Nightmare Range (15 page)

A group of about a half-dozen Korean women sat around a low table, all of them leaning over metal bowls of steaming soup. Mouths hung open. Chopsticks clattered against porcelain.

“Where’s the tall woman?” I asked in English. “The one who just came from the PX?”

Two or three of the women were young and the others not so young, but trying to look that way. Their hair was in disarray and their eyes sleepy but they were all attractive. Very attractive. Ernie entered the room, grinning.

“
Yoboseiyo,
” he said. “Where’s the stuff from the commissary? Come on.
Bali, bali
.” Quickly.

None of the women seemed to understand him although I knew that if they were hired as hostesses to the rich and famous,
they must speak English, and probably Japanese. I scanned the room. No sign of the contraband.

“Come on, Ernie,” I said. “Let’s keep looking.”

Before he followed me out of the room, he stopped and waved at them. “Goodbye, girls.”

We slid open every paneled door but each room was filled only with flat cushions for sitting and low mother-of-pearl inlaid tables. Downstairs, I lifted the countertop on the end of the bar and searched back there. Nothing. Ernie found a storage room and managed to pry it open. Fumbling around in the darkness, he finally located a light and switched it on.

“Here it is,” he said.

The walls were lined with wooden cupboards holding neatly arranged bottles of liquor, wine, champagne and various decanters filled with liqueurs and aperitifs the names of which I couldn’t pronounce. Some of the containers had the Korean customs import stamp on them, some didn’t.

Atop a raised wooden pallet sat the two cases of soda, the two cases of American beer and about a half-dozen paper bags. I rummaged inside the bags. Stuck between four bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label, I found the receipt from the Class VI Store, dated today, time-stamped less than an hour ago. I lifted it out and shoved it into my pocket.

“Where’d she go?” I asked.

“Hell if I know,” Ernie replied.

We stepped out of the storeroom and back into the cocktail lounge. Someone was waiting for us. A middle-aged Korean woman, tall, full-figured, with an elaborately coiffed black hairdo, her body wrapped in a flower-patterned blue silk dressing robe. She stared at us for a moment, her face dour, the brow wrinkled.

“
Koma-ya
!” she said. Boy!

A slender young man appeared out of the shadows, wearing black trousers, a pressed white shirt, and a black bow tie. He bowed to the woman.

“
Kopi, seigei,
” she said. Coffee, three.

He bowed again and backed away.

Then she motioned toward the largest linen covered tables in the center of the room, her eyes never wavering from ours. “Sit,” she said.

“No time to sit, mama-san,” Ernie said. “Where’s the tall woman? The one who brought you the Johnny Walker Black?”

“She go,” she said.

“Where?”

“Not your business.”

“It is our business,” Ernie said, pulling out his badge. “We’re from Eighth Army CID and you’re in violation of Korean import restrictions. We can call the Korean National Police and we will, if you don’t tell us where to find the tall woman with the dependent ID card.”

“Sit!” she said, pointing a polished nail at two upholstered wooden chairs.

Ernie walked forward. “Why the hell should we?”

“Because,” she said, “I am Tiger Kang. I know every honcho at Eighth Army and every Eighth Army honcho know Tiger Kang!”

She pointed her red-tipped forefinger at Ernie’s nose. “And you two are in deep kimchi.”

“We been there before,” Ernie replied.

The boy reappeared, this time holding a tray with a silver pot of coffee and three saucers and cups. He placed them atop the immaculate tablecloth, along with tiny silver spoons, a container of cream and a bowl of sugar. He bowed once again to Tiger Kang and departed. The coffee smelled good. I sat down. So did Tiger Kang. Finally, reluctantly, so did Ernie.

In the Army, when you break a regulation, even a foolish black market regulation, it is tantamount to disobeying a direct order—and, therefore, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, serious stuff. Abusing one’s Commissary and PX privileges by either reselling purchased items or giving a gift of
more than twenty-five dollars value to an unauthorized person was a breach of United States Forces Korea Regulation 190-2 and a violation of the Republic of Korea’s customs laws.

On small black market cases, people would be adjudicated guilty on the preponderance of evidence, which sometimes came down to nothing more than the word of me and Ernie. In addition, American GIs were deemed by the military to be responsible for the activities of their dependents. More than one GI had been denied promotion because his wife had been caught black marketing. A few were even busted down in rank. A small handful, depending on the extent of the black marketing operation, were court-martialed, spending weeks or even months in the Army Support Command stockade.

