Martin Limón - Nightmare Range

A couple of blocks later I saw the big guy I had seen before, standing at the mouth of an alley. He looked into the alley at something and then back at me, as if undecided what to do.

I shouted, “Hey!” and started running toward him.

He hesitated for a second and then ran. I let him go and turned down the alley he had been protecting. It was dark. I could see nothing. Then I tripped, sprawled, and something hit me from behind.

When I came to, Ernie was looking down at me, surrounded by some sailors in their dress whites and Shore Patrol armbands. I was never so happy to see squids.

They got me into their van and took me somewhere. Ernie told me, but it didn’t register. Nothing much did. On the way there, I passed out again.

The next morning when I woke up I waited for a while and then asked the medic when he walked into the room.

“Where am I?”

“The dispensary. On Hialeah Compound. Had a pretty nasty bump on the noggin last night.”

“What’s my condition?”

“Hold on.”

The medic left the room, and after a few minutes a doctor came in. He looked at my head, checked some X-rays up against a lightboard, and then pronounced me fit for duty.

No shirkers in this man’s army. I could’ve used a few days off.

While I was getting dressed, Ernie showed up. He consoled me by reminding me about the Happy Hour at the Hialeah NCO Club tonight.

“Exotic dancers, too,” he said.

I smiled but it hurt the back of my head.

The bright sun of southern Korea was out. In force.

“Personnel? Why personnel?”

“I want to check something out. Leonard Budusky.”

“Who?”

“An MP who I think is an acquaintance of mine.”

After we showed him our identification, the personnel clerk got Budusky’s folder. “He came to Korea over six months ago,” I said.

The bespectacled clerk ran his finger down a column of typed entries.

“Seven,” he said.

“What state is he from?”

“Virginia.”

I held up my hand. “Wait a minute. Let me guess. Norfolk.”

The clerk looked up at me, his eyes almost as wide as his mouth. “How the hell did you know that?”

Ernie tried to pretend that he was in on the whole thing, but when we got to the Main Post Snack Bar, he bought me some coffee and threatened me with disembowelment if I didn’t tell him what was going on. Considering the pain I was in, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it much if I’d let him go through with it. Instead, to humor him, I explained.

“First of all, to find the culprit, we’ve got to figure out motive and opportunity.”

“I remember that much from CID school.”

“The motive seemed to be money. Now, that narrows our list of suspects down to anybody in the Seventh Fleet, any GI stationed near Pusan, or any of the Korean citizens of this wonderful city.

“The next step is figuring out opportunity. That brings us closer because that narrows it down to the four thousand or so sailors who had liberty during the stopover, the three hundred or so GIs who had passes, and again, all the Korean citizens of this fair city.”

“So it’s a tough job. We knew that.”

“But the mugger got anxious. On the first night, when only the advance party was in, he attacked. That eliminated all the sailors who were at sea with the Kitty Hawk . When Petty Officer Lockworth died, it also eliminated, in my mind, the Korean civilian populace. Because there is no doubt that the Korean authorities would take the mugging of American sailors seriously, but they realize the enormity of the bad public relations they would get back in the States if a Korean was found to have done the killing. The fact that they still didn’t launch an all-out manhunt meant to me that they must be confident, through their own sources, that it wasn’t the work of one of their local hoodlums.

“That leaves the GIs. When the fleet is in, soldiers tend to be conspicuous. They stick out, by virtue of their stinginess, from their seafaring compatriots, and the girls down in the village can spot them a mile away.

“We wandered all over Texas Street for two nights and didn’t see any, did we?”

“Not except for the MPs.”

“Exactly, and except for the two big guys we saw in that alley that looked familiar to me. After I called the desk sergeant and got the names of all the MPs who had duty on the first night, it started to click. The three big studs in the central patrol had all stayed on duty past curfew. Of the four patrols, theirs was the only patrol that did. Of the three of them, the desk sergeant told me that the biggest and meanest was Corporal Leonard Budusky. I remembered their faces. Two of them were the guys we saw scurrying down that alley. When the MPs on duty denied having seen them, I knew it had to be a lie. When MPs are in the village having fun, they will seek out the on-duty patrol, to let them know where they’re at or just to say hello.

“When that young buck sergeant on duty realized that the notorious out-of-town CID agents were asking about his partners, his first reaction was to lie and protect them.”

“So you know two MPs were on duty the first night, when the guy got killed, and you know they were out the second night, off duty, when you got beaned. You still don’t have any proof.”

“You’re right about that. And they’ll know it, too. Probably just go about their work as if nothing happened and if we ask them any questions deny everything. But the one thing I do have, that the killer doesn’t know about, is the motive.”

“Money?”

“Partially. But mainly his motive is something that abounds in a city with a big naval base like Norfolk.”

“What’s that?”

“Hatred.” I took a sip of the hot bitter coffee. “Hatred of the US Navy.”

It was a lot easier stalking Texas Street now that we knew who we were looking for. The desk sergeant had already told me, but I checked all four MP jeeps just to be sure. Leonard Budusky and his burly partner were not on duty tonight. They had pulled the day shift and got off about two hours ago.

Ernie had been disappointed when we missed Happy Hour at the NCO Club, and the exotic dancer, but I told him it would be in both our best interests if we remained sober.

The Pusan streets were filling again with fog. It was damp, cold, and dark.

This time we had weapons. A roll of dimes for me. Ernie had a short, brutal club, a wooden mallet, tucked into the lining of his jacket.

We patrolled methodically, keeping to the shadows. The Texas Street area is big, but not that big. Eventually we found them.

They were coming out of a bar, laughing and waving to the smiling girls.

“Spending money like sailors on shore leave,” Ernie said.

“Must have come into an inheritance.”

Budusky was tall, about six foot four, with squared shoulders and curly blond hair. His partner was the young guy who had enticed me into the mouth of the alley last night. He was tall, almost as tall as Budusky, and just as robust. I’m pretty big myself, and have had a little experience on the streets of East LA, but Ernie was a lightweight in this crowd, only about a hundred and seventy pounds.

We followed them carefully, one of us on either side of the street, hiding as we went. They weren’t paying much attention thought, still laughing and talking about the girls.

Finally, when the alleys ran out of street lamps, they stopped. They took up positions, one behind an awning, the other behind a telephone pole, as if they’d been there before. I wished I had brought my little map, to check the positions of the previous muggings. It didn’t matter much now, though. The opening to a dark, seemingly pitch-black alley loomed behind them. They had chosen their position well.