Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  He drove around town. He saw Lehigh University and, just for the hell of it, drove inside. There really wasn’t much to see. He was disappointed, and wondered why. What had he expected?

  He went back to the Hotel Bethlehem, and checked out. When the eight-to-four shift let out, he was standing at the end of the bridge over the railroad tracks hoping he would be able to spot Tommy.

  Tommy spotted him first. Tommy had changed so much he had let him walk right by him. But Tommy saw him out of the corner of his eye, and came back—even though the last fucking person in the fucking world he expected to see was his fucking brother on the fucking bridge wearing a fucking suit.

  They went to the Lithuanian Club, and drank a lot of beer. Once Tommy told the guys his fucking big brother was a fucking corporal in the fucking Marines, it was all right with them despite the fucking suit that made him look like a fucking fairy.

  The Lithuanian Club reminded McCoy of the Million Dollar Club in Shanghai. Not in looks. The Lithuanian Club was a dump. It smelled of beer and piss. But the Million Dollar Club was the place where Marines went because they had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but get drunk when the duty day was over. And that’s all the Lithuanian Club was, too, a place where the enlisted men from the steel mill went because there was no place else to go when they came away from the open hearths, and nothing to do but get drunk.

  Tommy reminded McCoy of a lot of Marines he knew, particularly in the line companies.

  They wound up in a whorehouse by the railroad station. McCoy paid for the all-night services of a peroxide blonde not because he was really all that interested in screwing her, but because the alternative was worse: He was too shit-faced to get in his car and drive back to Tommy’s rooming house or the Hotel Bethlehem.

  The Corps was hell on drunk driving and/or speeding. He still hadn’t accepted the possibility that he could become an officer. Which was the main reason why he hadn’t said anything about Quantico to either Anne-Marie or Tommy. Besides, they probably wouldn’t believe it. Which was easy to understand; he didn’t quite believe it himself. But getting arrested for drunk driving or speeding would be the end of it. He wanted to give it a shot, anyway.

  Tommy pulled him out of the whore’s bed at half-past six in the morning and said he had to go to fucking work and needed a fucking ride and some fucking breakfast: He couldn’t work eight fucking hours on the fucking open hearth with nothing in his fucking stomach.

  They went to a greasy spoon and had eggs and home fries and coffee. He dropped Tommy off at the walk bridge over the railroad tracks and drove back to the Navy Yard.

  (Two)

  The San Mateo Club

  San Mateo, California

  27 August 1941

  The building that housed the San Mateo Club had been built, in 1895, as the country residence of Andrew Foster, Sr. It so remained until 1939, when Andrew Foster, Jr., seventy, on the death of his wife, moved into the penthouse atop the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco and put the estate on the market.

  It had been quickly snapped up by the board of directors of the San Mateo club. Not only was the price right and the house large enough for the membership then rather crowded into the “old clubhouse,” but the money was there. A very nice price had been offered for the “old club” by developers who wanted to turn its greens and fairways into a housing development.

  The Foster Estate (“the new club”) contained land enough to lay out twenty-seven holes (as opposed to eighteen at the old club), as well as gently rolling pastures right beside the polo field that could accommodate far more ponies than the old club could handle. And old Mr. Foster, Jr. had thrown in all of the furnishings, except for those in his private apartment, which had moved to the hotel penthouse with him.

  The woman was lanky and fair-haired. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, a pale blue dress, and white gloves. From where she was standing, by the foot of the wide staircase leading to the second floor of the clubhouse, she could see the reserve supply of champagne. It was practically, if somewhat inelegantly, stored by the door to the passageway to the kitchen in ice-filled, galvanized-iron watering troughs for horses.

  She took a delicate bite of her hors d’oeuvre, a very nice pâté on a crisp cracker, sipped at her champagne, and seriously considered just picking up one of the bottles and carrying it upstairs. He would probably find that amusing.

  But it would be difficult to explain if she met someone coming down the stairs. Without the champagne, it would be presumed that she was going up to use the john. There were inadequate rest room facilities for ladies on the main floor of the San Mateo Club. The men had no similar problem. What had been a private study off the library had been equipped with the proper plumbing and that was it.

  Which meant that when nature called, the men could conveniently take a leak not fifty feet from the bar. But the women, when faced with a similar requirement, more often than not would find their small downstairs facilities occupied and would have to seek release in an upstairs john. The silver lining in that cloud was that no one looked curiously at a woman making her way up the wide, curving staircase.

  She put her empty champagne glass on the tray of a passing waiter, smilingly shook her head when he offered her a fresh glass, and started up the stairs.

  No one was in the upstairs corridors, which she thought was fortuitous. But she hurried nevertheless, and quickly entered, without knocking, a door halfway down the right corridor. There was a brass number on the door, 14. The numbered rooms were an innovation of the House Committee; before they had been put up, people spending the night or the weekend in the “new clubhouse” had been unable to find their own rooms.

