Semper Fi

Chapter Eight

(One)

The man who walked out to the pump island when McCoy drove in wore an Amoco uniform: a striped shirt and trousers with a matching billed cap. There was an Amoco insignia on the brow of the cap and a nameplate, "Dutch," was sewn to the shirt breast. The man was about thirty, McCoy judged, and already wearing a spare tire.

"Fill it with high-test, sir?" he asked.

McCoy nodded. After Dutch had opened the hood, McCoy got out of the car.

"You must have just had the oil changed," Dutch said, showing McCoy the dipstick. "Clean as a whistle and right to the top."

"Your name Schulter?" McCoy asked.

"That's right," Dutch said, warily curious.

"I'm Anne-Marie's brother," McCoy said.

Dutch hesitated a moment and then put out his hand. "Dutch Schulter," he said. "I heard-she told me-you was in the Marines."

"I am," McCoy said.

"You must be doing all right in the Marines," Dutch Schulter said, making a vague gesture first at the LaSalle. and then at McCoy himself.

"I do all right," McCoy said.

The gas pump made a chugging noise when the automatic filler nozzle was triggered. Dutch Schulter moved to the rear of the car, topped off the tank, then hung the hose up. McCoy looked at the pump. Eleven point seven gallons at 23.9 cents a gallon: $2.79. He took a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off a ten-dollar bill.

Dutch Schulter handed the change to him, together with a Coca-Cola glass.

"They're free with a fill-up," he said.

"How do I get to see my sister?" McCoy said.

Schulter looked at him for a moment as if making up his mind, and then raised his voice: "Mickey!"

A kid in an Amoco uniform appeared at the door of the grease-rack bay.

"Hold the fort, Mickey," Dutch called. "I got to go home for a minute."

Home was a row house on North Elm, a little wooden porch in front of a fieldstone house that smelled of baby shit, sour milk, and cabbage.

Anne- Marie looked older than he expected. She was already getting fat and lumpy, and she had lost a couple of teeth. She cried when she saw him, and hugged him, and told him he had really growed up.

Dutch touched his shoulder, and when McCoy turned to look at him, handed him a bottle of beer.

"You're an uncle, Kenny," Anne-Marie said. "We got a boy and a girl, but I just got them to sleep, and you'll have to wait to see them. You can stay for supper?"

"I thought I'd take you and Dutch out for supper," McCoy said.

"You don't want to do that," she protested. "You won't believe what restaurants ask for food these days."

"Yeah, I do," McCoy said.

"What I should have done," Dutch said, "is had him follow me in the truck. You want to run me back by the station? Could you find your way back here again?"

"Why don't you take my car?" McCoy said. "I've got no place else to go."

"You got a car, Kenny?" Anne-Marie asked, surprised.

"He's got a goddamned LaSalle convertible, is what he's got," Dutch said.

She looked at him in surprise.

"You been doing all right for yourself, I guess," she said.

"I've been doing all right," McCoy said.

"I'll put it up on the rack, and grease it," Dutch said. "And then have the kid works for me, you saw him, Mickey, wash it."

"Thank you," McCoy said, and tossed him the keys.

Dutch Schulter returned a few minutes after six, as soon as the night man came on at the station. McCoy was glad to see him. Anne-Marie was getting on his nerves. She was a goddamned slob. He had to tell her to change the diaper on the older kid; he had shit running down his leg from under his diaper.

The sink was full of unwashed dishes. McCoy remembered that, come to think of it, his mother had been sort of a slob herself. Many of the times the old man had slapped her around, it had started with him bitching about something being dirty.

She told him she would really rather make his supper herself. When Dutch returned with his car, she said, he could take her down to the Acme and she would get steaks or something; but she didn't mean it, and McCoy didn't want to eat in her dirty kitchen, off her dirty plates.

She asked him if he had been to see "Daddy," and he told her no. And she told him she hadn't seen him either. He had been mad at her since she left the convent (and boy, could she tell him stories about what went on in that place!); and after she had married Dutch, outside the church and all, it had gotten worse.

