Martin Limon: Mr. Kill

“Can I see your badges?” he asked.

We showed him.

“Captain Fieldjoy isn’t in. He’s on a supply run down in Seoul. Is there something I can help you with?”

I jotted down his name. Sergeant Ernsworth. He was a little old for a buck sergeant, maybe in his mid-thirties, and he sported a flaming red crew cut and a splash of freckles across a pug nose.

Ernie wandered over to a wall plastered with black-and-white photos of officers in uniform, shaking hands and presenting one another with plaques and awards. I showed Sergeant Ernsworth the list of names. “A dozen guys,” I said, “up here from Taegu. Working on some sort of communications upgrade.”

“What about ’em?”

“I want to talk to them.”

“What if they’re busy?”

“They’ll get un-busy. At least for as long as it takes to ask them a few questions.”

Ernsworth thought about it; after a few seconds, he shrugged. “Follow me.”

He opened a low door for us and then led us down a long corridor, turned right, and at a new Quonset hut turned left. We entered an air-conditioned room with rows of impressive-looking equipment, like stainlesssteel refrigerators embedded with the occasional blinking green light.

“All of this stuff is classified,” Ernsworth said. “Don’t be jotting down any nomenclatures or model numbers.”

“That’s not why we’re here,” I replied.

Finally, we reached an open area with canvas tarps spread on the floor. Toolboxes were scattered in disarray and men huddled in groups behind metal panels, peering into copper-and-rubber-wired innards that sparked and blinked and beeped. Ernsworth waited until one man who was reaching deep into a pit of complicated machinery retracted his hand and looked up at us.

“They want to talk to you and your team,” Ernsworth told him. Then he swiveled on his heels and left. The man who stood to face me was a sergeant first class, balding slightly at the front of his short-cropped gray hair, holding a rubber-handled screwdriver loosely in long fingers. His mouth hung open.

Ernie and I flashed our badges.

“Just routine,” I said. “We want to ask you a few questions.”

I pulled out my notebook and started to ask.

On the way back down the mountain, I gazed out the side of the jeep at the magnificence of the city of Seoul. Maybe I was trying to avoid staring at the innocent-looking hookers who appeared every quarter mile or so. Maybe I was thinking about Mrs. Oh on the Blue Train and the crazed look in her eyes as her children glanced back and forth between the adults who surrounded them, wondering what had gone so terribly wrong. The city lay like a pulsating god, spread-eagled across the countryside, stretching from Tobong Mountain rising high above the mist in the north to the sinuous blue of the Han River in the fogshrouded south. I loved this city. I wasn’t sure why. It was so far from my original home, the people were so different from anyone I’d known growing up, but I’d adopted the city now. Had it adopted me? I didn’t think so. The city of Seoul would always turn its back on me. I’d always be an outsider. I’d always be the stranger who, oddly, spoke a little of their sacred language. My love of the city and my love of Korea, I felt certain, would never be returned.

Ernie rounded a corner and honked at two girls walking arm in arm by the side of the road. After overcoming their shock, they both waved gaily.

“What’d you think?” Ernie asked me.

“About what?”

He turned to study me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay.”

“So what’d you think about what those Signal Corps twerps had to say?”

“I think they’re telling the truth. They took the Blue Train from Taegu to Seoul two days before Mrs. Oh was raped.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Oh. The woman who was raped on the Blue Train.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And everybody on their team has been present for duty every day. There’s no way one of them was on that train.”

“So scratch them off your list.”

“Already done.”

“So, now what?”

“We could work on the black-market detail like Riley told us to.”

“Get serious.”

Ernie hated working the black-market detail. The job consisted of lurking outside the Yongsan Compound commissary and waiting for a Korean dependent wife to come outside with a load of black-market items-Tang, instant coffee, soluble creamer, imported bananas, frozen oxtail-and follow her to the ville and bust her when she sold the duty-free goods to a black-market mama-san. A crummy job. A job that was supposedly designed to protect Korean industries from having to compete with cheap, imported tax-free American goods, but a job that was really designed to keep as many Korean yobos out of the commissary and PX as possible.

Ernie hated the black-market detail, and so did I.

“Where to, then?” Ernie asked.

“Colonel Brace said the Blue Train rapist was a Korean problem,” I replied. Ernie nodded. I continued, “I agree with him. So let’s go have a talk with the Koreans.”

“The KNP Liaison Office?”

“The same.”

When we hit the bottom of Namsan, Ernie stepped on the gas and wound his way expertly through the midmorning Seoul traffic.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ernie asked. “The Provost Marshal’s going to be pissed.”

“Do you know any other way of finding the guy who raped that woman?”

“Maybe the KNPs will find him.”

“Like hell,” I said.

“Yeah,” Ernie agreed. “Like hell.”

The Korean police didn’t have access to US Army military compounds. They wouldn’t have a chance of finding him.

When we rolled up to the front gate of Yongsan Compound, an MP was waiting for us.

“You Sueno?”

After I nodded, he turned to Ernie. “You Bascom?”

“Right.”

“Better get your butts out to the Crown Hotel. Like now.”

“What happened?” Ernie asked.

“Something about a USO show and a bunch of hysterical round-eyes.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“Hell if I know. Go find out.”

The MP stood away from the jeep. Ernie performed a neat U, floored the gas pedal, and screeched off into the Seoul traffic.

The Crown Hotel is on the main supply route, just a half mile west of the G.I. red-light district known as Itaewon. Probably Marnie Orville and the rest of the girls of the Country Western All Stars didn’t know how close to the center of action they actually were, and they wouldn’t know unless somebody showed them. So far, there hadn’t been time. A blue Hyundai sedan of the Korean National Police sat in front of the hotel, warning light flashing.

Ernie squealed up to the front door, turned off the engine, and we both jumped out of the jeep, showing our badges to the two young cops guarding the front door.

“Odi?” I asked. Where?

He told me the third floor.

We ran past milling hotel staff and ran up the carpeted stairway three steps at a time. In the long hallway, a half dozen doors were open. Marnie Orville stood in front of one of them, screaming at a Korean policeman. Ernie rushed toward her, holding up both his hands.

“Marnie,” he said. “We’re here. What’s going on?”

She swiveled on him, her blonde hair in sleep-ruffled disarray, blue eyes blazing with anger. With one hand she held a bathrobe closed over her full-figured body. With her other hand she kept pointing at the confused cop.

“This son of a biscuit keeps claiming that he doesn’t understand English.”

“Marnie,” I said, “he probably doesn’t. You’re not in Austin anymore. Tell us what happened.”

She took a deep breath, stopped pointing, and used the extra hand to tighten her robe. “Prudence, you okay?” she asked.