Read Online The Iron Sickle by Martin Limon - Free Book Online Page B

Before he left, he paused and said, “You wouldn’t have twenty bucks you could loan me, would you?”
    I did. I pulled out two blue ten-dollar military payment certificates and handed them to him.
    “Thanks.” He shoved the MPC in his pocket and returned to the hooch. He didn’t want me to see him reimburse Miss Ju for the damage to her room. When he came back, he shrugged. “Don’t want no hard feelings out here in the ville.”
    I slapped him on the back. “You did the right thing.”
    As we walked away, Ernie stuck his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”
    “About what?”
    “About me paying Miss Ju for the damage.”
    “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
    “Good. Riley’d never let me hear the end of it.”
    In the army, performing a good deed is considered to be a character flaw.
    We stopped in the open-air Itaewon Market. Beams of early morning light filtered through canvas awnings and piles of fat fruit shone in their red and purple glory. Vendors and farmers bustled everywhere, jostling with the mostly female shoppers with their wire-handled baskets slung over chubby forearms. We found the stall where last night we’d discovered the dead rat, but the totem was gone. I asked the proprietor what he’d done with it.
    “
Jui-sikki
?” he asked.
    “Yes, a rat.” I described the wood slat foundation and the twisted rectangle of wire.
    He shook his head vehemently. “
An boayo
.” He hadn’t seen anything.
    “The guy must’ve doubled back last night,” Ernie said.
    That’s when I told him about my encounter with the man in black on my way back to the compound. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and whistled.
    The Provost Marshal kept us waiting for almost an hour. Ernie and I had showered, shaved, and changed into our dress green uniforms. The mood at the 8th Army MP Station and here at the CID headquarters was somber to say the least, what with one of our own lying dead at the 8th Army Morgue. I’d only had time to jolt back one cup of strong coffee in the CID admin office, and my stomach was growling.
    When we were told to enter, we marched into his office and stood in front of the Provost Marshal’s mahogany desk. Behind him, displayed on three poles, were the flags of the United States, the Republic ofKorea, and the United Nations Command. We saluted. He didn’t salute back, just continued to glare at the paperwork in front of him. Without looking up, he said, “You left your posts.”
    Ernie spoke up. “An MP was dying out there, sir. We had to do something.”
    Instead of barking a rebuke, which is what I expected, Colonel Walter P. Brace, the Provost Marshal of the 8th United States Army said nothing. The silence grew long. Finally, he said, “The KNPs are asking for you.” For a moment I wondered if Miss Ju had filed charges against Ernie for trashing her hooch, but then Colonel Brace continued. “Inspector Gil Kwon-up. You’ve worked with him before.”
    “Mr. Kill,” Ernie said.
    “Yes. The first murder was committed on compound, under our jurisdiction. The murder last night was committed off compound, under Korean jurisdiction. The KNPs are giving it their highest priority and assigning their most senior homicide investigator, this Mr. Kill. He asked for you, specifically, and his request has been approved by the Chief of Staff, Eighth Army.”
    “Both of us?” Ernie said.
    “Yes, both of you. Apparently he was impressed with your work on that last case you worked on together.”
    The Colonel shuffled through more paperwork, as if he were trying to understand why his two most unreliable CID agents had been assigned to his highest profile case. Colonel Brace preferred investigators like Jake Burrows and Felix Slabem, who would never dare follow up on information that might prove embarrassing. He was worried about losing control of the investigation. Once Ernie and I were out there with the KNPs, Mr. Kill,