like I said, some people just want to get caught.
Ernie spoke first. “We’re not here about the wire.”
Captain Calloway flinched but quickly straightened his face. I held up the trip ticket.
“Your driver closed out the jeep’s log last night at twelve thousand four hundred sixty-three miles, but now the odometer reading is twelve thousand four hundred sixty-six miles. Three miles. It’s a mile and a half to Kumchon, so the jeep has traveled the equivalent of one round trip.”
Captain Calloway’s neck muscles worked up and down his throat, and his right hand crawled toward the telephone receiver, as if he were going to call for help.
I continued. “You started watching me when you noticed I was speaking Korean to Miss Ma at the Golden Night Club. Not your typical GI on his first tour in the Orient. That’s why you were raising hell in the orderly room. An excuse to check me out. And then you followed me when I broke into the warehouse last night and clubbed me over the head when I came out.
“You’ve probably already destroyed the invoices, but you knew that with a little homework we’ll uncover the whole scheme. You could deny any accusation Rawlings might make against you, just accuse him of trying to bargain his way out of trouble, but in the end you’ll be charged with dereliction of duty; with letting your subordinates get away with pilfering hundreds of dollars’ worth of supplies. That, at least. Even if you’re found innocent, it will mean the end of your army career.
“Hitting me over the head and destroying the invoices was only meant to give yourself a little more time. A little time to go out to Kumchon and take your revenge on Miss Ma for finding a new boyfriend. Or maybe take your revenge on the new boyfriend and stop him from blowing the whistle on your little black market scheme. What you didn’t expect is that I wouldn’t go out there. And when I didn’t show up, you took it out on her.”
Calloway stared directly at me, but for him I wasn’t there.
Ernie clicked his gum a couple of times.
“We can check with the MPs on duty last night,” I said. “They’ll remember you driving your jeep off post.”
Calloway stood up slowly. “There’s no need.” He bowed his head for a moment, and then he looked up at us. “It was Rawlings’s idea. He said he’d sold copper wire before, on previous tours over here. It was easy money. I used the money at first to spend weekends down in Seoul. In first class hotels. But then I met Miss Ma, and instead I spent all my time in Kumchon. I tried to get her to quit her job, stay with me, but she wouldn’t do it.”
His eyes widened, as if he were amazed at something.
“I’m an officer, with a good future, and I was getting rich, but she still turned me down. Can you believe it? But you! You with no money, just here for a few days …”
He shook his head, angry at the tears that were squeezing themselves out of his knotted face.
Ernie’s gum clicked faster. He didn’t like this kind of thing. He twisted Calloway around and made him assume the position up against the wall. Then he cuffed him and read him his rights. All the while Calloway cried, and when Ernie was finished, he had to unwrap two more sticks of gum and pop them nervously into his mouth.
We stayed at RC4 for a couple more days, wrapping things up, trying to enjoy the freedom of being away from the flagpole, but it didn’t work.
Someone from Miss Ma’s family came and took her body away. And the little girl.
We went back to Seoul.
On cold winter nights I still think of the woman from Hamhung, with her big warm smile, and the little girl who refused to cry.
THE DRAGON’S TAIL
Strange asked us to meet him at the Snatch Bar.
Its official title was the Snack Bar, but Strange liked to call it the Snatch Bar because he claimed he always found some “strange” there. That is, lonely female dependents of officers and NCOs who were unable to resist his charms. What charms those were, though, was beyond me. He was overweight and balding, always wore wrap-around dark glasses and sucked on a greasy plastic cigarette holder that never left his lips. His real name was Harvey and he was the non-commissioned officer in charge of classified documents at headquarters, working directly with the Commander of 8th United States Army and the Chief of Staff and everyone who made the most important decisions for the United States forces in the Republic of Korea. So my partner, Ernie Bascom, and I put up with Strange. We listened patiently to his fantasies, no matter how perverted, and, as a quid pro quo, we fed him fantasies of our own. The information he provided was just too good to ignore.
At the stainless steel serving line, I purchased a thick porcelain mug of steaming hot black coffee, carried it through the crowded cafeteria, and plopped it down on the table in front of Strange.