Nightmare Range (23 page)

“What did Hei-sok think?”

“He was angry, but he didn’t say anything. Myong-hui loved the flower. Instead of spending so much money in the teahouse, Hei-sok should have done something like that. Since his money was all gone, all he did was pluck a withered old blossom for her hair. I think that’s what gave Ralph the idea, but she threw the blossom away when Ralph gave her the more beautiful flower he bought in the shop.”

“Was the blossom a
mukung-hua
?”

“Yes. You know about our national flower?”

She seemed impressed, which is why I said it. I had paid close attention during my Korean language classes. Might as well get some credit.

“What about Hei-sok’s friend?” I said. “How did he react?”

“I didn’t see because that’s when everyone started yelling when they noticed the riot police moving in behind us. We couldn’t get out. It was strange, really. They kept telling us to leave the area, but there was no way out. I wasn’t too worried
then, there were so many of us, and everyone had been peaceful. But of course the speakers had said so many impolite things about our president. I think that must have made the soldiers angry.”

“What did you do when the armored vehicles moved forward?”

“We tried to move out of the way. Students climbed over fences and ran down alleys. The vehicle moved very slowly. I’m sure the driver didn’t intend to run over anyone.”

“Did you see Ralph go down?”

“No. There was too much confusion.”

“Where was Hei-sok?”

“I don’t know. Myong-hui and I were holding on to one another, trying to get out of the way. We didn’t see what happened to Ralph. It was only later that we heard about it.”

“Does Hei-sok live on campus?”

“Yes. In the first men’s dormitory.”

I put my hand in the right pocket of my coat, Ernie’s cue to take over the interrogation.

“Young lady,” he said, “do you love Myong-hui?”

She seemed to be surprised that Ernie could speak. “She is my best friend.”

“And you’d want to protect her, wouldn’t you, from ruining her life by becoming involved with a foreigner?”

“I think it would be best to marry a Korean,” she said, and then her mouth fell open. “You think that I …”

“Where were you when Whitcomb went down?”

“I told you. We were trying to get away. It was an accident. He must have fallen.”

“This Hei-sok, does he study
tae kwon do
?”

“No. He is very frail. He could not have done anything like that.”

And then she dropped her head into her lap and she was crying.

My face felt feverish by now, the flu shot was getting to me, but I took a breath of the garden-scented air and the dizziness subsided.

We had to ask directions a couple of times, but gradually we made our way to the boy’s dormitory on the other side of campus. The boys in the waiting room looked at us suspiciously, but soon shouts were ringing up the big cement hallways for Li Hei-sok. He looked thin and frightened, and there were still scratches on his neck from where a policeman must have collared him. We walked with him into the game room, getting as far away as possible from a pair of students slamming a small white globe at one another in a vicious round of Ping-Pong.

Ernie backed him into a corner.

“You pushed him,” he said. “You pushed Whitcomb, he fell, and then the armored vehicle ran over him. And we’re here to take you in.”

He looked at me, confused. I translated what Ernie had said into Korean.

“No,” he said. “It didn’t happen that way. I didn’t do it. You don’t understand.”

He fell back against the wall, clutched his stomach, and looked about him for support. The Ping-Pong ball careened back and forth.

Some of the other young men noticed Hei-sok’s frantic face and wandered over. Just curiosity so far, but I wondered if the hot emotions of the morning would carry over into the dismal afternoon. My fever was coming back.

When I heard the slam, I almost jumped out of my suit.

The word
propriety
flashed through my mind, and I remembered my Korean language teacher slamming his pointer down on the desk, explaining the cardinal rules of Confucian propriety. I cursed myself for not seeing it earlier.

It was a baseball bat, coming down flush on the Ping-Pong table. The little guy with glasses in the photograph, the one Myong-hui’s friend had said was named Pak Un-sil, stood before
us. His breath came hard, and he wore a white bandana tied around his forehead. Indecipherable Chinese characters were slashed in red ink across the bandana. He spit as he screamed, but I could pick up most of what he was saying.

“Don’t touch him, you fornicating foreign dogs! You’ve ruined enough here in our country. Whitcomb deserved what happened to him. I pushed him, and I’d push him again!”

He slammed the baseball bat back down on the Ping-Pong table for effect. It was certainly getting that. I was dizzy and feverish, only from the flu shot, I hoped.

“Whitcomb was trying to get Myong-hui, even though he knew that she was Hei-sok’s girlfriend. He bought her a flower and presented it to her right in front of all of us. He didn’t care who was embarrassed. He didn’t care about his own face, and he didn’t care about any of us. He just wanted her. To use her and then throw her away, like he threw away our national flower. I would not let him insult Koreans like that.”

Ernie backed away from the cowering Li Hei-sok, and we both took a couple of steps from each other so if Pak Un-sil went for one of us, the other would be able to get him from behind. I saw Ernie glance at a chair he could grab if the kid lunged. I was ready to turn over the Ping-Pong table.

A crowd gathered, at a respectful distance. Nobody wanted to get too near a loony with a baseball bat.

