W E B Griffin - Corp 01 - Semper Fi

by Semper Fi(Lit)

  "What the hell." he said aloud and picked up the telephone. He didn't give a damn what it cost, he was going to have it pressed. So far, he hadn't spent much money at all.

  A waiter and a bellboy delivered the breakfast on a rolling table. By the time he'd eaten everything and put down both bottles of ale. he felt almost human again.

  When he was dressed. Pick Pickering lifted up the telephone and told them to send up a boy for the luggage and to have a cab waiting.

  The MP at the gate to the Navy Yard took one look at McCoy's campaign hat and went back in the guard shack for his pad of violation reports.

  "Got to write you up. Corporal, sorry," the MP said. "Maybe they'll let it ride because you just got back."

  The Officer Procurement Board was in a three-story red-brick building near the gate, and McCoy said good-bye to Pickering there.

  "Well, maybe we'll bump into each other again." Pickering said.

  "I hope by then I'm a civilian. Otherwise. I'll be standing at attention and calling you "sir.' " McCoy said.

  "So what?" Pickering said.

  "It doesn't work that way. Pick." McCoy said, giving him his hand. "As you are about to find out. this is the U. Fucking S. Fucking Marine Corps. But it was fun. and I'm glad the quarter landed the way it did."

  "Good luck," Pickering said, and squeezed McCoy's hand a little harder, then got out of the cab and walked up the sidewalk to the big red-brick building.

  The 47th Motor Transport Platoon was in a red-brick barracks building not far from the river. Two Marines were very slowly raking the small patch of carefully tended lawn between the sidewalk and the building.

  McCoy paid the cab driver and then stood by the open truck.

  "You guys want to give me a hand with my gear?" he called to the guys with the rakes.

  He was still a corporal, a noncommissioned officer. Noncommissioned officers don't carry things if there are privates around to carry things. They looked at him curiously, not missing the out-of-uniform campaign hat and the illegal chevrons. Then they stepped over the chain guarding the lawn and shouldered his seabags and followed him into the barracks building.

  The linoleum deck inside glistened, and the brass doorknobs and push plates were highly polished. This was the States, McCoy thought, where American Marines-not Chinese boys-waxed the decks and polished the brass. And Marine corporals watched them to make sure they did it right.

  There was a sign on the orderly room door, KNOCK, REMOVE HEADGEAR. AND WAIT FOR PERMISSION TO ENTER

  McCoy checked his uniform to make sure it was shipshape, removed his campaign hat, knocked, and waited for permission to enter.

  "Come!" a voice called, and he pushed the door open and walked in.

  There was a company clerk, a PFC, behind his desk, and a first sergeant, a squeaky-clean guy of about thirty-five behind his. Behind the first sergeant was a door marked LT A.J

  FOGARTY, USMC, COMMANDING.

  "You must be McCoy," the first sergeant said. "You was due in day before yesterday."

  "At Portsmouth they told me I had forty-eight hours to get here," McCoy said. "I'm not due in until noon tomorrow."

  "What were you doing at Portsmouth?" the first sergeant said.

  "I was in a squad of prisoner-chasers from Diego," McCoy said.

  "Shit!" the first sergeant said. "Nobody told us anything about you going to Portsmouth. You went on the Morning Report as AWOL this morning. Now we'll have to do the whole fucking thing over."

  Well, I'm stepping right off on the wrong foot. Not only did I have to take those poor bastards to Portsmouth, but it put me right on the first sergeant's shit list.

  "We can submit an amended report," the company clerk said.

  "When I want your advice, I'll ask for it," the first sergeant said. He looked at McCoy. "Sit," he said. "You know that campaign hat's nonregulation?" "No, I didn't," McCoy said.

  "Well, it is," the first sergeant said. "And so are them chevrons,"

  "I just got a violation written by the MP at the Main Gate," McCoy said. "For the hat. He didn't say anything about the stripes."

  "It'll take a week, ten days, to come down through channels," the first sergeant said. "I don't know nothing about violations until the message center delivers them. And sometimes they get lost. You want a cup of coffee?" I'll be a sonofabitch, he's not entirely a prick. "Yes, please, thank you."

  The first sergeant picked up the telephone on his desk and dialed a number.

  Then, while it was ringing, he covered the mouthpiece with his hand and spoke to the PFC: "You heard the corporal," he said. "Get him a cup of coffee and if they got any, a doughnut."

  The PFC scurried from the orderly room.

  "Sergeant-Major, this is Quinn," the first sergeant said to the telephone. "Corporal McCoy wasn't AWOL. They stuck him with a prisoner-chaser detail to Portsmouth. He just reported in a day early. I got him on the Morning Report as AWOL. How do you want me to handle it?"

  Whatever the sergeant-major replied it didn't take long, for the first sergeant broke the connection with his finger and dialed another number.

  "First Sergeant Quinn," he announced. "Is Lieutenant Fogarty there?"

