Red Sky in Morning A Novel of World War II

by Patrick Culhane

  “It’s important. Any idea where he might be?”

  Finally Big Brown’s eyes came open. “He’s a hero now. Nobody’s bothering him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. You can order me to tell you, and I still won’t know.”

  He closed his eyes again.

  Over the next few hours, Pete did a complete lap of the main deck from the fo’c’sle back along the port side and all the way to the stern, then came back starboard. Along the way he encountered three clusters of crew, but nobody knew where Monroe was, or at least wouldn’t say.

  He checked the galley, the mess, the various cabins on that deck, then made his way up to the boat deck and cut through the officers’ mess, past the cabin he shared with Connor, and around the corner and then, as he neared the door to Rosetti’s cabin, he noticed something glimmering darkly on the deck of the dimly lit passageway.

  Something that was almost certainly blood.

  Apprehension spiked through him as he backtracked to his own cabin, which he found empty—Connor not around, probably on the bridge pulling another watch. Pete opened his locker and got out his .45-caliber automatic pistol.

  All the officers had service-issue .45s, and they had practiced with the heavy weapons every two weeks back in San Diego—every one of the Fantail Four a crack shot. He pulled the clip out of a spare boot and slapped it into the pistol, then racked a round into the chamber.

  He kept the pistol’s safety in the on position and tucked the gun behind his back in his waistband. He checked himself in the mirror, toweled the sweat from his face, then left the cabin and returned to the passageway just outside Rosetti’s cabin.

  He looked down at the drops, convinced that they were indeed blood.

  He knocked on the door and got no answer. He waited, knocked again, and again heard nothing. He opened the door and stepped in, finding the light on, but the cover down over the porthole.

  Behind the door, a familiar voice said, “What the hell?”

  Pete moved into the room and whirled, his hand going behind his back and settling on the butt on the .45, ready to whip it around if necessary. Rosetti stood at the fold-down desk behind the door, a scarlet-stained towel around his left hand.

  “Jesus, Pete!” The ex-cop seemed half-amused, half-irritated. “Don’t they teach you to knock in Iowa?”

  “I saw blood on the deck—thought there might be a problem.”

  “Sarge’s turned you into a regular Junior G-man,” Rosetti said, pulling the towel away from his hand, revealing a long laceration along his palm—not unlike the fatal wound across Dick Driscoll’s neck.

  “What happened, Vince?”

  “Working on that goddamned engine. We were taking the lube oil strainer out to replace it with the one from the low-pressure side, when it slipped and . . . I don’t know . . . somehow it got me, and I ended up with this fucking thing.” He held the hand out as evidence.

  “Why aren’t you in sick bay?”

  Rosetti gave him a chagrined grin. “Suppose I figured the corpsmen were too busy, and frankly I know as much about it as those boys. So I came up here to stitch it up myself. You seem on edge, pal. What’s going on?”

  “I’m looking for Orville Monroe. Seen him?”

  “No. What do you need that little fairy for?”

  “Answer some questions about Dick’s murder. And by the way, that ‘little fairy’ saved all our asses today.”

  Rosetti made a face. “Yeah, I heard. You’re right. Kid deserves better than a dumb crack like that. You think Orville can help you find Dick’s killer?”

  “Maybe.”

  Rosetti shook his head. “Doesn’t seem possible, does it? Dick gone. Butchered like that. Funny thing, I keep hearing us singing ‘I’ll Get By’ . . . on deck, for the colored boys?”

  “Last time we ever sang together.”

  “Damn. Not the way to go, not even in war.” Rosetti daubed at the wound again.

  “You okay? Maybe sick bay isn’t a bad idea.”

  “I’ll be fine. After pulling half a porthole out of that phone talker’s face and stitching him up, this is small potatoes.”

  “You did the stitching yourself?”

  “Yeah. Corpsman’s hands were shaking. Poor phone talker’ll curse me every day of his life, when he looks in the mirror to shave.”

  Pete frowned. “Maybe so, but you can’t stitch that hand yourself. Let me get you a corpsman.”

  Rosetti, looking a little pale, considered that advice. “Maybe you better at that. I’ll . . . I’ll wait here.”

