Martin Limon - Jade Lady burning

Johnny wouldn’t be seeing any paychecks for a while. He’d be liable for the claims against the government on the eggs and the leg and the jeep. But that was the least of his worries.

I set him up on the edge of the road. He looked dazed. I slapped him a couple of times. It felt good but I was on duty, so I stopped.

Johnny Watkins blinked and then stared at me with big blue eyes.

“Miss Pak?” he said.

“No. My name is George.”

“Miss Pak? Is she dead?”

“Under the circumstances, yes.”

Johnny stared straight ahead for a while, along the splotches of frozen ice covering the rice paddy.

“We were going to get married,” he said.

I squatted down next to him. ‘That’s nice.”

“We already had the paperwork in. It was supposed to come back any day.”

I was touched. So was Ernie. But he was busy tiptoeing through the shattered eggs and listening to the cursing of the man with the broken leg.

We didn’t bother to tell the first sergeant that Johnny Watkins’s marriage packet was in. We thought we’d check that out on our own. Besides, he was too busy interrogating Johnny, documenting his every step for the last twenty-four hours, and calling the provost marshal to let him know that we were off the hook-we had the suspect.

Johnny’s story didn’t do much to help his case. He had gone out to the ville the night before last, like always, with Freddy and Sammy. They’d hit the King Club, the UN Club, the Lucky Seven, all the regular haunts. Just before curfew, Freddy and Sammy had hooked up with their steadies and made it to their hooches for the night.

Johnny had seen Miss Pak when they stopped in the Lucky Seven around ten-thirty. She seemed nervous, upset, angry, which wasn’t too unusual these days, according to Johnny. She had told him that she was busy that night and that he should go back to the compound. Kimiko had come into the club, policed up Miss Pak, and paraded her out the door.

Since Johnny was getting screwed around by Miss Pak, it’s understandable that he didn’t let the first sergeant know right away about the marriage paperwork. He felt like a jerk, I guess, letting her run around like that on him. But I’ve seen stranger things. When a young man is in love… He mumbled something about her being a hostess at big parties for rich guys. There was probably some truth in that. But not the whole truth.

After the first brief interrogation session the first sergeant seemed flushed with success. Johnny had no alibi. He also had a hell of a motive. The woman he loved was running around on him, escorted by the likes of Kimiko, the dregs of Itaewon.

While Top was making some phone calls and preparing a briefing for the provost marshal, we slid out of the office, jumped in Ernie’s jeep, and went over to the Eighth Army Chapel.

Churches always amaze me. Long clean carpets, polished pine, huge looming windows. So unlike the real world. A guy in clean but unstarched fatigues walked down the aisle towards us, smiling. Private First Class Hurchek. I’d seen him around the compound. At the snack bar, at the recreation center, at the library-every place but the Lower Four Club. He had dark brown hair cut in a shaggy crewcut, heavy eyebrows, and he looked like he was absolutely overjoyed to see us.

“Good morning, gentlemen.” He sang the greeting. “Can I help you?”

“We want to see the chaplain,” I said.

Ernie flashed his identification at Hurchek, a lot faster than he normally does, like waving garlic at a vampire. Hurchek frowned. He realized that we weren’t there to save our souls. Although Lord knows, and so did Hurchek, that they needed saving.

Hurchek put a finger to his lip and looked down at the wellmanicured carpet.

“You don’t have an appointment?”

“No.”

“I’ll see if he has time to receive you.”

He walked away and we sat down on a slippery bench in the hallway.

“I don’t want him to receive us,” Ernie said. “I just want him to answer a few questions.”

“Show a little respect, Ernie.”

“You’re looking at my best act.”

We were nervous-out of our environment. Two whores would have felt more at home than we did.

Great soundproofing in these chapels. You can’t even hear whispering. After about five minutes, Hurchek opened the big oak door and waved us in. A ticket to see the wizard.

Chaplain Sturdivant rose from behind his huge desk, walked around, and shook both our hands-earnestly. He was a small, trim man, balding, and from behind thick lenses his brown eyes pinned you. If he had grown a goatee and changed out of his fatigues into a black suit, he would have looked like Lenin.

The great socialist leader sat back down at his desk. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

“It’s about Spec-4 Watkins. He’s just been arrested under suspicion of murder. He also has a marriage packet in with Miss Pak Ok-suk, the woman who was killed the night before last out in Itaewon.”

Sturdivant’s sloe eyes closed and then opened slowly.

“Watkins. Watkins.” He thumbed through a box jammed with three-by-five index cards. “I don’t remember him. I should. There’s just so many of them.” He stopped riffling through the box and pulled out a card. “Here it is. Watkins, John B. And Miss Pak Ok-suk. The paperwork’s already been logged in, the interview conducted, and the packet briefed at the chief of staff meeting. It should be on its way to personnel.” He looked up at us. “If it’s not there already. For that you’ll have to check with PFC Hurchek.”

“Do you remember anything specific about your interview with Specialist Watkins and Miss Pak?”

“Oh God, no. There’s just so many I have to conduct. It seems like half of the young GIs who come to Korea are getting married. They’re just so impressionable. So easily fooled.” Chaplain Sturdivant shook his head. “You can’t believe some of the cases I’ve had. Just last week a young boy, twenty-one, was set to marry an old Korean business girl. Thirty-seven, she said. I wondered if the family register hadn’t been tampered with, because she looked older. And the report from the Korean National Police! She’s had seven abortions. Seven! When I told this young man about it, he didn’t even blink. He just said, ‘Oh yeah, she told me.’ Can you believe it.”

We believed it. Sturdivant went right on.

“When they got in here I did everything I could to slam her, make her ashamed of what she was doing, but do you think it had any effect? None. And the simpleminded trooper just sat through the whole thing with his mouth open. It had no effect on him. He’s going to take that hideous old creature home to his parents. To his mother! It just never ceases to amaze me. And we’ve got stacks of paperwork. Poor Hurchek has to stay here late at night just to make sure that all the packets get out to personnel in some sort of timely fashion.”

Sturdivant’s hands clenched one another; back and forth, back and forth. He sighed.

“And the command briefings. I usually take a whole box of packets over there, brief the chief of staff on the statistics, and show them some of the more unusual cases. I get more attention at my briefing than even your boss, the provost marshal, gets when he briefs the black-market statistics. Like when I told them about that thirtyseven-year-old whore. I asked her what her real age was and she said, ‘Me thirty-seven. No bullshit.”’

The chaplain paused, pleased with his anecdote. His grin fell when he saw me and Ernie just staring back. He sat up straighter. I got back to business.

“Would looking at the packet help jog your memory about Watkins and Miss Pak?”

“Miss? Why do you keep calling her Miss? As if she’s not just a business girl?”