Semper Fi

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 about 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.

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."

"And four years in the Corps," Sessions said. "Which I think would give you a hell of an advantage at Quantico.''

"You think I could make it through?" McCoy asked.

"I do," Sessions said. "But the only way to find out for sure is for you to apply, pass the board, and go."

"It's worth a shot, I guess," McCoy said, thinking aloud. "What have I got to lose?"

"Sergeant Davis has your application all typed up," Sessions repeated. "I'll approve it, of course."

"Thank you," McCoy said, simply.

(Four)

After he signed his name to the applications Staff Sergeant Davis had typed up for him, he put the whole business from his mind, convinced that like all other paperwork he'd seen in the Corps, it would take forever and a day to work its way through the system. He had more important things on his mind than the possibility that the application might, some months down the pike, be favorably acted upon… or that some further months down the pike he would be facing a board of officers-which probably wouldn't approve him anyway. After a while, in fact, he'd come to the conclusion that the incident at the ferry had a lot more to do with the whole business than Sessions's brilliant insight that he would make an officer. Sessions was being nice to him. The officers he would face on the board, when and if he got to face it, wouldn't think they owed him a thing.

And besides, he had three much more immediate problems to face, all of them connected. The first was what was going to happen to him now that the "interviews" were over. He didn't want to go to the Motor Transport Platoon, but on the other hand that would be a good place to keep his nose clean until Captain Banning came home from Shanghai. And he didn't really want to go to a heavy weapons platoon as a machine-gunner either. Since he'd be transferring in grade, they would try to bust him on general principles; and that would fuck up going back to work for Captain Banning.

He could also ask Captain Sessions to keep him around the detachment. Sessions would probably do it-as a favor. But that would mean he'd have to work as a clerk and push a typewriter and he was still not anxious to do that. And more important, if he stayed in Philadelphia, he'd have to deal with his two other problems: He had made up his mind to go home and face that and get it the hell over with once and for all. But going home once was not the same thing as having home so close to where he was stationed… Christ, Norristown was only an hour away in the LaSalle.

These were the thoughts that were occupying his mind, not the remote, way-down-the-pike possibility of being called before a board of officers who would make up their minds whether or not he stood a chance of keeping up with a bunch of college boys at Quantico.

On Monday morning, he signed the application papers. On Wednesday morning, Staff Sergeant Davis came to the barracks and told him to put on his best uniform and report to the board at 1330.

"Sit down, Corporal," a major, who was the president of the board, said. The five officers of the board were sitting behind two issue tables pushed together. One was a second lieutenant who was functioning as secretary. Two of them were first lieutenants (Lieutenant Fogarty, the 47th Motor Transport Platoon commander was one of them). Captain Sessions was the fourth. And the last was the major McCoy was seeing for the first time.

McCoy sat down at attention in a straight-backed wooden chair facing the tables.

"We have before us what is apparently a well-turned-out corporal of the regular Marine Corps," the president of the board said, "who, with his shady reputation, his illegal chevrons, and his equally illegal campaign hat, is just about what we expected of a China Marine so highly recommended by Captain Sessions. And others."

"Come on, Major." Captain Sessions chuckled. "The lieutenant's going to write that all down."

"Strike everything after-what did I say?-'well-turned-out corporal of the regular Marine Corps,' Lieutenant," the president ordered.

"Aye, aye, sir," the lieutenant said, and smiled at McCoy.

"Who comes to us not only recommended by Captain Sessions but by another member of this board, Lieutenant Fogarty, whose recommendation is based on his long-time evaluation-it must be three weeks now-as the corporal's platoon leader. The corporal's qualifications having, after due evaluation, been judged to be more than adequate, we now turn to the real question. In your own words, Corporal, would you tell this board why you feel yourself qualified, after proper training, to serve your country and the Marine Corps as a commissioned officer?"

"I'm not sure I do, sir," McCoy said.

"That's the wrong answer, Corporal," the president of the board said. "You want to try again?"

"Tell us why not, McCoy," Captain Sessions said.

This whole fucking thing is unreal. How am I supposed to answer that?

He paraphrased what was in his mind: "I'm not sure I know how to answer that question, sir," he said.

"You've known second lieutenants, McCoy," Sessions said. "Pick out any one of them except this one, and tell us why you doubt your ability to do anything he can do."

"Sir, all I've got is a high school education," McCoy said.

"You speak Chinese, I have been told?" the president asked. "And Japanese? And several European languages?"

