Semper Fi

Chapter Six

(One)

U.S. Marine Corps Base San Diego, California 9 July 1941

The U.S.S. Charles E. Whaley was as miserable a pile of rust and rivets as McCoy expected it would be. Since she was not a man-of-war, there was no Marine detachment aboard, which translated to mean that he had hardly anybody to talk to. Sailors don't like Marines anyway, and there were six pigboat swab jockeys from SUBFORCHINA being shipped to Pearl Harbor, and they really hated China Marines. The only swabbie who gave him the time of day was a bald, hairy machinist's mate second class who quickly let him know that he didn't mind spending a lot of time at sea far from women.

Reeking of diesel fuel, riding light in the water, the Whaley took seventeen days to make Pearl Harbor-swaying and pitching even in calm seas.

There was plenty of time to think things over and conclude that he'd been handed the shitty end of the stick. Again. Like always.

Starting with Ellen Goddamn-the-Bitch Feller.

And getting sent home from China was also getting the shitty end of the stick, too. Christ, he'd practically given away the furniture in the apartment. And despite the efficiency report that was supposed to make him sound like Lou Diamond, even a bunch of dumb fuckers in a fucking truck company would smell a rat about somebody who was sent home from China just after he shipped over for the 4th Marines and got promoted.

And the new assignment stank, too. A goddamned truck company at the Navy yard in Philly. Philly was the last tucking place he wanted to go. It was too close to Norris-town. and he never wanted to go there again, period. And there was no question in his mind that he was going to walk into this tucking truck company in Philly and immediately be on everybody's shit list. There weren't that many corporal's billets in a Motor Transport platoon, and sure as Christ made little apples, the people in Philly had planned to give this billet to some deserving asshole of a PFC with hash marks (Oblong bars, one for each four years of satisfactory service, worn on the lower sleeve of outer garments) halfway to his elbow.

McCoy had been in the Corps long enough to know that Stateside Marines didn't like China Marines (The tales -amplified in the retelling- of houseboys to clean billets, of custom made uniforms, of exotic women available for the price of a beer, of extra retirement credit, et cetera, tended to cause some resentment toward China Marines among their Stateside peers) and here would be a China Marine, a corporal three months into his second hitch, showing up to fuck good ol" PFC Whatsisname out of his promotion.

When the U.S.S. Charles E. Whaley finally tied up at Pearl Harbor, there was a Master at Arms and two Shore Patrol guys waiting for him at the foot of the gangplank. He wasn't under arrest or anything, the Master at Arms told him (although he really should write him up for his illegal, embroidered to the sleeves chevrons). It was just that The U.S.S. Fenton was about to sail for Diego, and they didn't want him to miss it.

The U.S.S. Fenton turned out to be an old four-stacker destroyer that was tied up the other side of Pearl. Ten minutes after he was shown his bunk in the fo'c'sle. a loudspeaker six inches from where he was supposed to sleep came to life:

"Now Hear This, Now Hear This, Off-Duty Watch Stand to in Undress Whites to Man The Rail."

That fucking loudspeaker went off on the average of once every ten minutes all the way across the Pacific to Diego.

The only kind thing McCoy could think of to say about the U.S.S. Fenton, DD133, was that it made San Diego six days out of Pearl. She was carrying a rear admiral who didn't like to fly and knew that with his flag aboard nobody was going to ask questions about fuel consumed making twenty-two knots. It must have been great on the bridge, turning the tin can into a speedboat. But where he was. McCoy thought, he had trouble staying in his bunk. And his body was bruised black in half a dozen places from bumping into bulkheads and ladder rails when he misjudged where the tin can was going to bounce.

But Diego was next, and he would soon be on land again, and there was no reason he couldn't get a nice berth on the train from San Diego to Philly. The Corps probably wouldn't pay for it, but he could do that himself. In his money belt he had a little over three hundred dollars in cash: the hundred he'd started with, plus the hundred ninety he'd won-ten and twenty dollars at a time-from the pigboat sailors on the Charles E. Whaley and the ten he'd won in the only game there had been on the tin can.

Plus an ornately engraved "Officer's Guaranteed Checque" on Barclays Bank, Ltd., Shanghai, for $5,102.40. That came from the last crazy thing that had happened in Shanghai. When he'd gone to the apartment to sell his stuff, the "General" said he'd make it easy for him. He'd take everything off his hands for five hundred dollars American. McCoy had jumped at that. Then the General pushed a deck of cards at him and demanded, "Double or nothing."

