“You didn’t pay her, did you?”
“No. She just asked me to check this out as a favor. Really, I’m doing it for Doc Yong.”
“Of course you are. You getting any of that?”
I ignored him.
I’m six foot four, Hispanic, with dark hair and dark eyes and some people have told me that I present a good appearance. But I have never had the success with women that Ernie has. I suppose I’m too serious. Growing up as an orphan in East L.A., as a foster child farmed out from family to family, I was forced to be serious. And observant. And cautious. Qualities that most of the silly girls we met in nightclubs didn’t prize but qualities that I hoped Doctor Yong In-ja would respond to. I wasn’t about to brief Ernie on my romantic progress-or lack thereof-with Doc Yong.
The boxes above us had reached the late fifties now and the color and sturdiness of the cardboard was rapidly deteriorating. We reached 1953, December, and then September and finally, after shifting a few boxes, July.
It was on the top shelf, the cardboard crumpled and the rectangular shape distorted. Probably because the box had been dripped on through a porous roof at one time and then dried out. According to Linderhaus, this tin- roofed Quonset hut had been built only a few years ago. Who knows where they’d stored stuff before that? We used a small stepladder. Ernie steadied me as I grabbed hold of the big box, slid it to the edge of the wooden shelf, and let it drop onto the cement floor with a thump.
A squadron of fleas swirled into action. Ernie cursed and swatted.
“Christ, Sueno. You and your freaking fortune teller.”
After the insects calmed down, I opened the box. It held a jumble of papers, some of them in brown folders, some not. I thumbed through the names typed on white labels at the top of each folder. Occasionally, I pulled a folder out and glanced at it.
Doravich, Peter T., Corporal, had been the perpetrator of an assault in the barracks up at the old 1st Cavalry Division, when the 1st Cav had been stationed near the DMZ. Doravich had beaten up another G.I. using an entrenching tool and the victim had lost an eye. Hardenson, Arthur Q., Staff Sergeant, had been tried and convicted for pistol whipping and then robbing a Korean bus driver. The bus driver’s family had also filed a claim against the United States government for the then princely sum of $5,000. Marcellus, Oscar S., Private First Class, had been accused of raping a Korean business girl. The military court found that he’d merely been guilty of not paying her as agreed in their preexisting verbal contract. The court martial ordered him busted down two stripes to Private E- nothing and had him shipped back to the States.
None of the men had been murdered. So, presumably, their bones wouldn’t be found in Itaewon.
The Korean War ended when a cease-fire was signed between North and South Korea-and their respective allies, Communist China and the U.S.A.-in July of 1953. Auntie Mee claimed that Mori Di had been murdered “at the beginning” of the reconstruction period. That is, shortly after the end of the war. I left the box marked July, 1953 and moved on to August, 1953. Ernie switched on a flashlight because the glow from the overhead fluorescent bulbs didn’t reach down here very well.
“You don’t believe any of this fortune teller shit, do you?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Let me search these files,” I said, “then we’ll talk.”
August didn’t seem to have anything that matched Auntie Mee’s words. Neither did the box containing the SIRs for September, October, nor even November. Ernie was becoming antsy and the time was close on to ten o’clock, when we would have to make our appearance at the commissary. I decided to at least finish the box marked December, 1953 and then, like a sharp slap across the face, I spotted a thick manila folder.
“What is it?” Ernie asked.
I pointed.
There, typed neatly across a yellowed label affixed to the folder, was a name and a rank: Moretti, Florencio R., Technical Sergeant, (Missi ng, Presumed Dead).
I pulled the folder out, rubbed the flat of my palm across its smooth surface, and felt a thin coat of dust trickle through my fingers. I thumbed quickly through the folder, every new fact confirming what I’d known from the moment I’d seen the name Moretti.
Ernie waited, hardly breathing.
Finally, I looked up at him and said, “We’ve found Mori Di.”
We spent the rest of the morning sitting in Ernie’s jeep in the parking lot out front of the Yongsan Commissary. People went in and people came out: G.I. s, officers, American female dependents, Department of Defense civilians, but mostly Korean wives. I paged through the Serious Incident Report and made notes. Ernie chomped impatiently on ginseng gum.
The Koreans would have called him Mori Di because that’s how they would’ve heard his last name. There are too many syllables in American names for them so they try to pare them down somewhat. The Koreans wouldn’t have called him by his first name, Florencio or Flo, for two reasons. First, G.I. s refer to one another by last names; the Koreans would’ve mimicked that. Second, Koreans have trouble pronouncing the English letter f. The sound doesn’t exist in their alphabet. The closest they can come is to couple a hard p with a u and then continue on with the word. For example, when you hear a Korean refer to France, if you listen closely, you will hear them say “Pu- ran-suh.” Said quickly enough it sounds almost like “France.”
So “Mori Di” would’ve been what they called him.
The next question was how had Auntie Mee known about him? I didn’t believe for a minute that the ghost of Technical Sergeant Florencio R. Moretti had visited her from the spirit realm. Also, why did she care about his bones or where they were buried? At this point, the answers to these questions didn’t really matter. I’d promised Doc Yong I’d try to find the remains of Mori Di and, for her sake, I would.
By noon the commissary was bustling and one Korean woman in a tight-fitting dress caught Ernie’s attention. She was filling up the trunk of her PX taxi with every imaginable black-market item, from Tang to Spam. When she was finished, she hopped in the back seat of the taxi and gave the driver instructions. They pulled away from the long line of vehicles waiting in front of the Yongsan Commissary.
“That’s our lady,” Ernie said.
I looked up from the SIR. “You’re just choosing her because she’s the best looking you’ve seen so far.”
“You’ve discovered my criterion. Are you a detective or something?”
Ernie started the engine and was just shifting into first gear when, in the distance, we heard a siren. The sound grew louder. Within seconds a canvas-sided MP jeep with a flashing red light atop its roof swerved into the commissary parking lot, hesitated for a moment, and then headed straight toward us.
“What the-” Ernie said.
Tires screeched and the jeep pulled up in front of us, blocking our way. Two armed MPs jumped out. Each kept his right hand atop the grip of his. 45.
Ernie shouted at them. “You’re blocking my way, morons!”
“Tough shit, Bascom,” one of the MPs said. He was a buck sergeant and his name tag said Pollard. I knew him. He was a good MP.
Sergeant Pollard stood in front of Ernie and told him, “You’re off the black-market detail.”
“So what took you so long?” Ernie replied.
“Break-in,” Pollard said. “Field grade officer’s quarters. You and your partner have caught the call.” He pulled a small notebook out of his breast pocket, thumbed through it, and said, “Yongsan South Post, Unit 43-B, Artillery Drive. Assigned to the J-2, Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell.”
This is where two guys with less savoir faire would’ve whistled in awe. J-2 meant military intelligence. The J stood for “joint command”: the United Nations, U.S. Forces Korea, and the 8th United States Army. So Colonel Oswald Q. Tidwell was in charge of military intelligence on the Korean Peninsula and answered only to the commander, 8th United States Army. In army parlance this is the equivalent of sitting at the right hand of god.
“Anybody hurt?” I asked.
Pollard studied his notes. “Not that’s been reported so far. But Mrs. Tidwell is hysterical.”
“Why?”
“Her daughter is missing. Hasn’t reported in since fifteen hundred hours Tuesday.”
“You mean Jessica?” Ernie asked.
Pollard checked his notes again. “Right. That’s her name.”
