Martin Limón - Nightmare Range

He thought for a while and then he said, “The problem is how did she get over the wall? It would have to be something that would give her a lift without causing any particular notice from the neighbors. Trashcans maybe?”

That was it. “Or a trash cart?”

Ernie and I ran outside and scoured the neighborhood until we found the old rag dealer.

“Yesterday, when you rounded the corner away from the store, you stopped calling and clanging your shears for a while. You had a customer.”

“Yes.”

“Who was it?”

“A beautiful young lady. Very tall. Very fancy.” The old man slashed his fingertips across his eyes and up. “She locked herself out of her house.”

“So she had to climb the wall?”

“Yes. I rolled my cart over and tilted it up. She climbed over easily.”

“And then what?”

“And then I went about my business.” The old man looked at the ground, shaking his head slightly. “But she was a very strange woman. Later, down at the bottom of the hill, I saw her again. She was all out of breath from her climb and she had torn her sweater.”

“Her sweater? What color was it?”

The old man reached under some stacks of cardboard. “Here. She sold it to me, cheap, because it had been torn. My wife repaired it, and it looks fine now. I should be able to sell it for a good price.”

The old man held it up to us, and I reached into my pocket for my small wad of Korean bills.

It was soft and fluffy and baby blue.

Since the Spider Lady was a Korean citizen and therefore not under our jurisdiction, we contacted Captain Kim and had him go along with us to make the pinch.

She was behind the bar of the Spider Lady Club, just getting ready for the evening’s business, laughing and joking with the other girls.

Ernie and I came in the door first, wearing our coats and ties, and when she saw Captain Kim behind us and the blue sweater in my hand, the exquisite lines of her face sagged and her narrow eyes focused on me, like arrows held taut in a bow. Blood drained from her skin, and she stood stock-still for a moment. Thinking.

Then she reached under the bar and pulled out a long glistening paring knife, and as her girlfriends chattered away she kept her eyes on me and pulled the point of the blade straight down the flesh of her forearm.

She kept pulling and ripping until finally the other girls realized what was going on and by the time we got to her, her arm was a shredded mess.

Her nurse training had come in handy because she knew that stitches weren’t likely to close arteries that had been cut lengthwise. We applied a tourniquet, but somehow she managed to let it loose while she was in the ambulance and, turning her back to the attendant, kept her secret long enough to do what she wanted to do: die.

Janson was put on the first flight out of the country by order of the commanding general, his personal effects packed and shipped to him later.

Billings spent a lot of time at the NCO Club, restricted to post. He spun romantic tales about his two friends and what he saw as their self-sacrificing love.

The girls at the Spider Lady Club told us the truth. About how proud the Spider Lady had been to be marrying a doctor.

Through it all, from bar to bar, all I could think about was the doll-like woman with the nice curves.

Whose smile had been filled with life.

“The last time the USS Kitty Hawk pulled into the Port of Pusan, the Shore Patrol had to break up a total of thirty-three barroom brawls in the Texas Street area. Routine. What we didn’t expect was the fourteen sailors who were assaulted and robbed in the street. Six of them had to be hospitalized.

“From eyewitness accounts, the local provost marshal’s office ascertained that the muggings appeared to have been perpetrated by Americans, probably the shipmates of the victims. However, no one was caught or charged with a crime.”

We were in the drafty headquarters building of the 8th Army’s Criminal Investigation Division in Seoul, two hundred miles up the Korean Peninsula from Pusan. When the first sergeant called me and Ernie into his office, we expected the usual tirade for not having made enough black market arrests. What we got was a new assignment. The first sergeant kept it simple.

“First, make sure you take the right flight out of Kimpo. Then, when you land in Pusan, infiltrate the waterfront area and find out who’s been pulling off these muggings.”

Ernie adjusted his glasses and tugged on his tie.

“Maybe the gang who did it has left the navy and gone on to better things.”

“Not hardly. The Kitty Hawk was here only six months ago. The tour in the navy is four years, minimum. Not enough time to break up the old gang.”

Ernie got quiet. I knew him. He didn’t want to seem too anxious to take on this assignment, an all-expenses-paid trip to the wildest port in Northeast Asia, and he was cagey enough to put up some objections, to put some concern in the first sergeant’s mind about how difficult it would be to catch these guys. That way, if we felt like it, we could goof off the whole time and come up with zilch, and the groundwork for our excuse was already laid.

I had to admire him. Always thinking.

“And you, Sueño.” The first sergeant turned his cold gray eyes on me. “I don’t want you running off and becoming involved in some grandiose schemes that don’t concern you.”

“You mean, stay away from the navy brass.”

“I mean catch these guys who are doing the muggings. That’s what you’re being paid for. Some of those sailors were hurt badly the last time they were here, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

I nodded, keeping my face straight. Neither one of us was going to mouth off now and lose a chance to go to Pusan. To Texas Street.

The first sergeant handed me a brown envelope stuffed with copies of the blotter reports from the last time the Kitty Hawk had paid a visit to the Land of the Morning Calm. He stood up and, for once, shook both our hands.

“I hate to let you guys out of my sight. But nobody can infiltrate a village full of bars and whores and drunken sailors better than you two.” His face changed from sunshine to clouds. “If, however, you don’t bring me back some results, I guarantee you’ll have my highly polished size twelve combat boot placed firmly on your respective posteriors. You got that?”

Ernie grinned, a little weasel-toothed, half-moon grin. I concentrated on keeping my facial muscles steady. I’m not sure it worked.

We clattered down the long hallway and bounded down the steps to Ernie’s jeep. When he started it up, he shouted, “Three days in Texas Street!”

I was happy. So was he.

But I had the uneasy twisting in my bowels that happens whenever I smell murder.

By the time we landed in Pusan I had read over the blotter reports. They were inconclusive, based mainly on hearsay from Korean bystanders. The assailants were Americans, they said, dressed in blue jeans and nylon jackets, like their victims and like all the sailors on liberty who prowled the portside alleys of Texas Street. The Navy Shore Patrol had stopped some fights in barrooms and on the streets, but they were unable to apprehend even one of the muggers.

By inter-service agreement, the army’s military police increased their patrols near the dock areas when a huge naval presence moved into the port of Pusan. The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk , with its accompanying flotilla and its over five thousand sailors, more than qualified as a huge naval presence.

The MPs were stationed, for the most part, on the inland army base of Hialeah Compound. They played on Texas Street, knew the alleys, the girls, the mama-sans. But somehow they had been unable to make one arrest.