Mr. Kill (11 page)

That’s him, more practical than imaginative.

The Greeks pulled their knives and stepped forward.

7

A
lmost in unison, they pressed buttons and the blades clicked open, gleaming in the dim yellow light. Weyworth scurried to the end of the bar. Keeping my eyes on the Greeks, I spoke to him.

“Nice company you keep, Weyworth.”

“What do you want?”

I shrugged. “Just want to talk to you.”

One of the Greeks stepped forward. Ernie raised his pool cue. The man stopped.

“Tell your buddies to lay off. We’re not after them. We’re after you.”

“
You
tell ’em,” Weyworth said.

Apparently, he just had. One of the Greeks waved his free hand at me and said, “Go. You go.” He motioned toward the back door.

Ernie grabbed a second pool cue and tossed it to me. I grabbed it on the fly.

“How was your trip to Seoul?” I asked Weyworth.

“How do you know about that?”

“What was the purpose of the trip, Nick? Sightseeing?”

“None of your damn business.”

“Or maybe picking up some contraband and selling it to these gentlemen.” I studied the bar and the coats the Greeks were wearing. If Weyworth had just dropped off some contraband, it had to be small, something like jewelry. Dope was out of the question. Not only is there a small market for it in Korea but, more importantly, the punishment for trafficking in narcotics in the Republic of Korea is death. I couldn’t imagine even these guys would be
that
stupid. “Maybe these guys brought something into port,” I said. “Something valuable, and you transported it north to Seoul and made the sale.”

Weyworth squirmed. “Get the hell out of here.”

“You’re coming with us, Weyworth.”

Ernie stepped toward him. The Greeks started forward, but we both brandished our pool cues. They stopped. The sailors spoke enough English to understand that we weren’t after them, only Weyworth. And if the transaction had already been made, if they already had their money, they wouldn’t be willing to fight over keeping him here.

At least that’s the way I read the situation.

I covered Ernie as he approached Specialist Four Nicholas Q. Weyworth at the end of the bar. The Greeks stood their ground. Ernie finally reached Weyworth and shoved him with his pool cue. He threw him up against the bar and turned him around, keeping a weather eye on the Greeks. He was about to handcuff the young man, who kept squealing in protest.

“I ain’t done nothing.”

But just as Ernie snapped shut the cuffs, a plate flew through the air. I ducked. Another plate swooped toward me, and this one connected. I shrugged it off, but by now one of the Greeks had taken advantage of the distraction and was scuttling toward me, a knife with a gleaming blade held in front of him.

I swung the pool cue. He dodged it and lunged. I sidestepped, feeling the blade slice my jacket near my elbow. I twisted the cue and slammed him flush in the gut. As he doubled over, another Greek jumped on my back and I rolled with the jarring force of his body and twisted forward and then he was upside down careering through the air.

Glassware and chairs and pool cues flew everywhere. Weyworth ran past me, heading for the front door. I lunged for him but missed. I saw Ernie punching and wrestling with two Greeks, and I ran toward them. At the same time I heard footsteps tromping in from the back and someone shouting “Halt!” The front door slammed open, and there was cursing in Greek. I shoved a guy away from Ernie, and he reeled toward the front door. I ran after him.

Just as I stepped outside, watching for knives—and just when I started to breathe the fresh tang of mist-laden air—I was hit with something heavy.

Right in the face.

*  *  *

When I woke up, I was lying flat on my back in a bed with crisp white sheets. My eyes focused on a weasel staring down at me. Then I realized it wasn’t a weasel, but something worse: Lieutenant Messler.

“You look like shit,” he said.

I tried to move my lips. They weren’t working very well. Finally, I croaked out a sound. “Where’s Ernie?”

“Oh, he’s fine. A couple of scratches and bruises. Nothing serious. Lucky for you Sergeant Norris and his partner hung around the area.”

Probably on Messler’s orders, to keep an eye on the CID guys from Seoul who were messing around in their area of operations.

“Who hit me?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Probably a third-country national. Try to remember, Agent Sueño, Eighth Army encourages us to make friends with our international neighbors.”

I meant to say “Screw you,” but I think it came out more like “Scoo you.” I can’t be sure, because my hearing wasn’t too great either. Suddenly I felt dizzy staring at Lieutenant Messler, and a nurse came over and shooed him away. “What about Weyworth?” I managed to croak before he walked away.

