Murder in the Navy Page 7

  “Hey, Jones,” he said. “Hey, Jones, you bastard, c’mere.”

  Jones moved over to Masters warily. “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t ‘yes’ me, and don’t ‘sir’ me. Just remember this, you bastard. I’ll be watching you. I got nothing to do on that goddamned ship, anyway, so I’ll be watching you. With all my eyes, Jones. Every one of them. I’ll be watching you and that other sonafabitch, and God help either of you the first time you step out of line. Just remember that.”

  Jones eyed Masters levelly. “Why’ve you got the knife in me, sir?” he asked.

  “Hah!” Masters snorted. He turned and reeled across the room, taking Jean’s arm and leading her to the door.

  “I warned him,” he said. “I warned the bastard. Now I’ll watch him. Him and Daniels. Come on, Jean, miss, ma’am. I got a jeep out here someplace.”

  “Do you think you should drive? I mean …”

  “No, I shouldn’t,” Masters said. “But I will anyway. Do you fear for your life?”

  “No,” she said in a small voice.

  “You do. You do, and it’s sweet of you to say you don’t. Come on, we’ll walk.” He paused. “I haven’t got a jeep, anyway. Where the hell would I get a jeep?”

  They walked down the tree-lined streets of the base. The barracks were unlighted, and the trees cast large shadows on the brick walls.

  “This is a beautiful base,” he said. “One of the prettiest.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It’s a shame it’s in such a rat town. Rat towns shouldn’t have beautiful bases.”

  “They shouldn’t.”

  “My bit of philosophy for the day,” he said. “Where are we walking?”

  “I don’t know. I’m following you.”

  “Well, there are a variety of things available on this lovely base. We can wander around and look at the trees and the flowers. Would you like to do that?”

  “If you want to.”

  “Or we can stroll over to the air base and watch the Navy pilots make landings in the dark. That is apt to be dangerous.”

  “Then let’s not do it.”

  “You do not, I gather, appreciate danger.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Fine. There then remains a magnificent ball field, complete with bleachers and tons of grass. The weather is uncommonly mild, and we can pretend there is a game in progress. What say?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

  “It is restricted,” he went on. “But methinks a mere enlisted man guards the portals. We can scare him away with all our assorted bars, Ensign Dvorak.”

  “All right,” she said, and then she laughed softly and held his arm tighter. They walked in silence until the outline of the ball field loomed ahead. Standing near the gate was an enlisted man with a guard belt and a rifle.

  Masters walked over and said, “You there! Snap to!”

  The man leaped to attention. “Sorry, sir. I—I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s a fine recommendation for a man on watch. I saw some Waves in their underwear trying to crawl under the fence at the far end of the field. Get over there and stop them.”

  “Yes, sir.” The guard started running, and Jean began laughing.

  “He must think you’re crazy,” she said.

  “No. But he’s going to be mighty disappointed. After you, m’dear.”

  They walked across the field, and he took off his jacket, over her protests, and spread it on the ground for her. They sat, and the stars were etched sharply overhead, and the world seemed to end at the perimeter of the ball field.

  “I’m beginning to get sober,” he said.

  “Are you? Well, good.”

  “Why? I’m also beginning to remember why I got looped.”

  “Schaefer again?”

  “Schaefer again. Damnit, why’d they have to stick me on that damned investigation board?”

  “Chuck, can’t you forget it? You know the Navy as well as I do. Look at it this way. How many men are killed when a ship goes down?”

  “Sure.”

  “Chuck …”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not going to get morose, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.” He laughed suddenly.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Mary. I was just thinking of Mary.”

  “My girl friend?”

  “No. Another Mary. A girl whom you are not—but I think I’ll kiss you anyway.”

  “Chuck …”

  He took her in his arms, and she tried to hold him away, for just a moment, until his mouth found hers. And then she trembled slightly in the circle of his embrace and gave her lips to him.

  “I’ll be seeing a lot of you, you now,” he said.

  “I …”

  “Yes, I will. Oh, yes, I will. You might as well get used to the way I kiss.”

