Martin Limón - Nightmare Range

Using our flashlight, I found Clerk Lee’s address etched into a wooden doorway: 175 bonji , 58 ho , in the Yonghyon District of the city of Inchon. A light glimmered behind the wall, flickering because of the still falling rain. Ernie rang the doorbell. Two minutes later a door creaked open behind the wall and someone padded out in plastic slippers across the small courtyard.

The gate opened and a face stared out at us. Ernie tilted the beam of the flashlight and then I could see that the face was beautiful.

She was a Korean woman in her late twenties. Her features were even and her skin was so smooth that I had to swallow before stammering out the lines I’d mentally rehearsed in Korean.

“Is Mr. Lee Ok-pyong in? We’re here on official business.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

As I answered I noticed that her hair was black and thickly luxurious, tied back by a red ribbon behind her oval-shaped face.

“We work on the American compound,” I answered. “It’s important.”

She opened the door a little wider. Ernie pushed past her, sloshed over flagstone steps, and slid back the oil-papered door that led into the sarang-bang , the front room of the home. A thin man with thick-lensed glasses looked up at us. He wore only a T-shirt and pajama bottoms and had been studying a ledger. A lit cigarette dangled from his lips.

“Mr. Lee Ok-pyong?” Ernie asked.

“Yes.”

“With all the money you made ripping off foreign hooch, seems you could afford a better place than this dump.”

I’m not sure if Clerk Lee understood. Without being invited in, Ernie slipped off his shoes and stepped up onto the warm vinyl floor. I followed. The beautiful woman stood by the open doorway, not sure if she should run and notify the police or if she should stand here by her husband.

“Your wife is very beautiful,” Ernie said.

Clerk Lee was fully alert now. He sat upright and stubbed out his cigarette. “What do you want?”

“We want you to tell us about Dubrovnik,” Ernie said. “Have you seen him tonight?”

“Who?”

“Sergeant Two,” I said. That’s what the other MPs and the Koreans in the transportation unit called Dubrovnik rather than trying to pronounce his full name.

Clerk Lee’s glasses started to cloud and the color drained from his face. His wife stepped into the room, knelt, and wrapped both arms around her husband’s shoulders. She turned to us.

“Get out,” she said in Korean. “No one wants you here. Get out!”

Ernie understood that. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll get out. Just make sure you don’t let any other GIs in here tonight.”

As we left, Mrs. Lee stared at us with the face of an ice goddess. Her husband looked as if he were about to vomit.

At this time of night, the local police station was a madhouse. The Korean National Police had arrested three prostitutes and two Greek sailors for drunk and disorderly. They also had taken into custody one pickpocket and two fellows who’d tried to break into an old brick warehouse near the port.

“Busy?” I asked the Korean cop.

He looked at me as if I were nuts. Ernie and I both flashed our badges. In a few minutes we were talking to the night shift desk officer. We explained that we wanted Clerk Lee Ok-pyong taken into custody immediately, so he wouldn’t be able to talk to his cohort and thereby ruin our case against him. The khaki-clad officer listened patiently and when I was done he lifted his open palms off the top of his desk.

“Nobody,” he said in English. “No cops.”

Sure, he was short staffed, but the real reason he didn’t want to help us was that he didn’t want to bust a fellow Korean without orders from on high. Who knew who the man was connected to?

Ernie argued with the desk officer for a while but finally gave up. When the Korean National Police don’t want to do something, they don’t do it. I pulled him out of there.

Outside, the night was completely dark, and the rain drifting in off the Yellow Sea was colder than ever.

The next morning, Ernie and I rose early from the warm ondol floor in the room we’d rented in the Yong Param Yoguan, the Dragon Wind Inn. After we washed and dressed and pushed through the wooden double-doors, Ernie said, “The place even smells like dragon wind.”

“It was cheap,” I said.

“So’s pneumonia.”

Without stopping anywhere for chop, we headed straight to the police station. This time the commander was in, a man who introduced himself as Captain Peik Du-han. We shook hands and he spoke in English.

“I understand you were in last night requesting an arrest.”

Briefly, I explained the situation to him. He nodded, his expression calm, but I noticed that his fists were beginning to knot.

“ Kei-sikki, ” he said finally. Born of a dog.

Ernie came alert at that. His Korean vocabulary is limited mostly to cuss words. Captain Peik caught our alarmed expressions and said, “Not you. My duty officer last night. He should’ve listened to you. Or at least called me at home.”

“Why?”

Captain Peik sighed heavily. Then he stood up and grabbed his cap off the top of his coat rack. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, floppy hat atop his head, corncob pipe gripped in his teeth, hands on his hips, stared out across an expanse of lawn and over a cliff that fell off into the misty expanse of the churning Yellow Sea.

“Doug, baby.” Ernie slapped the back of MacArthur’s shin.

South Korea is one of the few countries in the world, outside of the United States, to have landscapes studded with statues of famous Americans. Up north at Freedom Bridge just south of the DMZ stands a statue of White Horse Harry Truman. In June of 1950, if he hadn’t made the decision to fight to save South Korea, this country wouldn’t exist today. MacArthur’s contribution was the invasion of Inchon: cutting North Korean supply lines so US forces could manage to break out of the Pusan Perimeter, retake Seoul, and push the North Korean Communists all the way north to the Yalu River, their border with China.

But Captain Peik hadn’t brought us here to this place known as Jayu Gongyuan , Freedom Park, for a history lesson. While MacArthur stared thoughtfully at the Yellow Sea, Peik led us into the heavy brush beneath a line of elm trees.

“ Chosim, ” he said.

I understood and managed to avoid the two mud-covered stone steps that led downward into the brush. Ernie stumbled over the hidden masonry. I caught him before he fell.

“ Chosim means ‘be careful,’ ” I told him. “When are you going to start taking those Korean language classes on post?”

“When you stop bugging me about it.” Ernie pushed away my hand and straightened his jacket.

Some of the bushes in front of us had already been cleared and strips of white linen surrounded the area, the Korean indication of a place of death.

The body of Clerk Lee Ok-pyong lay in a muddy ditch.

“Shit,” Ernie said.

Lee had changed out of his T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Now he wore slacks and an open collared white shirt that had been spattered with dirt. His head had been bashed in with something long and heavy. All I could think of was an MP’s night stick.

Blue-smocked technicians milled around the body. Ernie and I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing to be said. We’d screwed up royally this time. If only we’d collared Dubrovnik last night when we’d had our chance.

A KNP sedan pulled up to the edge of the park. Two officers climbed out and one of them held the back door open. A woman dressed in black emerged. Holding both her elbows, the two officers escorted the woman across the damp lawn. She kept her head bowed and a veil of black lace covered her face.