Nightmare Range (27 page)

I thanked him, and we walked out of the police station. He didn’t have an extra copy of the photograph, but even considering the poor quality of the black and white snapshot, I wasn’t likely to forget that face.

No matter how many years I spent in Asia I would never get used to the number of gorgeous women who were forced to work in dumps like ASCOM City.

We rolled through the alleys. Rock and roll blared from darkened nightclubs, brightly manicured fingers clutched at us as we passed. Finally we found the Blue Dragon. From the outside it appeared to be one of the larger clubs, and it sat in one of the most crowded and brightly lit alleys. I figured we were approximately in the center of the red-light district known as ASCOM City.

We pushed through the beaded curtain, and thirty set of blinking eyelashes followed us as we stepped carefully through the multicolored darkness to the bar. The place was mostly empty, just a few GIs at tables in desultory conversation with a couple of the girls. An old woman approached and brought us a couple of cold beers, and then a pair of mini-skirted girls materialized out of the darkness. They became a little standoffish when I mentioned Miss Yu Kyong-hui, but they swore they hadn’t seen her for two nights. “Two nights?”

“Yes,” one of the girls said. “She wasn’t here last night. And the night before that she went out early with a GI, but she never came back.”

“Did Miss Yu have a boyfriend?”

“Yes. But she finished with him about a month ago.”

“Why?”

The girl shrugged her slim bare shoulders. Ebony hair cascaded around them and glistened in the gyrating light.

“Maybe not enough money. I don’t know.”

“This GI who took her out night before last, do you know him?”

“No.”

“What did he look like?”

She conferred with the other girl, they chatted, and soon some of the other girls had gathered around and were offering
their opinions. Finally, the girl I had been talking to turned back to me and said in English, “We don’t know what he looked like. Just GI, that’s all.”

The old woman brought another couple of wets, and Ernie gave one of the girls some money and sent her out to buy dried squid and peanuts. The girl I had been talking to was named Miss Kwon, she was from Taegu, and she had high hopes of becoming a secretary some day. For the rest of the night we drank and feasted, and when curfew came, I put away all thought of going back to Seoul.

After pounding on a small wooden door for five minutes, I managed to wake up Ernie. It took him about thirty more seconds to get his clothes on, and we promised the girls we’d be back and bundled out the door into the cold Korean morning.

Ernie looked up at the sky. “Oh, good,” he said. “It’s cloudy.”

A sharp wind whipped particles of grit into my face.

“What time is it?”

Ernie checked his watch. “Ten thirty.”

I groaned.

We showered at the post gymnasium and then paid for shaves at the PX barber shop. By then it was almost noon, so we went over to the NCO Club and ate lunch. By the time we arrived at the 8th Army Printing Plant it was already past one o’clock.

“Maybe we ought to call the first sergeant,” Ernie said.

“With no news? Let’s wait a little longer.”

The 8th Army Printing Plant was a huge, thick-walled building, so brightly whitewashed that it hurt my eyes. The Japanese Imperial Army had built the compound that we call ASCOM and they must’ve kept a lot of valuables on hand because the whole place was like a fortress.

We walked into the admin office and flashed our identification, and it wasn’t long before we had the plant manager, an American civilian, buzzing around us.

“Corporal Austin is one of our most reliable employees,” he said. “I can’t imagine what could be wrong.”

“Maybe nothing,” I said. “We just want to talk to him.”

Austin was at his printing press, ink smeared on his fingers and a folded newspaper covering his head.

He was almost as tall as me, but lanky, and muscles stood out on his arms, pulsating in almost as steady a rhythm as the machinery behind him. He stared at us with intelligent brown eyes.

“It’s about your bookmaking operation,” I said.

He said nothing.

“How much was Rodney VonEric into you for?”

He didn’t move. The only change in his face was moisture that appeared in his eyes. Finally, he made his decision. He answered.

“Over fifteen hundred dollars,” he said.

Ernie whistled.

“But I didn’t kill him.”

“Where were you Saturday night?”

“Out.”

“Where?”

“I go hiking sometimes. Through the Korean countryside.” He waved an ink-stained hand. “It’s very peaceful out there, once you get away from the city.”

“Where did you stay?”

