Martin Limon: Mr. Kill

“Where’s Ernie?” he asked.

“Last night,” I replied, “he worked late on a case.”

“What case?”

“The case you said the Provost Marshal was so hot on. Theft from the Country Western All Stars.”

Riley squinted suspiciously. “Ernie has a lead?”

I ignored him and continued to shuffle through the paperwork.

Staff Sergeant Riley is a paper-pusher. Nothing more. Still, he likes to pretend that he’s giving orders when he’s only relaying them, and he pokes his nose into every case that interests him, which is most of them. Ernie and I tolerate him because he has extensive contacts throughout the 8th Army headquarters complex and he often saves us a lot of legwork.

Yesterday, before we’d left the office, I’d asked Riley to contact the American military units that are located near the route of the Blue Train. Specifically, Camp Ames in Taejon, Camps Henry and Walker in Taegu, and Hialeah Compound in Pusan. What I wanted was a list of who was on temporary duty to Seoul, who was on emergency leave, who was absent without leave, and who was on regular in-country leave. Once I had that, maybe I could start to narrow down the identity of the mystery man who’d hopped off the Blue Train in Anyang.

“You’re not looking too well,” Riley told me.

“I’m not feeling too well either.”

“What in the hell did you two guys do last night?”

While I continued to peruse the list of names, I told him. As I spoke, Miss Kim stopped her typing.

The five women of the Country Western All Star Review were Marnie, Kristie, Prudence, Shelly, and the bass player, whose name I couldn’t recall at the time. During the breaks in the show, Ernie had shown them his Criminal Investigation badge and his. 45, and for some reason they took a liking to him. Maybe it wasn’t so much his personality as the fact that they felt adrift in a sea of G.I. s who were fawning all over them and an ocean of Koreans they couldn’t understand. Ernie listened to their problems. There were many, the pilfering of a microphone and a cowboy boot and an electric guitar being the least of them.

They complained about the food they had to eat in the hotel. They’d asked the waiter for something lighter than the greasy American breakfast that was served, and what they received instead was roast mackerel, white rice, and a bowl of clam bouillon.

“For breakfast,” Marnie said, crinkling her nose. Marnie Orville was the voluptuous one. The one who sang most of the numbers, the one who owned the equipment, and the one who had arranged the USO tour.

The other girls chimed in, complaining about the food and how they couldn’t eat the kimchee; although they realized it was made of fresh vegetables and it was good for you, but they couldn’t tolerate the garlic smell on their breath.

“The boys in the front row,” Marnie said, “would have to move back twenty feet.”

I doubted that a hand grenade would’ve made the boys in the front row move back twenty feet, but Ernie let her talk. She was lonely, as were all the girls. It might seem strange, considering the rabid attention they were getting from stagestruck G.I. s, but once their show was over and they’d been driven back to their hotel, there was nothing for them to do but sleep and get up and then get ready for another show.

It was a half hour before midnight by the time we reached the Grand Hotel in Uijongbu. We could’ve made it back to Seoul before curfew, barely, but the Grand Hotel had a nightclub in the basement and the girls of the Country Western All Star Review couldn’t wait to see what a Korean nightclub looked like. Ernie’d been there before, and he led us down carpeted steps. The joint was plush, with an orchestra of middle-aged men, a lead singer in a white dinner jacket, and three or four beautiful Korean women belting out old favorites for the mostly older crowd that sat at round tables covered in white linen.

Ernie talked our way past having to pay the cover charge, claiming that the Country Western All Star Review was in Korea on some sort of cultural exchange and therefore deserved diplomatic immunity. He never sold it, but the tuxedoed manager finally tired of arguing with him and let us in. A few minutes later, between numbers, Ernie spoke to the Korean MC, who studied our table and then nodded enthusiastically. After sipping one round of drinks, the women of the Country Western All Star Review were coaxed up on stage, and soon they were singing and dancing to some old country standards that the orchestra knew. The Korean audience clapped along, delighted.

I’d already told Mr. Shin and his crew to return to the hotel in Seoul. Marnie was worried about the safety of the equipment, but I knew better than to impugn Shin’s integrity. The only problem was that once midnight came and went, we were trapped in the basement of the Uijongbu Grand Hotel until the nationwide curfew ended at four in the morning. Out on the streets, the only things that moved were military patrols with orders to shoot to kill. Still, we were cozy down there, with everything our hearts could desire.

Until about two-thirty in the morning, everything went great. Korean men kept sending bottles of locally made Oscar champagne to our table, and the American ladies danced as often as they wanted to. But by the time three in the morning rolled around, everyone was exhausted. Heads started drooping to the white linen tablecloths, and some people even spread out on the leather booths in the back. I was one of them. I’d tried not to drink too much. Ernie, however, had let himself go. He drank not only two liters of OB beer, along with plenty of glasses of Oscar, but also a straight shot or two of Suntory whiskey. Not that I was counting.

Just before four a.m., I persuaded one of the waiters to bring me a steaming hot cup of coffee. MJB instant, but it did the trick. I shook everyone awake and loaded four of the women into Ernie’s jeep. That left Ernie and Marnie without a ride, so I hailed a Korean cab driver and arranged for him to transport Ernie and Marnie back to the Crown Hotel in Seoul at double the meter reading-the standard rate, since he had to leave his prescribed area of operations. The cabbie made better time than I did, and when we finally arrived at the Crown Hotel on the outskirts of Itaewon, the ladies of the Country Western All Star Review, exhausted but pleased, each gave me a hug and a kiss goodnight. Ernie, apparently, had already retired upstairs with Marnie.

He was a big boy and could take care of himself. I restarted the jeep and drove back to 8th Army compound.

“That asshole,” Riley told me when I finished the story. “Always dipping it where he shouldn’t.”

I glanced at Miss Kim. Her face was red and she was typing furiously on her hangul typewriter. When she realized I was looking at her, she stood abruptly, snatched a tissue from a box, and marched out of the admin office, heading down the hallway toward the ladies’ latrine.

“What’d they tell you about the missing equipment?” Riley asked, apparently not noticing Miss Kim’s discomfort.

“They think it’s a pattern,” I told him. “Something goes missing after almost every performance, almost like somebody hunting souvenirs. And they believe they’re being watched.”

“Being watched?” Riley scoffed. “Of course they’re being watched. Five good-looking round-eyed women. What did they expect?”

“They didn’t expect Peeping Toms. Faces flash in front of windows, according to them, and then disappear.”

Riley shrugged. “Just G.I. s having a little fun.”

In my notebook, I made a list. From Hialeah Compound in Pusan, no one was AWOL and three G.I. s were on in-country leave. I wrote down their names. At Taegu, things became more complicated. Camp Henry is a larger base than Hialeah and has a lot of Signal Corps and aviation activity. As such, I had a dozen G.I. s who’d left Taegu and were temporarily assigned to the Long Lines Signal Battalion in Seoul. Camp Ames in Taejon is tiny, and I had a minuscule report. No one AWOL, no one on temporary duty, and only one guy on in-country leave. He had a Korean name and a very specific leave address in Seoul-31 bon-ji, 15 ho, Mugyo-dong-which meant that he was visiting family and therefore he was Korean-American, what’s known in 8th Army as a “Kimchee G.I.” I scratched him off my list.