about twelve feet and, looking across, it looked very close. A twelve-foot jump. I could make it. It’s just that if I missed, it would be a three-story drop. Just a matter of confidence, I told myself. If it were twelve feet paced off on the ground, it would be no big problem. It was just the fear of the abyss below.
I got back against the far side of the building, ran across the roof as fast as I could sprint, pushed off from the top of the cement parapet, and leapt into space.
The parapet had been higher than I thought, and rising up the three feet or so to breach it had taken away most of my forward momentum. I was hurtling through the air, halfway between the two buildings and the edge still seemed a long way away. I hit the ledge of the opposite building flush on my stomach.
I thought it had killed me and I almost blacked out, even as my body began to slide down the side of the building. I grabbed on to the ledge with my elbows and stopped myself. It bit into my chest, and I kicked and found a toehold, pushed up with my foot, and managed a better grip so I could pull up. Struggling for every inch, I shimmied up onto the roof.
I lay there for nearly a minute but still couldn’t breathe. After a while I was getting some air. My hand was bleeding again.
I found the stairwell in the center of the roof and walked carefully down the steps. It was a small apartment house, and the pungent aroma of kimchi and fish became stronger as I descended toward street level. I encountered no one. When I got to the front door, I lay prostrate and peered around the corner. The policemen were still standing in front of the door but Judy had just walked out of the club into the cold night, still in hot pants and T-shirt. She started talking rapidly to the police. I prepared to make a run for it, but by then the policemen were laughing. One of them came forward and offered her a cigarette. The other one good-naturedly lit it and, while they were enjoying themselves, I walked out of the building, down the alley, and onto the large road.
I was glad I had taken that toilet paper. I had the entire wad gripped tightly in my left hand inside my jacket pocket. I felt some blood seep slowly out and I gripped the soggy paper harder trying to stanch the flow.
Along the road, past rows and rows of clubs and bright lights, GIs swarmed everywhere. I became less worried about the KNPs. As long as the blood didn’t seep through my jacket-I wanted to go on the compound, to the dispensary, and get some stitches in my hand. I didn’t think the MPs were looking for me. I was pretty sure it was just the KNPs. As far as the Army was concerned, my only offense was being AWOL, and that probably hadn’t even been reported yet. Even if it had, nobody wastes any time looking for U.S. Army deserters in Korea. There’s nowhere for them to go. Eventually they’ll either turn themselves in or come to no good end. But the KNPs were looking for me pretty hard. I had to figure it was to protect General Bohler. The mayor and the chief of police must have put out the word that I had to be apprehended, prevented from snooping around anymore.
If I told my story, no one would believe me. Just another jealous enlisted man trying to make an officer look bad. But the powers in Itaewon definitely didn’t want me out here unattended. Or maybe they knew about the film and figured I had it.
There was a steady stream of military vehicles going in and out of the post’s main gate. The defense of Korea never stops. I stood and watched them and decided against going on to the compound for medical treatment. The way things had been going lately I decided to play it safe and check on my status later.
More important, the guard mount at the gate, like the roving MP patrols, was composed of an American MP, an ROK Army MP, and a Korean National Policeman. He could finger me and have his buddies waiting for me when I came out.
An ROK Army jeep, with a cab made of sheet metal instead of canvas, roared out of the gate and turned. I ran out into the street and waved it down with my good hand. They pulled over and the soldier on the passenger side slid one pane of the divided window forward.
I spoke to them in Korean. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I have to get back to my post right away. Can you help me?”
“We are going to Seoul,” the young man said. He was a ROK Army lieutenant.
‘There is an emergency in my unit. They need a translator right away.”
“Have they caught an intruder?” The lieutenant sat up, suddenly interested.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t talk about it.”
“Get in,” he said, and opened the door for me.
The ROK sergeant shifted into the back to make room for me in the passenger seat. I ducked into the front seat, hiding my hand in my pocket.
Then I felt it. A dull thud behind my left ear. Dazed, I just sat there, wondering what it was. Then I felt it again, this time to the back of my head.
A bystander moved away from the jeep and cowered against an old woman who had just been putting up her soup cart for the night. Suddenly she turned green and faded into the mist.
16
“These guys aren’t too happy with you.” It was the first sergeant.
‘That’s funny,” I said. ”I thought we hit it off quite nicely.”
We were talking through an iron grating.
I was in the holding cell in back of the Itaewon Police Department. It was a charming place really. The room was about thirty feet square with a cement floor and two huge wooden platforms, the living quarters for the inmates, elevated about three feet high on either side of the central aisle. Broadcasting its presence from the rear was the byonso.
They say learning is best accomplished when the tactile senses are employed. The fetid waves of aroma pulsating out of the byonso left the meaning of the word indelibly impressed on my cerebral cortex.
Earlier that morning an old man had sloshed a bucketful of water onto the cement floor. I had been sitting on the edge of the platform and he had unceremoniously doused my shoes and my socks. My cold feet reeked of the stale water and disinfectant. I was hungry, I was dirty, and a series of fresh bruises arrayed about my torso added their drumbeat to the huge aching knot on my head.
Other than that I was fine.
One of the blue-suited policemen came up beside the sergeant, pulled out a large ring of keys, and opened the iron door. I stepped out quickly and took a deep breath. At the front desk they gave me an envelope with my identification, my keys, and my mallet. I checked to make sure it was all there.
I slipped my Army ID card and my Criminal Investigation Division badge into my hip pocket. “What about an apology?” I said.
Top looked at me. “An apology?”
“Yeah,” I said, “from Captain Kim. His boys got a little rough. While I was conducting an investigation.”
‘That’s not the way they see it.”
“Well how the fuck do they see it?” My neck stiffened and made the pain from my head pulse louder. The sullen eyes of the half-dozen Korean policemen around the room were on us.
Top faced me directly. “Let’s go, George.”
I straightened my jacket out, looking around the room at each policeman in turn.
“They charged you with resisting arrest for one thing,” Top said.
Standard police procedure. The first thingyou do is coveryour ass.
“And then they charged you with breaking and entering.”
“But I didn’t break anything,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “something’s probably broke now.”
I couldn’t argue with logic.
“I was on a goddamn investigation.”
“I claimed you were on an investigation,” Top said. “I told them that. And I told them that you’re in the CID, at the moment.”
“So they dropped the charges?”
“No. They told me to get you out of town.”
“They don’t have any jurisdiction to tell me to get out of town.” I said it but I didn’t believe it. It was their
