Jonesy’s heart pounded, and not just from the unaccustomed run. If the police in the North Precinct were able to do their jobs without military interference from either side, they’d eventually trace the bullet to his gun. He told himself they probably wouldn’t even bother investigating, given the fierce battle that raged half a mile to the north.
Then he realized that after the neighbors found Mr. Hwang dead on the floor, someone would clean out his cash register before—or perhaps instead of—calling the police. Looting had become a real problem in Hongkou over the last two days, and that might work to Jonesy’s advantage.
Still, he didn’t breathe easier until after they’d crossed the bridge into downtown.
“Let’s drop your things off at my place for now. Then we’ll go to the theater to look for Charlie.”
And if Charlie wasn’t there—a sinking feeling in Jonesy’s gut said he wouldn’t be—then their next stop would be the General Hospital.
**
After stopping at his office on the Bund to change into the spare uniform he kept there, Doug hired a sampan to take him to the USS Valparaiso. After climbing the rope ladder to the quarter deck, he stopped and saluted the flag, then turned and saluted the petty officer there. “Commander Douglas Bainbridge, requesting permission to board.”
It was a peculiarity of the navy that whatever crew member was assigned watch as the Officer of the Deck—regardless of rank—had authority over anyone asking permission to board, regardless of rank. Even an admiral would have to salute a lowly seamen if said seaman was working as Officer of the Deck at the time—though it was usually a petty officer or ensign—and submit to his permission to board the ship.
“Permission granted, sir,” the Petty Officer said; and now that Doug was again a superior officer, he saluted crisply.
“Petty Officer Harlan, might I have a word with you?”
“Of course, sir,” Harlan said, standing at rigid attention.
“At ease, Harlan.”
The petty officer put his hands behind his back and widened his stance.
“Is Commander Rose aboard?”
“No sir, he’s gone ashore.”
“When did he leave?”
“Friday afternoon, sir.”
So Rose was on shore when Nick Bonadio met his end. “Who’s got command of the bridge this watch?”
“That would be Lieutenant Stephenson, sir.”
“And Ensign Farnsworth is second, then?” That was the usual rotation.
“He is, sir.”
“Thank you, Harlan. As you were.” Doug took a step away and then stopped, turning back toward the petty officer. “Would you be able to get me a list of all crew members who were on shore Friday night?”
“Of course, sir,” Harlan said. “It’s one third of the crew, so it might take me a while.”
That would be about a hundred names. Doug had to stop himself from sighing. “I’ll pick it up from you on my way out.”
Inside the radio room, Doug found Petty Officer Callahan at the radio, adjusting dials in tiny increments. Doug got his attention, and the young man stood and saluted.
“I heard that Ensign Farnsworth is on the bridge this afternoon,” Doug said, returning the salute. “I need you to go through that door and tell him you have a confidential message for him in the radio room. Can you do that, Callahan?”
“Yes, sir!” He went through the door to the bridge, and Doug stepped back, careful to stay out of view. Lieutenant Stephenson was in charge of the bridge during this watch, and Doug didn’t trust him not to report back to Commander Rose later.
The door opened again, and Petty Officer Callahan re-entered, with Ensign Farnsworth in tow. Farnsworth’s eyes widened in surprise when he saw Doug standing at the side of the room.
“Commander Bainbridge, I didn’t realize you were on-board,” Farnsworth said, snapping a hurried salute, which Doug returned.
“I’d like a word with you in private, ensign,” Doug said, and led the way to the back door. “Callahan, I’m ordering you to keep this interaction to yourself. Don’t discuss it with anyone not in this room. I’m acting on assignment from Captain Jansen, which means you can consider this an order from him. Do you understand?”
In other words, don’t say anything to Commander Rose, which was precisely why Doug had invoked Jansen’s name.
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
Doug and Ensign Farnsworth went out to the corridor, securing the door behind them, and stood at the top of the ladder.