  She caught her breath, and when she spoke, her voice was very low. “I’m used to it already,” she said.

  7

  Masters heard reveille sounded over the ship’s p.a system the next morning, but it didn’t get him out of his sack. He heard Le Page come grumbling awake in the bunk opposite him. He rolled over his face to the bulkhead, pulling the pillow over his head. Le Page shuffled around for his shoes, and Masters wondered why the hell they’d put a meathead like the Ensign in with him. A man should be quiet in the morning. A man should come to terms with life again slowly. He shouldn’t stumble around until life slapped him right in the face like a wet mackerel.

  What the hell was Le Page doing now? Masters could hear the rattle of his dog tags, and beneath that another sound he couldn’t immediately identify. He placed it then, and he was tempted to throw his pillow at Le Page’s empty head. The goddamn jackass was making up his sack!

  “Hey, Masters,” Le Page said. “Wake up, Masters. Reveille.”

  Masters played dead. Maybe if he lay still, without moving a muscle, without breathing, Le Page would go away. Maybe Le Page would wander out to the boat deck and jump over the side.

  “Hey, Masters!” Le Page shouted. “Come on, boy. Reveille! Don’t want to miss chow.”

  From under the pillow and the blanket, Masters ominously intoned, “Le Page, you are a goddamned jackass.”

  “You awake, Masters?” Le Page asked, apparently having heard the sullen mumble from beneath the bedclothes.

  Masters held his breath.

  “You awake?” Le Page repeated.

  “Yes, goddamnit, I am awake!” Masters shouted. “A dead man couldn’t sleep in here with all the goddamn racket you’re making.”

  “Well, gee, Chuck,” Le Page said, “I thought you wanted chow.”

  “I don’t want chow,” Masters said.

  “Well, how was I to know?”

  “I don’t want anything. I just want silence. Complete silence,” Masters said. “I just want to sleep a little.”

  “A rough night last night?” Le Page asked.

  “I don’t want an hour-long discussion,” Masters said patiently. “I want to sleep. Go, Le Page. Go eat your chow. Eat my helping, too. Eat until you’re gorged. Eat until you bust! But just get the hell out of here and leave me alone!”

  “Well, sure, Chuck. I mean, if you want—”

  “That’s an order!” Masters roared.

  “Yes, sir,” Le Page said. He scurried for the curtained doorway, and Masters smiled grimly and rolled over again.

  He closed his eyes and tried to capture sleep again, but it was no use. He was awake. Well, I’m awake, he thought. Well, another goddamn day blooming on the horizon. Well, what’s so special about …

  Jean. Jean Dvorak.

  The name popped into his mind, and he suddenly remembered everything that had happened the night before, and a smile blossomed involuntarily on his face. He nodded in satisfaction. A nice girl. A real nice girl, one of the nicest he’d ever run across. Had he promised to call her today?

  He didn’t remember. But he would call her, whet
her he’d promised or not, as soon as he could get off the ship. In that case, he thought, leave us get the hell out of our sack.

  He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and scratched his chest idly, listening to the rattle of his dog tags. He yawned cavernously, stretched his muscular arms over his head, and then sighed.

  His blues were thrown over the back of a metal chair, looking rumpled and disconsolate. He abruptly remembered all the Scotch he’d drunk the night before. Drunk was the word for it, all right. He wondered if he’d behaved all right with Jean. Yes, he was pretty sure he had. Be a hell of a thing to mess up with a girl like that. You don’t run across a girl like that every day of the week.

  “Tor-ay-oh-dor,” he sang suddenly, “don’t spit on the floor. Use the cuspidor. That’s what it’s for.”

  Of course, this did not apply to a Navy vessel. There were no floors on a Navy vessel. There were only decks. “Tor-ay-oh-dor,” he sang again, “don’t spit on the deck. Use Le Page’s neck. Make the low-down sonofabitch a wreck.”

  He smiled and pulled on his gray trousers. He went to the sink and washed his face. How many songs like that were there? he wondered, and then he wondered why he was so concerned with things musical this morning. Songs that could be twisted around, of course.

