Jade Lady Burning (22 page)

“The place looks great,” I said.

He opened a beer for me. “Beats living in a tent out in the field at Fort Lewis.” He opened one for himself. “The old lady’s out playing
bua tu
with their friends. Probably be out all night and come back in the morning down about two hundred bucks.” He lifted his can and smiled. “So we can drink all day and night.”

We all took big long swigs on the ice-cold beers. I felt the color coming back to my cheeks.

“Can’t stay long,” I said. “We’re in the middle of an investigation.”

“The CID never sleeps,” Ernie said. He grabbed a huge handful of mixed nuts and stuffed them into his mouth.

“What do you know about General Bohler?” I asked.

“Bohler?” Milt said. “Why would you guys want anything to do with that old fart? He’s dangerous.”

“It’s a long story,” I said, carefully picking out a Brazil nut. “And I don’t have much time for it right now.”

“Okay.” Milt held out his hand as if to stop me. “Say no more.”

Milt finished his beer and the old woman padded into the room with three more. She served Milt first and then us and I hurried and finished mine and handed her the empty. Ernie crushed his can before he gave it to her. Can’t take him anywhere.

“How much clout does Bohler actually have downtown?” I asked.

“Clout isn’t the word,” Milt said. “Anybody who holds the position of Chief of Staff owns the town. Everybody here—the mayor, the chief of police, even me, we’re all dependent on the money that comes from Eighth Army.”

“Not just the payrolls,” I said.

“Of course not. There’s a lot of Korean workers on the compound, but in addition to their paychecks, they manage to squeeze a lot of materiel out of the base: leftovers from the mess halls, used supplies that can be written off the property book. And occasionally there’s even out-and-out theft,” Milt said. “As long as it remains a tolerable percentage, the Army just writes it off. It’s cheaper than the expense of trying to chase it down.”

“And the Koreans know what the percentage is,” Ernie said. He was getting drunk.

“Yeah … building contracts, the cleaning contracts, the maintenance contracts. It’s endless.” Milt made a helpless gesture. “And the big shots here have their chopsticks in every pot and they got to pay off the bigger guys down in Seoul. Hell, a lot of the money probably filters all the way to the top.”

“Probably most of it,” Ernie said.

“And if a commander tried to clamp down on it all,” I said, “what would happen to him?”

“Not too much.” Milt shrugged. “Depending on how hard he pushed. They might make life miserable for him, but mainly they’d just wait for him to finish his tour and be replaced by another guy.”

“One who might be corrupt.”

“Naw,” Milt said. “Most of the COs aren’t corrupt. Not in any big way anyway. It’s just that they’ve got a choice. If they fight it, they won’t win and they might be risking their military careers. If one pushed too hard, they’ll find a way to cope with him.”

“Like?” I said.

“Whatever,” Milt said.

“But the smart ones just ignore it,” I said. “Pretend it’s not happening.”

“Exactly,” Milt nodded. “If he plays along, they treat him like a king. They give him awards and plaques and have ceremonies for him. And if any one of his Korean workers gets too greedy or doesn’t live up to his responsibilities and embarrasses the commander, the Koreans in power will have his ass.”

“Self-policing,” Ernie said.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

The old lady brought in three more beers and picked up the empties. Ernie forgot to crush his can this time.

“I suppose,” I said, “it wouldn’t be anything for them to set him up down in the ville with a little dolly.”

“Whichever one he chooses,” Milt said. He leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his beer.

“Would he have to pay her?” Ernie asked.

“The commander don’t have to pay for nothing in Itaewon,” Milt said. “Oh, she might hustle a little money from him and some stuff from the PX, shit like that. But she’d better not gouge him and piss him off. The Koreans’d have her little butt.”

Milt sighed, staring off into space at the beauty of it all. He suddenly seemed to realize something. “Hey, you guys don’t have something on General Bohler, do you?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

He sipped his beer for a moment and then looked at me. “What’d you find out, George?”

“Nothing much, really. Except that Bohler is a pervert.”

“We all knew that.”

“No, a real pervert,” I said. “Chains, whips, all the basic equipment.”

“Everybody’s got to have a little fun,” Milt said. “Gets boring fucking with the troops all day.”

“There’s more to it than that,” I said. “He’d been seeing a Miss Pak, recently deceased. He’s the last person that I know of to see her alive.”

“George, you’d better forget about it.” He sat forward in his chair. “The Army’d back him up all the way to the presidential palace. They’d find something to charge you with and burn you both. Don’t mess with this. It’s officer stuff. And if you really piss them off, they’ll let the Koreans have you for lunch.”

13

E
rnie was particularly morose. Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was the fact that we were sitting in a canvas-covered jeep, it was cold, there was no heater, snow was on the ground, and we were freezing our balls off. Or maybe it was something else. I asked.

“Why so glum, chum?”

Ernie tightened his arms across his chest and grunted.

“The Nurse?”

He shifted in his seat and turned slightly away from me.

Bingo.

We were parked in what looked like a residential area but was actually nothing but small houses that were divided into individual rooms for field-grade officers—majors and above. We were at the bottom of a hill at the top of which sat Major General Bohler’s official residence, a rambling ranch-style home surrounded by an electrified chain-link fence and security guards. The narrow street was lined with sturdy green shrubbery and the naked bark of elm trees gutting out the winter.

The purpose of this exercise was to spot General Bohler on his morning jog. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it’s just that when I put somebody under surveillance I like to start from the beginning, at his first rising in the morning, like the first page of a book.

We’d kept our drinking to a minimum the night before, and when we parted in Itaewon Ernie had promised to meet me at the motor pool so we could pick up his jeep at 0530. Miss Lim, the one with the husband in Cincinnati, had been a little surprised that I had stayed so sober and that we’d gone to the
yoguan
so early.