“I also need to count on your discretion, Farnsworth. Can I?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Good. At ease. This is important—I need to know everything you can tell me about Seaman Second Class Nick Bonadio, and specifically his relationship with Commander Rose.”
“This is in reference to that meeting you asked about a few weeks ago, sir?”
“That’s part of it,” Doug said. “But I need to know everything you can remember about their other interactions, as well. Anything that stands out in your memory.”
“Well, sir, nothing really stands out, except for that direct meeting with the commander that you mentioned to me that night. I did ask Lieutenant Stephenson about it after we spoke, before I went to bed. I was troubled by it, you see. The lieutenant said he didn’t know anything about it, either, but he said he’d ask the commander in the morning.”
“And the next morning, it was announced that Seaman Bonadio was back on regular duty,” Doug finished for him.
“That’s right, sir,” Farnsworth said. “I was troubled by that, as well. I didn’t feel that Seaman Bonadio had learned his lesson after going A.W.O.L.”
“Yes, you mentioned that,” Doug said, thinking of their earlier conversation, in which he’d asked the ensign directly his opinion about Bonadio’s shortened punishment. Though he’d suspected it, this gave him confirmation that Bonadio had not gone through the chain of command, but went directly to Commander Rose.
Or was summoned by Commander Rose.
“Is there anything else you can remember?”
Farnsworth took a deep breath, looking up in thought, his hands still clasped behind his back. “No, sir. There’s nothing notable before that. That’s why it seemed so strange to me. It still does, sir.”
Doug nodded. “I agree. Thank you, Scott, for your candor. I appreciate that. Now, I have one more request for which I need to ask your absolute discretion.”
“Of course, sir,” Farnsworth said. “I know Captain Jansen put you in charge of the investigation into Seaman Bonadio’s death, and I’m happy to cooperate in any way that I can.”
“Good man,” Doug said, patting the tall ensign’s shoulder. “I need to go see Commander Rose in person—and I need for him to not know I’m coming.”
16
Doug double checked the address. The enormous house, in the gleaming white Art Moderne style, with shiny chrome edging at the flat roofline, couldn’t be right.
This was the right place, but he wondered how on earth someone could afford to live in this mini-mansion on the salary of an American Navy Commander. Shanghai was certainly less expensive than any comparable American city, and foreigners lived well here, but this was still a rich man’s home. And in a stylish neighborhood, just a block off of Avenue Haig, with its high-end shopping; and several blocks west of the Recreation Grounds.
Pete and Julia don’t even live in a house this size, he mused. They lived in a brick townhouse a few blocks away—and he knew for a fact that they were actually rich.
Commander Montgomery Rose came from a long line of naval officers, of which he was quite proud, and had informed Doug early in their acquaintance. His great-grandfather was a captain who’d served the Union during the Civil War, in spite of being from an old Virginia family—but, Rose had commented almost as an aside, the Navy hadn’t been as full of traitors as the Army, and most southerners in the Navy had remained loyal. He was as proud of that as anything else.<
br />
Monty’s father had also been a captain before he retired nine years ago—no admirals in the commander’s lineage, as Doug recalled. So, where had this money come from?
He pushed the ivory button beside the door, and the new-style electric doorbell ding-donged inside. A moment later, the door was answered by a young Chinese girl in an expensive green silk qipao, with gold embroidery.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she said in English. “You wish to see Mr. Rose?”
Doug was taken aback, and for a few seconds the cat held his tongue. The girl in front of him couldn’t be more than sixteen years old; and her perfect English compounded the surprise.
“Is Mr. Rose in?” Doug finally asked, careful to use the civilian term.
“Yes, he is finishing his bath. Please come inside, and I will tell him he has a visitor. May I tell him your name, sir?”
I’d rather you didn’t. But while Doug hated to lose the element of surprise, it would be worse to lie about his identity and then have Rose wonder why he’d lied. That wasn’t worth the momentary—and fleeting—advantage when Rose first saw him.
“Tell him Douglas Bainbridge is here to see him.”
