After the near miss with the garlic truck, Ernie visited Staff Sergeant Palinki, the military police armorer, and demanded more ammo for his .45.
“How about you, buddy?” Palinki asked me. “You need a weapon too?”
I declined. I figured one gun was enough for what we needed to do.
Palinki was a huge man-Samoan, from Hawaii. He’d told me he hadn’t originally wanted to join the army, but he’d been drafted. He admitted freely that his entire extended family accompanied him to the induction center and they’d all cried like babies when he’d been taken away. His family thought they’d never see him again, and they almost hadn’t. He’d been trained in infantry tactics and sent to Vietnam, but emerged with only minor shrapnel wounds. When he returned to Hawaii, much of his extended family had moved on. The young ones were going off to college; others were landing tourist hotel or government jobs and moving into tract homes around the island.
“I had money in my pocket and stripes on my arm,” Palinki said. “I was somebody, but if I get out of the army, I go back to being nobody again.”
So he re-upped for six. Now, after more than eight years in the army, he was heavily invested. “Twelve more years,” he said smiling, “and I’m walking. Back to the big island with a monthly retirement check and full medical.” Then he smiled even more broadly, showing a gold-capped tooth. “And full dental.”
Palinki was a lifer, like me. We were loyal to the army, for the most part, and patriotic, true-blue Americans, but the first rule when you’re a lifer is to watch out for your brisket. If you piss off the wrong people, the army will screw you over and not even look back. Sometimes, like in Vietnam, they can even get you killed. Usually, though, they don’t, at least not on the streets of Chico Village.
This time, though, they almost had.
Before I could shove the soccer balls out of the way and sit back up, I heard Ernie cursing and firing his weapon-one shot, two-into the Songtan night.
Then he ran after the cab. Down the road, tires screeched, an engine roared, and hoarse GIs shouted and cursed. Ernie fired again. By now I was out of the bin and standing unsteadily, surrounded by broken metal tubing and splintered wood. I took a step forward, and something heavy banged against my foot. I reached down and spotted a cylindrical object. I lifted it and turned it toward the light. Colt 45. A full can, warm to the touch, unopened. I heard the gunfire again, and then it stopped. I dropped the can, grabbed my throbbing head, and staggered toward the sound.
Like the sudden emersion of trapdoor spiders, Korean business girls in hot pants and miniskirts poured out of the bars and nightclubs lining the main drag. Everyone’s attention was turned toward flashing blue and green and yellow lights rotating down the road. A KNP roadblock. I surged forward with the crowd and spotted Ernie, standing next to three KNPs and what looked like the same taxicab that had tried to kill me. It was parked at an angle in front of two blue KNP sedans, and two Korean men were on their knees next to the cab with their hands shackled behind their backs. One of the KNPs had his fist on the back of the head of one of the kneeling men; he was leaning over, talking at him, and the suspect kept his head bowed, nodding occasionally.
Ernie stood next to a man I recognized: Mr. Kill. He saw me and his gaze filled with concern.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Somebody threw something at the cab. It hit the windshield and gave me enough time to get out of the way.” I paused. “What are you doing here?”
He smiled. “We visited your friend, Haggler Lee, after you talked to him. He agreed that you might need some backup.”
I glanced at the two kneeling Korean men. “Who are they?”
“Not sure, but we’ll find out soon enough.”
Ernie said, “They’re lucky I didn’t pop them with one of the rounds I fired.”
Mr. Kill smiled. “That certainly put them into a panic.”
I told them about the can of Colt 45 that someone had thrown.
“The Ville Rat,” Ernie said. “Gotta be. He must be in the area.”
Quickly, I explained to Mr. Kill who the Ville Rat was and told him what he looked like.
“I’ll send a patrol in,” Mr. Kill said.
“No.” I held out my hand. “It’s better if Ernie and I approach him.”
Mr. Kill studied me. Then he said, “If you think it’s best.”
“Yes, we want his cooperation,” I said, “if we can get it.”
Ernie and I hurried back to the black section of Songtan.
The Blue Diamond Bar was packed. The music was so loud it blared out into the roadway as GIs jostled one another wall to wall. Inside, I could make out a half-dozen bar maids, sweating and serving drinks as fast as their hands could move. Most of the GIs were marines. I could tell by the T-shirts and headgear they wore, marked by unit insignia, and by the Japanese words-such as musame and taaksan and skoshi-they bantered about. Also, most of the men were in much better physical condition than your average Osan airman. Not that the zoomies didn’t work hard, but most of their jobs were highly technical and often sedentary.
Ernie and I pushed our way through the crowd. The greeting we received wasn’t particularly unfriendly, but it wasn’t friendly either. Most of the black marines eyed us suspiciously. Like one black GI had told me long ago, when you’re off duty and you finally have a chance to relax with other black GIs, you don’t particularly want to deal with any white motherfuckers, not if you don’t have to. We searched along the far wall with the small tables and finally Ernie elbowed me.
“There he is.”
Like a red flame in a dark night, the Ville Rat’s afro flashed red, orange, and yellow, depending on how the rotating strobe lights happened to hit his hairdo. He sat with three other GIs, all of them black, and they were smoking and laughing and chugging down sixteen-ounce cans of Colt 45. As we approached, he looked up at us.
At first there was fear in his green eyes. But then his black friends turned, noticing where his gaze fell, and uniformly they frowned. This seemed to give the Ville Rat courage. I pulled out my badge, showed it to the GIs at the table, and said, “We need to talk to you, outside.” Two of the black GIs stood, ready to object. “Not you,” I said, “only him.”
They glanced at the Ville Rat. He motioned for them to sit down.
“We’ll talk,” he said, “but we’ll talk here.” His voice was high and reedy, but it had a cadence to it, like a laid-back musician who spent a lot of time playing saxophone riffs.
“Outside,” Ernie said.
“Here,” the Ville Rat repeated.
By now, more GIs in the crowd had noticed our presence and a small group of curious parties coalesced around us. Ernie glanced back and forth, grinned, and said, “On second thought, this is as good a place as any.”
I grabbed an empty stool and sat opposite the Ville Rat. Ernie stood behind me, still grinning. He pulled out a pack of ginseng gum and offered some around. No takers.
“You threw a can at the cab,” I said.
The Ville Rat lifted his cigarette from the ashtray and puffed. The smoke only crawled part of the way down his throat before he blew it out.
“Didn’t want to see anybody killed,” he said.
“So who’s trying to kill me?”
“The same guys who are going to kill me.”
“As in who?”
“Dangerous people,” he replied. “People with connections.”
“And they want to kill you because you can finger them.”
“Some of them.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rat. That’s what the GIs call me.”
“Affectionately, I hope.”
“I’m a popular guy.”
“You tried to tell us something up in Sonyu-ri. You said it wasn’t right, what they did to that girl.”
“It wasn’t right.”
“You knew her?”
“I’d seen her.”
“So who killed her?”