by James Jones
“Regular Dillinger, aint I?” Angelo grinned at the crowd. It got a general laugh, even in the nervousness.
“Shut up, Maggio,” the MP called Brownie warned. “Come on.” They took him on through and out another door in the opposite wall, not the corridor door which was on the left wall, but a door into another room. The fourth wall opposite the corridor door was all windows. There were no bars on them.
Pretty soon the man whose name had been called first came back out too and the clerk escorted him through the door where Maggio had gone and shut it. One of the Shafter MPs who had ridden in the trucks came and stood by it, when the clerk motioned for him. Then he called another name. The second man followed him through the door into the police lieutenant’s office.
“Looks like the old single shot routine,” somebody said nervously.
In a few minutes the clerk came back and went to the opposite door and called Maggio again.
“Told you I was the decoy, dint I?” Angelo grinned at the crowd. It got another nervous laugh and the tension relaxed a little, because everybody was comparing himself instinctively to the bony little Wop and deciding he was not so bad off after all.
“Shut up, Maggio,” the MP called Brownie said. “Come on.”
They went in. Pretty soon they came out and went back into the other room. Then the cleric led the man out and into the other room and called another name. That was the procedure that was followed down through the whole list.
When Prew’s name was called he got up and followed the clerk, his knees feeling loose. In the inner office the half-Hawaiian police lieutenant was behind his desk in his mustard uniform. In a big deep wooden arm chair beside the desk sat Tommy, a look of petulant sullen resignation on his face. The Shafter MP First Lieutenant sat against the wall. The two young-faced FBI stood unobtrusively across the room, seeming a dead part of the furnishings.
“You know this man?” the police lieutenant asked Tommy.
“No,” Tommy said wearily. “I’ve never seen him before.”
The police lieutenant consulted a list. “Prewitt,” he said. “Prewitt, have you ever seen this man before?”
“No, Sir,” Prew said.
“Havent you ever been out to the Waikiki Tavern?” the lieutenant asked patiently.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And you mean you’ve never seen this man out there?”
“Not that I remember, Sir.”
“He hangs out there all the time, I’m told.”
“I may have seen him then, Sir. But if I did I dont remember.”
“Have you ever seen any queers out there?”
“I’ve seen some men that looked like queers. Looked womanishly. I dont know if they were.”
“Dont you know a queer when you see one?” the lieutenant asked patiently.
“I dont know, Sir. Theres only one sure way to tell a queer, isnt there?”
The lieutenant did not smile. He looked tired. “Have you ever been out with a queer, Prewitt?”
“No, Sir.”
“Not once? In your whole life?”
Prew wanted to grin, remembering Nair’s: Oh. You mean in my WHOLE life, but he did not. “No, Sir,” he said.
“You dont have to lie to me,” the lieutenant said patiently. “The psychological textbooks say that almost every man, at one time or another in his life, has been out with a queer. This is all in the strictest of confidence. We’re not trying to put the finger on any of you men. We’re trying to protect you from these people.”
Tommy sat in his chair staring out the window, his face set. He made a very poor monster. Prew felt suddenly sorry for him.
“To do that,” the lieutenant said tiredly, “we have to have legal evidence, to put these people where the law says they belong. We’re not after you men.”
“I thought the law said both parties are held equally responsible,” Prew said. “At least,” he said, “thats what I’ve always heard.”
“Thats true,” the lieutenant said tiredly, “legally. However, as I said, nobody wants to bring charges against you men. We only want you to help us clean up this nest of vice out around Waikiki. The Waikiki Tavern is a respectable place. They dont want to be used as an esoteric trysting place any more than we want them to. But they can hardly handle a thing of this magnitude. Its a job for the law.”
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said. The police lieutenant looked very tired, and there were still ten more men after him to be run through. He felt suddenly sorry for the lieutenant.
“All right, I’ll ask you again, Prewitt: Have you ever been out with a queer.”
“I rolled one once,” Prew said, “when I was on the bum before I got in the army.”
