The Guardhouse Murders

by Don DeNevi

  After a short pause, the pilot continued,

  “However, men, there is a slight glitch I must tell you about. We may crash into the Bay. I’ve just been radioed by the Presidio controller that zero-zero conditions, heavy layers of fog blanket the water strip our runway we’ve been designated to splash down on near the eastern Oakland section of the Bay Bridge. The thin thread of water is smooth enough, but lack of lighting in foggy and night conditions and other safety measures, including warnings to stray, unaware fishing boats, almost guarantees, with the lack of visibility, a collision. Circling before descent, hoping the fog will burn off won’t help. We have no fuel to fly into the San Joaquin valley, because all of Northern California is fogged-in. The two of us here in the cabin may be accomplished pilots with years of both commercial and military flying experiences, but that won’t help now.”

  “No boys, we’re in trouble. So, with the Treasure Island air staff nervous, the Presidio controller nervous, and the two of us controlling ‘Big Breasted Virgin’ nervous, I suggest you immediately belt yourselves to your benches, and hope the Treasure Island controller knows what he’s doing in talking us down until I can see the water. I believe we’ll be okay because both of us in here flew in China over the Hump, then with Claire Chennault and his Flying Tigers. We follow to a ‘T’ all military airline safety procedures. And most important, a new radar system has been installed in the island’s little control tower, which when coupled with our fully-functioning two-way radio systems, reduce the possibility of an accident.”

  “So again, kids, buckle up, lay back, close your eyes, and see you when we exit after anchoring in our berth, or, for those who qualify, in Heaven.”

  With that, Peter, uncertain whether to smile or frown, leaned back and watched the weather front’s violent rain squalls drum the Catalina. Wobbling over the shoals of the Farallon Islands, some 30 miles from the entrance to the San Francisco Bay, the seaplane heeled directly for the flyover of the center portion of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “Nice to see you, Farallons. No wonder the old fishermen named you the Devil’s Teeth Islands. There’s no place to dock, the place being nothing but jagged razor-sharp rocks.”

  As he closed his eyes to doze during the final minutes of descent, he thought,

  “Well, if I’m to enter Heaven so young, I want to be asleep when it happens. And, if I’m to have a final thought as I walk up those steps, it’ll be of a moment years ago--Joan listening with all her precious mind as Mrs. Hofmeister asked Kazuo to translate from Latin into English the first page of Chapter Four of ‘Caesar’s Gallic Wars’. Joan’s turn would be next, translating the second page. He could see her so clearly as he drifted into a state of “forty winks”, wearing a spotless, freshly-ironed white blouse with a Peter Pan collar under a light brown, almost tan, cardigan sweater, the collar showing. Her sleeves were pulled up a bit, over a matching plaid pleated skirt. Especially accentuating her beautiful flowing black hair was a blood-red scarf tied under her collar. She may have only been 15 years old at the time, but Peter knew if he was to marry, it would have to be to Joan. And, it wasn’t just because of her beauty. Part of it had to do with her natural shyness, her gentle quietness, and her respectful attentiveness. But the most important was her high intelligence. She was the tenth-grade class president, which meant she was on her way to becoming Student Body President. She was President of the Latin Club; President of Honor E, the honorary “straight A club”; President of the GAA, the Girl’s Athletic Association; and social editor of the high school newspapers, the “Edison Hi-Lite.” She was academically and socially active simultaneously. She studied hard for her straight A’s because she wanted to go to college. All her activities, and quality of input, promised she would be a good mother. What more could a good woman be?”

  Meanwhile, as Peter napped during the final few minutes of the journey, the PBY-5A became strangely quiet. Even the reliable motors yielding their monotonous droning, steady and gently vibrating, seemed eerily hushed. The sounds were so hypnotic that Peter slept though the drama about to unfold.

  In the Catalina cockpit, the two pilots glanced and grinned at each other as they received clearance from the Treasure Island ground control approach tower to touch down despite the weather conditions blinding the Bay’s few visual cues.

