"Surprise, surprise," he said, as jovially as he could manage. "Fancy running into you here!"
"I don't know why you're surprised, Pick," Martha said, looking directly at him. "You followed me from the air station."
He felt his face color.
"I soloed today," he blurted. "A couple of hours ago."
"Good for you," she said.
"Christ!" he said, furious and humiliated.
"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," Martha said. "Congratulations, Pick. Really. I know what it means, and I'm happy for you."
"I want to celebrate," Pick said.
"You should," Martha said. "It's a bona fide cause for celebration."
"I mean, with you," Pick blurted.
"I was afraid of that," she said.
"I thought maybe dinner, and then..."
She shook her head, and held up her left hand with her wedding and engagement rings on it.
"It sometimes may not look like it, Pick, but I'm in mourning."
"You go out with Captain Mustache," Pick blurted.
She laughed a delightful peal of laughter.
"Is that what you call him?" Martha said. "Marvelous! You better pray he doesn't hear you. Jimmy is very proud of his mustache."
"You go out with him," Pick persisted.
"That's different," Martha said. "He's a friend."
"And I can't be your friend?"
"You know what I mean," Martha said. "Jimmy was our friend. He was best man at the wedding."
"I'll settle for being your friend," Pick said.
"You don't take no for an answer, do you?" Martha said.
"Usually, I take anything less than 'oh, how wonderful' for no," Pick said.
"Well, Mr. Pickering," Martha said, "I'm truly sorry to disappoint you, but not only will I not go out with you, but I would consider it a personal favor if you would stop following me around and staring at me like a lovesick calf."
"Jesus!"
"I'm a widow, for God's sake," Martha went on furiously. "I'm just not interested, understand? I don't know what you're thinking-"
She stopped in mid-sentence, for Second Lieutenant Pickering had turned and fled down the aisle.
Martha told herself that there was really no reason for her to be ashamed of herself for jumping on him that way, or to be sorry that she had so obviously and so deeply hurt his feelings.
She was a widow, for God's sake.
Greg, my wonderful Greg, was killed only two months and twelve days ago. Only a real bitch and a slut would start thinking about another man only two months and twelve days after her husband, whom she had loved as much as life itself, had been killed. And if that handsome, arrogant sonofabitch was any kind of a gentleman he would understand that.
Martha Sayre Culhane vowed that she would never again think of the terrible hurt look in Pick's eyes when she told him off. It would not bother her, she swore, for she would simply not think about it.
Let him look at some other girl,, some other woman, with those eyes. That would get him laid, and that, certainly, was all he was really after anyway. He had probably stood in front of a mirror and practiced that look.
Goddamn him, anyway! What did he think she was?
She went back in the dressing room and took the black dress off. She did not buy it.
She went from Gayfer's Department Store to the bar at the San Carlos. She waited for Jimmy Carstairs to come in. By the time he came in, she was feeling pretty good.
When she woke up the next morning, she remembered two things about the night before. She'd had a scrap with Jimmy Carstairs, who had refused to let her drive herself home. And that once-or was it twice?- she had tried to call Pick on the house phone. He had had no right to walk away from her like that before she had finished telling him off, and she had been determined to finish what she had started.
There had been no answer in the penthouse, even though Martha remembered letting the telephone ring and ring and ring.
(Three)
San Diego Navy Base, California
21 February 1942
Although it was surrounded by a double line of barbed-wire-topped hurricane fencing, the brig at Diego was not from a distance very forbidding. It looked like any other well-cared-for Naval facility.
But inside, Lieutenant Commander Michael J. Grotski, USNR, thought as he waited to be admitted to the office of the commanding officer, it was undeniably a prison. Cleaner, maybe, but still a prison. Until November 1941, Lieutenant Commander Grotski had been engaged in the practice of criminal law in his native Chicago, Illinois. He had spent a good deal of time visiting clients in prison.
"You can go in, Commander," the natty, crew-cutted young Marine corporal in a tailored, stiffly starched khaki uniform said as he rose from his desk and opened a polished wooden door. Above the door was a red sign on which was a representation of the Marine insignia and the legend "C. F. KAMNIK, CAPT. USMC BRIG COMMANDER."
The "C," Commander Grotski knew, stood for "Casimir." He had come to know Captain Kamnik pretty well. They were not only two good Chicago Polack boys in uniform, but they had both once served as altar boys to the Reverend Monsignor Taddeus Wiznewski at Saint Teresa's. Monsignor Wiznewski had installed a proper respect for what they, were doing in his altar boys by punching them in the mouth when Mass was over whenever their behavior fell below his expectations.
They had not been altar boys at the same time. Captain Kamnik was six years older than Lieutenant Commander Grotski. And he had enlisted in the Marine Corps when Grotski was still in the sixth grade at St. Teresa's parochial school. But it had been a pleasant experience for the both of them to recall their common experience, and to find somebody else from the old neighborhood who was a fellow commissioned officer and gentleman.