  A moment later. Lieutenant Fogarty apparently came on the line, for Quinn delivered the report that McCoy had arrived, that he wasn't AWOL, and that he'd caught the Morning Report before it left for Washington and was going to make out a new one.

  "The Old Man says wait," First Sergeant Quinn said when he hung up. "You want to read the newspaper?"

  He pushed a neatly folded Philadelphia Bulletin across his desk toward McCoy.

  "Top," McCoy said, "what I'd really like is to get buyout papers filled out."

  "What?"

  "No offense, but I've have enough of the Corps."

  The first sergeant laughed, not unpleasantly.

  "All discharges have been frozen," he said. "Nobody's getting out of the. Corps except on a medical discharge. Didn't they know that in China?"

  "Shit," McCoy said.

  "There's some people thinks there's going to be war," the first sergeant said.

  "I didn't know discharges had been frozen," McCoy said lamely.

  Half an hour later, a young PFC came into the orderly room (without knocking, McCoy noticed).

  "If you're Corporal McCoy," he said, "the Old Man's outside in the staff car."

  McCoy looked at the first sergeant, who jerked his thumb in a signal for him to go with the driver.

  The Old Man was about twenty-four, McCoy judged, a well-set-up, ex-football player-type. He returned McCoy's salute, motioned him into the backseat of the staff car, and then, as it moved off, turned to face McCoy.

  "I'm glad it turned out you weren't AWOL, Corporal McCoy," he said. "That really would have disappointed a lot of people."

  "Sir, I didn't volunteer to go to Portsmouth," McCoy said.

  "I didn't think you did.'' Lieutenant Fogarty laughed.

  They went back to the building where Pick Pickering had gone to deliver his college records to the Officer Procurement Board. That seemed a lot longer ago than an hour before, McCoy thought.

  He followed Fogarty into the building and up two flights of stairs to the third floor. Fogarty pushed open a door and went into an office, holding the door open for McCoy. Then he spoke to a staff sergeant behind a desk.

  "The not-really-AWOL Corporal McCoy," he said.

  "You go right in and report to the captain, Corporal," the staff sergeant said. "He's been waiting for you."

  Since I'm not going to be able to get out of the Corps, I'd better do what Captain Banning told me to do: Keep my nose clean in this truck platoon and hope that when he comes home from Shanghai, he'll remember his promise to see about getting me out of it.

  That meant reporting according to the book. McCoy went to the closed door, knocked, was told to enter, and marched erectly in. Carefully staring six inches above the back of the chair that was facing him, so that whenever the captain spun
around in it, he would be looking, as custom required, six inches over the captain's head. He came to attention and barked: "Corporal McCoy reporting to the captain as directed, sir!"

  The chair slowly spun around until the captain was facing him.

  "With that China Marine hat, Killer," Captain Edward Sessions, USMC, said, "I'm surprised they didn't keep you in Portsmouth. Aside from that, how was the trip?"

  McCoy was literally struck dumb.

  "You seem just a little surprised, McCoy," Sessions said, chuckling. "Can I interpret that to mean Captain Banning didn't guess what we had in mind for you?"

  "What's going on here?" McCoy said.

  "For public consumption, we're part of the administrative staff of the Marine Detachment, Philadelphia Navy Yard. And you were assigned to the 47th Motor Transport Platoon because that was a good way to get you to Philadelphia without a lot of questions being asked. What this really is-not for public consumption-is the Philadelphia Detachment of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, of the Marine Corps."

  "I don't understand," McCoy said.

  "I'm disappointed," Sessions said. "Two things, McCoy. The first is that my boss believes you know a lot about the Japanese in China that no one else knows, including Captain Banning; and we want to squeeze that information out of you. Secondly, he thought the Japanese would probably decide to do to you what you kept them from doing to me. Either reason would have been enough to order you home."

  "So what happens to me here?"

  "I hope you have a clear head," Sessions said. "Because there are two officers here who are about to pump it dry."

  "And then what?"

  "Then, there are several interesting possibilities," Sessions said. "We'll get into that later."

  "When did you make Captain?" McCoy asked, and belatedly added, "Sir?"

  "I was a captain all the time," Sessions said. "The orders were cut two days after I sailed for Shanghai." He leaned across his desk and offered McCoy his hand. "Welcome home, McCoy. Welcome aboard."

  Chapter Seven

  (One)

  Golden's Pre-Owned Motor Cars North Broad Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1 August 1941

  There was no doubt in Dickie Golden's mind that despite the seersucker suit, the kid looking at the 1939 LaSalle convertible coupe on the platform was a serviceman. For one thing, he had a crew cut. For another, he was deeply tanned. For another, he didn't look quite right in his clothing. He was wearing a seersucker suit, but he was obviously no college kid.

  He was probably a Marine from the Navy Yard, Dickie Golden decided. They looked somehow different from sailors. He was too young to be more than a PFC; but maybe, just maybe, he was a lance corporal; and the finance company would sometimes write up a lance corporal if he could come up with the one-third down payment. There was of course no way this kid could come up with one-third down on the LaSalle convertible, even though it was really one hell of a bargain at $695.