  By radio, the airmen were now in continuous conversation with the controller. Calmly, and as cogently as he could explain, he said via the radio,

  “Gentlemen, I will guide you through the persistent fog. Circling to consume your remaining fuel is useless. Our navigation lights through the Bay are useless in zero-zero conditions. Making practical passovers over the water landing site are also of no value. We hear the spluttering of your engines suggesting the last drops of aviation fuel. Beware that if the aircraft begins to skid, you are less than 300 yards from the Oakland side of the San Francisco Bay Bridge pylons. We have no rescue crews.”

  With that, the controller, in an unperturbed, composed, confident tone, instructed the two pilots to begin nosing down to 150 feet after circling Angel Island and banking hard to the right.

  Flying blind, and as low as they dared, the pilots had no option other than trust the guidance of an unknown official. Meanwhile, the scratchy, radio-statically voice in the headphones aligned the PBY-5A on the landing water-strip correctly. In the final seconds of the splashdown, the two glanced out their plexiglass windows, noting that the nearby high intensity lights were brightly distinguishable.

  “My God,” whispered the copilot, “he’s a cool customer to talk our descent down so calmly. We’re not to be killed on impact this day!”

  “Yeah, we’ll make it. We’re not to be counted in the high death rate of our friends. But this approach is the worst of the worst of all that I’ve made.”

  As the plane’s two-winged landing pontoons simultaneously touched down on the water at the reduced speed of 90 miles per hour within the strip’s inner markers, a sudden dull-like sound followed with less than a 30 second silent glide in zero visibility toward the Oakland-side of the Bay Bridge. After it pulled up less than 25 yards of one of the large pylons supporting it, a long silence followed, on the outside of the plane, waves gently lapping it, on the inside the crew shaken, no one daring to admit he had been scared out of his wits.

  Within a moment, realizing the landing had been successful, the airmen ecstatically erupted into loud cheers and the stomping of their heavy aviation boots. Although still enveloped in fog, the Navy, Marine, and Army personnel on the docks of Treasure Island and guarding the bridge were heard to be yelling and yelping so loud the hoopla excitement could be heard in both San Francisco and the Oakland-Berkley port facilities.

  Of course, the commotion awakened Peter from napping with a start.

  “Are we down, or in Heaven?”

  Hearing the loud spoken question, the nearby navigator said with a wide smile,

  “It’s always better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground. No one wants to die drowning in a sinking plane. That was close, fellas, unthinkably, inconceivably close. Now, let’s waddle on over to Berth 4 and, if we’re lucky, dodging the seagulls, to moor safely.”

  “Did I miss any drama?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  -

  Manacled

  Although “Fly, Big Breasted Virgin, Fly” was securely anchored in her berth for mooring in the Treasure Island docking facility, all was strangely quiet. Even the late afternoon commute traffic on the eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge seemed hushed, other than the soft lapping of the water around the low cabin section of the Catalina Flying Boat.

  Poking his way through the covering of the aft compartment and climbing out of the aircraft’s open hatch, Peter, glancing around in the heavy fog, exclaimed,

  “Terrific hollering and hoopla, wasn’t it? Any left out there?”

  Although a cold bay breeze fanned his flushed fact, Peter was pleased
by its sting. This sudden vitality somehow softened his tense rigidity, the solitude of dense fog, the strange sensation from fearing pending death by violent impact.

  With the navigator directly behind him and the remainder of the crew following the navigator, Peter strode over the gangplank to the ramp leading toward the wharf. Scattered drops of heavy mist fell all around him. The air was colder than usual as the odor of the open ocean was stronger. The only people in sight before them were five or six warrant officers standing around two military automobiles awaiting their arrival. Just then, two Navy captains in the backseat of a jeep pulled up.

  “Wow,” muttered the pilot, “They’ve come for you, Lieutenant Toscanini. I know the jeep driver. He’s on the Admiral’s staff here. The two captains are skippers of destroyers from the Fourth Fleet. Their boats are anchored on the north side of the island.”

  Slowly, six arrivals, ambling at a leisurely pace on the sloping wooden surface of the ramp, began to whisper to one another.

  “They call Treasure Island ‘The Bus Stop’, where VIPs are dropped off and picked up.”

