W E B Griffin - Honor 2 - Blood and Honor

by Blood

  "She is?" Clete asked, surprised. He had said goodbye to Martha in Mid-land three days before. "The girls?"

  The girls were his cousins, Elizabeth (Beth), who was twenty-one and about to graduate from Rice, and Marjorie, who was nineteen and in her sopho-more year at that institution. Miss Martha became pregnant with Beth shortly after she took into her bride's home the two-year old-son of her husband's sis-ter, Eleanor Patricia Frade, deceased. She raised Clete as her own, and her daughters and her nephew always thought of themselves as brother and sisters.

  Jean-Jacques shook his head, "no." Clete was disappointed. Marjorie and Beth seemed to be less a royal pain in the ass recently than earlier on.

  "Miss Martha drove up from Houston," Jean-Jacques said. '"Got here just after you went to town. Must have gotten up in the middle of the night to start out."

  He pointed at a Kraft paper bag in Clete's hand. "You want me to put that in your room for you? They're in the library, and I know he and Miss Martha have been peeking out the curtains looking for you."

  "He" was Cletus Marcus Howell, master of the house, Chairman of the Board of Howell Petroleum, and Clete's grandfather.

  "No, thanks, I want another look at it."

  "Anything I can get for you?"

  "No, thanks," Clete replied, and then changed his mind. "Yeah, there is. I just had a god-awful Sazerac, and I'd like a good one."

  "My pleasure," Jean-Jacques said. "One Jean-Jacques Jouvier world-famous Sazerac coming right up."

  Clete crossed the wide foyer and entered the library.

  A tall, pale, slender, sharp-featured, silver-haired man glowered at him. He was wearing a superbly tailored dark blue, faintly pin-striped three-piece suit, with a golden watch chain looped across his stomach.

  "Well, look what the cat dragged in," the Old Man said. "Ran out of rotgut in the Vieux Carre, did they?"

  "Grandfather," Clete said, and walked to his aunt Martha, a tanned, stocky, short-haired blond woman, and kissed her cheek.

  "He had no way of knowing I was coming," she said, defending him.

  "What brings you here?" Clete asked.

  "What do you think? I wanted to see you before you left" Martha said.

  "I'm flattered," he said.

  "You know Mr. Needham, I believe, Cletus?" the Old Man said.

  "No, Sir, I don't believe I do."

  Mr. Needham was a bald, nearly obese middle-aged man who had removed his jacket and rolled up his white shirtsleeves so that he could more easily prac-tice his art.

  He was standing before an oil portrait of Cletus Howell Frade in a Marine Officer's dress-blue uniform. He turned to look at Clete, smiled, wiped his hand on a rag, and extended it to Clete.

  "I'm honored to meet you, Sir," he said. "A genuine privilege to meet one of our country's heroes."

  Clete looked uncomfortable.

  "How do you do?" he said, then: "I didn't know you could do that."

  "Do what?" his grandfather asked.

  "What's the word? 'Fix'? 'Change'? Go back and change one of those once it was done."

  "Of course you can. That's an oil portrait, not a photograph," the Old Man said.

  "I'm really glad you're here, Major," Mr. Needham said. "I want everything to be just right."

  He pointed to Clete's dress-blue tunic, laid out, complete to Sam Browne belt and officer's saber, against the back of a red leather couch.

  "I had Antoinette bring that down from your room," the Old Man said. "Mr. Needham had little difficulty changing your rank insignia to a major's. Your decorations-including that Navy Cross you somehow forget to tell me about-posed more of a problem."

  "It looks fine to me," Clete said after comparing the tunic with the nearly complete work on the portrait. "I'm really impressed with someone like you, Mr. Needham. I can't draw a straight line."

  "How is it, Cletus," the Old Man pursued, "that I had to learn of your Navy Cross from Senator Brewer?"

  "What's the name of that play? Much Ado About Nothing?"

  "They don't hand out the Navy Cross for nothing," the Old Man said. "You can tell us about it now."

  Jean-Jacques appeared with four Sazeracs in long-stemmed glasses on a silver tray.

  "Saved by the Sazeracs," Clete said, taking one. "Thank you, Jean-Jacques."

  "I don't recall asking for a Sazerac," the Old Man said.

  "Not to worry, Jean-Jacques," Martha said. "If he doesn't want his, Mr. Needham, Cletus, and I will split it."

  "I didn't say I didn't want it, I said I didn't remember asking for it," the Old Man said. "Thank you, Jean-Jacques."

  Needham took his glass and raised it to Clete.

  "To your very good health, Sir," he said.

  "Thank you," Clete said.

  "Hear, hear," the Old Man said.

  Clete sipped his Sazerac, then set it down and opened the brown paper bag, taking from it a pair of binoculars.

  "What have you got there?" the old man asked.

  "A pair of Bausch and Lomb 8-by-57-mm binoculars," Clete replied. "I just bought them. I'm sure they're stolen."

  "What in the world are you talking about?"

  "You asked what I have here, and I'm telling you."

