Nightmare Range by Martin Limon Page B

There.”
    Ernie and I walked over. It was just a hovel. Raised foundation, little plastic closet in the corner, folded sleeping mats on a vinyl floor, and a small pot-bellied stove in the center of the room with rickety aluminum tubing reaching to the ceiling. An American officer in dress greens stared at me out of a framed photograph. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, maybe twenty pounds over his fighting weight, with curly brown hair and a big jolly smile. Gold maple leaves on his shoulder glittered along with his white teeth.
    I turned back to the women. “How long has Miss Lim been gone?”
    “She came home from work late last night. The baby never stopped crying. She waited until the curfew was over and then left for the hospital.”
    “Before dawn?”
    “Yes.”
    “And she’s been there ever since?”
    “Yes.”
    The old woman waited patiently, not understanding. I smiled at her, thanked them both, and we turned to go. The woman in the blue shorts and red T-shirt called after me.
    “Hey!”
    We stopped and turned around.
    “Why you GI always make baby and then go?”
    I didn’t have an answer for her. Ernie stopped clicking his gum. We turned around and left.
    The waiting room of the MoBom Hospital was packed. An attractive young Korean woman with a snappy white cap pinned to her black hair sat behind a counter near the entrance. Behind her was a list of basic fees. It was ten thousand
won
, up front, to see a doctor. Fourteen bucks.
    I told her about Miss Lim and her sick baby and asked wherewe could find her. She thumbed through a ledger but kept shaking her head. She wanted to know Miss Lim’s full name. I told her she was the woman with the half-American baby. She perked right up.
    “Oh, yes. She is in Room three fourteen. The stairway is over there.”
    The room held about thirty tiny beds with plastic siding on them. Next to one of them, Miss Lim sat on a wooden chair, her face in her hands. I showed her my identification.
    “Hello, Miss Lim. We’re from the CID.”
    It seemed that her face was about to burst with redness. She was a plain woman, young and thin with a puffy face that looked even more bloated from crying.
    “Is your baby going to be all right?”
    “The doctor is not sure yet. I must wait.”
    Ernie didn’t like it here. He fidgeted with the change in his pocket and then drifted toward the door. My signal to wrap it up quickly.
    “The money you took from behind the bar, it has already been replaced. I will talk to everyone. Explain your situation. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
    Her head went back into her hands, and this time she clutched her red face as if she were trying to bury it in her palms. I couldn’t be sure, but I think her shoulders convulsed a couple of times. I looked down at the baby. It was scrawny. Unconscious. Sweat-soaked brown hair matted against its little head.
    We left.
    Neither one of us spoke as the sloe-eyed stares followed us out of the hospital.
    Ernie zigzagged his jeep through the heavy Seoul traffic as if he were in a race to get away from the devil.
    “Well,” he said. “We wrapped up another one.”
    “I’m sure they won’t do anything to her,” I said. “I’ll type upthe report to make her look as good as possible. Even the Eighth Army chief of staff has got a heart.”
    Ernie didn’t say anything. I turned to him.
    “Right?”
    He shrugged. “If you say so, pal.”
    The chief of staff didn’t want to prosecute, but in his capacity as the president of the Officers’ Club Council he did demand that Miss Lim appear before the next board meeting and explain her actions. The word we got was that he was upset because she could have come to the Club Council at any time, explained the nature of her financial emergency, and they would have helped out. Thievery wasn’t necessary, according to him.
    When Ernie heard that, he snorted. “Nobody likes a person with a problem until that person has already solved the