Free The Wandering Ghost by Martin Limon

pulled my .45 and shot as many of them as I could until the rest scattered like the cowards they were. Instead, I kept my mind on business.
    With his left hand, Weatherwax fumbled in his jacket for a handkerchief and held it across his nose. Gradually, the flow of blood subsided.
    “MPs don’t run the bars,” I told him. “Too dangerous. GIs you’ve busted get juiced up and want to come after you. And I don’t really believe you’re interested in any of this brassware.”
    Inside the display window, a brass index finger pointed toward the sky.
    “So what?” Weatherwax said. “I’m off duty. I can go where I please.”
    “Where you please,” Ernie said, “is where Warrant Office Bufford tells you to go.”
    “He got nothing to do with it.”
    “Then why are you following us?” I asked.
    Weatherwax looked away, as if he were very tired, still holding the handkerchief to his nose. I could see it coming. I believed Ernie saw it, too. Weatherwax was still enraged and he was about to try something.
    Men in the crowd hooted. One of them bounced too close and Ernie shoved him so hard the skinny guy reeled backwards, slammed into his buddies, and fell backward on his butt. More angry voices erupted.
    Ok-hi and Jeannie stood behind the growing crowd, huddled beneath a plastic awning, looking worried.
    That’s when Weatherwax tried it. I’m not sure where it came from. There must have been a stone or a brick lying on the ground and suddenly it was in his hand, then winging through the air, heading straight for Ernie’s head. Ernie flinched. The missile sliced his ear, barely making contact, veered to the right, and hit one of the GIs in the crowd.
    It was as if a hyena had been thrown into a gaggle of chimps. The howling started. Ernie was trying to punch Weatherwax and Weatherwax was trying to punch Ernie and, as I strained to hold them apart, the same guy who’d been knocked backward onto his ass sneaked out of the pack of gawkers and slammed his puny fist into Ernie’s kidney. I lunged for him but he retreated into the crowd and then Ernie and Weatherwax were going at one another again. Brutally.
    “MPs!” someone shouted and over their heads I could see, heading our way, bobbing black helmets.
    I grabbed Ernie, ripped him away from Weatherwax. The front of his jacket was slathered in blood. Weatherwax wheeled drunkenly, unable to follow. I shoved through the gawking crowd. It wasn’t difficult because most of them were starting to back off now that the MPs were on the way. Ok-hi and Jeannie stood at the mouth of an alley about half a block farther down the narrow road. They waved us on. Together, the four of us—me supporting Ernie, Ok-hi and Jeannie leading—entered the darkness, Ernie still howling about how he was going to kick some MP ass.
    The alley narrowed, the darkness grew, and the hooting voices behind us faded.
    We spent the night with Ok-hi and Jeannie in a yoguan , a Korean inn. Sitting on the warm ondol floor Ok-hi did her best to nurse Ernie’s wounds, but Jeannie had to do most of the practical work: bringing in a pan of hot water; washing out the scratches and bruises; asking the middle-aged woman who owned the yoguan to loan her some antiseptic ointment. Ok-hi mainly cooed and rubbed Ernie’s shoulders and nibbled on the edge of his damaged ear.
    “He was clumsy,” Ernie told me. “I spotted him before we entered the Silver Dragon Club and then, when we came out, he was standing down the street, staring our way. Don’t they teach MPs up here how to conduct a proper tail?”
    “I don’t think Division needs to tail people too often.”
    I’d bought four cold liters of OB at a local shop and while the girls ministered to Ernie, I popped the bottles open and poured the frothing beer into porcelain drinking glasses, the type usually used for serving barley tea. Ok-hi downed hers almost as fast as Ernie. Jeannie left her beer for me.
    “Bufford and Colonel Alcott put him up to it,”