The battery was almost dead, and went dead before the engine would crank. A colored man with a battery on a little wheeled truck was called. Dickie Golden said he would replace the battery.
"Maybe all it needs is a charge," McCoy offered helpfully.
You dumb sonofabitch, if you knew what you were doing, you'd not only make sure there was a hot battery in here, but you'd start it up every couple of days. These flat-head 322-cubic-inch V-8s are always hard to start.
"No," Dickie Golden said, grandly, "I want this car to be right." He told the colored man to replace the battery. And then "while they were waiting" he suggested they take the information for the finance company down on paper.
He was obviously pleased with the facts McCoy gave him: That he was a corporal, unmarried, and had no other "installment loans" outstanding. McCoy decided he was going to come down $100 from the $695 and make it back by slipping the paper to some finance company who would give him half of the fifty back and make it up by charging eight percent, maybe ten. That would make the car $595. Then he would sell him insurance through some shyster outfit that would charge twice what it was worth-making it part of the easy payments-and slip Dickie Golden another twenty-five bucks back under the table. Then there would be a credit-check charge, and Christ only knew what else.
After McCoy's first look at the LaSalle, he went to another used-car lot and gave the wash boy there a dollar to go in the office and borrow the Blue Book for him. The Blue Book told him the LaSalle was worth $475 wholesale, the average retail was $650, and the average loan value was $400. McCoy decided he would pay $525 for the car.
Dickie Golden wanted to ride along with him, of course, when he took the test drive. McCoy handled that by passing the salesman three hundred in cash-enough for the down payment-"to hold." And when Dickie Golden said he still thought he'd better go along, McCoy turned indignant and asked if Dickie Golden didn't think he could drive; and Dickie Golden backed down.
McCoy drove up Broad Street until the engine was warm and then pulled in a gas station on a side street and gave the guy running it a buck to let him put it up on the grease rack and lend him some tools.
He could find nothing wrong with the car and would have been surprised if he had. It needed points and a condenser, and an oil change, and the wheels aligned, but there was nothing seriously wrong with it. The heads had never been off, and the engine was just as dirty as it ought to be. If it had required work it would have showed.
He drove back to Golden's Pre-Owned Motor Cars.
Dickie Golden told him he had been getting worried.
McCoy told him he thought the clutch was going.
Dickie Golden said he didn't think so, but that it was not much to worry about anyway, since they had a thirty-day fifty-fifty fix-any thing policy. That meant they would pay half of the cost of anything that needed fixing or replacing in the next thirty days. And besides he was going to knock $100 off the price because Corporal McCoy didn't have a trade-in.
He showed McCoy the papers, already made out. With everything included, after a $300 down payment, the payments would come out to $27.80 over thirty months."
"I talked them into going thirty months," Dickie Golden said, "to keep your payments down."
You just hung yourself. Buster. You must really get kickbacks from every sonofabitch and his brother. So much that you won't mind going down another $70 on the basic price.
"I'll give you $500 for it," McCoy said.
"You got to be kidding," Dickie Golden said.
"That's all I can afford," McCoy said.
"Then I guess we don't have a deal," Dickie Golden said.
"I guess not," McCoy said. "You want to give me my $300 back?"
"I guess I could ask my partner," Dickie Golden said. "I don't think he'll go along with this, but I'd like to see you in the LaSalle, and I could ask him. If I can catch him at home..."
If you've got a partner, at home or anywhere else, I'll kiss your ass at high noon at Broad and Market.
"Why don't you ask him?" McCoy said.
Dickie Golden was gone twenty minutes. When he came back, he had a whole new set of papers all made out.
"My partner says $525 is as low as we can go," Dickie Golden said. "That's less than wholesale."
McCoy read the finance agreement with interest. Then he handed Dickie Golden $225.
"Deal," he said.
"What's this?" Golden said, looking at the money but not picking it up.
"I already gave you $300," McCoy said. "That's the other $225."
"No, this deal was to finance the car and for you to buy your insurance through us."
"What do you want me to do, call a cop? It's against the law in Pennsylvania to take kickbacks from finance companies and insurance companies."
"What are you, some kind of wise guy?"
"You just write on there, paid in full in cash," McCoy said. "Or we call the cops."
"Give me those papers back and get your ass off my lot!"
"I'll walk just as far as the pay-phone booth down the block," McCoy said. "With the papers."
"I ought to kick your ass!" Dickie Golden said, but when McCoy handed him the papers, he wrote "paid in full" on the Conditions of Sale.
McCoy was pleased with himself when he drove the LaSalle off the lot and onto North Broad Street. Not only was the LaSalle a nice car, but he had just screwed a used-car dealer. McCoy hated used-car dealers: Patrick J. McCoy of Norris-town, Pennsylvania, Past Grand Exalted Commander of the Knights of Columbus, Good ol' Pat, everybody's pal at the bar of the 12th Street Bar & Grill, Corporal Kenneth J. "Killer" McCoy's father, was a used-car dealer.