The lieutenant’s tired mouth tightened a trifle. “Okay,” he said. He nodded to the clerk standing by the door. “Bring him in.”
The clerk went out and came back with Maggio and the two big MPs, one MP with riot gun coming through the door first and turning around, then Maggio, then the other MP with riot gun following Maggio. The clerk started to cross the room. His line of march would have passed between the MP called Brownie and Maggio. The MP called Brownie stepped in front of the clerk, standing at port arms wooden faced.
“You cant pass between the prisoner and his guard, Corporal,” Brownie said woodenly.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” the clerk said. He was terribly embarrassed. “I forgot,” he explained lamely, and went around.
“Prewitt, do you know this man?” the lieutenant said wearily.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“Not exactly a friend, Sir,” Prew said. “He’s in my Company.”
“Werent you talking to him outside a while ago?” the lieutenant said.
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said. “So were a lot of other people.”
“You were sitting beside him though, werent you?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You ever go on pass with this man?”
“Yes, Sir. Several times.”
“You ever go to Waikiki with him?”
“No, Sir,” Prew said. “I’ve run into him out there once or twice, but I never went out there with him.”
“You say you have run into him out there?”
“Yes, Sir. I’ve run into lots of men from the Company out in Waikiki. We all go out there from time to time.”
“We’re concerned with this man now,” the lieutenant said. “Who was he with when you saw him out there?”
“I dont remember, Sir.”
“Was it someone from the Company?”
“I dont remember, Sir. I dont think he was with anybody.”
“You mean anybody you knew? Or with nobody?”
“With nobody, Sir.”
“You didnt see him with any of these men you say you’ve seen out there that looked like they might be queers?”
“No, Sir.”
“Okay,” the lieutenant said wearily to the clerk. “Take him out.”
They took Maggio out, the same way they had brought him in, first one MP with riot gun, then Maggio, then the other MP with riot gun.
“They aint takin no chances on him gettin away, are they,” Prew said to nobody in particular, unable to resist it.
“Soldier,” the Shafter MP First Lieutenant said sharply, “you’ve been in the Army long enough to know the procedure of guarding a prisoner.”
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said, and shut up.
“Let’s have no more of that then,” the Shafter MP First Lieutenant said sharply.
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said, and shut up.
The police lieutenant was playing with a pencil, tiredly. “You have nothing to say, then, about this man here?” He nodded at Tommy who was still staring set-faced out the window, trying hard to be above such disgusting implications and besmirchments. “Nothing at all?”
“No, Sir,” Prew said. “I don’t know him at all, Sir.”
“We’re trying to help you men get out of this mess you’
ve gotten into,” the lieutenant said patiently. “You’re all of you treading on dangerous ground out in Waikiki. All of you men ought to already know that.” He paused.
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said. “I mean, no, Sir.”
“Any time a man breaks any law,” the lieutenant recited wearily, “he’s treading on dangerous ground. Eventually, the law always catches up with him. We’re trying to help you men before you get in that deep, Prewitt. But we cant help you if you dont help us to help you.” He paused.
“No, Sir,” Prew said. “I mean, yes, Sir.”
“You still have nothing to say?”
“I dont know anything to say, Sir.”
“Okay, thats all,” the lieutenant said wearily. “Bring in the next one.”
“Yes, Sir,” Prew said. Before he could stop himself, he saluted the civilian police lieutenant instinctively. The lieutenant smiled, and the Shafter MP First Lieutenant laughed sharply. The two bright-faced young FBI men did not do anything, except to lean on against the wall, seeming a part of the furnishings.
“Okay, Prewitt,” the half-Hawaiian police lieutenant smiled. “Show him out. Who’s the next one?”
The clerk escorted him across the anteroom and through the door which the Shafter MP stood beside. He shut the door behind him. There was nobody in the long room except the two Schofield MPs guarding Maggio down at the other end, and the men from Schofield who had already been through the mill, sitting on the wooden benches along the walls. Their faces still looked strained. Prew stood looking at them, feeling the sweat from his armpits still trickling coolly down his ribs, then he walked down toward Maggio and the MPs.