  “My Devotion.” There was one.

  “My abortion,” he sang, “was painful, and cost me a fortune …”

  That was an old one. He’d learned it years back when the song was popular. He’d learned another one at that time, too, and it was probably the most disgusting distortion he’d ever heard. It was a take-off on “Jealousy.”

  Leprosy, he sang silently, you’re making a mess of me. There goes my right ear. There goes my left ear.

  He brushed his teeth vigorously, taking the taste of the song and the preceding night’s Scotch out of his mouth. Does Le Page ever wash? he wondered. I think all the sonofabitch does is eat. I don’t think he’s taken a shower since he came aboard. Someday I’ll tell him. Le Page, I’ll say, I have put up with this godawful stink for a good many moons now, Le Page my good man.

  What godawful stink, Chuck? he will ask.

  The godawful stink emanating from your rotund little form, Le Page, I shall answer. I suggest you take a shower, Le Page. I suggest you wash off all the crawling little vermin that are suffocating the opening of your navel and perhaps other apertures, Le Page. I suggest you do that right this minute, Le Page, and in case you were wondering about the strength of my motivations, that is an order, Le Page, that is a goddamned order! Now hop to it!

  Someday.

  Not now. Not right now. Right now I’m going to the wardroom, where I’ll stuff myself full of the garbage they call morning mess, which is exactly what it is. And then quarters for muster, and then I shall sneak away from this floating cracker box and make a call to the nurses’ quarters, and perhaps Jean will agree to see me this evening.

  He dried his face and hands, flipped the towel onto his sack, and then walked out into the passageway and then onto the main deck. When he got to the wardroom, he studiously avoided sitting next to Le Page. He sat between Reynolds and Carlucci instead, and then he waited for the steward’s mate to take his order. There was a choice of eggs this morning. He chose scrambled, and then asked for an immediate cup of coffee, which he downed almost the instant it was poured.

  “How do you feel this morning?” Reynolds asked.

  “Just dandy,” Masters said. “How do you feel?”

  “Lousy. I always feel lousy. What I meant, though, you weren’t very chipper yesterday.”

  “That was yesterday. I feel fine today.”

  “You’ve forgotten all about dead people?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Masters said.

  “Hey,” Carlucci said, “how do you rate pancakes, Mike?” He glared at Reynolds’ plate, and then looked back to the sunnysides on his own plate.

  “I’m, executive officer,” Reynolds answered, smiling. “I’ve grown accustomed to the privileges of rank.”

  “How about spreading the largess a bit?” Carlucci asked.

  “You’re better off with the eggs,” Reynolds answered.

  “Where’s the Old Man this morning?” Masters asked.

  “I think he’s still asleep. When have you ever seen him at morning mess, anyway?”

  “Never. I was just hoping he’d fallen over the side or something.”

  “You’re too hard, on him,” Reynolds said seriously. “He’s got a lot of headaches.”

  “Even now that the FBI has cleared up our nasty little scandal? Hell, I thought the Old Man’s worries were over.”

  “How’d you ever get to be an officer, Chuck?” Reynolds asked.

  “I brown-nosed my way through boot camp,” Masters replied.

  “Shake, pal,” Carlucci said, starting to eat his eggs, an obvious look of distaste on his face.

  “No, seriously,” Reynolds said.

  “Seriously? Truth is, I wanted to be an FBI man. I—”

  “Oh, horse manure.”

  “God’s truth, s’help me. I flunked the course, though. Wretched was that day,” Masters said woefully. “But, still being obsessed with the idea of performing a government service, I joined the Navy. The Secretary of the Navy immediately gave me a commission. That’s the story, Mike.”

  “Yeah,” Reynolds said dryly.

  “And here are my eggs,” Masters said. He took the plate from the steward’s mate and began eating. He glanced over to where Le Page was seated, marveling at the amount of food the Ensign could stuff into his mouth and apparently swallow without chewing.

  Reynolds and Carlucci left before he finished his eggs. He ordered another cup of coffee, sat drinking that and smoking until the boatswain announced quarters for muster. He swallowed the remainder of his coffee, squashed the cigarette in an ash tray, and left the wardroom.

