Nightmare Range (45 page)

“We shouldn’t even be doing this,” I told Ernie.

“Screw it. If Dubrovnik makes it over here and him and this guy Lee compare notes, they’ll be able to get their stories straight. We’ll never bust anybody.”

The crime was diversion of US Government property. PX property, to be exact.

The way the scam worked was that Clerk Lee Ok-pyong filled out two bills of lading. One with the actual amount of imported scotch and cigarettes and stereo equipment to be delivered and the other with a larger amount that would be actually loaded onto the truck. For security reasons, each truck was escorted by an armed American Military Policeman. But since both Dubrovnik and the Korean driver were in on the scam with Clerk Lee, there was nobody to complain about the phony paperwork.

Near the outskirts of Inchon, they would pull the truck into a secluded warehouse and unloaded the excess PX property. Then they’d continue on their merry way to the Main PX in Seoul. Before leaving the Port of Inchon, each truckload was padlocked
and sealed with a numbered aluminum tag. If the tag was tampered with, the receiving clerk on the other end of the line could tell. Supposedly. I wasn’t sure if the receiving clerk was in on the scam or whether Dubrovnik had somehow managed to figure a way to re-seal the load. That was one of the things we’d hoped to discover during Sergeant Dubrovnik’s interrogation.

However they were doing it, the scam was working well and might have gone on forever if an audit in the States hadn’t identified the discrepancy between what was being shipped to the Port of Inchon and what was actually arriving in the Main PX inventory. Once 8th Army CID was notified of the leakage, Ernie and I were given the assignment. A couple of days later we had figured out which MP and driver were in on it. Finding the clerk who supplied the phony paperwork took a little longer but now we had him. Everything would’ve gone smoothly if Dubrovnik hadn’t eluded us at the Yellow House.

The lane leading to the home of Clerk Lee Ok-pyong was not as well-paved as the one leading to the Yellow House. A stone-lined gutter ran down the center of a muddy walkway. Brick and cement walls loomed over us on either side, most of them topped by barbed wire or shards of glass stuck into cement. If you don’t protect yourself against thievery, the Koreans believe, you deserve to be robbed.

Using our flashlight, I found Clerk Lee’s address etched into a wooden doorway: 175
bonji
, 58
ho
, in the Yonghyon District of the city of Inchon. A light glimmered behind the wall, flickering because of the still falling rain. Ernie rang the doorbell. Two minutes later a door creaked open behind the wall and someone padded out in plastic slippers across the small courtyard.

The gate opened and a face stared out at us. Ernie tilted the beam of the flashlight and then I could see that the face was beautiful.

She was a Korean woman in her late twenties. Her features were even and her skin was so smooth that I had to swallow before stammering out the lines I’d mentally rehearsed in Korean.

“Is Mr. Lee Ok-pyong in? We’re here on official business.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

As I answered I noticed that her hair was black and thickly luxurious, tied back by a red ribbon behind her oval-shaped face.

“We work on the American compound,” I answered. “It’s important.”

She opened the door a little wider. Ernie pushed past her, sloshed over flagstone steps, and slid back the oil-papered door that led into the
sarang-bang
, the front room of the home. A thin man with thick-lensed glasses looked up at us. He wore only a T-shirt and pajama bottoms and had been studying a ledger. A lit cigarette dangled from his lips.

“Mr. Lee Ok-pyong?” Ernie asked.

“Yes.”

“With all the money you made ripping off foreign hooch, seems you could afford a better place than this dump.”

I’m not sure if Clerk Lee understood. Without being invited in, Ernie slipped off his shoes and stepped up onto the warm vinyl floor. I followed. The beautiful woman stood by the open doorway, not sure if she should run and notify the police or if she should stand here by her husband.

“Your wife is very beautiful,” Ernie said.

Clerk Lee was fully alert now. He sat upright and stubbed out his cigarette. “What do you want?”

“We want you to tell us about Dubrovnik,” Ernie said. “Have you seen him tonight?”

“Who?”

“Sergeant Two,” I said. That’s what the other MPs and the Koreans in the transportation unit called Dubrovnik rather than trying to pronounce his full name.

