Slicky Boys (35 page)

Out the clean plate glass window, I watched the city of Seoul roll by. Warehouses, residential apartments, the blue expanse of the Han River, and the trees and red tile roofs of Yongdungpo. We were heading south and gaining speed. Soon the buildings of the city’s suburbs gave way to vast tracks of frozen brown rice paddies and blue hills in the distance and little straw-thatched huts huddling amidst patches of frozen snow.

I thought of this guy named Shipton and I thought of Cecil Whitcomb. What was it that had brought these two together? What was the deadly connection? Whatever it was it seemed just out of reach, on the other side of a wall of mist, waiting for me to reach out and grab it. I thought of a
kisaeng
named Miss Ku and a beautiful young woman who only wanted to be Ernie’s wife.

And I thought of tunnels.

Strange had said “tunnels.” Something classified in J-2 had been about tunnels.

Of course there were all sorts of tunnels. A new one for commuter traffic had been built beneath Namsan Mountain just south of downtown Seoul. There was one being carved beneath the city, the beginning of a subway system that should be finished in about twenty years. But most of all, I thought about the ones dug by the North Koreans and just discovered by our side about a year ago. Three of them. Right under the DMZ. With a track down the center and wide enough for three armed soldiers to march abreast. The newspaper stories had estimated that the North Korean People’s Army could move a fully equipped infantry battalion through each of these three tunnels in about two hours.

But what in the world did that have to do with this case?

Probably the whole thing—dust disturbed on the top of a filing cabinet, folders moved from the edge of the drawer to the center, the feeling that someone had tampered with their documents—was strictly the overheated paranoia of a bunch of half-nuts Security NCO’s.

If they were all like Strange, who could trust any of them?

1 watched a white crane wing slowly across a frozen field. What was he doing here this late in the winter?

A strange bird.

Everything I looked at—the distant hills, the huddled farm communities, the gently rolling rivers—faded into the bloodied body of the Nurse.

The trip took longer than we thought because the ROK Army was conducting war games in the hills just south of Taejon. The train screeched to a halt amongst the frost-covered peaks and soldiers hopped aboard, holding their Ml6 rifles pointed toward the sky, spot-checking identification and searching the baggage for evidence of enemy commandos.

It was all pretty silly, but in this country citizens put up with any indignity from the military. For one thing, they remember the horrors of the Korean War. For another, they don’t have any choice.

When an armed party approached us, Ernie opened one eye and growled at them. The soldiers must’ve thought that messing with an irate American would make their officer-in-charge unhappy, so they ignored us. After about forty minutes we started moving again.

When the train finally pulled into the big cement bulwark of the Pusan Train Station, it was already after eleven. Less than an hour until curfew.

We were both worn out, and at the moment I didn’t give a damn about Shipton or Whitcomb or the murder case—all I wanted to do was get my butt off that damn rattling platform. We slung our AWOL bags over our shoulders and plowed through the milling crowds to a long row of kimchi cabs outside. The drivers loitered in front of their cars, smoking, exchanging banter, hoping for one more good fare before the world closed up at curfew.

“Where to?” Ernie said.

It wasn’t as cold down here but still our breath billowed before us.

“Probably too late to get billeting at Hialeah Compound. Best we find a
yoguan.”

Across the broad road that ran in front of the train station were rows of two- and three-story cement and brick buildings, some with blinking lights advertising warm floors and baths.

“Over there,” Ernie said. “Maybe they offer girls, too.”

“Maybe.”

Always thinking, that Ernie.

We trotted across the big road against the light and entered the maze of alleys between the buildings.
Soju
houses and soup joints were still doing a good business at this hour. Sandwiched between a teahouse and a dumpling shop was a doorway that led upstairs to the Hei-un Yoguan. Upstairs, an old woman sat on the floor in a little room watching a Korean comedy show on a TV that was turned up way too loud. She lowered it when she saw us.

I greeted her and asked about rooms, and she said she had two. After setting the price, we gave the money in advance and she gave us keys and pointed down the hallway.

