Word of Honor (38 page)

"Why? To get me neutered?"

296 " NELSON DEMILLE

"That's not a bad idea either." She picked up the newspaper and dropped it back in the drawer. She sipped on her wine, then said, "Interesting piece."

Tyson shrugged.

Marcy said, '~ I didn't know that investigations for capital crimes were conducted in cocktail lounges."

Tyson replied, "Better than a holding cell."

Marcy said, "I suppose you're trying to smooth-talk her. Turning on the charm."

Tyson knew there was no sarcasm or rebuke in that statement; only an appreciation of a possible explanation for his interest in Karen Harper. He said, "I'll tell you something you'll never read in that rag or anyplace else, and it is this: If by compromising that woman I could weaken or kill the government's case, I still would not do it. Not to her, not to you, and not to myself."

Marcy nodded. "Still, the story, for what it's worth, hints at some impropriety. You'll see that suggestion again in the Washington Post in a more genteel form." She added, "Anyway, if you wanted to try that route, I give you my conditional permission." She smiled.

"Conditional on what?"

"Conditional on results."

Tyson drank most of the water.

Marcy said in a carefully neutral tone, "Is she nice?"

Tyson had heard that loaded question enough times to know the correct response. "From the standpoint of looks, you can see for yourself, though she's certainly not my type. Her personality is abrasive, bitchy, and entirely too officious. Typical . . . of some people with newfound power."

He glanced at Marcy surreptitiously over the rim of his glass.

Marcy seemed to be mulling this over, and if it had a ring of familiarity she didn't say so. She said, "Well . . . anyway, as long as it's only business, do what you have to do. I do in my business." She smiled mischievously.

Tyson put down his glass and finished his cigarette, throwing the butt in the glass. He said, "What prompted you to pay a visit to Andrew Picard?"

Marcy shrugged. "Curiosity." She added, "I could see WORD OF HONOR e 297

his house across the cove, and one day while I was out alone in the skiff, I just came ashore in his backyard. He was cutting the grass. I introduced myself. We talked, then I left."

"I suppose if he lived inland that meeting never would have happened."

She looked across the bedroom at him. "Is that where you were tonight?"

"Yes. And I felt damned silly finding out you'd been there. He probably thinks all the Tysons are going to drop by to check him out. Maybe I can get my mother to fly in from Florida. She'd rap him over the head with her cane."

"I'm allowed to call on whomever I please. This concerns me too, you know."

"I trust you didn't ask him to do me any favors regarding testimony. "

She shook her head. "I didn't."

"Good. " He adjusted the pillow behind his head. He didn't like this feeling of physical disability. He could see why permanently disabled people were sometimes cantankerous. He said to her, "Picard's testimony is not that important. So you don't have to be nice to him if you see him downtown. You can snub him if you want."

"All right. But I doubt if I'll run into him."

Tyson glanced at her. Her response was somewhat out of character, he thought. But perhaps his perceptions were getting cloudy with fatigue.

Marcy sat in the dresser chair and kicked off her sandals. She regarded her toes awhile, her wineglass held in her lap.

Tyson decided he wanted to be alone. He managed a convincing yawn. "I'm going to get some sleep. Could you shut off these lights for me?"

Marcy remained seated. She said, "I want to speak to you about David.

He's involved with that girl."

"Good. She seemed nice. Great tits."

"I think he's having sex with her."

"Terrific. I I

"That's not ... I mean, how are we to react to that?"

"Well, if we had a daughter, we're supposed to get upset, angry, and frantic. With a son you say, 'terrific.' -

298 * NELSON DEMILLE

"You're baiting me. And this is serious. The boy is just sixteen. Aside from any moral issues, there are practical issues here. Psychological issues."

"Right." Tyson was aware that sometimes a call to perform some sort of parental duty was a spouse's way of trying to get an errant partner back into the fold. He said, 'Have you spoken to him?"

"Well . . . no. It's more a father-son thing."

Tyson said straight-faced, "What does that mean?"

"You know. That's something a father should discuss with his son. It would be awkward for him and me if I spoke to him about it."