Clerk Lee’s glasses started to cloud and the color drained from his face. His wife stepped into the room, knelt, and wrapped both arms around her husband’s shoulders. She turned to us.

“Get out,” she said in Korean. “No one wants you here. Get out!”

Ernie understood that. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll get out. Just make sure you don’t let any other GIs in here tonight.”

As we left, Mrs. Lee stared at us with the face of an ice goddess. Her husband looked as if he were about to vomit.

At this time of night, the local police station was a madhouse. The Korean National Police had arrested three prostitutes and two Greek sailors for drunk and disorderly. They also had taken into custody one pickpocket and two fellows who’d tried to break into an old brick warehouse near the port.

“Busy?” I asked the Korean cop.

He looked at me as if I were nuts. Ernie and I both flashed our badges. In a few minutes we were talking to the night shift desk officer. We explained that we wanted Clerk Lee Ok-pyong taken into custody immediately, so he wouldn’t be able to talk to his cohort and thereby ruin our case against him. The khaki-clad officer listened patiently and when I was done he lifted his open palms off the top of his desk.

“Nobody,” he said in English. “No cops.”

Sure, he was short staffed, but the real reason he didn’t want to help us was that he didn’t want to bust a fellow Korean without orders from on high. Who knew who the man was connected to?

Ernie argued with the desk officer for a while but finally gave up. When the Korean National Police don’t want to do something, they don’t do it. I pulled him out of there.

Outside, the night was completely dark, and the rain drifting in off the Yellow Sea was colder than ever.

The next morning, Ernie and I rose early from the warm
ondol
floor in the room we’d rented in the Yong Param Yoguan, the Dragon Wind Inn. After we washed and dressed and pushed through the wooden double-doors, Ernie said, “The place even smells like dragon wind.”

“It was cheap,” I said.

“So’s pneumonia.”

Without stopping anywhere for chop, we headed straight to
the police station. This time the commander was in, a man who introduced himself as Captain Peik Du-han. We shook hands and he spoke in English.

“I understand you were in last night requesting an arrest.”

Briefly, I explained the situation to him. He nodded, his expression calm, but I noticed that his fists were beginning to knot.

“
Kei-sikki,
” he said finally. Born of a dog.

Ernie came alert at that. His Korean vocabulary is limited mostly to cuss words. Captain Peik caught our alarmed expressions and said, “Not you. My duty officer last night. He should’ve listened to you. Or at least called me at home.”

“Why?”

Captain Peik sighed heavily. Then he stood up and grabbed his cap off the top of his coat rack. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, floppy hat atop his head, corncob pipe gripped in his teeth, hands on his hips, stared out across an expanse of lawn and over a cliff that fell off into the misty expanse of the churning Yellow Sea.

“Doug, baby.” Ernie slapped the back of MacArthur’s shin.

South Korea is one of the few countries in the world, outside of the United States, to have landscapes studded with statues of famous Americans. Up north at Freedom Bridge just south of the DMZ stands a statue of White Horse Harry Truman. In June of 1950, if he hadn’t made the decision to fight to save South Korea, this country wouldn’t exist today. MacArthur’s contribution was the invasion of Inchon: cutting North Korean supply lines so US forces could manage to break out of the Pusan Perimeter, retake Seoul, and push the North Korean Communists all the way north to the Yalu River, their border with China.

But Captain Peik hadn’t brought us here to this place known as
Jayu Gongyuan
, Freedom Park, for a history lesson. While MacArthur stared thoughtfully at the Yellow Sea, Peik led us into the heavy brush beneath a line of elm trees.

“
Chosim,
” he said.

I understood and managed to avoid the two mud-covered stone steps that led downward into the brush. Ernie stumbled over the hidden masonry. I caught him before he fell.

“
Chosim
means ‘be careful,’ ” I told him. “When are you going to start taking those Korean language classes on post?”

“When you stop bugging me about it.” Ernie pushed away my hand and straightened his jacket.

Some of the bushes in front of us had already been cleared and strips of white linen surrounded the area, the Korean indication of a place of death.

The body of Clerk Lee Ok-pyong lay in a muddy ditch.

“Shit,” Ernie said.

