Free The Iron Sickle by Martin Limon Page B

said. “To the scene of the crime. The game, as your British cousins so aptly put it, is afoot. We have no time to lose.”
    “You believe he’ll strike again?” Ernie asked.
    “Undoubtedly. He has everyone on the run now, doesn’t he? He’ll want to press that advantage and press it hard.”
    Even though we’d worked with him before, it always took me a while to adjust to Inspector Gil’s fluency with the English language. He’d studied in the States, not only at an international police academy set up to train allied police officers in anti-Communist operations, but also at one of the Ivy League universities. I forget which one. And he read a lot, both in Korean and English and sometimes in classical Chinese.
    “Why did you choose us for this assignment?” Ernie asked.
    “You chose yourselves.”
    When he didn’t elaborate, Ernie took the bait. “Okay, Inspector, how exactly did we choose ourselves?”
    “This morning, when I took control of the crime scene from the Itaewon KNP station, the first thing I did was send my men out tocanvas the neighborhood. At the open-air market, they found a vendor who told them that two Americans had been up at dawn, asking him if he’d seen something that had been left at his stall last night. He didn’t know who you were or why you were asking, but he told my man he’d been startled.”
    “Startled by what?”
    “Working in Itaewon, this man sees many Americans walking back and forth on their way to the military compound. Occasionally one of them even stops at his stall and purchases some vegetables or fruit. But the communication is always accomplished by pointing and hand gestures. This American, the one who asked him questions this morning, could speak the language of our illustrious forebears. And speak it well.”
    “So you knew it was my partner, Sueño, here.”
    “Do any other Americans in Eighth Army law enforcement speak Korean?”
    “Hell no. Why bother? On compound everybody speaks English.”
    “Exactly. So I knew it was you two, already investigating, already on the case.”
    “That vendor,” I said, “did he give you any information that he didn’t give us?”
    “He said he felt startled, as if he was staring into the face of a great ape who could talk.”
    Ernie guffawed. “Damn, Sueño, I told you to shave before you went out to the ville.”
    While Ernie enjoyed his laugh, Mr. Kill sat silently. Officer Oh’s narrow shoulders rose as she swerved through traffic. She said, “I don’t think he looks like an ape.”
    Ernie stopped laughing and stared at the back of her head, surprised she could speak English.

    Mr. Kill had made a number of changes at the murder site.
    First, the
pochang macha
had been roped off, as had the area up the walkway where Corporal Collingsworth had been murdered. Technicians in blue smocks with the word
kyongchal
—police—stenciled on their backs were working both crime scenes: dusting for fingerprints, scraping samples of blood, searching under strobe lights for hair or loose strands of material. The KNP sergeant who’d been on duty last night stood off to the side, explaining to the technicians why he hadn’t secured the area earlier and called in forensics: the victim was an American, and therefore he didn’t fall under the jurisdiction of the Itaewon Police station. The KNP was red-faced and embarrassed, knowing it was a flimsy excuse and an inaccurate one, technically. Anything that happened off compound did in fact fall under the jurisdiction of the KNPs as the Provost Marshal had previously informed us. However, out here in Itaewon, the local KNPs often let the American MP patrols handle issues involving American GIs. Less paperwork.
    Mrs. Lee, the owner of the
pochang macha
, sat forlornly on a wooden crate. I walked over to her.
    “Did he come back last night?” I asked.
    She looked up at me. “What? The killer?”
    I nodded.
    She hugged herself and shivered. “No.”
    “Did you sleep in the