The Passage (58 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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Dan nodded absently, looking across the dance floor. The lanky warrant officer was one of those people you couldn't argue with. It was easier just to nod and move on to something else. But he wished Harper hadn't said that word.
Cephas got up and put some quarters in the Pac-Man. Miller and Harper joined them, and Dan sat with Horseheads, who was tossing back the free popcorn. He stared into his drink, mood darkening by the second.
That word: boat. Shit, shit,
why
had Harper said it? Because when he had, it was not some glossy yacht that flashed in front of Dan's eyes, but splintered, dark-sodden thwarts; the hull boards opening and closing like breathing lips. And looking back at him, Graciela, the baby, the boy … . He'd lived, and they … He perceived himself suspended above a black pit of despair and guilt. Why had God plucked him from death, fed and rescued him, and let them fall astern, rocking in the wake under the empty sky? How had anything he or they ever done deserved that?
“Jeez, what's the matter, sir?”
“It's nothing, Ed. I was just thinking about those refugees.”
“They're okay now.”
“I mean the ones that didn't make it … or that probably didn't make it … . I don't know. Shit, I don't feel so good.”
“You better throttle back on those.”
“Yeah, maybe you're right.” But still he lifted it and drank, the liquor burning its way down his throat. Two or three more and he'd forget.
Cephas and Harper came back with two girls, Jay bragging about his score. “That's not such a challenge, you got a little eye-hand coordination,” he told the yeoman. “Angela here, she's got it down. Dan, Mitch, this is Angela, and this is Lori. Where you girls from?”
“Coral Gables.”
“Shit, you played it before. You got the technique down.”
“Hey, cowboy, I never seen the fucking thing before. You just make the little guys eat each other. What kind of technique can there be?”
“Yeah, you ought to be good at that, boy.”
“Boy! Hey, you see any boys around here, just blow 'em up to man-size.”
“Sorry, I choke on small bones.”
The girls giggled. The blonde, Angela, was about nineteen, with curly damp hair streaming down over her tank top. She looked drunk, and her nipples showed through the damp cotton. Lori was blond, too, but thinner, and her pupils looked frozen, as if she was on something powerful. Already, Harper was cupping her butt casually. “One for you. But you'll pay, you'll pay,” he told Cephas. “Hey, Dan, want to play Pac-Man? Angela's ready for some stick action.”
“No thanks.”
“Dance with Lori; she wants to dance.”
He shook his head. Harper said, “Jeez, what's the matter? Let's get this party rolling. Here, babe, take this and go over and get us some more drinks. Get the lieutenant a margarita, what he's drinking ain't working.”
Cephas lighted a cigarette and waved the match out, looking around. The beer seemed to be overcoming his reticence, and he started talking. Dan only half-listened at first. He worked every day with the departmental yeoman, but he'd never gotten close to him. Now he was surprised to hear him say, “You know, sir, I know how you feel about your ex. I been divorced two years now and I still hate the bitch.”
“Tell him the nut,” said Harper. “How you're still making money off her.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah. I'm not married anymore. But I'm still drawing BAQ.”
BAQ was basic allowance for quarters, the extra pay married servicepeople got. “How you do that?” said Horseheads.
“All you got to do is take the marriage certificate in and show them in the ship's office; it shows up on your next check. I just never told the fucking Navy I got divorced.”
Dan tensed. What Cephas was describing was fraud. The girls came back with drinks. Jay shoved one across the table, but he didn't look at it. “You mean you're living aboard ship and still drawing BAQ for living ashore?” he asked the yeoman.
“Cool your jets, loo-tenant,” drawled Harper. “Jesus, did you see him tighten up? Look. The poor son of a bitch makes what, four hundred a month? It don't hurt anybody he makes another hundred.
Shit, who does it hurt? You could do that yourself if you wanted.”
“No, I couldn't. It's against regulations,” Dan said. He was angry now, at himself as much as at Cephas. Knowing about something like this and not taking action on it was a violation in itself for someone in the chain of command—as he was. But turning a man in on the basis of a confidence exchanged over drinks … that wouldn't play very well, either, in terms of building trust within the department. You stupid asshole, he raged at himself. Didn't you learn anything from that episode with Lassard on
Ryan?
