Ernie tore off the yellow copy of the arrest report and handed it to the Korean woman. “Your husband is on the way,” he said. “He’ll escort you over to the Ration Control Office to apply for a new plate.”
There would be a much smaller limit on her new Ration Control Plate. The woman knew this and she started to sniffle again.
Ernie stood up from the rickety wooden field desk and walked toward me. “Have you met Muencher?”
“Not yet,” I said.
He made the introductions. She had a long face with a smattering of freckles across the nose. I could tell by the way that her helmet sat too high on her head that plenty of reddish-blonde hair was knotted up and hidden under there. Pinned to her lapel was the rank insignia of corporal. She held out her hand.
I shook it. The flesh was cool and smooth.
“Sergeant Sueno,” she said. “I’ve heard of you.” I nodded. “You speak Korean, they tell me.”
“A little.”
“More than that.”
“When I have to.”
“And you work with Mr. Kill.”
“Also, when I have to.” I smiled. Some of the MPs were jealous of the special details Ernie and I were assigned to. She didn’t seem to be. I turned to Ernie. “We gotta go.”
“Where?”
“Downtown.”
He nodded, knowing that meant the KNP headquarters. “What about the black market detail?”
“Looks like Corporal Muencher has it all to herself.”
She pointed to her chest. “Just me?”
“You can handle it. In any given situation, just do what Ernie would’ve done.”
“What’s that?”
“Whatever is most likely to piss off Eighth Army,” I told her.
– 9-
After shaving in the barracks and changing into my jacket and tie, I jumped into Ernie’s jeep and he drove us to the KNP headquarters in downtown Seoul. Traffic swirled around us, honking loudly, until we reached the inner city, where it went silent because there was a serious fine for using your horn there. We parked next to the same pindaedok vendor Ernie had used before. She was happy to see us. Her round face shone as Ernie slipped her a thousand-won note, about two bucks. After jostling our way through a heavy flow of pedestrians, we entered the KNP headquarters.
“Another ass-chewing?” Ernie asked.
“I don’t think Kill works that way.”
“How does he work?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
Despite the hiss of warm air in the temperature-controlled building, every foyer and hallway was permeated with the pungent smells of cigarette smoke and kimchi. We climbed two flights of stairs and followed the signs written in hangul down a long hallway. At the end, Officer Oh was waiting for us. With an open palm, she ushered us into the office of Chief Homicide Inspector Gil Kwon-up.
He sat on the edge of his desk, arms crossed, staring at a map of Korea. We walked up next to him. Without turning around, he said, “I understand you experienced a small mishap yesterday.”
“They jumped us from a roof,” I told him. “And the guy we chased was an expert at evasion and escape.”
Kill glanced at the KNP report. “He slid down the fire escape?”
“‘Rappelled’ would be the more exact term.”
“Who was he?” Ernie asked.
Mr. Kill shook his head. “We’re not sure. Not yet.”
“Unlikely to be relatives,” I said.
“Yes, very unlikely.”
Once a woman became a “business girl” in Itaewon, she was most often shunned by her family. It was unfair, because almost all the girls who worked there were forced into prostitution by poverty. There was no social safety net in Korea-no food stamps, no welfare, no unemployment insurance-and jobs were tough to come by, especially for young women who’d only completed Kukmin Hakkyo: People’s School, the minimum six years of elementary education. There were factories opening up that employed legions of young women in very controlled conditions, reminiscent of the military, but even those jobs were highly sought-after and typically required at least a middle school or even high school education.
Farm families could seldom afford to feed an unmarried daughter. Or if they could, they required her to perform grueling work in the fields. Rice was still the main crop in South Korea. Wading in knee-deep water all day in the blistering sun, bending over to carefully transplant tender rice shoots in vast acres of mud was back-breaking work. Under such pressure, many girls ran away. From there, they too often ended up in the brothels and nightclubs of downtown Seoul, catering to Korean salarymen, or in the red light district of Itaewon, servicing American GIs.
“So who else would help her?” Ernie asked.
“Someone who didn’t want her answering questions about Major Schultz,” Kill replied.
“Are you saying there might’ve been a motive for Schultz’s murder other than revenge for Miss Jo?”
Mr. Kill shrugged. “We don’t know. What we do know is that we have to find her and ask her that question, amongst others.” He turned to give us the full benefit of his piercing stare. “And this time, we have to make sure that once she’s taken into custody, she stays in custody.”
“All right,” Ernie said, flopping down in an unused chair. “Now that the ass-chewing is over, how do we find her?”
“She might have stayed in Seoul,” Mr. Kill said. “In a city of eight million people, she could be difficult to track down. But we have an all-points bulletin out on her. We’ll find her eventually.”
“But you don’t think she stayed in Seoul,” I said.
“Why go to all that trouble just to change neighborhoods? I think she might’ve gone south,” he said.
“But if you have an APB out on her,” I said, “it will be dangerous for her anywhere in the country.”
He shook his head. “Not so much. Seoul generates more alerts for fugitives than any other part of the country, by far. Local police don’t have time to follow up. They just file the alerts and forget them, unless the miscreant happens to fall into their lap.”
Kill was always doing that. Using vocabulary like “miscreant” or idioms like “falls into their lap.” Most Americans took his expertise in English for granted. After all, wasn’t everybody supposed to speak English? But I knew how much hard work went into being able to use certain words and idiomatic constructions with ease, and I marveled at his skill. I only wished that someday I would be able to speak Korean half as well as he spoke English.
Kill stood and turned away from the map. He was wearing a charcoal-grey suit, different from the one he’d worn yesterday. His white collared shirt was cut to his exact proportions and sported French cuffs. He cleared his throat. “Officer Oh has been looking into her background.” At his nod, she stepped forward in her neatly pressed blue uniform, bowed slightly, and, arms at her side, she began to recite the information like a schoolgirl in front of a classroom.
“Miss Jo Kyong-ja was born in the city of Mokpo in South Cholla Province. After middle school she lived with her family but leave them, not sure when. Her father die now and mother live with younger brother who study at high school.”
This was common. The older sister’s future had been sacrificed in order to provide an education for the younger brother. But at least she’d been put through middle school.
“Her first District Health Card was issued by Pyongtaek-gun,” Officer Oh continued. The county of Pyongtaek. “Nightclub she work at was Yobo Club in Anjong-ri.”
Ernie whistled. “Right outside the main gate of Camp Humphries,” he said.
We’d both been there. Camp Humphries was the largest Army base in the country, not in population, but in square mileage. Mainly because the compound’s mission was the training of attack helicopter crews and plenty of space was required.