The Case Of The Little Italy Bounce (Woody Stone, Private Investigator Book 1)

by R. D. Herring

  “Really? Have you been to visit since you got back?”

  “Sunday, when our ship was tied up at 32nd Street, a bunch of us went to the hospital. Now, we only have base liberty.”

  “Base liberty? Why?”

  “I guess it’s cause they don’t know when we’re getting discharged.”

  “I may be the new guy, but one thing I know is that we know when you’re getting discharged. If you want to visit Lt. Logan, the city bus stops at our gate, plus there’s also a Guard Mail Run to Balboa everyday at 1300.”

  “Yes, sir, I sure would. I’ll never get another chance to see him.”

  “When you get secured by the Police Sergeant, go to the Admin Chief’s Office, down the passageway to the left. Tell him I said to give you a Special Liberty Chit. I’ll look into this whole liberty situation. Tell Lt. Logan I said, Semper Fi.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will.” That broom grew wings.

  After the Police Sergeant approved our placement of the OIC’s new suite of furniture, I briefed Sekach. We ran to fill Dave Cournea in on the plan to catch the 1300 Guard Mail Run to Balboa the next day. His face dropped. That silver-tongued Eyetalian birddog had made his own arrangements with a female Marine clerk in the Admin Office.

  It sounded plenty far-fetched, but went something like, the next day, she would say she was ill and had to take the bus back to her barracks at MCRD. Instead, she would sneak up the outside stairs to the second floor of our barracks. She’d meet Dave in one of the private rooms set up for Staff NCO’s, but which were all unoccupied. Then, we were two. Sekach and I later joked that it was a toss-up between visiting Lt. Logan and hanging around to see how Cournea’s Detroit drama unfolded.

  The Admin Chief was a fat cigar smoking Master Sergeant who was as sore as an ingrown toenail that I had talked to the OIC ‘behind his back’. After a rambling lecture, he told Sekach and me to ‘stand fast’ while he went to get the forms. I stared at the framed pictures hanging behind his desk. There was a picture of a cocky looking Staff Sergeant with the ‘Blue Max’ hanging around his neck; it was signed in ink: ‘To Buck. From Cuba to Guadalcanal. Semper Fi. John Basilone’.

  Another photo was a jungle scene with a younger, 150-pound version of the Top standing beside a short Marine, with big hands and a big smile. They both were gripping Browning Automatic Rifles; it simply had a piece of paper with the type written words, ‘Tom Rosa. Guadalcanal 1942’. The Top returned and signed two of the liberty chits for us.

  “The Guard Mail driver leaves from the front of this building at 1300 tomorrow. You tell Gardner to wait for you at Balboa. You tell im, if he doesn’t, I will personally stretch his scrotum over a 55-gallon oil drum. Now you boys remember what I told you - stay away from officers.”

  At Balboa Hospital, we found Lt. Logan in a wheelchair on a sun porch, his one leg sticking straight out in a cast. A big chested, blue-eyed Navy nurse sat close beside him in a straight back chair and was hanging on his every word. We assumed the boss was making the most of the time on his hands.

  That night, back at the barracks, Cournea was in a daze lying on his rack. We could barely get him to speak, “Soooo good. SO good…” We finally left him alone; we’d get the scoop later.

  At the formation on Friday morning, a Tech Sergeant came out of the Admin Building and handed out a dozen, or so, Honorable Discharges. He couldn’t resist first asking if anybody had changed his mind. If someone had arrived with doubt in his mind, living in that place would have cleared up his thinking, except, maybe… Cournea.

  Three hours later, I was at San Diego Airport waiting for an 11:45 flight to Memphis. There was a San Diego Tribune displayed at a newsstand. The headlines read, ‘North Korea and United Nations Sign Armistice’, and ‘Dizzy Dean Plus Six Inducted into Hall of Fame’.

  ‘Way to go, Dizzy! Fuck the gooks’.

  I located the snack bar to buy a sandwich and noticed a crowding and commotion to my right. John Wayne, the Hollywood actor, was standing there with a bottle of Coca-Cola and a cigarette in his left hand. He was going around shaking hands with everybody in uniform. A Marine standing next to me said, ‘He just walked right in and started shaking hands’. I had just positioned myself in his direction of movement when he gave me an easy smile, grabbed my extended hand and gave it a pump.