McCoy cut the deck for the jack of clubs to the General's eight of hearts.

"Once more." the General demanded.

"Just so long as it's once more," McCoy said. "I'm not going to keep cutting the deck until you win and quit."

He got a dirty look for that.

"Once more," the General said. "That's it."

McCoy cut the five of clubs. The General smiled, showing his gold teeth… until he cut the three of hearts.

But he paid up, even though he had to go to the bank to get that kind of cash.

McCoy added the General's two thousand American to the money already in Barclays Bank and then asked for a cashier's check for the whole thing. After a moment they understood that what he w-anted was what they called an "officer's checque."

He made them make it payable in dollars. The Limeys were in a war, and he didn't want to take the chance that they'd tell him to wait for his money until the war was over when he went to cash it.

He could goddamned well afford a Pullman berth from California to Philly, even if they wouldn't give him credit for the government rail voucher and he had to pay for the whole damned thing himself.

McCoy had taken boot camp at Parris Island, and he'd shipped to China out of Mare Island, in San Francisco. So this was his first time in Diego. His initial impression of the place-or anyway of the part that he saw, which was the Marine Corps Recruit Depot-was that it was a hell of a lot nicer-looking, at least, than Parris Island, although he supposed that that didn't make a hell of lot of difference to boots. They probably had the same kind of semiliterate, sadistic assholes for DIs here that they did at Parris Island.

There was a bullshit legend in the Corps that after you finished boot camp, you would understand why the DIs treated you like they did, how it had been necessary to make a Marine out of you, and how you'd now respect them for it. As he watched a Diego DI jab his elbow in the gut of some kid who wasn't standing tall enough, or who had dared to look directly at the DI, or some other chickenshit offense, McCoy remembered his own Parris Island DI.

If I ever see Corporal Ellwood Doudt, that vicious shit-kicking hillbilly again, he thought, I'll make him eat his teeth, even if I have to go after him with a two-by-four.

McCoy found the Post Transportation Office without trouble in a Spanish-looking building with a tile roof. He set his seabags down and presented his orders to a sergeant behind a metal-grilled window, like a teller's station in a bank.

"You need a partial pay, Corporal?" the sergeant asked.

"Let it ride on the books," McCoy said. "I was a little lucky on the ship."

"Your luck just ran out," the sergeant said. "I hate to do this to you, Corporal, but you report to the brig sergeant."

"What?"

"They'll explain it over there," the sergeant said. "I just do what I'm told."

"All I want from you is a rail voucher to Philadelphia," McCoy said.

"You would have been smarter to pay your own way and put in for it when you got there. But you didn't. You came here, and my orders are to send the next three corporals who come in here over to the brig. There's a shipment of prisoners headed for Portsmouth. The guard detail needs a sergeant and three corporals. Now that you're here, they can go."

"Give me a break. Forget I came in."

"I can't," the sergeant said. "I got to send a TWX to Washington saying you're in the States. You read the orders."

The brig sergeant was a forty-year-old gunnery sergeant, a wiry, tight-lipped man with five hash marks and a face so badly scarred that McCoy wondered how the hell he managed to shave.

"What did you do. Corporal, fuck up in China?" he said, when McCoy gave him his orders.

"Not as far as I know. Gunny," McCoy said. "I'm being transferred in grade."

"Well, we got sixteen sailors headed for Portsmouth," he said. "Mostly repeat ship-jumpers, one deserter, one assault upon a commissioned officer, one thief, and three fags. You, plus a second lieutenant, a staff sergeant, and two other corporals are going to take them there. And all the time you thought the Corps didn't love you, right?"

"There's no way I can get out of this?"

"You're fucked, Corporal," the Gunny said. "You just lucked out.''

In addition to the other corporals, the sergeant, and the lieutenant, the guard detail consisted of seven privates and PFCs. The other corporals and the sergeant were at least ten years older than McCoy. The lieutenant was McCoy's age, a muscular, crew-cut, tanned man who-to prove his own importance, McCoy thought-went right after McCoy.

"You're a little young to be a corporal, aren't you? Have you had any experience with a detail like this?"

"No, sir."

"You've qualified with the shotgun?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"I don't know, sir."

"What's your skill?"

"Motor transport, sir."

"They must be pretty generous with motor transport promotions in China," the lieutenant said.