“In a grove of trees.”

I stared at him.

“I take my rucksack and a few C rations. When it’s cold enough I take my sleeping bag.”

“Was anybody with you?”

“No.”

“Did anybody see you leave?”

“I doubt it. Most of the guys in the barracks were already out in the ville. You know how they are.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

Apparently the civilian manager had taken it upon himself
to call the MP station because just then he walked in with Lieutenant Crane at his side. Crane started snapping questions, and Austin told him the same story. Crane turned to me.

“Why didn’t you notify me?” he said. “This case belongs under our jurisdiction.”

Ernie piped up. “You weren’t doing nothing.”

Crane glared at him and then turned back to Austin. He took a green walkie-talkie off his belt and fiddled with it until it beeped. Thirty seconds later, two MPs came into the printing plant at a brisk walk.

Crane looked at Austin. “You’re under arrest. Clean off your hands and step over here against the wall.”

Austin did as he was told, and soon the MPs had him trussed up and Crane entered into a feverish conversation with the plant manager.

We left. I was happy to be outside in the fresh air and away from the noise of the churning machinery.

Back at the Blue Dragon Club we sat at a table nursing a couple of wets, waiting for Miss Kwon and her girlfriends to come back from the bathhouse. When they came in, they were wearing only T-shirts and short pants and had towels wrapped around their hair, and their clean, fresh faces bubbled with laughter. When they saw us, they surrounded our table.

Miss Kwon said, “You come back.”

“Sure,” Ernie said. “We’re not number ten GIs. We came back to say goodbye.”

They went upstairs to change, we ordered another round of beers, and Miss Kwon was the first one back.

I fiddled with my wallet, looking for the first sergeant’s number, thinking of calling him so we wouldn’t get in too much trouble. The photograph of the GI I had found in Yu Kyong-hui’s hooch fell out. Miss Kwon snatched it up.

“Where you get this?”

“From Miss Yu’s hooch.”

“She
taaksan
crazy about this GI. He’s infantry, but he was stationed here before. He almost married Miss Yu, but he ran out of time to get an extension and had to go back to the States.”

“Well, she kept his picture for a long time.”

“Not so long. Maybe two years. She still gets letters from him, and she told everybody that he got orders and he will be coming back soon.”

“If she was waiting for him to come back to Korea, why would she leave here so suddenly?”

Miss Kwon shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Then it clicked. The whole thing. I slammed my palm on the table. Ernie jumped.

“What the …”

“We’ve been idiots, Ernie. If VonEric needed money to pay off gambling debts, where would he get it?”

“Well …”

“Sure. I’m going to call the first sergeant right now and let him know that we’re going to be here a while longer. We have some paperwork to do.”

Ernie frowned. While I was on the phone behind the bar trying to get through to Seoul, he made sure to finish all the beer.

Word of our snooping would spread quickly, so I waited until Waitz was off duty to start going through the records of the Army Support Command Replacement Detachment. I compared some of the entries to the notes I had pilfered from VonEric’s desk. As we went over the assignments for the last few months, Ernie started to see the pattern.

“Waitz has been diverting guys to posts in Korea where their specialty is not required.”

“Right.” I stood up and reached for my coat. “Let’s get off base and find a taxi.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Inchon.”

“What the hell do you want to go there for?”

“They have a nice place there I want to visit. The Olympos Hotel …”

“You don’t need a room. Miss Kwon will put you up.”

“I don’t want a room. It’s the other half of the title I’m interested in.”

“What’s that?”

“The Olympos Hotel and Casino.”

The cab driver swerved rapidly through the countryside, and I kept telling him to slow down so we wouldn’t slide off the slick roads. When we came over the crest of the hills surrounding Inchon, the huge harbor spread out below us like rippling green glass. Rusty merchant ships nodded lazily on the gentle waves like drunken sailors sleeping against lampposts. At the edge of the water, on a slight hill above the rest of the city, stood the Olympos Hotel. Half of its square eyes twinkled in the sunset.

Chandeliers, plush red carpet, beautiful women flashing brightly colored cards across green felt tables.

“Let’s get out of this dump,” Ernie said.

“I just want to see if he’s here.”

“Who?”