  “Son, you look real fine in that uniform. We appreciate your service.”

  It didn’t seem to faze him that I made no reply. I never forgot his gesture. John Wayne, a stranger, was the first and last person to ever tell me, ‘We appreciate your service’.

  I asked the woman behind the lunch counter if she had beef burritos, but I was out of luck. By the time I had eaten a sandwich and mentally listed every John Wayne picture I could think of, the loudspeaker announced that my flight would board in ten minutes. We were walked across the hot tarmac to where a DC-3 waited in all its shiny aluminum-skinned glory. As I climbed the portable loading steps, a sea of silver Quonset huts caught my eye in the near distance.

  The Marine Corps Recruit Depot sat next door to the airport. Beyond the Quonsets, recruit platoons were specks as they were being practiced in close order drill. A backdrop of Spanish architecture ran the whole length of the half mile-long asphalt parade deck. I thought, ‘So long, Bob. Semper Fi’.

  As we rose into the sky, the quiet murmur of the big DC-3 engines was dragging me down into sleep. Something was beating its dark wings in the recesses of my mind. Was that all there is? It was all too normal. Did any of those drones around me know that young American men had died by the thousands? That I could have been, maybe should have been, one of them, all dead without benefit of a real war to die in. Called on by their country, they gave their last breath doing their duty. Was everyone so busy sopping up the gravy that no one could acknowledge that?

  My Daddy, an advertising man, used to say, ‘Folks will always follow their own ideas. It’s my job to put those ideas in their heads’. Someone had failed to tell those people what to think. What in the hell did it all mean? Not a soul on that plane knew that I had spent the last year in a foreign land I knew nothing about, scared. Absolute fear of dying from freezing cold, gunshot, explosives or mind-numbing boredom had stripped away all other emotions.

  The horror exposed every nerve ending in your body; it kept you alert; it was your friend. The terror was a known and familiar entity, a focal point. Where would I find that now? Slime had been injected into my skull. It only hurt a little, but it made it hard to see or even think. The faggot put his hand back on my shoulder. Holeman will fix this guy’s wagon! The faggot yanked at my shirt violently. I grabbed his wrist with every intention of breaking a bone. The stewardess yelped and startled me awake.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  “It was my fault.” She rubbed her forearm. “You’ll need to put your tray in the upright position. We’ll be landing in Fort Worth shortly. You won’t need to change planes.”

  The other passengers stared at me. I found it interesting that I really didn’t give a shit.

  In Memphis, I told the cabbie to drop me at the curb of 620 South Perkins Road. I hung my seabag on my shoulder and walked up that falsely familiar driveway. I had lived there my whole life, but it was all strange to me. I instantly and deeply missed the rough security of my platoon. The first full understanding of the bond fire-forged amongst men by deprivation and death swept through my mind. The brotherhood of men who had worked together for a cause greater than themselves, lived and died together with pride in themselves resonated through me. I felt the irony of celebrating that insight while mourning the loss.

  Staff Sergeant Robert E. Holeman, in truth, was only a few years older than I was. Holeman, with his dedication, sense of responsibility and love for his Marines, showed us what it meant to be a man. I loved those people. Now, they’d left me. No, that wasn’t true. I left them. Did it matter? I was still shit out of luck without my Marine Corps family. Ronnie and Daddy were gone. Pop Gilliam was dead. The house I gr
ew up in was the saddest sight I’d ever seen. I should’ve been happier. Why couldn’t I be like everybody else?

  Mama. Big hugs. Pork chops, lots of cornbread and sweet tea. Mama had gone out and bought new clothes for me. The shirts were two sizes too small. The pants were short. After supper, I took one of her Camels and smoked it on the back porch then wandered into the garage. Daddy’s ’41 Ford station wagon sat beneath a thick coat of dust. ‘Can that possibly be the same car’?

  I guess I knew where I was heading. The almost full pint of Wild Turkey was still in the secret wall crevice where Daddy last touched it all those years ago. I took a nip, then a couple of slugs. I pulled on that bottle until it stopped tasting like kerosene. The feeling of well being it brought to me was a fair trade for the burning in my gut.