"Good morning, Commander," Captain Kamnik said as he rose up behind his desk and grinned at Grotski. "How can the Marine Corps serve the Navy?"
"Oh, I just happened to be in the neighborhood and I thought I would drop in and ruin your day."
"Let me guess," Kamnik said, first closing the office door and then going to a file cabinet. From this he took out a bottle of Seagram's. Seven Crown. Then he continued, "You are about to rush to the defense of some innocent boy out there, who has been unjustly accused."
"Close, but not quite," Grotski said, taking a pull from the offered bottle and handing it back. Kamnik took a pull himself, and then put the bottle back in the filing cabinet. Technically, it was drinking on duty, one of many court-martial offenses described in some detail in the Rules for the Governance of the Navy Service. But it was also a pleasant custom redolent of home for two Polack former altar boys from the same neighborhood.
Kamnik looked at Grotski with his eyes raised in question.
"You have a fine young Marine out there named McCoy, Thomas Michael," Grotski said.
It was evident from the look on Kamnik's face that he had searched his memory and come up with nothing.
"McCoy?" he asked, as he went to his desk and ran his finger down one typewritten roster, and then another. "Here it is," he said. "ex-Marine. He's on his way to do five-to-ten at Portsmouth." Portsmouth was the U.S. Naval Prison.
"Not anymore, he's not," Grotski. "You have his file?"
"Somewhere, I'm sure. Why?"
"You're going to need it," Grotski said, simply.
Captain Kamnik walked to the door and pulled it open.
"Scott, fetch me the jacket on a prisoner named McCoy. He's one of those general prisoners who came in from Pearl. On his way to Portsmouth."
"Aye, aye, sir," the corporal said.
Kamnik turned to Grotski.
"You going to tell me what this is all about?"
"After you read the file," Grotski said. "Or at least glance at it. I'll throw you a bone, though: I have the feeling the commanding general of the joint training force in Diego is more than a little pissed at me."
"Really? You don't mind if I'm happy about that?"
"I'
m flattered," Grotski said.
Corporal Scott entered the office a minute later, carrying a seven-inch-thick package wrapped in water-resistant paper and sealed with tape. On it was crudely lettered, "McCoy, Thomas Michael."
The package contained a complete copy of the general court-martial convened in the case of PFC Thomas M. McCoy, USMC, 1st Defense Battalion, Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to try him on charges that on the twenty-fourth day of December 1941, he had committed the offense of assault upon the person of a commissioned officer of the U.S. Navy in the execution of his office by striking him with his fists upon the face and on other parts of his body.
The record showed that PFC McCoy was also charged with having committed an assault upon a petty officer of the United States Navy in the execution of his office by striking him with his fists upon the face and on other parts of his body, and by kicking him in the general area of his genital region with his feet.
The record showed that PFC McCoy was additionally accused of having been absent without leave from his assigned place of duty at the time of the alleged offenses described in specifications 1 and 2.
The record showed that in secret session, two-thirds of the members present and voting, a general court-martial convened under the authority of the general officer commanding Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor, T.H., had found PFC McCoy guilty of each of the charges and specifications; and finally that, in secret session, two-thirds of the members present and voting, the court-martial had pronounced sentence.
As to specification and charge number 1, PFC McCoy was to be reduced to the lowest enlisted grade, suffer loss of all pay and allowances, and be confined at hard labor for a period of five to ten years at Portsmouth or such other Naval prison as the Secretary of the Navy may designate, and at the completion of his term of imprisonment, be dishonorably discharged from the Naval service.
As to specification and charge number 2, PFC McCoy was to be reduced to the lowest enlisted grade, suffer loss of all pay and allowances, and be confined at hard labor for a period of three to five years at Portsmouth or such other Naval prison as the Secretary of the Navy may designate, and at the completion of his term of imprisonment, be dishonorably discharged from the Naval Service.
As to specification and charge number 3, PFC McCoy was to be reduced to the lowest enlisted grade, suffer loss of all pay and allowance, and be confined at hard labor for a period of six months in the U.S. Navy brig at Pearl Harbor, or such other place of confinement as the Commanding General, Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor, T.H., may designate.
"Another of your innocent lambs, I see, Commander," Captain Kamnik said.
"Lovely fellow, obviously," Grotski said.
"So what about him?"
Grotski handed a single sheet of paper to Kamnik.
OP-29-BC3
L21-[5]-5
SERIAL 0002
FROM: THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF, PACIFIC FLEET
TO: GENERAL OFFICER COMMANDING, MARINE BARRACKS, PEARL HARBOR
REFERENCE: RECORD OF TRIAL, MCCOY, PFC THOMAS MICHAEL, USMC
1. THE REVIEW REQUIRED BY LAW OF THE TRIAL, CONVICTION, AND SENTENCING OF PFC MCCOY HAS BEEN COMPLETED BY THE UNDERSIGNED.
