As I pecked out my preliminary report, I thought of what I knew about the British soldiers in the Honor Guard. Their pay wasn’t good-probably less than half what an American of comparable rank pulls down-so they often use their ration control plates to buy everything they can out of the American PX and sell it to the Koreans down in the village. Sometimes they barter. Paying their houseboy in the barracks in imported liquor or cigarettes for doing their laundry and shining their shoes. Or buying freeze-dried coffee and hand lotion and tins of preserved meat for the girls in Itaewon who would favor them with those ephemeral charms that a young soldier prizes most.
So maybe this all had to do with some sort of black-marketing scam. Maybe Miss Ku, the gal at the teahouse, wasn’t what she appeared to be. Maybe Cecil Whitcomb had gotten involved in a large black market deal and ripped Miss Ku off and she’d hired someone to take her revenge.
Maybe.
I made a note to check Whitcomb’s ration control records.
Or maybe they’d been in on something together and pissed somebody off and now Miss Ku was in danger. Or already dead.
I made a note to monitor the KNP reports for the next few days. Tonight, so far, there was nothing on a dead female.
When I finished the report, I pulled it out of the typewriter and checked it for spelling mistakes. I wasn’t worried about grammar. Nobody cares about grammar in the army. Only spelling. Spelling is something you can look up. Check out precisely without bending your brain too much. Since I’d been in the army I’d only heard grammar mentioned once. That was in Basic Training when my drill sergeant said, “When I talk, you assholes’d better know what I mean.” Somehow we always did.
Whoever read this report would understand its grim message. It was simple enough. A British soldier had been murdered, by person or persons unknown.
What they wouldn’t understand-what nobody knew but me-is that I would find the killer.
Ernie and I had been involved. Maybe we’d been double-crossed, used to set up an innocent man. Or maybe Miss Ku had been sincere, maybe she just wanted us to deliver a simple note. If that were true, Ernie and I should’ve pressed harder, found out why Cecil Whitcomb was so nervous about talking to us. And why he seemed so passive when he read a love note from a beautiful woman.
Either way, nothing would stop me from getting the people who had done this.
Koreans might be inscrutable to most of the world, but they aren’t inscrutable to me. I grew up in East L.A. speaking two languages, living in two worlds, the Anglo and the Mexican. More worlds than that, really, if you consider the foster homes: Jewish, Polish, Argentinean. So learning a third language, Korean, hadn’t intimidated me. In fact it came fairly easily, especially when the army gave free night courses on the compound and the instructor was young and female and pretty. And living in the Korean world hadn’t bothered me either. Their culture was just another puzzle to unravel, like so many that I’d faced when the County of Los Angeles moved me from home to home.
I had time to solve this case. The request for an extension of my tour of duty in-country had been approved for another twelve months. I didn’t have to worry about money or food or a place to sleep. The army took care of that. Other than an occasional hassle at work, I had nothing else to do except drink beer and chase women and I could set that aside for a while. I’d catch the son of a bitch who killed Cecil Whitcomb.
And I’d make sure he rotted in prison. Or in hell.
“George! Wake up!”
I raised my head, my hands cold on the-sharp edge of the metal typewriter.
“You sleep here all night?”
It was Riley, the Admin Sergeant, the guy who’d first told us about the murder last night. He let go of my shoulder. I shook my head and wiped drool from the corner of my mouth.
'Yeah. I guess I did.”
“Better get your ass washed up. The First Sergeant’s on the way in and you know he won’t tolerate a sloppy troop.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I stood up. Riley pulled a disposable razor out of his desk drawer and tossed it to me.
“Here. Use this.”
I caught it and grunted. “Thanks.”
Down in the latrine I washed up and managed to shave without cutting myself. After I finished, I dried my face with towels of coarse brown pulp. By the time I walked back into the Admin Office, Riley had a pot of coffee brewing. He handed me a cup. I thanked him and sipped on it gratefully.
“Better prepare for heavy swells,” he said. “The First Sergeant had one hellacious case of the ass last night.”
My head hurt so I said it softly. “Fuck the First Sergeant.”
“I wouldn’t,” Riley said. “Not even with your dick.”
The door slammed, heavy footsteps pounded, and a low growl reverberated down the hallway.
“Sueno! You in here?”
I didn’t answer. I guess he took that for a yes.
“Get your ass in my office!”
I finished drinking my coffee, set the cup down, and grinned at Riley.
“I hate to see the old boy so worked up before breakfast.”
“That son of a bitch doesn’t eat breakfast. He gets all his nourishment by chewing ass.”
I walked down the hallway, concentrating on keeping my chest thrust out and my shoulders back. I knew I put up a good front. I’d been working on my technique for years. But inside I felt completely alone.
4
It was a dark room. With somber red curlicues in the wallpaper and a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, her halo radiant behind a shawl of purple silk. A tall priest dressed in black gazed down at me, warning me with his eyes to keep quiet. The room smelled of must and baby powder. Old women cried and twisted lace handkerchiefs with crablike fingers.
My mother didn’t look like herself. No flushed complexion, no smile ready to break out beneath laughing eyes, no movement in her arms or legs. She lay still on the bed and for a moment I thought she was a stranger, a stranger made of wax.
The priest pointed and nodded his head. I leaned across the damp sheets of the bed and kissed my mother’s face. The flesh was cold. I pulled away quickly. Her eyes remained tightly shut but her lips fluttered, like the wings of a dying butterfly.
“jorge,” she said. “jorge mio.”
They took me out of the room.
A few hours later the priest woke me and told me my mother was dead.
I cried for three days. The First Sergeant and I sat in uncomfortable silence. He puttered with paperwork and occasionally walked up and down the hallway to see if the secretary was in yet. I remained immobile on the hard wooden chair. His little coffeemaker gurgled in the corner and I was tempted to walk over and pour myself a cup, but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.
We were waiting for Ernie.
The First Sergeant didn’t want to waste his breath on just one maggot, he wanted to have us both here for the ass chewing. I knew his game. Keep me here, callousing my butt, so I’d get the message: You can’t be trusted to be let out of my sight or you’ll wander off and get lost again.
It was a game a lot of sergeants and officers play. Somehow it makes them feel good. Maybe their parents played it on them, I don’t know. And feeling good is more important to them than productivity. I was dying to get on with the investigation; time could be everything. The people I needed to talk to could disappear in a few hours like the morning mist. But I wasn’t going to beg.
Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. He was looking forward to this-in fact he had to wipe his mouth occasionally with the back of his hand because saliva was dripping out- and a First Sergeant with a case of the ass cannot be denied. Not in the army I know.
It was about one minute to eight when Ernie popped through the door.
“About time you got here,” the First Sergeant said.