"I guess so, sir."

"Frankly, I'd hoped to have a more experienced noncom," the lieutenant said. "One at least who has qualified with the shotgun."

"I'm an Expert with the Springfield and the.45, sir. I think I can handle a shotgun."

"You can't handle a shotgun, Corporal, until you're qualified with the shotgun," the lieutenant said, as if explaining something to a backward and unpleasant child. "I'll have the gunnery sergeant arrange for you to be qualified."

"Aye, aye, sir."

A corporal drove McCoy to the range in a pickup truck. The same corporal watched him fire ten brass-cased rounds of OO-buckshot from a Winchester Model 1897 12-gauge trench gun at a silhouette target at fifteen yards. He then drove him back to the brig and told McCoy it was SOP to clean a riot gun whenever it had been fired. That meant it had to be detail stripped… McCoy couldn't just run a brass brush and then a couple of patches though the bore.

As careful as McCoy was, he managed to spot his shirt, tie, and trousers with bore cleaner, which meant that he might as well use them for rags or throw them away, because no matter how many times you washed them, you couldn't get bore cleaner out of khakis.

When he reported back to the lieutenant, the lieutenant told him that he had a soiled uniform.

"Aye, aye, sir, I'll change it."

"When you do change it, Corporal, make sure you have a shirt with regulation chevrons."

"Sir?"

"Get rid of those Tijuana stripes, Corporal."

McCoy decided to take a chance; he had nothing to lose anyway.

"Sir, embroidered-to-the-garment chevrons are regulation in China."

"You're no longer in China, Corporal," the lieutenant said. "And I don't want to debate this with you. I expect to see you here at 0730 tomorrow in the correct uniform."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"And, Corporal, I've inquired; and regulations state that at my discretion the noncoms may be armed with the pistol. Since you say you are an Expert with the pistol, I think you had better draw one rather than arm yourself with a trench gun."

"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said.

The 47th Motor Transport Company at Philadelphia, McCoy thought, had to be an improvement over what he was doing now. Otherwise he was going to belt some chickenshit sonofabitch like this before his discharge came and get dragged to Portsmouth with a trench gun pointed at his back.

He went to the clothing store and bought three shirts and had regulation chevrons sewn to their sleeves. And then he fought down the temptation to get a hotel room in Diego. The way his luck was running lately, he'd get in a fight or something and get his ass in a crack.

The duty NCO at the brig found a cot for him, and he slept there.

In the morning, the lieutenant gave everybody detailed instructions and a little pep talk, then they went to the brig gate to take over the prisoners. The prisoners were in blue denim, with a foot-high "P" stenciled on the knee of the trousers and on the back of the jacket. They each carried a small cotton bag, which contained a change of underwear and socks, another set of "P"-marked denims, a toilet kit, less razor (since attempted suicide was a possibility, especially among the 'deviates,' they would shave themselves under the supervision of their guards), and their choice of either New Testament or Roman Catholic missal.

They were handcuffed: the right wrist of one man to the left wrist of the man beside him. And their ankles were chained, which made them walk in a shuffle.

On the brig bus, the lieutenant informed the guard detail that if a prisoner escaped, Marine Corps regulations stated that the guard responsible for that prisoner would be confined in his place.

McCoy knew that was bullshit. But he wondered if the lieutenant really believed it or whether it was just one more instance of an officer believing the troops in line were so stupid he could tell them anything he wanted.

The brig bus delivered them to the San Diego railroad station.

A U.S. Army Troop Car had been made available to the Marine Corps for the trip. It was attached to the train immediately behind the locomotive.

McCoy marched his guard detail-their riot guns at port arms-and the fourteen handcuffed and shackled prisoners through the crowded concourse and down the platform to the Army Troop Car.

He tried to tell himself that all he was doing was his duty, that these guys had fucked themselves up, that they had no one to blame but themselves for the mess they were in. But it didn't work. None of the fourteen prisoners was old enough to vote. Most of them looked not only frightened and humiliated but insignificant-like little boys. And so did most of their guards.

He was going to have to have a quiet word with the guards on his shift to make sure that one of the little boys didn't without goddamned good reason turn his shotgun on another of the little boys.

McCoy was relieved when they were all inside the Army car. He could not ever remember being so uncomfortable-so ashamed of himself was more like it-than when he had marched this pathetic little band through the station.