It was less than two minutes after the girl bowed and backed away that Rose came hurrying down the open stairs, tying the belt of his bathrobe as he went, his bare feet smacking on the hard surface of the steps. His hair was wet and pushed back from his face, a lock of it sticking out backward from the crown of his head.
“Bainbridge, I wasn’t expecting you. This must be urgent, to have not called first.”
Doug recognized the subtle scolding, and ignored it.
“It is important, yes,” he said, relishing the commander’s dishevelment. Rose was off-balance, at least for the moment. “I know you were made aware that Seaman Second Class Nicholas Bonadio was killed sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning, but—“
“Yes, nasty business,” Rose said, scowling. “I heard there was an autopsy yesterday, but I don’t know details.”
“I’m not sure if you were told that Captain Jansen asked me to oversee the investigation, and coordinate all of the pieces for him.”
Doug enjoyed the shocked look in Rose’s eyes.
“No, I wasn’t told.” He sounded stunned. Then his eyes narrowed. “That’s not really an Intelligence task, though, is it?”
It’s not really anyone’s task, officially. “Not on the surface.” Doug watched for a reaction. Seeing none, he continued. “It’s impossible to say if it is or isn’t until we’ve learned all of the facts.”
Rose appeared to have reacquired a semblance of normalcy now. “You think he might have been a foreign agent, spying on us for someone?”
Doug knew better than to get into that. “I can’t discuss any particular line of inquiry, Commander. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course, of course,” Rose said, nodding. Then he motioned his arm toward a wet bar on the far side of the room. “Care for a drink, Bainbridge?”
Doug didn’t usually drink this early in the day—it was not quite noon—but wanting to keep the conversation going, he asked for a Gin Rickey. “I wondered if you might tell me everything you know about Seaman Bonadio,” Doug said while Rose mixed the ingredients in a shaker.
“I see the performance evaluations of every man on my ship—except for yours,” Rose said, shaking the drink, and then pausing to pour it into a highball glass. “I can tell you that Seaman Bonadio had satisfactory evaluations, until his most recent one. Last month, he was given a sub-par rating.”
Doug found that interesting. “What was the reason, if I may ask?”
“You may,” Rose said, handing him the cocktail. “He had one citation for lax discipline while on watch. He also had a couple of marks during an inspection. Those were sufficient for a sub-par rating. Of course,” he added almost as an aside, “he would have received another sub-par rating this current period, for the A.W.O.L. incident. That would have made two consecutive unsatisfactory evaluations, which would endanger his Second Class rank, and potentially be enough to demote him to Seaman Third Class.”
Rose was a task master, which made his leniency after Bonadio’s A.W.O.L. such an anomaly.
“The night before you released him from extra duty after his A.W.O.L., Seaman Bonadio met with you privately in your quarters,” Doug said. There was a flicker behind Rose’s eyes, but his expression stayed normal. “His ensign and his lieutenant were not involved in arranging the meeting, nor were they aware of it happening until afterward. If I may, Commander—what did you and Seaman Bonadio discuss that night?”
A tight, thin-lipped smile stretched Commander Rose’s mouth into a line. “We discussed private matters, Commander Bainbridge. I’ll leave it at that.” His words were as tight as his lips.
Doug shook his head. “I’m sorry, Commander, but a man is dead, and I need to know what he discussed with you before he died. I can ask Captain Jansen to order you to cooperate, or we can just make it easy and discuss the conversation now. The choice is up to you.”
Rose’s eyes flashed with hostility, but his expression was stony. “Very well,” he said, his words clipped. “Seaman Bonadio came to me with information about an officer on my ship who has engaged on multiple occasions in unnatural and immoral activity with enlisted men in our crew, including at least one under his command.
“In exchange for identifying the guilty parties, Seaman Bonadio demanded release from the extra duties that had been assigned to him. I agreed; but he reneged on his promise, and only identified the officer, refusing then to name the enlisted men unless I paid him for each name. I refused, of course, and he left. But I am a man of my word, and on my honor I was bound to release him from his extra duties, since he named Ensign Farnsworth as the deviant officer.”
