Jade Lady Burning (27 page)

Earlier that morning an old man had sloshed a bucketful of water onto the cement floor. I had been sitting on the edge of the platform and he had unceremoniously doused my shoes and my socks. My cold feet reeked of the stale water and disinfectant. I was hungry, I was dirty, and a series of fresh bruises arrayed about my torso added their drumbeat to the huge aching knot on my head.

Other than that I was fine.

One of the blue-suited policemen came up beside the first sergeant, pulled out a large ring of keys, and opened the iron door. I stepped out quickly and took a deep breath. At the front desk they gave me an envelope with my identification, my keys, and my wallet. I checked to make sure it was all there.

I slipped my Army ID card and my Criminal Investigation Division badge into my hip pocket. “What about an apology?” I said.

Top looked at me. “An apology?”

“Yeah,” I said, “from Captain Kim. His boys got a little rough. While I was conducting an investigation.”

“That’s not the way they see it.”

“Well how the fuck do they see it?” My neck stiffened and made the pain from my head pulse louder. The sullen eyes of the half-dozen Korean policemen around the room were on us.

Top faced me directly. “Let’s go, George.”

I straightened my jacket, looking around the room at each policeman in turn.

“They charged you with resisting arrest,” Top said.

Standard police procedure. The first thing you do is cover your ass.

“And then they charged you with breaking and entering.”

“But I didn’t break anything,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “something’s probably broke now.”

I couldn’t argue with logic.

“I was on a goddamn investigation.”

“I claimed you were on an investigation,” Top said. “I told them that. And I told them that you’re in the CID, at the moment.”

“So they dropped the charges?”

“No. They told me to get you out of town.”

“They don’t have any jurisdiction to tell me to get out of town.” I said it but I didn’t believe it. It was their town and their country. “What happened to cooperation between Korean and U.S. Investigative agencies? What about the KNP Liaison Office?”

“It’s your own fault,” he said. “You know what we were supposed to do here. It’s obvious to everybody that no one else was going to get murdered and the whole thing could be forgotten.”

“That’s not the way I saw it,” I said.

“No,” he said, “You have to go and start investigating all this shit again, get people all in an uproar, and end up with the whole fucking world down on your ass.”

“I was just trying to earn my pay,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”

A Korean doctor approached. He wore a black suit and a black tie and black horn-rimmed glasses. So as not to clash with his jet black hair, I thought. The man nodded to Top and then to me. He took off his coat, handed it to a cop, opened his bag, and went right to work. He made me open my hand on a countertop and used water and a washcloth to rinse off the dried blood in a plastic basin. After the wound was cleaned to his satisfaction, he pulled out a bottle of peroxide and with a cotton swab drenched the open gash in the fiery solution.

I tried not to let the pain show on my face. Top sat quietly off to the side and looked at me without expression. Every time I twitched, the cop grinned a little wider. I was impressed that so much pain could come from such a small part of my body.

The doctor pulled out a syringe and a small vial and deftly filled the syringe with a clear fluid. The cop’s feverish interest seemed to be growing. By the time the doc reopened my reluctant hand and stuck the needle flush into the middle of the open wound, the policeman was in rapture. My arm convulsed with the pain. We all stood there silently while the doctor waited for the Novocain to take effect. Then he pulled out a needle that looked like an oversized fishhook and laced some black nylon string through it. He took my hand again and pushed the needle through my flesh, across the wound, and under the flesh edging the other side. The string followed the needle through and he quickly laced up the largest parts of the gash. His hand movements were quick and sure but he kept having to tell the officer to get out of his light. His nose was almost in my palm.

When the doctor finished, he knotted off the string neatly and pulled a small pair of scissors out of his bag and cut off the loose ends. It looked as if the black fossilized remains of a primordial sardine were resting in my palm.

He stood up, Top helped him put on his coat, and I nodded my thanks to him.

When we got outside, Top laid into me.

“Sergeant Sueño,” he said, “these are not people you want to be in bad with. I won’t be able to help you if you keep pushin’ on this.” He paused. “I’m not hearing you say what I need to hear you say.”

