much but the girls out in the ville say that his running partners are called Freddy and Sammy.”
“What’d this fellow do?”
“Possibly murder.”
“Not that little girl they found out in the ville?”
“The same.”
The chief sighed. So much corruption in the world. Why couldn’t everyone be satisfied with something nice and sedate, like wagering?
“I know Johnny,” he said. “I know Freddy and Sammy, too. They’re just young kids. Fun-loving, boisterous. Your typical GIs, full of life. I can’t believe that they’d do… that.”
I asked, “Were they involved in anything, Chief?”
Winkle narrowed his eyes. “Like what?”
“Like your operation, for instance.”
“No. Not at all. I doubt that they even know about it. I don’t think they were even black-marketing. Just your average kids. Goofing off, pretending they were working to stay out of trouble during the day and then running the ville every night, chasing the girls. That’s all they had on their minds. Business girls.”
“Where can we find them?” Ernie said.
‘They work in the motor pool. Get assigned to different jobs. Hold on, I’ll check.” The chief lifted up his phone and dialed some numbers rapid fire. ”Hello, Joe? Yeah. I need to know where that kid Johnny Watkins is working today. No, he doesn’t owe me any money but you do. Okay, okay, okay. Payday. That’ll be fine. Now look it up for me, will ya?” The chief drummed his fingers on the desk. Joe came back on the line. ”Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Joe. See ya.”
Chief Winkle cradled the phone. “He’s working for data processing. Been there a couple of weeks.”
“Regular duty hours?”
“Yeah.”
We thanked him and left. The ringing of his phone followed us down the hallway.
Eighth Army’s data is processed in a green cinder-block building fit snugly into a long row of offices in the main headquarters complex of Yongsan Compound. From time to time on Sundays I had walked down the tree-lined lanes with a soft female hand in mine, when the only sound was the rustling of the leaves and the gurgling of the creek that ran through the heart of the compound. Today the data processing building was full of buzzing and beeping and the quick movements of overworked clerks.
“Can I help you?”
She was a buxom thing with flows of red hair piled atop her head and a tight green Army Class-B uniform showing off her figure. I could have flashed her my badge but it always seemed overly dramatic to me.
“We’d like to see the NCO in charge.”
“Sergeant Parsons?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s out right now.”
I looked at the freckles across the bridge of her nose and her nice smile and somehow managed to keep my wiseass remarks to myself. Ernie clicked his gum.
I said, “We’re looking for Specialist Watkins. I understand he’s been assigned as your driver for the last couple of weeks. We just want to talk to him.”
“Oh, Watkins. Yeah.” She looked down at a chart on the counter between us. “He’s out on a run. Probably won’t be back until about four or four-thirty.”
Ernie rolled his eyes. The first sergeant would have a fit.
I looked back at the girl’s bosom and then at the chart.
“Where’d he go?”
“He has to stop at a bunch of small compounds-at the PX’s and snack bars, places like that-and pick up their Ration Control Data Entry cards.”
“Is this his schedule?”
“Yes.” She ran a carefully manicured finger down the list. “Right now he should be at ASCOM City. His next stop is Yongdungpo.”
“Do you have a sheet of paper so I can write down this schedule?”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll make a copy for you.”
A minute later she was back and handed me the extra copy.
“Do you have any idea where this guy has lunch?”
She giggled. “Knowing Johnny, it’s probably out in the village.”
We thanked her and ambled out.
“Not bad for a white woman,” Ernie said.
He started the jeep, rolled through the main gate, and jumped into the Seoul traffic. About twenty minutes later we crossed the Third Han River Bridge, heading south, across murky waters churning with ice.
The 362nd U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery Compound fit perfectly into the little village of Heichang-up. There were shops and restaurants and open-air produce markets and then a few feet of red brick wall, a gate, a few more feet of red brick wall, and then more shops and stores.
Air defense. A part of daily life in this country.
The village sat south of the Han River, about fifteen miles as the crow flies from Seoul. Perfect for shooting up those North Korean pilots who’d just dropped all their ordnance on a bombing run of the South Korean capital. The compound had sat there, quietly, since the end of the Korean War. They’d been on alert plenty of times but so far they hadn’t had to use their pop guns, except in training.
A Korean gate guard and an American MP checked everyone who went in or out of the one-lane main gate. Rather than go through the hassle, Ernie and I just parked across the street, got comfortable, and waited for Specialist-4 Johnny Watkins to show up.
Old women, resplendent in their chima-cbogori, their traditional full-length Korean dresses, peered at us curiously. The young people strode by all in a bustle, paying us no attention. One old woman became so intent on trying to figure us out that she stuck her face into the jeep. Not a lot to do in these little towns. Ernie offered her a stick of gum.
She looked confused, her face wrinkled a little more, and then she withdrew and paraded slowly away.
Ernie leaned back in his big canvas-covered seat, his hands resting contentedly on the steering wheel.
“You think Johnny did it?”
“Hard to say. So far we don’t have much information. A girl killed. Brutally. Skewered and burned. Johnny knew her. Kimiko knew her. A whole bunch of other customers knew her. I don’t see any reason yet to pick this Spec-4 out of the crowd.”
“Other than he’s a GI and the Korean newspapers are assuming it’s a GI and the commanding general has to give them something.”
‘There’s that. But locking him up for a while won’t hurt him. And it’ll give us a chance to sort this shit out. If he did it, fine, we’ll burn his ass. If he didn’t, we’ll find out who did.”
“Better hope so. For his sake.”
Ernie spit his gum out the window, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. “One thing bothers me, though.”
“What’s that?”
‘The interrogations Captain Kim conducted. Nobody saw nothin’. Nobody heard nothing.”
‘That’s what I’d expect them to say.”
“But Captain Kim can be very persuasive. And he’s got enough power out in that village to twist the truth out of them. Yet he let them get away with claiming that nothing shit.” Ernie sat up and turned towards me. “You saw those hooches. They’re all jammed right against each other. And they’re not much more than plywood and plaster. If this guy hurt that girl that bad, and held her down and tied her up and then started a fire, somebody must have heard something! You know they did. They probably all know who the hell did it!”
‘They heard. For sure they heard something. But they didn’t necessarily see anything. People out there have a habit of not poking their noses outdoors at night.”
“Well, maybe they didn’t actually see the guy but they knew that something was going on. Hell, that’s why
