Martin Limon - The Ville Rat

By now, Demoray had realized what was happening and was struggling to get up.

With the shotgun, Rick Mills motioned for me to move to my left. He also motioned for Ernie to step closer to me and the little kisaeng .

Then he said, “Demoray, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, boss. I’m okay now.”

“These boys knocked you for a loop, eh?”

“They got lucky.”

“I doubt that. They’re just smarter than you. Why don’t you admit it?”

Demoray didn’t answer.

Mills said, “Come over here.”

“I can’t move, boss.”

“Sure you can. Just wriggle forward a little bit at a time. You can do it.”

“I can’t.”

“ Try , goddamn it!”

Demoray tried. He made a few inches’ progress. Then he made more.

“That’s it,” Rick Mills said. “Just keep coming like that. Like a big worm. The big worm that you are.” He paused, stared at us, and then back at Demoray. “We had the perfect operation going,” Mills said. “For years. Everybody was getting fat. The DACs were getting what they wanted, the generals were getting the swimming pools and golf courses, the ROK government was getting contracts and gifts every year, but nobody was getting greedy. Everybody played it cool, made sure the records stayed clean and questions weren’t asked, and every Eighth Army inspector general was either handpicked by one of our commanders or kept busy with projects that kept him away from the Central Locker Fund. Everybody played it cool. Played it smart.”

Demoray was just a few feet away from Rick Mills now, sweaty and smeared with gasoline. Like the worm Mills had suggested, Demoray looked up and said, “Get the keys, boss. Let me up.”

Mills looked down at him, his lips twisted in disgust. Then he spit off to the side, took a step backward, and as fast as a striker kicking a ball toward the goal, his foot flashed forward. Demoray’s head snapped back, and blood and flesh and what might’ve been molars flooded over his front lip.

“Dumb shit,” Mills said.

The little kisaeng started to whimper.

“Can you shut her up ?” Mills said. He shook his head. “Korean women used to be strong. My wife would never have whined like that. No matter what.”

The little kisaeng stifled her crying.

“What now?” I asked Mills.

“Whadda you mean, what now ?”

“I mean, you can shoot us. A lot of good it’ll do you. The game’s over now, Mills. You must’ve been listening when I gave Demoray advice. A good lawyer. You can definitely afford one, probably from one of those fancy law firms. Somebody who specializes in going up against the government. You know what Eighth Army JAG is like. You’ll get a slap on the wrist. They won’t just be intimidated by your legal representation; they don’t particularly want the embarrassment of what’s been going on beneath their noses for all these years.”

Mills grinned. “You’re a cynical bastard, aren’t you?”

I shrugged.

“How about you,” Mills said, turning to Ernie. “Do you agree with your partner here?”

“He’s right about most things.”

“But not everything.”

“Nobody is,” Ernie said. “Like how many cartridges do you have in that shotgun. Two? If you miss with one, either me or my partner will be on your ass.”

I don’t know how he managed it, but Ernie was somehow chomping on ginseng gum again.

Mills grinned even more broadly. “By God, I like your spirit. Shit, if I would’ve had guys like you working for me, instead of this piece of shit . . .” Demoray shook his head. “. . . we’d still be in business and going strong.”

“We wouldn’t work for you, Mills,” I said.

“Why not. You don’t like money?”

“I like money fine. I just don’t like raping and torturing helpless women.”

Mills frowned. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought his finger tightened on the trigger of the shotgun. He glared at me. For a long minute, I held my breath. Mills was making a decision. Ernie felt it too. An aura of tension seemed to emanate from his body. I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to attack. If he had to go down, he would at least go down fighting; but he was also weighing the odds. Rick Mills knew how to handle that shotgun. If either Ernie or I made a play for him, our guts would be blown out of our stomachs and splattered all over onionskin.

Finally, Rick Mills took his eyes off of mine and glanced at the little kisaeng .

“Get her out of here,” he said.

I reached for her. She stood.

“That’s what it was,” Rick Mills said. “Not the money. Who gives a shit if wasted tax dollars land in my pocket or somebody else’s? It was the arrogance. The cruelty. The thinking that we were better than the Koreans. So much better than their women that we could use them in the ways we saw fit. Ways that made us feel good. That’s why this piece of shit deserves to die.”

Demoray twisted his bloody mouth away from the floor, saying “Please.”

Mills kicked him again.

“Go on,” Mills said. “Get out. All three of you. Get out now.”

Ernie grabbed the little kisaeng and started to back away.

I stepped backward, keeping my hands raised and my eyes on Rick Mills’s shotgun. When I was almost out of range, I said, “You don’t have to do this, Mills.”

“Sure I do,” he said.

“You’ll be in trouble, sure,” I said, “but you didn’t kill anyone. You know how it works. You pay your dues and life goes on.”

“I paid my dues,” Mills said, “when my wife died.”

“How about him?” I said, motioning toward Demoray. “You can’t just shoot him.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not the judge and jury.”

“I am now.”

In the distance, a siren sounded. As we listened, it grew louder. “You better get out, Sueno. While you still can.”

I backed away, stepped around the edge of the long row, and finally out of the line of fire. I leaned against the stanchion, breathing deeply, suddenly realizing that my knees were wobbly. Apparently, Ernie’d already hustled the little kisaeng out of the warehouse. He ran toward me, grabbed my arm, and without a word yanked me toward the exit.

I followed.

We were just stepping outside the warehouse into the blessed fresh air when we heard it. A shotgun blast. And then, as we dived toward the ground, a huge whoosh , like a mighty monster inhaling all the oxygen in the world, and the 8th United States Army Non-Appropriated Fund Records Repository exploded into flame.

Orrin W. Penwold, the Ville Rat, was declared “persona non grata” by the ROK Ministry of the Interior, which meant that he’d never be allowed to return to the Republic of Korea. It took the KNPs a few days to find him, but eventually they did. The US Embassy bought him a one-way ticket back to the States.

Mr. Wilbur M. Robinson Sr., long-time Department of the Army Civilian with the 8th Army Comptroller’s Office, decided to retire and discreetly took his leave.

The warehouse fire made some news, especially when the bodies of Master Sergeant Demoray and Noncommissioned Officer Rick Mills were found in the rubble. An Associated Press stringer did a story on it that not only appeared in Stateside newspapers, but was even cleared for publication in the Department of Defense official publication, the Pacific Stars and Stripes . It was a strictly factual story, however, and mentioned nothing about the long-term misappropriation of Non-Appropriated Fund merchandise.

Meanwhile, the Gunslinger was always good copy and the same AP stringer, tipped off by some anonymous source, got wind of the melee during the court-martial of Private First Class Clifton Threets. He reported on the shooting of Sergeant Orgwell and the official accusations against Threets, but the main focus of the story was the Gunslinger and how, according to eyewitnesses, he’d fired one of his pearl-handled revolvers into the ceiling of the courtroom. This made for quite a story back in the States, but since it couldn’t be corroborated by official 8th Army sources, it didn’t appear in the Stars and Stripes . Lieutenant Peggy Mendelson at 8th Army JAG never explained why, but after the story appeared, the charges against Threets changed from attempted homicide to aggravated assault. And when Second Lieutenant Bob Conroy threatened to fight even that, the charges were lowered to simple assault. Threets pled guilty to the charge, was sentenced to time served, and dismissed from the Army with a bad-conduct discharge.