W E B Griffin - Corp 05 - Line of Fire

by Line Of Fire(Lit)

  "What the hell was that all about?" Jerry the bartender asked.

  "Nothing," Hart said. "Forget it."

  "You want another one of these?" Jerry asked, holding up the Haig & Haig.

  "Yeah, Jerry, please." I don't feel good about Wertz. Why not?

  "Why do I have this feeling that you liked it as well as I did?" Elizabeth "Beth" Lathrop asked, in his bedroom in the suite in the Andrew Foster. When she spoke, neither Beth Lathrop nor George Hart was wearing clothes. And they were both sprawled in more or less close proximity across his bed.

  "Cut the bullshit, " he said, and swung his legs out of bed and went to the bottle of scotch on the dresser.

  When Elizabeth "Beth " Lathrop came into the suite, she was wearing a blue cotton dress he would remember the rest of his life.

  As he would remember the rest of her, the long blond hair parted in the middle and held in place with a bow in back. And the smell of her perfume. And her blue eyes (matching her dress) and her long delicate fingers.

  And now her perfect, pink-tipped breasts and the delicate tuft of blond hair at her crotch and the incredible warm softness within.

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning you did what you were paid to do. Leave it at that, for Christ's sake. Skip the bullshit.

  He watched her face in the mirror over the dresser. It tightened, and then she shrugged.

  Don't tell me I hurt your feelings, honey. You didn't really expect me to believe that "it was good for me, too" bullshit, did you?

  He poured scotch into a glass and glanced over at the bed. She pulled the sheet over her. He lifted the glass toward her and caught her eye.

  " Yes, thank you, I will, " she said.

  He walked to the bed.

  "How did a nice girl like you get into this?" he asked. What a damn fool silly question for a vice cop to ask, he thought as he asked it.

  "You know the rules, " she said. "That's one of the questions you're not supposed to ask. " She pushed herself up against the headboard, pulled the sheet over her chest, and then reached for the glass.

  "Thank you, " she said, politely.

  "Professional curiosity, " he said over his shoulder as he went to make himself a drink. "What was it? Your husband threw you out? There's a kid somewhere, and this is the only way you can feed it? I think you're too smart to get under a pimp. "

  "No husband. No kid. No pimp. What did you mean, `professional curiosity'?"

  "I've heard a lot of stories.

  "I'll bet you have. I bet you ask all the girls, right?"

  "I'm a cop. Or was. A vice squad detective.

  "Oddly enough, I believe that, " she said. "You said `was'?"

  "Now I'm in The Marine Corps. "

  "I wondered about that, " she said. "Pick said you were an old pal from Saint Louis. "

  "I'm from Saint Louis. "

  "But you're not old pals?" He shook his head, no.

  "I work for his father.

  "Oh, that's right, his father is a captain in the Navy.

  "A general in The Marine Corps," he corrected her, laughing.

  "In Washington. "

  "Close, " she said, and smiled.

  He shook his head.

  "So that wasn't a threat to make trouble for me? she asked

  "No. Of course not. "

  "I've never had any trouble... been arrested."

  "That's simply a question of time. Maybe it would be good for you. Twenty-four hours in the slam with a dozen girls off the street might make you understand what the hell you're doing to yourself "

  "What have we got here, a Marine who used to be a vice detective? With morals?"

  "You're so goddamned beautiful! You don't have to fuck every man who comes along!"

  "Thank you, " she said, "but I don't fuck every man who comes along. The only reason I fucked you was that I couldn't find a third girl for the job. "

  "You're running a string?" he asked, genuinely surprised. The madams of his acquaintance, and he knew half a dozen, were not at all like this girl Most were fat and middle-aged, and all were hard as nails, with cold eyes.

  "I'm a photographer, " she said.

  "That's a new one.

  "You asked"

  "Go on. "

  "An advertising photographer, nothing special, mostly for catalogs and brochures. The way you get commissions is to be nice to art directors. Then they started asking me if I had friends who might like to earn a little pocket money. Somebody once said that the way to get rich is to identify a need and then fill it. So I provide a service. I have associates. Do we have to keep this UP - ?"

  "Pickering's paying for this?"

  "Do you have any idea how much housekeeping supplies this hotel uses?

  Not to mention how many Foster hotels there are?

  Keeping the heir apparent happy is just good business. They take it off their income tax as `client relations.

  "But he knows?" he asked, but it was more of a statement.

  "Of course he knows. Pick's a very good-looking fellow, but he's not that good-looking. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but there's no such thing as a free lunch.

  He shook his head.

  "Did you ever hear that you shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth?"

  Beth asked.

  "You're so goddamned beautiful! You shouldn't be doing this! You don't have to do this!"

