The rest of the table was stacked with more files, like a small mountain range. These were the hundreds of cases that had been adjudicated in the complainant’s favor. So far, there weren’t any plans to investigate any of these. But wasn’t it possible that someone who’d won their case was still aggrieved because the compensation they received didn’t match their loss? Possible, but the ones who’d been turned down seemed the logical starting point.
I sighed and returned to the admin office. Staff Sergeant Riley was in early, as usual, and he’d already plugged in the percolator, and it was busy brewing a couple of gallons of PX-bought coffee. We listened to it bubble.
“You getting anywhere in your investigation?” Riley growled.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You better. Your butt is on the line here.”
“How so?”
“The Provost Marshal didn’t like being pushed into appointing you and your screw-off buddy to this investigation. He wants results. Otherwise, he’ll replace you faster than it takes to type up reassignment orders to the DMZ.”
The DMZ is like purgatory, neither heaven nor hell. Just a long line of machine guns, concertina wire, and land mines with 700,000 North Korean Communist soldiers on one side and 400,000 ROK and US soldiers on the other.
“The DMZ? Why would he send us up there?”
“To teach you a lesson about how to follow orders.”
“We’re following orders.”
“But when you’re out there,” Riley said, pointing at some unknowable distance, “investigating crime, you’ve got to be able to understand the meaning behind the orders.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t embarrass the Command. And make sure your investigation comes out where they want it to, which means make sure the man with the iron sickle is a North Korean agent.”
“Even if he’s not?”
“Anybody who does what he’s done has to be a North Korean agent.”
“How so?”
“Because he’s screwing us up,” Riley said. “He’s messing with the Eighth United States Army.”
I should’ve said something rude back to him. He expected me to. GI etiquette. Instead, I sat silently until the coffee was done and poured myself a large cup. I was halfway through when I realized what I’d missed. I returned to the conference room, pulled out my pad and my pen, and wrote down an address.
The phone rang on Riley’s desk. His whiskey soaked voice said, “Yeah?” He paused for a moment and then, “What crime site?” He pulled a pencil out from behind his ear and started jotting something on a piece of paper. “They destroyed a pochang whatta?”
I set down my coffee cup and had already reached the door before he finished.
“Near the Itaewon Market,” Riley shouted after me. “At the crime site.”
The pochang macha was trashed.
I examined the wreckage. Not only had it been tilted over on its side and then turned upside down, but many of the cooking utensils had been bent and the porcelain serving bowls smashed. Pulverized drinking tumblers lay in glassy circular piles.
Mr. Kill picked his way through the wreckage.
“Someone took their time,” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “They not only turned over the cart, they then used some sort of club to systematically smash everything that was breakable.”
“And stomp on the smaller items.”
He nodded, agreeing with me. “They must’ve worn thick-soled shoes.”
Like Army jump boots, I thought. “What about Mrs. Lee?”
“She was in a safe place,” Mr. Kill replied.
Ernie drove up in his jeep, screeched to a halt, and jumped out. “What the hell?” he said.
“Exactly,” I replied.
“Anybody hurt?”
I shook my head.
“The ville patrol must’ve seen who did it,” he said.
We looked at Mr. Kill. He stared steadily back at us. “Your American military ‘ville patrol,’ as you call it, made no such report. Neither did the KNPs. It wasn’t until a citizen walked into the Itaewon Police station about zero five thirty this morning that a report was filed.”
“We came by here,” I said, “a few minutes before curfew. The stand was intact.”
“So this happened sometime between midnight and zero five thirty in the morning,” Mr. Kill said. He waited for it to sink in. Then he continued. “Who would be most likely to be out during the curfew?”
“Law enforcement,” I said.
Mr. Kill nodded. “Law enforcement,” he agreed.
“Where, again?” Ernie asked.
“Sogye-dong,” I said. “Behind Seoul Station.”
Ernie knew where the main train station was. It was a landmark in the city, a beautiful domed building that had been a gift around the turn of the century from the Russian Czar to the Korean King, back before the Japanese had attained full dominance on the peninsula.
I had the address written in my note pad: Sogye-dong, 3-ku, 105-ho. Once we looped around Seoul Station and behind the big railroad yards, I had Ernie slow and pull over. On a greasy wooden board holding up a bicycle repair shop, someone had written, 2-ku, 36-ho.
“Keep going,” I said.
The road was lined with lumber yards and spare parts warehouses. We reached a cross street that seemed a little more prosperous. Off to the right were two-story brick buildings, so I told Ernie to turn right. When we slowed I saw we’d reached 3-ku and the numbers were rising rapidly. Across the street I spotted it: a clean, three-story brick building with a placard that said SAM-IL PEIKHUA SAMUSIL. Literally, March First Hundred Products Office. In Korea, March first was like the Fourth of July in America. It was the day in 1919 when the entire country spontaneously arose in opposition to the Japanese cccupation of their country. Not that it did them much good. The world ignored their uprising and hundreds of protesters, including all the movement’s leaders, were summarily executed. Beneath the hangul sign smaller English letters said SAM-IL CLAIMS OFFICE. This was common practice with Korean businesses. Their
Korean name was often different, sometimes radically different, than their English name.
“That’s it,” I told Ernie. “Pull over where you can.”
Ernie waited until the traffic slowed and then hung a U and pulled over right in front of the building in an area reserved for buses.
“We’ll get a ticket if we park here,” I said.
“Police business,” Ernie replied as he looped a chain welded to the metal floorboard around the steering wheel and snapped it shut with a padlock. As we climbed out of the jeep, people waiting for the next bus stared at us dully.
Ernie straightened his jacket. “What is this place again?”
“I told you. Of all the claim packets submitted to 8th Army, both the ones accepted and the ones rejected, this office submitted the most. About half, maybe more.”
“They’re mining the US Treasury.”
“Yes, but instead of a pickax and a shovel, they’re using an Eighth Army Claims Form.”
We pushed through the double doors of the building. The foyer was clean, with polished tiles, light brown walls, and another one of those narrow elevators. I read the sign for the various offices. The one we were looking for, Sam-Il Claims, was on the third floor. We decided to take the stairs.
Behind a sliding glass door sat a receptionist. Petite and young, she was a Korean woman with a doll-like face. She stared up at us, surprised. I pulled my notebook out and read off a name I’d written down, the name that had signed most of the 8th Army Claims Forms as the legal representative of the claimant.
“Pak Hyong-ku,” I said. “Uri halmal issoyo.” We have business with him.
Ernie pulled out his badge and shoved it in front of her face. The leather foldout was almost as broad as her forehead. The young woman blanched. A pink handkerchief appeared in her hand, and then she stood, holding the handkerchief to her mouth and, without a word, scurried away on clattering high heels. Ernie watched her tight skirt until she was out of sight.