A Korean general spoke first. I couldn’t understand everything he said; the language was formal and used a vocabulary seldom heard in the red light district of Itaewon, but I picked up most of it. Every few sentences he paused, and a younger officer translated what he’d just said into English. The general expressed his gratitude to the countries of the United Nations for their support of the free Republic of Korea, both now and during their time of need some twenty years ago, when they’d been attacked by the forces of the North Korean Communists and the massed legions of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the Red Chinese People’s Army.
After a few more droning remarks by the American general, which were similarly translated into Korean, a plaque was presented to a UN civilian in a grey suit. Dutch, I believe he was. Then a half-dozen Korean women, decked out in full-skirted silk hanbok, placed leis over the heads of the smiling dignitaries. The pretty young women backed up and bowed deeply. More martial music blasted out, and the UN Honor Guard saluted with their silver bayoneted rifles. Then, to the accompaniment of a pounding drum, they marched smartly off the field.
The assembly was dismissed and Colonel Brace, along with many of the other dignitaries, hopped off the podium. After saluting a few generals and exchanging some smiling remarks, he motioned for us to meet him beneath a quivering elm tree. When he reached us, his demeanor had changed completely. His eyes were squinting, and he glanced away from us, setting both fists on his hips, as if manfully controlling his temper. Colonel Brace was a jogger who kept his weight down to anorexic levels as was the fashion of the 8th Army officer corps. He might have been much smaller than either of us, but his fists tightened as if he were preparing to spring forward and pummel us both.
“Where do you two guys get off,” he said, “upsetting Mrs. Barretsford like that?”
“We didn’t upset her,” Ernie replied. “The fact that we were assigned to the black market detail is what upset her.”
Colonel Brace shook his head slightly, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Finally, he said, “No ‘sir’ in that answer, Bascom?”
“Sir,” Ernie said.
“You should’ve kept a low profile,” he told us, “done your work without drawing attention to yourselves.”
When neither of us answered, Colonel Brace continued. “I’m putting you back on Sergeant-of-the-Guard duty, effective immediately. Report to the MP Station after evening chow. You’ll be on that detail every night until further notice.”
“No more black market?” Ernie asked.
“No more black market. And end your questions with ‘sir.’ Is that understood?”
“Understood, sir,” Ernie replied.
He stared at us for a while, as if amazed at the human wreckage he had to deal with. Finally, he shook his head again and said, “Dismissed.”
Ernie and I saluted, maintained the position of attention, and waited for the colonel to stalk away. As we watched him go, Ernie chomped on his gum a little louder. Other than that, he showed no reaction to the butt chewing. We were used to being treated as if we were lower than whale shit. It’s a leadership technique the officer corps uses. I believe at West Point they have a week-long seminar on the finer points.
When the colonel was out of sight, we returned to the narrow parking lot where we’d left our jeep. Ernie hopped in, but I hesitated to climb into the passenger seat. He looked up at me.
“I have work to do in the admin office,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes. “Suit yourself. I’m going to catch some shut-eye before we start the night shift.” The jeep’s engine sputtered to life. Ernie backed out of the narrow space, shifted gears, and roared off in a cloud of carbon and grime.
Inside the CID office, Staff Sergeant Riley was busy shouting into the phone about some personnel transactions that had gone missing. The admin secretary, Miss Kim, industriously typed away on a stack of reports that had come in concerning the Barretsford case. She allowed me to read them, both the American ones and those from the Korean National Police. There wasn’t much to see: a whole lot of interviews, plenty of harassed bus drivers and cabbies, and US officers and civilians who had known Barretsford. But nobody seemed to know anything about why he had been attacked. In the entire stack, there was no new information. When I finished, I placed the paperwork back on her desk and said, “Komap-sumnida.” Thank you.
She smiled in response.
Miss Kim was a gorgeous woman, tall and shapely. I liked the way she held herself: poised and self-aware while at the same time quiet and watchful. I had often been tempted to ask her out on a date. What held me back was not shyness but worse. She had once been close to my partner, Ernie. At the time, she thought the relationship was serious, but eventually she discovered that to Ernie Bascom, nothing is serious, neither life nor death and certainly not romance. Now she could barely stand the sight of him. I believed she still cared for him, and I figured if I made a concerted effort I could break through those emotions and win a place for myself in her affections. But there’s something about the memory of another man-especially a man you know well-that can stop a romance from developing. Jealousy, it’s called. So instead of asking her out, I was unfailingly polite to her, showing kindness whenever the opportunity arose. I brought her gifts: a rose, a small bottle of PX hand lotion, candy on holidays. She appreciated my thoughtfulness but I wasn’t winning her heart. And I wasn’t trying to-at least that’s what I told myself.
I found a typewriter on a wooden field desk at the back of the office. I rolled a sheet of paper, along with three carbon onionskins-one green, one pink, and one yellow-into the carriage. Carefully, I started to type, first the date and then the subject: INTERVIEW AT THE PX SNACK STAND. And the case: C. WINSTON BARRETSFORD, HOMICIDE.
I typed out what the couple at the tiny snack stand across from the Claims Office had seen. An Asian man in his thirties, about five ten, a hundred and forty to a hundred and fifty pounds, with a deformed lower lip; well dressed, wearing a suit and a long overcoat and apparently holding something hidden beneath the coat. I described how he stood completely still, out of the rain, staring at the locked front door of the Claims Office. I even mentioned how his nose was running and how the old woman had speculated that he seemed to be staring at some far away vision. I described how he abruptly disappeared after the Claims Office opened at zero eight hundred. At the end of the report I typed my name, rank, and badge number. Then I pulled the four sheets out of the typewriter, peeled off the carbon, and signed my name at the bottom. The original would go to Colonel Brace; the green copy would stay in the CID file cabinet; the yellow copy would go to Lieutenant Pong, the Korean National Police Liaison officer; and the pink copy was mine, to be stashed in a dusty brown accordion file I kept in my wall locker back in the barracks.
I dropped the reports into Riley’s in-basket, stuffed my copy into my pocket, and nodded my goodbye to Miss Kim.
Nobody else noticed me leave, which was good because if they’d asked me where I was going, I would’ve been reluctant to admit that I was on my way to see someone who my old drill sergeant in basic training would’ve referred to as an egghead.
The military doesn’t trust intellectualism. The honchos of 8th Army only appreciate raw facts and actions based on those facts. Anyone who hunts for motive by delving into the recesses of the human mind is either laughed at or, more often, ignored.
I stood in a small office at the end of a long hallway in the western wing of the 121st Evacuation Hospital. The receptionist for Captain Leah Prevault was a punctilious Korean woman who’d probably been working in the hospital since before Christ was a corporal. She asked me if I had an appointment, and when I answered I didn’t, she told me I’d have to make one. I reached across the counter and, before she could react, twisted the appointment book in my direction.