“I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead.”
“ ‘Speaking ill?’ What the hell are you talking about, Quincy?”
Quincy turned away and stalked down the long hallway of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters toward the dayroom. We followed. A green felt pool table and a TV sat unused. The room was empty. He plopped down heavily in a padded chair.
“I thought it was all over,” Quincy said. “I thought no one would come around asking me questions.”
I grabbed a three-legged stool and sat opposite Quincy. “A man’s life depends on your truthfulness, Captain Quincy. Anything you say will be held in a file classified Secret.”
He nodded, sighed, and let out a long burst of air. “Dick Everson jogged,” he told me. “He was in good shape, and that’s part of the reason he was popular with the ladies.”
“What’s the other reason?”
“He’s a pediatrician. You know how women love pediatricians.”
I didn’t but I let him talk.
“So he gave a few speeches at the Officers’ Wives Club. You know, on the welfare of children in the Command, on what the OWC could do to help, things like that.”
Ernie pulled out a stick of ginseng gum and unwrapped it. “So Everson hooked up with a couple of the wives,” he said.
Quincy swiveled his round head and frowned at Ernie. “Only one wife.” We waited, the silence growing longer, hoping he’d tell us who. Finally he answered the unspoken question. “I don’t know who she was. Dick Everson was a gentleman. He’d never talk. But every night when he put on his jogging suit and went out for a run, it always lasted a lot longer than it should have. At least an hour. More often two. And he came back smiling.”
“How can you be sure he was meeting this woman?” I asked.
“He told me. I could tell something was up. I didn’t pry, but he told me that she lived with her husband in quarters on post and he reassured me that this woman had no children.”
“That was important to him?” Ernie asked.
“Very,” Quincy replied. “He would have no part in traumatizing kids.”
“Decent of him,” Ernie said.
“But he didn’t give you her name?” I asked.
“No. Like I said, Dick Everson was a gentleman.”
“Boffing a fellow officer’s wife,” Ernie said. “Is that in the manual?”
Quincy’s face flared red. “He broke up with her,” he said. “She didn’t want to, but he knew it had to be done.”
“When?” I asked.
“Two months ago. Maybe three.”
After that, Ernie shot some pool. I asked a few more questions, but they didn’t go anywhere. When I finished with Quincy, we left.
Nothing else in Captain Richard Everson’s military life seemed in any way unusual. Ernie and I weren’t exactly sure where to take this unofficial investigation. At least we weren’t sure until that night in Itaewon when we ran into Choi Yong-kung’s mother again. She had been waiting for us on the road that leads from 8th Army headquarters to the nightclub district.
She grabbed my sleeve, pleading with me. Telling us she had someone she wanted us to talk to.
Miss Tae, the former waitress at the Silver Dragon Club, did indeed have long, straight, beautiful legs. She showed them off by keeping them crossed under her short skirt at the table in a Korean teahouse where we met.
After having escorted us to the teahouse, Yong-kuang’s mother made a discreet departure.
“When I left Everson,” Miss Tae said in Korean, “the ice pick was still on the ground, the GI doctor was alive, and Choi Yong-kuang had run away too.”
“Why don’t you tell this to the Korean police?”
“They would beat me. Make me tell them what they want to hear. So they don’t lose face and have to admit that they were wrong.”
I wasn’t so sure if that was true. Not for Lieutenant Pak Un-pyong, anyway, the chief investigator in the this case. But it was probably true for the institution he represented.
“So who killed Everson?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Then who does?”
Ernie couldn’t take his eyes off Miss Tae’s legs. I concentrated on her face. Too heavily made up for my taste, but I could still admire the darkly lidded narrow eyes and the gentle curve of the smooth white flesh beneath her high cheekbones.
She sipped on a porcelain cup of green tea, set it down, and then spoke. “To find out the truth, there is a man you must talk to. He paid us to murder Captain Everson.”
I almost choked on my tea. When I recovered, I translated for Ernie.
“Paid you?” he asked.
She turned to him, speaking in English now. “Yes. But we no do. We no can do.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Someone paid you and Choi Yong-kuang to kill Everson, but you couldn’t go through with it?”
She nodded. “After we left, someone else kill Everson.”
“Maybe this man who paid you,” I said.
She nodded again.
“What is his name?”
“He called himself Mr. Kim.”
I groaned inwardly. The most common name in Korea. More common than Smith or Jones in the United States. Miss Tae continued.
“Mr. Kim come in Silver Dragon Club. Quietly. Wearing hat and sunglasses. He watch me with Everson. When Everson leave, he talk to me. Find out I have boyfriend who is kampei.” Gangster. She was talking about Choi. “Later he meet us both and offer us money to murder Everson.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. He never say. But one thing …” Miss Tae ran her long fingers along the edge of her teacup. “He strange.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Kim. I don’t think he hate Everson. I don’t think he even know Everson.”
“Someone else wanted Everson killed?”
“I think so.”
“But you don’t know who,” I said.
Miss Tae shook her head. I kept asking questions but was unable to pull any further information from her. When his turn came, Ernie asked her questions having nothing to do with the Everson case. Before we left, Ernie had convinced her to go out with him. The date was set for next week, Tuesday. In her new job, in a nightclub downtown, Miss Tae wasn’t off until then.
Ernie was willing to wait. “You think she’s lying?” he asked.
We were walking down the brightly lit main drag of Itaewon.
“Probably,” I answered. “This mysterious Mr. Kim is a convenient scapegoat. But if she’s telling any part of the truth, it could mean that someone else actually did murder Captain Everson.”
“Like who?”
I had an idea. But I didn’t want to say anything yet. Not without proof.
The next morning I was on the phone again, identifying myself as a CID agent and asking questions. After about a dozen calls and a trip to the 8th Army housing office, I had the information I needed.
We sat at a table wedged against a side wall of the big Quonset hut that serves as the 8th Army snack bar. I sipped coffee. Ernie glanced at my notes. “Thorough,” he said.
“Thanks.”
What I had done was obtain a list from the Housing Officer of all the accompanied quarters on South Post along with the names of family members, and therefore I had a list of all the wives who lived on South Post. Almost two hundred names. First I crossed off all those who had children. The remaining list was about three dozen strong. I crossed off the enlisted families, and then I was down to twenty-six names.
“How’d you eliminate names after that?” Ernie asked.
“I made phone calls to their husbands’ units. Found out what shifts they worked.”
Ernie slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Of course. Everson used to visit her at night. So her husband had to work nights. Probably a swing shift.”
“Probably. That left us with three names.”
“So we go talk to them?”
“No. I’ve narrowed the list down to one.”
“One?”
“If I’m right, and if this woman were somehow involved in Everson’s death, she would’ve had to be able to persuade a Korean man, this mysterious Mr. Kim, to take the risk of approaching Miss Tae and Choi Yong-kuang and paying them to commit murder.”