The MP called Brownie jerked his head. “Stay back there, Mack,” he said. “This man is a prisoner.”
Prew stared hard at him, then moved his eyes to Maggio and winked and grinned. Angelo winked and grinned back, but his heart did not appear to be in it any more. Prew turned back toward the others. Somebody had gotten out a pack of cards and some of them were sitting in a circle on the hardwood floor playing stud for matches. He sat down on the bench and watched.
Something had been touching lightly at his mind ever since he had first gone in there and seen that it was Tommy. It did not make sense that they were using Angelo for bait, when it was Tommy. Angelo had never been out with Tommy. Bloom had been out with Tommy. So had Andy. So had Readall Treadwell. So had Prewitt, one time. But the only connection Angelo had with Tommy was last Payday, when he had picked him up for Prewitt, which was the only time Prewitt had been out with any of them, yet Prewitt gets called in on the investigation, too. Where did they get Prewitt’s name? and where was Hal the French tutor? If they really had enough on Angelo to use him as the bait, Hal the French tutor ought to be there too. It began to look like whoever had informed had used last Payday for his informing material, but if that was so where was Hal the French tutor?
Somebody else had gotten out their packs of the always present, large size, poker cards and now there were three or four stud games for matches going on the floor. They all played concentratedly, not talking, and as they played the strain began to fade off of their faces.
Prew gave it up in disgust and sat in on one of the games. Hell, it was all just his imagination probably. He was getting jumpy. He always had an inclination to want to play the leading role. I yam ze great EEtalian actore, I play ze leading role, everybody die.
The players moved over silently to let him in. Nobody contested his presence. This common adversity took precedence over The Treatment. The Treatment would start in again as soon as they got safely home. But for now it was suspended before this narrow escape from the law.
Pvt 1cl Bloom was the second man after Prewitt to be run through the mill. He came into the room and stared blankly at the stud players and then at Maggio and then he went over to the bench along the other wall and sat down by himself. He did not sit in on any of the games. He sat by himself cracking his knuckles and cursing in a low monotone of astonished outrage and affront, the sound going on and on never changing tone as if it were a pure reflex arising from a great misunderstanding. When Moore, the other NCO candidate, came over to sit beside him he got up and moved away by himself again, looking at Moore indignantly for having interrupted his monotone of cursing.
The rest of them played stud for matches concentratedly until the last man had been run through. Then they were herded back out to the trucks by the Shatter MPs wearing only sidearms. Prew turned back for one last look at Angelo at the other end of the room, still sitting between the two big riot-gunned Schofield MPs and also looking outraged, now that this windfall of a vacation he would have to pay for when he got back was over so soon.
The trucks pulled out under the same scrutiny of the pedestrians, different pedestrians probably, but as far as the soldiers in the trucks could see, the same identical pedestrians, still coming from the same docks where the same brass band still played the same song for the same new boatload of tourists. As if by a common command, the men in the trucks all stared back conjointly with such a weary ferocity that the pedestrians got uncomfortable and looked away at something else and tried to appear occupied, thinking that if it did come to a war at least we could put as tough and bloodthirsty an Army in the field as anybody. Then the trucks were out on the open highway, riding over the steep gulches of crumbling crimson rock, past the cane fields, some of them burning in the crisp summer air with great black clouds of smoke, past the mathematical fields of pineapple, back toward Schofield. It was after three o’clock, and under the vast bowl of the cerulean sky everything looked very small and far away and very quiet, as far as the eye could see to the blue smoke of the mountains on both sides.
At the monthly Sex Hygiene Lecture and short arm inspection, a week later, Capt Holmes made a short embarrassed speech about perversion and degeneracy, after the movies showing what syphilis and clap can do to you had been run off. The Chaplain, in his address on the importance of love in the sexual act and the necessity of sexual faithfulness and continence on the part of the male before marriage, did not mention either.