  "If they're stolen, where did you get them?" Martha asked.

  "In a pawnshop on Canal Street."

  He saw that the stolen binoculars now had the Old Man's attention. With a little bit of luck, that would end the questioning about the Navy Cross.

  "Why do you think they're stolen?" Martha pursued.

  The moment Clete saw the binoculars in the pawnshop he knew they were stolen. For one thing, there was a burnished area (freshly painted over) by the adjustment screw where the Navy customarily engraved USN and the serial number. For another, the price was right, and finally the pawnshop proprietor was exceedingly reluctant to provide a bill of sale. He reduced the price even further on the condition that Clete take possession without paperwork.

  Instead of a sense of outrage at the theft, Clete felt a certain admiration for the thief. It had been his experience as an officer of the Naval Service that the three most difficult things to steal from the Navy were pistols, binoculars, and aviator chronographs.

  When he was in Washington, where he had spent most of the last six weeks, he would not have been at all surprised if some dedicated, and outraged, Marine Corps supply officer had shown up at Eighth and Eye (Headquarters, USMC, is at Eighth and I Streets in Washington, D.C.)-or for that matter, had burst into OSS Headquarters in the National Institutes of Health Building-and demanded either the return of his Corps-issued Hamilton chronograph or pay-ment therefore, since he was no longer in a flying billet.

  The first time he was shot down, he parachuted into the waters off Tulagi and was rescued by a PT boat. As they roared back to the "Canal," her skipper suggested to him that if he put the Hamilton into his pocket, it might be con-sidered "Lost In Combat."

  Since a small gift of a government-issued chronograph to a fellow officer of the Naval Service whose vessel had plucked him from shark-infested waters seemed appropriate, Lieutenant Frade took that Hamilton off his wrist and gave it to him, together with his saltwater-soaked.45 Colt automatic and its holster.

  He was, of course, issued another Hamilton chronograph and another.45, but only after a dedicated supply officer (literally during a Japanese strafing raid on Henderson Field) offered him the choice of either paying for both, or sign-ing a two-page document swearing, under pain of perjury-the awesome pun-ishments for which were spelled out in some detail on the form-that they had really and truly, Boy Scout's Honor, cross my heart and hope to die, been lost in combat.

  He had paid. The Hamilton on his wrist now was still on some supply offi-cer's books somewhere.

  "Look here," Clete said. "You can see where someone ground off 'USN' and the serial number."

  Martha looked, and then the Old Man looked.

  "If you believed them to be stolen, why did you buy them?" the Old Man asked, incredu
lously.

  "I wanted them," Clete explained reasonably. "You can't just walk into the optical department of Maison Blanche and buy them anymore. The Navy takes all that Bausch and Lomb can make."

  "The morality of the question never entered your mind?" Martha asked, with a tolerant smile.

  "Oh, but it did. Since they had already been stolen, I decided the higher morality was to make sure they were put to use by a bona fide commissioned of-ficer of the Naval Service, such as myself, rather than, for example, by some tout watching the ponies run at the racetrack."

  "You have a screw loose, you know that? Your deck of cards is at least four or five short of the necessary fifty-two. A genetic flaw from your father's side," the Old Man said, and then had what he thought was a sudden insight. "You're pulling our leg, right? Taking advantage of an old man and woman who trust you?"

  "Pulling your leg about what?"

  The Old Man looked at him suspiciously, then changed the subject.

  "Tell me about the Navy Cross," he demanded. "The Senator said the cita-tion was very vague."

  "You really want to know?"

  "No. Not really. Why should I care how my only grandson earned the na-tion's second-highest award for gallantry?"

  "I'd like to know too," Martha said.

  "Well, there I was, cruising along at ten thousand feet, with nothing be-tween me and the earth but a thin blonde..."

  "Oh, God!" Martha said.

  "Spare us your vulgar sense of humor, if you please," the Old Man said sternly, but unable to keep a smile from his lips. "You will have to excuse my grandson, Mr. Needham. He frequently forgets we tried to raise him to be a gen-tleman."

  "I'd venture to say, Mr. Howell, that the Major is simply being modest," Mr. Needham said.

  "I suppose that's possible," the Old Man said, visibly pleased. "Unlikely, but possible." He changed the subject: "Well, at least we've had the chance to make sure the portrait is technically accurate, haven't we? There was a problem of time. My grandson returns to duty tomorrow."

  "Oh, is that so?" Needham replied. "Where are you going, Major? Or isn't a civilian supposed to ask? 'Loose Lips Sink Ships'?"

  "Actually, I'm going to Buenos Aires," Clete said. "And, so far as I know, that's not a military secret."

  "Buenos Aires?" Needham asked.

  "It's in Argentina," the Old Man offered helpfully.

  "About as far from the war as you can get," Clete said.

  "Thank God for that," Martha said.

  "Cletus has been appointed Assistant Naval Attach‚ at our embassy there," the Old Man said.

  "That sounds very interesting," Needham said. "I don't know anything about Argentina, except, you know, what is it they call their cowboys?"

