Free The Wandering Ghost by Martin Limon Page A

Ernie said. “You can bet on it.”
    “Probably,” I agreed.
    “Sure they did. They want to keep tabs on what we’re up to. The Division chief of staff is probably breathing down their necks.”
    I’d heard stories about the Division chief of staff: Brigadier General H. K. Pacquet, a decorated veteran of combat in Vietnam. “Hong Kong” Packet is what they called him. Had something to do with a special type of antipersonnel explosive he’d devised while working with the Special Forces. Pacquet had been wounded in Vietnam. Wounded so badly that his face was hideously deformed but he was otherwise healthy, which is why the army decided to keep him on active duty. He’s a hard charger and a bad ass and everyone in Division is terrified of him. Even the honchos at 8th Army back off when “Hong Kong” Packet catches a case of the ass.
    “So they send Weatherwax out to watch us,” I said. “And you beat the crap out of him for his troubles. That’s certainly going to help our position back at Division PMO.”
    “Screw Division,” Ernie said. “They’re interfering with an official investigation.”
    “All they were doing, Ernie, was watching.”
    “Same difference.”
    I wished Ernie would’ve talked to me before he punched out Weatherwax. Maybe there’s something we could’ve done to mislead him. Make him—and the Division honchos—believe we were doing one thing while we were actually doing another. Too late now. By punching out Weatherwax, Ernie’d given Division PMO ammunition to use when they approached 8th Army and asked—as I believed they would—that we be removed from the Jill Matthewson case. They’d wanted us gone from day one. Outside law enforcement nosing around in their territory would never sit well with the Division honchos. I didn’t bother to mention all this to Ernie. Bureaucratic infighting meant nothing to him.
    Ok-hi ordered chop from the woman who owned the yoguan, and twenty minutes later a Korean boy of about twelve years of age brought in a square metal box that he set in the middle of the floor. As he shuffled into the room, the boy kept his eyes down. Respectful in the Confucian tradition, but it also gave me the impression that he was ashamed to look at us. Two debauched American GIs and two even farther-fallen Korean women. It was as if this delivery boy did- n’t want to be contaminated by evil. Without speaking, the boy slid open a side panel on the metal box and pulled out steaming bowls of pibim-bap , fried rice; meiun-tang , hot mackerel soup; and a plate of yaki-mandu , fried pork dumplings. Then he closed the box, bowed, and backed out of the room. All performed without once having actually looked at us.
    Jeannie broke open my wooden chopsticks, unfolded a paper napkin, placed it on my knee, and motioned with her open palm. “ Duh-seiyo ,” she said. Please partake. It wasn’t quite as polite as “ chapsu-seiyo ,” which means the same thing but is spoken to one’s superior rather than to one’s equal. I was pleased to be equal with this Korean business girl named Jeanie, so I dug in.
    After chop, Ernie and Ok-hi retired to their own room. Jeannie cleaned up, setting the empty dishes outside in the vinyl-floored hallway. Then she slid shut the oil-papered door and rolled out two down-filled sleeping mats. I was tired, but not tired enough to ignore her.
    In the morning, Ernie and I were up just after dawn. We said our goodbyes to Ok-hi and Jeannie who lingered in the yoguan since both rooms were paid for until noon.
    The narrow alleys of Tongduchon were quiet and cold in the early morning hours. All the shops and nightclubs and bars were padlocked and shuttered with heavy iron gratings. A low mist spread along cobbled lanes. As we walked, Ernie stuck his hands deep into his pockets and breathed deeply of the frigid air, pungent with the odor of fermented cabbage and stagnating beer and ondol charcoal gas floating from the hotels and yoguans that dotted the