(Two)
The next morning was a Saturday, but there was no reveille bugle, at least not one the enlisted members of the Philadelphia Detachment of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence had to pay any attention to. Reveille sounded and ten minutes later first call; and the truck drivers and mechanics of the 47th Motor Transport Platoon went down and out on the street and lined up for roll call.
But the seven enlisted men in the three rooms on the attic floor set aside for the "Special Detachment" didn't even get out of bed until the bugler sounded mess call. In addition to McCoy, there were two gunnery sergeants, a staff sergeant, and three PFCs. The PFCs were clerks. The staff sergeant worked for Captain Sessions. McCoy didn't know where the gunnery sergeants worked. The only time one of the gunnery sergeants spoke to him since he reported in was when one of them told him he didn't have to stand any formations, but that he had to be in the red-brick office building every morning at oh-eight-hundred.
What happened there was that from the very first day they sat him down in an upholstered chair he suspected had been stolen from a Day Room and talked to him about what he knew about the Imperial Japanese Army in China.
There were usually three of them: Captain Sessions, another captain, and two lieutenants. The other captain was pretty old-and an old Marine-because the first thing he asked McCoy was whether he had known Major Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller in Shanghai.
"He commanded the Second Battalion, sir," McCoy said. "I knew who he was."
Puller was a real hard ass. Fair, but a hard-ass. He acted as if he thought the Second Battalion was going to war the next day and trained them that way.
"He's pretty good with a Thompson himself," the old captain said. "I thought maybe you two had got together and compared techniques."
Aside from recognizing it as a reference to the incident at the ferry, McCoy didn't know what the old captain was driving at.
"No, sir," he said.
Sometimes it was all the officers at once, sometimes it was a couple of them, and sometimes it was just one of the young lieutenants by himself. Always there was one of the PFCs to take care of changing the tubular records on a Dictaphone.
However many of them there were, the interrogation went generally the same every day.
They came with folders, notebooks, and pencils.
And they had thumbtacked maps of Kiangsu, Shantung, Honan, and Hopeh provinces to a cork board. The locations of Japanese units were marked on each map. The wall beside the cork board was painted white, and they used that as a screen for a slide projector. Sometimes there were photographs, including some he took himself. Some of these were blowups, and some had been converted to slides.
And they asked question after question about the Japanese forces. McCoy was surprised at how wrong their information was about the Jap order of battle. And he could tell they didn't like some of his answers about the Japanese. It was as if they hoped he was going to tell them the Japs were nothing but a bunch of fuck-ups who had done so well against the Chinese because the Chinese were fucked up even worse.
But he told them what he knew and what he thought: The Chinese were not lousy soldiers, but they just didn't give a damn because they knew they were getting screwed by their officers, who would sell the day's ration if they could find a buyer. The Jap officers, on the other hand, were generally honest. Mean as hell, they thought nothing of belting the enlisted men-sergeants, too-in the mouth. But they didn't sell the troops' rations, and the rest of the Jap system seemed to work well. If a Jap soldier was told to do something, he did it, period.
One of the young lieutenants had studied Japanese in college. When he was alone with McCoy, he spoke a few words of Japanese to him. He didn't speak it all that well, but he spoke better Japanese than the old captain (who had done eight years, 1927-1935, with the 4th Marines in Shanghai) spoke Chinese.
McCoy learned (they didn't tell him, but he learned) that none of the young lieutenants was a regular. They had all come into the Corps right after college. McCoy wondered what the hell they were doing sitting around asking an enlisted man questions. As young lieutenants without any experience, they should instead have been out with troops in the field.
Once, a couple of civilians, an old one and a young one, dropped in while he was standing in a skivvy shirt by a map of Honan Province (the room was right under the roof and was hot as hell). When they entered the room, McCoy stopped talking, not knowing who they were.
"Don't let me interrupt," the older civilian said.
"Carry on, McCoy," the old captain ordered. So he carried on.
That was the day he was straightening them out about how good the Japanese soldiers were, and he went on with that. From time to time the old civilian would snort, as if he didn't think McCoy knew what the hell he was talking about, but McCoy decided to let the old guy fuck himself. The civilians stuck around until he was finished. When they were gone, McCoy asked who they were. For some reason, the officers thought that was funny. They laughed at him, and he never got an answer.
McCoy had no idea how long the "interviews" were going to go on. At first, he'd hoped they would go on forever. But by the end of the second week, he knew he was just about talked-out. If there was something he knew about China they hadn't gotten out of him, he couldn't think of what it was.
When first call blew that Saturday morning, he got out of bed and took a shower. Standing under the shower, shaving, reminded him of China and made him a little homesick for it. The only time in China he'd had to shave himself was when he was on a convoy. The rest of the time there'd been Chinese boys to do it for him.