“Waitz.”

There was not much of a crowd, since it was Monday night. A few Japanese tourists, a couple of high-rollers from Hong Kong at the baccarat table, and a smattering of bewhiskered merchant marines. Although there wasn’t much foliage for camouflage, I didn’t have to take any extra precautions to conceal myself from Waitz. He was humped over one of the blackjack tables, jabbing his finger into the green felt when he wanted a hit, waving his hand from side to side when he wanted to stay. His small pile of chips dwindled and then disappeared before our eyes. Without looking up from his cards, he reached back into his wallet and pulled out another short stack of twenty dollar bills. The dealer arrayed them like a fan on the table, counted them quickly, and
then made a pencil calculation converting them to
won
. She pushed two small stacks of chips out to him, and Waitz dropped almost half of them into the betting circle.

We waited outside the hotel. I figured it wouldn’t take long.

He walked through the lobby rubbing his face, and the red-coated attendant opened the door for him. I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders were still hunched and he stumbled as he walked. We put down the beers we had been drinking in the small garden overlooking the bay and followed.

His cab pulled up in front of Whiskey Mary’s, one of the oldest establishments in Inchon’s nightclub district. I told our driver to cruise by, and we watched Waitz walk in.

By the time Ernie and I peeped through the beaded doorway, Waitz was already too busy arguing with a Korean woman to notice us.

“Who is she?” Ernie asked.

“Miss Yu Kyong-hui.”

“How did you know?”

“Waitz and VonEric were both gambling. One out here at the casino, the other on football, placing bets with Austin. When Waitz got in too deep, he started taking bribes to give GIs choice assignments.”

“If VonEric was in on it,” Ernie said, “how did he get in so deep to Austin?”

“From checking the records, it looks like he wasn’t taking bribes. Maybe he figured he’d rather be in trouble with an illegal bookmaker than get caught by the army for abusing his official position and thereby face a court-martial. But he worked in the same room with Waitz, so eventually he must have realized what Waitz was doing, or maybe Waitz told him, figured to enlist him as a collaborator. Who knows? Then when VonEric wouldn’t go along with the program, it made Waitz nervous. Maybe real nervous. And maybe VonEric even threatened to turn him in. The records were there, the ones we saw this afternoon. Enough
to convict him, or at least build a hell of a case against him. If anybody knew about it.”

“So Waitz decided to kill VonEric.”

“Right.” I jerked my thumb toward the entranceway to Whiskey Mary’s. “And he knew that Miss Yu Kyong-hui had jilted him, so he talked to her. It turned out they had something in common. Miss Yu’s old boyfriend was infantry. He had probably just gotten lucky on his last tour to Korea and been assigned down here, maybe to the Special Forces detachment on the ASCOM compound. But he wouldn’t be so lucky again. It would be the DMZ for him. Miss Yu might not be able to see him for weeks on end.”

“And Division isn’t real big on helping GIs get their marriage paperwork through.”

“Right. So Waitz made a proposition to Miss Yu. Just take VonEric home with her, loosen a crack in her floor that was already there, and her boyfriend would receive a choice assignment away from the DMZ.”

A shriek rippled through the beaded entranceway to the club. Ernie was first in. I pushed my way through a gaggle of sweet-smelling business girls and found Ernie wrestling a bloodied knife away from Miss Yu.

Waitz was already pushing through the back door. I ran toward him but had to dodge sloshing beer and broken bottles from the cocktail tables he’d turned over behind him. When I made it outside, I spotted him down the street hopping into a taxi. There were no others around, so I couldn’t follow him. I returned to the club.

Miss Yu was screeching and clawing at Ernie’s face, like some great warrior bird.

“He’s got to fix the assignment!” she said. “I don’t care about MPs. I don’t care about CID. I did what he want me to do, now he must help me!”

“What is it you did for him?” I asked.

Miss Yu glanced around at the business girls and the handful
of merchant sailors. They all stared at her. Suddenly, she realized that she’d said too much.

“Nothing,” she replied. “I did nothing.”

It took us half an hour to get her booked into the Inchon Korean National Police Station. I briefly explained what the charge was but told them that Ernie and I had to leave in order to arrest the American who’d been her accessory.