Dutch was a good man, she said. She had met him when she was working in the Highway Diner on the Bethlehem Pike after she left the convent. He had been nice to her, and one thing had led to another, and they'd started going out. Then they got married and started their family.

McCoy did the arithmetic in his head, and decided she had the sequence wrong: She and Dutch started their family, and then got married. The old man could count, too, which might be one of the reasons he was pissed-off at her.

How dare she embarrass Past Grand Exalted Commander Pat McCoy of the KC? She not only leaves (or gets kicked out of?) the convent, but she gets herself knocked up by some Dutchy she meets slinging hash at the Highway Diner.

Dutch came home with the LaSalle all greased and polished, then took a bath and got dressed-up in a two-tone sports coat and slacks. Anne-Marie had on a too-tight spotted dress with a flowery print. They loaded the kids in the car and went looking for someplace to eat.

Anne- Marie said the food in the 12th Street Bar Grill was always good, and they didn't ask an arm and a leg for it. McCoy knew she was less concerned with good food and saving his money than she was in going where the old man would be hanging out so he'd see them together all dressed-up, and him driving a LaSalle.

"I saw a place on the way into town, Norristown Tavern… Inn… that looked nice," McCoy said.

"They charge an arm and a leg in there," Anne-Marie said.

"Yeah, they do, Kenny," Dutch agreed. He did care, McCoy decided, what it was going to cost.

"What the hell, I don't get to come all that often," McCoy said.

When they were in the Norristown Inn, in a booth against the wall, Anne-Marie looked up from trying to force a spoonful of potatoes into the boy and whispered, "There's Daddy."

Good ol' Pat McCoy was at the bar, with a sharp-faced female, her hair piled high on top of her head, her lipstick a red gash across her pale face… obviously the second Mrs. Patrick J. McCoy.

McCoy thought it over, and when they were on their strawberry shortcake, he got up from the table without saying anything and walked to the bar.

"Hello," he said to his father.

His father nodded at him. The second Mrs. McCoy looked at him curiously.

He's not surprised to see me, which means that he saw me at the table with Anne-Marie and Dutch. And didn't come over.

"You're home, I see," McCoy's father said.

"About ten days ago."

McCoy's father moved his glass in little circles on the bar.

"Learn anything in the Marine Corps?" McCoy's father asked.

That told his new wife who I am. Now she doesn't like me either.

"I learned a little," McCoy said.

"So what are you doing now, looking for a job?"

"Not yet."

"Maybe the Dutchman'll give you one pumping gas," his father said. He laughed at his own wit and turned to his wife for an audience. She dutifully tittered.

"Maybe he will," McCoy said, and walked back to the table.

"What did he say?" Anne-Marie asked.

"Not much," McCoy said.

He told himself he was being a prick when the bill came and he got mad that Anne-Marie had ordered one of everything on the menu. He'd offered to take them to dinner; he shouldn't bitch about what it cost.

He told Anne-Marie and Dutch that he had to go back to Philadelphia, so he couldn't stay over on the foldaway bed. But he promised to write. Then he dropped them at their row house. Before he left, he asked for Tommy's address.

They were obviously pressed for dough, and he considered slipping Anne-Marie fifty bucks "to buy something for the kids," but decided against it. She'd already started moaning abut how hard it was to make it with two kids on what Dutch brought home from the Amoco station. If he gave her money, she would be back for more.

He didn't return to Philly. He never intended to. Though he wasn't on leave, he didn't have to go back or make the reveille formation or anything. Lieutenant Fogarty had pointedly told him that no one was going to be looking for him around the platoon, and that if he didn't want to use up his leave time, he could sack out in the barracks whenever and check in with the first sergeant every couple of days.

He just wanted to get away from the row house and the stink of baby shit and cabbage.

He stopped outside of town, put the roof up, then drove to Bethlehem and checked into the Hotel Bethlehem. It wasn't the Bellevue Stratford, but it was nice, and when he went down to the dining room in the morning, they had breakfast steaks and corned beef hash on the menu. He ordered it up, fuck what it cost.

