Slicky Boys (29 page)

T
HE BEAM OF THE
F
IRST
S
ERGEANT’S FLASHLIGHT
bobbed through dust and intricate cobwebs: disused office furniture, the coal furnace, ancient cardboard boxes filled with yellowing files, mops and buckets. Nothing else.

“Who’d you say was down here?” the First Sergeant asked suspiciously.

The odor of gunpowder drifted above the must and cobwebs.

“Somebody was here,” I said. “I’m sure of it. I was talking to him.”

The metal door of the fuse box stood open, a couple of plugs missing.

Behind the furnace, falling snow drifted into the cellar. The wooden hatchway where the workmen brought in the coal was wide open. A padlock hung loosely on the hasp. Busted.

The First Sergeant’s face grew more grim but he didn’t apologize for doubting me.

Outside, what looked like footsteps led off through the slush. They were big, about size twelves, but whether or not they were sneakers or oxfords or combat boots we couldn’t tell.

“You say this guy talked to you?” the First Sergeant asked.

I nodded.

“What’d he say?”

“He said we killed the gal down at the Tiger Lady’s. And he virtually admitted to killing Whitcomb.”

“Virtually?”

“Well, he didn’t deny it.”

“What else did he say?”

“He said he was going to kill me. And Ernie, too.”

We followed the footsteps until they climbed back onto the sidewalk heading deep into the redbrick buildings of 8th Army Headquarters.

“You want back on the case?” the First Sergeant asked me.

“I never left it.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think you did.”

From the CID office I dialed my way through the ancient phone exchange and finally was connected to a number off post.
Ajjima,
the Nurse’s landlady, answered. Ernie and the Nurse were out she said—back together again, good news in itself—and she’d let them know about the threat to our lives as soon as they returned.

The landlady was a responsible woman. I knew she’d relay the message and make sure Ernie understood how serious it was.

Afterward, I walked back to the barracks through the softly falling snow. I drank a beer from the big vending machine. Even though I showered and changed into clean underwear I couldn’t sleep. It was two hours past midnight. Still, I sat on the edge of my bunk in the dark. Thinking.

Footsteps down the hallway. I straightened. Pounding on my door. “Sueño!”

The voice of the CQ.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Phone call.”

I slipped on my rubber thongs and slapped down the hallway, still in my skivvies. I grabbed the receiver.

“What?”

“Agent Sueño?”

“Yes.”

“This is the Desk Sergeant at the MP Station. Your presence is requested in Itaewon.”

“What is it?”

“Emergency. Someone hurt.”

“Who?”

“I don’t have a name.”

“Where?”

“A hooch in Itaewon. The KNP Liaison Officer didn’t give me an address. Said you’d know. Belongs to a woman called ‘the Nurse.’”

I’m not sure what I did after that. I do remember the CQ talking to me. “Sueño. Sueño? You OK?”

I stumbled back to my room and threw on my clothes.

I ran to Itaewon.

The last glimmers of silvery moonlight disappeared behind floating clouds. The snow and slush had stopped, but the wind picked up and spirits whistled through dark alleys. I wound through a narrow pathway between brick and stone walls, listening for footsteps behind me.

Nothing.

At the Nurse’s hooch, the front gate was open. Neighbors loitered in front, arms crossed, faces greedy with curiosity. Light from a street lamp streamed down onto the muddy walkway. A shrill wail ricocheted off the stone walls. The voice was tired, weathered. Not the Nurse. But it came from her hooch.

Then I knew who it was. Warmth drained from my face. I started to run again.

In front of the house I pushed through a small crowd. Without taking off my shoes, I leapt up onto the narrow porch.

Blue-suited policemen had already arrived. I saw something below me and stopped and almost stumbled. Blood streamed in a long trail across the vinyl floor.

She was on her back, and for the first time since I’d known her the Nurse’s face was twisted in agony.

Ajjima,
the landlady, knelt beside her, screaming through the dry reeds of what was left of her tattered vocal cords.

A young Korean policeman, pale, looked at me and then looked at the wall, as if bringing my attention to something.

Scribbled in blood, like the scrawl of an evil child’s fingerpainting, were four dripping words. In English.

“Dreamer, dream of me!”

The landlady screamed again. I stepped back, smacking my shoulder against a cabinet. Jars shattered. Tins crashed to the floor and rolled crazily through the blood.

I knelt beside the landlady and reached for her. When my fingertips touched the cheap material of her sweater, a spark crackled between us.

She shrieked—again and again—as if someone had shoved a hot blade into her heart.

28

C
APTAIN
K
IM
,
THE
C
OMMANDER OF THE
I
TAEWON
P
OLICE
Station, strode into the chaos of the crime scene and started barking orders. Policemen jumped.

We’d worked together on many cases. Not always happily.

When Kim saw me he raised one shuttered eye, like a small brown bear coming out of hibernation, and spoke one word: “Why?”

I knew what he meant. Why was I here? Why was I involved with these people? Why did I let this happen?

I pointed to the pitiful remains of the Nurse.

“I knew her,” I told him.

He scanned the room, taking in the landlady and the PX goods and the blood. He nodded his head and turned his back on me, writing me off as just another GI partaking of the charms of a Korean business girl.

He tried to interrogate the landlady, but all she did was swallow terrified gulps of air and let them out in something resembling a croak. Captain Kim finally gave up in disgust and ordered she be taken to the hospital.

He asked me only a few questions. My story boiled down to two facts: that I’d known the Nurse for over a year now, and that she had been the steady girlfriend of my partner, Ernie Bascom.

That’s when one of the uniforms interrupted and told Captain Kim that Ernie had been here, too, fought with an intruder, and been transported over to the military hospital on Yongsan Compound.

