Nightmare Range (34 page)

Ortfield looked up at me, nervous and afraid. Ernie wasn’t sure what I was up to but we’ve been partners long enough for him not to question me. He grabbed Ortfield by the arm and when he pulled away, he twisted his wrist behind his back and shoved him forward in front of the flowers and the huge photograph of Choi Un-suk.

This time the crowd made way.

I spoke into the megaphone again, praying that Ernie would know what to do.

“We Eighth Army soldiers, we Americans, we who are responsible for Ortfield,” I said, “
daedanhi choesong-hamnida.
” We are terribly sorry.

Right on cue, Ernie grabbed the back of Ortfield’s head and forced it down. He struggled—choking, bent forward at the waist—but Ernie held him there for almost half a minute. I bowed at the same time.

Choe Un-suk’s mother began to cry. Handkerchiefs fluttered in the trembling fingers of the elderly ladies. While Ortfield was down, the schoolgirls, Un-suk’s classmates, bowed too, and the adults joined in, and like the ocean when the tide goes out, the crowd lowered.

When they rose again, there was much embracing and everyone turned their backs on Ortfield and Ernie and me.

I handed the megaphone to the sad-faced aunt, climbed off the platform, and as quietly as I could, pulled Ernie and Ortfield toward the departure gate.

When we arrived back at the CID office, Riley pulled a pencil from behind his ear and peered at us over the mountain of paperwork.

“ ’Bout time you guys got back. What the hell took you so long?”

“We had a couple of delays.”

His eyes narrowed. “Goofing off again, eh?”

Ernie ignored him, sauntered over to the coffee urn, and poured himself the dregs of the day’s java.

I stood in front of Riley’s desk, studying him, wondering how much he’d understand. Wondering how much the army would understand. The explanation would be long and hard, and in the end it would be meaningless to them. No sense even starting.

I took of my coat and hung it on the gray metal rack. “Yeah, Sarge,” I said. “You caught us. Goofing off again.”

He nodded, grunted, and looked back down at his paperwork.

All was right with the world.

T
he wrinkled sergeant cursed as he held the handkerchief to the knot on his head. Blood seeped through the white linen and trickled down his wrist.

“They were inside the jeep and pounding me before I could pull my weapon.” An army-issue .45 was still holstered and buckled to his canvas web belt. “I don’t know why she stopped. Probably just wanted to give them a ride.”

Ernie and I were standing in the big black-top bus parking area next to the two-story red brick building that housed 8th Army Finance.

Ernie paced back and forth, watching the bleeding staff sergeant, studying him. “Let me get this straight, Holtbaker. You and this second lieutenant Burcshoff pick up the Aviation Detachment payroll here at Finance, you load the briefcase full of money into the jeep, you start to drive off, and she stops to pick up a couple of guys standing on the curb?”

“They waved us down.”

“Then they jump in the jeep,” Ernie continued, “club you on the head, shove you onto the sidewalk, and drive off with the jeep and the money and Second Lieutenant Burcshoff.”

Holtbaker nodded. Blood puddled in the cuff of his green shirt.

“Did she put up any sort of a fight?” I asked.

“Yeah. I think she went for the pearl-handled pistol she carried, something passed down from her old man, she told me, a retired colonel. But these guys were ready. She didn’t have a chance.”

The sergeant described them. One tall and blond, the other average height, brown hair. The blond guy was somewhat thin. The brown-haired guy was average weight. No distinguishing characteristics. They were both wearing sneakers, blue jeans, and nylon jackets—what every off-duty GI in the country wears.

A typically miserable description from a witness.

“When they made their getaway,” Ernie asked, “who drove? Second Lieutenant Burcshoff or one of the hijackers?”

“How the hell should I know? By then I was facedown on the sidewalk.”

“How much money was in that briefcase?”

“The whole monthly payroll for the Aviation Detachment. Over ten thousand bucks.”

Ernie and I canvassed the area for witnesses. At the Moyer Recreation Center, no one had seen anything. These thieves were quick and professional. Get in. Get the money and the jeep. Get out. Not your typical GIs pulling some caper.

“What’s our next step?” Ernie asked.

“They have a jeep, they have a satchel full of money, and they have a female second lieutenant. What we do is put out an allpoints-bulletin and wait for one of those items to turn up.”

