I returned to the bar.
“She cleaned out totally,” I told Ernie.
“Yeah. Not so much as a tumbler of mokkolli.”
At the mention of the Korean word for rice beer, the owner glanced at Ernie curiously.
“There’s one spot we haven’t searched,” Ernie said.
“Where?”
“The cloak room.”
He pointed toward the Dutch door next to the entrance. It had been dark when we walked past it.
“Come on.”
The owner followed.
I shoved the top part of the door open and groped inside for a wall switch. There wasn’t one. I fumbled with an inner latch and pushed open the lower part of the door.
“Above,” the owner said.
I reached up and waved my hand around until I found a string. Gently, I pulled down. A bulb ignited the room. There were no coats on racks, not even any coat hangers, but sitting in the center of the room, perched on a wooden stool was something Ernie and I had seen before.
The totem. The same one we’d seen in the Itaewon Market on the day when Corporal Collingsworth had been murdered. The same wooden stand, the same wire rectangle rising above, but this time there was no dead rat dangling by it’s feet. This time there was something else tied to the wire. Something that took a while for my eyes to bring into focus. Something slathered in blood, blood that had dripped down the rectangular wire and further along the wooden base of the contraption and puddled in a yard-wide lake of gore at the bottom of the stool.
It was a head.
The head of Mr. Ming, the man who had once been the top-earning field agent for the Sam-Il Claims Office.
We didn’t return to 8th Army until noon the next day.
By that time, the compound was alive with trucks and jeeps and vans, all ferrying personnel and equipment back from the field, away from 8th Army Headquarters South and back to the civilization of the Yongsan district of southern Seoul. The field exercise had been called off. Ernie and I were more exhausted than we thought possible. We drove straight to the 8th Army snack bar and parked the jeep.
The place was packed. A lot of people were after some hot chow. Ernie and I stood in line at the grill, and he ordered a hamburger and fries, and I ordered two bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. When we finally paid for our lunch, it took us ten minutes of waiting to squeeze into a vacated table up against the wall. We were only a few feet from the jukebox and somebody had put on “Break It to Me Gently,” which was one of my favorite songs.
Ernie said, “You like that?”
I nodded.
“You would,” he said.
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but I didn’t really care because I was too busy eating to pay him much attention. I’d just chomped into my second sandwich when a pair of combat boots appeared next to our table. Small combat boots. I looked up.
Captain Leah Prevault stood next to us. I started to smile but then caught myself. The look on her face was more than grim, it was enraged.
I started to say something but before I could even get out a greeting, her small hand swung from her side and landed on the side of my face. The sound bit into the air around us and all activity stopped. No more murmuring of voices, no more clang of porcelain on tableware. For some reason, even the jukebox chose that moment to shut off and whirr between records.
All eyes turned toward us. Even Ernie seemed shocked.
“You betrayed us,” Captain Prevault said.
“What?” I stammered.
“Doctor Hwang,” she said. “And the patients at the Mental Health Sanatorium. You betrayed them all. All!” she shouted.
I was dumbstruck. I had no idea what she was talking about. “What?” I said.
“They arrested them all!”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know! You know. They came with trucks and arrested Doctor Hwang and rounded up all the patients and took them away and now the entire valley is empty. I stopped by there on the way back from the field. There are military guards out front. They wouldn’t let me in until I insisted and finally they showed me. They’re all gone. For purposes of national security, they told me. You had them arrested!”
“Wait a minute, lady,” Ernie said, standing up and holding out his hands. “My partner didn’t have anybody arrested. I was with him all last night, and we didn’t go near this place, this ‘sanatorium’ you’re talking about.”
“Then his friends did it!” she said. “You have to do something about it. They’re not criminals!”
And then she was crying. I finally stood up and tried to comfort her but she slapped my hand away, staring at me with a face full of rage, and turned and trotted out of the snack bar, knocking over somebody’s coffee on the way out.
As we were about to climb into the jeep, Strange appeared.
“Had any strange lately?”
“Can it, Harvey,” Ernie said. “We’re in no mood for your bullshit.”
“Who’s talking about bullshit? I’ve got the real deal for you.”
“What deal?”
Strange looked both ways. “Keep this under your hat,” he said. “You two were busy at Eighth Army headquarters last night.”
“So?” Ernie said.
Strange stepped closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They know about the Bogus Claims File. They know you have it. They want it back.”
“They’ll have to ask nice,” Ernie said.
“They know that,” Strange said. “Technically, the file doesn’t exist so they know they can’t arrest you for taking it. But there are all sorts of other charges they can bring you up on. Entering a restricted area, for one.”
“The SOFA Secretariat’s Office?” I said.
“Exactement,” Strange said. “Not to mention anything else they feel like making up.”
Strange was right. The Uniform Code of Military Justice uses such vague language and covers so many broad areas of behavior that, when directed, the JAG office can charge just about anybody with just about anything.
“So maybe we’ll give it back,” I said, “after the investigation.”
“They want it now.”
“People in hell want ice water,” Ernie said.
“Then you better make yourself scarce,” Strange said. Like a hound sniffing danger in the air, he stepped away and turned his back on us. Within seconds, he was rounding the corner toward the snack bar and in the distance we heard a siren blaring.
Ernie jumped in the driver’s seat and started the jeep. I got myself in the passenger seat just as he shoved the little vehicle in gear. We spurted out of the parking lot too late. The MP jeep spotted us. I glanced back. Staff Sergeant Moe Dexter was at the wheel, one MP on his right and two more crouched in the backseat. All of them were armed with M-16 rifles, except for Dexter, but I’m sure he had a.45 on his hip.
Ernie slammed the jeep into high gear, and it surged forward. As we neared Gate Number Seven, a Korean guard marched out into the roadway, holding up his open palm, ordering us to halt. Ernie stepped on the gas. At the last second, the guard leapt out of the way.
Horns blared as Ernie skidded into the busy midday traffic. Kimchi cabs, three-wheeled trucks, and the occasional ROK Army military vehicle made way as Ernie careened out of Gate Number Seven and headed east on the Main Supply Route. Moe Dexter and his boys barreled after us, siren blaring, only a few yards back.
“Where are you going?” I shouted.
“Itaewon.”
“It’s too crowded,” I said.
“That’s why I’m going there.”
Ernie swerved past cabs, darting into and out of oncoming traffic, once even leaping up on the pedestrian walkway to get around a slow moving truck. I held on and prayed.
An old woman with a cane, impervious to the swirling machinery around her, tottered across the roadway. “Watch out!” I shouted. Ernie slammed on his brakes, swerved to his right, downshifted, and once past the elderly halmonni, surged forward once again.