  “Easier than flying from the military airfields.”

  “Look at the berths to the left behind you. Only our PBY is moored.”

  “Others coming and going all the time.”

  “What a place to have a sea base!”

  “A short bus hop to Frisco’s south of Market Street and the bars and accompanying joy palaces.”

  “Yeah and jammed with every enlisted man of the several squadrons training here.”

  “You mean the enlisted men who serve as pilots without having the rank of commissioned officers.”

  “Yeah. They are all housed here.”

  “You mean the Flying Boat pilots.”

  “Yup. And everyone wanted shore-leave every night of the week. Lucky bastards. They have the best living conditions. Best mess halls.”

  “No Tent Cities here. Bet they have the best barracks, too.”

  “Just look at all those sailors in dungarees lined up over there behind the fence in the nonrestricted area.”

  “Yeah, most of them are ‘pollywogs’, so green, so gullible, you have to wonder what’s to become of our Navy.”

  At that point, Peter turned and asked,

  “What’s a ‘pollywog’?”

  “Oh, you know, Lieutenant,” someone responded. “All sailors in the Navy are first “Pollywogs until they cross the equator. Then, after a brutal initiation, the new recruit becomes a ‘shellback’!”

  “Well, never happened to me,” Peter responded.

  “Because you’re obviously the best of the USN’s intellectuals.”

  Nearing the awaiting officers, the flight crew, smiling approvingly, began waving at the servicemen starting to cheer again.

  Just then, one of the destroyer captains who had climbed out of the backseat of the jeep and walked to the front of the assemblage, demanded in a loud, angry voice,

  “What’s delaying you?”

  Stunned, Peter and the flight crew slowed their ambling gait ever further.

  “How rude, after a 20-hour flight,” the co-pilot whispered to the navigator.

  “Our carry-on bags are a bit weighty, sir,” responded the pilot.

  After a moment’s staring study of the men beginning the ascent to him at the top of the wharf, he retorted,

  “Get smart with me, airman, and you’ll find yourself overnight in the island’s brig. Get cracking.”

  No one spoke as the arrivals reached the officer who, in the meantime, was joined by two of the six or seven who had arrived earlier in the two military automobiles. Among them, two, in US Army dress had slipped “MP” armbands on their arms above their elbows. All who had arrived were carrying holstered .45s.

  “It was a long flight, sir. My fault we’re about 30 minutes late. I could blame headwinds, foggy conditions off the coast and in the bay, but I should have allowed time for that. I apologize, sir,” the pilot offered.

  Without a word, the captain turned to Peter who had placed his duffle bag and small valise on the ground next to his feet.

  “Lieutenant Toscanini, I presume?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Motioning to the two warrant officers wearing MP arm bands, who walked toward Peter, he announced in a cold, somber voice,

  You’re under arrest and will be immediately manacled and incarcerated in the base brig until delivered to the Fort Mason Presidio Stockade and held incommunicado. Colonel Edward F. Penaat, Port Provost Marshal, has issued the arrest warrant based upon an Intelligence Memorandum forewarned by the Federal of Investigation of Washington, D.C. to the Office of the Acting Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal. The writ authorizing your arrest was co-signed by Charles W. Dullea, Chief of the San Francisco Police Department; Colonel Murray H. Rapp, Chairman of the Waterfront Security Committee; and, numerous other responsible for the safety and security of the San Francisco harbor, shipping and waterfront activities, military installations, western defense operational areas, the Port of Embarkation and its Intelligence Division. You may peruse the warrant on the drive to the Treasure Island Brig.”

  “There you will be read your rights under the Rights of the Accused of War Crimes Allegations under the penal code of articles for the Government of the Navy. The warrant specifies Article 4.”

  “One last point, Lieutenant Toscanini. The port’s legal adviser is the Port Judge Advocate. This office will provide legal advice on the claims for the government. At the reading of the rights of the accused, you’ll be able to ask, in the presence of your assigned attorney, any questions you’d like.”

  With that, Peter, in the presence of all the members of the flight crew who were observing the proceedings, stunned beyond belief, mouths agape, minds in utter disbelief, was handcuffed. A pair of connected rings shackling his young wrists, and frozen in thought, he said nothing as he was led to the backseat of the second Buick.