  I went back in the house more than a little drunk. I found Mama sitting in the parlor. The only light in the room came from the dim dial of the Magnavox Radio Phonograph she and Daddy bought for Ronnie’s 17th birthday. I slid down into Daddy’s leather chair. Hank Snow was wailing, quietly and mournfully in the dark. Live, from the Grand Ol’ Opry…

  “It’s so good to have you home, Woody. I’ve been a wreck while you were away.”

  “Mama, it’s been a hard two years…”

  “I imagine so, Woodrow, but you’re safe with those who love you now. No use dwelling on it.”

  I stared at the glowing tip of Mama’s Camel as sleep finally dissolved my misery.

  ***

  Saturday morning I called Ginger. We talked about everything. We talked just to hear the other’s voice. I was flabbergasted when Ginger told me she was working in bookkeeping at the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. She said it made her feel closer to me. She said her mother called her an old maid working for the Government. I told her I’d take care of that, at least the old maid part.

  Sunday, we talked again and made plans to be married in her parents home in Huntsville the following Saturday. I washed the station wagon, aired up the tires, and took Mama out to a restaurant Sunday evening. I explained the plans Ginger and I had made. Yes, she wanted to be there. I was feeling a peace I hadn’t known for the past two years. Monday, we took my undersized new clothes back to Montgomery Ward and exchanged them.

  Early Tuesday I got a call from Dave Cournea in Detroit. He had contacted Ed Kowalski’s mother in Brooklyn over the weekend. He said he had just wanted to tell her that we all loved Ed and that he didn’t suffer in the end.

  “She was really nice.” Dave’s voice was trembling in the phone.

  “She said if anybody from Ed’s platoon ever got to Brooklyn, she’d be glad to show them his grave. She said he was buried up in Queens where his father was from and had been buried. I told her Ed was a good Marine and plenty of his friends would like to do that. One thing led to another and she asked if I thought anyone would like to attend a memorial service for Ed. She said he’d been buried in the wintertime and there’d not been a proper service.”

  “Dave, people are spread out everywhere,” I said.

  “Look, I know, but I also know what I told Ed’s mother is true. I got everybody’s phone number while we were at 32nd Street. Look, the crop of it is, she’s organizing a memorial service this Saturday. Saturday was my suggestion, before job hunting, or something else, starts taking up everybody’s time. I contacted a couple of people. If you’re in, I’d like to give you a couple of numbers to call.”

  “I’m in, Dave.” I knew Kowalski would do it for me. I got the scoop from Cournea and started making long distance calls. The most difficult call was the one to Ginger. What would she think? I was wishing I had a belt of something as I explained the situation to her.

  “Woody, I think that’s wonderful, you going to your friend’s memorial. That’s a little bit of why I love you. Hey, can you stop by and see me on the way?”

  I flew into Huntsville and spent two nights in the Wilson’s guest room. We adjusted our wedding plans to the following weekend. Virginia came to my bed both nights.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  My plane landed on time at Idlewild Airport on Friday afternoon. I walked across the asphalt and concrete apron to the American Airlines Terminal staring at the building’s facade; the whole thing was a giant stained-glass window. Some South American painter’s mural, showing lush jungles and tropical birds, filled the terminal’s interior - all a little overwhelming. The real name was the New York International Airport, but Idlewild, the name of the old golf course it was built on, is what stuck.

  I got my bag and grabbed a cab to the Jamaica Quality Courts on Rockaway Boulevard, just north of Idlewild, where Dave Cournea said he’d meet me. Cournea and Pasternak were already there when I checked in. We walked down the block to McDermott’s Bar and spent three hours drinking beer and telling the same old jokes and stories all over again. We didn’t talk about Ed Kowalski.

  We pooled our money for a taxi to the Kowalski address on Saturday morning. It was fifteen, or so, miles to 250 Bay 10th Street, and we knew nothing about the local transportation system. Our cab had barely stopped at the curb on Bay 10th Street, when Mike Sekach wheeled up in what turned out to be his father’s ’51 Lincoln Cosmopolitan.

  Mike lived in Nassau County, a ways out on Long Island. Matter of fact, his Daddy, Albert J. Sekach, was a Nassau County Police Inspector in charge of their Eighth District in Levittown. Mike said it took about an hour to drive in on a Saturday. If we had been a little more geographically savvy, we could’ve had him pick us up at our motel.

