Slicky Boys (32 page)

“Not to worry. I’ll keep him happy.”

As we were leaving, Miss Kim pulled a nail file out of her purse and slashed at red claws.

Ernie didn’t seem to notice. On the other hand, he didn’t offer her a stick of gum, either.

Sometimes you wear out shoe leather for days and come up with nothing, and other days you ask a simple question and people look at you like, “You didn’t know
that?”

I passed by the big black anchors on the front lawn of the Commandant Headquarters, Naval Forces Korea, and pushed through a heavy teak door into carpeted offices. I pulled out the black-and-white photo that Herbalist So had given me and showed it to the petty officer sitting behind a

varnished desk. The brass in the office gleamed; the odor of disinfectant and boiled coffee hung in the air.

“This guy?” the petty officer said, fingering the photo. “Sure I know him. Lieutenant Commander Bo Shipton. Navy Seal.” He shook his head. “Bad mother. Jumped ship about three, four months ago.”

Bingo!

“When did you last see him?”

“Nobody’s seen him since then.”

“Do you have his personnel folder?”

“You’ll have to talk to the commandant first.”

“Can do easy.”

The picture worked wonders. The commandant decided to see me right away. After a short chat, I obtained the information I wanted, assuring him that the integrity of the navy would be preserved. He was worried because anything that reflected badly on the navy could reflect badly on him.

The commandant offered me a cup of coffee but I didn’t have time. I was out the teak door, past an old Korean man in a ragged khaki shirt. He silently scrubbed a huge brass ball with a sticky yellow fluid.

Children skated on frozen rice paddies and smoke curled from tubelike chimneys above the straw-thatched roofs of farmhouses. The roads were slippery and spotted with broad fields of black ice. Snorting oxen pulled wooden carts laden with giant turnips. Ernie sped around the obstacles as if he had every curve and hazard preprogrammed into his brain.

“Navy Seal, huh?” he said.

“Yeah. As bad as the Green Berets. On his way up, too. An officer, twelve years in.”

“So why in the hell did he go AWOL?”

“That’s what the commandant wouldn’t talk about. His personnel folder was excellent. Beauregard Shipton, from south Texas, father a small-time rancher near the Mexican border who lost his land wildcatting for oil. Shipton had some problems with his father and wanted to be on his own. After Seal training he went to Vietnam. Served two tours there. A bunch of awards. Looks like he loved it.”

“Those fucking Seals used to go up into North Vietnam. Right into Haiphong Harbor.”

“According to Shipton’s personnel record,” I said, “he caught shrapnel in the jaw, couldn’t breathe, and performed a field tracheotomy on himself. Sliced into his own throat, stuck a bamboo tube into his windpipe, and survived like that for three days until they managed to med-evac him out.”

Ernie shifted into low gear and slowed for two farmers perched atop a rickety tractor. The tractor’s ancient engine chugged doggedly forward, billowing black smoke into the gray sky. Ernie spotted an opening in the oncoming traffic, stepped on the gas, and swerved around the rattling machine. The two farmers stared.

When he built his speed back up Ernie asked, “So you gonna tell me now? About how you got those ration control plate numbers?”

I told him about the message written in blood above the Nurse’s body and the tattered vocal cords of the landlady. I told him, too, about my meeting with Herbalist So, although I didn’t mention the ceremony.

“So in the morning,” Ernie said, “the Chinese girl gave you this information?”

“Right.”

“This guy, Shipton, must be living off the black market, pulling down a grand or two every month.”

“Probably.”

“So why’s he killing people?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who do you think is next on his list?”

“Us.”

Ernie nodded. “Makes more sense than the people he’s killed so far. At least with us he has a reason. We’re trying to put him behind bars.”

I moved my arm and felt the 38 rub against my chest. “Behind bars,” I said. “That’s one place to send him.”

“Or to hell, huh?”

“Maybe better.”

The road curved into a farm village. Ernie didn’t slow much but blinked his lights on and off, and the white-gloved policeman on a platform in the center of town whistled us through. Schoolgirls with waist-long pigtails scurried out of our way, pointing and giggling at the long-nose GI’s.

The road sign pointed toward Heing-ju Sansong, the fortified cliffs of Heingju, two kilometers away.

