“I have to warn Ernie,” I said.
“Do that,” Riley said.
I ran out to the narrow parking area between the buildings. Ernie had just parked the jeep and was walking toward the building. I grabbed him.
“The Nurse is here. Talking to the First Sergeant.”
“Oh, shit. About what?”
“About you going out nights. Not coming home.”
“Nothing in the Code of Military Justice says I can’t.”
“No. But the honchos don’t like innocent-looking girls on their doorstep complaining about debauched GIs. Bad for the CID’s image.”
“Fuck the CID’s image.”
I squeezed his arm. Somebody had to lecture him. Somebody had to keep him from screwing up his life at every turn. If not me, who?
“Ernie. You have to make the First Sergeant happy. Let him know you’ll do whatever it takes to avoid embarrassment for him and the Provost Marshal. Otherwise, he might restrict us to compound or worse, who knows. Conduct Unbecoming is a court-martial offense. They could lock you up. What with this new murder, we have to keep our freedom of movement. You have to take care of it, Ernie.”
“Shit, George. You worry too much about the small stuff.”
“It isn’t small, Ernie. You and I sent Cecil Whitcomb to his death.”
He sighed.
“Besides, you ought to treat the Nurse better. She’s a good chick. She deserves it. Get in there and make nice with her.”
“I was going to anyway. Tonight.”
“Do it now.”
“Relax, Reverend. I get the point.”
He shrugged off my grip and stormed up the steps. Before I went back into the Admin Office, I watched him knock on the open door of the First Sergeant’s office and enter.
I leaned over Riley’s desk. “What’d you get on those former GIs?”
He handed me a stack of messages. “A couple hundred names. Seems that foreigners aren’t as bashful as I thought about ending up on KNP blotter reports. Of course, a lot of them are just traffic accidents, things like that. But there’s a few fights. Even a few alleged robberies. When you pick out some names, let me know and I’ll ask for details.”
“Thanks, Riley.”
“What was all that shit about at the kisaeng house?”
“Woman got killed.”
“Anybody we know?”
“A friend of Ernie’s.”
“He’s not having a very good day, is he?”
“No. He’s not.”
Neither was I, but I didn’t tell Riley that.
I thumbed through the blotter reports the Korean National Police Liaison had provided. As Riley had said, most were just traffic accidents or disputes over hotel bills. Of the serious incidents, four were alleged robberies by Americans, three of which turned out to be underpayment to prostitutes. Only one was an out-and-out theft, from a fellow traveler on a package tour. A Japanese camera. Virtually all the people listed, and all of those involved in the serious incidents, had already left the country.
The next stack of paperwork was a little more interesting. Each page was a short biographical sketch with a small black-and-white photo: GIs who’d gone AWOL in Korea and had not yet been apprehended. The fact that they hadn’t been apprehended wasn’t surprising, since we don’t bother to look for them. The reason is that the ports of embarkation, either by ship or at the Kimpo International Airport, are so tightly controlled by the Korean authorities that we aren’t worried about AWOL GIs slipping out of the country. And if they stay here, eventually they’ll tire of scrounging for a living on the fringes of Korean life. Sooner or later, almost all of them turn themselves in, willing to accept court-martial as long as they can get a ticket back to the States.
Of course, I suppose a few of them went to all the trouble of getting phony passports and slipping out of the country, but the army wasn’t worried about it. Now that the draft was gone and the American economy was in a shambles, men were fighting to stay in the army. Not to get out.
Still, the most likely way to make a living after going AWOL was by way of the black market. A phony military identification card, a phony ration control plate, and you were in business. The danger was that you had to go onto the compounds regularly to do the purchasing. That’s why the guy who was shadowing us had short hair. So he’d look like an active duty GI.
I studied the pictures carefully. None of the faces seemed familiar. I tried to imagine each one in a smoke-filled barroom or on a street, lounging behind us, trying to look inconspicuous. Nothing clicked. Every face was a complete stranger.
I read the names and the biographical notes. Still nothing.
Heels clicked down the hallway. The Nurse marched past the door of the Admin Office, looking straight ahead. The big double doors of the exitway creaked open and slammed shut.
I thought of running after her, trying to console her, but she looked too upset. Anything I said would probably just come out stupid. Like most wives or girlfriends, the Nurse considered the running-the-ville buddy-me-the real cause for all her grief. Ernie was pure of heart. It was just evil guys like me who were leading him astray.
I damn sure wasn’t going to betray Ernie and tell the Nurse the truth about his love life. And I didn’t feel like telling any more lies today. So I stayed where I was.
The First Sergeant called Riley down the hallway, and after a brief chat the skinny Admin Sergeant returned. He was shaking his head.
“What is it?”
“I have to counsel Ernie on the dangers of promiscuity. And too much booze.”
“You?”
“Hey, I’m a Staff Sergeant.” Riley pointed to the yellow rocker beneath his stripes. “This gives me superior knowledge and virtue.”
I thought of the bottle of Old Overwart he kept in his locker and the old hag business girls he sometimes picked up in the ville and dragged back to the barracks.
“Yeah. Virtue,” I said. “You got that.”
Miss Kim had had enough. Holding a handkerchief to her nose, she jumped up from her typewriter, ran out of the office, and clicked her high heels down the hallway toward the ladies’ room.
“What’s wrong with her?” Riley asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Riley shuffled through a stack of paperwork. “Must be a virus.”
26
Before the First Sergeant had finished with Ernie, I placed a call to the British Honor Guard.
The Sergeant Major confirmed for me that Cecil Whitcomb had indeed been the proud owner of a Gurkha knife. He’d bought it off a soldier in a British Gurkha unit in Hong Kong. For “five quid,” whatever the hell that was. The knife was not listed in the inventory of his belongings conducted after his death.
The Sergeant Major told me that Whitcomb’s body had been released by the Seoul coroner’s office and had been flown out that morning via a specially arranged flight from Kimpo Air Force Base. I asked him for the name and address of Whitcomb’s next of kin. He gave me an address somewhere in London, but of a woman with a last name other than Whitcomb. His mother, he said. Her husband, Whitcomb’s father, had died a few years ago and she’d remarried.
I folded the address and stuck it in my wallet.
I went back to the barracks and waited until the firing of the cannon at 1700 hours that signified the close of 8th Army’s official business day. When all was clear, I changed my clothes and went over to the snack bar and ate some chow. I just wanted to be alone. Have time to think about the case. Have time to think about what happened to Miss Ku. About what happened to Cecil Whitcomb.
Whoever we were dealing with had wanted Cecil Whitcomb badly. He’d used Miss Ku and Eun-hi and me and Ernie, and using us, he’d accomplished his objective. It made sense that he had to entice Whitcomb off the compound. In the nature of army life, whether in the barracks or on the parade field or out running the ville with his buddies, Whitcomb would never be alone. That night out in Nam-daemun, he had been alone.