 
 
ACROSS the table, the lean man in the toupee and glasses examined Lenson's flushed, angry face with satisfaction.
Snookered, Jay Harper thought. The self-righteous prick done snookered himself. And not a fucking thing he can do about it. Lori came back with the drinks and he ran his hand up her back as he sipped Jack Daniel's, rolling it past his tongue and sighing. The good stuff. He'd better enjoy it while he could.
Lenson mumbled something about a head call and stood up. Harper waved the glass, smiling after the lieutenant's rigidly retreating back, barely restraining the impulse to give him the finger.
“Is he pissed off?” Cephas said anxiously. “He looked pissed off. Should I of told him that, sir? Is he gonna put me on report?”
“Cool it, shipmate. He can't do nothing to you.”
“He can tell the disbursing officer.”
“If he does, I'll take care of you. You know that.”
“Yeah. Yeah! Thanks.” The yeoman gave him a happy, relieved, grateful smile. “I really appreciate it, sir.”
“Don't mention it.” Harper looked away, running his hand absentmindedly up the inner thigh of the girl who leaned on him. Young pussy, he thought. Wet and tight. Unlike his fucking wife. Forget her, he thought. With a little fucking luck, he'd never see that bitch again.
With a little luck …
Miller, back from playing the machines, looked worried. “What's the matter, Chief?” Harper asked him.
“I'm broke dick. Shot my wad.”
“How did you do that?”
“It was a bet. On the Pac-Man. A guy said he could—”
“You're kidding. Somebody sharked you at Pac-Man? Where the fuck did that last hundred I loaned you go?”
“Shit, I had to rent the car. I told you that. And you're riding in
it, too.” Miller pushed his hand out, rubbing his finger and thumb together. “Come on.”
Harper grunted. Glancing at the girl, he pulled out his wallet, fanned out a handful of fifty-dollar bills. He snapped off two and handed them to Miller.
“Thanks.”
“Goddamn it,” he grunted. But the chief was already headed away, back toward the machines.
“He gambles too much,” said Cephas, looking to Harper for confirmation. “Doesn't he?”
“Hey, everybody's gotta do something. Him, he can't pass up a fucking bet. Me—it's good looking women.” Harper snapped off another crisp note, held it up for a second in front of Lori's blank eyes, and handed it to her. “For getting us the drinks, Sweet Cheeks,” he said. She took it without a word, but he felt the gentle pressure of her leg increase.
Cephas was a goddamn lost puppy. His family had screwed him up somehow. Harper'd had to listen to the story, but he didn't have to remember it. The guy was so hungry for affection, he'd do anything he was told. Miller was a pain in the ass in another way. So he was Cephas's sea daddy. And the loans gave him leverage, a handle, on the gunnery chief.
Everybody had a handle, he thought, running his hand up the girl's thigh to the crack of her tight-fitting jeans. All you had to do was find it, find out what they needed, then figure out what they had to give you, or what they had somebody else needed. Anyone who could understand that could make it in business, in the Navy, anywhere. It was so simple. How could you not understand that? How could people be so fucking stupid?
He threw back the last swallow of bourbon, snapped off another bill, and held it up in two fingers. Cephas was watching him in admiration.
“Go get us another round, bitch,” he said to the girl, watching her and smiling.
 
 
DAN was back at the table, still feeling black, when Miller came back and stood by them, looking back toward the bar. “The fuck's the matter with you?” Harper asked him.
“I was watchin' the TV. There's something going down.”
“What?”
“I don't know. First was about some trial, a verdict. Then they said something about Cuba. You think we should better call the ship?”
“Something about Cuba,” repeated Harper. “What? It's on the TV, you said?”
Dan got up. He didn't say anything to them, just went to the phone booth by the bathroom and pulled his wheel book out with the quarterdeck number. It was busy, but on the third try he got through. “USS
Barrett,
quarterdeck watch speaking, sir. May I help you.”
