Martin Limón - Nightmare Range

We ran back up the pathway. At the top of the hill, the shrine stood empty. Using my penlight I examined the weathered ropes hanging beneath splintered rafters.

“Sliced,” I said.

“With what?” Ernie asked.

“Can’t be sure but with something sharp. Maybe a bayonet.”

Mr. Shin found us.

So did about five of his pals. Light from a yellow streetlamp shone on angry faces, all of then belonging to young punks with grease-backed hair and sneers on their lips.

“Why are you looking for me?” Shin asked in Korean.

We stood in an alley not far from the King’s Pavilion Pool Hall Ernie and I had stopped in earlier today.

“Your girlfriend,” I told him, “Miss O Sung-hee, was murdered last night. Where were you while she was being killed?”

Shin puffed one time on his cigarette-overly dramatically-and then flicked the flaming butt to the ground. Ernie braced himself, about one long stride away from me, his side to the Korean man nearest him. He was ready to fight. Five to two were the odds, but we’d faced worse.

“Not my girlfriend,” Shin said at last, switching to English. “No more. Break up long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Maybe one month.”

A long time all right. “Miss Kang didn’t mention your name to the Korean police. Why not?”

“She no can do.”

“ ‘No can do?’ Why not?”

“She my … how you say?… sister.”

“She’s your sister?”

“Yes. Kang not her real name. Real name same mine. Shin.”

“So you met Miss O through your sister?”

“Yes.”

“Why’d you break up with Miss O?”

Shin shrugged. “I tired of her.”

I didn’t believe that for a minute. Shin was a tough guy all right and like tough punks all over the world there would be a certain type of woman available to him. Women who thought little of themselves. Women who, in order to build up their self-esteem, flocked toward men who were on the outs with the law. Men who they considered to be exciting. Korea, like everywhere else, had its share of this type of woman. But from everything I’d heard about Miss O Sung-hee, I didn’t believe she was that type. She went for cops and attorneys and helicopter pilots. Men of power. Men of real accomplishment. Not men who were broke and hung around pool halls.

“She dumped you,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Miss O. She think, ‘I no like Shin anymore.’ She tell you karra chogi .” Go away.

Shin’s sneer twisted in anger. “No woman tell Shin go away.”

Ernie guffawed and said to me, “Is this guy dumb or what?” He stepped past me and glared at Shin. “So you took Miss O to the top of the hill and you used a knife and you killed her.”

Shin realized that he was digging a hole for himself. “No. No way. I no take. That night, I in pool hall. All night. Owner tell you. He see me there.”

Shin mentioned the pool hall owner because even he knew that nobody would believe the testimony of him and his buddies. I crossed my arms and kept my gaze steady on Shin’s eyes. He was a frightened young man. And when he’d heard that Ernie and I were looking for him, he’d voluntarily presented himself. Both these points were in his favor. Could he have murdered Miss O Sung-hee? Sure he could have. But something told me that his alibi would hold up. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here anxious to clear his name. If he’d murdered her, he’d be long gone. Still, I’d check with the pool hall owner as soon as I could.

Ernie had his own way of testing Shin’s sincerity. He stepped forward until his chest was pushed up almost against Shin’s. Ernie glared at Shin for a while and then snarled. “Out of my way.”

Shin seemed about to do something, to punch Ernie, but indecision danced in his glistening black eyes. Finally, he sighed and stepped back, making way for Ernie and me. Grumbling, his pals made way too.

We ran the ville.

Shots, beers, business girls on our laps. Ernie was enjoying the rock music and the girls and the frenzied crowds and gave himself over to a night of mindless pleasure. Me, I sipped on my drink, barely heard the music, and ignored the caresses of the gorgeous young women who surrounded me.

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Ernie asked.

I shook my head.

“Come on,” he coaxed. “What could possibly be wrong? We’re away from the headshed, on temporary duty, we have a pocket full of travel pay, and we’re surrounded by booze and bands and business girls. What more could you possibly want?”

“A clue,” I answered.

“A clue?”

“A clue as to who murdered Miss O Sung-hee.”

Ernie shrugged. “Maybe the KNPs were right all along. Maybe it was Rothenberg.”

And maybe not.

When the midnight curfew came along, GIs either scurried back to Camp Colbern or paired up with a Korean business girl. Ernie found one for me and the four of us went to their rooms upstairs in some dive. In the dark, I lay next to the girl, ignoring her. Finally, I slept.

Just before dawn, a cock crowed. I sat up. The business girl was still asleep, snoring softly. I rose from the low bed, slipped on my clothes and, without bothering to wake Ernie, walked over to the Korean National Police station.

The sun was higher when I returned. After gathering the information I needed at the police station, I’d walked over to Camp Colbern. There, in the billeting room assigned to me and Ernie, I’d showered, shaved, and then gone to the Camp Colbern Snack Bar. Breakfast was ham, eggs, and an English muffin. Now, back in Paldang-ni, I pounded on the door to Ernie’s room. The business girl opened it and let me in. Ernie was still asleep.

“Reveille,” I said.

He opened his eyes and sat up. “What?”

“Time to make morning formation, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Why? We don’t know who killed Miss O so what difference does it make?”

“We know now.”

“We do?”

I filled him in on the testimony I’d received this morning from Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg. When I finished, Ernie thought about it. “You and your Korean customs. Why would that mean anything to anybody?”

“Get up,” I told him. “We have someone to talk to.”

Ernie grumbled but dressed quickly.

We wound our way through the narrow alleys of Paldang-ni. Instead of American GIs and Korean business girls, the streets were now filled with children wearing black uniforms toting heavy backpacks on their way to school and farmers shoving carts piled high with garlic or cabbage or mounds of round Korean pears. We passed the Dragon Lady Teahouse and just to be sure, I checked the doors, both front and back. Locked tight. Then we continued through the winding maze, heading toward the hooch of Miss Kang.

What I’d questioned Rothenberg about this morning concerned his friendship with Miss Kang. How they’d both sat up nights in the hooch waiting for Miss O. But Miss O would stay out after curfew and then not come home at four in the morning and often Rothenberg had to go to work before he knew what had happened to her. But sometimes she’d be back early with some story about how she stayed at a friend’s house and how they were having so much fun talking and playing flower cards that the time had slipped by and she hadn’t realized that midnight had come and gone and she’d been trapped at her friend’s house until after curfew lifted at four in the morning.

“You knew it was all lies, didn’t you?” I asked.

Rothenberg allowed his head to sag. “I guess I did.”

“But Miss Kang knew for sure.”

“Yeah,” Rothenberg said. “Miss O had a lot of boyfriends. I realize that now.”

Private Everett P. Rothenberg went on to tell me that sometimes Miss O made both him and Miss Kang leave the hooch completely.