He twisted the portable lamp, aiming it at the paperwork on his desk until his face was again deep in shadow. Then he sat down and began reading, ignoring me completely. I thought of Han Ok-hi’s parents. Their daughter was gone. I thought of my own responsibility. I wanted to speak, but what was there to say? So I stood there, silently, the only sound in the room the scratch, scratch, scratch, of a fountain pen on parchment.
A squad of Military Police vehicles, sirens blaring, escorted us south, away from Seoul, away from Tango, toward the town known as Songtan.
“VIP treatment,” Ernie said. “About time.”
We were in the back seat of yet another Army-issue sedan. This time with two MPs up front, one driving, the other holding an M-16 rifle across his lap.
Ernie leaned forward. “You guys ever seen two GIs being treated better than this?”
“Yeah,” the driver drawled. “When we transport them in chains down to the stockade.”
The other MP guffawed. Ernie sat back in his seat and turned to me and smirked. “Jealousy is a terrible thing.”
But I wasn’t so sure the MPs were wrong. We’d just been handed a hot potato by the Commanding General of the 8th United States Army and we’d just been given permission to ride roughshod over any military staff officer who dared to stand in our way. In the Machiavellian world of the 8th Army bureaucracy, such power had to be used with caution. Staff officers have long memories. And they know how to bite. Not to mention that failure meant court-martial. But I tried not to think about that.
We were off the expressway now, on a country road leading south toward Songtan-up. The town of Songtan. “Si” on the end of a place name means city, “up” means town, and “li” or “ni” means village. The farther down the hierarchy you go, the farther out in the country you are. Rice paddies stretched away on either side, and the MP convoy occasionally was forced to swerve around an ox-drawn cart laden with piles of moist alfalfa. The weather was cold and hazy, the way I like it. When I was growing up in L.A., we didn’t experience many days like this: overcast, fresh air, a brisk chill invigorating a gentle breeze. What we got mostly was blazing hot sidewalks and smog thick enough to make breathing painful when we tried to play.
It was autumn now. According to ancient poets, the most beautiful time of the year on the Korean Peninsula. The time when the name Chosun, the Land of the Morning Calm, seems most appropriate. When leaves turn brown and red and yellow, and farmers harvest the last dry fields of grain, and rice paddies are flooded in preparation for the winter freeze. Autumn is the time of Chusok, the harvest moon festival, on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month. When families gather and perform the seibei ceremony and then trek out into the countryside, toward grave mounds dotting round hills, to commune with the dead. To eat a family lunch with long-departed relatives and provide them with updates on the progress of the living. It’s a warm time, a family time, a time of bounty and good cheer. And a melancholy time for an American GI alone in a strange country. But I’m used to that. I grew up in foster homes in L.A., and I felt alone in a strange country there too.
Straw-thatched huts lined the two-lane road but they soon gave way to tile-roofed buildings. Behind a line of hills was the vast acreage of Osan Air Force Base, the largest American air base in Korea.
At the edge of Songtan, we passed the open parking lot of the bustling Songtan Bus Station and hung a right across a double line of railroad tracks. The one-lane road narrowed, and we slowed to a crawl. The road became even narrower, and we spotted the first pool halls and beer joints, and finally the lead jeep pulled over. The MPs parked their vehicles, leaving one MP behind as a guard, and we stepped into the maze of passageways and alleys that branched out from the main road.
Shops filled every nook and cranny: brassware emporiums, leather goods stores, sporting equipment outlets, and then, at last, the bars. One nightclub after another, each with brightly colored neon just now blinking on in the late-afternoon dusk. Business girls, most freshly made-up for their night’s work, loitered in bead-draped doorways. They waved at the MPs, inviting them in, laughing, cooing at us. A few of the MPs waved back.
The NCO in charge barked: “Knock off the bullshit!” The MPs turned away from the girls and resumed their grim-faced expressions.
There was no doubt where the crime scene was located. The entire walkway had been roped off, and two Korean National Policemen stood guard. Ernie showed them his CID badge, and I flashed my newly-minted military identification card. When they hesitated, Ernie said, “He’s with me.” He grabbed me by the arm, lifted the white police tape, and before the cops could react, the two of us ducked through.
Behind us, scantily-clad business girls flooded out of the front doorways of every bar lining the alleyway.
“Set up a perimeter,” the MP sergeant shouted. His men scurried, preparing to protect this crowded little walkway from the threat of a pack of mini-skirted Korean bargirls.
Why had General Armbrewster sent such a large contingent of MPs with us? I suppose because he wanted to show that he meant business. The murder of an innocent young woman had struck a nerve here in Korea, and the honchos of 8th Army were always wary of bad publicity. Ernie and I were to be provided with the resources we needed to conduct this investigation as we saw fit. Actually, we hoped to ditch the MP escort as soon as possible. Grabbing a lot of attention was good for advancing a military career, but it wasn’t much help in solving a murder.
Three men in khaki stood outside the mouth of a dark alley. As we approached, they watched us expectantly. Korean cops. One of the men I recognized. Captain Noh, commander of the Songtan contingent of the Korean National Police. We’d worked with him once or twice before. Results had been mixed but, fortunately, Ernie hadn’t pissed him off. Not much anyway.
We shook hands and rapid introductions were made. Without further ado, Captain Noh led us down the alleyway.
He was a grim-faced man with a lugubrious expression and a no-nonsense, by-the-book way of doing his job. Last time we’d worked with him he’d told Ernie and me that he’d been prowling the streets of Songtan for more than twenty years, since the end of the Korean War. Crime had gotten worse, according to him. After the war, people were starving, and they stole, robbed, and maimed in order to feed their families. Now, he said, they were becoming westernized. They stole, robbed, and maimed simply for kicks.
Ten-foot-high brick and cement-block walls loomed on either side of the narrow pathway. Behind the walls, pots clanged and radios blared. Families at home, hidden behind their barricades, cut off from the raucous world of the GI bar district. Every half meter or so, a brick-lined channel in the center of the cobbled lane was punctuated by three-inch-wide air vents. Sewage bubbled through subterranean passageways, reeking of ammonia and soap suds and waste. The air in the walkway was pungent not only with the smell of sewage, but with clouds of charcoal gas billowing out from beneath the warm ondol floors that heated the homes behind the walls.
The alley curved and then curved again. Sinuous, like a dragon winding its way through a stone maze. Finally, in front of a red tile-roofed overhang in the center of a red-brick wall, Captain Noh stopped. The wall didn’t look too welcoming. It was topped with rusted barbed wire and shards of glass embedded in mortar. Captain Noh rapped on the varnished wooden gate and shouted, “Na ya!” It’s me!
Immediately, the door in the gate opened.
Inside, a uniformed KNP came to attention and saluted. Captain Noh returned the salute as he ducked through the door. The rest of our entourage followed him inside. Before entering, I paused to study the recessed gate. Embedded in the cement wall next to the door was a metal speaker for an intercom system, and below that a brass placard. I pushed the buzzer. It worked. I pulled out my notebook and jotted down the name etched in the placard: Jo Kyong-ah, written in phonetic script. Jo being the family name, Kyong-ah a given name for a female. After the name, etched into the brass, was a Chinese character. I copied that down also. A complicated character, twenty strokes, female radical on the left. As I scribbled, the pronunciation and meaning of the word came to me: yang. The Korean word for “Miss.” Whoever owned this house was announcing to the world that she was a woman, and an unmarried woman at that.