2. THE REVIEW REVEALED THAT THE COMPOSITION OF THE GENERAL COURT-MARTIAL WAS NOT IN KEEPING WITH APPLICABLE REGULATIONS AND LAW. (SEE ATTACHMENT 1 HERETO.)
3. IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED THAT THE FINDINGS AND SENTENCE IN THE AFOREMENTIONED CASE BE, AND THEY HEREBY ARE, SET ASIDE.
E. J. KING
ADMIRAL, USN
"You mean we're going to have to try this character again?" Captain Kamnik asked. "What about the 'composition' of the court-martial?"
"The law requires that 'all parties to the trial,'" Grotski said, "be present for all sessions of the court. They weren't. The trial lasted three days. Three times, one officer or another was called away. The court reporter, apparently a very thorough individual, put it in the record every time somebody left, and when they came back."
"I can't imagine why they would be called away," Kamnik said, sarcastically. "It's not as if there's a war on, or anything important like that."
"CINCPAC really doesn't review these cases himself," Grotski said. "He gives them to a lawyer on the judge advocate's staff to review, and he generally goes by his recommendations. Whoever reviewed this saw that members of the board kept wandering in and out."
"You're not telling me we have to go through the whole goddamned trial again?" Kamnik said.
"No," Grotski said. "You remember I said the general is pissed at me?"
"What about?"
"Well, by the time the case was reviewed, McCoy was already on his way to Portsmouth... here, in other words. So this was sent here for action. And the general called me in and said that somebody had fucked up in Hawaii, and that we were going to have to try Brother McCoy all over again, and would I please see that it was done very quickly and efficiently, and that I was to personally make sure that no member of the board left the room for any purpose while the trial was on.
"So I said, 'Aye, aye, sir,' and read the file. Then I went back to see the general and told him that in my professional judgment, we could not retry Brother McCoy. For two reasons: The first was double jeopardy. He'd already been tried. The government had its shot at him. They should not have gone on with the trial with any member of the court missing, but they did. That was not McCoy's fault. He was there. And I told the general that it was not the responsibility of his defense counsel to object; that he was almost obliged to take advantage of mistakes the prosecution made. And then I told him that even if they sort of swept that under the rug and tried him again here, McCoy was entitled to face his accusers. The Navy would have to bring here from Pearl (or from wherever they are now) the officer he punched out, and the shore patrolman, plus all of McCoy's buddies who had previously testified that McCoy was just sitting there innocently in the whorehouse when the shore patrol lieutenant came in and viciously attacked him for no reason that they could see."
"You mean this sonofabitch is going to get away with punching out an officer? A shore patrol officer?" Captain Kamnik asked incredulously.
"Think of it this way, Casimir," Commander Grotski said dryly, " 'it is better that one thousand guilty then go free than one innocent man be convicted.'"
"But the sonofabitch is guilty as hell! Innocent, my ass!"
"He was entitled to a fair trial, and he didn't get one," Grotski said. "I must say the general took this better than you are."
"I thought you said he was pissed," Kamnik said.
"At me. As the bearer of bad news. He doesn't seem to be annoyed with Brother McCoy nearly as much. As a matter of fact, he even had a thought about where PFC McCoy can make a contribution to the Marine Corps and the war effort in the future."
"What does that mean?"
"I'm here to 'counsel' McCoy," Grotski said. "You're welcome to watch, but only if you can keep your mouth shut."
"I wouldn't miss this for the world," Kamnik said. "You want him brought here?"
"That would be very nice, Captain Kamnik," Grotski said. "I appreciate your spirit of cooperation."
"Scott!" Captain Kamnik called. The natty corporal stuck his head in the door. "Do you know where to find the sergeant of the guard?"
"He's out here, sir. He's waiting to see you."
"Ask him to come in, please."
The sergeant of the guard was the meanest-looking sonofabitch Commander Grotski had seen in some time, a bald, stocky staff sergeant of thirty or so, with an acne-pocked face. Grotski searched for the word, and came up with "porcine." The sergeant of the guard was porcine, piglike, a mean boar pig.
The sergeant of the guard came to attention before Kamnik's desk.
"What's on your mind, Sergeant?" Kamnik asked.
"I didn't know that the captain was busy, sir."
"Don't mind me, Sergeant," Grotski said amiably.
The sergeant still hesitated.
"Go on, Sergeant," Captai
n Kamnik said.
"The captain said he wanted to hear," the sergeant of the guard reluctantly began, "of an 'incident.'"
"Yes, I did."
"We had a little trouble with one of the transits, sir," the sergeant of the guard said.
"Oh?"
"He gave one of the guards some lip, sir," the sergeant of the guard said. "And then he assaulted two guards. The point of it is, sir, before we could restrain him, he busted PFC Tober's nose."
"The situation is now under control?"
W E B Griffin - Corp 02 - Call to Arms Page 27