  The men he passed seemed happier today. A ship was a funny thing, all right. Nothing but a small community. A tight little community of men living in extremely close quarters. You find a dead nurse in the radar shack, and the smell of the corpse will most naturally spread to the rest of the ship. People don’t like corpses where they live. And nobody likes the idea of a killer roaming the decks, which are the streets of the community that is the ship. Nobody likes that idea at all. So Schaefer put an end to the crew’s discomfiture. Schaefer, allegedly, leaped over the fantail. He took the stink of the corpse with him, and he also rid the streets of the killer.

  The crew, one-track-minded as it was, probably liked Schaefer better now than they had when he was alive. Schaefer had lifted the pall for them. And he had also, incidentally, lifted the restriction. The crew could go awhoring now. The crew could inhabit the dimly lighted dime-a-dance joints in the city that was Norfolk. Or the crew could shoot their pay at the many penny arcades and shooting galleries. Or the crew could get tattooed, or buy tailor-mades, or spend their time and their money in various other ways, none of which were particularly entertaining.

  But would the crew ever stop to wonder whether Schaefer had actually strangled the nurse? Does an ordinary citizen ever wonder about the methods of the police? If a rapist is plaguing a neighborhood, and the police claim they’ve captured him, does the community still lie awake nights wondering? No. The community relaxes.

  The crew had relaxed, too. There were smiles now. There was whistling. The cursing had always been there, but it seemed more forceful now. Things were back to normal.

  Almost.

  They were not back to normal if either Jones or Daniels was a killer. They were not back to normal at all, if that were the case.

  And no one cares but me, Masters thought.

  Charles Stanton Masters, protector of the innocent, upholder of the righteous, seeker of justice.

  Charles Stanton Masters, Jerk First Class.

  I should have stood in bed.

  Colombo, the quartermaster first, handed Masters the muster sheet. Colombo was tall and lean
, and he always showed up for muster with clear eyes and a smiling mouth. Masters envied that fresh look. He never seemed able to attain it in the morning. The communications crew—consisting of radiomen, radarmen, sonarmen, signalmen, and quartermasters thrown in for good measure—lined up every morning in the space between the aft sleeping compartment hatch and the rail. They faced the sea, and they inevitably faced it bleary-eyed. Masters and Colombo faced the men. On the mornings when Masters was too groggy to read the sheet, Colombo took over. Colombo was never groggy. Aft of this muster spot, the gunnery men lined up between the aft mounts. Elsewhere along the ship, the other members of the crew faced other officers with similar muster sheets.

  The names were read off. If a man were AOL or even AWOL, it was T.S. for him. If a man were below catching forty winks, someone would always answer to his name—but only if they knew he was there. The officer always knew that someone else was answering for an absentee. In fact, he usually sent someone down below to rustle him out of his sack.

  In addition to checking attendance, the officer usually gave his men pertinent bits of information concerning the ship’s day. For example, he told them there would be an inspection at noon. Or he wanted every man in his division to get a haircut that day. Or pay would be distributed at 1500. Or everyone would be restricted to the ship because a dead nurse had been found in the radar shack. Things like that. For this sailor’s life was not a simple matter of waking up in the morning and going about your business. There were men who explained exactly how you should go about your business, and Masters was one of these men.

  This morning, there was nothing special to say. He read off the names in his division listlessly, and each man answered with his own peculiar variation of “Here.” The variations ranged from “Yah” to “Yo” to “Yay” to “Present” to “On deck” to—in rare moments—“Here.” Jones answered to his name by saying, “Yo.” “Yo” was the saltiest answer. It didn’t take a sailor long to catch on to the fact that “Here” was an answer reserved strictly for guys straight out of boot camp. The muster-reading was accomplished without a hitch. Everyone was present and accounted for. The men hung around, slouching wearily, talking among themselves, until the boatswain tooted his pipe and announced cleaning stations. The men dispersed. Colombo took his time. He was a first-class petty officer. First-class petty officers didn’t have to rush.