was that the strict discipline of military life would straighten them out. Any MP could have told the geniuses at the Pentagon that they were wrong. Instead of going straight, career criminals continued their nefarious ways inside the ranks of the U.S. Army. That didn’t mean that all the GIs standing in front of me were criminals. But you could bet that some of them were. And those few were the ones who would urge on their fellow soldiers to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Like, for instance, beat the crap out of two 8th Army CID agents.
More black GIs appeared in the courtyard behind us. Ernie swiveled, arms extended, his. 45 rotating as if on a gun turret.
“Look,” I said, “we just want to talk to Brandy for a few minutes. That’s all. Then we’ll be on our way.”
A few of the doors of the hooches slid open. Women appeared, Korean women. Some with Afro hairdos, most wearing silk see-through robes. All of them skinny. None voluptuous enough to be Brandy.
A propeller twirled through the air. I tried to dodge it but it clipped my shoulder and clattered to the flagstone steps below. A mongdungi, a wooden stick used to beat dirt out of wet clothing.
The women jeered.
The guy in front of me raised his baseball bat. Ernie swiveled, fired the. 45, and the bat splintered into a thousand shards. Women screamed. Ernie shouted, “Get down!”
The men standing in the doorway of the Black Cat Club cursed and took cover in the courtyard.
“Come on!” Ernie said. “Enough of this bullshit!”
We ran past the splintered baseball bat, through the back door of the Black Cat Club, past the byonso, until we reached the main ballroom. A fluorescent bulb beneath the bar provided the only light. Keeping the. 45 rotating, Ernie made his way to the door. He grabbed the iron handle and pulled. Locked. Barred from the inside.
“Hurry,” he said.
I stepped past him, fiddled with the latches, and finally lifted a long metal rod. The door creaked open. A cold breeze drifted through the open crack.
Black men stood at the back exit, glaring.
“Tell Brandy,” Ernie said, “that we’re sorry we missed her.”
With that, he fired the. 45 into the rafters above the men’s heads. They scattered. We pushed through the front door of the Black Cat Club and scampered out into the deserted streets of the Tongduchon bar district.
The gunfire had alerted the Korean National Police. Whistles shrilled and jeep engines roared, all zeroing in on the Black Cat Club. Ernie and I raced through back alleys.
“Why’d you have to shoot?” I asked.
Ernie answered as if I were nuts. “We have to maintain respect.”
“I was talking to them,” I said. “We could’ve worked something out.”
“Bull. We’d broken into their hooch. The law was on the brothers’ side for once. They were going to do what they do best. Kick the crap out of a couple of T-shirts.”
Ernie had a dim view of human nature. Maybe he was right. There was a reason that 8th Army CID issued us. 45s and it wasn’t because people were reasonable. We rounded a corner and off to our left, from another alley, came the sound of a herd of footsteps stampeding toward the Black Cat Club. We hid in the shadows and watched.
On the main drag of the bar district, Korean cops, holding billy clubs at port arms, trotted in military formation.
“Dozens of ’em,” Ernie whispered.
Going to the Black Cat Club hadn’t done us any good. Instead of finding either Brandy or refuge, we’d called down the fury of Korean officialdom. We crouched in the dark alley, sweating, breathing hard, trying to calm down.
When the footsteps passed, Ernie said, “Where to now?”
“There are some brothels next to the bars. Maybe we can sneak into one and find some business girl who’ll take us in.”
Ernie didn’t have a better idea.
We reached the main street of the Tongduchon bar district, about a long block east of where we’d seen the platoon of cops. A joint called the Seven Star Club loomed across the street from us. If the back doors were open, we might be able to gain access to the building and climb the stairs to the hooches above. No lights shined in any of the windows but it was the only plan I had. If we could hide until morning, we’d be able to reenter the compound amid the mass of GIs returning to Camp Casey. No one would be able to connect us with either the break-in at Kimchee Entertainment or the disturbance at the Black Cat Club.
I stared at the empty street, calculating our odds of avoiding the KNPs until dawn.
“Maybe we should stay here,” I said.
“The patrols will be by eventually,” Ernie replied, “as soon as they figure out what happened at the Black Cat Club. Besides, there’re warm hooches in the Seven Star Club and pee pots and business girls. All the comforts of civilization.”
Ernie was right. We had to chance it. I looked both ways. All quiet. I waved for Ernie and together we slouched across the road.
Looking back, I should’ve realized that the Korean National Police would figure out where we’d go next. The bar district. Where else would American GIs be welcomed in the middle of the night? Where else would a couple of miscreants like Ernie and me seek refuge? So when we stood behind the Seven Star Club, pleased with ourselves for having sneaked across the main drag, trying to decide whether to open the back door or climb through a window, suddenly, as if materializing out of the dark mist, KNPs converged on us from both ends of the alley.
Ernie elbowed me. “Don’t look now.”
I looked anyway. They wore riot-gear helmets and held three-foot-long wooden batons. About a dozen of them plugged each end of the alley.
Ernie reached for his. 45.
I grabbed him, wrapped him in a bear hug, and held on. He realized the wisdom of what I was doing and didn’t struggle. Without further incident, the Korean National Police took us into custody.
8
Torture is a relative term.
A person can consider himself to be undergoing torture simply by being denied something he craves. Cigarettes for a smoker. Caffeine for a coffee drinker. Take me for instance. I started drinking coffee during my first tour in Korea in the middle of the frigid winter. Now it’s a habit. Every day on the way to work I stop at the 8th Army snack bar and guzzle two mugs of steaming hot coffee that’s brewed in huge stainless steel urns. Then and only then do I feel ready to face the day.
Korean cops don’t drink coffee. Too expensive. Usually, they have a pot of barley tea brewing somewhere in the station. The lieutenants and other higher-ups might brew a pot of green tea on hot plates behind their desks. But no java. And even if there had been coffee available, the KNPs wouldn’t have offered me any. Nor Ernie, who kept raising hell and cussing them out.
I tried to reason with my interrogator. He wasn’t a bad guy, actually. Captain Ma was his name and he was a friendly cop with a skinny, chain-smoking body and a wrinkled, smiling face that, since it was always grinning, was totally unreadable. I couldn’t tell if he was about to honor me with an award for lifetime achievement or slice out my spleen. I sat on a wooden chair, barefoot, wearing only a T-shirt and pants. The rest of my clothing had been taken from me. Also, in case I forgot to mention it, my wrists were handcuffed behind my back. Tightly. Part of the torture.
No bamboo beneath the fingernails. Not yet.
Without having talked it over, Ernie and I arrived at the same alibi. Of course we were separated immediately after our arrest and were not allowed to communicate in any way-a basic tenet of Interrogation 101. But the fact that our stories dovetailed wasn’t miraculous. It made sense if you understood the first rule of lying: Stick with the truth, until it becomes inconvenient. Then say as little as possible.
So we each told the KNPs the same story. We were in Tongduchon searching for leads on the disappearance