  Pete nodded and left the cabin. When he walked to the stairs, he was following the path of the blood drops; down would take him to sick bay and a corpsman.

  But the blood trail stopped on the landing, nothing on the steps Rosetti would have used coming up from the engine room. Yet the stairs leading from the bridge deck did have blood droplets. . . .

  A sick feeling flooded through him as Pete followed the trail of droplets up the stairs, and then across the hall to the door of the cabin that had been Executive Officer Richard Driscoll’s.

  As if in a dream, with a sense he had done this a thousand times before and would do it a thousand times more, he turned the knob, swung open the door, and stared into the cabin. . . .

  . . . at utter blackness. The porthole in here had its cover down, as well.

  He flipped the light switch, somehow already knowing what he would see—and gazed into the open, unseeing eyes of Orville Monroe, sprawled on the floor, on his back, the little man’s mouth a slit not unlike the one in his throat, and again Pete was reminded of Driscoll’s fatal wound.

  Pete knelt to take a pulse but there was none; the body, though, remained warm. The blood pooling near the wound was again surprisingly minimal.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw it: Orville came to Rosetti’s cabin, the two men struggled and Orville met the same fate as Driscoll, the would-be savior who had come upon Rosetti forcing himself on Orville in shaft alley, Dick interceding on Orville’s behalf and getting killed for the effort.

  Then Rosetti carries the body up the stairs and stows it in Driscoll’s currently out-of-use cabin.

  The captain had been right: they had a maniac on board, and insane as it seemed, that maniac was Vince Rosetti.

  Who Pete had just left, one deck below!

  Pistol in hand, Pete sprinted down the stairs. He swung around the corner, bolted down the short passageway, and burst into Rosetti’s cabin without knocking.

  The burly ex-cop was gone.

  Chapter 13

  AUGUST 31, 1944

  Pete Maxwell flew out of Vince’s cabin and took the stairs to the main deck, then hurried down the port side passageway to sick bay. He had to tell Washington, right now, that he finally knew who the killer was. As he neared the door, he became aware of the pistol still in his hand—had he encountered anyone along the way, he’d have looked like a homicidal maniac himself, on the run.

  Weapon at his side now, he entered sick bay and looked toward Sarge’s cot, past a khaki-clad figure, then realized Ensign Vincent Rosetti was blocking his view.

  Reflexively, the .45 came up and its snout seemed to level itself of its own free will at the chest of Pete’s once-trusted friend, the second tenor of the Fantail Four Minus One.

  “Pete!” Rosetti blurted, shocked, alarmed. “What the hell?”

  Rosetti stood at a stainless-steel table where the seated Negro corpsman, Jasper Jensen, was about half-finished stitching up the ensign’s left palm. Both men froze under the aimed automatic, whose blocky, bulky no-nonsense design seemed at odds with the trembling hand wielding it.

  “Vince . . .” Pete shook his head; he boiled with rage and yet sadness was intermingled, and he had to struggle not to fucking cry. “How the hell could you do it?”

  “Pete,” Rosetti said softly, patting the air with his good hand, “just lower that, buddy. You’re confused. I didn’t do anything. What do you think I
did?”

  “You know.”

  “I don’t.”

  He worked hard to keep the .45 steady. “First Driscoll, now Monroe. You must be some kind of damn psychopath. I should shoot you where you stand, you sick son of a bitch. . . .”

  From the corner of an eye, Pete discerned only one other patient in sick bay—Sarge Washington, in t-shirt and rumpled dungarees, climbing with some difficulty off his cot. He staggered toward them like the Mummy, one eye shut under his skull bandage, possibly against the throbbing pain of a concussion. “Easy now, Mr. Maxwell! What’s this you say, ’bout Orville?”

  “Sarge,” Pete said, “just stay where you are, okay?”

  Rosetti was shaking his head, his voice tight as he insisted, “I didn’t kill Dick. He was my friend, Pete, our friend. I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Pete thumbed back the safety with a tiny click that was somehow deafening. “I think you did. I know you did. . . .”

  “Mr. Maxwell,” Washington said, moving in beside the seated corpsman. “Don’t do nothing stupid. No reason not to talk about this. Now tell me about Monroe. . . .”