Our rooms were small but comfortable enough. Each had a flat hard bed and a cylindrical bead-filled pillow and a bathtub with a nozzle on a long rubber hose for a shower.

Luxurious accommodations for a former field soldier.

Neither of us felt like going outside and elbowing amongst the natives for some chop, so we ordered Chinese food from the old woman. In about twenty minutes a boy brought a tin box filled with fried rice and sweet-and-sour pork and a plastic pot of barley tea.

After we ate, we shoved the plates and utensils out in the hallway. Despite Ernie’s protestations of wanting to find a girl, he didn’t do anything about it.

Shortly after midnight the city quieted down and I lay beneath my half-open window, moonlight streaming in, and pulled the covers over my head. A few minutes later, I passed out.

Something pounded on my door.

“George! Reveille! It’s oh-dark-thirty.”

Ernie’s voice. I looked around. He was right. It was still dark.

I climbed out of bed, unlatched the door, and let him in.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I want to get out of this roach coach, make it over to the compound, and find some real chow. You know—coffee, toast, all that shit. And read the
Stripes.”

“Yeah. Let’s do that.”

We had a lot of work ahead of us. No sense putting it off.

Ten minutes later we were outside. When we found a cab, I told him to take us to Hialeah Compound. The driver roared through broad, wide-open streets, not nearly as crowded as those in Seoul. The compound was farther inland than I thought. About five miles from the Port of Pusan.

The Japanese Imperial Army, for some reason, had been big on cavalry. The compound that is now Hialeah had been used by them to race horses. When the U.S. Army took it over, some wiseacre decided to call it Hialeah Compound, after the famous racetrack in the States. The name stuck.

A narrow road lined with shops and bars led straight into a dead end that was the front gate of Hialeah Compound. A big cement MP guard shack sat on the side, and barbed wire ran along the top of the closed chain-link fence. We got out, paid the driver, and marched into an open door marked “Pedestrian Entrance.”

A bored MP wearing a gleaming black helmet liner sat behind the counter. A stenciled sign behind him instructed us to show our identification and pass upon entering or leaving Hialeah Compound, by Order of the Commander.

Friendly place.

We showed him our ID’s and he gave us directions to the billeting office. Just outside the MP shack sat the NCO Club. Not open yet, but reassuring to know that it was there.

“Ice cubes and cold beer,” Ernie said. “Who could ask for more?”

The Korean clerk at the billeting office had us fill out a couple of forms, took copies of our temporary duty orders, and finally gave us the key to a section of a Quonset hut. He told us there were two bunks in there and we’d have to share. It didn’t bother us. We didn’t plan to spend much time there anyway.

After dropping off our bags in the room, we forgot about breakfast and went straight to the PX.

It was a good-sized building, which made sense because although the population of the compound was small—only about two thousand—there was still a big demand for the PX products off base, so everybody bought their full ration every month.

The front door was locked. We walked around back and found a door open at the loading dock. After wandering around for a while we found an administrative office and a Korean secretary sitting at a desk in front of a door marked “Manager.”

The manager was a small American man, a slight paunch under his business suit, and prematurely balding on top. He nodded enthusiastically when we told him why we were there. No, he said, the courier hadn’t picked up the ration control data cards from last night.

He took us into a storage room marked “Layaway,” cleared a table for us, and plopped down three oblong boxes of computer punch cards.

“You’ll keep them in order, won’t you?” he asked. “If they are out of order it cause’s them a terrible time up at Data Processing in Seoul, and I always receive a nasty phone call from their officer in charge.”

“We’ll do our best,” I said.

“Got any coffee?” Ernie asked.

“Of course. Just ask Miss Lee. She’ll be happy to get some for you.”

I wondered how happy Miss Lee would be about serving two strangers, but I didn’t say anything. The manager left, and Ernie followed him out and came back a few minutes later with two steaming cups of coffee in mugs marked “Army & Air Force Exchange Service.”

“That Miss Lee is one fine-looking mama,” Ernie said.