  "There's another rule, " Beth said. "Clients are not supposed to worry about the girls. "

  "Fuck you!"

  "That's all you're supposed to do, " Beth said. "Let's leave it at that. And this time I won't tell you how much I liked it. " He met her eyes, and then looked quickly away. Beth made him very uncomfortable.

  "Have you got a girl back in Saint Louis? Is that it? You're consumed with guilt?"

  "No girl back in Saint Louis. No girl anywhere.

  "I'm surprised, " she said.

  "Why should you be surprised?"

  "Because you strike me as a nice guy, " Beth said.

  "You know what's really strange?" George said. "I really did like doing it with you. I never liked it so much before.

  "I'm pleased.

  "So laugh. "

  "Sorry. "

  "Goddamn you!"

  "I really am pleased, " she said. "I probably shouldn't tell you this, but every once in a while... it's not just business.

  "Am I supposed to believe that?"

  "Believe whatever you goddamn please!" Their eyes met.

  After a moment she said, "Why not? It's already paid for.

  "Just for the hell of it, how much?"

  "For the three of us, three hundred dollars.

  "You could hire every whore in Saint Louis for three hundred dollars. "

  "Come on, " Beth said, making a gesture at his midsection.

  "Obviously, you want to.

  He'd never wanted to sink himself in any woman half as desperately as he wanted to be in this one again.

  It's all the fucking booze, he thought, as he walked to the bed and pulled the sheet off her. The booze, and that insane goddamn airplane ride under the bridge. All of it. I'm a little crazy, that's all. I'm too smart to fall for a whore, even one as beautiful, and nice, as this one.

  "What the hell is that you're drinking?" Captain Karl Hart asked his son.

  "Scotch. They make it in Scotland."

  "Jerry, give me some real whiskey, and give him another of those. When did you start drinking scotch?"

  "I don't know. How's the suicide?"

  "Accident victim, accident victim," Captain Hart said. "I just checked. The undertaker got the lipstick and rouge off him, and the women's underwear, and I talked to the cop on the scene, and there's no further problem." Hart had one final thought about Beth Lathrop: There's one thing you have to say about her, she's not the kind of girl you could bring home to meet the folks.

  [Five]

  FERDINAND SIX

  BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  15 SEPTEMBER 1942


  They decided to move out. They were out of choices.

  For one thing they had to eat.

  They'd started with more smoked pig than the ten pounds or so Sergeant Steve Koffler found on the morning he thought everybody had taken off and left him: At Ian's orders, Patience had taken twice that much more and hidden it in the rocks by the stream, in a small cave that could be sealed with rocks and protected from wildlife and insects.

  And then Ian stalked another wild pig and impaled it on his MACHETE, SUBSTITUTE STANDARD, and for two days the three of them feasted on roast pig. Ian didn't want to risk smoking it, because of the smoke, and Steve figured there was no point in arguing with him. So they roasted it over the last of their dry wood, which was smokeless. The pig was pretty good, even without salt.

  But now just about everything was gone. And the men had of returned from looking for Lieutenant Reeves and Lieutenant Howard. In fact, they hadn't even sent a messenger back-suggesting the unpleasant possibility that they had run into the Japs and would not be returning.

  So they took their small arms and ammunition (the British Lee-Enfield rifles and their.303 ammunition) into the jungle, and buried them. The rifles in one place, their bolts in another, and the ammunition in still another.

  Steve thought that was mostly bullshit. The Japanese were not going to wander around in the jungle looking for rifles an ammo. Nor was he, Ian, or anyone else going to come back and dig them up. They could just as easily have left them in the hut with the radio for the Japs to find.

  As he was spreading a layer of dirt on his rifle, he wondered what he should do about reporting in. Should he get on the air and tell Townsville or Pearl Harbor that FRD6 was leaving the net for an indefinite period?

  He decided against that. It just might happen that he could come back; but if he had signed off the net, those by-the-book assholes would give him all sorts of static about coming back on.

  Though he recognized it as whistling in the dark, the hope that he might get back on the air later almost made him feel comfortable about leaving the Hallicrafters intact. The rotten thing about that was the Japs would probably find it. If he was absolutely certain that the Japs would actually get it, he would have smashed the sonofabitch. But he wasn't certain of that. So in the end he compromised. He took all but one of the crystals that controlled the frequencies, wrapped them in the last remnant of his skivvy shirt, and put them in the pocket of his utility jacket.

  He made one last report, this time to Townsville, for the atmospherics were such that he couldn't reach Pearl Harbor.

  And then he signaled Patience to stop pedaling the generator.

  Feeling a strange mixture of sadness and blind rage, he left the hut for what he thought would be the last time.

  When he got outside, Edward James and Lieutenant Reeves were in the clearing.

  Reeves looked like a walking corpse, and the clothes he had on him were rags.

