Nightmare Range by Martin Limon

customer sends a drink back because it isn’t what he ordered. Inventories shouldn’t come out even down to the last ounce of liquor and the last can of beer. Not real inventories. But when you’re pulling a scam, you might decide to make everything balance perfectly so you don’t attract attention. So you won’t have a couple of nosy CID agents wandering around your club.
    Or maybe the employees collected the money for some other reason. I didn’t know. But most important, I couldn’t figure who had stolen the money in the first place.
    I looked at the cashier. “Who took the money out of the brandy snifter?”
    She stared at the floor. Slowly she began to shake her head. I tried again.
    “Where did all this extra
won
come from? Did you take up a collection?”
    Still she said nothing, as if she were tremendously ashamed, and just kept shaking her head.
    I stood up. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything here. Ernie stood up and threw his empty beer can into the wastebasket. We walked out into the hallway.
    Ernie said, “They’re trying to cover something up.”
    I said, “You got that right.”
    Two cute young Korean girls, bundled in sweaters and scarves, bounced down the hallway toward the main exit. Lunch hour waitresses, heading home. I stopped them and spoke in Korean.
    “Young lady. Who is the head of the union here?”
    They both stopped abruptly, breathless and wide-eyed.
    “Mr. Kwon. The bar manger.”
    I thanked them; they giggled and continued on their way.
    Ernie looked after them. “Nice legs.”
    “That’s all you could see of them.”
    “That was enough.”
    We wandered down the red carpeted hallway, took a couple of lefts, and found the bar manager’s office. Mr. Kwon stood up when we walked in. He was a tall man, close to six feet, maybe in his mid-fifties, and he had the scholarly air of someone who works with books and ledgers—not like most of the bartenders I was used to back in the States. He wore slacks and a white shirt with a black tie. His hair was oiled and combed straight back. I tried to imagine him in the white pantaloons and tunic of the ancient Korean with the hair long and knotted on the top. He looked like a Confucian scholar caught in modern times.
    His eyes widened slightly. “Yes?”
    “It’s about the money you collected,” I said, “to replace what was missing from behind the bar. Why?”
    Mr. Kwon sighed and indicated the chairs across the small cubicle. “Have a seat.”
    We sat.
    “This morning,” he said, “when Miss Pei came to me and toldme the money was missing, we decided to take up a collection and replace it.”
    “We?”
    “The Korean employees here. It is not good to leave something shameful like the disappearance of money unattended to. This is our home. We take care of it.”
    “But Miss Pei had already told one of the Americans, the assistant manager.”
    “A mistake. We should not have bothered you about this matter.”
    “Who took the money?”
    Mr. Kwon looked down for a second then up at me. “The money is back now. There is no reason to worry about who took it.”
    “Maybe not. But I need to know. Otherwise, I won’t know whether to worry or not.”
    “And besides,” Mr. Kwon said, “now that the chief of staff is interested in this matter, you are nervous and if you don’t find out the truth it could be bad for you.”
    Bingo. I was hardly admitting it to myself. If this had been the Enlisted Club and the money had been returned and none of the 8th Army honchos had known about it, I wouldn’t have bothered to look any further. As it was, the first sergeant would be breathing fire if we didn’t wrap this thing up.
    Ernie jumped in. “Don’t you worry about the chief of staff. You just tell us who stole that damn money.”
    Mr. Kwon looked at him steadily. “One of our waitresses stole it. Miss Lim.”
    Ernie said, “Why haven’t you turned her in?”
    “We will take care of it. Our own way.”
    There was something