In the sixteenth century the Japanese Shogun, Hideyoshi, invaded Korea. The bulk of Hideyoshi’s naval armada streamed up the Han River, past the cliffs of Heing-ju, heading for Seoul, the ancient capital of the Yi Dynasty. It was there at Heing-ju that the Korean defenders made their stand. They blockaded the river with pontoons filled with fighting men and huge sharpened stakes near the shore and from the cliffs of Heing-ju they launched fire arrows and blazing oil-soaked clumps of hemp and rock from wooden catapults.

Hideyoshi and his fleet took heavy losses, but in the end the Japanese landed successfully farther upriver. The Shogun’s forces swallowed Korea whole, causing untold destruction and death. It might’ve happened a long time ago but the Koreans still remembered it, as they remembered every crime perpetrated on them by the Japanese.

In memory of the great battle, the ROK Navy’s Central Headquarters was stationed here at Heing-ju, on the cliffs overlooking the blue expanse of the Han River Estuary. Lieutenant Commander Bo Shipton had been given a plum assignment—liaison officer to the ROK Navy, the only American serving with them at this headquarters. It was from here that he had gone AWOL three months ago. So far, no one had been able to tell me why.

Technically, Shipton was no longer AWOL. Thirty days after jumping ship his status had been changed. The U.S. Navy now officially classified him as a deserter.

The ROK Navy headquarters building was a rambling, single-story brick building with an elegant facade of inlaid brass and teak. A single pole stood out front. From it, the Korean flag fluttered in the breeze off the Han River. An expanse of lawn, brown and stunted now in the icy winter wind, spread toward the cliffs and dropped off into gray mist.

Ernie pulled in near the end of the parking lot and turned off the engine. I looked at him.

“You going in?”

“Too much brass. You take it.”

“Okay.”

He settled back in the canvas seat and pulled out a flat, brown paper sack stuffed with magazines from Scandinavia. Long legs, blond hair, pale skin.

“What’s the matter, pal?” I asked. “Getting kinky on me?”

“No. Just need some shit to tell Strange.”

That’s Ernie. Always prepared.

I climbed out of the jeep and headed across the gravel parking lot toward a huge double door with brass handles in the shape of anchors. Two sailors dressed in black with white caps and white leggings raised their rifles and came to attention as I approached. One checked my identification and I told him I was here to talk to someone about the former U.S. Liaison Officer, Lieutenant Commander Beauregard Shipton.

Some quick words were whispered into an intercom, the door was opened, and I was waved in.

The carpeted hallways were paneled with varnished oak and hung with painted scenes of historic Korean sea battles. In a glass case a metal astrolabe, one of the earliest in human history, invented by some ancient Korean scholar, glistened. I was trying to decipher the brass plaque below it when a Korean lieutenant in a dress naval uniform hurried down the hall, all smiles, holding out his hand.

“Good afternoon. You’re here about Shipton?”

“Yes.”

It turned out he was Lieutenant Lee, the Public Affairs Officer, and spoke excellent English. He took me back into his office and after checking my identification he told me the usual: that they had already given a full statement to the U.S. authorities concerning the disappearance of Lieutenant Commander Shipton, and they didn’t see anything more they could add.

“I want to speak to the people Shipton worked with,” I said.

“That would be Commander Goh, his former supervisor. Unfortunately he is very busy.”

I explained why we were after Shipton; about the three murders. And I told Lieutenant Lee that if I didn’t receive cooperation immediately more innocent people could be killed.

His eyes narrowed at that and there was some more hushed conversation on an intercom. Lieutenant Lee was clicking back on his intercom when a stout man in a naval officer’s uniform stormed into the room.

He had a craggy, square face and broad shoulders, and his chest was loaded with ribbons. The Public Affairs Officer stood up immediately and bowed.

“This,” Lieutenant Lee said, “is Commander Goh.”

Goh’s hard eyes studied me, the creases around his nose and mouth tight, as if he were having a terrific bout of indigestion. His Korean was gruff. Guttural.

“Shipton rul allago shipyo?”
he said. You want to know about Shipton?

I nodded.
“Nei. Allago shipoyo.”
Yes. I want to know.