  Mrs. Kowalski was a sweet lady and genuinely glad to see us all descend on the home she shared with her own mother and her skinny 15-year-old daughter named Gina. The Kowalski women had set up a breakfast buffet on the screened-in porch. A few more of the guys arrived by cab. Three were in uniform, on leave from Camp Pendleton. They wore the Korean Campaign ribbons and a Presidential Unit Citation ribbon we short-timers hadn’t found out about. We all dug in, then there was a, ‘son of a bitch’, followed quickly by an, ‘excuse me, Ma’am’. That directed our attention to the long flagstone walkway that bisected the front lawn down to the curb.

  Staff Sergeant Robert E. Holeman marched up the walk with the razor creases of his Alpha Uniform slicing the humid salt air and his chest full of medals sparkling. The stabbing glint off his fair leather belt buckle was a beacon to his arrival.

  “Hey, y’all.” He pulled open the screen door. “That bacon I smell?”

  We laughed. We talked. We ate all that the ladies had put on the table. We told the same jokes and stories all over again. We only talked about Ed Kowalski with his mother.

  Lt. Logan still was unable to travel, but all together, eight of the surviving members of our platoon stood on that porch in Brooklyn. Everybody was contacted; some just had to get on with rebuilding their lives. One of them would never get on with anything ever again; Holeman told me Ski had been killed in a motorcycle wreck on Pacific Coast Highway in Encinitas, south of Camp Pendleton. He had been drunk.

  It got around to time to organize the boat spaces to get everybody to the Memorial Chapel at the Calvary Cemetery. Mrs. Kowalski told us the priest would meet us at two o’clock. Cournea and I rode with Mrs. Kowalski, her mother and daughter. The rest packed into Sekach’s dark green Lincoln with the clamshell doors.

  We entered Calvary Cemetery through a wrought iron gate. The fieldstone perimeter wall was higher than a man’s head. It had obviously been there a very long time. All of the land in the cemetery was perfectly flat. The gravestones and monuments seemed to stretch ahead for miles, the same to either side. It was the largest cemetery I had ever seen.

  We stopped at a tall granite monument engraved, ‘Kowalski’. Ed had a flat marble marker beside his father’s, ‘1933-1952’. We stood there awhile before people started drifting back to the cars. I hung back a moment staring at that 12 by 24 inch granite slab, ‘Edward Morgan Kowalski Jr., 1933-1952, Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps. Korea.’ Somebody had done a g
ood job engraving a Silver Star Medal.

  We got back in Mrs. Kowalski’s car and she led the procession to the chapel. I was surprised to see thirty plus relatives of various ages. The priest conducted a brief religious ceremony, and an uncle presented a warm eulogy in Ed’s memory.

  I had no idea when it was coordinated, but then SSgt. Holeman walked forward. He recounted a night in Korea when it was ten below zero. Private First Class Edward Kowalski and another Marine manned a listening post on a finger of land 200 yards forward of friendly lines. At first light, they came under enemy machine gun fire. PFC Kowalski instructed the other Marine to keep his head down but put fire on the machine gun position as best he could. ‘Make sure you shoot at him or to the left of him. I’m going around to the right and frag his ass’, he had told his friend.

  “That’s exactly what this Marine, a member of your family and my Marine Corps family, did. He worked his way around to the right and pitched a fragmentation grenade right between the two commies working that machine gun. They never saw him coming. Ed never saw the sniper the commie bastards had traveling with the machine gun.” Holeman rubbed the scar on his face, blinked hard and walked back to his seat.

  The family all wanted to meet us, to shake our hands. Mrs. Kowalski wanted us to go back to her house. We didn’t have the emotional energy. Three of our number had flights home that evening, so we turned that and early Sunday morning flight times into our cover story. We made our promises to stay in touch and said our thank you and good-byes to the Kowalski family.

  Without much spoken word, we assembled beside the chapel. Like Pavlov’s dog, we looked at SSgt. Holeman and waited for his ‘Listen up’. He cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head in a question. We finally got talking and determined that the Jamaica Quality Courts and, in turn, McDermott’s Bar were pretty darn centrally located, plus close to Idlewild Airport.

  Back at McDermott’s, Bull McDermott, himself, was tending. Bull, a tall man with no wrists, just big hands on the ends of big arms, announced our arrival.