Tommy lived in a rooming house, a great big old rambling building built on the side of a hill. He wasn't there, of course; but the landlady, a big pink-cheeked Polack woman told him he could probably catch him at the walk bridge over the railroad tracks when his shift was over, and that if he missed him there, he could find him at the Lithuanian Social Club.

He drove around town. He saw Lehigh University and, just for the hell of it, drove inside. There really wasn't much to see. He was disappointed, and wondered why. What had he expected?

He went back to the Hotel Bethlehem, and checked out. When the eight-to-four shift let out, he was standing at the end of the bridge over the railroad tracks hoping he would be able to spot Tommy.

Tommy spotted him first. Tommy had changed so much he had let him walk right by him. But Tommy saw him out of the corner of his eye, and came back-even though the last fucking person in the fucking world he expected to see was his fucking brother on the fucking bridge wearing a fucking suit.

They went to the Lithuanian Club, and drank a lot of beer. Once Tommy told the guys his fucking big brother was a fucking corporal in the fucking Marines, it was all right with them despite the fucking suit that made him look like a fucking fairy.

The Lithuanian Club reminded McCoy of the Million Dollar Club in Shanghai. Not in looks. The Lithuanian Club was a dump. It smelled of beer and piss. But the Million Dollar Club was the place where Marines went because they had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but get drunk when the duty day was over. And that's all the Lithuanian Club was, too, a place where the enlisted men from the steel mill went because there was no place else to go when they came away from the open hearths, and nothing to do but get drunk.

Tommy reminded McCoy of a lot of Marines he knew, particularly in the line companies.

They wound up in a whorehouse by the railroad station. McCoy paid for the all-night services of a peroxide blonde not because he was really all that interested in screwing her, but because the alternative was worse: He was too shit-faced to get in his car and drive back to Tommy's rooming house or the Hotel Bethlehem.

The Corps was hell on drunk driving and/or speeding. He still hadn't accepted the possibility that he could become an officer. Which was the main reason why he hadn't said

anything about Quantico to either Anne-Marie or Tommy. Besides, they probably wouldn't believe it. Which was easy to understand; he didn't quite believe it himself. But getting arrested for drunk driving or speeding would be the end of it. He wanted to give it a shot, anyway.

Tommy pulled him out of the whore's bed at half-past six in the morning and said he had to go to fucking work and needed a fucking ride and some fucking breakfast: He couldn't work eight fucking hours on the fucking open hearth with nothing in his fucking stomach.

They went to a greasy spoon and had eggs and home fries and coffee. He dropped Tommy off at the walk bridge over the railroad tracks and drove back to the Navy Yard.

(Two)

The San Mateo Club San Mateo, California 27 August 1941

The building that housed the San Mateo Club had been built, in 1895, as the country residence of Andrew Foster, Sr. It so remained until 1939, when Andrew Foster, Jr., seventy, on the death of his wife, moved into the penthouse atop the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco and put the estate on the market.

It had been quickly snapped up by the board of directors of the San Mateo club. Not only was the price right and the house large enough for the membership then rather crowded into the "old clubhouse," but the money was there. A very nice price had been offered for the "old club" by developers who wanted to turn its greens and fairways into a housing development.

The Foster Estate ("the new club") contained land enough to lay out twenty-seven holes (as opposed to eighteen at the old club), as well as gently rolling pastures right beside the polo field that could accommodate far more ponies than the old club could handle. And old Mr. Foster, Jr. had thrown in all of the furnishings, except for those in his private apartment, which had moved to the hotel penthouse with him.

The woman was lanky and fair-haired. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, a pale blue dress, and white gloves. From where she was standing, by the foot of the wide staircase leading to the second floor of the clubhouse, she could see the reserve supply of champagne. It was practically, if somewhat inelegantly, stored by the door to the passageway to the kitchen in ice-filled, galvanized-iron watering troughs for horses.

