Martin Limón - Nightmare Range

A handkerchief emerged from her handbag and Mrs. Lee dabbed her eyes.

I knew it was coming now, the reason she’d gone to all the trouble to find me. I was prepared for a surprise but this one took me completely off guard.

“I want you to meet with me,” she said. “I want you to tell me everything about the case, about what happened to my husband.”

“We can talk about that right here,” I said.

“No. You have to get back to work and there are too many people around.”

I studied the layout of the teahouse again, to make sure I hadn’t missed something. There were about a half-dozen customers, two waitresses, and one young man behind the serving counter, none of them within earshot of our conversation.

She looked boldly into my eyes. “I want to meet you,” she said. “So you and I can be alone.”

I’m dumb but not that dumb. As coolly as I could, I agreed.

For the next two weeks, all my off-duty time was spent with the Widow Lee. She had to work in Inchon and I had to work about thirty miles away in Seoul. Some nights we met in between, at a Korean-style inn with a warm ondol floor in the city of Kimpo right near the big airport that services the capital city. We’d lie together and hear the big jets fly over us and listen to Korean music and, when we found time, eat Korean food. It was a lovely time for me and she seemed so desperately in need of someone to be near her.

She told me about her job. She filled out the bills of lading for the imported American goods that were transported from the Port of Inchon to the Main PX in Seoul. The same thing her husband had done. Gradually, she started to tell me of the mistakes her husband had made. Before she could go on, I changed the subject. The next time we met, she brought it up again.

Ernie clicked his fingernail against my coffee cup.

“Wake up,” he told me. “We have to go to work here in a minute and you’re still sleeping.”

We sat in the 8th Army snack bar on Yongsan Compound, wearing clean white shirts and ties and jackets, having one last cup of java before heading up the hill to the CID office to begin our regular workday.

“And you’re developing bags under your eyes,” Ernie continued. “The Widow Lee is putting you through one serious workout.”

“Can it, Ernie.”

“Oh. That much in love, are we?”

I pushed my coffee aside, placed both my hands on the small formica-covered table, and stared him straight in the eye. “So what if I am?”

Ernie’s eyes widened and he leaned back. “Easy, pal. I didn’t know you were taking this so seriously.”

“Yeah. I’ve been taking it seriously. I’ve been taking her seriously. The last couple of weeks have been about the best couple of weeks of my life.”

“Okay. Fine. So what’s bothering you?”

“What’s bothering me is that I don’t know what to do.”

“Hey, relax and enjoy it. Just don’t get married.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Ernie’s eyes crinkled in puzzlement, something that doesn’t happen to him much. He has the world figured out. Or at least he thinks he does.

“Then what are you talking about?” he asked.

“I’m meeting her tonight at the same yoguan in Kimpo. Drive me out there in the jeep. Hang around. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Before he could ask more questions, I rose from the table, strode out of the big fogged-glass double doors of the snack bar, and marched up the hill to the CID office.

That night the Widow Lee and I went to the best restaurant in Kimpo. I ordered kalbi , marinated short ribs braised over an open charcoal fire. When we were finished, we walked arm in arm back to the yoguan . After we hung up our coats and relaxed, she pulled a wad of paperwork out of her purse. She sat next to me on the warm floor and held my hand and spoke earnestly to me for what must’ve been almost an hour. Most of what she said, I didn’t listen to. The bills of lading she handed to me, those I did pay attention to. Duplicates. With differing amounts of product listed on each.

I guess I knew from the day out at Freedom Park overlooking the Yellow Sea. Maybe General MacArthur had made me aware of it. Or maybe it had been the hidden stone steps that Ernie and I had stumbled on, and almost every Korean cop who approached the scene; she had breezed past as if they were an item of furniture in her front room.

She’d been there before, and recently, to the murder site of her husband.

Sergeant Dubrovnik, an experienced MP and a man on the run for his life, had either shot himself in the ribs with his own.45 or he’d allowed someone he trusted to stand very close to him. Who else but a woman? And a woman he knew well?

And the job she’d received on compound. Sure, the union would work very hard to make sure that, as a widow of one of their deceased members, she found employment, but starting as a billing clerk? That was a relatively high paying job that required extensive experience. The union gets people jobs but usually the job is at the lowest entry level and the person who lands it is happy to get it. The work is steady, the benefits better than most jobs in Korea, and advancement will depend on how hard they work.

The Widow Lee had started near the top. Somebody, probably a man, had cleared the way for her.

And now me. I was next on her list. She’d learned from her husband’s mistakes; Sergeant Dubrovnik, an MP, was no longer in the picture. A CID agent was her next step up.

And now I held the duplicated bills of lading in my hand. The proof I needed. Ernie was waiting in a nearby teahouse, the jeep outside.

But could I do it?

Her eyes widened when I told her.

“A drive? Why should we go for a drive?”

“Because I say so.” I ripped her coat off the peg in the wall and tossed it to her. “ Kapshida, ” I said. Let’s go.

She refused so I slapped her once-something I never do to a woman. But she was no longer a woman to me. She was a criminal.

At the police station in Inchon, Captain Rhee studied the bills of lading and listened patiently to my explanation. She wanted me to go into the scam with her. She had taken her husband’s job and now I would take Sergeant Dubrovnik’s place. And working in the CID headquarters, I’d be in even a better position to cover things up. Captain Rhee nodded, understanding what I said.

He held the Widow Lee overnight for questioning.

In a way I was proud of her. Captain Rhee told me later that she denied everything.

The Korean National Police re-covered the ground they’d covered before but this time they were asking different questions. Between the home of Lee Ok-pyong and the park overlooking the Yellow Sea, they canvassed local residents who’d been out on the night he was murdered. Previously, no one had seen two men walking together, one of them a Korean, the other an American. This time the police asked them if they’d seen a Korean man walking with a woman. A few of them had. One of them, a sweet potato vendor, even mentioned that she’d seen the couple, deep in conversation, pass the statue of General MacArthur and disappear into the brush. Later, the woman had come out alone, stood by the sea for a moment and had then thrown something over the cliff. A stick maybe. Maybe a mongdungi , a heavy club that women in Korea use to beat dirt out of wet clothing. Then the woman had hurried out of the park.

In Songtan-up, bar girls and local shop owners remembered a robust American GI walking arm in arm with a beautiful Korean woman. Both of them were strangers in these parts. They’d entered a narrow back alley and one of the bar girls assumed it was for a late night tryst. After only a minutes or two, the woman had left alone, in a hurry, and the bar girl assumed that she’d changed her mind about her affection for the big GI.