The sergeant showed up just before the train pulled out to show McCoy and the other corporals where he and the lieutenant would be sleeping and to explain the arrangements the lieutenant had come to with the conductor regarding chow. The dining car would make available "sandwich meals" for the prisoners, which would have to be picked up by the guard detail.

"When things settle down, maybe you corporals can get a meal in the dining car, but for now the lieutenant says he doesn't want you to leave the car."

The lieutenant made four ritual appearances every day, at 0600, 1200, 1800, and 2400 hours. He stayed about ten minutes, making sure that every prisoner had eaten, washed, and shaved, and had washed his previous day's uniform and underclothing.

McCoy managed to eat in the dining car only once. The waiters made it perfectly clear by lousy service and exaggerated courtesy what kind of shit they considered the guards to be. He didn't need any more reminding.

He took every other meal in the U.S. Army Troop Car, which meant that he ate nothing but sandwiches and coffee all the way across the North American continent.

It wasn't what he had dreamed about on the Pacific: a plush seat in a Pullman car and meals and drinks in the club car, as America the Beautiful rolls past the windows.

But that, of course, was fantasy. This was reality. This was the fucking United States Marine Corps.

(Two)

Boston, Massachusetts

1630 Hours 16 July 1941

McCoy had to change trains at Boston for the Philadelphia train. He had plenty of time. The Boston Maine from Portsmouth had put him into Boston at five minutes to three. By quarter after three, he had a reserved seat on the club car. They'd given him a train voucher to Philly and two meal tickets at the Portsmouth Naval Prison, but he'd torn them into tiny pieces and thrown the pieces into a trash bucket.

He didn't want a fucking thing to do with anything concerning the Portsmouth Naval Prison. Or, more importantly, with the Fucking United States Marine Corps. He had made that decision somewhere between Diego and Chicago and still wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. For his own sake. Not in connection with any dumb fucking ideas he had about doing something with Ellen Goddamn-the-Bitch Feller. He had five thousand fucking dollars. There was absolutely no reason he had to stay in the Marine Corps and put up with all the shit.

He could buy his way out of the Corps and get a job. Things were better now, and he had a high school diploma. Maybe even go back to Shanghai and see if he couldn't work something out with Piotr Petrovich Muller, or the "General."

Five thousand simoleons plus was a lot of money. Even if he spent whatever it cost for passage back to Shanghai; he would have enough left over not to have to worry about getting a job right that minute. He could look around, see what looked good, and move into that.

So it was really a good thing in the end that the fucking Corps had sent him home as a fuck-up for doing what he was supposed to do, and even a better thing that he had gotten involved in the prisoner-escort detail. It had convinced him to get the hell out of the fucking Corps. Otherwise, he would have stayed in China sticking his neck out, and sooner or later the Japs would have done to him what they tried to do to Sessions.

The prisoner-escort detail had gotten worse toward the end after they'd changed trains in Boston for New Hampshire, and really rough when they actually got to Portsmouth.

There had been another bus with bars over the windows waiting for them along with three Marines carrying pistols in white web gear and three-foot-long billy clubs they kept slapping in the palms of their hands.

All the prisoners were scared shitless, and two of them- one of the fairies and the great big guy who was going to do ten years before he was dishonorably discharged for slugging an officer-had actually cried.

There was a little ceremony when the prison signed for the prisoners. Then one of them tried to ask a question and got the end of a billy club in his gut for it. Hard enough to knock the wind out of him and knock him down.

And that fucking lieutenant just stood mere and made believe nothing had happened. He knew goddamned well it was a violation of Rocks and Shoals (The Disciplinary Code for the Governance of the Naval Services) to hit somebody with a billy club like that, but the chickenshit sonofabitch didn't do a thing about it.

He was more concerned with important things like taking McCoy aside and telling him he was willing to admit a mistake about him and that he had probably been put off by McCoy's Tijuana chevrons. Anyhow, the lieutenant went on, he wanted to tell McCoy his deportment during the trip was all and more that could be expected of a good Marine noncom and that when he got back to San Diego he was going to write his commanding officer a letter of commendation.

What that was going to mean after he got to this fucking truck company in Philly (and McCoy believed the chickenshit sonofabitch was serious about writing the letter) was that whenever some poor sonofabitch had to be transported to Portsmouth, that shitty detail would go to Corporal McCoy since he was so good at it. But fuck that. The first thing he was going to do when he got to the 47th Motor Transport Platoon was ask the first sergeant for the forms to buy himself out of the Corps.