  "Gauchos," Clete said.

  "And lovely dark-eyed Se¤oritas..."

  "And some lovely blue-eyed Se¤oritas," Clete said, thinking of one of the latter in particular.

  "Oh, really?" Martha said, picking up on that. "Has your blue-eyed Se¤orita got a name?"

  "You sound like you've been there before," Needham said, sparing Clete from having to respond to Martha.

  "Yes, I have."

  "Unfortunately, he was born there," the Old Man said.

  "Really?"

  Clete gave the Old Man a warning look. The Old Man met his eyes defi-antly, but after a moment, backed off.

  "I hope you haven't made plans for dinner, Cletus," the Old Man said. "For reasons I can't imagine, Martha just told me she wants to go to Arnaud's."

  "No, Sir," Clete said. "I was planning to have dinner here, with you."

  "Another indication that you're not playing with a full deck," the Old Man said. "Why in the world would you prefer to have dinner with me, as opposed to having dinner with a young woman very likely to be dazzled by your uniform and medals?"

  "Because you are my grandfather, and despite some monumental flaws of your own, I would rather spend time with you than anyone else I can think of except Martha."

  The Old Man looked at him. Tears formed in his eyes. He turned and went to the wall and pulled the call bell.

  Jean-Jacques Jouvier appeared almost immediately.

  "Call Arnaud's," the Old Man ordered, his voice sounding strange. "Tell them I require a private dining room for three at eight. Tell them-understand-ing this dinner is important to me-they may prepare whatever they wish. Arrange for the car at 7:45. And when you've done that, bring us another round of Sazeracs."

  Jean-Jacques nodded and left the room.

  The Old Man looked at Clete, then pointed at the uniform tunic on the red leather couch.

  "Since it's already off its hanger, would it be inconvenient for you to wear

  that?"

  "Not at all," Clete said. "Is Arnaud's offering a discount for servicemen?"

  "I don't know," the Old Man said. "But now that you've mentioned it, I'll be sure to ask."

  [THREE]

  Arnaud's Restaurant

  The Vieux Carre

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  2030 5 April 1943

  When the 1938 Durham-bodied Cadillac pulled up to the over-the-sidewalk canopy of the French Quarter Landmark-it was said that the Marquis de Lafayette wanted to dine at Arnaud's but couldn't get a table-one of the pro-prietors, who was functioning as the maitre d'hotel, and a waiter came out the door.

  "I was hoping you'd change your mind, again, Mr. Howell," the proprietor said as the Old Man. grunting, stepped out of the car.

  "I'd heard business was bad, but I wasn't aware it was so bad you had to stand on the street shanghaiing customers," the Old Man said.

  Clete laughed.

  "Stop that," Martha said. "The last thing you want to do is encourage him."

  "You remember my daughter-in-law, of course, Edward?" the Old Man asked.

  "Of course. Nice to see you again, too, Mrs. Howell."

  "And my grandson?"

  "Of course. Miz Howell, Mr. Frade."

  "That's Major Frade, Edward. What did you think he's wearing? A door-man's uniform?"

  "It's good to see you, too," Clete said, shaking hands.

  "For reasons I cannot fathom, Mrs. Howell wished to have dinner here tonight, and my grandson went along with her. Personally, if this were to be my last meal in New Orleans for a while, I could think of half a dozen other places besides your greasy spoon," the Old Man said.

  "Well, we'll try to see that Major Frade doesn't go away hungry."

  "That'll be a pleasant change," the Old Man said, and, following the waiter, walked into the restaurant. The proprietor, Martha, and Clete smiled at each other, shaking their heads. The proprietor bowed Martha into the restaurant ahead of him.

  "Would you like anything special?" the proprietor asked Clete. "All I heard was that the dinner was important to him. I didn't know who."

  "How are the oysters?" Clete asked.

  "Compared to what?" the proprietor asked.

  "Hey, this is me. not my grandfather." Clete chuckled.

  "How would you like them?"

  "On the half-shell."

  "These are nice, you'll like them," the proprietor said. "I was going to sug-gest on the half-shell."

  The little procession moved past the long line of people waiting for tables and on to the rear of the lower dining room. The Old Man, who had been taking half a dozen meals a week in Arnaud's since he was twelve, was one of the rare exceptions to the rule that Arnaud's did not accept reservations. A small room with a curtained door was waiting for them, the table set up elaborately, includ-ing a candelabra. Three wine coolers held napkin-wrapped bottles.

  The proprietor took a bottle of champagne from one of them, skillfully popped the cork, and poured.

  "I don't recall ordering champagne," the Old Man said.

  "It's for Mrs. Howell and Major Frade," the proprietor said. "They, at least, appreciate a nice glass of wine."

  "Major Frade also expects a serviceman's discount."

  "Tonight the servicema
n's discount, one hundred percent, applies to him and any of his lady guests. All others, of course, either pay or wash dishes."

  "If I have to pay, I will have a glass of water and some rolls and butter."