“Lieutenant Lenson. Heard there was something up.”
“Yes sir, we're putting out an emergency recall. Where are you? Get all the guys you can find and get them back to the ship ASAP.”
“What is it? Some kind of—”
“I can't say, sir. Just get everybody back you can, pronto.”
He hung up and stood in the hallway, listening to the Caribbean rhythms. Then he went back in, to see the others gathered around the television set over the bar.
L
ESS than a mile away, Thomas Leighty stood with his hands in the pockets of his suit slacks on a littered, dimly lighted street, trying to ignore the distant yells of a group of drunks. A pickup truck sheered by and a beer bottle came hurtling out of it. It missed him, but not by much.
Maybe, he thought, I should have taken the official car. But he hadn't felt right about driving it for personal use. Now, looking around at the ominously empty street, he wondered if that had been the right decision.
“Oh, new in town? Sure, a couple places you can go,” the waiter had said as he dined alone. They'd made eye contact a couple of times, then got to talking. “What do you want? You don't want one of these back-room suck-off places, like the baths.”
“No, no baths.”
“Someplace nice. That's what I like, too. What do you want, music? There's Monty Trainer's and 27 Birds—”
“A club. Someplace quiet.”
“Where you can be yourself. I know … there's Uncle Charlie's, out on U.S. One. But you're not that far from the Double R.” He'd smiled slowly. “Then there's my place … We could have a drink, listen to some music. I won't be off till one, but I'll give you my number, just in case you're a late-nighter.”
Now he stood tensely outside the Double R. The street was quiet after the raucous passage of the truck. The bar was unobtrusive, almost unnoticeable unless you knew or had been directed to it.
When he was at sea, there were long periods of time he didn't think about sex. He might admire another man's body, but distantly, as one admires a piece of sculpture without the desire to possess it. Then they'd put into port, and he would know it would be that night. And he'd dress carefully and stroll out. Where no
one knew him, he could show a different aspect of himself. Something he couldn't do in Charleston.
But at the same time, there was the fear. The NIS knew about Sanderling. They suspected him, he knew that, and he found himself examining the shadows behind him. Being seen in a gay bar was “frequenting,” “associating with known homosexuals.” It could be the last nail in his coffin.
So that left him with the choice, he thought, standing alone on the dark street. He could do the smart thing—turn around and leave. Or he could wait out here and try to make contact as someone came out. He felt exposed here, though. Since overhearing the conversation on the fantail, he had a recurrent nightmare of standing on a corner like this and being recognized by someone from
Barrett.
The last choice, of course, was just to go in.
Finally, he cursed himself for a coward and a fool and crossed the street and quickly pushed the door open, to find himself confronted by a bulky citizen guarding an inner door. “This is a private club, sir.”
“I can't go in?”
He was examined up and down. “Provisional membership's five dollars.”
He was sweating, but he kept his back straight as he strolled in. You didn't look directly at anyone, not at first. You weren't here because you wanted someone. You were just here for a quiet drink. Only later would come the subtle checkout, but if they met your eyes, you still turned away. Only to glance back a few moments later. Instead, he examined the decor. The walls were bare wood. The lighting was from wagon-wheel lamps. The bar area was separated from the dance floor by a wooden split-rail fence, like a corral. The sound system was playing Tammy Wynette.
Gradually, he realized that all the men were cowboys—all in western dress, pointed boots of leather or snakeskin or armadillo, heavy silver jewelry, ten-gallon hats, plaid shirts, bandannas. He felt out of place in his suit and tie. He didn't like to feel conspicuous. He almost left, but then seated himself firmly at the old-fashioned bar and ordered a gin and tonic from a bartender in handlebar mustache and sleeve garters.