"It might be awkward for me too if I had to ask him if he's fucking the socks off his girlfriend. Why, by the way, do you think he is?"

"Well . . . sometimes you can sense these things," she said.

"Really'? How?"

"Oh, stop being an ass, Ben. You can tell when people are doing it."

"Now you're getting me nervous."

"Will you speak to him?"

"Yes. Tomorrow. On the boat."

"We'll see about the shark trip."

"I'm going."

"Why is this important to you?"

"My grandmother was eaten by a shark. And on the subject of sex, close the door."

Marcy hesitated, then stood and moved to the door. "I thought you were tired."

"I was, but you were talking dirty."

She smiled. "Get Melinda Jordan off your mind, Tyson.

She closed the door and moved toward the bed. "Do you want to see really great tits?"

Tyson pulled off the robe and threw it on the floor. "Do you want to see my war wound?"

Marcy smiled slowly as she unzippered the jumpsuit and pulled it down to her waist. Her white breasts stood erect from her dark bronze torso.

Tyson felt his penis move as it hardened.

WORD OF HONOR * 299

She said, "Want to see any more?"

"All of you."

She slid the jumpsuit and panties down to her ankles and kicked the bunched clothing to the side. Tyson stared at her black pubic hairs, which seemed to cover more area than the bathing suit she'd worn when she'd gotten her tan. She came beside the bed. "How do you want to do this?"

"Female superior, as they call it in our manual. I don't think I can get my leg moving even for this."

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Sure. Thought about it while I was drowning."

She came into the bed and straddled him with her knees.

"Too heavy?"

"I'm fine." He reached out and massaged her breasts, then let one hand slip down to her crotch and ran his fingers between her labia. "Long time, Marcy."

She nodded. "Feels good. - She cupped his testicles with one hand and stroked his stiffening penis with the other. "if we can get this as stiff as your knee, we'll be in business."

He smiled as he felt her getting moist on his fingers.

She leaned forward and kissed his lips. "Salty. -

He put his moist finger to his mouth. "Very salty.

"Pig. I I

Tyson felt her hand guiding him, and he slipped into her easily. She wiggled her groin until she fully enveloped him, then still in the kneeling position began a slow rhythmic movement. "Ben . . . oh, my. . . . -

He stroked her back and buttocks, then massaged her feet.

Marcy stretched out, covering him with her body, and they embraced. She picked up the tempo, and Tyson heard her deepening breath in his ear. She murmured, "Oh, God, Ben. I missed your cock."

"My cock missed you." He felt her coming-not all at once, but in small rippling tremors with rests between each series of undulating waves; like the sea, he thought, the primeval seas from which we came, the salty moon tides that still surge within us. She took in a short, deep breath of air, then her body stiffened a moment and went limp. He thrust upward hard and felt a sharp pain in his knee

300 * NELSON DEMILLE

shooting up and down his leg, but he thrust again, the pain fighting for attention with the pleasure. He came and almost passed out.

Tyson breathed slowly and steadily. His fingers ran through the cleavage of her buttocks, and he felt the sweat that always formed when her orgasm was intense.

She whispered in his ear. "Are you all right?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"Hurt?"

"A little."

She rolled off carefully and lay on her side. "You're pale. I I

"All the blood went south. Just give me a second."

Marcy slid out of the bed and walked to the bathroom. She returned with aspirin and a tube of liniment.

Tyson took the aspirin, and Marcy rubbed the liniment into his knee. He felt drowsy but was aware of her leaving again and returning with a basin and sponge. She washed his groin, then sponged the salt from his body. She lay down beside him and covered them both with the sheets. "Shock and exposure. You need rest and body warmth."

"Wake me at four."

"Okay. " She snuggled up to him, and he fell asleep with her arms around him.

Marcy waited, then got out of bed. She put the clock radio on the floor, turned off the table lamps, put her robe on, and walked to the door. She turned back and looked at her husband in the shaft of light coming from the hallway. He never slept in a supine position, and that he was doing so now was vaguely disturbing. She watchedthe rise and fall of his chest thinking how much she felt for him and wondering why the best man she had ever known had to suffer for the past sins of an army and a nation. She left the room and closed the door softly.