There was a bar in the station in Boston, and McCoy walked by it half a dozen times waiting for the Philly train without going in. He wanted a drink. He wanted lots of drinks, but he was going to wait until he was safe on the train-had left Portsmouth Naval Prison behind him for good- before he took one.

The first time he noticed the guy looking at him was on the platform. He was a regular candy-ass, about his age, wearing a regular candy-ass seersucker suit; and McCoy thought he was probably a kid going home from college, except that it was now the middle of July, and colleges were closed for the summer.

The candy-ass wasn't just looking at him, he was sort of smiling at him, as if goosing up his courage to talk to him. Christ, there were fairies all over. Goddamn-the-Bitch Ellen Feller's husband wasn't the only one. And he never would have guessed that hairy machinist's mate second on the Whaley was a cocksucker. And now here was this kid making eyes at him who looked like an Arrow Shirt Company advertisement for a choirboy Boy Scout.

On the train the club car steward put McCoy in a velvet plush chair by a little table and handed him a menu. Fifty cents (not counting tip) was a hell of a lot of money for one lousy drink of Scotch whiskey; but he didn't give a fuck what it cost, he was entitled. He'd been thinking about this drink practically from the moment he went aboard that fucking fleet oiler in Shanghai. Just as the waiter was about to take his order, the guy who had been making eyes at him on the platform walked up.

"This free?" he asked, putting his hand on the back of the velvet plush armchair on the other side of the table.

"Help yourself," McCoy said.

How am I going to get rid of this pansy without belting him?

"Scotch," McCoy said to the waiter. "Johnnie Walker. Soda on the side."

"Same for me, please," the pansy said.

McCoy gave him a dirty look.

"I'm about to be a Marine myself," the pansy said.

"You're what?" McCoy asked, incredulously.

"I'm about to join the Marine Corps," the pansy repeated.

"I'm about to get out of the Marine Corps," McCoy said.

"You are?" the pansy-who-said-he-was-about-to-enlist asked, surprised. "I thought all discharges were frozen."

"I'm getting out," McCoy said firmly. He remembered hearing rumors of a freeze, or a year's extension, or something like that, but he hadn't paid a hell of a lot of attention.

Jesus Christ! What if this candy-ass is right? Then what?

"You sound as if you're not happy in the Marine Corps," the young pansy said.

He doesn't talk like a pansy, and wave his hands like a woman, but then, neither did the machinist's mate second.

"Do I?" McCoy replied, unpleasantly.

"Then you're just the guy I want to talk to," the young man said. "The way the recruiters talk, it's paradise on earth. All the food you can eat, all the liquor you can drink, and all the prettiest girls throwing themselves at you."

"You're really going in the Corps?" McCoy asked, his curiosity aroused'-and his suspicions diminished just a little by the pretty girls.

"I'm really going in the Corps," the young man said. He put out his hand. "Malcolm Pickering," he said.

McCoy took it.

"Ken McCoy," he said. Pickering's grip was firm, not like a pansy's.

The steward set their drinks on the table.

"Put that on my tab," Pickering said.

"I can buy my own drink," McCoy said.

"Put the next round on your tab," Pickering said reasonably.

McCoy nodded. He twisted the cap off the miniature bottle and wondered idly if putting it in its own little bottle was how they got away charging half a buck for one lousy drink. He picked it up and read the lable. It held 1.6 ounces. That brought it down to 37.5 cents an ounce, which was still a hell of a lot more than he was used to paying for liquor.

"Can I ask you a question, Corporal McCoy?" Malcolm Pickering asked.

McCoy looked at him and nodded.

"I saw you in Chicago on the track with some strange-looking guys," Pickering said. "What was that all about?"

Chicago? What the hell does he mean by that?

And then he understood. There had been an hour's wait while the railroad switched locomotives. The lieutenant had the bright idea that the prisoners should exercise. Since they couldn't do calisthenics or close-order drill handcuffed and with their feet shackled, what the lieutenant had done was send them shuffling up and back down the track for half a mile or so. This Pickering guy had obviously seen that.

"We were exercising the prisoners," he said. "That what you mean?"

"What did they do?" Pickering asked.

"Three of them were fags," McCoy said. "One of them slugged an officer. The rest of them found out the hard way that once you enlist, you're in until they let you out."