It was Doug’s turn to be caught off-balance, and he took several seconds to let that all sink in. As he thought about it, he began to question the straight-forward way in which it had been relayed.
“But Ensign Farnsworth hasn’t been punished. He’s not on restricted duty, not confined to quarters. And to my knowledge, he’s not serving extra duties.” A transgression such as the one alleged could even result in confinement and the loss of commission.
Commander Rose’s expression and tone were cold. “Without the names of the enlisted men who had cavorted with him, there was no proof—only Seaman Bonadio’s word that it was so. And now that Bonadio is dead, well...”
Doug could follow that implication without a road map. “Did Bonadio say how he came to be in possession of that knowledge?”
“He did not. He only said that to disclose it would reveal the identity of at least one of the enlisted men—and he wasn’t prepared to do that without payment for the information. I wasn’t about to give in to extortion, however. He assured me that his information was reliable, and I should not doubt its veracity.”
Doug tried to square this accusation with his own impressions of Scott Farnsworth. The ensign’s masculine bearing and professional demeanor were models of military discipline. “And you believed him?”
Rose seemed affronted at Doug’s doubt. “Yes, I did. I’m fully aware that men will tell all manner of lies to advance their own cause, and I did not consider Seaman Bonadio to be any more trustworthy than most—perhaps less so, even. But I could see that he was telling the truth. I have a lot of experience with lies and partial truths, Commander Bainbridge, and in my experienced assessment, Seaman Bonadio was entirely sincere.”
Doug took a breath to weigh that. “So then, what happens with Ensign Farnsworth? Is the matter simply closed?”
“Far from it,” Rose said, again looking affronted. “I kept a close eye on him for the remainder of our last cruise, but I personally witnessed nothing that would substantially prove Seaman Bonadio’s accusation. I also determined it was only a matter of time before Seaman Bonadio found himself in trouble again, for some violation or other, and I planned to extract additional information
from him at that time.”
“Letting him off the hook again as payment for continued cooperation,” Doug said, his tone biting, letting his disapproval show.
“I refuse to pay a bribe, Commander Bainbridge,” Rose replied, icy. “But leniency in exchange for cooperation in catching a bigger fish is acceptable policy. Even you would agree, I’m sure.”
Doug couldn’t argue, but he hated it. He took a long drink of his cocktail instead. It was past noon now, damn it.
“Thank you, Commander Rose.” He set the half-finished cocktail onto a side table. “This has been helpful. Captain Jansen and I appreciate your cooperation. I’ll let you know if I have any follow-up questions for you. Good day, sir.”
**
Doug detoured through the Recreation Grounds to think things over. What Commander Rose had said was compelling motivation for Ensign Farnsworth—or any of the unnamed enlisted men who were party to his “unnatural and immoral activity”—to eliminate the threat of exposure, and its consequences.
But Doug knew Ensign Scott Farnsworth as well as he knew anyone on the ship, and he couldn’t convince himself that the young man would commit murder. He graduated from the Naval Academy, for heaven’s sake. Not that being an Annapolis grad precluded criminal intent when the motivation was strong enough, but Doug still had a hard time picturing Scott Farnsworth killing Nick Bonadio in cold blood, and dumping his body.
He needed to think it over for a while, put everything down on paper and analyze it. He was a good analyst, damn it—he’d been analyzing intelligence in Washington for almost three years before he came to Shanghai. Sometimes a workable conclusion just needed time to present itself.
He wanted to talk it over with Lucy. She was always good at seeing things from another angle that he’d missed. But he was reluctant to reveal secrets about Navy personnel to a civilian.
*
“Ho, there! Wake up, sleepy head.”
Doug broke from his reverie to see Jonesy approaching from the direction of Thibet Road. He was surprised to see Bao trailing behind the stocky reporter.
No Accidental Death Page 16