tough. Not like KNP now. You send me monkey house? Huh! You send Lucy. Lucy not afraid.”
Ernie glared at her but didn’t say anything further.
Some of the other women started chattering about their experiences in the monkey house. None of them were strangers to doing time, but they hadn’t done any time lately. Probably, with a successful black-market operation, the local police were being paid to look the other way. That would explain Lucy’s bravado and her disdain for two CID agents from Seoul.
When they calmed down, I said, “People could get hurt, Lucy, if we don’t find Pruchert. Innocent people.”
She studied me once again, picking up her cigarette and puffing on it for a while, letting the silence grow.
“I know why you come,” she said finally. “You come because of G.I. on Blue Train. G.I. who do bad things to Korean women.”
“That’s right, Lucy,” I said. “I can’t fool you, can I?”
She spoke rapidly in Korean, explaining to her fellow denizens of G.I. Heaven what we were here for.
“This G.I.,” she said, finally. “G.I. on train, he hurt Korean women. Hurt them bad, kurei?” Right?
“Yes,” I replied. “One of them was raped in front of her children. Another was raped and then murdered, also in front of her children.”
Lucy repeated what I said. Some of the women looked sad, others showed no expression.
“We know about rape,” Lucy said. “Anybody here know about rape.” She pointed at the women surrounding the table, jabbing her forefinger at them one by one. “We all young during Korean War. G.I. come, Communist come, United Nations come, Chinese come. Anybody try find Korean woman. Any Korean woman run away. Sometimes hide. Most time can’t hide. Why? Need food. Need water. Need medicine. Otherwise no can live. Our mama sick, daddy sick, baby sick, how we let them die?”
Lucy stared at me, expecting an answer. I had none.
“We do what we gotta do,” she continued. “That time, who have most money? American G.I. So we go, learn speak American language. Learn about G.I., learn how to make money. Learn how to black-market. So G.I. hurt Korean woman on Blue Train, we know. We know all about anything.”
She waved her arm.
Some of the women nervously lit new cigarettes or poured themselves more hot water. One of them whispered, “Aiyu, mali manta.” You talk too much.
Lucy ignored the comment.
“So Lucy, will you help us find him, or not?”
She pointed at the wrinkled photocopy. “Pruchert, he not do.”
“So you do know him?”
“We know.”
“What makes you so sure he didn’t do anything?”
“Lucy know.”
“Maybe you should let us decide that,” Ernie said.
Most women love Ernie and his irreverent attitude. For some reason, Lucy didn’t.
“Okay,” she said, “you decide. Hurry up, find out.”
“Where is he, Lucy?” I asked. “When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday. He come do black market.”
“What did he sell?”
“Wristwatch. Good one. G.I. only can buy one each year, so he sell good one.”
Under the 8th Army ration-control system, only one each of certain expensive items can be purchased by any given G.I. during a one-year tour. Only one stereo set, only one television, and only one wristwatch. At the end of the year, before he’s cleared to leave the country, the G.I. must either produce the item or produce a document showing he shipped it legally back to the States. There are ways around that, such as claiming the item was stolen, and some G.I. s are foolish enough to just sell the item on the black market and worry about justifying it later. They often get away with it because some units are not as diligent about checking on the rationed items as they should be.
“After he sold it, where did he go?”
“Same place he all the time go. You don’t know?”
“No. I don’t know. Tell me.”
“He go casino. You know. Down in Pusan.”
“He makes money selling on the black market, and then he takes that money and throws it away in a casino?”
“Lotta G.I. do.”
“What casino did he go to?”
“In Pusan only one. Beautiful place. Haeundae Beach.”
I’d heard of it, but I’d never been there. Maybe Pruchert went to the Haeundae Casino, and maybe he didn’t. Maybe that’s what he told Lucy. Maybe instead he took a cab over to the train station and hopped on the Blue Train.
“How do you know he went to the casino?” I asked.
“He all the time need money. All the time worried about honcho find out he black market. All the time worried honcho find out he go to casino.”
Signal sites deal with a lot of top-secret traffic. People into various types of depravity, including compulsive gambling, are considered to be security risks and, as such, lose their clearances. The U.S. Army Signal Corps is a hothouse of pressure; a difficult job to perform and everyone watching everyone else. It figured that Pruchert would want to get away; and if he were black-marketing and gambling, he’d want to concoct a good cover story, such as meditating at a Buddhist monastery. Of course, he’d also need a good cover story if he were the Blue Train rapist.
I asked Lucy and the other women a few more questions, but it soon became obvious that if Ernie and I wanted to know more about Corporal Robert R. Pruchert, we’d have to find him ourselves.
We thanked the women and left. Lucy followed us to the front gate.
“Pruchert good boy,” she told us. “Dingy dingy but good boy.”
She whirled her forefinger around her right ear, indicating that Pruchert was dingy dingy. Nuts.
“So you don’t think Pruchert is the Blue Train rapist?” I asked.
“No,” Lucy said, crossing her arms. “He not.”
“If you’re so smart,” Ernie said, “then tell us who is.”
“I tell,” Lucy replied. “Blue Train rapist bad man. Very bad man. But when anybody see any day, he look like good man. Lucy, any woman in G.I. Heaven, we all before trust good man. We all before tricked by good man. We all before, rape. Now, we anybody no trust.”
We ducked out through the gate into the stinking pathway that ran in front of G.I. Heaven. Back on the pedestrian lane running through the bar district, Ernie shook himself like a golden retriever shaking off rain.
“Creepy,” he said.
“It takes a lot to creep you out.”
“That it does,” he replied, “but G.I. Heaven managed.”
We jogged across the main supply route. At the front gate of Camp Henry, the MP guard said, “Where in the hell you guys been?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night in Waegwan, weren’t you supposed to be guarding that USO show? The Country Western All Stars?”
Ernie stepped close to the MP. “What happened?”
The guy told us. Or at least he told us part of it. We ran to the Camp Henry Medical Dispensary.
