As far as 8th Army was concerned, the Threets case was a simple prosecution for armed assault. It was about to get uglier.
On the trip back from ASCOM we didn’t talk much. When we returned to the Yongsan Compound, Ernie entered through the back gate to South Post. After winding through some tree-lined lanes, he parked the jeep in the lot across the street from the “One-Two-One Evac,” the 121st Evacuation Hospital.
At the front desk, a female medic told us where we could find SFC Vince Orgwell. We clattered down long tile-floored hallways. As we did so, Ernie’s head kept swiveling, checking out the nurses and the medical aides clad in their tight white jumpsuits. Finally, we reached a ward with a half-dozen beds on either side. SFC Vincent P. Orgwell was the third on the right.
“Smoke,” Ernie said. Orgwell opened his eyes. Seeing us, he pushed himself farther up on the raised bed, pulling the white sheet higher as he did so.
“Who are you?” he asked.
We flashed our badges. This time I did the talking. I asked him to describe what had happened on the firing range. He did. Everything he said matched what was in the initial MP report. He’d been the safety officer on the left side of the range. Initially, he’d pointed the green disc of his signal paddle at the fire control tower, indicating that the six firing points on his side of the range were all clear. But then he’d seen that PFC Threets was not pointing his weapon up and down range, so he’d immediately signaled with the red side of the paddle.
“I remember the voice coming over the loudspeaker,” Orgwell told us. “‘Cease Fire! The range is not clear. Repeat, the firing range is not clear!’” He mimicked it with the authoritative voice of a fire control officer.
“What was Threets doing?” I asked.
“He was climbing out of the foxhole,” Orgwell said. “I went over to see what the hell was wrong with him and, without warning, he turned and fired.”
I glanced down at his leg.
Orgwell leaned forward and touched the cast. “Won’t lose my knee,” he said. “The docs here have done a hell of a job, although they say I won’t be doing any squat thrusts any time soon.”
He was referring to one of the exercises in the army’s “daily dozen” calisthenics drill.
“Are you putting in for disability retirement?”
“Don’t want it,” he said. “All I want is to return to Charley Battery.”
“Hope you make it,” I said.
“Thanks.”
I paused. “Do you have any idea why Threets did this to you?”
Orgwell shook his head. “Fed up with the army, I suppose.”
He thought about it a moment and then he continued.
“He was like most of these kids, didn’t take it seriously. Also, you know how some of these blacks keep bad-mouthing the ‘man.’ Claiming every time their pass is pulled it’s racist.” He studied me as he said it, wondering if I was a full-blooded member of the club. Apparently, he decided I was. “Just an excuse to not pull their weight,” Orgwell said. When neither Ernie nor I reacted, he added, “in my opinion.”
“Threets says there’s another reason he shot you,” I said.
“Yeah?” Orgwell was suspicious now. “What was that?”
“You know,” Ernie said.
Orgwell swiveled his head. “I know?”
“Yeah,” Ernie said. “You know damn well.”
Orgwell pulled the sheet up closer to his neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Threets says you made a pass at him,” Ernie said.
“A pass?”
“You tried to enter into a homosexual relationship with him,” I explained.
Orgwell’s face flushed red. He began to sputter. “You must be out of your mind!” When we didn’t respond, his face grew more contorted, and then he’d thrown the sheet back and he was sitting up, the brace surrounding his wound strapped tightly against his leg. “You lie!” he shouted and then lunged at Ernie.
Ernie stepped back and Orgwell tried to grab him, but his leg gave out and he tumbled to the tile floor in a heap, screaming in pain as he did so. An orderly entered the ward and started to pull him upright. Orgwell continued to sputter until a nurse hurried in and helped the orderly get him back into bed. Once he was settled, she turned to us and pointed with her forefinger for us to leave. As we walked out of the ward, Orgwell was still swearing.
“He said, she said,” Riley told us. Then he corrected himself. “Or in this case, he said and the other he said. Either way, you can’t prove nothing.”
“Not up to us to prove it one way or the other,” Ernie said. “It’ll be up to the court-martial to decide.”
“Threets better not demand a court-martial,” Riley said. “He’d better settle and take the time they give him. If he forces Eighth Army to go to trial and if he throws this homo stuff at him, they’ll put him away until he’s as old as . . .”
Riley paused, groping for the right comparison.
“As old as one of your girlfriends,” Ernie interjected.
“Right,” Riley said, and then he caught himself. “What do you mean by that crack?”
Ernie shrugged and continued reading the sports page of Stars and Stripes.
I was seated at a field desk near the coffee urn typing up our report. Ernie liked for me to do them, since he had no patience for paperwork. I liked paperwork. Sitting at the typewriter relaxed me and spelling everything out gave me a chance to put it all in perspective. Make sense of what was essentially unending chaos, like the case of the frozen lady in the red dress. By typing out our report, it was made clear to me where we had to go next. We had to go after the one lead we had. We had to find the Ville Rat.
I considered this to be a revelation. The masterstroke of a great detective. Or at least I did until Ernie stepped in front of the coffee urn, poured steaming java into a thick mug, and said, “Strange wants to talk to us.”
“Finally?”
“Yeah.”
“He found something out?”
“Apparently. He says it’s all hush-hush.”
“Where do we meet him?”
“Where else? The Snatch Burr.”
Which is what Strange called the 8th Army snack bar.
“At lunch?”
“Yeah.” Which is when we usually met him, in the middle of a crowd, where we’d be less conspicuous and less likely to be overheard.
“In the meantime,” I said, “we have to find the Ville Rat.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He knows something. More than he’s telling.”
Ernie nodded. “So where do we start?”
I thought about it. Then I said, “We start with the Colt 45.”
The Central Locker Fund was very possibly the neatest military warehouse I’d ever seen. The vast cement floor was swept immaculately clean, and the wooden shelves lining the walls and running in three long rows down the middle aisles were made of pine-smelling wood and shining nails. A purring forklift carried pallets laden with neatly stacked cardboard cases of Carling Black Label toward the small mountains of beer in the back. Toward the front, Korean workmen rolled flat metal carts laden with cases of imported scotch and vodka to the rows of shelves closer to the main office.
“Clear the booze out of here,” Ernie said, “and you’d have space for a C-130.” A military air transport.
Light shone behind a glass enclosure. We entered a short hallway and followed it to a double-doored entranceway. Inside was another vast warehouse, about half as big as the other, this one filled with rows of desks interrupted by grey hedge rows of Army-issue filing cabinets, all of it populated by industrious-looking Korean workers hunched over stacks of onionskin invoices or hauling manila folders from one wire in-basket to another or talking animatedly on heavy, black military phones.