The Edge of Honor (44 page)

“Absolutely right, sir.”

Folsom rolled his eyes. The boatswain’s mate of the watch called Folsom into the pilothouse, leaving Holcomb and Jackson alone. Jackson debriefed Holcomb about the information he had extracted from Marcowitz.

Brian was silent for a minute, considering the implications.

“If what he says is true,” Jackson continued, “this makes the third witness that has said that the drug ring here is a black operation.”

“With a black guy running it.”

Jackson was silent for a moment. “I’m embarrassed to say it, but that’s what it looks like, yes, sir.”

A large figure appeared along the port-side catwalk as Chief Martinez loomed up out of the darkness. He paused when he saw that Jackson and Brian were talking, but Brian waved him over. In the near darkness, the chief’s face was a large round shadow. He had a long cigar in his left hand and his coffee mug in the other. His hat sat on the back of his massive head like a doll’s cap.

“Boats here know what you just told me?” Brian asked.

Jackson said no, then recounted his session with Mar cowitz while the boatswain listened intently. At the end, Martinez shook his head.

“Dead end,” he pronounced. Jackson noted that Brian was nodding his head, agreeing with the boatswain.

“Why so?” Jackson asked Brian. Brian looked around the bridgewing area and into the pilothouse before replying.

It was nearly full dark. The port running light cast a red penumbra into the mist blowing along the ship’s sides.

“Because there’s no way we could make an accusation like that without touching off a larger race problem.”

“Not if I made the accusation,” said Jackson defensively.

Brian shook his head. “You say Marcowitz is saying any black guy. That’s ridiculous. Any black guy would have to include you, the chiefs, half a dozen E-Sixes, and the Supply officer. You and I both know that every black man aboard this ship is not in the drug business. The real druggies are probably trying to make their customers think so, because that’s one way to make it look like there’s a pretty big mob out there should a guy, especially a white guy, think about turning snitch. Uh-uh, I don’t see anything that you can do with this for now.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jackson mused. “I pulled EM One Wilson’s service record the other night. There were some surprises in it. Like he’d been an MAA at one time.

And has a college degree.”

“Why’s that make him a suspect?” Brian asked.

“Because he comes across like some illiterate dummy when he’s talking to anyone senior to him. He’s sandbagging.”

“You figure Bullet could be the kingpin?” asked Martinez.

“I don’t know,” said Jackson with a sigh. “There’s nothing firm in any of this–just a bunch of scared fish running their mouths. There’s gotta be another way in.”

Jackson sighed again. Holcomb was right. He should have seen it himself.

Maybe he was getting too close to this thing. “There’s gotta be another way in,” he repeated.

“This drug shit,” rumbled Martinez. “For the kids, it’s cops and robbers, getting high, givin’ the finger to the Navy regs. For the dealers, it’s money. Find a guy with lots of money, more money than he oughta have, and lean on him. Maybe get lucky.”

“I haven’t seen anybody on board wearing banker’s clothes,” Brian said.

“You say banker?” asked Jackson, looking at Martinez.

“Shit, yeah, the banker,” Martinez said. “The loan shark.”

“Garlic,” Jackson and Martinez said together.

“You guys just lost me,” Brian said.

“Garlic, the mess decks MAA. Big fat guy. The head cook. He’s the ship’s loan shark. You know, we get to Subic, a guy runs out of liberty money, he goes to see the loan shark. Garlic loans him five for six: Every five bucks you borrow, you pay back six on the next payday.

You borrow two hundred bucks, you owe two forty next payday. Ship’s gonna go back out on the line for six weeks, that’s three paydays.

Plenty of time to pay it back, specially when you ain’t got nowhere else to spend it when we’re on the line.”

“And Garlic has cash. Always has lots of cash,” said Jackson.

“At those rates, he ought to have cash,” muttered Brian. “I thought this sort of thing was illegal.”

“It is,” Jackson said. “But most ships let it go on as long as the chiefs keep an eye on it, make sure there’s no enforcers getting loose.

Somebody’s always going to go into business, so the theory is better to know who it is and what he’s doing than to have it out of control.”

Brian thought of Martinez when Jackson mentioned enforcers; what else was the boatswain but an enforcer for the XO? But what was the connection between the loan shark and the drug business?

“So what we have to do is to tie Bullet to Garlic,” Jackson was saying.