I didn’t wait for a translation but asked my question in Korean. “Is he alive?”

“Yes,” the policeman answered, nodding. “And conscious. But distraught about the death of this woman.”

“Do you have a description of the intruder?”

The uniform frowned, not happy to be embarrassed in front of his boss. “We are working on that.”

A pair of white-coated medical types came in with a long plastic bag. They laid it down next to the Nurse and rolled her into it. As they zipped it up and carted her outside, I looked away.

When the technicians arrived and Captain Kim started to direct their activities, I took advantage of his preoccupation, stepped out into the courtyard, and found a dark corner.

In the cold air I leaned over, hands on my knees. For a minute I thought I was going to be sick.

Who was this guy? This guy who was after me? With his “Dreamer, dream of me” and his two dead women and one dead man in his wake. Why had he targeted Ernie and me? He knew my name, that was clear. Sueño means to sleep or to dream. George the Dreamer. That’s what the other Mexican kids in school used to call me. And now this guy was calling me the same thing. And taunting me, just like those kids. But the blood on the floor was no dream.

I had to do something.

Who was next? Maybe the print shop guy? Forget him. It was more likely that either Ernie or I was next, and since the killer had taken the trouble to visit me at work, it was probably me. I had to find this guy and find him quick. But how?

I turned. A few of the people in the crowd outside the gate were gawking at me, as if I were an attraction in a sideshow.

I waited until another small van of police officers arrived and all attention was directed to them. I scurried down the alley toward the Main Supply Route.

No taxis after curfew. I ran all the way back to the compound. Panting heavily, I was able to explain to the gate guard what had happened to Ernie. He called for an MP jeep and they drove me over to the 121 Evacuation Hospital.

The buffed corridors of the 121 Evac were dimly lit and silent this time of night. I tried to inhale as little as possible but the frightening smell of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant still needled its way up my nose. As I strode forward, I heard shouting in the distance.

The shouting grew louder as I approached the Emergency Room.

“Bullshit!” Ernie’s voice.

“You have to stay for testing. Doctor’s orders.” A woman’s voice. Patient.

When I pushed into the Emergency Room, a half-dozen blue-clad medics and nurses turned their eyes toward me. All of them looked tired and harassed. Ernie, still in street clothes, glanced over and continued talking as if I’d been a part of the conversation all along.

“They want me to stay overnight when I have work to do,” he said. “Can you believe it? Just a few stitches, a little iodine, a bump on the head. In ‘Nam we just patched them up and sent them back to the field, most rickety tick.”

The nurse folded her arms, not liking the fact that Ernie now had reinforcements. He was hard enough to handle on his own.

“You might have internal damage,” she insisted. “We won’t know until tomorrow, when we run the tests.”

Ernie held a bottle of pills up to the blue fluorescent light. “You gave me this shit. This’ll take care of it.”

“Antibiotics don’t heal ruptured internal organs,” the nurse said.

I put my hand on Ernie’s shoulder.

“She’s right,” I told him. “Stay overnight. Let them run some tests.”

He turned his bloodshot green eyes on me, lowering his voice for the first time.

“Where is she?”

“They’re taking her to the morgue.”

“Then I have to go see her.”

“You have to stay here.”

Ernie stood up. “No way.”

I gazed helplessly at the nurse. “I’ll bring him back tomorrow.”

She nodded, finally worn down by his pestering. “You do that,” she said. “If there’s anything left of him.”

At the front exit, Ernie tossed the antibiotics into a trash-can.

“Hey!” I said. “You’re gonna need that shit.”

“Why? Doesn’t get me high.”

Sometimes there’s no reasoning with him. Especially after his steady girlfriend is murdered.

It was past four
A.M.
now, so getting through the gate was no sweat. I woke up a cab driver and he was happy for the early morning fare.

I helped Ernie into the cab. He wasn’t nearly as strong as he was trying to pretend to be.

“Odi?”
the driver asked. Where?

I wasn’t sure how to say the word in Korean, so I just told him to take us to downtown Seoul. He rubbed his eyes. “Where in downtown Seoul?”

I said it as plainly as I knew how.

“The place where they keep the dead people.”

As we rode through the sleeping city, Ernie started to talk.

“The son of a bitch knocked me out.”

His voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d just come off a three-quart drunk.

“Who did?”

“A big guy. Almost as tall as you, but broader. Built like a fucking wildcat on protein supplements.”

“American or Korean?”

“Made in the USA all the way. I was in the
byonso,”
Ernie said, “squatting over the hole. It was those damn eels the Nurse and I ate downtown.”

I remembered her telling him to send them back because they weren’t fully cooked. As usual, he’d been hard-headed about it and refused.

“Must’ve been tainted or something,” he said. “Anyway, it kept pouring out of me and you know how your knees can cramp up on you when you’re squatting over a Korean toilet.”

“Yeah.”

“I heard a sound. Someone coming in the front gate. Quiet like. I figured it was
ajjima’s
husband, sneaking in from a soju house, liquored up again. Next thing I know there’s a scream. The Nurse. A stick smashes against wood and glass and
ajjima’s
up screaming. I’m struggling to stand, pulling my pants up, and by the time I bust out of the
byonso,
people next door have opened their windows, yelling
Dodukiya! Dodukiya!”
Thief! Thief!

Ernie turned his head to look blearily at me. “You know how they do when there’s a slicky boy in the neighborhood. So I’m still thinking it’s a thief when something huge lurches out of the Nurse’s hooch, and before I know what’s happening a stick hits me in the stomach, but maybe it’s not a stick but a boot and I take a couple of punches on the way down. The next thing I know some neighbors are carting me downhill to a Gl ambulance.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Take it easy, Ernie. Calm down.”