The young man slammed his bat onto the top of the Ping-Pong table again. It rattled. He slammed the bat again, and the table gave up and caved in. Splinters flew everywhere. Ernie lifted the chair, like a lion tamer, and charged. The kid swung and almost knocked the chair out of Ernie’s hands. I pounced on the kid’s back, grabbing for his arms, and then Ernie gripped the bat. The three of us waltzed around the room a couple of times, sweating and cursing, until Ernie ripped the bat from the young man’s hands.

He was still cursing, frothing at the mouth, and he tried to bite me. I let go and then the other kids were around us, everyone
pushing and shouting, and the stocky kid broke away and darted upstairs.

Ernie and I wrestled ourselves free and ran after him.

I heard his footsteps pounding up past the second floor landing and on up to the third floor. Wood rattled, and when we arrived at the top I saw his sneakers disappearing through a trapdoor in the ceiling. Ernie went first. He pushed the door up carefully, ready to drop back quickly if the kid had found another bat. The coast was clear, and when he was up, I scrambled up after him.

On the roof of the big dorm, eternity loomed above us, domed by a vast gray sky. No sign of the kid. Ernie pointed toward the stone spire. He was climbing up, over gargoyles, like a crazed Korean Quasimodo. We ran over and started shouting at him to come down. Wasting our breath.

“I’m not going up there,” Ernie said. “No way.”

More students came up on the roof and stood around gawking. They cupped their hands around their mouths and shouted. The kid kept climbing.

When he reached the top of the spire, he straddled the pinnacle and stood straight up, his arms outstretched. He looked fragile up there, against the gray Asian sky.

A wave of nausea ran through me. Whether it was from the flu shot or from the heights or from the desperate young man wavering above me, I couldn’t be sure. I have never been sure.

More students gathered down below in front of the dormitory, and I heard their distant cries.

I decided I had to try, and I walked toward the spire. I found a handhold, braced myself, and looked up.

The young man’s arms were outstretched, and his eyes closed for a moment as if he were praying. Then his knees flexed and he pushed himself forward, and for a few brief seconds he was flying.

I can still hear the crunch. And then the screams.

The line-of-duty investigation determined that since Corporal Ralph Whitcomb had died as a result of unauthorized activities, his parents were ineligible to draw his serviceman’s group life insurance. Eighth Army put out a special bulletin reminding everyone to stay away from political rallies of any sort—especially student demonstrations.

Whitcomb was, however, authorized a headstone by the Veteran’s Administration.

It took two days’ worth of brandy to rid myself of the flu.

T
he early morning Seoul traffic swept us along like a rushing river of metal. Ernie managed to pull over, and we climbed out of the jeep. The boy was still there.

“Looks like he fell from a ten-story building,” Ernie said.

This would have been plausible except that there was nothing around but a shrub-filled lot and a long sidewalk leading to the intersection between the district of Itaewon and the 8th United States Army headquarters on Yongsan Compound.

Bare feet stuck out of ragged cuffs, and the boy’s pullover sweater was as soiled and greasy as his skin. A crusty, transparent film oozed out of his tightly shut eyes, and blood bubbled and caked on his puffy, cracked lips.

Ernie knelt down and felt for a pulse.

“He’s alive,” he said.

We tossed him in the back of the jeep. He weighed nothing. Ernie revved up the engine, let out the clutch, and bulled his way into the traffic.

“Now that we got him,” he said, “what the hell are we going to do with him?”

“Feed him,” I said. “Get him cleaned up. And then find out how he ended up face down on the pavement of Seoul.”

I have a room on the compound, but in the early morning you’ll most often find me walking back from Itaewon, the nightclub district the Korean government has set aside for GIs. It’s a long walk, but usually I’m too numb to feel it. Rats scurry out of the way, stacks of drained OB beer bottles sway in the cold wind, and zombie-like Americans head for the warmth and comfort of military barracks. Normally I shower, shave, slip into the suit and tie required of all CID agents, and stumble over to the 8th Army snack bar for a cup of coffee and a copy of the daily
Stars & Stripes
. But today, on the way in, I almost stepped on something: a boy lying face down on the pavement.

Korea may not have a whole lot of excess wealth, but you don’t often see beggars. Most of the panhandlers are kids, and they’re healthy and full of spunk, put up to it by some Fagin lurking in the alleyways.

So to see a boy like this, passed out, drenched in grime, his dirty cheek scrunched up against the cold cement—it wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

I’d heard about people in New York who just walk around someone in trouble. In East LA, where I’m from, we aren’t exactly known for our neighborliness either. But I always figured that if I ran into a helpless waif I would stop, see if I could help.

Except I was on the last empty stretch of sidewalk that led to the compound, and there were no other pedestrians, and if I stopped to help the boy what would I do for him? Back in Itaewon you can catch a cab without too much problem, but no driver ventures out on this long empty stretch unless he already has a fare, and you can bet he’s not going to stop for some six-foot-four American with a filthy urchin draped over his shoulder. If I carried him to the compound, I’d get hassled at the gate. All guests have to be signed in and their Korean National ID card numbers entered on the MPs sign-in roster.