The Iron Sickle (25 page)

Captain Leah Prevault stood next to us. I started to smile but then caught myself. The look on her face was more than grim, it was enraged.

I started to say something but before I could even get out a greeting, her small hand swung from her side and landed on the side of my face. The sound bit into the air around us and all activity stopped. No more murmuring of voices, no more clang of porcelain on tableware. For some reason, even the jukebox chose that moment to shut off and whirr between records.

All eyes turned toward us. Even Ernie seemed shocked.

“You betrayed us,” Captain Prevault said.

“What?” I stammered.

“Doctor Hwang,” she said. “And the patients at the Mental Health Sanatorium. You betrayed them all.
All
!” she shouted.

I was dumbstruck. I had no idea what she was talking about. “What?” I said.

“They arrested them all!”

“Who did?”

“I don’t
know
! You know. They came with trucks and arrested Doctor Hwang and rounded up all the patients and took them away and now the entire valley is empty. I stopped by there on the way back from the field. There are military
guards
out front. They wouldn’t let me in until I insisted and finally they showed me. They’re all gone. For purposes of national security, they told me. You had them
arrested
!”

“Wait a minute, lady,” Ernie said, standing up and holding out his hands. “My partner didn’t have anybody arrested. I was with him all last night, and we didn’t go near this place, this ‘sanatorium’ you’re talking about.”

“Then his friends did it!” she said. “You have to do something about it. They’re not
criminals
!”

And then she was crying. I finally stood up and tried to comfort her but she slapped my hand away, staring at me with a face full of rage, and turned and trotted out of the snack bar, knocking over somebody’s coffee on the way out.

As we were about to climb into the jeep, Strange appeared.

“Had any
strange
lately?”

“Can it, Harvey,” Ernie said. “We’re in no mood for your bullshit.”

“Who’s talking about bullshit? I’ve got the real deal for you.”

“What deal?”

Strange looked both ways. “Keep this under your hat,” he said. “You two were busy at Eighth Army headquarters last night.”

“So?” Ernie said.

Strange stepped closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They know about the Bogus Claims File. They know you have it. They want it back.”

“They’ll have to ask nice,” Ernie said.

“They know that,” Strange said. “Technically, the file doesn’t exist so they know they can’t arrest you for taking it. But there are all sorts of other charges they can bring you up on. Entering a restricted area, for one.”

“The SOFA Secretariat’s Office?” I said.

“
Exactement
,” Strange said. “Not to mention anything else they feel like making up.”

Strange was right. The Uniform Code of Military Justice uses such
vague language and covers so many broad areas of behavior that, when directed, the JAG office can charge just about anybody with just about anything.

“So maybe we’ll give it back,” I said, “after the investigation.”

“They want it now.”

“People in hell want ice water,” Ernie said.

“Then you better make yourself scarce,” Strange said. Like a hound sniffing danger in the air, he stepped away and turned his back on us. Within seconds, he was rounding the corner toward the snack bar and in the distance we heard a siren blaring.

Ernie jumped in the driver’s seat and started the jeep. I got myself in the passenger seat just as he shoved the little vehicle in gear. We spurted out of the parking lot too late. The MP jeep spotted us. I glanced back. Staff Sergeant Moe Dexter was at the wheel, one MP on his right and two more crouched in the backseat. All of them were armed with M-16 rifles, except for Dexter, but I’m sure he had a .45 on his hip.

Ernie slammed the jeep into high gear, and it surged forward. As we neared Gate Number Seven, a Korean guard marched out into the roadway, holding up his open palm, ordering us to halt. Ernie stepped on the gas. At the last second, the guard leapt out of the way.

Horns blared as Ernie skidded into the busy midday traffic.
Kimchi
cabs, three-wheeled trucks, and the occasional ROK Army military vehicle made way as Ernie careened out of Gate Number Seven and headed east on the Main Supply Route. Moe Dexter and his boys barreled after us, siren blaring, only a few yards back.

“Where are you going?” I shouted.

“Itaewon.”

“It’s too crowded,” I said.

“That’s why I’m going there.”

Ernie swerved past cabs, darting into and out of oncoming traffic, once even leaping up on the pedestrian walkway to get around a slow moving truck. I held on and prayed.

An old woman with a cane, impervious to the swirling machinery around her, tottered across the roadway. “Watch out!” I shouted. Ernie slammed on his brakes, swerved to his right, downshifted, and once past the elderly
halmonni
, surged forward once again.

Moe Dexter wasn’t nearly as deft. He slammed on his brakes in time to avoid murdering the old woman, but then he laid into his horn, thereby insulting a respected elder. I turned in my seat to watch. Pedestrians started shouting at him. One
kimchi
cab driver got out of his car as if to confront the four burly Americans, and a truck loaded with garlic nosed in front of Dexter’s jeep. Dexter ignored the taunts, backed up, and then slammed his front fender into the side of the
kimchi
cab. He twisted the little vehicle out of the way, the driver screaming and cursing at him all the while. And then Dexter was after us again.

“About two hundred yards back,” I said.

“He’s still coming?”

“Still coming.”

Ernie turned right and entered the narrow road that passed through the heart of Itaewon, past the UN Club, the Lucky Lady Club, the Seven Club, and finally the King Club. He hung a left up Hooker Hill. We passed a few middle-aged housewives with huge bundles of laundry balanced on their heads. They weren’t too mobile carrying that much weight and with only a few feet of clearance on either side of the jeep, Ernie had to slow to give them time to get out of the way. When we reached the top of the hill, Ernie turned right up a gradual incline that was even narrower than the road running up Hooker Hill. I looked back and glimpsed Moe Dexter barreling uphill after us.

“He’s still coming?” Ernie asked.

“Still coming.”

