Martin Limon: The Iron Sickle

“Yesterday it was raining,” I said. “If a guy arrived a little early and had to wait for the office to open, he wouldn’t want to stand here on the sidewalk.”

“No,” Ernie replied, “he’d wait in there .”

Behind us loomed the back entrance to one of the two-story brick buildings, this one belonging to the Logistics Command. Ernie and I stepped up on the porch and pushed through the door. Inside, a stairwell wound up to the second floor, and just past the foot of the stairs, a small snack stand had been set up. Most of the headquarters buildings had similar operations, sponsored by the PX.

An elderly Korean woman wore a loose smock and a white bandana enveloping her grey hair. A small man, maybe her husband, reached into a cardboard box and handed her wax-paper-wrapped rolls and doughnuts, which she set on display behind a plastic sneeze guard. The smell of percolating coffee gave the stand a homey air.

“ Anyonghaseiyo ?” I said in Korean.

The old woman bowed slightly and said, “ Nei. Anyonghaseiyo. Myol duhsi-geissoyo ?” What can I get for you?

I ordered a small coffee. Ernie bought a carton of orange juice.

After the old woman gave us our change, I said, “Yesterday, the man who waited here, did he order anything?”

Both of them stopped what they were doing, as if suddenly frozen by a cold wind from Manchuria. Finally, the old woman cleared her throat and said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean the Korean man who stepped in here yesterday morning to get out of the rain, just before eight o’clock. Did he order anything? Coffee maybe? Juice?”

The man and woman exchanged glances, and I guessed they must’ve worked together for many years.

“No,” the old woman said. “He ordered nothing.”

Bingo.

“Did he speak to you?” I asked.

“No.” The old man spoke for the first time, straightening up from his chores. “He said nothing to us. He just stood there in front of the door, staring at the rain.”

“What did he look like?”

Their description matched the one given by the employees of the Claims Office.

“Did you see him leave?” I asked.

“No, but I was glad when he did.”

“Why?”

“He just stared out the window. He didn’t move. Not one muscle the whole time he stood there.”

“There was one thing that moved,” the old woman corrected.

“What was that?” I asked.

“His lip. His lower lip. It was purple, puffed up, like something was wrong with it. The whole time he stood there it kept pulsating, like blood was pounding through it.”

“Is that it?”

“No,” she replied. “He kept sniffling, as if his nose were running. I kept thinking he was going to cry.”

I tried more questions but stopped when I realized they had nothing else to tell us.

On our way back to the barracks, Ernie insisted we ought to tell Riley that none of the vaunted investigators who’d been assigned to the Barretsford case had thought to interview the couple who ran the PX snack stand across the pathway from the Claims Office.

“You just want to rub it in,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Let’s wait for them to come to us.”

This crime wouldn’t be solved on the American compound. Like an avenging warrior, the man with the iron sickle had emerged out of the vast city of Seoul. Eventually, if Colonel Brace wanted Americans to solve this case, he’d have to enlist someone who spoke Korean and wasn’t afraid of snooping around back alleys and asking embarrassing questions. That would be us. Most of the other investigators were afraid to even venture off compound. They couldn’t read the signs, Korean addresses made no sense to them, and not enough people out there spoke English. If you ventured too far from compound, toilets were hard to find; and when you did find one, it was often nothing more than a stinking square hole in a dirty cement floor. If you weren’t limber enough to squat, you were in trouble.

And more importantly, most of our American colleagues were afraid to piss off their military superiors. Ernie and I sometimes tried not to piss off our superiors, but it rarely worked. Mostly we just didn’t give a damn.

We sipped on our coffee for a while, each lost in thought, until suddenly Ernie said, “Whoa! Who’s that?”

I glanced up. Barreling across the parking lot was an American woman, light brown hair uncovered in the drizzle. She was wearing only a long black dress covered by a grey sweater, and was dragging a little girl behind her who looked to be about eight or nine. The woman was thin but strong, as if she worked out regularly, and she was glaring at us, enraged. As she headed straight toward us, I realized who she was. Ernie did, too.

“Trouble,” Ernie said, quickly climbing out of the jeep. I popped out of the passenger side and walked to the front of the jeep.

The woman marched up to Ernie and slapped his chest with her free hand.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Ernie stood with his mouth open, dumbfounded.

“You’re CID!” she shouted. “You’re supposed to be finding the man who murdered my husband. What are you doing here?” She glanced at the commissary, quickly turning back to us with an incredulous expression. “Are you worrying about the black market? Black market ! At a time like this?” Her mouth hung open, and her eyes were scrunched in disbelief. “What is wrong with you people?”

This time she let go of her daughter’s hand and launched at Ernie in earnest, reaching sharp nails toward his eyes. Just in time, he grabbed her wrists and leaned away from the assault, but she continued to come at him, throwing a knee to his groin, pushing him back onto the hood of the jeep, screaming at the top of her lungs. The little girl, Barretsford’s daughter, Cindy, held both her hands to her mouth, her shoulders hunched in fear, crying.

I hurried around the jeep and grabbed Mrs. Evelyn Barretsford in a bear hug. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that people were beginning to congregate in front of the commissary, and a few of them were trotting across the parking lot. In the distance, I heard the groan of an MP siren. By then, Mrs. Barretsford had started to calm down, and we let her go. She knelt and hugged her daughter, sobbing and saying, “You should be looking for him . You should be looking for the man who slaughtered by husband !”

A few other military dependent wives gathered around her, comforting her and her daughter, all the while shooting evil looks at us.

When the MPs arrived on the scene, even they gave us the business. “What are you doing here?” one of them asked. “You’re CID. Maybe you should forget about the black market for a while and go out and solve some real crime.”

“Get bent,” Ernie told him.

The MP, a burly fellow, took a step forward, then stopped, apparently seeing the fire in Ernie’s green eyes. The MP hesitated, shrugged, and turned back toward Mrs. Barretsford.

An hour later we were ordered to report to the Provost Marshal-immediately if not sooner. We found him out on the parade field in front of 8th Army headquarters, standing with a group of dignitaries on a white bunted podium. We skidded to a halt at the edge of the field.

“Too late,” Ernie said.

A bass drum pounded and the United Nations Command Honor Guard marched onto the raked gravel. First out was a unit of the Republic of Korea Army with their green tunics and white hats, followed closely by the American honor guard in their shiny brass buttons and dress blue uniforms. Finally a platoon of Gurkhas from the British Army swung white-gloved fists resolutely forward as they strutted onto the field in their bright red blazers. A six-gun salute from a battery of 105mm howitzers blasted into the sky as sergeants shouted commands and the parade wound into formation in front of the podium. Smoke roiled across the field, cuing the 8th Army band to strike up first the Republic of Korea national anthem and then “The Star Spangled Banner.”