The Edge of Honor (17 page)

The first class pushed one earplug aside and asked him to say it again.

Jackson complied, louder this time, sensitive to the fact that they were playing with him. The first class looked over at his two watch mates and then back at Jackson.

“Haven’t seen him,” he shouted back.

Jackson thought for a minute. His sources had been pretty sure that this is where Gallagher was hiding out.

The chief engineer had reputedly told Gallagher that he would go get his .45 and shoot him if he laid eyes on him, and Gallagher had apparently decided that the smart thing to do was to lie low for a week in case Mr.

Benedetti meant it. The chief boiler tender, incensed over what Gallagher had done, had put in a special request chit to the exec asking to get Gallagher transferred over to Berkeley, which Jackson thought was a capital idea. Let them shoot him.

“Where’s the tool crib?” Jackson shouted back.

“It’s over there, behind two Able boiler. But it’s locked up; chief’s got the key.”

“That’s okay. You,” he said, pointing to one of the sitting men, “you show me where it is.”

The BT1 suddenly looked worried. “I think maybe you better call—”

Jackson walked right up close to the BT1. “Don’t give me any shit, BT One,” he said. Funny, the man could hear him now. “If I say so, you’ll cut the lock on the tool crib and empty it out for inspection. Right, BT One?”

He turned back to the other man. “Now, you—let’s go.”

The BT1 scowled and reached for the phone. The younger petty officer got up as slowly as he could without being clearly insubordinate and led Jackson around to the back of 2A boiler, where he pointed to the tool crib, a wire cage ten by ten feet, constructed against the forward bulkhead of the fire room and lined with shelves for spare parts, rags, lubricants, and tools. The light fixture on top of the tool crib was not working. No supply vents cooled this area behind 2A boiler, so the heat was stupefying. The engineer spat into the bilges and then sidled away, leaving Jackson standing in the two-foot space between the forward bulkhead of the fire room and the hot steel air casing of the boiler.

Although the tool crib was dark, Jackson thought he could see someone in there. As he approached it, he noticed that the door, chain link on a steel frame, was not locked. He opened the door and found Gallagher asleep on a bale of rags. He nudged the petty officer with his foot and woke him up. Gallagher sat up with a start, and when he saw khaki in the dim light behind the boiler, his face grimaced in fear. Jackson had an idea why, and it had nothing to do with Mr. Benedetti.

“On your feet, Gallagher. I want to talk to you.”

Gallagher got up slowly, rubbing his face. He was dressed in a ragged, oil-soaked pair of dungarees, which the main-space engineers called their bilge diving suit.

He stank, and Jackson wondered how long he had been holed up there.

There was a dirty mess-decks tray lying in the small wash sink inside the tool crib, and an oil smeared plastic water jug in the corner. All the comforts of home. Jackson looked over his shoulder to make sure the other man had left, then stepped back so Gallagher could come out of the tool crib.

Gallagher was a short, squat, heavily muscled young man of about twenty-five; he had perpetual grease and off stains on his hands, lower arms, neck, and face, and red hair everywhere.

“You know who I am?” Jackson asked. It was somewhat quieter behind the boiler, so he did not have to shout. He wiped his face.

“Yeah. You’re the Sheriff.”

“That’s right, Gallagher. And you’re the guy who got high on marijuana, dropped the load, put us dead in the water, and killed ten guys over in Berkeley.”

Gallagher frowned and stared down at the deck plates.

Hot black bilgewater sloshed around beneath the stainless-steel plates.

His lips were working, but he said nothing.

“So now that you’re famous,” Jackson pressed, “what I want to know is, where’d you get the dope?” Gallagher shook his head but still said nothing. Then he looked up. “I don’t gotta say nothin’,” he said.

“Those’re my rights.”

Jackson leaned forward, getting in the shorter man’s face. He bared some teeth and hardened his voice.

“This isn’t mast, shithead. This is just a friendly little discussion.

See, I’m the first guy’s gonna talk to you, but the way I hear it, the second guy’s gonna want to dance first, talk later. You catch my drift?”

Jackson saw the flash of fear in Gallagher’s eyes. He knew what was coming. Gallagher shook his head again, looking from side to side as if to escape. Then he seemed to wilt.