I was worried that he’d disappear on me but instead he took off his jacket, draped it over the back of one of the folding chairs, and rolled up his sleeves.

The coffee wasn’t bad. Strong and hot, which is what I needed.

We went to work. We compared the printed numbers across the top of each card in the boxes with the four numbers we had that we expected Shipton to be using. It was tedious work. Every few minutes I had to take a break, sip on some coffee, and let my eyes uncross. Ernie took off his round-lensed glasses and set them on the table next to him.

A couple of PX employees—Koreans—wandered in, staring at us curiously. They took off their coats, hung them on the rack, and went back out onto the floor.

While we worked, the store opened, soft music was turned on out in the main room, and we heard the buzz of consumers doing their part to keep the international economy humming.

When I finished my coffee I decided to go after some more, but Ernie said he’d do the honors. Trying to keep Miss Lee all to himself.

It took us another hour and a half to go through the cards but in the end we had nothing. Not one card matched any of the numbers that had been provided to me by Herbalist So. I had the nagging feeling we’d screwed up somewhere. Maybe missed one of the cards. But we’d been careful as we went through them, pulling each one out, holding it up to the light, passing it across the table for a double check. There was no sense going through them again.

The manager came in.

“Ration Control’s here to pick up the cards.” He smiled. “I hope you’re about finished.”

“Yeah, we’re finished.”

Finished for good, I thought.

Ernie walked out into the main part of the PX, put his hands on his hips, gazed around, and walked back in.

“Goddamn shoppers,” he said. “Don’t they ever get tired of it?”

The PX manager looked at him as if he were a bona fide madman.

“Maybe we ought to go through the new cards,” Ernie said.

“What?”

“You know, the cards that have been anviled this morning. The ration control plate guy’s packing them up now.”

“But he’s in a big hurry,” the PX manager said. “He has to make rounds of all the outlets.”

“Come on,” I told Ernie.

At the row of cash registers we found a guy in fatigues. His armband said “Ration Control” below the 8th Army red-and-white cloverleaf patch.

He was a Spec 4, and after I showed him my CID identification and loomed over him for a few seconds he docilely brought the new cards back into the room.

We leaned over the table, working, and suddenly Ernie stiffened his back.

“Goddamn,” he said. “I got one! The son of a bitch was just in here!”

I snatched the card from his fingertips and compared the number to my list.

“You’re right. It was him.” I turned to the PX manager and pointed to a code number in the upper left of the card. “Which cashier was this?”

“Fourteen. I don’t know. I’ll have to look it up.”

Number Fourteen turned out to be a middle-aged Korean woman who’d been a PX employee for years, and when we pulled her off the cash register and escorted her back into the office, she was not only worried but her hands were shaking.

I handed her the card. Two cartons of cigarettes and a hundred dollars of miscellaneous items had been marked off.

“Do you remember this sale?”

She gazed at it a few seconds, then shook her head. I pulled out the photograph.

“How about this man?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think so. Very big man. He wear hat.” She reached up to her ears and jerked down, as if pulling on a cap.

“Did he say anything to you?”

“No. Just buy and go.”

“Have you ever seen him before?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t think, so.”

We checked with the ID card checker at the front door, but he didn’t remember the man at all.

“Looks like we screwed up royally,” Ernie said.

“But he’s still nearby,” I said. “If you wanted to make as much money as you could—fast—on the black market, where would you go next?”

“The package store.”

“And then?”

“The commissary.”

Without any good-byes we were out the door, jogging across the brown grass of the parade field, heading toward the little building that sold GI’s in Pusan all the duty-free booze they could drink.

There was only one cashier at the package store and not much traffic. He recognized the photograph immediately.

“He go. Maybe thirty minutes.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. PX taxi wait for him.”

“What did he buy?”

“Here.” He pulled put the ration control card and showed it to us. Four quarts of Johnnie Walker Black Label. The most expensive brand the store carried, and a full ration for the month. Also two cases of beer and two cases of soft drinks.