I’d asked the old woman who owned the place to wake me at five in the morning. It had been hard to leave Miss Lim. I promised I’d meet her at the American Club tonight, which maybe was a mistake, because I had no idea where this surveillance would lead.

Ernie exhaled vapor in the chill air. He said, “Why would a major general be involved with a floozy like Miss Pak Ok-suk?”

“For the same reason most old farts get involved with beautiful young women.”

“Altruism?”

“Right. And also they want to get a little nooky.”

“Why would he kill her?”

“Maybe that’s the way he gets his kicks, or maybe it was an accident, or maybe she had something on him and he wanted to keep it quiet, or maybe somebody else killed her and he wanted to cover it up to avoid scandal, or maybe …”

“All right, all right. I get the point. We don’t know.”

“Not yet.”

“How do we find out?”

“Follow him. See what he does. Then ask questions when it seems appropriate.”

“How do you put a tail on a major general?”

“The same way we normally do. Only it will probably be easier.”

“I guess you’re right. Everybody’ll just figure we’re extra security.”

“Yeah. Even he’ll probably figure that.”

“Big ego.”

“The biggest.”

Ernie had been in a good mood after that. We had a chance to nail a big shot. But the Nurse must have put him through the wringer last night. Sitting in our cramped little jeep, his mood was foul and evil.

I heard heavy breathing and rhythmic crunching on the snow before I could see him. An Airedale, a big prancing puppy, bounded out of the morning mist, Major General Clarence T. Bohler plodding after him. Determined. Grim.

The general ran past us down the hill and then turned left, heading for the South Post gymnasium, which had been forced to begin opening at 0600 ever since he took over as Eighth Army’s chief of staff.

“The son of a bitch didn’t even pay any attention to us.”

“Probably figures we’re waiting to escort one of these officers somewhere.”

Focusing his anger on the general seemed to make Ernie feel a little better. He sat up and started the jeep. We rolled down the hill a few feet and then he turned around and headed toward General Bohler’s residence. Ernie sped up the long driveway, past the half-asleep gate guard, and pulled up in front of the house.

The gate guard was up now, and walking toward us. Another khaki-clad Korean paced the far fence, staring at us curiously, an M-1 rifle slung over his shoulder.

A rock planter fronted the house, and the windows were large and very clean. It was a big place and the old guy must have had plenty of room in there to knock around by himself.

I grabbed my clipboard, hopped out of the jeep, and strode toward the approaching gate guard.

“Security inspection,” I said. I flashed my badge at him. “Why didn’t you stop and check us at the gate?”

“I tried to but …”

I scribbled something on the clipboard. “Never mind. Show us the rest of the grounds.”

A GI with a clipboard can do no wrong.

The guard walked us across the frozen lawn and explained how many guards were on duty at any one time and told us how the shift changes worked.

“Anyone in the house?”

“The housemaid. She always comes in early to help General Bohler with his jogging shoes.”

“Help him with his jogging shoes?”

“Yes. Tie them for him.”

Ernie’s eyebrows just about ripped themselves off the top of his head.

“Who else is on the staff?”

“The cook. He’ll be in first and later his assistant. And of course the housemaid’s assistant.”

We were behind the house now and had a good view of the Frontier Club, the skeet range, and far off in the misty distance the Chamsu Bridge stretching across the rolling Han River.

In the back were two oversized dollhouses. Plastic bowls sat in front of them.

“The dog?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why are there two of them?”

“General Bohler, he had another dog, the brother of the one that he has now.”

“She’s a bitch?”

“What?”

“A girl. A girl dog?”

“Yes. But her brother, he disappeared, ran away. Almost two weeks ago.”

“Was this dog a cherry boy?”

The guard looked up at me and his eyebrows arched.

“A cherry boy,” I said. “He never caught a girl dog. Young dogs are very strong and if a man eats a young dog, then he will be very strong, too.”

The gate guard smiled.

“And whoever finds this strong young dog, this cherry boy, he will be able to sell him to one of the special places in Seoul and make a lot of money.”

The gate guard’s frown returned.

“Maybe a hundred thousand won. Maybe more.”

“I don’t know. I never do that. I never eat dog meat.”

“You ought to try it sometime,” Ernie said. “It makes your
jamji
hard.” He clenched his fist and held his forearm rigidly in front of his chest.

I stopped writing on my clipboard and I think the gate guard was starting to wonder if this was a real inspection.

“Who’s working tonight?”

“Mr. Jung. He will be the chief. Starting at eight o’clock.”

“Tell him we will be back to talk to him tonight.”

The gate guards huddled in the center of the lawn and mumbled among themselves as Ernie careened the jeep down the slippery incline.

“Yo, Sarge. How goes it?”

The crewcut NCO looked up at Ernie from his chipped beef on toast, a little startled at friendliness so early in the morning. He was a stocky man, with a little gray at the temples and the weathered skin that comes when your face has been scraped by a razor about a jillion times. A tiny American flag pinned his black tie to his neatly pressed poplin shirt.

“Okay, Bascom, okay. How are you?”

“Hanging in there.”

Ernie plopped his plate atop the plastic-coated tablecloth and sat down at the small table. So did I. One of the Korean waitresses, carrying a heavily loaded tray, shuffled over and offered us coffee, juice, or milk.

I took one of each.

The Eighth Army mess hall is huge and noisy but the food is cheap. Forty-five cents for breakfast. All you can eat.

“The old man treating you okay?”

The sarge snorted.

“Late hours?”

“Not so much that. He likes to be by himself at night. It’s the seven days a week. He always has something going.”

“From what I can see, the headquarters pretty much closes down on Saturdays and Sundays.”