Ernie and I wielded a lot of power in this regard. Usually, we were reluctant to use it and sometimes we gave people a break. But we both figured that anyone making good money at the oldest
kisaeng
house in Seoul could afford a little inconvenience. Besides, Mrs. Wrypointe was breathing down our necks. Even from where I sat, in the middle of Tiger Kang’s
kisaeng
house, I could still feel the hot breath of the President of the Officers’ Wives’ Club. We needed a bust and we needed a bust soon. To get Mrs. Wrypointe off our backs, to get the Provost Marshal off our backs, but more importantly to free up some time so we could hunt for the men who had raped and brutalized the innocent Itaewon bar hostess known as Sunny, we needed to proceed with this arrest—despite Tiger Kang’s threats.

“Where is she,” Ernie asked, “the woman who bought that stuff out of the Class Six?”

Tiger Kang glowered at him. “Why you bother her? She good woman.”

“She works for you?” I asked.

“Sometimes. Sometimes we have big party. Need more girls. I call. Sometimes she come. Sometimes she no come.”

“What’s her husband think about this line of work?” Ernie asked.

Tiger Kang shrugged again. “Not my business.”

“We want to talk to her,” I said.

“She go.”

“So quickly?”

“She think you follow her, so she go.”

That was pretty brazen. She could’ve taken the stuff home, wherever that was, and then we’d have no case against her. Instead, she’d brought it here to Tiger Kang’s, as if to taunt us into making the arrest; figuring we wouldn’t because of Tiger Kang’s connections.

“Wherever she’s gone,” Ernie said, “we’ll find her.”

I had the receipt. That and the ration control record at the Class VI would be enough to trace her.

“Maybe,” Tiger Kang said.

“No maybe about it,” I replied. “We’ll find her. And we’re going to confiscate that stuff in the storeroom.”

“No,” Tiger Kang said. “You no take.” Tiger Kang poured cream and ladled sugar into her coffee. “You no take,” she repeated.

“Why the hell not?” Ernie asked.

“Honchos get angry. Your honcho, Eighth Army, they all the time come here.”

“They drink your black market scotch?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Anything they drink. They all the time want American beer. That’s why I buy.”

Ernie sipped on his coffee. “Not bad,” he said.

“Tiger Kang no use Folgers,” she said. “I buy from Colombia.”

“Nice,” Ernie replied. “You must have some rich dudes coming in here.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Many rich dudes.”

Ernie glugged down the last of his coffee and stood up. “Let’s get that stuff, Sueño, and load it into the jeep. We still have time to make a couple more black market busts today and get old Mrs. Wrypointe off our butts.”

Tiger Kang was studying him as he spoke.

“You leave here,” she said, “then you don’t have to take to MP Station, get hand receipt. Save you time.”

Ernie eyed her suspiciously. “You know a lot about how this works.”

“Tiger Kang know,” she said, pointing at her nose. “All the time I talk to honchos.”

It actually wasn’t going to make any difference if we confiscated the commissary and Class VI items. We already had the receipt and even without that, through the ration control records, we’d soon know the name of the woman who’d purchased them, and the name of her husband. As far as proof of the fact that she’d delivered them to Tiger Kang’s, our testimony was good enough. Usually we took both the woman and the black market items back to the MP Station—mainly just as a show to humiliate her more than anything else—but since she was gone, it was too late for that.

We could’ve contacted the Korean National Police liaison and turned Tiger Kang in for a customs violation but that would’ve been a waste of time. The KNPs wouldn’t do anything to someone who hobnobbed with the rich and powerful. Mrs. Wrypointe and the 8th Army Provost Marshal wanted volume, a lot of black market arrests. If the details of the police work were a little sloppy, that was besides the point. The purpose was to scare the hell out of the
yobo
s and thin out their ranks in the commissary and PX. Ernie and I knew the game. We’d played it before.

Ernie turned to Tiger Kang. “What’s her name?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The woman who brought the liquor and beer.”

“
Kokktari,
” Tiger Kang replied. Long Legs.

“That’s it?” Ernie asked. Even he knew that wasn’t a proper Korean name.

