“Go ahead.”
“So we got this tip-”
“Where’d you get this tip?” This was from the First Sergeant.
“Sources in Itaewon.”
“Sources in Itaewon? You mean gossip from business girls.”
I didn’t answer.
The First Sergeant folded his arms. “Go ahead.”
“So we went and talked to this girl. She knew a Korean man who owns a print shop, and he had an American friend. She thought this American guy was black-marketing, so we went to the print shop owner and got the guy’s picture.” Actually, the slicky boys stole the picture. But I didn’t want to tell the colonel that I was working with them. “We also found some phony ration control plate numbers.”
The First Sergeant and the Provost Marshal looked at each other.
“Good work,” the First Sergeant said. “But you’re not on the black market detail. You’re investigating a murder.”
“So this kisaeng, the next morning, ends up dead.”
The Provost Marshal shuffled through some papers. “I saw something about that in the blotter reports. And another one in Itaewon.”
“Yes. This American guy’s next victim.”
“What’d this Itaewon girl have to do with it?”
“She knew us.”
The Provost Marshal puffed furiously on his pipe, but it had gone out. “Corporal Sueno, would you please explain yourself?”
“This guy somehow found out that Ernie and I were investigating the murder of Whitcomb. Although our lead in Mukyo-dong wasn’t a very solid one, this guy, for reasons of his own, thought it might lead to something. He killed the kisaeng so she wouldn’t be able to identify him, and then he killed the woman Ernie has been seeing in Itaewon, probably trying to scare us off the case.”
The Provost Marshal looked at Ernie. Ernie remained completely stoic, as if he hadn’t even heard what I said. The Provost Marshal turned back to me.
“It’s sort of thin.”
“You’re right, sir, but if we can pick this guy up, interrogate him, we’ll probably be able to pin the Whitcomb murder on him. If he hadn’t been involved, why would he be murdering these women we talked to?”
I hadn’t thought out very clearly what I was going to say to the First Sergeant and the Provost Marshal, but I was warming to the explanation now.
“He’s getting desperate. He probably thinks we know more than we do, and even if he didn’t kill Whitcomb, he certainly has information that will help. We can already bust him and turn him over to the KNP’s for the murders of those two women.”
“Okay,” the Provost Marshal said. “We pick this guy up for questioning. But where can we find him?”
I pulled the folded computer printout from my pocket.
“We just got this from Data Processing. One of these phony RCP numbers, one of those associated with his photograph, was used down on Hialeah Compound in Pusan this morning. He probably thinks he’s safe down there for a while. Ernie and I can go there now. Pick him up when he makes his next purchase.”
The First Sergeant didn’t like it. “Why not just notify the Pusan MP’s?”
“How are we going to get the photograph down there to them that quickly? We’d have to send a courier down with it, anyway. Might as well be me and Ernie. Besides, the Pusan MP’s have other things to worry about. Ernie and I wouldn’t have anything else to concentrate on, other than busting this killer.”
“What’s his name?” the Provost Marshal asked.
“Beauregard Shipton. Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy. Former Liaison to the ROK Navy headquarters. Been AWOL for about three months.”
The Provost Marshal set down his pipe. “An officer?”
I nodded.
He shuffled some papers, probably hoping it would give him time to think. Apparently it did.
“Okay. Very good report, Corporal Sueno. You and Bascom can go now. First Sergeant, you stay here.”
The First Sergeant followed us into the hallway. “Wait in my office,” he told us. He went back into the Provost Marshal’s office. The door closed.
“Dick,” Ernie said.
“Yeah. The world’s full of them.”
Instead of the First Sergeant’s office, Ernie and I waited in the Admin section, shooting the breeze with Riley. Miss Kim still hadn’t thawed out, so Ernie didn’t know what to do with himself. And he was out of gum.
Riley pulled something out of his desk. “The KNP Liaison gave me this.”
It was a color photo of the blood scrawled on the wall at the Nurse’s hooch. He handed it to Ernie. Ernie didn’t flinch.
He was acting tough. But that’s all it was: an act. Deep down inside he was burning about the Nurse’s death.
Ernie studied the photograph. “Goddamn,” he said. “ ‘Dreamer.’ That’s your name, isn’t it, pal?”
“One way to translate it.”
“This guy’s really got a hard-on for you.”
I shrugged. Hearing it said that baldly didn’t make me feel exactly warm and secure.
Lights blinked on Riley’s phone. Carefully, he lifted the receiver, keeping the mouthpiece covered. After a few seconds he put the receiver back down.
“The honchos’re burning up the wires.”
“What for?”
“Getting clearance from the head shed. Making sure this doesn’t embarrass the navy too much.”
“Jesus,” Ernie said. “What the hell’s to clear? The guy’s a stone killer.”
“But he hasn’t killed anybody important yet,” Riley pointed out. He saw our grim faces.
“Sorry,” he said.
A few minutes later the First Sergeant’s heavy oxfords thundered down the hallway.
“Sueno! Bascom! I thought I told you to wait in my office!”
We rose but didn’t answer.
“Never mind that now.” The First Sergeant checked his wristwatch. “Go pack your bags. The last Blue Line leaves Seoul Station at seventeen hundred hours. I want you two on it.”
Riley unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. “I’ll issue them some petty cash, Top.”
“Fifty bucks should do it.”
We all stared at the First Sergeant.
“Okay. A hundred each-but that’s it.”
As Riley counted out the greenbacks and filled out receipts for us to sign, Ernie made eye contact with Miss Kim. She looked worried and didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. Finally, she pulled out a handkerchief and scampered down the hallway to the ladies’ room.
Ernie shrugged. As if to say, “Who can understand them anyway?”
32
The Seoul train station is a brick monolith covering a full city block with a huge dome towering above its center. The station looks like something out of Czarist Russia. Which in a way it is, since the “bears to the north,” as the Koreans call them, built the station as a gift to the Korean king in the 1890’s. The Russians’ motives weren’t completely pure, since at the time they were locked in a power struggle with Japan over influence in the Far East.
We pushed through the surging crowds of men in business suits and kids in school uniforms and old ladies
