“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No one,” Norris replied. “Not even my partner. There’s something about the guy. He’s nervous, worried. I think it could be something important.”
“Any idea what?”
“He wouldn’t spill. He only wants to talk to you.”
“How long will he be in port?”
“Until Thursday.”
That gave me four nights. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
Before I walked away, Sergeant Norris grabbed me by the elbow. “He said for you to come alone, but I think you should take some backup with you.”
“That might scare him off.”
Norris thought about it. “At least be armed,” he said finally.
“You’re suspicious of this guy,” I said.
Norris frowned. “Not of him so much, but of the people he might be dealing with.”
“Like who?”
“I wish I knew. He hasn’t told me anything. He only wants to talk to you. It just seems odd, though.”
“What does?”
“That he knows you by name.”
Norris was right. That did seem odd.
The Hialeah Compound Data Processing Center said they’d work on gathering Pruchert’s ration-control records for me and I could pick them up that afternoon. At the MP station, I called Riley.
“Where the hell have you been?” Riley screamed.
I held the phone away from my ear. “Chasing criminals,” I said. “What the hell do you think?”
“Do you consider your partner, Bascom, to be one of those criminals?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Taegu. Camp Henry. At oh two hundred hours this morning. MP report sitting on the Provost Marshal’s desk this morning. Looks like your buddy Ernie punched out a captain in the United States Army.”
“Embry?”
“Aha! I knew you’d know what I was talking about. There was a fight at the…” Riley rustled through some paperwork. “… the New Taegu Tourist Hotel in downtown Taegu. The KNPs were called, along with the MPs, and then a medical unit ambulance from the compound. It looks like Captain Frederick Raymond Embry was roughed up royally. He’s in the dispensary on Camp Henry right now.”
“How badly was he hurt?”
Riley looked at the paperwork again. “He’ll live. A few stitches. And maybe his nose will be a little twisted.”
“How about Ernie?”
“Scratches and bruises. Nothing serious. He was treated and released to the tender mercies of the Camp Henry MP station.”
“They have him locked up?”
“What else? You can’t go beating up officers for no good reason.”
“No good reason? Captain Embry was stalking one of the women in the band, Marnie Orville. Ernie was assigned to protect her. We even have reason to believe that Embry might’ve been the one who attacked that MP.”
As usual, instead of rewarding us for doing a tough job, 8th Army was berating us for doing what they’d told us to do.
“Marnie?” Riley asked. “She’s in the report here too.”
“And you’re the one,” I said, “who helped her locate Freddy Ray Embry, so she could contact him and get this shit started.”
Riley ignored me. “Let me see,” he said, shuffling through more paperwork. “Yeah, here it is. Marnie Orville says that Agent Ernie Bascom attacked Captain Frederick Raymond Embry without provocation.”
“‘Without provocation’? I’m on my way.” I slammed the phone down.
By the time I’d made the two-hour drive to Taegu, I was so tired that I was starting to hallucinate. Still, I made my way to the MP station, parked the green army sedan in the gravel lot, and walked inside and asked the desk sergeant about Ernie.
“No one’s allowed to talk to him,” the desk sergeant told me.
“By God, I will,” I said. “I didn’t drive all the way up here for nothing.”
“I don’t give a damn how far you drove. Nobody talks to him.”
“By whose orders?”
“Major Squireward.”
“Where’s his office?”
“You don’t have a need to know.”
I was about fed up with everybody’s attitude around here. I grabbed the desk sergeant by the collar of his fatigues and hauled him part way over the counter.
“You get Agent Bascom out here, and you get him out here now! You got that?”
The desk sergeant clawed at my arms, and I kept pulling. Soon he was on top of the counter, kicking with his combat boots. He rolled off of the counter and hit the wood-paneled floor with a thud. By then, other MPs had run in from the back rooms. One of them grabbed me, and I swiveled and punched him. Then nightsticks came out. A couple of them swung, and I dodged and grabbed more green material. I felt myself falling, and a huge pile fell on top of me. Somehow, someone clamped handcuffs on one wrist; two men held the other wrist steady as the second cuff was clamped shut.
They dragged me into a back room.
It was another twenty minutes before I stopped cursing. And kicking the bottom of the door with my foot, smashing the hell out of my toe.
13
The best way to pass the time in a jail cell-as I’ve learned from my two or three sojourns therein-is to sleep. Due to my state of extreme exhaustion, sleep was something I had no trouble doing. Actually, I wasn’t locked up in a jail cell, but rather in an interrogation room with no windows and a doorknob that turned freely but wouldn’t unlock. In the center of the room was a scarred wooden armyissue field table and two dented gray metal folding chairs. I pushed the chairs together, both facing the wall, and did my best to lie down on the impromptu bed. It was dreadfully uncomfortable, but my exhaustion was so complete that within seconds I was dead to the world.
A door slammed open and jerked me awake.
“On your feet!” someone shouted.
I staggered upright.
“The position of attention!” the same voice shouted.
I realized who it was; the same desk sergeant whom I’d jerked across the counter. It figured that he’d be a little cross.
When I was in a reasonable approximation of the position of attention-my back straight, my feet together, my hands at my sides, thumbs aligned with the seams of my trousers-the desk sergeant opened the door and an officer wearing his dress green uniform strode in. His name tag said Squireward, the gold maple leaf on his shoulder indicated his rank as major, and I already knew that he was the Provost Marshal of Camp Henry and of the 19th Support Group.
Major Squireward stopped in front of me and examined me like a hawk would a particularly distasteful rodent. Finally he said, “What have you got to say for yourself, Sueno?”
“About what, sir?”
“About pulling Sergeant Copwood across the counter.”
