“You’re right. I’ll have Riley make phone calls today up to Osan’s main personnel office, compile us a list.”
“Give him something to do, so maybe he’ll stay sober.”
“For a while, anyway. Still, I don’t think this guy is Air Force. He boarded the train in Pusan, according to Runnels. That would’ve been a long way to travel just to throw us off the track. And the way he climbed those barbed-wire fences in Anyang: this is a guy who’s used to accomplishing the physical.”
“Not as brainy as the zoomies.”
“Not that he’s stupid. It’s just that he throws his athletic ability in your face.”
“A guy like that doesn’t usually join the Air Force,” Ernie agreed.
“So what does he join?”
“The Marines,” Ernie replied.
Other than a small contingent at the embassy, there were no US Marines stationed in Korea.
“And if not the Marines?” I asked.
“The Special Forces.”
We looked at each other, and then we both returned to the map.
It was off the edge of the main part of the map, in its own little square: an oval-shaped island-about 50 miles south of mainland Korea and 175 miles southwest of Pusan-with a mountain smack-dab in the middle. Cheju-do. The Island of Cheju. We studied the map for a moment. Hallasan was the name of the mountain, a still-smoking volcano. At the base of the mountain was a small red pin. A training area. Run by a contingent of the United States Army Special Forces, more commonly known as the Green Berets.
Marnie stepped out from behind her electric keyboard, grabbed a G.I. from the front row, and started shimmying in her tight blue jeans and even tighter cowgirl blouse. A heartfelt somebody-done-somebody-wrong song was being belted out by the Country Western All Star Review behind her. The G.I. s of Hialeah Compound howled their mad delight.
I shouted in Ernie’s ear, “She’s letting loose tonight!”
He nodded his head, grinning from some sort of inner satisfaction.
Riley was still grumbling, complaining that we should’ve left for Seoul by now, but drowned his anxiety by jolting down a shot of bar bourbon followed by sips from a cold can of Falstaff.
We were in the Hialeah Compound NCO Club. Instead of turning in the sedan at the motor pool like the MPs wanted us to, we’d returned to billeting, where I’d spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon sleeping. When I awoke I’d taken a long shower, shaved, and then climbed into my last clean set of clothes. Riley kept complaining all the while that we were supposed to check out of billeting, turn in the sedan, and return to Seoul ASAP. Both Ernie and I told him to shove it, and he grew increasingly worried until I told him finally that the orders would be changed.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I know,” I replied.
He squinted his eyes, studying me. “It’s that Mr. Kill, isn’t it? He’s going to pull some strings.”
I didn’t answer.
“Look, Sueno,” Riley said. “You can get over on the honchos of Eighth Army sometimes. But when you do, they never forget. They make a record of it and that record is never washed clean. When this case is over and when Mr. Kill is no longer around to protect your low-ranking butt, your ass will be theirs.”
I shrugged.
Riley found some coffee down in the billeting office, and a deck of cards, and he’d spent the rest of the afternoon playing solitaire and getting himself wired on caffeine, waiting for the bar at the NCO Club to open.
The song finally ended and Marnie took a bow, to wild applause. The G.I. she’d been dancing with returned to his seat, reluctantly, and Marnie told the crowd that the Country Western All Stars would be back after a short break. The curtain closed; somewhere someone turned on a sound system, the music coming out a lot quieter than the raucous sounds that had just been blaring from the speakers and amps of the live band.
“Did you check with the MPs?” Ernie asked.
“Screw them. If they haven’t sent somebody to find us and escort us off-compound, it’s because they’ve received word from Seoul to leave us alone.”
Riley was talking to a group of G.I. s at the table next to us, bragging about how tough it had been in Nam during “the big one,” as he called it. They were egging him on and laughing at him because he was so drunk.
“You gonna stay here?” I asked Ernie.
“Where else do I have to go?”
“Nowhere. I’m going downtown.”
“To meet Kill?”
“Something like that.”
Ernie studied me. “What are you up to, Sueno?”
“Nothing. I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know when I do.”
“You’ll need backup.”
“Not on this one.” I didn’t want to get him involved in something I didn’t yet understand myself.
“Is it a girl?”
“Never mind, Ernie.”
“When will you be back?”
“What are you? My mother?”
“It’s not like you to run off without telling me what you’re up to.”
“It’s probably nothing. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before curfew.”
I glanced at Riley. He was aware that the G.I. s were laughing at him, but this only made him more aggressive in his storytelling. He was tall enough at five nine or ten, but so skinny from never consuming anything other than whiskey and coffee that he weighed only about 125 pounds. Still, he had a habit of acting like the toughest guy in two towns, especially after a couple of cold ones.
“Keep an eye on Riley,” I told Ernie.
“After three or four more shots of bourbon,” Ernie replied, “I’ll carry him back to billeting and tuck him in bed.”
I left the Hialeah NCO Club, made my way to the front gate, and flashed my CID badge at the pedestrian exit. The MP didn’t bat an eye. This confirmed to me that Mr. Kill had been true to his word and Ernie and I had been taken off Major Squireward’s escort-out-of-the-area list. I walked through the narrow wooden passageway and emerged into the Pusan night.
Salt-laced mist washed the air. Moist streets glistened from the glare of neon. A cab cruised by. I waved him down, the back door popped open, and I climbed in.
The cab driver said nothing. Probably because he didn’t speak English and didn’t expect me to understand Korean. He turned his head and waited for my instruction.
“Texas,” I said finally.
He nodded. An automatic spring popped the door shut and he shoved the little Hyundai sedan into gear.
The chophouse had a Korean name only, no English translation, written in black letters slashed across splintered wood: Huang Hei Banjom. Eatery of the Yellow Sea.
Technically we weren’t on the Yellow Sea. The Port of Pusan is located at the southeastern corner of the Korean peninsula where the Yellow Sea and the Eastern Sea converge. This can be confusing because the Eastern Sea, as the Koreans call it, is known as the Sea of Japan to the rest of the world. Koreans, however, don’t like to give unwarranted credit to the country that brutally occupied them for thirty-five years.
I stood across from the entrance to Pier Number 7, hidden in the shadows beneath a stack of wooden crates, studying the people who entered and departed the Eatery of the Yellow Sea. There were few Koreans, and the ones who did enter probably worked there. The main clientele was composed of Caucasian men. But not G.I. s. Their hair wasn’t cut short, they weren’t wearing neatly pressed PX blue jeans, and they didn’t sport nylon jackets with dragons embroidered on the back. These were men who looked as if they’d walked out of another century. Their hair was long and unkempt, and some of them had several days’ stubble on their faces. Their pants were loose, unpressed, hanging over scruffy brown leather brogans that in some cases looked as if they were about to fall off. Even from my distance of some twenty yards, their peacoats looked sopped through with the drizzle that washed