Tyson opened his eyes and saw that the ceiling had lightened almost imperceptibly. He could hear gulls and jays screeching, and a boat's hom echoed over the cove. A faint touch of dawn lightened the window, and he could see the tree outside.

"I'm alive," he said. "I'm home."

Ben Tyson drove west on he Shore Parkway. The

Triumph's

CHAPTER top was down, and the

afternoon sun shone

brightly in the south

west sky. To his left

he saw the parachute

towers of Coney Is

land, and beyond, the

deep blue Atlantic. It

25 was a fine afternoon

for a drive.

Tyson had chosen a nice tan suit of summer-weight wool in which to report for duty, though the Army had requested something green: a uniform actually. "Well," he said aloud, "maybe they won't notice."

The radio was turned to WNBC-FM, golden oldies, and Bobby Darin was belting out "Somewhere, Beyond the Sea," and Tyson hummed along.

Tyson thought about the first time he'd reported for active duty, September 15, 1966. The draft was sweeping up young men by the thousands, and the procedure in his draft board

301

302 * NELSON DEMILLE

was to report to a parking field on the campus. of Adelphi University.

From there, chartered buses took the draftees to the induction center on Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan. Reporting time at the parking field, recalled Tyson, had been 6 A.m. And Tyson never knew if that was simply because the Army liked to begin the day at dawn or because the Army thought it wise to take away these suburban boys under the cover of morning darkness.

He looked down now at the dashboard clock. He would arrive at Fort Hamilton before 5 P.m., early enough to report directly to the post adjutant, but late enough not to have to begin the processing procedure of getting a physical, ID card, payroll records, and all the other details of in-processing that he vaguely remembered as clearly distasteful.

He looked at his hands on the steering. wheel, then he looked at the speedometer. He was doing sixty-five, but since he was in no hurry, he slowed down and slipped the Triumph into the right-hand lane. The song on the radio was "Mr. Tambourine Man," Bob Dylan's version.

A half mile ahead, the massive Verrazano Bridge spanned the Narrows from Fort Hamilton to Fort Wadsworth. Traffic sped by in the outside lane, and gulls circled overhead. The Fort Hamilton exit approached. Tyson downshifted the Triumph, cut the wheel sharply, and exited into the ramp.

He came off the ramp, made a series of right turns, and approached the main gate that sat under the bridge's elevated approach road. He stopped in the middle of the road, took a deep breath, and pulled up to the MP

booth.

The MP, a woman of about twenty with short red hair and a pug nose, stepped from the booth. Tyson handed her his orders. She glanced at them, then handed them back. "You have to report to post headquarters. Do you know where that is?"

Tyson thought he detected a note of snippiness in her voice, and had he been a civilian, he would certainly have let it pass. He looked at her name tag, then said, "The next time I pass through this gate, Pfc Neeley, I will have an officer bumper sticker on this car, and you will salute as the car passes. If I should stop to address you, you will address me as Sir."

WORD OF HONOR 0 303

The young woman came to a position of attention. "Yes, Sir. "

Tyson didn't feel the least bit petty. It's like riding a bicycle, he thought. Once you learn, you never forget. He snapped, "Carry on."

She saluted. He returned the salute, his first salute in nearly two decades, and drove through the gate onto Lee Avenue. To his right was a row of vintage artillery pieces on display. To his left stood an old white wood frame building with a sign on the lawn informing him that the house had once been home to Robert E. Lee. As he drove he realized he didn't know where the headquarters building was but knew he'd eventually find it. He remarked to himself on the extraordinary neatness of the place, the lack of even a scrap of paper on the grounds, and he remembered those prebreakfast police calls, the entire garrison turned out to scour the post for offending litter.

He noticed, too, that the uniforms had changed; male and female soldiers wore camouflaged battle fatigues somewhat similar to the ones that in his day had been authorized only for Southeast Asia. He tried to picture himself dressed like that now but could not.

Tyson came to a building marked with a sign that said, HEADQUARTERS NYAC