  She closed the door and fastened the lock. She could hear the sound of the shower and of his voice, an entirely satisfactory tenor. She smiled at that, then walked to the bed, saw that he had tossed his clothing on it, sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. She delicately picked up the sweat-soaked blue polo shirt (a cloth letter “2” still safety-pinned to it) and an equally sweat-soaked pair of Jockey shorts and dropped them onto the floor beside a very dirty pair of breeches, a scarred and battered pair of riding boots, and a pair of heavy woolen socks.

  Then she pulled the cover off the bed and turned it down. She looked toward the bathroom, wondering how long he had been in there, how soon he could come out to find her.

  Surprise! Surprise!

  Then she had an even better idea. She walked to a credenza and pulled her hat and gloves off and dropped them there. Then she took off her wedding and engagement rings. And, very quickly, the rest of her clothing. It would be amusing only if she was finished undressing.

  But when she had finished that, he still hadn’t come out. The last time she’d seen him, she remembered, he had really needed a bath. He had been reeking with sweat; and perspiration was literally dripping off his chin. But enough was enough.

  She examined herself in a mirror and smiled wickedly at herself, walked to the bathroom door, opened it, and went inside. There was no shower stall. One corner had been tiled. The tiled area was so large that water from three shower heads aimed at the corner did not splash beyond it.

  His head and face were covered with lather. Still singing cheerfully, he was rubbing the tips of his fingers vigorously on his scalp. She saw a shower cap on a hook and quickly stuffed her hair under it. Then she stepped into the tiled area, hunching her shoulders involuntarily as the water, colder than she expected, struck her. Then she dropped to her knees, reached out, and put it in her mouth.

  “Jesus Christ!” Pick Pickering said, “Are you crazy?” And then he yelped. “Christ, I got soap in my eyes!”

  He stepped away from her abruptly to turn his face to a shower stream. Slipping and almost falling, the woman rose to her feet. She went to him, pressed her body against him, and nipped his nipple.

  “Where the hell is your husband?” Pick Pickering asked.

  “In the bar, I suppose,” the woman said. “I got bored.”r />
  She put her hand on it and pumped it just a few times until it filled her hand.

  “You want to try doing it standing up?” she asked. “It would be sort of like doing it in the rain.”

  “Dorothy!” Pick said.

  She tried to arrange herself so he could penetrate her, and failed.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  Pick Pickering picked her up and carried her to the bed. Penetration there proved simple.

  Three minutes later, he jumped out of bed.

  “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am?” she said. “That’s not very nice.”

  “You’re out of your mind, Dorothy, do you know that?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I am due in town right now,” he said.

  “Who is she? Anyone I know?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “No goddamned underwear!” He cried as he pawed through a canvas overnight bag. “I didn’t bring any underwear!”

  “How sexy!” Dorothy said.

  “What the hell am I going to do?”

  “Do without,” she said. “I do that all the time.”

  He looked at her and smiled.

  “You would crack wise at the moment your husband shot us both with a shotgun,” he said.

  “That presumes his being sober enough to hold a shotgun,” Dorothy said. “You really do have to go, don’t you?”

  “The only reason I played at all today is because Tommy Whitlock canceled at the last minute.”

  He pulled a fresh polo shirt over his head, and then started to pull on a pair of cotton trousers.

  “How lucky for the both of us,” she said.

  He looked at her and smiled again.

  “Be careful with the zipper,” she said. “I wouldn’t want anything to get damaged.”

  “Neither would I,” he said.

  “I’m not going to see you again, am I?” she asked.

  “I don’t see how,” Pick said.

  “I’ll miss you, baby.”

  “I’ll miss you too, Dorothy,” he said. He found his wristwatch on the bedside table and strapped it on. “Christ, I am late!” he said.

  He looked down at her, and she pushed herself onto her elbows. He leaned over and kissed her.

  “I really am going to miss you,” she said.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “Be careful, baby,” she said.

  He jumped up and, hopping, pushed his bare feet into a pair of loafers.

  Then he left, without looking back at her.

  Thirty minutes later he was in San Francisco by the entrance to the parking garage of the Andrew Foster Hotel. A sign had been placed on the sidewalk there: SORRY, BUT JUST NOW, WE NEED ALL OUR SPACE FOR OUR REGISTERED GUESTS!”

  Like everything else connected with the Andrew Foster Hotel, it was not an ordinary sign. It was contained within a polished brass frame and lettered in gold. And the frame was mounted in an ornate cast-iron mounting. The Andrew Foster was one of the world’s great hotels (the most prestigious as well as the most expensive hotel in San Francisco), the flagship of the forty-two-hotel Foster Hotel chain. Certain standards would have been expected of it even if Andrew Foster were not resident in the penthouse.

  Andrew Foster was fond of quoting the “One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn.” It was not the sort of rule that could be written down, for it changed sometimes half a dozen times a day. It could be summarized (and was, behind his back) as immediately correcting whatever offended his eye at the moment.

  What offended Andrew Foster could range from a smudge on a bellman’s shoes (“The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is that the staff must be impeccably turned out. If you do that, everything else will fall into place.”); to an overdone medium-rare steak (“The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is to give people at table what they ask for. If you do that, everything else will fall into place.”); to fresh flowers starting to wilt (“The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is to keep the place from looking like a rundown funeral home! If you can do that, everything else will fall into place!”).

