I’d seen it before. Too often. The command trying to mold a criminal case into something that made an ethical or legal point they wanted to make. Something they could contain. But crime is sloppy, usually tragic, and often bloody, and people’s motivations for doing what they do can be beyond the control, or even the understanding, of the honchos of the 8th United States Army.
“So the ‘gunslinger’ isn’t properly controlling his troops,” Ernie said.
“Lack of training,” Lieutenant Mendelson said. It was a reflexive statement, one the army uses to explain virtually any failing.
“Will the ‘gunslinger’ be asked to testify at the Threets court-martial?”
Lieutenant Mendelson looked sharply at Ernie. “That hasn’t been decided yet.”
“But you’re not going to go with the homo defense?”
“Not my call.”
“Whose call is it?”
“The officer assigned as his defense counsel.”
“Who’s that?”
“We don’t know yet. The first one resigned.”
“Why?”
“He has deployment orders. No time to properly prepare his defense.”
“So who’s been appointed to take his place?”
“That hasn’t been decided yet.”
“With less than a week to go before the trial starts, don’t you think you ought to assign someone?”
“That’s our job, not yours.”
Ernie grinned, pulled out a pack of ginseng gum and offered her a stick. She declined.
“What about our report?” I asked.
“You refuse to change it?”
“No reason to change it,” I said. “It’s based on face-to-face interviews.”
“Hearsay.”
“Unless it’s corroborated, yes.”
She slid the report into a folder.
“Okay. It’s your butts on the line.”
“I love it when you talk like that,” Ernie said. She glared at him.
I dialed and listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times. On the fourth ring someone picked up and, in an exasperated tone, said, “BOQ.” Bachelor Officer Quarters.
It was a woman’s voice, so I knew I had the correct number.
“Hello?” she said.
I kept my silence. She listened. “Okay,” she said finally. “No heavy breathing, so you must be the mystery man.”
She waited for me to reply, but again I said nothing. She sighed and the phone clattered to the wooden table.
“Prevault!” she shouted, her voice echoing down the hall. “It’s him again.”
Footsteps pounded into the distance and a few seconds later, lighter footsteps returned. The phone was lifted up and then a hushed voice came over the line, muffled, as if she’d covered the receiver with her hand.
“George, is that you?”
“It’s me,” I said.
Captain Leah Prevault was a psychiatrist at the 121st Evacuation Hospital; she and I had worked together on a previous case. We’d also gotten to know one another pretty well and one thing had led to another. But our relationship had to be kept secret because, even though as a CID agent my rank was classified, I was still an enlisted man and pretty much everyone on Yongsan Compound knew it. Captain Prevault, on the other hand, was a commissioned officer. Under the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, we were prohibited from fraternization-for the maintenance of good order and discipline, supposedly. Violation of this directive could make either one of us-or both-subject to court-martial. Which is why I didn’t identify myself the few times I called her at the BOQ.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Have you interrogated Orgwell yet?”
“We don’t call them ‘interrogations.’”
“But you asked him about the case?”
“No. I let him talk.”
“That must’ve been tricky, getting him to open up.”
“We have our ways.”
I imagined her wearing her bathrobe, a white towel wrapped around her hair, holding the phone with both hands and leaning against the wall in the center of the BOQ hallway.
“I have a favor to ask,” I told her. She waited. I explained what Threets had said at the 8th Army Stockade in ASCOM.
When I finished, she said, “They’ll claim he’s lying.”
“I know. Can you meet with him?”
“I’ll need a referral.”
“They have a doctor down there in ASCOM, don’t they?”
“I suppose.”
“Contact him. Tell him someone told you that Threets needs help.”
“Does he?”
“A lot of it.”
“But mainly you’re just trying to evaluate his credibility.”
“Yes,” I replied.
She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“When can we meet?” I asked.
She told me.
The Kit Kat Club sat in the maze of narrow pedestrian lanes that comprised the district in Seoul known as Samgakji. Literally, the Three-Horned District. It derived its name from a famous three-way intersection centered at the Samgakji traffic circle. Roads ran from there north to the Seoul Train Station, south to the Han River Bridge, and east to 8th Army headquarters-and, beyond that, to the village of Itaewon.
It was a short walk out of the wastern gate of 8th Army’s Yongsan Compound to the red-light district of Samgakji. However, it was a walk that white GIs seldom took. The village of Samgakji was frequented almost exclusively by black soldiers. White soldiers frequented Itaewon, a mile away on the other side of the compound. Nobody enforced this segregation, it had just developed over the years, but for some reason it was an unwritten rule that was seldom broken.
Except for tonight.
Ernie and I pushed through the front swinging doors of the Kit Kat Club.
Marvin Gaye wailed through the withered speakers of a jukebox. It was early, so there were only about a dozen GIs in the place, some of them shooting pool, others standing near the bar, laughing about something. But the laughter stopped when Ernie and I walked in.
We weren’t in uniform. We were wearing our running-the-ville outfits: sneakers, blue jeans, sports shirts with collars, and blue nylon jackets with fire-breathing dragons embroidered on the back. Beneath the writhing reptile, Ernie’s jacket said: I’ve served my time in hell. Somewhat of an overstatement, unless he was talking about his two tours in Vietnam. Mine said simply: Korea: 1970 -1974.
Most of the black GIs wore slacks and colorful shirts, occasionally with a beret or fedora tilted rakishly to the sides of their heads. None of them wore blue jeans.
Ernie was all out of reefer but he approached the GIs at the bar and offered them sticks of ginseng gum. There were no takers. While he bantered with them, I ducked behind the bar and flashed my badge to the barmaid. Her hair was tightly curled into a bouffant Afro, and as I started opening the beer coolers, her mouth dropped open. I was sliding up the first one, illuminating the contents with my flashlight, when she found her voice.
“Whatsamatta you?” she said.
“Inspection,” I replied, an English word most Korean workers in GI bars understood. Not only were inspections a big part of their GI customers’ lives, but they were also a favorite means of control utilized by Korean government authorities. Not so much to make sure that the bars complied with safety and health regulations, but rather as a means of coercing payoffs.
“No can do,” she said. When I didn’t stop, she repeated, “Mama-san say no can do.”
She scurried into the back room.
I found them in the last cooler, hidden in a cardboard box that said Samyang Ramyon: a dozen sixteen-ounce cans of Colt 45.
An older woman appeared behind me.
“Whatsamatta you?” she said. A favorite expression around here. But her voice was more gravelly, scraped raw by years of booze and tobacco smoke.
I showed her my badge.
“This,” I said, holding up one of the cans. “Where you get?”
“Present-uh,” she said quickly. “Some GI present-uh to me.”
“It was a gift?”
She nodded quickly.
“And where did the GI get it?” I asked.