Lorene, Prew thought, listening to both of them. It was such a perfect whore’s name; Lorene. It fitted her so well. It had all the right sounds, the right connotations. It was a much better name than Billy, or Sandra, or Maureen. He was glad she was named Lorene, instead of Agnes or Gladys or Thelma or some other name like that. Lorene was better.
Chapter 29
HE HAD NOT even used up his three trips at $15 ea. before he found out her real name was not Lorene at all, it was Alma.
Apparently, along with all the rest of it, he was to be denied even this meager satisfaction. It was almost unnerving. The only thing that kept it from reducing him to absolute defeat was that it was so much in keeping with everything else that had happened to him in the past three months, since he had quit the Bugle Corps.
It seemed that Lorene was only a house name Mrs Kipfer had picked for her out of a perfume advertisement. Mrs Kipfer did not think Alma was either French enough or intellectual enough for the star performer of her establishment. But her real name was Alma Schmidt, of all names. And she lived in Maunalani Heights, of all places. If he had tried, he could not have picked a more un-whorelike name out of the phone directory. And if he guessed, he could not have picked out of a real estate classified section a more un-whorelike place for her to live.
Maunalani Heights was the donjon and inner keep of the upper middle class of Honolulu, as distinguished from the rich men. The rich men, like Doris Duke, owned beach estates along Black Point and Kahala Beach and Kaalawai between the foot of Diamond Head and the sea. The rich men, like Doris Duke, owned these estates but did not live in them. The upper middle class of Honolulu owned Maunalani Heights and lived on it—rising up and up above Kaimuki, high up, where they could look out across the eroded ancient crater of Diamond Head which was a US Military Reservation, on out past that far out to sea along the world’s curve where sometimes they could watch far out the r
ain coming in from Molokai on the south wind like a curtain to cover Diamond Head, then Kaimuki, then finally themselves. It was a fine place for the upper middle class to live but it was a long ways from the beach.
Kaimuki was the saddle between the Heights and Diamond Head; it was also a densely settled community of the more well-off Japanese, except for the big square of it between 13th and 18th Avenues against the flank of Diamond Head which was the government’s cut of Kaimuki that was called Fort Ruger. It was almost symbolic, the way Maunalani Heights dominated the well-off Japanese of Kaimuki.
And up here, Alma Schmidt and a girl friend from the Service Rooms had a house, on Maunalani Heights. He was even more astounded when he saw the house they rented.
More accurately, Alma Schmidt and girl friend from Service Rooms lived on Wilhelmina Rise, not Maunalani Heights. Wilhelmina Rise was the steep sloped ridge running up from Kaimuki to the Heights at the very top of Kalepeamoa, elev. 1116 ft. Wilhelmina Rise was sort of the outer keep to the donjon of the Heights which, strictly, included only Maunalani Circle at the tip top and Lurline Drive a little lower down and Matsonia Drive a little lower still and Lower Lurline Drive still lower and then Lanipili Drive which was so short it hardly counted and, possibly but doubtfully, Mariposa Drive; all of these like regressive stairsteps below the Circle but still well up at the top, on Maunalani Heights. Still, it was legitimate for Alma to tell him Maunalani Heights, because all the other inhabitants of Wilhelmina Rise told people they lived on Maunalani Heights. And anyway, he did not know the difference. He had even thought that it was all rich men, like Doris Duke, who lived on Wilhelmina Rise. He never admitted this to her, however, after she explained it to him.
The house itself was on Sierra Drive which runs tortuously up the ridge twisting back and forth between houses on so many different levels that it reminds you of an illustration from a fairy tale, just off Wilhelmina Rise Street which runs straight up crossing and recrossing Sierra so steeply that even in coming down you have to take the drop in second, running down and out under trees that a moment ago you were looking down at the tops of through the windshield and thinking of those steep streets in the Casbah movies or in fairy tales. It was a small one-storey house of something, probably concrete block, but plastered over so smoothly it looked all of a piece with its low pitched roof that hung far out over the walls like in a Spanish hacienda in a fairy tale, and it was set right out on the edge of the steep western drop to Palolo Valley, like a castle in a fairy tale.