Nightmare Range (7 page)

“We’re not getting anywhere,” Ernie said.

“Something’s got to break soon.”

“It better. It’s not just muggings any more. It’s murder.”

I felt my innards sliding slowly into knots.

“We got to stay out tonight. Through curfew if we have to.”

“Yeah.”

I looked at Ernie. “Could it be the Koreans?”

“It could. But if the Korean National Police really believed it, they’d be cracking down on every local hoodlum hard, trying to squeeze the truth out of them.”

“What if the local police are in on it?”

“Then we’re in trouble. But I don’t believe it. Too much pressure from up top. The Koreans need us to ensure that their Communist brothers to the north don’t pour down here like they did two decades ago. And maybe more important nowadays is that they need the foreign exchange the fleet brings in.”

“And if the navy seriously believes that the Koreans aren’t doing everything they can to stop the assaults on their sailors, they could stop coming into port here.”

“They’d lose dock fees and re-supply money …”

“Not to mention tourism.”

We both laughed.

“Somebody in the navy then. In the advance party.”

“Could be that, since the
Kitty Hawk
was still at sea last night.”

I thought about the map I had made and the blotter reports.
“The last time the
Kitty Hawk
was here, there were no muggings until they had docked.”

“So?”

“We’ve been assuming that it’s probably a gang of sailors aboard the
Kitty Hawk
that have been preying on their own shipmates.”

“Yeah, but maybe there’s more than one group. Ideas like this are catching.”

“That’s possible. But maybe it is somebody in the advance party or maybe it’s somebody who’s here all the time. Somebody who knows the terrain, the lie of the land, the ins and outs of all the back alleys.”

“And if it’s not Koreans …”

“That’s right. GIs. GIs who spend a lot of time down here.”

“Village rats.”

“All the GI village rats have gone into hiding until the fleet leaves.”

“So it seems.”

I took a sip of my beer. I didn’t like what I was going to say. “That leaves the MPs.”

Ernie thought about it for a minute. “That would also explain why there were no arrests made in the past.”

“It sure would.”

He looked at me. “But why do the muggings only occur when the
Kitty Hawk
is here? And not other navy ships?”

“That I don’t know yet.” I looked around. “Let’s find a phone.”

“A phone?”

“Yeah. I got a call I want to make.”

The desk sergeant didn’t want to answer any of my questions at first because he could see what I was getting at, but I reminded him that this was an official investigation and he would be obstructing that investigation if he didn’t cooperate in every reasonable way.

I borrowed paper and pencil from the mama-san and wrote furiously, trying at the same time to keep one finger in my ear to
drown out the insane rock music. I seriously considered asking Ernie to hold his finger in my ear, but he was busy flirting with a couple of the girls.

Besides, there are limits to a partnership, even for crimebusters.

I had what I needed. Ernie looked at the sheet. A bunch of names, ranks, and times scribbled across the wrinkled paper.

“What’s that?”

“No time to explain. Let’s go.”

The girls pouted on our way out.

The MP jeep that held the central position on Texas Street was cruising slowly down the crowded block. I waved them down, and they came to a halt. I looked at my notes and read off thee names to them.

“Have you seen any of these guys? Tonight? In civilian clothes?”

I’m not too good a judge of whether someone is telling the truth or lying, but this time I had an edge. The young buck sergeant on the passenger side let the muscles beneath his cheek flutter a couple of times. Then he blinked and said, “No.”

I thanked him for the information. He’d given me more than he knew.

We walked off into the darkness away from the men, heading from the center of Texas Street toward the place a few blocks away where I had seen the two big Americans turn down a dark alley and disappear. We wandered around for a while, and in order to cover more ground we split up, agreeing on our routes and where to meet in fifteen minutes.

A couple of blocks later I saw the big guy I had seen before, standing at the mouth of an alley. He looked into the alley at something and then back at me, as if undecided what to do.

I shouted, “Hey!” and started running toward him.

He hesitated for a second and then ran. I let him go and turned down the alley he had been protecting. It was dark. I
could see nothing. Then I tripped, sprawled, and something hit me from behind.