Ernie pulled out another stick of ginseng gum, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. “Hopefully, it will be the second lieutenant.”

I nodded in agreement. “And hopefully, she’ll be alive.”

“Always preferable to dead.”

Ernie’s wish came true. A half hour later we received a call from the Korean National Police in the city of Kimpo, about fifteen miles west of Seoul. They had Second Lieutenant Burcshoff. She was alive. She was on the phone. Shouting.

“They took everything! The money, the jeep. I can’t believe it but the sons of bitches even took my goddamned .45!”

I held the phone away from my ear. She didn’t sound frightened, she sounded angry as hell. I told her to remain calm. Ernie and I would be there in a few minutes. We drove to Kimpo.

Second Lieutenant Constance R. Burcshoff held herself as if she were constantly at attention. The Korean cops stared at her surreptitiously, appalled that a woman would be wearing a fatigue uniform and combat boots, but she ignored their amazement.

“The thieves kicked me out of the jeep about two miles from here,” she said. “In the middle of a few acres of rice paddies. I caught a tractor into town.”

“They didn’t try to hide their identity?”

“They made me lie facedown in the back of the jeep. Still, I caught a glimpse of both of them.”

The description she gave didn’t match what Sergeant Holtbaker had told us. This time the blond guy wasn’t as tall and not quite so thin. The brown-haired guy seemed a little chubbier in her description. None of it gave us much to go on.

We drove Lieutenant Burcshoff back to Seoul. She sat ramrod straight in the back seat of the jeep, staring straight ahead, occasionally touching the empty holster at her hip.

Ernie offered her a stick of ginseng gum. She refused. I tried to engage her in conversation, but she didn’t want any part of it. I’d already checked her personnel records. She had earned her reserve commission from a Southern military-agricultural school, and she came from a long line of army officers. Her father had retired as a colonel and her grandfather had been a general in World War II. She even had ancestors who’d fought on both sides of the Civil War.

Lieutenant Burcshoff was the only female assigned to payroll officer duty and she was the only payroll officer who’d been
robbed. I couldn’t tell which was worse for her, the humiliation of being robbed or the humiliation of losing her grandfather’s pearl-handled .45.

All the way back to Seoul she sat with her face set in stone.

That afternoon the stolen jeep turned up at the Seoul train station. Ernie and I hustled over there.

It was parked in front of the main red brick building next to other military vehicles belonging to the 8th Army Rail Transportation Office. There were many ways to leave the train station: by train, bus, subway, or taxi. Ernie and I interviewed a few of the ticket sellers and the security officers who controlled the taxi queue, but no one remembered two Americans in civilian clothes parking a jeep and walking away.

There were plenty of fingerprints on the jeep, none of which were likely to do us much good without the perpetrators.

Back at the CID office we were told that General Skulgrin, the commanding general of 8th Army, was hopping mad that someone would steal an army payroll. He wanted the thieves caught and he wanted them caught immediately, if not sooner.

Overseas, GIs are paid not in greenbacks but in Military Payment certificates. The theory is that Communist agents won’t be able to hoard a bunch of US dollars and buy arms on the international market. Also, government officials fear that a few tons of US green in the local economy could lessen the value of the won, the Korean currency. Eighth Army has a press in Japan that prints up the MPC and each bill is assigned a serial number. Since GIs generally aren’t big spenders, there are no denominations larger than a twenty.

At 8th Army Finance, Ernie and I obtained a list of the serial numbers issued to Lieutenant Burcshoff. We passed it up the chain of command to the provost marshal, who showed the 8th Army CG. The next thing we knew, 8th Army Finance had a task force formed to search all incoming MPC and report the appearance of any of the stolen bills.

We heard a lot of grumbling from the finance clerks. It was going to mean a lot of extra work for them.

Ernie and I had the easy job, waiting for one of the stolen bills to turn up.

About three days later, one did. Turned in at the bank on Yongsan, the headquarters compound for 8th Army. The problem was that it was part of the main PX cash deposit. No telling who had spent it there. Maybe one of the thieves. Maybe somebody they’d passed the bill off to. We were no closer than we had been.

It was a little disheartening, but Ernie and I took it philosophically. There was no way the crooks could leave the country with that much MPC. Every bag on every flight leaving Korea, whether military or civilian, is searched by a customs agent—one of the benefits of investigative work in a country that lives in constant fear of terrorism.