“Okay,” he said. “I brung it with me. I don’t sell it or nothin’; just a toke now’n then.”

“At general quarters.”

“Okay, so I fucked up. Nobody told me about no GQ.

I was in my tree, the bell rang …”

“So you were spaced-out when you got down here forgq.”

“Maybe. A little.”

Jackson stared down at the man, willing him to look up from the deck, but Gallagher kept his face down.

“So where’s your stuff?”

“I deep-sixed it after … after … you know. I don’t got no more, honest.”

“Why do I not believe you, hunh? You know what? I heard the chief BT had a brain-fart. He’s offering to transfer your sorry ass over to the Berkeley, along with a letter telling them who you are and what you are and what you did two days ago. I mean, hell, it ought to beat living in the tool crib, right? Even if it’d be sort of a short tour, you know?”

Gallagher looked confused and then afraid as he thought it through. The crew of Berkeley would put him in a boiler and throw the torch in after him. Jackson watched him weigh the possibilities and then saw a cunning look come into his eyes.

“You’re just fucking around with me,” he mumbled.

“Am I? Want to see the chit? XO’s got it, and I’ll tell you what—he’s thinkin’ about it. They would see that justice was done, and there’d be no shit on our hands, see?”

This was a logic that Gallagher could indeed understand.

“So what’s the deal?”

“Deal? What deal?”

Gallagher looked from side to side as if to see whether there was anyone else around. “C’mon, Chief,” he said.

“I’m in enough shit already. What do you want?”

“I want the guy or guys you’ll have to go see to replenish your little treasure, that’s what I want.”

Gallagher stepped back away from Jackson and glanced back into the tool crib, as if he wanted to get back under his rock. Jackson heard some bells ringing around in front of the boiler and heard the pitch of the forced draft-blower turbines rise as the ship increased speed for some reason. Gallagher’s face streamed with sweat, and Jackson’s as he waited, his own khaki shirt glued to his back in the heat. Gallagher looked around again, sighed, and then gave a little nod.

“Okay, okay. I sure as shit don’t want no transfer to the fuckin’ Berkeley. You wanna know who moves product in this boat, you go see the ni—you go see your soul brothers.”

Jackson glared at him. “Meaning exactly what by that?”

Gallagher stared back, an impudent look spreading on his face, but did not answer him. Jackson wanted to hit him.

“You saying the drug ring is black?”

“Don’t know nothin’ about no ring. Didn’t say nothin’ about no ring, did I? Did I? Look, those fuckers find out I even talked to you, they’re—”

“Lemme tell you something, Gallagher: You’ve got bigger and sooner problems than that,” Jackson interrupted.

Gallagher’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ, c’mon, Sheriff, I gave ya something’, didn’t I? You ain’t gonna let—”

Jackson straightened up. “You didn’t give me diddly shit, Gallagher.

You’re still calling black people niggers, so why am I not surprised you’d say you’re getting your dope from ‘em, hunh? See you, Gallagher.

And you better get a bigger lock on that door. The bosun’ll bite through that one and call it practice.”

He left Gallagher standing by the tool crib and climbed up out of the fire room. He shivered in the almost-cold air of the main passageway and walked forward to his small office on Broadway, where he kept some clean spare shirts. He thought about what Gallagher had said.

Supposing Gallagher was telling the truth, which would be a rare event, that blacks had the drug concession. That complicated matters—a lot.

Any investigation targeted specifically against blacks would trigger an instantaneous hue and cry about oppression and persecution from the US

hotheads on the ship’s Human Relations Council, even if Jackson was leading the charge.

One other doper had claimed the same thing—that he got his marijuana from one of the blacks, hinting that they had the lock on selling dope on the ship. If it was true, Jackson knew that it was likely to be a small group of younger blacks who were disaffected from the rest of the crew, including most of the other blacks. Having a seat on the ship’s Human Relations Council, he knew the stats: Hood had about three dozen black men in the crew, with a fair mixture of nonrated men, petty officers and chiefs, and one officer, the Supply officer, Raiford Hatcher. He knew that most of them were upstanding citizens, sincerely interested in getting ahead and making something of themselves just like anyone else. But there was one group of about eight men who were clearly and openly hostile to whites and, for that matter, to the Filipinos and Hispanics who made up the rest of the minority mix in the ship. Chief Martinez called them equal-opportunity racists: They seemed to hate everybody.