I didn’t say anything.

The first sergeant shook his head, sighing, and went on ahead to the jeep.

The security guards at the gate remembered us as the guys who had been doing the inspecting lately and waved us right through.

“Is the general in?”

“Yes. He just got back from work.”

It had already been dark a couple of hours.

We parked the jeep, walked up to the front door, and rang the bell. An elderly Korean woman in traditional dress opened the door. We told her we wanted to see General Bohler. She looked confused for a moment and then a voice rang out from the back room.

“Let them in.”

She led us to a large room, a study, I guess you would call it. A fire crackled. Plaques and photographs hung on all the walls. In the center of the room was a carved statue of a nude African woman. General Bohler sat in a large leather lounging chair, wearing only sandals and a bathrobe. He set a book down when we walked in. Something thick and nonfiction:
The Enemies of Security.

“Evening, boys.”

Slowly, he put his glasses back on. He seemed completely relaxed. Too relaxed.

“Sit down. What can I help you with?”

“You’re under arrest, General.”

He began to laugh. “Aren’t you going to read me my rights or something?”

“We can do that. But it always seemed a little corny to me. You already know them, don’t you?”

“Sure I do. Now what am I being charged with?” He was a man playing along with a joke.

“The murder of Pak Ok-suk.”

“Who?”

“Miss Pak. The young girl you tied up, sodomized, and then strangled to death before setting fire to her apartment.”

“Hold on just a minute, son. I didn’t start any fire.”

“I’m not your son.”

I locked my eyes on his and fought the urge to punch his face in.

“No,” he said. “No, you’re not. You’re Hispanic, aren’t you? You could pass for Eastern European or Greek but you’ve actually crossed the border and come north, haven’t you? I’m a good judge of these things.”

“I didn’t cross the border. You crossed it in 1846.”

Bohler laughed. “Good answer. The Mexican War. When we took all that real estate away from your ancestors. Looks like we might have to take some more here pretty soon if you don’t clean up all those Commies you got running around down there.”

“I don’t have any Commies running around anywhere. Why’d you kill her?”

“Now, now. You’re sort of jumping to conclusions, aren’t you?”

“We got the photos, Bohler.”

Bohler’s facial muscles didn’t move but slowly the blood ran from his face. When his voice came out, his throat seemed to be clotted with cotton.

“I can make your careers. What are you now? Buck sergeants? In two years you’ll be E7s. In three, first sergeants. I’ve got friends at the personnel center. It’ll be a snap.”

“Get your clothes on, General.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what kind of buzz saw you’re going to run into. I’ve got money to hire lawyers and I’ve got friends who will rip you to shreds.”

Ernie blew a bubble and let it pop.

Bohler’s face purpled.

“You’re nothing but shits. Shit ass maggot enlisted men! I’ll have you chopped up for C rations.”

He jumped up and reached for something behind the end table. Ernie sprang forward and grabbed him and I yanked the whip out of his hand. We put him facedown on the sofa and handcuffed him. Ernie wandered around the big residence until he found his bedroom and his wallet.

“Fifty-six dollars, his ID card, and a bunch of plastic. I had to rummage through an assortment of leather straps and dildos before I found it.”

The hands of the housemaid quivered as she put on his slippers. We threw him in the backseat of the jeep and yelled at the security guards to call the MPs because we wanted an escort.

While we waited, Bohler curled up in a little ball.

“They took Buster, I know they did. They all had their eyes on him, watching him every day, and finally they got him. I couldn’t just let it go or else they would have gotten his sister, too. They’re all a bunch of cannibals.”

When the MPs got there I didn’t give them a chance to figure out what was going on. Three of their jeeps, red lights swirling, followed us in a mad little convoy over to the Yongsan provost marshal’s office.

Ernie leaned toward me. “Who in the hell is Buster?”

“His dog. Apparently some of the security guards had a little barbecue.”

Ernie sat back up and kept his arms stiff as he made a big right turn.

“Only sensible use for the mutts.”

“There’s no doubt in my military mind that you are completely out of your gourd!”

