by J. E. Park
“Palazzo got his ass kicked by a girl?” Master Chief asked, cracking up.
I was leaning against the bar, laughing so hard at the fight I had seen that morning that I could barely answer. Though it was not even noon yet, I was already pretty boozy. When Darrow found out that Tala and I had slept together the night before, he whisked me off of the ship after roll call and insisted on buying me a few drinks before he went to Pagsanjan.
“Oh yeah,” I told him. “We were getting out of our trikes in front of the Shit River bridge. Palazzo was walking in from Magsaysay Drive. Suddenly, this other trike comes barreling up and screeches to a halt right beside him. Then this little chick, who’s like four feet tall, jumps out and starts beating the shit out of the guy. She's screaming bloody murder the whole time, chasing him all around the intersection. It was like watching that monkey attack Claude!”
Remembering the matsing incident had the master chief giggling. “What’d Spanky do to deserve it?”
“Oh man,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. “You gotta hear it like I did. I’m sitting on the bus with the guy on our way back to the ship. I ask him, ‘What the hell was that all about?’ He looks at me and says, ‘I got pretty drunk yesterday. I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and I kinda missed the toilet.’”
I struggled to keep from busting up again. “So, I’m looking at this guy, his shirt’s all ripped, and he’s got fingernail marks gouged into his cheeks, right? I ask him, ‘She got that mad at you for missing the toilet?’”
We laughed so hard that the barmaid and a couple of the girls came in closer to hear the story. “So John says, ‘Yeah, I missed the toilet and accidentally peed in her purse.’” I then imitated that nervous laugh Palazzo always punctuated his sentences with.
“What?” Darrow exclaimed while the girls groaned in disgust. “He pissed in her purse?”
“Wait! Wait!” I pled. “It gets better! I asked him, ‘Why the hell does she keep her purse on the floor in the goddamn bathroom?’ So you know what John tells me? He goes, ‘She doesn’t. She left it on the couch in the living room.’”
We all lost our shit. Darrow buckled over in tears, the girls roared in hilarity, and I was laughing so hard that no sound was coming out. Then everything went silent. Our laughter was replaced with a ringing in my ears that drowned out the noise of everything else. Disoriented, I glanced over at the girl standing at my right elbow. Though I could not hear her, her face was contorted as if she were screaming and her cheek was covered in blood. I then turned toward my master chief, who looked shocked and in disbelief. After that, I caught sight of a man standing in the doorway, pointing a gun right at us.
Things were moving in slow motion. In fact, it was so slow that everything appeared to have stopped entirely. The only movement was a lone knife twirling in the air above us, seemingly suspended there all by itself. As I watched it, it crept by in an arc over our heads. Eventually it landed on the bar, bounced, and then sailed across the aisle to disappear against the bottles of booze lined up against the wall. As if on cue, that was when the ringing stopped. Everyone began moving in real time, and all hell broke loose.
Moving to push my master chief out of the line of fire, I jumped off my stool, tripping over someone lying at my feet. After regaining my balance, I watched the man on the floor writhe around for a second. Both his hands clutched at his throat as blood pumped out from between his fingers. He did not look familiar. When I looked up, though, some of the smoke had cleared, and I recognized the man in the doorway. It was Sergeant Tejada.
“Jesus Christ,” Darrow gasped, looking toward the door at his friend. “Wha…wh...wha?”
“He gonna put dat knipe in you back, Brad!” Tejada shouted. He was shaking.
My master chief looked down at Ibay, stepping back to avoid the puddle of blood pooling beneath his head. “You know that guy?” I asked him.
Darrow shook his head. I could see he was rattled. “Nope.”
Tejada scanned the small crowd inside the Dirty Crow. Luckily, it was still early, and we were the only Americans there. “You two need to get da puck out op here now! Go!”
Still not able to fully process what the sergeant was telling him, Darrow turned to TJ and asked, “Do you have any idea who this is?”.
Tejada shook his head. “No. I no tink he prom around here. He know you, dough. He going right por you.”
“You think he’s a hired man?” the master chief asked.