Since one of Jackson’s responsibilities was to keep an eye out for racial flash points, he had been watching them. If these guys were involved in the drug business, it would add a whole new dimension to a problem that he had thought was primarily racial.

He reached his office, unlocked the door, and closed it behind him. He shucked the wet shirt and toweled off his face and arms. Jackson did not approve of the exec’s off the-books, gun-deck justice system, although the thought of Martinez closing in on Gallagher provided a certain satisfaction. Jackson wanted to do it right: conduct a regular investigation, a Navy regulation investigation, penetrate the ring, turn some snitches, find the main man, catch his ass, and blow up the whole thing with courts-martial and brig time. He knew he would have to find an ally in the wardroom if he was ever going to pull this off, preferably one of the department heads, because it would take a department head to run interference with the XO. Martinez said that the new guy, Holcomb, was a straight arrow. Maybe he would try that route, get something going. If they could pull it off, they could bring it up as a package to the XO, and then maybe they’d do it right. There was a loud knock on his door and then Chief Martinez stepped into his office.

“He there?” growled the boatswain.

“Gallagher? Yeah, he’s there. And scared shitless, too.

He knows you’re on the prowl. But guess what—he gave me some news.”

“No shit. He name somebody?”

“Not exactly, but he said that if you want a little taste, you have to go see one of the brothers.” Jackson slipped on a clean shirt, transferred the insignia and his badge, and began to button up.

Martinez was silent, his ugly round face twisted in thought. “I wouldn’ta figured that,” he said finally.

“Guess I got too many buddies who’ve black.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be news on the outside, least that’s what they told us in MAA school. And I can guess which bunch it is, if it’s true. But what I’m trying to figure out is who, among the blacks in Hood, would be the main man. I mean, yeah, we’ve got racists on both sides of the street, but a kingpin drug dealer? I can’t put a face on that.”

“One of them new guys, that black-power bunch.”

Jackson rolled up the wet shirt and threw it onto his cluttered desk.

Martinez cracked his knuckles, making a sound like a bundle of firewood being run over by a tire.

“That guy Bullet, the electrician, he’s a leader,” Martinez mused.

“Every time the hotheads get to running their mouth, he’s one of the guys who can put a lid on it.

He don’t talk much, but the young bloods are always lookin’ to see what he thinks.”

“EM One Wilson?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take a look at his record, but I don’t have anything on him one way or the other. If he’s a big man on campus with the radical bunch, he’s keeping real quite about it.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t want to attract no attention, maybe.

Might be worth a lookee-see.”

Jackson was straightening out his shirt. He paused to look at Martinez.

“Yeah, okay. I see what you mean.”

“Red Crown, this is Wager on Air Force Green.”

Brian lifted the red radiotelephone handset from its mounting, keyed the switch, waited for the squeak of the encryption tone burst, and replied, “Wager, Red Crown, over.”

“And this is Wager. Going off-station for three hours to happy hour; ETA back on station nineteen-thirty.”

“Redcrown, roger, out.”

Brian replaced the handset and raised his eyebrows at Garuda Barry, who acknowledged the message from Wager. The Wager Bird, as it was known on PIRAZ, was an Air Force Boeing 707. It flew several thousand miles from Guam to the Gulf every day of the year and then orbited over the Gulf at 45,000 feet to provide UHF radio-relay service for all the American air forces—Navy, Air Force, and Marines—operating over North Vietnam.

Brian looked at his watch. Austin should be up to relieve him in an hour or so. The time had flown on this his first watch as evaluator on the PIRAZ station. He was thoroughly fascinated.

Combat had settled out after the flurry of the morning turnover, with its helicopter transfers of PIRAZ station files, computer tapes, message air plans for each of the four carriers now in WESTPAC, and the watch station pass-down-the-line logs. Officers and senior enlisted from Long Beach’s CIC had transferred over to Hood to brief their counterparts in Hood’s CIC formally on the peculiarities of radar and communications conditions in the Gulf, the latest enemy air-activity profiles, and the electronic-warfare environment. They brought radar video and audio tapes of the most recent air strikes and files of other intelligence matters.