Lee had changed out of his T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Now he wore slacks and an open collared white shirt that had been spattered with dirt. His head had been bashed in with something long and heavy. All I could think of was an MP’s night stick.

Blue-smocked technicians milled around the body. Ernie and I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing to be said. We’d screwed up royally this time. If only we’d collared Dubrovnik last night when we’d had our chance.

A KNP sedan pulled up to the edge of the park. Two officers climbed out and one of them held the back door open. A woman dressed in black emerged. Holding both her elbows, the two officers escorted the woman across the damp lawn. She kept her head bowed and a veil of black lace covered her face.

As they approached, she glanced up at me and even through the flimsy shroud I recognized the beautiful face of the wife of Clerk Lee. The look she gave me would’ve cooled Hell by about twenty degrees.

Keeping her eyes on me, she navigated the stone steps with ease and then paused in front of the body and turned her attention to what lay before her. The escorting officers backed up and Captain Peik approached. He stood silently next to her for a few moments and then began to whisper soft words. When he
finished, she nodded slowly. Captain Peik thanked her and the two officers escorted her back to the waiting sedan.

When she was gone, Captain Peik turned to us. “That’s her husband all right. She says he left the house shortly after midnight. Had to meet someone, she doesn’t know who. Now, you fellows want to tell me what you know about this?”

We nodded and walked back to General MacArthur. As Ernie explained about Sergeant Dubrovnik and our screw-up last night, I studied the granite statue and noticed that it even had shoelaces. Doug seemed to be listening to Ernie and Captain Peik. I strode across the expanse of lawn to the cliff and gazed down at foamy breakers crashing against rocks a hundred feet below. From here, I guessed I could throw something about a quarter mile out into the Yellow Sea.

When I turned around, General MacArthur was staring at me, reading my thoughts.

Ernie and I caught hell back at 8th Army.

The Foreign Organization Employees’ Union had lodged a formal protest about our conduct. Harassing one of their employees at his home and later not protecting him when he went to his rendezvous with death. Of course, everyone assumed that Sergeant Dubrovnik was the man who had summoned Clerk Lee to the park overlooking the Yellow Sea and there proceeded to bludgeon him to death. Why had he done it? Maybe because Sergeant Two wanted to keep Clerk Lee quiet about the nefarious activities they had engaged in together. Maybe. More likely they had an argument. Maybe Clerk Lee threatened to rat Dubrovnik out. Right now we could only speculate. What we needed to do was catch Sergeant Dubrovnik. Ernie and I checked with his MP company. Of course, the man hadn’t shown up for morning formation and, according to the Commanding Officer, no one in the unit knew where he had disappeared to.

Ernie and I were about to start searching for Dubrovnik when the CID First Sergeant pulled us aside.

“You’re off the case,” he told us. When Ernie started to protest the First Sergeant held up his palm. “Your first suspect escapes, right from under your noses. And then your second suspect, a Korean National who you shouldn’t even have been messing with, turns up dead.”

Ernie’s face flushed red and he started to sputter.

“Keep your trap shut, Bascom,” the First Sergeant barked. “The Provost Marshall is still deciding whether or not to bring you two up on charges. A Status of Forces violation. Harassing a Korean civilian and misuse of your military police powers. Not to mention gross incompetence.”

With that, we were assigned to the black market detail.

Two weeks passed by. Two weeks of watching Korean dependent housewives to make sure they didn’t sell duty-free liquor or cigarettes down in the ville. Clerk Lee was buried, Sergeant Dubrovnik was still at large, and the Provost Marshall was still holding the threat of charges over our heads. Then we got the call.

Stiff found in the village of Songtan-up.

The corpse belonged to Sergeant Ivan Dubrovnik. He’d been shot once through the heart at close range, apparently with his own Military Police issued .45, which was found beside him. He lay in a cobbled alleyway lined with nightclubs and beer halls and cheap room-rent-by-the-hour
yoguans
. Songtan-up served the 5,000 or so US airmen stationed at Osan Air Force Base. The sun was just rising above the rooftops of the two- and three-story buildings that surrounded us. The Korean cop who’d found the corpse at two in the morning told us that no one in the neighborhood had heard or seen anything. Five hours more of canvassing the neighborhood didn’t change that story.