Sergeant Tejada nodded. “Yeah, he a hired guy. Someone want to kill you, but no can pay much to do it. Guy like dis, he kill por cheap. You need to go, Brad! Get out back door and go to Doyle place. I meet you dere.”
“So, we’re not going to Pagsanjan?” Darrow asked, obviously not thinking clearly.
TJ shook his head. “No, I no tink we gonna go to Pagsanjan today. Or ever. It look like Pagsanjan coming here.”
*****
The Shore Patrol arrived at my apartment long before Tejada did. I barely had time to explain what had happened to Tala, take a shower, and change clothes before they were knocking on my door. Master Chief Darrow answered it, wearing a tee-shirt he had borrowed from me. “Can I help you?”
“Hello, Master Chief,” said MA1 Trevor Carlton, looking a bit nervous. He was not expecting to find Darrow there. “I’m here under orders to escort you and Petty Officer Murphy back to the ship.”
“Under whose orders?” Darrow asked.
“Lieutenant Krause.”
My master chief nodded. “Of course. Does the captain know about this?”
Shaking his head, the master-at-arms told him, “I have no idea.”
“Can you do me a favor and make sure that he does? Let him know what time we’re going to arrive on the quarterdeck?”
“Sure. I can do that,” Carlton answered.
“Now?” Darrow sounded a little irritated.
Flustered, Carlton grabbed his radio. He then stepped out of the apartment to make Darrow's call, leaving his Shore Patrol escorts to get us to the Jeep.
When we arrived at the quarterdeck, there was no captain there to greet us. Nor was there any division officer. Instead, there was only a set of instructions to go to the EMO office and call Lieutenant Krause when we got there. While we changed into our uniforms, Darrow left a message with the captain’s office to let him know where we would be.
“What did you not understand about zero tolerance for liberty incidents, Darrow?” Krause roared when he finally barged into the EMO office.
“Are you implying that I was involved in one?” my master chief asked.
“Are you telling me that you were not involved in a shooting out in town, Master Chief?”
“Is this a game where we can only speak in questions?” I asked. I was still a little drunk. Both Krause and Darrow shot me a look to let me know that I would be better served by keeping my mouth shut.
“There was a shooting on Magsaysay and I’ve got reports by my people who saw both you and Murphy at the bar where it happened!”
“Really?” Darrow laughed. “You have people? Who the fuck are your people?”
“None of your business!” Krause snapped.
“Like hell, it isn’t!” Darrow shouted back. “Who the hell told you that I was at a bar where a shooting happened? Huh? Who was it?”
Before Krause could answer, the captain walked through the door of the EMO. “Attention on deck!” I yelled, snapping to attention.
Fleming put us at ease as he stepped into the space. “What’s going on in here? I can hear the yelling all the way down the passageway!”
“Sir,” Krause started. “There was a shooting at the Dirty Crow this morning. I have reports that Murphy and Darrow were involved.”
The captain turned to the master chief with a look of complete shock on his face. “You shot someone?” he gasped. I found it amusing that the conclusion the skipper leapt to was that Darrow would have been the man behind the trigger. I thought it reve
aled just how dangerous the captain thought our master chief was.
Darrow scoffed. “Of course not. From what I understand, and I could be wrong, there was an attempted robbery of the bar we were at. The suspect was shot by an off-duty police officer.”
“You were at the bar where there was a shooting, and you don’t know what happened?” Fleming did not sound like he was buying that.
“Well, sir, that’s why I would hesitate to say that we were ‘involved’ in a shooting. We didn’t even see what happened. We only saw the aftermath.”
“That’s a lie!” Krause shouted, forgetting himself. “You’re going on liberty risk! Both of you are confined to the ship for the rest of the time we’re in the Philippines! No liberty! The two of you are walking time bombs! You sow chaos and destruction everywhere you go! You’re criminals! Deviants! Disgraces to the uniform! And if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to see that both of you hang from…!”
“Master Chief,” the captain quietly interrupted. “Would you take Murphy outside for a moment while I speak with the lieutenant in private?”
