Martin Limon - The Ville Rat

As we suspected, Demoray wasn’t in his room. We pounded on the door so loudly that one of the NCOs down the hall, still dressed in skivvies and a T-shirt, creaked opened his door and asked what the hell we thought we were doing.

“Do you have a key to Room Five?” I asked, flashing my badge.

“No. The maid keeps ’em around.”

“Where?”

He barged past us to the small kitchen, sparingly but routinely equipped with a refrigerator and gas stove. From a cabinet above the sink, he pulled down an MJB coffee can and tossed it to us.

“You figure it out,” he said, and stormed down the hallway back to his room.

The can was jammed with keys. Ernie handed them to me as I tried each one, and finally the door to Room 5 creaked open. I switched on the light.

The bunk was regulation size and tightly made up with an army blanket with the embroidered “U.S.” centered neatly. There were no dirty clothes on the floor and no dust atop the wall locker; I would’ve thought Demoray was a fastidious guy if I didn’t know that 8th Army senior NCOs paid only thirty bucks a month for laundry and maid service. I used the keys Palinki had given me to pop open the wall locker and Ernie searched under the bunk and in the foot locker, but we found nothing that could give us a hint as to Demoray’s whereabouts. Only neatly pressed uniforms, highly polished footgear, and a drawer full of green army socks.

“Waste of time,” Ernie said.

I didn’t argue with him. There was a photo propped atop the dresser drawer. It was of a much younger Demoray, still sporting hair, wearing his Class A uniform and staring blankly into a camera. I showed it to Ernie.

“His basic training graduation photo. Why would he keep that?”

“Maybe it reminds him of a time when he was innocent.”

I slipped the photo out of its frame and folded it into my jacket pocket. We left the room, closing the door and not bothering to lock it behind us.

“I hope somebody rips him off,” Ernie said.

“He can afford it.”

Halfway down the dark hallway, I stopped.

“What?” Ernie asked.

I shone my flashlight on a bulletin board covered with pins and squares of multicolored paper of various sizes. They were duty rosters and notes to people who might stop by and a safety announcement from the 8th Army Fire Station. In the upper left corner, a neatly printed three-by-five card had been pinned in a prominent position.

I took it down. “Look at this one,” I said.

“Yeah, what about it?” Ernie replied.

“Brush strokes. Not written with a pen like the rest of these.”

“What’s it say?”

“It’s an ad for some stereo equipment. Cheap. ‘See Demoray in Room 5.’”

“Not much of a clue.”

“Except for the writing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look how neat it is.”

Ernie studied the card closer. “Yeah, pretty clean.”

“Almost artistic,” I said.

“Yeah. So what?”

“Did you see any writing brushes in his room?”

“No. Maybe we missed them.”

“We didn’t miss them.”

“So he keeps them someplace else.”

“At his hooch off-post.”

“Right.” Ernie thought about that. “A lot of good it does us. It doesn’t tell us where his hooch is.”

“No, but it does tell us something-he’s our calligrapher.”

After a few hours’ sleep, we were back at the 8th Army CID Office.

“You’re late,” Riley said. “The provost marshal wants to talk to you.”

“Where is he?”

“Already gone to the morning chief of staff briefing. But he’s mad as hell about you two barging in on the Eighth Army Comptroller’s Office like that. He wants you both standing tall, right here, when he returns.”

“Can’t,” I told Riley.

“What the hell do you mean, can’t ?”

“We have a murder investigation to conduct. Somebody’s life could be in danger.” Like the little kisaeng . But I didn’t tell him that. The less Eighth Army knew, the better. Less of an excuse for them to micromanage. Ernie and I started walking away.

“Where the hell do you two think you’re going?” Riley shouted, red-faced.

“To see Mr. Kill,” I told him.

He waved his forefinger at us. “Your ass will be in the wringer.”

“It’s been there before,” Ernie said, not looking back.

When we arrived, the Itaewon Police Station was swarming with cops. Mr. Kill was already in conference with Captain Kim. After a few minutes, Mr. Kill came out and said, “No luck at the bokdok-bang s.” The local real estate brokers who routinely dealt in the rental of apartments and small hooches.

I showed him the photograph of Demoray.

“This will help,” he said. I explained that Demoray was much younger then and completely bald now. He handed the photograph of Officer Oh, who marched away with it toward the detail of cops waiting outside.

“There’s one person who knows where Demoray lives-the Ville Rat. Ernie and I are going to look for him.”

“He’s elusive.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

Before we left Itaewon, we stopped at Haggler Lee’s. He confirmed what I suspected: on Thursday, the Ville Rat would be making his largest delivery of the week to the numerous all-black clubs outside of the 2nd Infantry Division headquarters at Camp Casey, in the city known as Tongduchon. East Bean River.

After spending an hour fighting our way north through Seoul traffic, it took another hour to reach the outskirts of Tongduchon; not because of the road conditions, but because of the long waits at the three ROK Army checkpoints. As you left Seoul and approached the Demilitarized Zone, they became more prevalent, but each time our CID emergency dispatch got us through. When we reached the sign that said welcome to tongduchon, Ernie found a parking spot on the edge of the bar district and we hoofed it the rest of the way.

Ernie and I’d been to the Black Cat Club before. Nobody remembered us fondly, least of all the few black GIs playing pool in the dimly lit main hall. They glared at us, as if we only had bad news to bring. When we sat at the bar, Ernie ordered a brown bottle of OB. I asked the barmaid for a Colt 45.

She popped open Ernie’s bottle and then stared at me quizzically. “You white GI. Why you order Colt 45?”

“A friend of ours made a delivery. Maeul ui jwi .”

“Oh, he told me most tick you come.”

“He told you we would come?”

She reached in the cooler and pulled out the Colt 45. “Yeah,” she said, “two white GIs from Seoul.”

“When did he bring this in?” Ernie asked, pointing at the Colt 45.

“Maybe one hour ago,” she said.

“Where is he now?”

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “How I know?”

A few of the GIs were staring at us, realizing we were interrogating the barmaid. Since they were eavesdropping now, I flipped through my mental rolodex until I found a safe topic. A possible mutual acquaintance.

“Where’s Brandy?” I asked.

Her eyes widened. “You know Brandy?”

“Yes. Yeitnal chingu ,” I said. Old friend. We’d met Brandy on a previous case we had up here in Tongduchon. She’d been a lot of help to us and, in return, we later helped her out of a jam she’d gotten herself into concerning a jealous GI. Anyone who looked at her would realize immediately why the GI was jealous. Brandy was one of the finest-looking women in the village.

Three GIs approached, two of them with pool cues in their hands. “ Yo! You messing with our girlfriend? You messing with the Black Cat Club?”

“Nobody’s messing with nobody,” I said.

“The hell you ain’t. You be asking a bunch of dumbass questions.”