“So when do you figure the Ville Rat will show up?” Ernie asked.
“I’m not sure. But as soon as we see that one of the clubs has a new supply of Colt 45, we’ll know he’s in the area.”
“What if he doesn’t make the deliveries himself?”
“I believe he does. Remember what the old lady up in Sonyu-ri said, the one who owns the Black Star Nightclub. She said the Ville Rat was popular with the black GIs.”
“But somehow he found out that we were looking for him in Samgakji and he tried to have us killed.”
“Maybe it wasn’t him.”
“Then who would it be?”
“I don’t know. But from what we’ve learned so far, it seems the Ville Rat is just a former GI who’s making a living here . . .”
“An illegal living.”
“Yeah. An illegal living, but he’s not pulling down a ton of money. Is that enough to have somebody murdered?”
“You never know,” Ernie said, toying with his chopsticks. “Some GIs hate the CID.”
“But somebody not only paid those two guys to steal the garlic truck; they also knew how to contact professional killers, all on short notice.”
“We don’t know that they were professional.”
“No, but they probably were. So everything points to the hit being ordered by somebody making big bucks, somebody with connections to the Korean underworld.”
“They also sent Campione and the Far East District GIs after us.”
“No, those guys were amateurs. They weren’t out to kill anyone-they were out to frighten us, to protect their turf.”
“So you think somebody bigger than the Ville Rat is watching us?”
“They’re trying to. Which means that the stakes here are more than just a few cases of Colt 45.”
“Like what?” Ernie asked.
“Remember what Haggler Lee said. ‘Look to yourselves.’ He believes that the Colt 45 is being shipped in via the US military procurement process.”
“But Burrows and Slabem just audited their books.” Then he went quiet, staring at the noodles hanging off the polished wooden chopsticks in his hand.
“They’re brownnosers,” I said. “They wouldn’t have reported anything wrong if it stared them in the face.”
“They received a reward for that audit. It took them over a month.”
“What does Eighth Army reward people for?” I asked.
“For not making waves.” He dropped his chopsticks into his bowl and leaned toward me. “You think Burrows and Slabem purposely covered something up?”
“No. I don’t believe that at all. What I believe is that they didn’t look too hard. They took whatever horseshit the Non-Appropriated Fund honchos handed to them and treated it as if it were a set of commandments from on high.”
“So,” Ernie paused, letting it sink in, “what’s really happening is that somebody is ordering stuff off the books and selling it on the black market.”
“Yes. Think about it. The US taxpayer covers the cost of shipping the merchandise from the US or Japan or Europe or wherever it comes from. It’s brought into Korea with no customs duties or taxes, and then you sell it to the locals at whatever markup you can get away with.”
“But they don’t steal the merchandise from the government.”
“No, that would be too obvious. They pay for it, then sell it for double or triple what they pay for it.” I paused, too excited to eat. “And the Colt 45 might be just crumbs falling from the table.”
“Crumbs the Ville Rat licks up and uses to make a living.”
“Yeah.”
“But why him? Why would anyone risk the integrity of a larger operation just to allow some lowlife like the Ville Rat to make a few bucks?”
“He’s out of the army now, but where did he work when he was on active duty?”
“You think maybe he’s got something on somebody and he used that to force them to cut him in on the action?”
“Maybe.”
“But if we find evidence, the whole thing will fall apart. Which is why they sent the garlic truck after us.”
“And what about him? If we’re in danger, wouldn’t he be too?”
“Maybe whoever’s running this operation never saw the need to use violence before. But now they see the Ville Rat as a loose cannon. If they’re willing to murder a CID agent, they’d certainly be willing to snuff out a nobody like the Ville Rat.”
“Do you think he knows that?”
“He should, if he’s smart. He must’ve heard about Samgakji. Gossip spreads through the GI villages faster than smallpox.”
Ernie shoved his bowl away.
“Let’s get out there and find him.”
I slurped down the last of my noodles, stood up, and followed Ernie out the door.
We checked the Blue Diamond and all the other bars we’d visited before, but even though the night shift had come on and GI customers were starting to filter in, none of them had yet increased their inventory of Colt 45. One of the barmaids admitted to us that the guy who usually brought it was supposed to have come in earlier but hadn’t shown. I asked her to describe him to us, claiming we wanted to buy a whole case from him, and she relented. Skinny white guy, always wore loud shirts, reddish hair, teased and puffed out so he looked like a soul brother.
Ernie and I stood in the shadows beneath the awning of Kim’s Sporting Goods, enjoying the cool evening breeze, watching both white and black GIs stream out of the front gate of Osan Air Force Base. Down both lanes, off to the right and straight on, neon flashed an inviting promise: fun, drinks, women.
“Maybe he’s dead,” Ernie said. “Maybe we’re too late. Maybe after they burned the garlic truck, the two assassins went after him.”
“Maybe.”
“So then what do we do?”
I sighed. “We write it all down, everything we’ve learned, and then we ask permission from the provost marshal to reopen the NAF audit.”
“Are you nuts? They’d have to admit that they gave awards to the wrong guys.”
“So maybe we should do the inventory on our own.”
“If we knew what we were looking for, that would make sense. But there must be a mountain of documents at the Comptroller’s Office, and other places. It would take us weeks of checking and rechecking and comparing purchase orders to inventories to shipping documents and delivery invoices.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean maybe?”
“Maybe we could figure out a way to do it faster than that.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I have to think about it.”
At the front gate, some of the GIs were carrying out cases of beer or soda or large bags of commissary or PX purchases. They were probably going to their hooch or their yobo’s place, and they didn’t want to walk. For them, a line of Hyundai cabs had queued up at a taxi stand. But the number of GIs willing to pop for the fare were few and far between. Most of them walked. One of the cabs pulled away without a customer, which was unusual after waiting so long. Maybe he was tired of this shit and decided to go home. But the night was young . . . All these thoughts drifted idly through my mind as I thought about how a scam to import Colt 45 without it showing up in the regular inventory would work. How many people would be involved? Who would have to be paid off? How high would it go? It was certainly not worth the few bucks the Ville Rat was pulling down.
And then the cab’s engine roared and its headlights blinked on and the blinding light was speeding straight for us. Ernie shouted, “Hey!” and shoved my shoulder, and just before the speeding cab reached us, something dark flew out of the night. Whatever it was, it was heavy and compact; it twirled and then slammed into the speeding windshield of the cab. On impact, the cab jogged to the right just enough so I had time to dive blindly to my left, landing headfirst in a bin of soccer balls. Tires screeched and the wall behind me shuddered and the car’s glass exploded into a thousand shards. I covered my head.
– 11-