“Aye aye, sir,” Darrow responded as he led me out of the room.
Once we were outside of the EMO office and out of earshot, I turned to Darrow and saw that he was ready to explode. “What’s up?”
“You don’t see it?” my master chief snapped. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart guy.”
I shrugged. “See what?”
Darrow shook his head. “I’m not getting into it here in the passageway.”
The man was fuming. Surprisingly, I was not. The severity of what had happened had not sunk in yet, but I suspected an episode of epic proportions was on my horizon. I sighed at the prospect of having one more thing to add to my retinue of psychological horrors. They were piling up. “You know, Master Chief, I’m beginning to think the lieutenant’s right.”
“About what?” he spat.
“Sowing chaos and destruction everywhere I go.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
I shrugged. “I was talking to Bard the other day. You know that he’s never seen a dead body? He’s still got two parents, four grandparents, and all his aunts and uncles. I buried four of my people when I was thirteen and got a girl killed in El Salvador six years later. Master Chief, I’ve watched three people get killed in just the last four months. This isn’t normal.”
Darrow looked at me. “The guy at the bar was alive when we left.”
“Well,” I countered. “I’ll bet you my next paycheck that the son-of-a-bitch ain’t sucking air now.”
It took ten minutes for Captain Fleming to say his piece to our division officer. He never raised his voice enough for me to hear what they discussed, though. Judging by the way Krause stormed out of his office, it must have been scathing. We waited for him to get out of sight before Darrow and I walked back into the EMO.
“What happened, Darrow?” Fleming asked as he sat on the master chief’s desk. He knew that what my master chief had said before was only for the lieutenant’s benefit. The captain now expected to hear the real story.
“What happened, sir, was fucking amateur hour.”
“I don’t have time for this, Master Chief. Spell it out for me. What’s going on here?”
“We’re getting to him,” Darrow said. “That son-of-a-bitch knows we’re on to him, and he made a move to take me out. That’s what happened.”
“Are you serious?” the captain asked.
“Sir, I was on the AFPD for eight years. I have a head for this kind of thing. He knows that we’ve been looking for him in Pagsanjan. He doesn’t know what I’ve found out so far, so he hired some degenerate to take me out to cover his ass.”
“That's a pretty wild hunch,” Fleming said.
Darrow shook his head. “No, think about it. He calls me in here to tell me he received some report ‘by his people’ that we were involved in a shooting out in town? What ‘people’ does he have reporting to him out there? He ain’t got no fucking people! Krause knew someone was coming after me and whoever he arranged it with told him they fucked up! That’s how he knew what happened and that we were there! We got to the Crow early, and the place was still dead when this shit went down. There wasn’t anybody that saw us there.”
“Then how did this guy that came after you know where to find you?”
Darrow shrugged. “Sir, everyone on Magsaysay knows who I am. The people who can hire a tweaker to do this know how to put the word out for someone to call them if they see me pop up. It’s not hard. It’s not expensive either.”
The captain shook his head. He was having a hard time digesting what Darrow was telling him. So was I. “How do you think he found out you were on to him about Pagsanjan?”
“We had a run-in with someone from those missionaries Krause worked with. Hope’s Children Ministry. Maybe he got word out to the lieutenant that we were out there. The guys we have out in Pagsanjan looking for pervs have proven to be less than trustworthy also. They might have sold us out. The barangay captain out there in the slum is no fan of mine. I’ve got some dirt on him from way back in World War II. He might be inclined to help Krause to make sure it doesn’t get out. That prick also knew me and Tejada were headed that way today. He could have sent word to Krause to be on the lookout for us.”
Fleming stared at Master Chief Darrow for a long while before speaking. “Do you have any evidence at all to back this up?”
“No, sir. I’m pretty sure my evidence died at the Dirty Crow. I know I’m right, though, skipper! Look, there’s plenty of people out there all over the island of Luzon that would like to see me dead, sir. The difference between them and whoever did this was that those other guys know how to get a man iced. They would have hired a proper villain, not a junkie. Whoever arranged this had no idea what the fuck they were doing! It was hasty, unplanned, and reeks of someone taking advantage of an opportunity. It was like they just found out I was there and had to scrounge up somebody quick willing to take the shot. The fucker who stepped up probably had no idea who I was. He was just handed a knife, told to go to the Crow and stick it in the back of the old man with the flat top.”