When I came to, Ernie was looking down at me, surrounded by some sailors in their dress whites and Shore Patrol armbands. I was never so happy to see squids.

They got me into their van and took me somewhere. Ernie told me, but it didn’t register. Nothing much did. On the way there, I passed out again.

The next morning when I woke up I waited for a while and then asked the medic when he walked into the room.

“Where am I?”

“The dispensary. On Hialeah Compound. Had a pretty nasty bump on the noggin last night.”

“What’s my condition?”

“Hold on.”

The medic left the room, and after a few minutes a doctor came in. He looked at my head, checked some X-rays up against a lightboard, and then pronounced me fit for duty.

No shirkers in this man’s army. I could’ve used a few days off.

While I was getting dressed, Ernie showed up. He consoled me by reminding me about the Happy Hour at the Hialeah NCO Club tonight.

“Exotic dancers, too,” he said.

I smiled but it hurt the back of my head.

The bright sun of southern Korea was out. In force.

“Personnel? Why personnel?”

“I want to check something out. Leonard Budusky.”

“Who?”

“An MP who I think is an acquaintance of mine.”

After we showed him our identification, the personnel clerk got Budusky’s folder. “He came to Korea over six months ago,” I said.

The bespectacled clerk ran his finger down a column of typed entries.

“Seven,” he said.

“What state is he from?”

“Virginia.”

I held up my hand. “Wait a minute. Let me guess. Norfolk.”

The clerk looked up at me, his eyes almost as wide as his mouth. “How the hell did you know that?”

Ernie tried to pretend that he was in on the whole thing, but when we got to the Main Post Snack Bar, he bought me some coffee and threatened me with disembowelment if I didn’t tell him what was going on. Considering the pain I was in, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it much if I’d let him go through with it. Instead, to humor him, I explained.

“First of all, to find the culprit, we’ve got to figure out motive and opportunity.”

“I remember that much from CID school.”

“The motive seemed to be money. Now, that narrows our list of suspects down to anybody in the Seventh Fleet, any GI stationed near Pusan, or any of the Korean citizens of this wonderful city.

“The next step is figuring out opportunity. That brings us closer because that narrows it down to the four thousand or so sailors who had liberty during the stopover, the three hundred or so GIs who had passes, and again, all the Korean citizens of this fair city.”

“So it’s a tough job. We knew that.”

“But the mugger got anxious. On the first night, when only the advance party was in, he attacked. That eliminated all the sailors who were at sea with the
Kitty Hawk
. When Petty Officer Lockworth died, it also eliminated, in my mind, the Korean civilian populace. Because there is no doubt that the Korean authorities would take the mugging of American sailors seriously, but they realize the enormity of the bad public relations they would get back in the States if a Korean was found to have done the killing.
The fact that they still didn’t launch an all-out manhunt meant to me that they must be confident, through their own sources, that it wasn’t the work of one of their local hoodlums.

“That leaves the GIs. When the fleet is in, soldiers tend to be conspicuous. They stick out, by virtue of their stinginess, from their seafaring compatriots, and the girls down in the village can spot them a mile away.

“We wandered all over Texas Street for two nights and didn’t see any, did we?”

“Not except for the MPs.”

“Exactly, and except for the two big guys we saw in that alley that looked familiar to me. After I called the desk sergeant and got the names of all the MPs who had duty on the first night, it started to click. The three big studs in the central patrol had all stayed on duty past curfew. Of the four patrols, theirs was the only patrol that did. Of the three of them, the desk sergeant told me that the biggest and meanest was Corporal Leonard Budusky. I remembered their faces. Two of them were the guys we saw scurrying down that alley. When the MPs on duty denied having seen them, I knew it had to be a lie. When MPs are in the village having fun, they will seek out the on-duty patrol, to let them know where they’re at or just to say hello.

“When that young buck sergeant on duty realized that the notorious out-of-town CID agents were asking about his partners, his first reaction was to lie and protect them.”

“So you know two MPs were on duty the first night, when the guy got killed, and you know they were out the second night, off duty, when you got beaned. You still don’t have any proof.”

“You’re right about that. And they’ll know it, too. Probably just go about their work as if nothing happened and if we ask them any questions deny everything. But the one thing I do have, that the killer doesn’t know about, is the motive.”