  The gilt-lettered sign appeared on the sidewalk shortly after Mr. Andrew Foster spotted a simple GARAGE FULL sign. Everything else would fall in place if people were told (by means of a sign that didn’t look as if it came off the midway of a second-rate carnival) why they couldn’t do something they wanted to and were offered the inn’s apologies for the inconvenience.

  Ignoring the sign, Pick Pickering drove his car, a black Cadillac convertible, roof down, a brand new one, into the parking garage. He quickly saw that the garage was indeed full; there was not sufficient room for the rear of the car to clear the sidewalk.

  One of the neatly uniformed (after the fashion of the French Foreign Legion) parking attendants rushed to the car.

  “May I park your car for you, sir?” the attendant asked, very politely.

  Pick Pickering looked at him and grinned.

  “Would you please, Tony?” he asked. “I’m really late.”

  “No!” the attendant said, in elaborate mock surprise. “Is that why everybody but the Coast Guard’s looking for you?”

  “Oh, Christ,” Pickering said.

  “‘The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn,’” Tony quoted.

  “‘Is That People Are Where They Are Supposed to Be, When They Are Supposed to Be There,’” Pickering finished for him.

  “You’ve heard that, Pick, have you?” Tony asked. “You want me to let him know you’re here?”

  “Please, Tony,” Pickering said and walked quickly, almost ran, between the tightly packed cars to a door marked STAFF ONLY.

  Behind it was a locker room. Pickering started pulling the polo shirt off his head as he pushed the door open. He had his pants off before he stopped before one of the battered lockers.

  Two dinner jackets were hanging in the locker, and three dress shirts in cellophane bags fresh from the hotel laundry, but there was no underwear where there was supposed to be underwear. And not even any goddamned socks!

  Moving with a speed that could come only of long practice, he put suspenders on the trousers, studs and cufflinks in the shirt; and as he hooked the cummerbund around his waist, slipped his bare feet into patent leather shoes.

  Ninety seconds after he opened the locker door, Pick Pickering tied the knot in the bow tie as he waited impatiently for an elevator.

  The elevator door opened. The operator, a middle-aged black woman, stared at him and said, “You’ve got lipstick on your ear, Pick, and the tie’s crooked.”

  “Would you believe this?” he said, showing her his bare ankles as he stepped into the elevator and reached for a handkerchief to deal with the lipstick.

  “Going to be dull around here without you,” she said, laughing.

  “I understand he’s in a rage,” Pickering said. “Is there any special reason, or is he just staying in practice?”

  “You know why he’s mad,” she chided. “Where were you, anyway?”

  “San Mateo,” he said. “I was delayed.”

  “I could tell,” she said, then added, “You may wish you called him and told him.”

  Most of the “passenger waiting” lights on the call board were lit up, but the elevator operator ignored them as she took him all the way up without stopping. Pick watched annoyed and angry faces as the car rose past people waiting.

  “Your ears are clean, but don’t give him a chance to look at your feet,” the operator said, as she opened the door.

  Pickering was surprised to see that the foyer outside the elevator was full of people. Normally the only thing to be found in it were room service or housekeeping carts. He should have known the old man had more in mind than a lamb chop when he said he wanted Pick to have supper with him before he went.

  Someone recognized him and giggled, and then applauded. That seemed like a good idea to the others, and the applause caught on like a brushfire. Pick clasped h
is hands over his head like a victorious prize fighter. That caused more laughter.

  “I believe the Marine Corps has landed,” Andrew Foster’s voice boomed. “An hour late, and more than likely a dollar short.”

  “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” Pick Pickering said.

  “I assume that she was worth it,” the old man said. “I can’t believe you’d keep your mother and your father, not to mention your guests and me, waiting solely because you were riding around on a horse.”

  (Three)

  Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

  21 August 1941

  Two cops came to the cell.

  “Okay, Joe Louis, on your feet!” one of them said, as the other signaled for the remotely operated door to be opened.

  One of the cops came in the cell and stood over Tommy McCoy as he put his feet in his work shoes. When Tommy finally stood up, the cop took handcuffs from a holder on his belt.

  “Put your hands behind you,” he said.

  “Hey, I’m all right now,” Tommy said.

  “Put your hands behind you,” the cop repeated.

  As he felt the manacles snap in place around his wrist, Tommy asked, “What happens now?”

  The cop ignored him. He took his arm and sort of shoved him out of the cell, then out of the cellblock. They stopped at the property room and picked up their revolvers, then ripped open a brown manila envelope. They tucked his wallet, handkerchief, cigarettes, matches and change in his pockets, and led him out of the building to a parking lot in the rear.

  “When do I get something to eat?” Tommy asked.

  The cops ignored that question too.

  He wasn’t so much hungry as thirsty, Tommy thought. He’d really put away the boilermakers the night before, and the only water in the cell had been warm, and brown, and smelled like horse-piss.

  What he really needed was a couple of beers, maybe a couple of boilermakers, to straighten himself out.

  They took him to the mill to the small brick building just inside the gate. It looked like a regular house but was the place where the mill security police had their office. In there was also a dispensary where they took people until the ambulance arrived.