Captain Fleming turned around and sat in my master chief’s seat. “You’re sure of this?”
“I’m as close to positive as I can be without whoever hired the tweaker. My man Tejada will get to the bottom of that, though. I’ll get him, sir.”
“No, Master Chief. You won’t,” the captain said.
Darrow looked like he'd been smacked. “What?”
“This is out of control. You’re backing off the lieutenant, and I’m calling in the Naval Investigative Service to figure this out. No more hunches. I’m making this official.”
“Sir, I can handle…”
“I’m sure you can, Master Chief,” the captain said, cutting him off. “If you were acting in your old capacity on the AFPD, there is no one else I’d rather have on the case than you. You’re not a cop anymore, though. If that man tried to have you killed, I aim to make sure that he does hard time for it.”
Focusing his gaze directly upon me, the captain added, “I also aim to make sure you two don’t end up under investigation yourselves. Especially if Krause's battered body ends up washing ashore somewhere near Cubi Point. The two of you are finished with this stuff. That’s an order. You’re going to give the man some space and let him do whatever it is the NCIS can catch him for.”
“Like try to kill us?” I asked.
“That ain’t happening again,” the master chief growled. “TJ’s going to go ballistic on those fuckers in Pagsanjan. In fact, if Krause shows his face out there again to arrange another attempt, I’d put even money on those guys slitting his throat to cover their asses.”
The captain stood up. “That would certainly tidy things up nicely, wouldn’t it? I hope for your sake that’s not how this ends. If anything happens to that man outside of official channels, I’m sicking the NIS on you two, also. Got i
t?”
“Yes, sir,” Darrow and I answered simultaneously.
After the captain took his leave, I plopped down into the lieutenant’s chair while Darrow took a seat in his. “So, what are we going to do now?” I asked.
“You up for a road trip?”
I shrugged. “To Pagsanjan?”
“No, Doyle,” the master chief said, shaking his head. “Didn’t you hear the captain? We’ve got to stay away from there. That’s fine with me, too. Fuckin’ place makes my skin crawl.”
“Then where?” I asked.
“Lorna wants to take me back to her village to see her folks again,” Darrow told me. “It’s been years. She’s from a tiny place near Porac, close to Mount Pinatubo. Bring Tala and Mari. We’ll ask Bard and Dixie if they want to come, too. We’ll make it a day trip.”
“What about Krause?” I did not understand how a road trip to Porac would solve our problem with the lieutenant.
“What about him?”
“Are we going to just let him get away with that shit?”
Darrow smiled at me. “Krause ain’t getting away with nothing. The captain’s getting the NIS involved now.”
“And you’re okay with that? What if they don’t find anything?”
My master chief laughed. “What if they don’t find anything? Doyle, that man tried to kill me. The gloves are fucking off. If the NIS comes snooping around the USS Belleau Wood looking for dirt on our lieutenant, I’m going to make sure that they fucking find it.”
*****
CHAPTER 22
I was sitting at the picnic table in our courtyard, discussing the attack with Tejada and Darrow. That was when I began to realize how close the master chief had come to being killed at the Dirty Crow. I felt that old anxiety start to take hold and noticed how hard it was for me to concentrate. I had an episode coming. When my sweat pores opened up, I made my excuses to turn in for the night and escorted my guests to our broken gate.
TJ did not believe that Krause was behind the attack. After they identified Rickie Ibay, they found that he had no ties to Pagsanjan that they knew of. Darrow would not waver, however, and countered that the lieutenant must have hired the killer himself. The men were still arguing about it as I hustled the two of them onto the sidewalk. When I left, I had every intention of locking myself in my room to ride out my breakdown, but Tala was waiting for me as soon as I reached the top of the stairs. “Are you okay, Doyle?”