"They were Marines?"

"Sailors," McCoy said. "The Marine Corps does the Navy's dirty work, like guarding and transporting prisoners."

"What happened to them?"

"We took them to the Naval Prison at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to serve their sentences," McCoy said.

"Is that what you do in the Marine Corps?" Pickering asked.

"No," McCoy said. "I just got to San Diego when they needed a couple of corporals for the guard detail."

"What do you do?" Pickering asked.

"I'm a motor transport corporal," McCoy said. Though he didn't like the sound of it, that's what he was on paper. "I work in the motor pool."

"You like it?"

"No. I told you, I'm just waiting to get out of the Marine Corps."

"Then what will you do?"

McCoy didn't want to tell this nosy guy that he was going back to China. That would trigger a whole new line of questions. And aside from going back to China, he couldn't think of a thing he was likely to do. He had been in the Marine Corps since he was seventeen. It was the only thing he had ever done.

"What made you join the Corps?" McCoy asked.

"My father was a Marine," Pickering said. "In the World War."

"And he didn't warn you off?" McCoy said.

"He was a corporal," Pickering said. "What he warned me to do was get a commission."

Then he realized what he had said.

"I didn't mean to offend…" he began.

"Your father was right," McCoy said.

"So, with war coming, I figured I had better get one," Pickering said. "A commission, I mean."

"You seem sure that we're going to get into this war," McCoy said.

"You don't?"

"Christ, I hope not," McCoy said.

"We're probably going to have to do something about the Japanese," Pickering argued.

"The Japs are probably thinking the same thing about us," McCoy said. "And you wouldn't believe how many of the bastards there are."

"But they're not like Americans, are they?" Pickering asked.

"The ones I've seen are first-class soldiers," McCoy said. He saw the surprise on Pickering's face.

"The ones you've seen?" Pickering asked.

"I just came from China," McCoy said. "I was with the Fourth Marines in Shanghai."

Now why the fuck did I start in on that?

"I'd like to hear about that," Pickering said.

'I'd rather talk about something else," McCoy said.

"Like what?" Pickering said, agreeably.

"I'm going to be stationed in Philly," McCoy said. "For a while, I mean, say a month or six weeks, until I can get my discharge. If you know anything about it, why don't we talk about the best way to get laid in Philadelphia?"

"The best way, I've found," Pickering said, "is to use a bed. But there is a school of thought that says that turning them upside down in a shower is the way to go."

McCoy looked at him for a moment and then laughed out loud.

"You tell me about the Marines in China, McCoy," Pickering said. "And then I will tell you about getting laid in Philadelphia. Maybe with a little luck, when we get there- that's where I'm going, too, to the Navy Yard, to give them my college records-we could conduct what they call a 'practical experiment.' "

If I keep drinking with this guy and then start chasing whores with him, I am probably going to get my ass in deep trouble. But right now, I don't give a fuck.

He raised his hand above his head, snapped his fingers at the steward for another drink, and turned to Malcolm Pickering.

"You can buy a fourteen-year-old virgin in Shanghai for three dollars," he said. "What's the going rate these days in Philly?"

"There are no fourteen-year-old virgins in Philadelphia," Malcolm Pickering said solemnly.

I'll be goddamned if I don't really like this candy-ass civilian.

(Three)

The Bellevue Stratford Hotel Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 0905 Hours 17 July 1941

The first thing McCoy remembered when he woke up was that there had been a woman in bed with him, which meant he was likely to find his money and his watch gone.

The second thought was more frightening: The "Guaranteed Officer's Checque" from Barclays Bank, Ltd., Shanghai, had been in his money belt with the three hundred bucks. The whore probably wouldn't be able to cash it; but sure as Christ, she would have taken it, and it was going to be a real pain in the ass to get it replaced.

When he sat up, his head hurt like a toothache, as if his brain had shrunk and was banging around loose inside his skull. His lips were dry and cracked and the tip of his tongue felt like the sole of a boot.

How the hell am I going to get from wherever the hell I am to the Navy Yard without any fucking money? Or for that matter, out of the hotel? Jesus Christ, I hope at least they made me pay in advance!

He looked around the room, and that made it worse. This was no dollar-a-night hot-sheet joint. This was not only a real hotel, but a fancy-hotel hotel. Great big fucking room, drapes over the windows, a couch and a couple of armchairs, and Christ only knows what he had paid for the bottles sitting on a chest of drawers across the room. Before the whore got his money, he thought, at least he'd spent a hell of a lot of it.