She took a delicate bite of her hors d'oeuvre, a very nice pate on a crisp cracker, sipped at her champagne, and seriously considered just picking up one of the bottles and carrying it upstairs. He would probably find that amusing.

But it would be difficult to explain if she met someone coming down the stairs. Without the champagne, it would be presumed that she was going up to use the John. There were inadequate rest room facilities for ladies on the main floor of the San Mateo Club. The men had no similar problem. What had been a private study off the library had been equipped with the proper plumbing and that was it.

Which meant that when nature called, the men could conveniently take a leak not fifty feet from the bar. But the women, when faced with a similar requirement, more often than not would find their small downstairs facilities occupied and would have to seek release in an upstairs John. The silver lining in that cloud was that no one looked curiously at a woman making her way up the wide, curving staircase.

She put her empty champagne glass on the tray of a passing waiter, smilingly shook her head when he offered her a fresh glass, and started up the stairs.

No one was in the upstairs corridors, which she thought was fortuitous. But she hurried nevertheless, and quickly entered, without knocking, a door halfway down the right corridor. There was a brass number on the door, 14. The numbered rooms were an innovation of the House Committee; before they had been put up, people spending the night or the weekend in the "new clubhouse" had been unable to find their own rooms.

She closed the door and fastened the lock. She could hear the sound of the shower and of his voice, an entirely satisfactory tenor. She smiled at that, then walked to the bed, saw that he had tossed his clothing on it, sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. She delicately picked up the sweat-soaked blue polo shirt (a cloth letter "2" still safety-pinned to it) and an equally sweat-soaked pair of Jockey shorts and dropped them onto the floor beside a very dirty pair of breeches, a scarred and battered pair of riding boots, and a pair of heavy woolen socks.

Then she pulled the cover off the bed and turned it down. She looked toward the bathroom, wondering how long he had been in there, how soon he could come out to find her.

Surprise! Surprise!

Then she had an even better idea. She walked to a credenza and pulled her hat and gloves off and dropped them there. Then she took off her wedding and engagement rings. And, very quickly, the rest of her clothing. It would be amusing only if she was finished undressing.

But when she had finished that, he still hadn't come out. The last time she'd seen him, she remembered, he had really needed a bath. He had been reeking with sweat; and perspiration was literally dripping off his chin. But enough was enough.

She examined herself in a mirror and smiled wickedly at herself, walked to the bathroom door, opened it, and went inside. There was no shower stall. One corner had been tiled. The tiled area was so large that water from three shower heads aimed at the corner did not splash beyond it.

His head and face were covered with lather. Still singing cheerfully, he was rubbing the tips of his fingers vigorously on his scalp. She saw a shower cap on a hook and quickly stuffed her hair under it. Then she stepped into the tiled area, hunching her shoulders involuntarily as the water, colder than she expected, struck her. Then she dropped to her knees, reached out, and put it in her mouth.

"Jesus Christ!" Pick Pickering said, "Are you crazy?" And then he yelped. "Christ, I got soap in my eyes!"

He stepped away from her abruptly to turn his face to a shower stream. Slipping and almost falling, the woman rose to her feet. She went to him, pressed her body against him, and nipped his nipple.

"Where the hell is your husband?" Pick Pickering asked.

"In the bar, I suppose," the woman said. "I got bored."

She put her hand on it and pumped it just a few times until it filled her hand.

"You want to try doing it standing up?" she asked. "It would be sort of like doing it in the rain."

"Dorothy!" Pick said.

She tried to arrange herself so he could penetrate her, and failed.

"I don't think that's going to work," she said, matter-of-factly.

Pick Pickering picked her up and carried her to the bed. Penetration there proved simple.

Three minutes later, he jumped out of bed.

"Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am?" she said. "That's not very nice."

"You're out of your mind, Dorothy, do you know that?"

"Where are you going?"

"I am due in town right now," he said.

"Who is she? Anyone I know?"

He didn't reply.

