right over the windpipe and with enough force cut off all air, stifle sound from the vocal chords, and even in some cases snap the neck bone itself. This would be much more difficult to do from the back.
And why set up this little table with this jewelry-case display? It was almost as if it were some sort of shrine. But a shrine to what?
Another anomaly occurred to me.
“Where did he leave my weapons card?” I asked.
Captain Noh shook his head and held up one finger, to let me know that he’d answer in a minute.
We all backed out of the room, took off our gloves and our masks, and returned to the front room. I veered off toward the kitchen. It was a rectangular room, not much bigger than a large pantry in an American household, the cement floor lowered two feet below the wooden foundation of the rest of the house. On a low cement bench sat three propane burners. Atop one was a flat, round skillet. The fire below had been turned off and the knob dusted with fingerprint powder.
Captain Noh stood behind me. “He start fire,” he said.
There was a box of stick matches next to the burners.
“Why?” Ernie asked.
Captain Noh turned to look at him. The three of us were jammed into the narrow kitchen doorway.
“He want cook something.”
“What?”
Captain Noh pointed. I stepped down into the kitchen, sliding my toes into a pair of plastic sandals. In the round skillet was spread a single layer of charred black things that looked like needles. Using my thumb and forefinger, I picked up a few. They crumbled to dust in my hand.
Captain Noh said something in Korean. “Solip.” I didn’t understand the word at first, but then I figured it out. Pine needles. Roasted at a low temperature. That explained the burnt odor.
“Why?” I asked Captain Noh.
He shrugged. “Maybe because of smell.” Then he turned quickly and walked away.
Ernie glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.
I felt the same way. Captain Noh wasn’t telling us something. Why would he be so sensitive about burnt pine needles? I almost ran after him to question him further but stopped myself. No sense pressing. When Koreans decide to keep a secret from a foreigner, no power on earth can pry it out of them. Best to wait, figure it out for yourself. Usually, in due time, I can.
8
Out in the courtyard, Captain Noh and his cohorts waited for us in front of the byonso. It was in its own separate little cement-block building up against the northern wall. When Captain Noh opened the wooden door, the smell of ammonia jabbed into our nostrils like a sharpened fingernail.
“There,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Right there. Inside.” He pointed down.
I stepped into the outhouse and gazed into the rectangular hole in the cement floor. Down into filth and blackness. Most Korean homes don’t have commodes. They just come out here and squat and do their business. If you’re a man urinating, you aim carefully.
“My weapons card?” I asked. “You found it here?”
“Yes,” Captain Noh said, his face unreadable. “First he do something. Then he drop card on top of it.”
Ernie crossed his arms, trying not to laugh.
“Thorough search,” Ernie told Captain Noh.
Captain Noh nodded, taking Ernie’s comment as a compliment. He turned and returned to his colleagues waiting in the courtyard.
I grimaced at Ernie.
“Apparently,” Ernie said, grinning broadly now, “the brown-haired GI holds you in high esteem.”
“Can it, Ernie.”
Then, with Captain Noh and his two assistants, Ernie and I left the home of the woman known as Jo Kyong- ah. “Miss” Jo Kyong-ah.
Now deceased.
We spent the rest of the evening canvassing the bars and brothels of Songtan-up. The MPs were happy because they were able to loiter in the brightly lit alleys amidst blaring rock music and play grab ass with the Korean business girls. Ernie and I, however, were becoming less happy the more we learned.
By the time our little convoy left Songtan, we were downright morose.
The MPs drove us all the way back to Seoul. We stopped at various military checkpoints along the way because it was after the midnight curfew. We showed the stern-faced ROK soldiers our emergency dispatch and, holding their rifles at port arms, they waved us on. We approached the southern outskirts of Seoul, the Han River quiet and calm. Through glimmering moonlight, we crossed Chamsu Bridge, and the MPs drove us onto 8th Army’s Yongsan Compound and dropped us off in front of our barracks. I thanked them for the lift and told them we would no longer need their services. There was some grumbling about that; every GI likes easy duty. The sergeant in charge took it well, however, and sped off, leading his little convoy back to their home in the cave at Tango, 8th Army Headquarters (Rear).
The next morning, Ernie and I were showered, shaved, changed into clean clothes, and back on the job at 8th Army CID headquarters. But there was a new attitude toward us now. Cool. Distant. Agents walked down the hallway, not looking at us, pretending we weren’t there.
I knew, of course, why.
First, I’d committed the sin of losing my weapon and my badge. Something most cops swore would never happen to them unless they were dead. Second, Ernie and I together had committed the much worse sin of going “over the heads” of our immediate supervisors. Of course we hadn’t intended to. The decision to lay the blessing of the 8th Army Commander on us had come, not from us, but from General Armbrewster, the 8th Army Commander himself. Still, in the army, it doesn’t matter if you’re not responsible for a bureaucratic breach. The sin has been committed. No amount of rational explanation can wash away the stain.
As always happens in military units, the attitude of the bosses flows downhill to the peons. Although they wouldn’t state it directly, the orders from the Provost Marshal and the CID Detachment First Sergeant were clear. Sueno and Bascom are to be shunned. Anyone who associates with them will be guilty of disloyalty.
Even Staff Sergeant Riley, the Admin NCO of the CID Detachment, acted as if we were strangers. Ernie put up with this new attitude for about twenty seconds.
“You’re the biggest drunk in Eighth Army,” he told Riley, “and suddenly you’re too good for us?”
Riley’s skinny face looked shocked. “The biggest drunk?”
“What? Did I stutter?” Ernie asked. “If you hadn’t started with lining up those shots along the bar at the NCO Club, none of this shit would’ve happened.”
That was the night a group of us had gotten drunk, stumbled out to Itaewon, and I’d ended up losing my weapon and my badge.
“So it’s my fault now?”
“It’s always been your fault.”
I interrupted.
“Let’s get down to business, Riley. Show me the lists.”
Sullenly, Sergeant Riley slid a stack of paperwork across his desk.
Ernie shot Riley a sour look and then turned and stalked across the room to the other side of the office. He sat down in front of the desk of Miss Kim, the attractive young Admin Office secretary. She ignored him, continuing to hammer away at the hangul lettering on her manual typewriter. Not that she didn’t like Ernie. She liked him a lot. In fact, for the last few weeks they’d been dating regularly. But Miss Kim also had the Korean respect for harmony