“Who?” he said, stepping back to the edge of the bed.

“Spec Four Weyworth.”

“Nobody else was there when Norris and his partner found you. Just you and Bascom. Knocked out. Lying on the floor.” Then he grinned a weasel-like grin. “Good show, old chap.”

He chortled and disappeared.

My eyes popped open. I’m not sure how long I’d been out, but it was still dark outside. A yellow-bulbed lamp glowed dimly next to my bed. A figure sat in a chair, so silently that I almost hadn’t noticed he was there. He grinned and leaned into the light.

Ernie.

“They say you’ll be fine,” he said. “Just a mild concussion. Nothing to worry about.”

“Good.”

I started to get up. He held out his hands. “You should rest. At least until the morning.”

“What time is it now?”

“Zero five hundred.”

I groaned. “Do you know who hit me?”

“Greek sailors,” he replied. “I popped a couple of them good. Would’ve popped more if Norris and his partner hadn’t interrupted me.”

“Chased them away?”

“Yeah.”

“What about Weyworth?”

“One of the Greeks managed to get hold of my keys somehow.”

“He escaped?”

“Yeah.”

Ernie hadn’t been “popping them good” like he’d claimed. He’d been overcome just as I had. Sergeant Norris and his partner had apparently saved our butts.

There was a metal guard taped to my nose. I pulled it off.

“You look
mah
-velous, dah-ling,” Ernie said.

“Screw you.” I climbed out of bed, found my clothes stuffed in a bag beneath the nightstand, and started slipping them on. “Maybe we should wake up the armorer,” I said.

Ernie opened his coat. The butt of a .45 peeked out of a holster.

“‘Great minds’ and all that,” he said.

Two hours later, we were sitting at the PX cafeteria sipping coffee and perusing the morning edition of the
Pacific
Stars and Stripes
. I was very conscious of my nose. It was puffed up and bright red and almost glowed, and it was very tender to the touch. While drinking, I was careful not to tilt my coffee mug back too far.

We’d already been out to Weyworth’s hooch. Jeannie’s mother woke up angry and remained angry while we asked about Weyworth, claiming he hadn’t come home last night. We searched her hooch and its environs just to make sure. Ernie thought she was cute when she was angry.

“She’s cute when she does
anything
,” I replied.

We returned to the compound, and by then the cafeteria was open.

Now that the grill was heated up, I hobbled over to the serving line and ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, hold the mayo. Ernie had scrambled eggs and sausage. While we ate, I gradually started to feel more human.

“So, if you were Weyworth,” I asked Ernie, “where would you go?”

“Back to my hooch.”

“To face your angry girlfriend?”

“Hell, yeah. She’s cute.”

“But eventually you’d be arrested by the likes of you and me.”

“Maybe. But I wouldn’t be locked up long. The Greeks don’t talk—mouthing off to cops isn’t in their nature—and if I kept my mouth shut and said nothing more than that I wanted to talk to a lawyer, I’d be out in a couple of hours.”

“You know that because you work in law enforcement. Weyworth doesn’t necessarily know that.”

Ernie shrugged and continued shoveling eggs in his mouth.

“All we want to know,” I continued, “is what he saw on the Blue Train.”

“And if he’s the killer.”

“There’s that.”

“And if he’s not the killer, who is.”

“There’s that too.”

I walked to the serving line and pulled myself a cup of joe from the huge stainless-steel coffee urn. When I reached in my pocket for my receipt, the tired female cashier waved me past. There were so few customers, she remembered that I qualified for the free refill. I studied her face. She didn’t look much like Mrs. Oh Myong-ja, the first victim, but there were similarities. They were both Korean, they were both in their early thirties, and I could tell by her ring that they were both married. Did she have children? Probably. Why else would she be working so early in the morning on a G.I. compound?

When I returned to our table, I clunked my coffee mug down and asked Ernie, “What do you think Runnels meant about the Blue Train rapist having a ‘checklist’?”

Ernie looked up from the sports page. “I think the guy has a lot of people he hates.”

“What makes you say that?”

Ernie shrugged. “What he did on the train was an in-your-face act. Like flipping the world the bird.”