"No goddamned underwear!" He cried as he pawed through a canvas overnight bag. "I didn't bring any underwear!"

"How sexy!" Dorothy said.

"What the hell am I going to do?"

"Do without," she said. "I do that all the time."

He looked at her and smiled.

"You would crack wise at the moment your husband shot us both with a shotgun," he said.

"That presumes his being sober enough to hold a shotgun," Dorothy said. "You really do have to go, don't you?"

"The only reason I played at all today is because Tommy Whitlock canceled at the last minute."

He pulled a fresh polo shirt over his head, and then started to pull on a pair of cotton trousers.

"How lucky for the both of us," she said.

He looked at her and smiled again.

"Be careful with the zipper," she said. "I wouldn't want anything to get damaged."

"Neither would I," he said.

"I'm not going to see you again, am I?" she asked.

"I don't see how," Pick said.

"I'll miss you, baby."

"I'll miss you too, Dorothy," he said. He found his wrist-watch on the bedside table and strapped it on. "Christ, I am late!" he said.

He looked down at her, and she pushed herself onto her elbows. He leaned over and kissed her.

"I really am going to miss you," she said.

"Me, too," he said.

"Be careful, baby," she said.

He jumped up and, hopping, pushed his bare feet into a pair of loafers.

Then he left, without looking back at her.

Thirty minutes later he was in San Francisco by the entrance to the parking garage of the Andrew Foster Hotel. A sign had been placed on the sidewalk there: SORRY, BUT JUST

NOW, WE NEED ALL OUR SPACE FOR OUR REGISTERED GUESTS!"

Like everything else connected with the Andrew Foster Hotel, it was not an ordinary sign. It was contained within a polished brass frame and lettered in gold. And the frame was mounted in an ornate cast-iron mounting. The Andrew Foster was one of the world's great hotels (the most prestigious as well as the most expensive hotel in San Francisco), the flagship of the forty-two-hotel Foster Hotel chain. Certain standards would have been expected of it even if Andrew Foster were not resident in the penthouse.

Andrew Foster was fond of quoting the "One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn." It was not the sort of rule that could be written down, for it changed sometimes half a dozen times a day. It could be summarized (and was, behind his back) as immediately correcting whatever offended his eye at the moment.

What offended Andrew Foster could range from a smudge on a bellman's shoes ("The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is that the staff must be impeccably turned out. If you do that, everything else will fall into place."); to an overdone medium-rare steak ("The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is to give people at table what they ask for. If you do that, everything else will fall into place."); to fresh flowers starting to wilt ("The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn is to keep the place from looking like a rundown funeral home! If you can do that, everything else will fall into place!").

The gilt- lettered sign appeared on the sidewalk shortly after Mr. Andrew Foster spotted a simple GARAGE FULL sign. Everything else would fall in place if people were told (by means of a sign that didn't look as if it came off the midway of a second-rate carnival) why they couldn't do something they wanted to and were offered the inn's apologies for the inconvenience.

Ignoring the sign, Pick Pickering drove his car, a black Cadillac convertible, roof down, a brand new one, into the parking garage. He quickly saw that the garage was indeed full; there was not sufficient room for the rear of the car to clear the sidewalk.

One of the neatly uniformed (after the fashion of the French Foreign Legion) parking attendants rushed to the car.

"May I park your car for you, sir?" the attendant asked, very politely.

Pick Pickering looked at him and grinned.

"Would you please, Tony?" he asked. "I'm really late."

"No!" the attendant said, in elaborate mock surprise. "Is that why everybody but the Coast Guard's looking for you?"

"Oh, Christ," Pickering said.

" "The One Great Rule of Keeping a Decent Inn,' " Tony quoted.

" is That People Are Where They Are Supposed to Be, When They Are Supposed to Be There,' " Pickering finished for him.

"You've heard that, Pick, have you?" Tony asked. "You want me to let him know you're here?"

"Please, Tony," Pickering said and walked quickly, almost ran, between the tightly packed cars to a door marked