  Cadillac had stopped making LaSalles as of 1940, which really cut into their resale value. And the last couple of years Cadillac made them, they had practically given them away. But that hadn't worked, and LaSalles were orphans now. A 1939 Cadillac convertible like this one, with the same engine... about the only real difference between a little Cadillac and a LaSalle was the grill and the chrome... would sell for twelve, thirteen hundred.

  The down payment on this would have to be at least and the odds were the kid looking at it didn't have that kind of money. Dickie Golden did the rough figures in his head. Say he had the $250, that would leave $500 over two years plus a hundred a year for insurance. A $700 note over two years at 6% was right at $29 a month. They paid Marine privates $21 a month. He didn't know what they paid lance corporals, but it wasn't much more.

  But, Dickie Golden decided, what the hell; it was an up. It was possible the kid had just come off a ship or something, with money burning a hole in his pocket from a crap game. He just might have $300 for a down payment. More likely, he could switch the kid over to something he could afford. If he wanted an open car, there was a '37 Pontiac convertible at $495 and a '33 Ford-a little rough, needed a new top-for $229.

  He walked over to the kid.

  "Good-looking car, isn't it?" Dickie Golden said. "I've been thinking of buying it myself for the little woman." McCoy didn't reply to that. "You got the keys?" he asked.

  McCoy had just about decided to buy the LaSalle. Everything else was crazy, why not buy a crazy car?

  McCoy had just come from dinner with an officer and his wife. That was why he was wearing a suit. Maybe an apartment in a tall building at 2601 Parkway wasn't like officer's quarters on a base, and maybe there was some difference between a regular officer and an intelligence officer, but he was a corporal, USMC, and Sessions was a captain, USMC; it was the first time he had ever heard of a captain's wife "insisting" that a corporal come to dinner.

  More than that. Grabbing him by the arms, and hugging and kissing him on the cheeks... with her husband watching.

  She was a good-looking woman. Decent looking. Wholesome. She looked a lot like Mickey Rooney's girl friend in the Andy Hardy movies.

  "Ed told me what you did at the ferry, Ken," Mrs. Sessions said. "I can call you 'Ken,' can't I?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he said.

  "Well, you can't call me 'ma'am,' " she said. "I won't have that. You'll call me Jean."

  He hadn't replied. On the wall was an eight-by-ten enlargement of the picture he'd taken of Sessions in the black cotton peasant clothes.

  "I want to thank you for my husband's life," Mrs. Sessions said when she noticed him looking at it, and then when she saw how uncomfortable she had made him, she added: "I know he's not much, but he's the only one I have."

  Then Captain Sessions put a drink in his hand, and soon afterward they fed him, first-class chow that McCoy had never had before: one great big steak for all of them served in slices. Mrs. Sessions (he was unable to bring himself to call a captain's wife by her first name) told him they called it a "London broil."

  Since they were both being so nice to him, he had been very careful not to say or do anything out of line. He watched his table manners and went easy on the booze (there was wine with the London broil and cognac afterward). And as soon as he thought he could politely get out of there, he left.

  Which had put him all dressed-up on North Broad Street at eight o'clock at night with no place to go but a bar; and he didn't want to go to a bar. Drinking at a bar and trying to pick up some dame and get his ashes hauled did not seem like the right thing to do after a respectable dinner with a Marine Corps officer and his lady in their home.

  So he had figured he would walk up North Broad Street and maybe see if he could find a car in one of the used-car lots-at least get an idea of what they were asking for iron these days. And then he'd seen the LaSalle and decided, what the hell, why not see what he could do?

  "The down payment on a car like this would be $300, maybe a little more," Dickie Golden said, not wanting to let the kid take the car for a ride if there was no way he could handle it, "and the payments, including insurance, about thirty bucks a month over two years. Could you handle that much?"

  "Yeah," McCoy said. "I could handle that much."

  "You're a Marine, aren't you?" Dickie Golden said. One more fact out of him, and he would go get the keys.

  "Yeah," McCoy said.

  "The finance company don't like to make loans on a car like this to anybody's not at least a lance corporal."

  "I'm a corporal," McCoy said. "And I can make the down payment, okay? You want to let me hear the engine, take it for a ride?"

  Dickie Golden put out his hand. "I'm Dickie Golden, Corporal... I didn't catch the name?"

  "McCoy," McCoy said.

  "Well, I'm pleased to meet you, Corporal McCoy," he said. "You really know how to spot a bargain, I'll tell you that."

  You bet your candy-ass I do, you sonofabitch. I grew up on a goddamned used-car lot. You're ab
out to be had, buster, presuming the engine isn't shot in this thing.

  "Seven hundred dollars seems like a lot of money for an orphan like this," McCoy said.

  "Well, maybe we can shave that a little, if you don't have a trade," Dickie Golden said.