On the fourth morning after the robbery we caught a break.

The alert siren sounded, vehicles were prohibited from entering or leaving the compound, and the commanding general declared all Military Payment Certificates null and void. Everyone in 8th Army was instructed to turn in their old MPC to their unit commander in exchange for the new Military Payment Certificates. They were bright orange. The old bills had been blue.

At 5
P.M.
, close of duty day, all the old blue MPC would become worthless.

The change in MPC made the finance clerk’s search a lot easier. Everyone who turned in the blue MPC had to produce military identification and sign a register that said how much they were exchanging and, if it was over a hundred dollars’ worth, declare the source of the money.

A lot of lightbulbs burned at 8th Army Finance that night. Ernie and I paced the reception room, sipping coffee, waiting for something to break. Nothing did.

At about oh-dark-thirty, one of the clerks tapped my arm. “You Agent Sueño?”

I rubbed my eyes. “That’s me.”

“Here’s the register with the stolen bills. A whole stack of them.”

Ernie rose from a vinyl-cushioned couch, stretched, and leaned over me and the clerk as we studied the register. “MED-DAC,” I said. The 8th Army Medical Command. “Six hundred bucks. Turned in by Specialist Four Crossnut, Reginald R.”

A Spec 4 pulls down about two hundred and fifty dollars a month.

The clerk pointed to the remarks section of the register. “Claimed he made the money gambling.”

“The old standby,” Ernie said.

In the latrine, we splashed water on our faces and then ran outside. The first fingers of dawn crept over distant hills. On the wide cement porch we almost bowled over Lieutenant Burcshoff. She wore an immaculately pressed dress green uniform that clung to the curves of her lean body.

“You have a lead?” she asked.

Ernie grinned. “We got ’em nailed. Just a matter of time now. When you see those two thieves again, they’ll be standing in a lineup.”

A shadow of concern crossed the even features of her face.

We didn’t have time to chat. Ernie and I ran to the jeep and drove to the barracks of the 8th Army Medical Command.

Specialist Four Reginald R. Crossnut wasn’t tall and blond, and he wasn’t short with brown hair. He was black. And pissed off when Ernie yanked on his mattress and rolled him out of his bunk. He hopped to his feet, swinging bony fists, cursing.

“Who the
hell
do you think you are?”

Ernie shoved him up against a wall locker.

“We’re CID agents,” Ernie told him. “And we’ve been up all night and we’re pissed off and we don’t like thieves. Where’d you get the six hundred dollars in MPC?”

Crossnut’s eyes widened, realizing the trouble he was in. He glanced back and forth between us. Ernie and I looked as if we hadn’t shaved in a week.

“The money is
mine
!” Crossnut said. He tried to wriggle out of Ernie’s grasp, but it didn’t work. “I won it in a poker game.”

Ernie clicked steadily on his ginseng gum, breathing into Crossnut’s face. “Gambling isn’t legal in Korea, Crossnut. Not on compound. Not off compound.”

Apparently Crossnut hadn’t considered that. His brow wrinkled.

“You can tell us the story of where the six hundred bucks came from,” Ernie continued, “and be on your way. Or we can arrest you right now for illegal gambling. Self-confessed.”

He shoved Crossnut higher up against the wall locker. I stepped in closer. “Who’s your black market mama-san, Crossnut?” I asked.

“Ain’t got no mama-san,” he replied. Ernie knotted his fist and cocked it. He wasn’t acting. I’d seen him rough up suspects before. Crossnut studied Ernie’s face and apparently lost all doubts about his intentions. “I got a papa-san,” Crossnut said.

“Out in Itaewon?” I said.

Crossnut nodded slowly. “You going to bust me?”

“Only if you lie to us.”

He studied our faces: tired, grim ready to punch out his lights if he didn’t open up. “His name’s Mr. Kang. Works out of the back of the Black Widow Club. He’s a good dude. Knows how to treat the brothers. You mess with him, you’ll have a lot of dudes down on you.”

Kang wasn’t much of a papa-san. Still in his twenties, he was too young for the role, as skinny as a broom handle, and wearing a red silk shirt and three gold chains around his neck. We were in the empty bar of the Black Widow Club. The place reeked of barf, beer, and disinfectant. All the chairs were turned up atop
the cocktail tables, and an old woman sloshed suds on the floor with a dirty mop.