The MPs face crinkled in rage. “Screw you too, Bascom,” he shouted.
That was enough for Lieutenant Burcshoff to swivel her head and the barrel of the pistol along with it. I took two running steps and leapt across the couch. Ernie charged at the same time.
Lieutenant Burcshoff, with the reflexes of a tennis pro, backed off at the last moment. Ernie and I crashed into one another. Still, I was able to fling out my right hand and grab hold of one of her wrists. With all my strength I wrenched her arm toward the ground. She screamed, jerked her arm away, and twisted the barrel of the.45 toward her mouth.
Ernie kicked and flailed beneath me. A shot rang out. The smell of gunpowder exploded up my nostrils.
Heavy boots pounded down the hallway, and a herd of elephants crashed through the door.
I kept grabbing and turning and twisting, hoping to keep her from firing again. Finally a pair of knees ground into my back. MPs knelt above me and handcuffed my hands. In the confusion no one knew who was friend or foe. They sat me up against a bookcase.
They dragged Ernie, kicking and screaming, behind the safety of the couch.
General Skulgrin, the 8th Army commander, marched into the room. He knelt next to Lieutenant Burcshoff, one khaki-covered knee sopping up a puddle of blood. He turned his head and bellowed an order. “Get an ambulance! Now!”
Ernie was till wrestling with the MP he’d given the finger to. I heard knuckles crack on bone, and then reinforcement held Ernie to the ground until he finally stopped struggling.
General Skulgrin stuck gnarled fingers into the base of Burcshoff’s neck, feeling for a pulse. There wasn’t much left of the top of her skull. Finally he spoke to the MP officer hovering nearby. “Cancel the ambulance. She’s dead.”
He started to reach for the pearl-handled.45. A voice erupted in the room. To my surprise I realized it was mine.
“Don’t touch it! That pistol belongs to her! Not to her father. Not to her grandfather. Not to anyone else. It belongs to her!”
All eyes in the room stared at me, figuring I’d gone mad.
THE MYSTERIOUS MR. KIM
The old woman tugged so fiercely on my shirtsleeve that I almost toppled off of my barstool.
“You save my son!” she screamed.
Ernie set down his frothing brown bottle of Oriental Beer, swiveled, and grabbed the elderly woman by the worn cotton of her loose Korean tunic. I regained my balance and grappled with her for a moment, and soon Ernie and I wedged her between us, me waving my open palm in front of her nose and telling her, “Choyong hei.” Calm down.
Ernie and I were off duty, bar hopping through the red light district of Itaewon and, as we were wont to do, hoisting a few wets. About the last thing we expected was to be assaulted, for no apparent reason, by a hysterical old woman.
The out-of-tune rock band twanged their last note and then stopped playing, their mouths open, gawking at us. The GI customers also stared, as did the “business girls,” their nightly work interrupted in mid-hustle.
The old woman stopped screeching long enough for Ernie and me to walk her over to a corner table. I sat down next to her, patting the back of her bony hand.
She had to be in at least her early sixties. Most of her teeth were missing. The strong brown eyes in the center of her face were enveloped by the burn wrinkles of someone who had spent the better part of her life toiling in muddy rice fields. When it seemed that she wouldn’t start grabbing on me again, Ernie returned to the bar and brought over our drinks.
Now that she had our attention, she spoke in rapid Korean. Breathlessly, so fast that I had trouble following and asked her to repeat herself more than once. Finally, I managed to absorb the outlines of her story.
Her son had been arrested, tried, and convicted of that most horrible of crimes: murder.
The case wasn’t exactly unknown to us. In fact, it was the biggest flap to hit 8th Army in years.
A US Army doctor, Captain Richard Everson, had been stabbed to death in one of the narrow back alleys behind the flashing neon of Itaewon. An ice pick was found at the scene, and smeared blood confirmed it as the murder weapon. The apparent motive? Robbery. Captain Everson’s wristwatch, fraternity ring, and wallet were all missing.
Since the crime occurred outside of a military reservation, jurisdiction for the case fell squarely on the capable shoulders of the Korean National Police. With the international spotlight on them, the KNPs wasted no time. All known thugs in the Itaewon area were rounded up, and soon-after interrogations involving rubber hoses-a suspect was identified. Choi Yong-kuang was his name, the son of the woman sitting in front of us. He had accomplices. Three other young men who were members of his gang, according to the KNPs, but all three of the men had testified that it was Choi Yong-kuang who had actually done the stabbing of Captain Richard Everson.
Why had they killed Everson when they’d already had him outnumbered and disabled? Sheer meanness, according to Choi’s former comrades. Choi Yong-kuang had just wanted to watch an American die.
Although Ernie and I had monitored the case-as had everyone else in 8th Army who worked in law enforcement-we hadn’t actually worked on it. No Americans had.
I explained this to the old woman. She would have to talk to the KNPs.
Of course she already had.
“They told me to leave them alone, and when I refused, they did this to me.” She pointed to a puffed blue welt on the side of her face.
I had been translating for Ernie as we went along. He turned to the old woman and said in English, “What the hell do you want us to do?”
She understood and answered in broken English. “My son rob American doctor,” she said, “but he no kill American doctor. His friend, they all lie because Korean police beat them up. Somebody come later, after my son take money, go and stab doctor with ice pick. You Americans. Everybody in Itaewon say you CID. You can find out about American doctor. Find out who want kill him.”
Ernie shook his head. “There’s no reason in the world, Mama-san, to think that the killer was anyone besides your son.”
“Yes. There’s reason,” she answered. “Korean police, they know. Ice pick come from drink place up top hill. The Silver Dragon.”
The most expensive nightclub in the Itaewon bar district.
“How do they know that?”
“They know many things, but they no say.”
“Why not?” Ernie asked.
“I don’t know. You ask them. You find out.”
Ernie shook his head again. “This isn’t our case.”
The old woman leaned forward and grabbed his wrist in a white-knuckled clench. “If I have money, I give you, but I no have money. Next week, they kill my son.”
The Korean judicial system doesn’t tolerate endless appeals or long waits on death row. Within a month or two of arrest, convicted murderers are on their way to the gallows.
“If my son die,” she said, “then I die.” She sliced her thumb across her throat.
Ernie glanced around at the swirling interior of the smoke-filled bar. The business girls had become bored with us and were back to hustling GIs. The rock band was blaring again. Waitresses were busy slamming down bubbling bottles of Oscar, a locally fermented sparkling burgundy.
Ernie crossed his arms. “No can do,” he said.
With that, the old woman closed her eyes, fighting back tears. A moment later she started rocking back and forth, mumbling some Korean folk song.
Her singing grew louder, so loud that I could no longer hear the hubbub of the voices that surrounded me. I could only hear her ancient song of death.
Later that evening, after the old woman left, Ernie and I walked up the hill to the Silver Dragon Club.
“What the hell,” Ernie said. “Won’t hurt to look.”