“If we can show that drug money is somehow tied to Garlic’s bank, we might be able to break the whole thing up—if it is.”

“Yeah,” agreed Martinez. “Take their money, they can’t buy no resupply.

You could really put the hurt on ‘em.”

“How would you do it?” asked Brian.

“I get one of my snitches to make a buy with marked money, say a bunch of twenties,” Jackson said. “Then I wait a couple of weeks and get Garlic’s owe-me list. Like I said, he operates with the chiefs’ permission, so to speak. I call his fish in, see if I can find any of the marked bills. I also check with the ship’s store operator, see if any of those twenties are back in circulation. If they are, it means the drug guy is investing instead of just stashing.”

“How’s that get you to the kingpin?”

“Only the main man is going to have enough money to invest it with Garlic’s bank. The boats here and I lean on Garlic.”

“I’ve seen Garlic. That would take some leaning.”

“I’ll lock him up in an offline boiler. Fat guy like that, he’ll talk to me,” said Martinez. Brian shuddered at the thought.

“But first we have to get some marked money out. I’m going to have to wait until after we get back out on the fine again, because otherwise, it’ll just go ashore,” Jackson said.

“Shit, that’s going to take a while,” Brian said.

“It’s the only lead we have right now, unless the Marcowitz case comes up with something once we get in. In the meantime, I’m going to put the eye on Bullet Wilson.”

San Diego Maddy turned on the evening news and looked at her sunburned arms in disgust. This is going to peel tonight and I’m going to look like a damn leper at work tomorrow.

She had spent Saturday with the wives at the North Island Naval Air Station’s Navy beach, where Mrs. Huntington had reserved a family cabana for the afternoon and evening. There had been enough children flitting around the beach that all of the women had to assume Mom duty, taking turns overseeing playtime and then generally interfering with one another to cook hamburgers and hot dogs over a charcoal fire that had taken forever to get going.

Tizzy Hudson had even shown up, which was something of a rarity. She had not joined in the surrogate motherhood activities, choosing instead to spread out a large beach towel and soak up some rays. Maddy had enjoyed watching how the male traffic patterns on the beach changed when Tizzy arrayed herself in a careless sprawl, her gold bikini glinting in the afternoon sun. She had wandered over.

“What’s that thing made of, Reynolds Wrap?”

Tizzy had grinned beneath her opaque sunglasses. “If I get it wet, it’s even more interesting.”

“Well, I swear, Tizzy. One would think you’re fishing instead of sunbathing.”

“Well hell, Maddy, it is the beach. I sure as hell don’t come down here to swim in this frigid water. How you and Mr. Autrey doing, dear?”

Maddy had looked around quickly to make sure none of the other wives could overhear. She plopped down beside Tizzy; in her Bermuda shorts and knotted jean blouse, she felt like a frump next to long, tall Sally there.

“If you can keep that delirious mouth of yours shut, I’ll tell you. And the answer is, we are not doing anything.

He asked me to go to dinner with him, and I … well, I felt I owed him that courtesy, given what he did for mee.”

“And what exactly does he do for you, Maddy?”

“Did. The operative word is did. He’s a pretty exotic guy, actually—teaches Marine officers how to take care of themselves when they go behind enemy lines, or so he says. But I went to dinner, and that’s that, okay?”

Tizzy had flopped over on her tummy and slowly adjusted the bottom of her bikini, causing two officers walking along the beach to collide.

“If you say so, Maddy,” she said. “But you sure are sensitive about all this. I mean, if all you did was go to dinner with this guy, what’s the big deal? He didn’t ask you out again, did he?”

“Nope. And if he should, I’m not available. Hell, Tizzy, think of the trouble I’d be in if anyone found out—”

“Found out what, for crying out loud? Just for grins, you went to MCRD—with me, I might add, although that might not be held in your favor by this bunch—you got in a little jam, this guy bailed you out, you went out to dinner with him to say thanks. So what? Fox would just laugh.”

“Brian would not laugh,” Maddy had replied. “Definitely not.”

Tizzy propped herself up on one arm. “The presumption being that you’ve done something wrong?”

“Well, not if he thought it through. But I think it’s more a question of bad form—he’s stuck out there on that ship and his wife is going out with an unmarried man to the Grant Grill?”

