taking the side-in every dispute-of the honchos of the 8th United States Army, which goes a long way to explain why the Provost Marshal loves him.
Ernie ignored Riley’s harangue and walked toward the big silver coffee urn on the counter in the back of the admin office. Miss Kim, the statuesque admin secretary, pecked away at her hangul typewriter. I plopped down in a gray army-issue chair.
“A woman was raped,” I told Riley, “on the Blue Train, with her children sitting only a few feet away.”
Riley studied me carefully. “That’s why you look like somebody just placed a size-twelve combat boot up your butt.”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I rubbed my forehead and then the back of my neck.
Miss Kim stopped typing. Out of a plastic container, she poured some of her personal stock of barley tea into a porcelain cup. She brought it over and offered it to me. I accepted the cup with both hands and thanked her. She returned to her desk. The typing started again, more tentatively this time.
While I sipped the lukewarm tea, Riley’s gruff voice grated on my molars. “She was a Korean national, wasn’t she?” he asked.
“Who?”
“The victim on the Blue Train.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Definitely a Korean national.”
“Then why the hell did you spend all that time out there? It’s a KNP case.”
I sat up straighter in my seat. “We have reason to believe,” I told him, “that the perpetrator was one of our brave American men in uniform.”
“Did you arrest him?”
“No. He was gone before we got there.”
“So how can you be sure he was an American?”
“The G.I. sitting next to him said he was.”
“Was this perp wearing civvies?”
“Yeah.”
“So it’s just this G.I.’s opinion that the suspect was an American.”
I knew what he was getting at. If 8th Army could pretend that a suspect wasn’t an American G.I., they’d do it. Any way to avoid bad publicity was worth a try.
“Most of these cases,” Riley continued, “nobody can pin shit on us.”
Riley was correct. Rape is a hideously difficult charge to prove, especially when most of the Korean women American G.I. s hang out with are “business girls,” women forced into prostitution because of economic deprivation. Still, I started to say something, but Riley waved me off and then he tossed a sheet of paper in front of me. I grabbed it on the fly.
“From the head shed,” Riley said. “Chief of Staff, Eighth United States Army. The Provost Marshal wants you two on this. Immediately if not sooner. Looks like we’ve got the USO show from hell.”
“No time,” I said, tossing the paperwork back onto his desk. “We have to go to Anyang.”
“Anyang? What for?”
“This rapist. That’s where we think he got off the train.”
Ernie shouted from the back of the room, “Where’s the coffee, Riley?” He was holding up an empty tin can.
“My ration ran out,” Riley yelled back.
“Your ration ran out? How much you been black-marketing, anyway? Can’t you at least buy the coffee before you use your monthly ration buying stuff for your yobo?”
“It wasn’t for my yobo,” Riley replied. Riley had a thing for older women, and some of the Korean gals he hung around with were verging on the geriatric.
Ernie returned with an empty mug and clunked it down on the edge of Riley’s desk. “So, if it wasn’t for a yobo, what have you been using all your ration on?”
“Information,” Riley said. “I’ve been trading coffee to get information to help jerks like you.”
“Jerks like me,” Ernie replied, “don’t need to trade coffee for information. We get it the old-fashioned way.” Ernie reached into his pocket, slipped on his brass knuckles, and jabbed a short uppercut into the air.
“Okay, Bascom,” Riley said. “I’m impressed. Now convince your partner here to read that report I just handed to him. You two better get it in gear before the Provost Marshal develops a case of the big ass and takes a bite out of your respective butts.”
I grabbed the report again and, after reading a few sentences, I began to understand why it had received such a high priority. It involved round-eyes. A whole bevy of them. A USO-sponsored all-female band known as the Country Western All Stars, lovely ladies who’d flown over from the States to grace us lonely 8th Army G.I. s with their presence. The United Service Organization had been around since at least World War II. Bob Hope made it famous with his star-studded appearances on battlefields all over the world, and the organization, in numerous smaller venues, was still going strong. When it comes to an all-female country-western show and review-direct from Austin, Texas-the brass can’t do enough for them, and every broken fingernail shows up on the Chief of Staff’s morning blotter report.
According to the band’s leader, someone had been pilfering their equipment. At Camp Kitty Hawk, a microphone went missing. At the Joint Security Area, one of the girls’ boots. Near Munsan, at Recreation Center Four, they thought they’d lost an electric guitar but found it behind a Quonset hut. Apparently, whoever lifted the instrument had dumped it after realizing that he wouldn’t be able to make a clean getaway.
I handed the report to Ernie. He groaned.
“Babysitting,” he said.
“Babysitting, my ass,” Riley replied. He pointed at the report. “If you’d read the damn thing you’d see that this detail is going to involve a lot more than babysitting. There’s not only been theft of equipment but also threats made against the command. If you don’t get a handle on this case fast, you’re going to be up kimchee creek without a paddle.”
“Threats?” I asked.
“This band leader,” Riley said, “one female civilian known as Marnie Orville, has declared that if she isn’t assigned a full-time detective, and assigned one today, she’s going to refuse to go on.”
“She won’t perform?”
“You got it. So Eighth Army isn’t taking any chances. They’re assigning two investigators to the case. Namely, Agent George Sueno and Agent Ernie Bascom.”
“When’s their next appearance?” I asked.
“Tonight. Nineteen hundred hours. At the DivArty O Club.”
The Officers’ Club of the 2nd Infantry Division Artillery headquarters, at Camp Stanley in Uijongbu.
“The Provost Marshal wants you there,” Riley continued. “Standing tall and kissing some serious round-eyed butt.”
I tossed the report on Riley’s desk.
Ernie wandered over toward Miss Kim, who kept her eyes glued to a sheaf of paperwork and increased her typing speed to a furious rate. Ernie stood in front of her for a few seconds. They’d dated once. Until, that is, Miss Kim discovered that Ernie was involved with other romances. Ernie couldn’t understand why she’d taken it so hard. When Miss Kim still didn’t look up, Ernie finally shrugged and walked back across the room.
As I rose from my seat, I told Riley not to worry. We’d take care of this USO show situation.
“You’d better,” he growled.
Outside, Ernie started up the jeep. He shouted over the roar of the engine, “We should go to the hotel this band’s staying at. Interview them about the missing equipment. Let them know that someone’s on the case.”
“We should,” I replied.
We were both thinking of the woman on the Blue Train, Mrs. Oh Myong-ja, and her crying children. And we were thinking of the hatred radiating out of the eyes of the people surrounding her. But mostly we were thinking of what Private First Class Runnels, the courier on the Blue Train, had told us after he’d finally opened up. In particular, we both remembered his remark about “the first check mark on a long list.”
Ernie drove to Gate 5. After we were waved through the MP checkpoint, he turned left on the main supply route. Ernie plowed his way through the mid-afternoon Seoul traffic until we reached the turnoff to the Seoul-to-