"I don't speak Japanese as well as Chinese, sir. And I can hardly read it at all."

"Well, here's a given for you, Corporal. So far as the Marine Corps is concerned, fluency in almost any foreign language is worth more than a bachelor's degree. Anything else?"

"I wouldn't know how to behave as an officer, sir."

"They'll teach you that at Quantico," the president said. "Anything else?"

"Sir, Captain Sessions just sprung this whole idea on me."

"Answer this question. Think it over first-yes or no. No qualifications. Do you want to be an officer or don't you?"

McCoy thought it over. For what seemed to him like a very long time. The president of the board began to tap his fingertips impatiently on the table. Captain Sessions's left eyebrow was arched, a sign of impatience, often followed by an angry outburst.

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

"You are temporarily dismissed, Corporal," the president said, "while this board discusses your application. There may be other questions for you. Please wait in the corridor."

"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said. He stood up, did an about-face, and marched out of the room. He had just managed to close the door when he broke wind. It smelled like something had died.

"The board will offer comments in inverse order of rank," the president said. "Lieutenant?"

"Sir, I'm a little concerned about his attitude," the second lieutenant said. "He certainly took his time thinking it over when you asked him straight out if he wanted to become an officer."

"It has been my experience, Lieutenant," the major said, "that what's wrong with most junior officers is that they leap into action without thinking things over carefully."

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said.

"Lieutenant Bruce?"

"So far as I'm concerned," Lieutenant Bruce said, "he's what we're supposed to be looking for. A noncom of proven ability who can handle a wartime commission."

"Lieutenant Fogarty?"

"I'm impressed with him," Fogarty said simply. "He's a little rough around the edges, maybe, but they can clean up his language and teach him which fork to use at Quantico."

"Ed?" the president asked, turning to Captain Sessions.

"I admit of course to a certain personal bias. He saved my life. One finds all sorts of previously unsuspected virtues in people who do that."

There was laughter along the table.

"But even if he hadn't saved my skin, and even if a certain unnamed very senior officer had not made his desires known, I would enthusiastically recommend McCoy for a commission," Sessions added.

"Does he know about the general?"

"I'm sure he doesn't. The general and his aide were in civilian clothing, and they weren't introduced," Sessions said. "Being as objective as I can, I believe the Corps needs officers like McCoy."

"Because he's a linguist, you mean?" the President asked.

"He'd be a linguist anyway," Sessions said. "But that would be a waste of his talents, even though people who speak Chinese and Japanese are damned hard to come by."

"We will now vote in the same order," the president said. "Unless someone wants to call him back and ask him something else?"

He looked up and down the table.

"Lieutenant?" he asked, when he saw that no one had any additional questions.

"I vote yes, sir," the lieutenant said.

One by one, the others said exactly the same thing.

"This board, whose president is not about to put his judgment in conflict with that of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, USMC…," the president said, and waited for the expected chuckles.

After they came, he went on: "Especially after he said- slowly, carefully, and with great emphasis-I think we ought to put bars on that boy's shoulders, if for no other reason than he seems to be the only one in the Marine Corps besides me and Chesty Puller who doesn't think the Japs can be whipped with one hand tied behind us.' "

He waited again for the chuckles, then concluded: "This board has in secret session just unanimously approved the application of Corporal McCoy to attend the Platoon Leader's Course at Quantico. Lieutenant, you are directed to make the decision known to the appointing authority."

"Aye, aye, sir," the lieutenant said.

"Call him back in here, will you?" the president said.

The lieutenant went to the door, opened it, and motioned McCoy back into the room. McCoy marched in and stood to attention beside the straight-backed wooden chair.

"Corporal," the president said, "this board has considered your application carefully, and after review by the appointing authority, that decision will be made known to you through channels. In the meantime, you will continue to perform your regular duties. Do you have any questions?"

"No, sir."

The president rapped his knuckles on the table. "This board stands adjourned until recalled by me."

McCoy, thinking he had been dismissed again, started to do another about-face.

"Hold it, Corporal," the president said. "Sit down a minute."

McCoy sat down, more or less at attention.