“Kurum. Kapshida.”
Well, then. Let’s go.

The Public Affairs Officer seemed perplexed—maybe by my speaking Korean—but he made no effort to stop us. I followed Commander Goh down the carpeted hallway.

He made a couple of turns past busy offices with typewriters clattering away and gorgeous young Korean secretaries serving tea to bored-looking Korean officers. He pushed through a door with a large window in it that looked out toward another vast expanse of lawn behind the building, striding straight for the cliffs.

For a moment I thought he was going to keep going and see if I’d follow him over the edge. Instead, Goh veered toward a massive bronze statue of an ancient Korean warrior in metal helmet and brass-plated vest. Just beneath the huge sword leaning against the warrior’s leg, the commander stopped abruptly.

“Yi Sun Shin,” he said, gesturing toward the statue.

I knew who he was. The Korean admiral who’d invented the ironclad, sulphur-spewing
kobuk-son
—turtle boats. With his daring tactics and guerillalike forces, he had almost single-handedly stopped the invasion of Hideyoshi’s naval forces through the straits and isthmuses of the islands off the southern coast of Korea. Even in Japan, his military genius is revered.

“Yes,” I said, speaking in Korean. “He’s very famous.”

Commander Goh nodded. Satisfied.

He turned and clasped his hands behind his back and stared across the Han River below us.

“So you’ve come about Shipton,” he said in Korean.

“Yes. We have reason to believe that he’s killed three people.”

Commander Goh nodded. “He’s a very disturbed man.”

“You knew him well, then?”

“Very well. We worked together every day. We traveled together around the country to inspect naval fortifications. After work I showed him what life was like in our teahouses and in the floating world of the night.”

The military elite ran this country. They had money and they had prestige. And when they decided to visit a
kisaeng
house or some other place of pleasure, you can bet they received the very best. For a moment, I envied Lieutenant Commander Shipton. To run with them. Why would anyone go AWOL from a setup like that?

“What went wrong?” I asked.

Commander Goh breathed deeply of the salt air and took a few steps closer to the cliff. Twenty or thirty yards below, the churning waters of the Han River Estuary lapped against jagged rocks. He studied the low-lying fog.

“Shipton became very friendly with us. We all liked him. He even started to speak some Korean. Not as well as you, Agent Sueño, but he was progressing.”

He paused and gazed at distant clouds hovering over the Yellow Sea. The old habits of a sailor.

“One of our admirals had a daughter. She was a very well brought up young woman with a good education, but maybe she wasn’t the most attractive girl in the world. So the family was having trouble finding a suitable husband for her. It was decided that since she wasn’t going to find the very best of Korean husbands, she could settle for an American. She was introduced to Shipton.

“Besides,” Goh said, turning away from the water, “the admiral and his family had dreams of emigrating to America.”

He raised and lowered his broad shoulders.

“None of this, of course, we told to your previous investigators, Agent Sueño. We thought it would do no good. Now that he’s killed—killed again—we must tell you the full truth.”

“Killed again?”

“Yes.” He swiveled his craggy face toward me. “Can you keep what I’m about to tell you out of your report?”

“I don’t know. It depends on what it is.”

His expression didn’t change but he nodded. “We cannot afford for any of this to ever come out.”

“It will be kept strictly confidential,” I said. “Classified. No one outside of our investigative services will ever see it, unless it needs to be used in a trial.”

“But you will try him for these three murders he’s recently committed?”

“Yes.”

He seemed to reach a decision. “You won’t need what I’m about to tell you for that.” He glanced at my hands. “I notice you don’t take notes.”

“I have a good memory.”

“If I’m to tell you what I know about Shipton, it must never come up in his trial and it must never come up in your official reports.”

“You’re protecting this Korean admiral, the father of Shipton’s fiancee.”

He looked at me steadily. “Yes.”

It was a tough bargain, but I needed all the information I could gather if I was to have a chance of finding Shipton. We already had him pegged for three homicides. Maybe the evidence would be questionable in a high-class stateside trial, but for a military court-martial, here in 8th Imperial Army, it was plenty. I could get by without what Commander Goh was about to give me.

“All right, then,” I said. “No notes. No recordings. And what you tell me will never appear in an official report.”