Tiger Kang shrugged. “That’s what we call her.”

“Where does she live?”

Tiger Kang shrugged her silk-clad shoulders. “
Moolah
me.” I don’t know.

“All right,” Ernie said. “No name, no address, no Johnny Walker Black.”

He rose from the table and we walked back to the storage room. We left the two cases of pop but Ernie hoisted the beer and I hoisted the liquor and we carried it out past Tiger Kang, through the kitchen, and out to the jeep. All the while, I kept thinking Tiger Kang would jump us and try to scratch our eyes out, or at least have her boys do it. Other black market mama-sans had attacked us before in attempt to protect their ill-gotten contraband. But Tiger Kang did nothing. She just crossed her arms and glared at us.

I kept thinking of her curse. Maybe that’s why she didn’t lift a finger to stop us. Maybe somebody else would. Maybe somebody in our own chain of command. And maybe Tiger Kang was right. Maybe we truly were in deep kimchi now.

But like Ernie said, we’d been there before.

Back at the Class VI Store I made the Korean manager come out and unlock the green metal ammo can that held the ration control punch cards. With him watching, I shuffled through the thick stack and compared each one of the cards to the purchase receipt I held in my hands. Finally I found it: two cases of soda, two cases of beer and four bottles of Johnny Walker Black.

The name imprinted on the punch card was Mei-lan Burkewalder, dependent wife of Captain Irwin Burkewalder, US Army. Her first name didn’t sound Korean to me. Maybe Chinese. Since Red China was our avowed enemy and therefore no-man’s land for American GIs, I figured she must be from somewhere else. Hong Kong or Singapore, maybe. More likely Taiwan. Back at the CID office, I asked Staff Sergeant Riley, the Admin NCO, to use his contacts at 8th Army personnel to find out more about the Burkewalders.

Later that afternoon, Ernie and I made two more black
market busts, these out in Itaewon, and we figured that would take the pressure off of us, at least temporarily.

Early the next morning, Ernie gassed up his jeep at the Twenty-one T (Car) motor pool, picked me up at the barracks, and we wound our way off compound, through the still-quiet streets of Seoul, past carts being pushed and glimmering piles of cabbage being unloaded, and headed north on the Main Supply Route. At the outskirts of the city, the sign said
UIJONGBU
, 15
KM
. What we were looking for was a lead on the GIs who’d gang raped Sunny.

Fallow rice paddies lined the road. Ernie stiff-armed the big steering wheel around broad curves. Off to the east, the sun was just beginning to peek over distant hills.

“It feels good,” he said, “to be investigating real crime for once.”

I inhaled the crisp autumn air. Wisps of smoke rose through metal tubes atop tile-roofed farmhouses. Men in straw hats and women huddled in linen hoods balanced wooden hoes and scythes across their backs as they trudged toward distant fields.

“What’d Riley find out about that
kisaeng
we busted yesterday?” Ernie asked.

“She’s a third country national,” I told him, “from Taiwan. Mother’s Korean, father’s Chinese. They fled mainland China with the Kuomintang to Taiwan a couple of years before she was born. Somehow she met this Captain Burkewalder. They got married.”

“Where’s he stationed?”

“Vietnam. MAC-V advisory group.”

Ernie whistled. “Lucky dog,” he said.

Ernie’d spent two tours in Vietnam, loving every minute of it. The first tour he drove big trucks up and down Highway One and spent his off-duty hours smoking pungent hashish in his sand-bagged bunker. By the time he returned on his second tour, things had changed. No hashish available. The only way for a GI to get high was to buy pure China White from snot-nosed kids through the concertina wire.

“Uncle Ho used it as a weapon,” he always said, “and it worked.”

For Americans, the war had wound down. Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization program had succeeded and the few thousand American GIs still left in-country were mostly advisors to ARVN troops. Still, it was a dangerous job, maybe more dangerous than being part of an American combat unit, and I didn’t envy the assignment.

“So you think they’ll notify Captain Burkewalder about his wife having her PX privileges revoked?”

“They have to,” Ernie replied. “He’s her sponsor, theoretically responsible for everything she does. Helluva thing to have to worry about when you’re concentrating on staying alive.”

We reached the outskirts of the city of Uijongbu and Ernie downshifted the jeep.