Martin Limon: The Iron Sickle

As we left, Miss Ju stood with her cloth robe wrapped tightly around her slender torso, glaring at us. A few yards down the road, Ernie stopped and told me he forgot something, and he’d be right back. Before he left, he paused and said, “You wouldn’t have twenty bucks you could loan me, would you?”

I did. I pulled out two blue ten-dollar military payment certificates and handed them to him.

“Thanks.” He shoved the MPC in his pocket and returned to the hooch. He didn’t want me to see him reimburse Miss Ju for the damage to her room. When he came back, he shrugged. “Don’t want no hard feelings out here in the ville.”

I slapped him on the back. “You did the right thing.”

As we walked away, Ernie stuck his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

“About what?”

“About me paying Miss Ju for the damage.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good. Riley’d never let me hear the end of it.”

In the army, performing a good deed is considered to be a character flaw.

We stopped in the open-air Itaewon Market. Beams of early morning light filtered through canvas awnings and piles of fat fruit shone in their red and purple glory. Vendors and farmers bustled everywhere, jostling with the mostly female shoppers with their wire-handled baskets slung over chubby forearms. We found the stall where last night we’d discovered the dead rat, but the totem was gone. I asked the proprietor what he’d done with it.

“ Jui-sikki ?” he asked.

“Yes, a rat.” I described the wood slat foundation and the twisted rectangle of wire.

He shook his head vehemently. “ An boayo .” He hadn’t seen anything.

“The guy must’ve doubled back last night,” Ernie said.

That’s when I told him about my encounter with the man in black on my way back to the compound. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and whistled.

The Provost Marshal kept us waiting for almost an hour. Ernie and I had showered, shaved, and changed into our dress green uniforms. The mood at the 8th Army MP Station and here at the CID headquarters was somber to say the least, what with one of our own lying dead at the 8th Army Morgue. I’d only had time to jolt back one cup of strong coffee in the CID admin office, and my stomach was growling.

When we were told to enter, we marched into his office and stood in front of the Provost Marshal’s mahogany desk. Behind him, displayed on three poles, were the flags of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations Command. We saluted. He didn’t salute back, just continued to glare at the paperwork in front of him. Without looking up, he said, “You left your posts.”

Ernie spoke up. “An MP was dying out there, sir. We had to do something.”

Instead of barking a rebuke, which is what I expected, Colonel Walter P. Brace, the Provost Marshal of the 8th United States Army said nothing. The silence grew long. Finally, he said, “The KNPs are asking for you.” For a moment I wondered if Miss Ju had filed charges against Ernie for trashing her hooch, but then Colonel Brace continued. “Inspector Gil Kwon-up. You’ve worked with him before.”

“Mr. Kill,” Ernie said.

“Yes. The first murder was committed on compound, under our jurisdiction. The murder last night was committed off compound, under Korean jurisdiction. The KNPs are giving it their highest priority and assigning their most senior homicide investigator, this Mr. Kill. He asked for you, specifically, and his request has been approved by the Chief of Staff, Eighth Army.”

“Both of us?” Ernie said.

“Yes, both of you. Apparently he was impressed with your work on that last case you worked on together.”

The Colonel shuffled through more paperwork, as if he were trying to understand why his two most unreliable CID agents had been assigned to his highest profile case. Colonel Brace preferred investigators like Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem, who would never dare follow up on information that might prove embarrassing. He was worried about losing control of the investigation. Once Ernie and I were out there with the KNPs, Mr. Kill, and all the resources of the Korean law enforcement establishment at our disposal, the investigation would go wherever it went, regardless of whether Colonel Brace wanted it to go there or not. The whole face-saving cover story of the man with the iron sickle being a North Korean agent might be blown sky high.

Colonel Brace shifted in his seat. Here it comes, I thought, as he began to speak in a deeper, more authoritative voice. “Now that one of our MPs has been killed, we’re pulling all our agents off other cases. We’re going to find this guy, and we’re going to find him immediately. Is that understood?”

Ernie and I nodded.

Blood had rushed up from beneath Colonel Brace’s tight collar and reddened his ears. “You might be working with the Korean National Police, temporarily, but you are first and foremost soldiers in the Eighth United States Army. Is that understood?”

Ernie and I nodded again.

“You’ll turn in progress reports to Staff Sergeant Riley by close of business each and every day. Is that understood?”

We nodded again.

“All right, now get out there, and get me some results.”

I would’ve been happy to get out of there, but Ernie knew the Provost Marshal was over a barrel. The decision to assign us temporarily to the Korean National Police had been made above his pay grade and now was our chance.

“How about our expense account?” Ernie said.

“What about it?” Colonel Brace asked.

When working an investigation, we were allowed to turn in receipts to reclaim expenses of up to fifty dollars a month.

“How about upping it to a hundred a month?” Ernie asked. “Each.”

Colonel Brace frowned.

“We’ll be in downtown Seoul,” Ernie continued, “working with Mr. Kill. Things are expensive down there.”

“You’ll be wherever the killer is,” Colonel Brace said.

“Yes, sir,” Ernie replied, “but if we let the KNPs pay for everything, Eighth Army loses face.”

Colonel Brace continued frowning and shuffling through paperwork until finally he said, “Okay, approved. Tell Riley.”

“Yes, sir.”

We saluted and turned toward the door. Before we reached it, Colonel Brace said, “One more thing. Don’t think that because you’ve received sponsorship from someone high up in the Korean government that you can go around me. All reports come through me and me alone. No contact with anyone outside the chain of command.”

“Yes, sir,” we said in unison. As quickly as we could, we escaped from his office.

Out in the hallway, Ernie asked, “What in the hell did you do to us, Sueno? Pissing off the Provost Marshal like that?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“This Mr. Kill thinks highly of you. That’s why he asked for you.”

“He asked for you, too.”

“Only because he knows you’re no good without me.”

I barked a laugh.

“You know it’s true,” Ernie said.

No one else could watch my back like Ernie. And I watched his. It was the way we worked.

In the admin office, Ernie told Staff Sergeant Riley about the increase in our monthly expense account.

“Getting over again, eh Bascom?”

“We’ll be hobnobbing with the elite,” Ernie said. “Got to keep up appearances.”

“You? The elite? This I’ve got to see.”

“Just keep the money flowing, Riley. Me and Sueno, we’ll take care of the inter-governmental diplomacy.”

“You better watch your ass, Bascom,” Riley said, “or one of those big dogs will bite it off.”

The KNP headquarters in downtown Seoul was a seven-story monolith with a horseshoe-shaped driveway. Ernie and I pulled up in his jeep. Two young cops, their blue uniforms sharply pressed, blew their whistles and snapped a white-gloved salute. They would’ve opened the doors for us but the jeep didn’t have any doors, just an open-sided canvas roof. One of the cops promised to watch over the jeep, but Ernie waited as he parked it a few yards away from the entrance. Satisfied, we pushed through the big glass double doors.