It was the staff duty officer. The nervous desk sergeant had called him when he heard who we were bringing in. He didn’t want to take the responsibility, by himself, for booking a two-star general.

The staff duty officer was thin, small, and pugnacious; an infantry officer from the honor guard and absolutely flabbergasted that anyone would even think of arresting a general.

The room had filled with MPs waiting to see what would happen. I kept telling the desk sergeant that I wanted the guy booked and I wanted a key to the holding cell so I could put him in it but he kept stalling.

The staff duty officer strutted around like he owned the joint, which caused a few grumbles from the MPs who didn’t particularly like an outsider coming in and throwing his weight around. After all, a staff duty officer is supposed to stay up at the headquarters building and notify the Eighth Army staff in case of alert, not come messing around in military police business. I figured the desk sergeant would never be forgiven for calling him but that didn’t help me much now.

The staff duty officer, whose name was Captain Manning, had figured out who the real culprit was. Me. He got up close, the brim of his cap just a few inches below my chin.

“You’ve got the
temerity
to drag a flag officer of the United States Army out of his quarters in the middle of the night—”

“It’s not the middle of the night, sir.”

“… and stand him here in
front
of all his men, half
naked
—”

“He refused to put his clothes on.”

“You could have dressed him!” His face was flushed but I think even he realized how silly his statement was. A couple of the MPs snickered. He cleared his throat and continued. “And then you try to coerce a conscientious desk sergeant—who after years of military training is well aware of the proper way to treat his superiors— into booking Major General Bohler and locking him up as if he were some sort of common criminal!”

“I’m booking him for first-degree murder.”

Ernie held Bohler by the elbow. His arms were still handcuffed behind his back and his knobby knees stuck out of his silk lounging robe. His face had been hanging down but he looked up when he realized that he had gotten some support from a fellow member of the officers’ corps. He got his regular voice back. It was a growl.

“I’m going to have somebody’s ass for this, Captain. You’d better square it away.”

Captain Manning flinched and turned to the general, thrusting his shoulders even further back. “Yes, sir.”

Ernie jerked Bohler towards the desk. “Enough of this bullshit. Give me that goddamn form. I’ll fill it out and book him myself.”

The MPs glowered at the desk sergeant. One of them shouted, “Book the son of a bitchl” Another obscenity faded away. A murmur filled the room.

“At ease!” Captain Manning walked up to the desk sergeant. “Don’t you give him any form. This officer will not be booked, do you understand me?”

I got between him and the desk sergeant. “Interfering with an official investigation, sir? Obstructing justice?”

A moment’s confusion entered Captain Manning’s eyes. Ernie grabbed the paperwork out of the desk sergeant’s hands and started filling it out while I held on to Bohler. When Ernie asked the general for his service number and full name, Bohler wouldn’t answer, so we took it off his ID card.

Ernie slapped the completed form down in front of the desk sergeant and Captain Manning started yelling at him that it wasn’t valid. The MPs closed around us in a tight circle. A couple of them were fed up.

“We ought to book the captain for interfering with an arrest.”

“Yeah. Get back to the headquarters building where you belong.”

One of them reached out and put his hand on Captain Manning’s elbow. He swung his arm around like someone who had just been seared with a blowtorch. He actually hit the MP and then two MPs grabbed him. He tried to push them away and then the whole crowd started jostling. Ernie and I were trying to pull General Bohler out of the melee when someone slammed the door and hollered, “Attention!”

Everyone froze. Colonel Stoneheart, provost marshal of the Eighth United States Army, strode into the room, silver eagles glistening off his fatigue uniform like attack planes making their dive through the sun.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Everybody talked at once and General Bohler got his courage back and pretty soon Colonel Stoneheart was bowing and scraping to him and Captain Manning kept jumping in on their conversation like a puppy trying to get in with the big dogs. More MP jeeps rolled up, sirens blaring, Colonel Stoneheart gave some crisp orders, and the next thing I knew, Ernie and I were looking at each other in the relaxing quiet of an eight-by-ten holding cell.