“She was white pussy,” he told me. “Everybody was after her, from the top honchos to the bottom maggot E-1 privates. And then she gets involved in that traffic case, the one where the middle school girl was run over.”
“Chon Un-suk.”
“Yeah. That one. Matthewson couldn’t handle the pressure. She left.”
“What pressure?”
Otis shrugged. “The usual pressure.”
“The pressure not to make Division look bad.”
He shrugged again.
“You know this for a fact?” I asked.
“I don’t know nothing for a fact. You want testimony under oath, you ain’t getting it from me.”
“Why not?”
Sergeant First Class Otis lay down his fork and stared at me as if I were the biggest idiot in the world.
“For one thing,” he said, “because I finish my twenty in less than two years. And for another, I’ve slept out in the snow and the rain on field maneuvers and put up with white officers and drunken GIs and their slut girlfriends for so many years that I’m not going to jeopardize my retirement check just so Eighth Army can feel good about itself for five minutes. An Eighth Army that been ignoring Division for all the three tours I spent up here. An Eighth Army that let the Division commander run his area of operations as if he were the king of the world and all the rest of us be slaves, and nobody get out of line because if they do they be subject to humiliation and the loss of everything they been working for.”
Otis’s right hand clutched his butter knife; his knuckles were pale brown, heading to white. Also, his language was losing its precise military cadence, returning to the rhythms of the streets.
“Now get the hell outta here,” he told me. “Build your own case and leave me the hell alone.”
I figured that was enough. For the moment. If Ernie and I ever broke this case wide open-if it turned out as bad as I was afraid it might-we’d corner Otis, read him his rights, and force him to make a formal statement under oath. But I wasn’t ready for that yet.
I rose to my feet, snapped Sergeant First Class Otis a two-fingered salute, and left.
The more Ernie and I talked about it, the angrier we became.
Sure, we knew Division PMO was dragging their feet. We’d been expecting that since we came up here. But Mr. Fred Bufford- with the probable collusion of his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Alcott-had withheld information that bordered on being a criminal obstruction of justice. To wit, the involvement of Corporal Jill Matthewson in the case of the accidental death of Chon Un-suk and the true nature of the facts concerning the death of Private Marvin Druwood.
When we walked through PMO’s reception area, the swing-shift desk sergeant looked surprised. We veered to the right, before he could say anything, and entered the MP briefing room. Behind us a phone jingled and a dial turned. The MP briefing room was a small auditorium with a narrow stage in front. Overhead lights shone down on rows of metal chairs, providing dim light. The map Sergeant Otis had told me about hung from the back wall, next to posters warning of the danger of venereal disease. An overhead bulb shone directly on the map. Bright colors formed an intricate mosaic that seemed to pulsate.
It was an ingenious design. Right away, just by the style, I guessed that a Korean graphic artist had created it. It looked Asian. That is, not precisely realistic, not precisely to scale. Not scientific. Everything about it was slightly off kilter. But in many ways it conveyed the confusion and teeming life of Tongduchon better than any machine-manufactured topographical map could.
The background was a polished cherrywood panel of about four feet by four feet, hanging from thick brass hooks. Etched onto the right side of the panel was the main gate of Camp Casey fronted by the north-south running Main Supply Route. On the left was the East Bean River with various of the vehicle and pedestrian bridges depicted, some of which Ernie and I had already walked over. Beyond that, farmland. In the center, between the main gate of Camp Casey and the sinuous flow of the East Bean River, stood the bar district of Tongduchon.
The streets were drawn with black lines while the buildings of Tongduchon were moveable, held by thumbtacks, and depicted by various colored symbols. Gold stars for nightclubs, red hearts for brothels, circular targets for suspected black-market operations. The stores, factories, living establishments, and markets were just various covered rectangles with Chinese symbols painted onto them. The MPs couldn’t understand those symbols of course, but they did understand where the bars and the brothels and the black-market operations were. That’s where the GIs hung out and that’s all the MPs really needed to know. Ernie stepped back to better study the huge mosaic.
“It’s breathing,” he said.
“I’ll say.”
The teeming jumble of life in Tongduchon was somehow conveyed in the glowing map. We pointed out details to one another: the Tongduchon City Market; the street where Pak Tong-i’s office could be found; the location of the Chon family residence; the bar district; the Black Cat Club; the Silver Dragon Nightclub; the yoguan where we’d spent the night with Ok-hi and Jeannie. And finally, surrounded by red dashes, the off-limits area known as the Turkey Farm.
“It’s right in the middle of the ville,” Ernie said.
He was right. Although we hadn’t seen it in all our sojourns through TDC, the Turkey Farm sat behind the main row of bars, the row that held the Oasis Club and the Montana Club and the Silver Dragon Club-but while we walked those streets we hadn’t even realized it was there. Why? Because you couldn’t see it from the main drag and who would walk down those dark alleys to look? To the east of the Turkey Farm sat the Black Cat Club. Then I spotted something that surprised me. According to the map, right in the center of the off-limits area, the artist had deftly inserted a black inverted swastika. I pointed it out to Ernie.
“What the hell’s that?” Ernie asked. “A Nazi meeting hall?”
“No. That’s not a swastika but something more ancient. The symbol for a Buddhist temple.”
“A Buddhist temple in the center of the Turkey Farm?”
“Yeah. Go figure.”
Ernie searched the legend below the map. “That symbol’s not here.”
“That’s why the artist must be Korean. There are a few other symbols on this map that American MPs probably wouldn’t recognize. Look here.”
I pointed at the symbol for myo, a Confucian shrine. I’d remembered it from my Korean language class because it looked like two capital Ls turned upside down with their bases pointed outwards. Then, about two-thirds of the way up the spines of the Ls, a horizontal line slashed across them. The symbol looked to me like one of those tall horsehair hats Chinese priests wear when conducting Confucian ceremonies. And that’s why I could remember it.
Ernie stared at me quizzically. “A Confucian shrine,” he said, “in the center of the Turkey Farm? Not too far from a Buddhist temple?”
“Apparently,” I told him, “there’s more to this Turkey Farm place than GIs have been saying.”
The double door of the briefing room swung open with a crash.
“Freeze!” someone shouted.
Tall, gawky Warrant Officer One Fred Bufford stood in the doorway, his knees flexed, both arms held straight out in front of his body. Clasped firmly in his white-knuckled fists, he held an army-issue. 45 automatic pistol. The dark pit of the barrel was pointing right at us.
Ernie started to laugh.
6
Warrant Office One Fred Bufford’s forearms quivered with tension. The barrel of the. 45 bounced up and down and side to side, variously aimed at Ernie and then me. Ernie kept laughing and I wished he’d shut up.
“Hands on your heads,” Bufford shouted.
I put my hands on my head.
Ernie placed his hands on his hips and, finally, stopped laughing.
“Who do you think you’re going to shoot with that thing, Bufford?” Ernie asked. “What’s our crime? Entering the Provost Marshal’s Office without a permit? Studying a map of Tongduchon without proper authorization?” Ernie barked another laugh.