We passed one alley leading back down to the nightclub district and then another. On this second one, Ernie turned right. Immediately, our pathway was blocked by about three dozen young women milling about in front of an establishment with a sign that said
Hei Yong Mokyok-tang
, Sea Dragon Bathhouse. Caressing both sides of the Korean words were two brightly painted mermaids, smiling past long blonde tresses.

Ernie could’ve avoided this alley, but he’d purposely slowed and inched forward into the crowd. Ernie tapped his horn playfully, waved at the girls, and blew kisses. Most of the girls carried metal pans containing soap and shampoo and other toiletries balanced against their hips. And they looked great. Their straight black hair was held up by metal clips, and many of them wore short pants with either T-shirts or pullover sweaters with no brassieres beneath, their full natural jiggle on fleshy display. Other than the bars and nightclubs themselves, the Sea Dragon Bathhouse was the main social gathering place for the Itaewon business girls. Here they could meet during the light of day, trade gossip, and catch up on which establishments were hiring waitresses or hostesses or barmaids and who amongst their exclusive clan had landed a rich boyfriend or, better yet, a GI who would marry them and carry them back to the Land of the Big PX. Still holding on to the steering wheel, Ernie leaned to his left, reached into his pocket, and pulled out an industrial-sized pack of ginseng gum. Quickly, he started handing out sticks to grasping hands.

Behind us, Moe Dexter and his MP cohort rounded the corner.

“Don’t let them through!” Ernie shouted. I repeated what he’d said in Korean, adding, “The MPs have arrested a Korean woman.”

As our jeep passed, the girls clustered helpfully behind us. Moe Dexter was honking his horn, but it wasn’t working. Angry business girls stood in front of his jeep and on the sides, taunting the MPs,
shouting at them to go back to their compound. Pent-up rage at having been humiliated by members of law enforcement, of having always to show their updated VD cards, of being busted for selling the gifts GIs gave them on the black market—all of these emotions bubbled quickly into anger, and in this large gathering the business girls of Itaewon finally held the power. Cursing and red-faced, Moe slammed the palm of his big hand on the jeep’s horn and held it down, screaming at them to get out of the way. This seemed to make the girls even more determined. They pressed forward in front of the jeep, and Moe Dexter was forced by the growing crowd of female pulchritude to come to a complete halt.

At the bottom of the hill, we rounded the corner. Ernie stepped on it, and in a few seconds we’d reached the MSR. Ernie turned right and really let it rip, slamming on the brakes when he had to, giving it the gas when he could, showing the skills he’d developed during his years in Asia. Within seconds, we passed Hannam-dong and turned right until we reached Chamsu Bridge. Ernie crossed it heading south, and soon we were on the wide open roads running parallel to the Han River in the district known a Gangnam, literally River South. There were a few high-rise apartments along the waterfront but not many. Straw hatted farmers worked the fields that stretched on the long inland plains to distant hills. It was as if by just crossing the bridge, we’d been transported back in time. I even spotted a tired-looking ox pulling a plow.

I turned in my seat and studied the road behind us. From here, I had a clear view of Chamsu Bridge.

“No jeeps,” I said, turning back around.

“We lost ’em,”

“
You
lost them,” I said, “with the help of a few business girls.”

“I have always depended,” Ernie said, “on the kindness of business girls.”

We found Mr. Kill three stories below ground in the interrogation room of the Korean National Police headquarters. When he emerged, his tie was loose and his sleeves were rolled up. He looked exhausted.

“What do you want?” he said.

“The National Mental Health Sanatorium. What happened? Every patient there was arrested.”

“Not arrested,” he said. “They were just taken in for questioning.”

“Like the other witnesses were taken in for questioning?”

He shrugged.

“Have they been released yet?”

“Some of them.”

“How about the director, Doctor Hwang?”

“He’s been particularly uncooperative.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?” Ernie said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Mr. Kill looked down the hallway and then back at Ernie. “This isn’t the States. We do things the Korean way.” He pointed his forefinger at Ernie’s nose. “We do things
our
way.”

Ernie bristled. I stepped between them.

“Okay,” I said. “We can’t talk you into releasing these people but you can at least tell us what you’ve learned from them.”

“Not much. Other than they’re all a bunch of Communists.”

“You mean literally members of the Communist party?”

“No. I mean in the way they obstinately oppose the goals of President Pak Chung-hee.”

“That’s it?” Ernie said. “That’s why you’re holding them?”

Mr. Kill placed his hands on his hips and his face hardened. “How about your investigation? What have you found?”

“Not much,” Ernie said.

Mr. Kill nodded, as if that was the answer he expected. “So if you’ll excuse me.”

He returned to the interrogation room. We watched him go. Silently, we turned and trudged back up the steps.

“Nobody really seems to want to solve this thing,” Ernie said. “They’re just using the iron sickle murders as an excuse to resolve old grudges.”

“Mr. Kill could solve it if he wanted to,” I said. “He has all the resources of the Korean National Police at his disposal and yet he continues to concentrate on peripheral issues.”

“So what does that tell us?”

“It tells us that they want
us
, Eighth Army, to solve it.”

“Why?” Ernie asked.

“Because the KNPs don’t want to touch it.”

“And why would that be?”

“Because they’re afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“There’s only one thing in this world the Korean National Police are afraid of,” I said.

Ernie looked at me, waiting for the answer.

“Politics,” I said.

We passed the information desk in the main floor lobby. A few uniformed officers stared at us, and there was a lot or murmuring.

“I don’t like it,” Ernie said. “Maybe Eighth Army put the word out to be on the lookout for us. Let’s get out of here.”

I agreed.

Without incident, we reached the jeep in the parking lot and rolled into the busy streets of Seoul.