  "What about Lieutenant Howard?" Steve blurted.

  "I'm delighted to see you too, old chap," Reeves said. "I appreciate the warmth of your reception."

  "We thought you were all dead," Steve blurted.

  "We sodding well should be," Reeves said. "Mother did not raise me to be a sodding pack mule."

  "What?"

  "We struck gold," Reeves reported. "A sodding Nip truck all alone on a ration run."

  "No shit?"

  "Which we have carried up and down every sodding hill on this sodding island."

  "Anybody get hurt?"

  "Your lieutenant sprained his ankle. The chaps are carrying him in."

  "That's all?" Reeves nodded.

  Sergeant Steve Koffler felt like crying.

  [Six]

  THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  1630 HOURS 19 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Just after he knocked on the door to Senator Richmond Fowler's suite, Sergeant George Hart noticed a doorbell button nearly hidden in the framework of the door. He had just put his finger out to it when the door opened.

  A tall, trim, silver-haired woman in a cotton skirt and fluffy blouse smiled at him.

  She really must have been a looker when she was young.

  "Sergeant Hart, right?" she asked. "Colonel Rickabee said you were coming over."

  "Yes, Ma'am." She gave him her hand. A wedding ring was her only jewelry, but pinned to her blouse was a cheap metal pin, two blue stars on a white shield background. It signified that she had two members of her immediate family serving in the Armed Forces.

  George's mother had been wearing one, with one star, when he'd gone to the house from the airport.

  "I'm Patricia Pickering," she said, "but I suppose that a detective like you will have already deduced that, right?"

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "I'd like to apologize for what my idiot son did to you, Sergeant," she said. "To put that behind us."

  "Lieutenant Pickering was very nice to me, Ma'am."

  "Was that before or after he flew you under the Golden Gate Bridge?" she responded, gently sarcastic. "That was inexcusable! Stupid enough on his part, and inexcusable to take you with him." He had been following her into the sitting room.

  "Dick, this is Sergeant Hart," she said. "Sergeant, this is Senator Fowler." Jesus Christ, a United States Senator is actually getting out of his chair to shake my hand!

  "How do you do, Sergeant?" Fowler said. "I've been hearing a good deal about you lately, all of it good. I'm quite an admirer of your commanding officer."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Correction," Senator Fowler said, "I'm quite an admirer of Colonel Rickabee. I'm very fond of your commanding officer, but as Mrs. Pickering and I were just saying, he does need a keeper; and according to Rickabee, you're just the man for the job."

  "You're putting the sergeant on a spot, Dick," Patricia Pickering said.

  "I certainly didn't mean to," Fowler said. "I meant to make the sergeant welcome."

  "Thank you, Sir."

  "Where are your things, Sergeant?" Patricia Pickering asked.

  "Ma'am?"

  "Your uniforms. Your clothing."

  "Oh. Captain Sessions arranged for me to share an apartment. It's a couple of blocks away. I went there first."

  "We were just talking about that, too," Fowler said. "We think it would be better for you and Lieutenant Moore to be in here with the General. Would that pose a problem for you?"

  "Sir, I go where I'm told to go. But I don't know what Colonel Rickabee would say. Or General Pickering. Or, for that matter, Lieutenant Moore."

  "I don't think Colonel Rickabee will have any objection," Fowler said. "I'll have a word with him. And that should take care of any objections Lieutenant Moore might have. You know him, I gather?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "And General Pickering's vote doesn't count," Patricia Pickering said firmly. "There's a small suite next door," she went on, gesturing toward the wall behind Hart. "I've asked them to put a door in. It should be there by the time Lieutenant Moore gets out of the hospital. With a little luck, that will be before my husband does."

  "For the time being you can stay in the spare bedroom," Fowler said. "Is that all right with you?"

  "Sir, I do what I'm told." Well, I guess if your father owns the hotel, and you want a door put in, they put a door in.

  "There's one more thing, Sergeant," Patricia Pickering said.

  "One of our stewards, a fine old fellow named Matthew Howe, is retired here in Washington-" What the hell is she talking about?

  ,-and he is willing-actually, he seemed delighted when I asked him-to look after my husband. He'll be coming in every day to take care of him."

  "What Mrs. Pickering is saying, Sergeant," Senator Fowler explained, "is that Howe will take care of General Pickering's linen and pass the canap‚s, leaving you and Lieutenant Moore free to take care of him in other ways."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Our first priority, your first priority, is to see that General Pickering does n
othing that might hinder his recovery," Senator Fowler said. "Obviously, Mrs. Pickering and I have a personal interest in that. But I would also strongly suggest to you, Sergeant, that he's not going to be much use to The Marine Corps, for that matter to the country, if he winds up back in the hospital. Do I make my point?"