I walked over to the front gate and copied the family’s name and address from the engraved marble plaque embedded in the stone walclass="underline" Shin, 201-26 bonji, 34 ho, Hyonjo-dong, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
I walked back to the jeep.
“I’m going to try to talk to her,” I said. “If I’m not back in thirty minutes, send in the Eighty-Second Airborne.”
“If you’re not back in thirty minutes, I’ll be gone.”
I returned to the front gate and rang the bell. An old woman shuffled out of the house and crossed the garden. When she saw my face, she started calling for someone named Lawyer Hong. He appeared at the door, speaking English.
“Can I help you?”
“I want to speak to Miss Shin. About what happened at the demonstration.” I showed him my identification.
“Just a moment.” He closed the gate in my face and walked quickly back into the house. After a few minutes, he reappeared. “Miss Shin will be unable to talk to anyone for a few days.”
“But it’s about the man who was killed …”
The door slammed in my face again.
As I walked away, I saw a baggy-faced old man glowering at me from a second-story window. I hated to drop a dime on little Miss Shin like that. American boyfriends aren’t exactly good news to the ears of Korean parents. But it could have been worse. She could have been the one under those tires this afternoon.
I ducked back in the jeep and plopped into the passenger seat.
“No luck?”
“None.”
“Where to?”
“Let’s go find out a little bit more about the unfortunate Corporal Ralph Whitcomb.”
The Charge of Quarters at Headquarters Company, 8th Army, was unsure if he should let us into Whitcomb’s room.
“We showed you our identification,” Ernie said. “What more do you want?”
“You need a warrant or something, don’t you?”
“This is government property.” Ernie waved his arms, taking in the entire three-story building. “People inspect it inside and out all the time. Who needs a warrant?”
The little guy brushed his brown hair back and reached for the ring of keys on his hip. “I guess you’re right. The first sergeant came through this morning tearing down FTA signs, and last week the dogs came through sniffing for dope.”
“If anybody wants privacy,” Ernie said, “they better rent a hooch out in the village.”
We walked down the hallway and the CQ opened Whitcomb’s door. The cement block walls of the rectangular room had been painted a pale yellow. Bunks sat in three of the corners with big double-door wall lockers strategically placed to give each soldier a modicum of privacy. A row of shoes, starting with a highly spit-shined pair of combat boots, sat under each tightly made bunk. A bikinied Korean beauty beckoned from the OB Beer calendar on an otherwise naked wall.
There was no question about which bunk was Whitcomb’s. The wall behind was plastered with photographs, many showing him robust and alive. He had been about five foot ten and seemed to be always smiling. A shock of blond hair waved over a pair of army-issue horn-rimmed glasses. There were photos of him posing in front of pagodas and shrines and ancient ruins, all places that I’d heard about but never had the gumption to visit.
In some of the photos Whitcomb was accompanied by young Korean women. In those, the backdrop was usually what appeared to be college campuses.
“This guy didn’t waste his time or money on the girls out in the village,” Ernie said.
“No. Looks like he went after the good ones.”
Ernie checked some of the photos more closely. “Nice,” he said. “But these good ones can be more dangerous.”
“You’re talking about getting trapped into marriage.”
“That, too,” he said.
There were more photos in an album and a packet of new photographs in a cloudy transparent wrapper.
Miss Shin, without her chrysanthemum, stood next to Whitcomb on the campus of what looked like Chungang University. The plain, round-faced girl and the two young men we had seen at the police station were also smiling broadly at the lens. I turned it over. Their first names were penciled in, from left to right. Miss Shin’s first name was Myong-hui.
I stuck the photograph in my pocket.
“Time to visit a few dormitories,” I said.
“You’re just hoping we’ll run into a panty raid.”
“They have those here?”
“They have them everywhere,” Ernie said.
We didn’t bother with the administrative offices, just asked a young woman, strolling through the campus, where we could find the women’s dormitories. She pointed, surprised to see two big Caucasian men on campus. She wasn’t carrying any books. Classes had been cancelled for the day.
When we arrived at the row of dormitory buildings, we started asking young women if they knew the whereabouts of Shin Myong-hui or her friend. I showed them the photograph. Ernie kept picking out the best looking girls to question until we found one who was willing to answer. She also pointed, this time to a two-story brick building, and we trudged up cement steps until a middle-aged Korean woman barred our way. I spoke to her in Korean, showed her the photograph, and she ushered us toward a waiting room with a sitting area, a couple of card tables, and a pot of hot water on a charcoal-burning space heater.
Ernie wandered over to the game room next door and fumbled with the foosball machine.
The girl from the picture was short and her complexion was about the color of a cup of coffee lightened by an ounce of cream. She wore a plain beige skirt and blouse, kept wringing her hands in front of her flat belly, and bobbed her glasses beneath her crinkled brow. I asked her to sit down. The middle-aged woman made sure I caught her long hard look and then turned and marched out of the room.
The young woman pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket and started worrying it.
“We’re here about the American who was killed today,” I said.
Ernie padded into the room, pulled over a straight-backed chair, and sat down facing both of us.
I continued. “You’re a good friend of Miss Shin Myong-hui?”
“Yes.”
“The American, Ralph, he bought her a chrysanthemum today.”
The crinkles on her forehead softened for a moment, and she almost smiled.
“It was very nice,” she said.
“Were they lovers?”
“No. Not yet. But I think they would have been.”
She looked back down at the floor, and the handkerchief waggled.
“Tell me about them.”
Her sentences rolled out in precisely pronounced English, and I could see her editing her grammar as she went along.
“I was with Myong-hui when she met Ralph. He was taking photographs, here on campus, and he asked us to take a snapshot of him next to the fountain. Then he asked us, one by one, to pose with him. Later we went to a teahouse and talked, and before he went back to the compound, he had exchanged phone number with Myong-hui.
“At the time she didn’t think she’d ever hear from him again. Mainly she was curious-about Americans. He was the first she’d ever met. And the first I’d ever met. He seemed nice. I warned her about Hei-sok, her boyfriend, but she wouldn’t listen. She was always so open about everything. When he found out, he was upset, but he did his best to hide it. He tried to act …” She searched for a word. “… sophisticated about the whole thing. But I know he was very hurt and very angry. We met Ralph again about a week later, and he took us to see an American movie.”
“On Eighth Army compound?”
“Yes. In Yongsan. And after the movie we went to your snack bar and ate some ice cream. It was very delicious.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. When Hei-sok heard that we had gone to an American compound, he was furious, but he was smart enough not to scold Myong-hui. He knew that she would be sure to do whatever he told her not to do. Today was the fourth time we had seen Ralph, and the second time the four of us had gone together.”