I already knew that Ernie had more brains than people gave him credit for. And more brains than he usually bothered to show.

“And what he did next,” I said, “here in Pusan, is an act even more brutal than the first.”

“Right.”

“So the ‘checklist’ probably becomes progressively bloodier.”

Ernie looked back at the sports page. “Unless we catch him first.”

Mr. Kill was waiting for us at the Pusan Police Station.

He rose as we walked in, and within seconds we were in a police sedan being driven over to the Pusan-
yok
, the train station.

“The local police,” Kill told us, “are checking with every cab driver who picked up a fare at the Pusan station yesterday. They should have a report for us some time today. Not only did Mrs. Hyon and her three children take a cab from the train station to the Shindae Hotel, so did the killer.”

“So if they’re checking that,” Ernie asked, “why are we going to the train station?”

Mr. Kill raised a paper bag he’d been holding in his lap. “This.” He pulled out a woman’s purse. “This is the one the rapist showed to the desk clerk,” he told us. “So he could follow Mrs. Hyon up to the third floor.”

“Already dusted for prints?”

“There weren’t any. He must have wiped it down.”

“If the guy’s so smart, why’d he leave the purse?”

“Probably thought we couldn’t do anything with it,” Kill said. “And he might be right.”

The sedan pulled up in front of the huge flagstone expanse in front of the Pusan train station. Canvas-covered lean-tos were set up in neat rows. Some of them had wooden counters and sold hot bowls of noodles; others hawked already-packed
toshirak
with rice and kimchee and other savories inside, suitable for eating on the train. Other stands sold umbrellas or galoshes, and a few sold clothing items of various descriptions for the traveler who might’ve forgotten to pack something.

Mr. Kill stopped at every clothing stand, showed them the handbag, asking if they sold this type of item. Three of them did. He questioned them at length. Finally, a tall woman with a pronounced overbite admitted that she’d sold a handbag exactly like that to a foreigner. She remembered the time: it was already dark, and the Blue Train from Seoul had just pulled in.

“After that,” she said, “we locked up and went home. No business after the last Blue Train.”

“What did he look like?” Mr. Kill asked.

“Like them,” she said, pointing to Ernie and me. She realized Mr. Kill expected more, so she said, “Big. With a big nose.”

Patiently, Mr. Kill took her through all the various physical attributes a person can have. When he was finished, we had the picture we expected. A Caucasian male, about six feet tall—maybe a little more, maybe a little less—with short-cropped dark hair, but she hadn’t noticed if the hair was curly or straight. His nose was big, not as pointed as Ernie’s and not as puffed up as mine. He wore a dark shirt of some sort, she wasn’t sure of the color, and he wore dark slacks, although they could’ve been blue jeans. His shoes, she didn’t see.

“How about a traveling bag?” Kill asked.

She shook her head. “He wasn’t carrying one. And I would’ve noticed. I’m in that line of work.”

Mr. Kill asked about the man’s hands. He’d used them to point at the handbag and he’d used them to make payment.

Yes, there was hair on the hands. She crinkled her nose at the memory. And the nails, she thought, were probably cut short, although she couldn’t be sure. No rings or jewelry that she remembered.

Mr. Kill asked if he’d spoken to her in Korean or English.

“He didn’t say anything,” the vendor replied. “He just pointed.” Her array of handbags was hanging by nails on the rafters.

“He didn’t ask how much it was?”

“No. So I told him. Four thousand five hundred.”

“You told him in Korean or English?”

“In English,” she replied proudly. “I can speak that much.”

“Isn’t four thousand five hundred a little steep?” Kill asked.

The woman blushed. “All foreigners are rich,” she said. “And anyway, he didn’t wait for his change.”

*  *  *

A couple of hours later, the local KNPs located the cab drivers. The one who’d driven Mrs. Hyon and her three children to the Shindae Hotel was an elderly man who sat forward on his hard wooden chair and puffed on a Kobuksong cigarette through the entire conversation. According to him, Mrs. Hyon was having trouble with her kids, who were restless after the long train ride. When they arrived at the hotel, she paid him and thanked him, seemed all in all a very nice lady.

“
Chuggosso
?” he asked, his mouth open. She’s dead?

Kill nodded gravely.