"Corporal, unofficially, what that Platoon Leader's Course actually is is Parris Island for officers. What it's really all about is to make Marines-Marine officers-out of civilians. To do that, they're going to lean hard on the trainees. That might be harder for a Marine corporal to take than it would for some kid straight from college. It would be a shame if some Marine corporal who a lot of people think would make a good officer were to say, 'I'm a corporal; I don't have to put up with this crap. They can stick their commission.' Do I make my point?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, while I cannot tell you how this board has acted on your application, or whether or not the appointing authority will concur with its recommendation, I can mention in passing that the next Platoon Leader's Course begins at Quantico One September, and if I were you I wouldn't make any plans for the period following One September. Perhaps between now and One September, your platoon commander could see his way clear to putting you on leave."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Fogarty said. "No problem there, sir."

"Well, that's it then," the president said. "Unless anyone else has something?"

"I want to sec the corporal a minute when this is over," Captain Sessions said. "Stick around, please, Killer."

" 'Killer?' " the president asked, wryly. "Is that what you call him? My curiosity is aroused."

"With respect, sir, that is a little private joke between the corporal and myself," Captain Sessions said.

(Five)

Norristown, Pennsylvania

10 August 1941

Norristown was dingier, dirtier, grayer, and greasier than McCoy remembered; and he had a terrible temptation just to say fuck it and turn the LaSalle around and go back to Philly.

In China, McCoy had told himself more than once that he would never go back home, because as far as he was concerned there was nothing left for him there. That had been all right in Shanghai, but it hadn't been all right once the Corps had sent him to Philly. He knew he was at least going to have to make an effort to go see his sister Anne-Marie, who was probably a regular nun by now, and his brother Tommy, who was now eighteen and probably almost a man, and maybe even the old man.

McCoy told himself that at least he was not going back to Norristown the way he left… on the Interurban Rapid Transit car to Philly with nothing in his pocket but the trolley

transfer the Marine recruiter had given him to get from the Twelfth Street Station in Philly to the Navy Yard.

He was coming home in a LaSalle convertible automobile; he was wearing a candy-ass college boy seersucker suit like Pick Pickering wore; and he had a couple of hundred bucks in his pockets and a hell of a lot more than that in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society bank.

At the convent, a pale-faced nun behind a grille told him that she was sorry she couldn't help him but she had never heard of anyone named Anne-Marie McCoy. A moment later, the door over the grill was once more shut and locked. After that he went to the rectory at Saint Rose of Lima's.

A young priest opened the door. He was a dark-eyed, dark-haired guy, who looked like he could be either some kind of a Mexican or maybe a Hungarian. He was only wearing a T-shirt; but the black slacks and shoes gave him away. Besides, McCoy could have told you this one was a priest even if he was naked in a steambath. He had that look. Still, McCoy was a little let down that the guy wasn't wearing a white collar and a black front.

"Can I help you?" the young priest asked.

"Is Father Zoghby in?" McCoy asked.

Standing in exactly this spot, he recalled, he had asked that same question at least a couple of hundred times before: When he was an altar boy. Later when he was in some kind of trouble in school and the sisters or the brothers sent him to see "the Father." And later still on the night when the old man went apeshit and came after him with crazy eyes, swinging the bottom of the lamp. McCoy came here that night because he hadn't known where else to go or what else to do.

"I'm sorry," the young priest said. "Father Zoghby's no longer at Saint Rose's."

"Where is he?" McCoy asked.

"He's in Saint Francis's, I'm sorry to say," the young priest said, and repeated, "Can I help you?"

Saint Francis's was a hospital near Philadelphia. It was where they sent you if you were going to die, or if you went crazy.

"I'm looking for Anne-Marie McCoy," he said. "She used to be in this parish, and then I heard she was at the Sisters of the Holy Ghost as a novice. But when I asked at the convent, they told me she wasn't there. And they wouldn't tell me where she went."

"What's your interest in her?"

"She's my sister," McCoy said. "I've been away."

"I see," the priest said.

There was recognition now in his eyes. McCoy thought the young priest had probably heard all about the grief and pain the incorrigible son had inflicted on good ol' Pat McCoy before they ran the incorrigible off to the Marines. Nobody but his family would believe it, but when good ol' Pat wasn't glad-handing people at the used-car lot or the KC or the 12th Street Bar Grill, good ol' Pat McCoy was pouring John Jamieson's into his brain. Only his wife and kids knew it, but good ol' glad-hand Pat was a mean, vicious drunk who got his kicks slapping his wife and his kids around. Sometimes he beat them because there was some kind of reason like not showing the proper respect, or for bad grades or a note from one of the Sisters or the Brothers, or for leaving polish showing when you'd waxed one of the cars on the lot. More often he beat them for no reason at all.