  CHAPTER TEN

  -

  A Secret meeting on Treasure Island

  Manacled and slightly manhandled as he was shoved into the backseat of the second military police vehicle, Peter, of course, understood it was all a ruse.

  For whatever reason, all servicemen who knew or became acquainted with the Lieutenant, who even casually observed, communicated, or merely smiled or nodded in passing had to honestly believe he was a wanted criminal. Word had to spread, and spread quickly, that he was arrested, handcuffed, and incarcerated in the Treasure Island Naval Base brig. Peter’s life as an undercover agent depended on the subterfuge, so meticulously planned and systematized, being believed.

  With only a slight nod to the flight crew standing motionless, each man clutching his personal bags, in shocked amazement, jaws still ajar, eyes as wide as the bottoms of beer cans. As the small caravan of two automobiles, a single jeep, and two motorcycle members of the military police who just arrived, sped away. Sitting between two silent officers in the backseat of the automobile second in line, Peter stared straight ahead in absolute silence and lack of acknowledgement. He calmly reflected,

  “Regardless of what happens, the systematized stratagem conceived requires my absolute and faithful allegiance. Undercover assignments are created in the shadows of military administrative offices and carried out in utmost silence. I may die with no recognition whatsoever, my body tossed into a garbage drum or dumpster, then burned in some dirt hole full of oil. But I’ll do it, so help me God, I’ll do it, and do it right.”

  As the afternoon’s first sunlight gently dissipated the damp foggy mists, and he listened to the moaning easterly winds sweeping through the Golden Gate, Peter noted the flurries of Naval activities on the wharves and docks servicing the array of war ships in the Port of Trade Winds Harbor adjacent the Alameda, the broad thoroughfare lived with poplar trees.

  Traffic from the side-streets leading to the waterfront yielded the rights-of-way to the speeding four-door sedans, jeep, and motorcycles. Wherever he was being delivered, Pete
r knew it would be within moments since the Treasure Island Naval Station, the fifth largest in the U.S. Navy, was only a little more than 400 acres of tons of rock and silt dredged up from the Bay bottom.

  “Yet,” he pondered as he noticed the causeway in the distance to his left that led from the Bay Bridge onto the southern entrance of the island, “look what those 400 acres hold--the Headquarters of the 12th Naval District, three permanent two-story buildings converted from air hangars for blimps and dirigibles; more than 700 units of enlisted men’s quarters; over 900 housing apartments, and 90 barracks-style facilities for those in training facilities; a modern Naval Hospital of 500 beds with some 700 patients; several clinics for training medical staffs; the U.S. Fleet Training Center and its accompanying waterfront facilities; the Auxiliary Air Facility Airfield for seaplane salvage, serious repairs, renovations such as new radar installations; plus a variety of hangars, centers for receiving and departure of troops, specialists, and essential officers, and laypeople. Above all, the Naval Air Station at Treasure Island in 1944 was the largest electronics and radio communication training center with a teaching staff of over 1,300 officers.”

  “And,” Peter continued to reflect, “This little artificial island left over from the 1936-7 Golden Gate International Exposition processes more than 12,000 men and women a day. It’s the departure point for sailors of surface ships and submarines. Treasure Island, named after the dredged gold-laden fill silt and dirt the rainy seasons in the Sierra Mountains bordering California and Nevada washed down through its rivers to the Bay. More than 29 million cubic yards of sand and gravel make up the island, much of it laced with gold dust. This little treasure dirt was firm enough in 1943 to launch some 4,000 freighter cargo voyages and some 800 heavily-laden troop ships. Who can beat us at war? Some island,” he smiled.

  The staff car had turned right at the first signal-light intersection that led from the causeway of the bridge after slowing down on what was now a four-lane, two in each direction, thoroughfare named “Avenue of the Palms”, and cruising past several small theaters, barracks, recently streamlined, repainted, and attended to by non-military civilian custodial personnel, the green colored camouflaged cars halted in a row before two double-iron gates with shoulder-high columns connected to equally high brick walls.