Ernie and I made our way to the bar district. We were like homing pigeons. We felt comfortable near business girls and booze. We passed the Black Cat Club and kept going. In an alley behind the Silver Dragon Nightclub, we paused to catch our breath. I looked back, thinking this would be a good time to talk to Jill about turning herself in somewhere safe before she became a deserter. I opened my mouth to speak.
She wasn’t there.
I went back and searched the alleyways. No dice. Ernie helped me and together we retraced our steps. No sign of Corporal Jill Matthewson.
“Why’d you let her go?” Ernie asked.
“I didn’t let her go. She just went.”
“Why?”
Ernie couldn’t figure it out. Neither could I. But maybe Corporal Jill Matthewson was on a mission.
Ernie and I found shelter in Ok-hi’s hooch. That night, after the ville patrol passed through the Silver Dragon Nightclub on their regular rounds, Ok-hi trotted up and told us that the coast was clear. About two minutes later, Ernie and I were sitting at the bar of the Silver Dragon, sipping on cold draft OB, exchanging theories as to where Jill Matthewson might have gone.
“She used us,” Ernie said. “Let us escort her back to Tongduchon so she could attend Mrs. Chon’s kut, and when she had no more use for us, she dumped us.”
The band on the Silver Dragon’s elevated stage hammered out a rock song. On the small dance floor, a battalion of voluptuous Korean business girls jitterbugged with one another. A handful of GIs lurked amongst cocktail tables, leering at the girls on the floor, nursing cheap drinks, generally acting like the Cheap Charlies they were.
If Ernie was right, and Jill had dumped us, we were up kimchee creek without a paddle. We were absent without leave, didn’t have enough evidence of 2nd ID’s black-marketing to force a prosecution, and the entire local military police corps was searching for us.
“I don’t think she used us,” I said finally.
Ernie stared at me as if I were dumb enough to play catch with mortar rounds.
“Then what?”
“She’s investigating.”
“Investigating what?”
“Investigating the murder of Private Marv Druwood.”
“On her own?”
“Yes. She can be more effective on her own. A couple of big ugly Eighth Army CID agents tagging along would make people nervous. Both Koreans and GIs.”
Ernie scoffed. “She’s probably back in Wondang by now. Her and Miss Kim Yong-ai, packing up and moving on. Probably on their way to Seoul where we’ll never find them. I’m telling you, Sueno, we’ve been had.”
“Maybe.”
We drank a couple more beers in silence. I knew what we had to do. Bust into Lieutenant Colonel Alcott’s office and grab his black- market records. But what if they weren’t there? What if he’d moved them? Even if we found them, without Jill Matthewson’s corroborating testimony our case would be weak. So weak that 8th Army might decide not to prosecute. Especially when we’d been granted no legal authority to bust into his office. But what was the alternative? We were toast here in Division. And if we caught the first train back to Seoul tomorrow, what would we have to show for our efforts? Nothing except four days of bad time on our records. And an Article 15 in our future for being AWOL. And fond memories of the murdered Marv Druwood and the murdered Pak Tong-i and the rape victim, Miss Kim Yong-ai. Maybe Ernie could write off Jill Matthewson, but I couldn’t. I simply could not believe that she’d cut out on us. There had to be a reason.
I peered into the bottom of my empty beer mug and searched for it. It wasn’t there. I switched to bourbon. Maybe that would help. It did. What had we been talking about just before the Korean men in suits barged into Madame Chon’s home? How to gain access to Camp Casey. As fugitives, we couldn’t waltz through the main gate anymore. Something told me that Jill had left us in order to tackle that problem.
Had she gone by herself onto the compound? Unlikely. She’d gone to seek help. Help that would assist us in gaining access to Camp Casey. I told this to Ernie. He admitted that it was possible, but he wasn’t optimistic that it was true.
The rock band had just stopped clanging when a hubbub broke out toward the back of the Silver Dragon, beyond the pool tables. People, both Korean business girls and American GIs, were crowding around someone, like fans begging for autographs. Some of the women squealed. GIs laughed.
I elbowed Ernie. “At zero-three-hundred. Altercation brewing.”
Ernie sat up and stared greedily toward the back door, ready to invest all his frustrations in a fight.
The crowd parted and someone walked through. A shiny black helmet bobbed and, for a second, Ernie and I prepared to run. MPs. And then I realized that there was only one. The helmet bobbed through the crowd until I could see strands of blonde hair peeking from beneath its edge, and suddenly a face that I recognized appeared: Corporal Jill Matthewson. Still surrounded by admirers, she strode out of the crowd onto the center of the dance floor. All of the Korean business girls gasped and cooed and “aahed.” Jill was outfitted in full MP regalia: spit-shined jump boots, pressed combat fatigues, embroidered leather armband, polished black helmet, canvas web belt cinched tightly around her trim waist, and finally a holstered. 45 caliber automatic pistol, her palm resting lightly on the hilt.
The business girls squealed and some began to applaud. And then, like an avalanche of flowers, they surrounded Jill. All of them giggling, laughing, patting her on the back and shaking hands, holding out two of theirs to clasp one of hers. Many of the business girls stepped back and bowed as she approached and then embraced her.
Ernie gazed at me, eyebrows raised.
What were these young Korean prostitutes so happy about?
I thought I knew. Finally, after all the decades of foreign men parading in and out of these bars and brothels and clubs, parading in and out of their lives, men who had no respect for women in general and Korean business girls in particular, finally, after all these years of suffering during and after the Korean War, here was a woman, a GI woman, and, better yet, an MP woman. Someone who would listen to them. Someone who could understand them. The business girls called her by name, “Jill! Jill!” warbling like a flock of doves.
Jill smiled and waved and embraced and shook hands and returned fond greetings with the good grace of a woman to royalty born. I had to remind myself that she was a fatherless Hoosier teenager who’d grown up in a trailer park. But tonight, at this moment, in the village of Tongduchon in the nightclub known as the Silver Dragon, she conducted herself like a queen.
When she approached the bar, I stood. She hugged me. I hugged her back.
Ernie slouched on his barstool. Jill stared down at him.
“You’re late,” Ernie said.
Jill grinned. “Had some work to do.”
“Like ironing your fatigues?”
“And other things.”
“Like what?”
Jill glanced around the Silver Dragon. “Not here. The ville patrol’s liable to double back. Outside. We’ll talk.”
It took her almost as long to walk out of the Silver Dragon as it had taken her to enter. And this time even the band members roused themselves and lined up to shake her hand, as if it were their last chance to meet face-to-face with someone famous.
Outside in the cold February wind, some of the luster faded from Jill’s face. The alley was lit by the yellowish glow of a street-lamp and a smattering of fluorescent rays that leaked out the back door of the Silver Dragon.
“Where you been all day?” Ernie asked.
“Making arrangements.”
“Arrangements for what?”
“For getting at Colonel Alcott’s records.”