Kenneth J. McCoy would never forget the time when good ol' Pat had dragged him in front of the judge: "God knows, Your Honor," Pat McCoy told the judge, the Honorable Francis Mulvaney, a fellow knight at the KC, "I have tried to do my best for my family. God knows that. I sent them to parochial school when it was a genuine sacrifice to come up with the tuition. I made them take Mass regular. I tried to set an example."

He paused then to blow his nose and wipe his eyes.

"And now this," his father went on. "Maybe God is punishing me for something I done in my youth. I don't know, Your Honor."

"I'll hear your side of this," His Honor said to the incorrigible.

Who replied that good ol' Pat had slapped his eldest-just turned seventeen-son one time too many. And his eldest son (otherwise known to this court as the accused, Kenneth J. McCoy) had seen red and given him a shove back. And good ol' Pat, the loving father who had sent the accused to parochial school even when that had been a genuine financial sacrifice, had been so drunk that he fell down and tore his cheek when he knocked over the coffee table.

And that had made of loving Father so pissed that he came after die accused with the base of the table lamp. After he'd demonstrated his willingness to use it by smashing the Philco radio and the glass in the bookcases and the plaster statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the accused had fled the premises and sought refuge in the rectory of Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church. There he had remained until, accompanied by the good Father Zoghby, he surrendered himself to the Norristown Police to face charges. Good of loving Father Pat McCoy had accused his eldest son of assault with intent to do bodily harm as well as general all-around incorrigibility and heathenism and ungrateful sonism.

"I'm sorry he cut his face," the accused mumbled to the judge.

"That's all?"

"Yes, sir."

It had already been arranged, Father Zoghby had told him when he'd come to the jail. He'd had a word with the judge. To spare his family any further shame and humiliation, the judge would drop all charges on condition that the accused join the U.S. Marine Corps for four years.

Later he'd tried to send his civvies home in the box they gave you at Parris Island, but it had come back marked REFUSED. So had die letters he'd written at first to his mother and Anne-Marie and Tommy. Then there had been a letter from Father Zoghby: His father could not find it in his heart to forgive him, and had started telling people he had no son named Kenneth. It would be better, Father Zoghby continued, if Kenneth stopped writing until things had a time to settle. He would pray that his father would in time forgive him, and he would keep him posted if anything happened he should know.

While McCoy was still running the water-cooled.30-caliber Browning in Dog Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, Father Zoghby had written him one more letter His mother was dead; Anne-Marie had a vocation and was a novice at the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Ghost; Tommy had gone to Bethlehem, where the steel mills had reopened and there was work; and his father had remarried.

"Anne- Marie left the convent at least two years ago, I'm sorry to say," the young priest said. "I'm sure your father would know where she is."

"I can't ask him," McCoy said.

The priest looked at him for a moment, and McCoy sensed that he was making up his mind. Then the priest stepped outside and closed the rectory door after him.

"Maybe I can help you," he said.

He led him past the church building, then down the cracked concrete walkway to the school buildings-the grammar school to the left and the larger, newer Saint Rose of Lima High School building to the right-and finally to the nun's residence.

He spoke first to Sister Gregory, who recognized McCoy as she looked down at him from the steps of the residence, but acted as if she had never seen him before in her life. She went back inside, and a minute later Sister Paul appeared at the door and walked down the steps to where McCoy and the young priest stood.

"How are you, Kenneth?" Sister Paul said.

"I'm all right, Sister," McCoy said. "How are you?"

"Have you made things right between you and God, Kenneth?"

"I don't know, Sister," McCoy said.

"You're not going to make trouble are you, Kenneth?" she asked.

"I just came home from China," McCoy said. "I want to see Anne-Marie."

"You were in China, were you?"

"Yes, Sister."

"Anne- Marie left the Sisters of the Holy Ghost," Sister Paul said, "and I'm sorry to tell you, she has also abandoned the Church."

"Do you know where she is?"

"Here in Norristown," Sister Paul said. "She's taken up with a Protestant."

"Excuse me?"

"She chose to marry a young man outside the Church. He's a Protestant whose name is Schulter. He has the Amoco station at Ninth and Walnut. They have two babies, a little girl and a little boy."

"Thank you. Sister Paul," McCoy said.

"I don't want you to do anything, Kenneth, that will cause your father more pain," she said. "I hope you've had time to grow up, to think things through."