And then he saw the money belt. It was on the little shelf over the wash basin in the bathroom. That figured. Just before she left, the whore had taken the money belt into the bathroom, just in case he should wake up and see her going through it. Once she'd emptied it, she hadn't given a damn where she left it.

He needed a glass of water, and desperately. Maybe, if he hadn't been rolled, too, he could borrow say, ten bucks, from Pickering. It wasn't the end of the fucking world. He had his pay record with him, and he had at least two months' back pay on the books. All he had to do was come up with enough money to get from here to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and he could draw enough money to keep him going.

And he would go to some bank and ask them what you were supposed to do when you lost a 'Guaranteed Officer's Checque.' He would say he lost it. And since he hadn't signed it, they would have to sooner or later make it good.

He staggered across the room to the bathroom and saw that it was really a high-class place. There was a little button marked ICE WATER that operated a tiny little chrome water pipe. And when you pushed the button, it really produced ice water.

He drank one glass of ice water so quickly it made his teeth ache. He drank a second glass more slowly, from time to time looking at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. His eyes were bloodshot, and-he had to check twice to make sure what it was-his ears were red with lipstick.

He looked down at other parts of his body.

Well, I apparently had a very good time, even if I can't remember the details.

There was something under the empty money belt, making a bulge. Idly curious, he pushed the money belt off it. It was his watch.

"I'll be goddamned," McCoy said, then told himself that just because the whore hadn't stolen the watch, it didn't mean she hadn't helped herself to the cash and the "checque." It wasn't that good a watch, he knew. He had bought it primarily because it had a lot of radium paint on the hands, so that he could see them at night. He picked up the money belt and worked the zipper. There was money in it, $250, and the "checque."

"I'll be goddamned," he said again.

Now he had a cramp in his bladder, so he went to the toilet and relieved himself. He saw that the bathroom had two doors: one led in from his fancy bedroom, and one went out into some other room. When he was finished taking a leak (an incredibly long teak), he tried the knob. It was unlocked, and he pushed it open.

Malcolm Pickering (McCoy remembered at that moment that sometime during last night, Pickering had told him to call him " 'Pick") was on his back on a double bed, stark naked. His arms and legs were spread. And he was awake.

"Please piss a little more quietly," Pick Pickering said. "I woke up thinking our ship was going down."

"Shit." McCoy laughed.

"I have come to the conclusion, Corporal McCoy," Pick Pickering said, "that you are an evil character who rides on railroads leading innocent youth such as myself into sin."

"It looks like we had a good time," McCoy said.

"Yeah, doesn't it?" Pickering said. "What time is it?"

"A little after nine," McCoy said.

"I treat my hangovers with large breakfasts and a beer," Pickering said. "That sound all right to you?"

"I don't want to report smelling of beer," McCoy said.

"They have Sen-Sen," Pickering said, and suddenly sat up. "Jesus!" he said, and then he swung his feet to the floor and reached for the telephone. "Room service," he ordered, and then: "This is Malcolm Pickering, in 907. Large orange juice, breakfast steak, medium, corned-beef hash, eggs up, toast, two pots of coffee, and two bottles of Feigenspann ale. Do that twice, please, and the sooner the better."

Very classy, McCoy thought. That'll probably cost three, four, maybe five dollars. But what the hell, I've still got most of my money.

"What's this place costing us?" McCoy asked.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this. Killer," Pickering said. "It is only because I am an upstanding Christian that I do. We flipped for it last night, and you won. It's not costing you a dime, and I don't want to think about what it's costing me."

McCoy was surprised that Pickering called him "Killer." The only way he could have known that was if he had told him. And the only way he would have told him. as if he needed another proof, was that he was pretty drunk.

"I want to pay my share," McCoy said.

"Don't be a damned fool. If that quarter had landed on the other side, you would have paid," Pickering said. He got to his feet and walked across the room. "But since I am paying. I get first shot at the shower.

If anything, McCoy decided. Pickering's room was larger than his. And then he noticed that a door and not just the bathroom connected both rooms. He went back to his own room, found his seabags in a closet, and took out a clean uniform. It was clean but mussed. He hated to report in a mussed uniform, even if the first thing he was going to do when he reported in was ask for the buy-out papers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So what?" Pickering said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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