“Oooh, the Grant Grill. I like this guy’s style. Next time he calls, you tell him you’re married and serious about it, then give him my number.”

Maddy had laughed. “And how do I describe you, Tizzy? Married and not serious about it?”

Tizzy had pulled her sunglasses down on her nose to look at Maddy. “Why not, dearie—you don’t want him, do you?”

Maddy had spent Sunday morning running household errands and recovering from sunburn, having been deceived once again by the cool beach breezes and the gentle San Diego sunlight into thinking that there was not much sun out. The tanning lotion had not done much to keep the red away and now she smelled like mothballs after lathering on a few pounds of a white sunburn cream.

After an entire day with her ‘Navy family,’ as Mrs. Huntington was fond of calling them, she felt like she had done her duty for the week. And Saturday had been a good day, although everyone there recognized it for what it was—a diversion, a way to have a day out of the house, in company with other women who were all in the same spouseless boat. It was hard to be lonely and depressed when chasing a bunch of kids around the surf, even if none of them was hers. Her mind veered away from the subject of children. In her heart, she’ really wanted to start a family with Brian, but she could not bring herself to do it when Daddy was going to be away at sea for months on end. She sometimes wondered if that was an excuse, a way to cover up the real reason—her old phobia.

Her father had left her; their father was not going to leave them, by God.

Amidst the busy work, Maddy had just about managed to squeeze Autrey back into his box. She had mentally arrayed layers of excuses between what she had felt—she had to admit it, what her body had felt—and what she knew to be her true feelings about Brian. And her marriage.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? When Brian was gone for seven months, she didn’t have a marriage.

Okay, so you focus on Brian, on your feelings for him, on your love for him and his for you. There, that’s straight, she thought. Her brain had no problem making the distinction, but she was having more trouble than she had anticipated keeping another facet of her personality in its box.

Damn the man: The fact was, he could make Brian disappear by just standing there. And damn Tizzy Hudson. She acted as if she and Autrey were in this together just to get Maddy Holcomb into trouble.

The phone rang. She got up to turn down the television and then went to the phone and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Maddyholcomb.”

She gripped the phone, pressing it tightly to her ear, and tried to think of what to say.

“Got back tonight,” he was saying, his tone of voice easy, as if they had been having this conversation for an hour. “I’ve been up at Warner Springs—in the mountains east of San Diego, where the Navy runs the POW training camp. Man, you should see it. They have an honest to God prison camp: barbed wire, vicious-looking dogs, towers, searchlights, big ugly guards, even these scary interrogation rooms, the whole bit. Any officer going in country to Nam and all the aviators have to go through this course; they call it SERE: survival, escape, evasion, and resistance.

They turn a class of about forty officers loose in a two-hundred-acre high desert area and then hunt them down with dogs and helos and round them up.

Then they get to experience what a prison camp is like.

Damn fine training. And you are trying to decide what to say to me, right?”

She hesitated, swallowed. “Yes.”

“Well, that’s a good start. All the Gods smile on a woman who says yes.

You don’t have to say anything else, because yes is the right answer.

Wednesday night, there’s a dynamite folksinging group going to be playing at Parker’s Place, up on College Avenue, in the university district. They’re called The Three of Us; they do Peter, Paul, and Mary stuff. They’re from Long Beach, and they’re outta sight. I’ll be there from about nine-thirty.

I’ll have a table right up front, because I’ve bribed the manager.

Actually, he owed me a big favor and I’ve called it. Please come, Maddy Holcomb. Wednesday night. Nine-thirty. Dress casual. Parker’s Place. See you. Please.”

She closed her eyes, lowering the phone to hold it in both hands but not hanging up. Now. Do it. Tell him thank you, but you can’t. Give him Tizzy’s number.

Anything. But this is over. Good night. Goodbye. Then hang up. It’s easy. Just do it.

But she didn’t. Okay, don’t tell him. Just hang up the phone. But she didn’t.

Neither did he for a moment, but then, before she was ready, just as she was remembering to breathe, she heard the phone click and then the dial tone. She sighed and put the phone down. She hadn’t said yes. You hadn’t exactly said no, either. But I don’t have to go. I can just—I can just stay home, or I can go over to Tizzy’s, or I can—. Or you can go to Parker’s Place and listen to some folk music. Damn this man. Mr. Cool himself.