  Pete ignored Washington, his eyes locking with Rosetti’s, which were wide and wild and indignant and terrified. “Vince, you and the other guys used to love to kid me about being a farm boy.”

  “You’re no farm boy,” Rosetti said softly.

  “Maybe not, but I know what the farm boys do with a rabid dog.” And he raised the weapon and trained it between Rosetti’s eyes.

  “Stop it,” Washington said.

  Pete stared expressionlessly at Rosetti, who was shaking his head and muttering, “No, no, no. . . .” To Washington, Pete said, “He killed Dick and he killed Orville. No witnesses left, right, Vince? Except for the blood trail from your cabin to Dick’s—that’s where I found Monroe’s corpse stowed. . . .”

  Washington held up his hands as if surrendering and took a step toward Pete. “You listen to me, Mr. Maxwell. We’re partners in this. Fact, you made me the lead investigator. You need to take a breath and listen.”

  “You’re a casualty, Sarge. I had to step up to the plate myself . . . and as goddamn much as I hate it, my friend Vince here killed—”

  “Nobody,” Washington said, his voice deep, his tone authoritative. “Listen! I checked out Mr. Rosetti’s alibi myself— my pal Willie Wilson vouched for him. You know Willie, Mr. Maxwell—he don’t lie. And when Mr. Driscoll was murdered, Mr. Rosetti was sittin’ in the officers’ mess, all the while. Willie saw him.”

  Rosetti said, “It’s the truth, Pete. You’re mixed up about this. I’m no goddamn killer.”

  Pete took it all in, but he did not lower his aim, the nose of the .45 trained at the white space between Rosetti’s eyes. “I know what I saw,” Pete said. “And what I saw was a blood trail from Rosetti’s cabin to Driscoll’s cabin, where I found Monroe with his throat cut.”

  This news froze everything for a moment.

  Then, some desperation in his voice now, Rosetti said, “I told you, Pete—I cut my damn hand in the engine room. There were three witnesses!”

  “That right?”

  Rosetti ticked them off: “Blake, Smith, and Big Brown.”

  “Doesn’t explain the blood. I know what I saw.”

  Rosetti, half-crazed with fear, held up his partly stitched hand, lurching forward half a step. “Then look at this, you dumb son of a bitch!”

  “Get back!” Pete demanded, waving the .45.

  Rosetti did.

  But Washington stepped forward, moving in between the two men, blocking Pete’s aim.

  “Goddamnit, Sarge, get out of the way!”

  “No. You settle down. You ain’t had enough sleep last couple days to know your own name; you been shot at and tripping over dead bodies and generally thinking about as straight as a two-year-old with a temperature.”

  “Out of my way, Sarge . . .”

  “What, you gonna shoot me? That’ll go over big with the other colored boys. Listen, ’fore you go off half-cocked, ask yourself this—what if that blood trail was from Mr. Driscoll’s

  cabin down to Mr. Rosetti’s, not the other way around?”

  “That doesn’t make sense . . .”

  “Doesn’t it? Killer couldn’t have got himself cut in Driscoll’s cabin, then bled as he went back to his own cabin?”

  “What, you mean—got cut scuffling with Orville? How much fight could Orville have put up?”

  “Any man facing a blade can put up a fight. But chew on this—what if the real killer wanted you to think Mr. Rosetti murdered Orv?”

  Pete’s mind reeled—he’d been so positive that he’d figured out what happened, yet here were two possibilities that he was wrong, or had overlooked something. . . .

  He was no detective. But Sarge was. Maybe he should listen to the real detective. . . .

  Washington was saying, “Mr. Rosetti here has got a tight alibi for the first murder, and plenty of witnesses to say how he cut his hand, for the second.”

  In a daze, almost a dream state, Pete sensed the gun in his hand ease down as Washington lowered its snout toward the deck; and Pete didn’t fight it when Washington gently lifted the weapon from his hand and snapped the safety on again.

  Rosetti fell into a chair near the stainless-steel table and sat there, looking exhausted, the half-stitched hand cradled in his lap by his good one. Pete’s eyes met Rosetti’s, but Pete was too close to what he’d thought and felt moments before to realize just what he’d put his friend through.