After he was dressed, he went down to the mess for breakfast, and then he walked to the gate. When he had tried to bring the LaSalle onto the Yard the night before, the guard at the gate wouldn't let him, because he didn't have either a Yard sticker, license plates, or proof of insurance. But the guard had let him park the LaSalle inside the gate and had explained to McCoy that he could get a sticker on Saturday morning from the provost marshal if he got there before noon with proof of insurance and license plates.
McCoy started the LaSalle and drove to an office of the Pennsylvania Motor Vehicle Bureau, where he registered the car and got a cardboard temporary license plate until they mailed him a real one from Harrisburg. Then he went.to an insurance agency and bought insurance. It was still early, and he didn't like the way the wear on the tires looked, so he found a Cadillac dealer. While they were aligning the front end, he went to the parts department and bought a set of points and condensers and a set of spark plugs and a carburetor rebuild kit.
Finally, on the way back to the Navy Yard, he saw a Sears, Roebuck where he bought a small set of tools on sale. Later he got a sticker from the provost marshal and drove to the barracks.
He would spend the weekend rebuilding the carburetor and changing the points and the plugs, and maybe giving it a good shine with Simoniz. Dickie Golden for sure had used some quickie polish, which made it look good but wouldn't last more than a week.
What he was doing, he knew, was not what he should really be doing. Working on the car was a dodge, an escape: He should really be going back to Norristown, even if he had to ride there on the Interurban Rapid Transit.
But he didn't want to go home now or next week or maybe ever. So maybe he would get lucky between now and next weekend. Maybe something would happen that would keep him from going home then. Like a transfer to the West Coast. Or maybe getting run over by a truck.
(Three)
United States Navy Yard Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 0830 Hours 4 August 1941
"Close the door, Ken," Captain Sessions said, "and then help yourself to coffee if you'd like. I want to talk to you."
McCoy expected that Sessions was going to talk to him about the LaSalle. He knew there was scuttlebutt around about it: Where the hell did a corporal come up with enough money to buy a car like that? Scuttlebutt had a way of getting around-and that meant to the officers. So he thought it had finally become official.
He poured black coffee in a china cup. When he turned around, Sessions waved him into a chair.
"Have you given any thought, Ken, about what you'd like to do next?"
That meant that the "interviews," as McCoy suspected, were now over.
"Yes, sir," McCoy said.
Sessions made a "come on" gesture with his hand.
"Captain Banning said that when he gets home, he would try to find a home for me," McCoy said. "He said I should keep my nose clean, and he would either get me to work for him again or send me back to heavy weapons."
"Have you ever considered becoming an officer?" Sessions asked.
McCoy thought that over a moment before answering.
There were a number of officers around the Corps who had been enlisted men. And a number of noncoms had at one time or another been officers. An even larger number of old noncoms had been officers in the Haitian Constabulary, where the troops they'd commanded had been Haitians. McCoy had sometimes imagined that there would probably be a chance somewhere down the road after he had more time in, for him to get to be a warrant officer, and maybe even a commissioned officer. But he sensed that Sessions wasn't talking about some time in the future.
"You're talking about now, sir?" McCoy asked.
Sessions nodded.
"The Corps is about to really expand, McCoy. Even if we don't get in the war, the Corps is going to be five times as big as it is now. We're going to need large numbers of officers. And many of them are going to come from the noncommissioned officer corps. People like yourself, in other words. Are you interested?"
"I don't know," McCoy said, more thinking aloud than a direct reply.
"There are a number of people, myself included, Ken, who believe that you have what it takes."
"I hadn't even thought about now," McCoy said. "Maybe later."
"The process is simple," Sessions said. "You apply. Sergeant Davis has your application all typed up. All you have to do is sign it. Then you appear before a board of officers. The purpose of that is to give them a chance to see how well you can think under pressure. The board then votes on you; and if they approve, you'll be ordered to Marine Corps Schools in Quantico and run through the final phase of the Platoon Leader's Course. If you get through that, you'd be commissioned a second lieutenant."
> "I never heard of the Platoon Leader's Course," McCoy said.
"The primary source of officers will be young men who have spent their college summer vacations going through officer training courses. The first summer they go through what amounts to boot camp. And the rest of the time we give them everything from customs of the service to the platoon in the assault. If you went to Quantico, you would be sent through the final phase with a group of them."
"College boys?" McCoy said, thinking of Pick Pickering. That's how Pickering was going to become an officer.
"Going through college is not a disease, McCoy," Sessions said. "You'd be surprised how many people have gone to college. Nice people. Jean went to college. I met her there."
McCoy smiled at him.
"I meant, I'm not sure I could hack it in that kind of company," McCoy said. "All I've got is a high school diploma."
W E B Griffin - Corp 01 - Semper Fi Page 19