“Money?”

“Partially. But mainly his motive is something that abounds in a city with a big naval base like Norfolk.”

“What’s that?”

“Hatred.” I took a sip of the hot bitter coffee. “Hatred of the US Navy.”

It was a lot easier stalking Texas Street now that we knew who we were looking for. The desk sergeant had already told me, but I checked all four MP jeeps just to be sure. Leonard Budusky and his burly partner were not on duty tonight. They had pulled the day shift and got off about two hours ago.

Ernie had been disappointed when we missed Happy Hour at the NCO Club, and the exotic dancer, but I told him it would be in both our best interests if we remained sober.

The Pusan streets were filling again with fog. It was damp, cold, and dark.

This time we had weapons. A roll of dimes for me. Ernie had a short, brutal club, a wooden mallet, tucked into the lining of his jacket.

We patrolled methodically, keeping to the shadows. The Texas Street area is big, but not that big. Eventually we found them.

They were coming out of a bar, laughing and waving to the smiling girls.

“Spending money like sailors on shore leave,” Ernie said.

“Must have come into an inheritance.”

Budusky was tall, about six foot four, with squared shoulders and curly blond hair. His partner was the young guy who had enticed me into the mouth of the alley last night. He was tall, almost as tall as Budusky, and just as robust. I’m pretty big myself, and have had a little experience on the streets of East LA, but Ernie was a lightweight in this crowd, only about a hundred and seventy pounds.

We followed them carefully, one of us on either side of the street, hiding as we went. They weren’t paying much attention thought, still laughing and talking about the girls.

Finally, when the alleys ran out of street lamps, they stopped. They took up positions, one behind an awning, the other behind
a telephone pole, as if they’d been there before. I wished I had brought my little map, to check the positions of the previous muggings. It didn’t matter much now, though. The opening to a dark, seemingly pitch-black alley loomed behind them. They had chosen their position well.

Ernie and I remained hidden. We could see each other from across the street, but the two MPs couldn’t see us.

It took twenty minutes for three sailors, lost in their drunkenness, to wander down the road. They were little fellows, in uniform, hats tilted at odd angles. Two of them had beer bottles in their hands, and each had his wallet sticking out from beneath his tunic, folded over his waistband.

The navy’s into tradition. Even if it’s stupid. Or maybe especially if it’s stupid. No pockets.

We let the sailors pass us. I was glad Ernie didn’t warn them. Of course, he wasn’t the type to warn them anyway.

They didn’t see us as they passed. They were laughing and joking, and I doubt they would have noticed a jet plane if it had swooped down five feet over their heads.

What did swoop down was Budusky and his partner. Two of the sailors went down before the third even realized what was happening. He swung his beer bottle, but it missed its mark and he was enveloped by the two marauding behemoths.

Ernie and I slid out of our hiding places and floated up the hill, my roll of dimes clenched securely in my right fist. Ernie smashed his mallet into the back of the MP’s head, and I knew all our problems were over with him. But just as I launched my first punch at Budusky, he swiveled and caught the blow on his shoulder. I punched again, but I was off balance from having missed the first blow, and he countered and caught me in the ribs. It was hard, but I’ve had worse, and then we were toe to toe, belting each other, slugging viciously. It could have gone either way, and I was happy to see Ernie looming up behind him. I jabbed with my left and backed off, waiting for it all to end, but then, as if a trapdoor had opened beneath his feet, Ernie disappeared. I
realized that one of the sailors had gotten up and, thinking Ernie was one of the enemy, had grabbed him and pulled him down. Another of the sailors came to, and now the three of them were rolling around on the ground flailing clubs and beer bottles at each other, cursing, spitting, and scratching.

Something blurred my vision, and Budusky was on me. I twisted, slipped a punch, and caught him with a good left hook in the midsection. He took it, punched back, and then we were wrestling. I lost my footing, pulled him down with me, and we rolled down the incline. I threw my weight and kept us rolling, I wasn’t sure why. Just to get us into the light, I guess. Our momentum increased our speed, and finally we jarred to a stop.