  But Rosetti knew, and just as his fear had turned to relief, now that relief turned to rage. “You fucking moron, Maxwell. I ought to wring your scrawny fucking neck, stick a gun in my face!”

  Yet Rosetti stayed seated, while Pete just stood there, with no idea what to say, not even entirely sure that Washington was right, though what the detective had said seemed to make sense. . . .

  So Pete and Rosetti faced each other, one with a blank hangdog expression and the other turning a seething red, their friendship disintegrating in the space between them.

  Rosetti seemed to be considering whether to get up out of his chair and kick the shit out of Pete when the sound of the pistol clattering to the deck drew their mutual attention.

  Washington had toppled.

  Both Pete and Rosetti started for the fallen man, but the corpsman, Jensen, beat them to him. He took Washington’s pulse and looked up at the two. “Just passed out. Mr. Maxwell, could you help me get him back to his cot?”

  “Glad to,” Pete managed, and without thinking about it retrieved his .45 from the floor and tucked it in his front waistband. Then he and the corpsman got under Washington’s arms and hoisted him to his feet and drunk-walked him back to his berth.

  “Sir,” the corpsman called to Rosetti, “can you get me a damp towel?”

  “Where from, son?”

  “Over there, far corner—see that little sink? Clean towels on the table next to it.”

  Rosetti did as instructed.

  Pete asked the corpsman if Sarge would be all right.

  “He’s a strong one,” Jensen said. “But meanin’ no disrespect, you’re done in here, sir. My job is to watch out for these men, and you got to go. You can’t come in my sick bay, waving a goddamn gun, sir. And you better know I’ll report this incident to the captain, soon as I finish with Mr. Rosetti’s hand.”

  “I’d expect you to, corpsman.”

  Pete had been so sure; and, even now, what he’d come up with made sense to him. But he was no detective, and Washington was—had taken Sarge about ten seconds to come up with two reasonable alternative scenarios for the blood evidence that had seemed to Pete so obviously damning.

  Rosetti came over and handed a towel to the corpsman. He didn’t meet Pete’s eyes, still seething, if in control.

  Jensen said, “Mr. Rosetti, you go back to the table, I be there in just a minute to finish up your hand.”

  “All right,” Rosetti said. “Thanks.”
/>
  Like a whipped puppy behind its master, Pete fell in behind Rosetti, following him to the stainless-steel table.

  “I don’t suppose,” Pete said, “ ‘sorry’ will cut it.”

  “Not hardly,” Rosetti said.

  “You understand, I was just trying to . . . that I got caught up with . . . Vince, sorry is all I’ve got.”

  “Noted.”

  Pete nodded, then headed for the door, but he paused halfway and turned back. “Don’t mind my asking, what were you doing down here, anyway?”

  Rosetti lifted his gashed hand. “Little matter of some stitches? Last I saw you, you said you were going after a corpsman for me, you prick. You didn’t come back, and my mitt didn’t miraculously heal itself, so I went on down to sick bay under my own steam.”

  The corpsman approached the table. “Mr. Maxwell, you need to leave—now.”

  Pete stepped into the passageway, but he did not leave, instead waiting outside sick bay for a good fifteen minutes before Rosetti finally exited. The burly engineer did not look thrilled to see him. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Vince, I need to talk to you about your accident.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Rosetti started off and Pete put a hand on his shoulder, and the ex-cop whirled and brought his fist back to swing and Pete just stood there.

  The fist froze in midair, and Pete shrugged and said, “Do what you have to. Because I have things I have to do, too.”

  Rosetti’s fist dissolved into fingers and his limp hands hung at his sides and he seemed genuinely hurt, almost near tears as he said, “Jesus, you pointed a gun at me! You saw two men with their throats cut and you thought I was capable of that! I’m your friend, or I was, anyway. You’re supposed to fucking trust me!”

  “Dick probably trusted somebody. Little Orville probably trusted somebody, too. And they’re dead. And whoever did that is still on this ship. And the captain said it was my job to figure it out. You’re the cop, and I get the goddamn job! You could’ve stepped up, Vince, but you didn’t. I’m sorry. That’s all I have. That’s all you get.”