Eventually, his heart rate slacked off. He tapped a quarter on the bar, musing again over the refugee operation. Apparently, he'd made the right decision, taking people aboard—despite the original orders. Because once the storm hit, that was what everybody had done, British, Dutch, Coast Guard. Navy Regulations, Article 0925, and NWP-9 were explicit about what a commander had to do faced with vessels requiring assistance. Not that there were things he'd do differently if they were ordered back to station. For one thing, he needed a different personnel mix—more Spanish speakers, more
medical personnel, including a female corpsman. A dedicated habitability load-out-by the time they docked,
Barrett
was completely out of soap and toilet paper, not to mention sanitary napkins, diapers, and baby supplies, none of them standard stock items aboard U.S. Navy warships. It had all gone into a lessons-learned message he'd shot up to DESRON SIX that morning.
When he looked up again, everybody was streaming out onto the dance floor. An older man stepped up to a microphone and, yes, it was Square Dancing Night at the Double R. That and the fact that no one at all had spoken to or even looked at him made it easy to pay quietly for his half-finished drink and leave as the do-si-dos began to echo off the rafters and the cowboys, grave and reserved and stiff, nodded to one another and began spinning one another about, heavy boots clunking on the scuffed wooden floor.
 
 
“YOU know Uncle Charlie's?” he asked the driver of the Yellow. The man, a Cuban, closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “Byrd Road, U.S. One. A fag joint.”
Leighty didn't answer, and after a moment the driver shrugged and pulled out. “So, what you faggots think about the trial?” he said after a mile or so.
“Excuse me?”
“The trial, what you think about the trial?”
“I don't know. What trial?”
The cabbie told him there'd been a police-brutality decision due that day, and they'd just found the cop innocent. “For once, they did justice. But the niggers don't like it.”
“We heard there was some … racial polarization,” Leighty said carefully.
“Call it whatever you want, but I ain't taking no fares to Northwest tonight.”
They both fell silent as Leighty looked out. Coconut Grove looked paradoxical, oxymoronic, with expensive, grand houses cheek-to-cheek with falling-down shacks. Uncle Charlie's was across from a Porsche dealership, a peachy brown plain-fronted building, again with no sign at all, no lights out front, no windows, either.
Yes, he thought the moment he entered, this is more like what I'd hoped to find. No leather, no cowboy affectations. Just tables, soft rock, low lighting, and people talking to one another at the little tables. Women and women, men and men, men and women dancing casually. He went through to the bar, ordered another gin and tonic, and sipped it standing up, listening to scraps of conversation, arguments.
“Hey, I think Anita's right. You know? That you can be cured. Only trouble is, I don't want to be.”
“Okay, next: Are we going to have the same mimes this year? We have applications from five groups. What kind of feedback did we get about those guys in the green tights?”
“View the planet as a large brain, along with the racial unconscious—”
“No, at Bananas. He was standing there looking out at the bay and I came up and said to him, ‘What is that you have on under your slacks—'”
“I bought it at three fifty; now it's at six twenty-five. The point is not to hold out for peak, okay? It's capital gain per quarter you want to use as a measurement.”
“I have never used one. Amyl nitrate is not good for the human heart—”
“He said he hated my dog, but he still jumped in to save her when she fell in the pool.”
But the glances he got were unfriendly—in fact, rather hostile—and the conversations stopped as he went by and eyes flicked up to him and narrowed. So he didn't try to join any of them, just kept walking, looking for an empty table, but there didn't seem to be any.
“Hi. How are you? My name is Evans.”
He turned to a younger man with sandy hair over his ears, direct, slightly sad blue eyes, pouting lips, and teeth that should have been straightened. The Palm Beach look, white shoes, white belt, arms muscular under a tennis sweater with the sleeves pushed up, heavy gold link ID bracelet, gold Rolex.
“Hi. Thomas.”
“How are you, Thomas? I haven't seen you here before.”
“Haven't been here before. New in town.”
“Uh-huh. Are you a cop?”
Leighty smiled. So that was it. “You're direct, aren't you? No, I'm not a cop.”
“Something about you, the way you hold yourself. Something … authoritative. You're military, aren't you? There are a lot of retired Air Force here, older guys. They came down here during the war and liked it and came back when they retired.”
“Why do you need to know anything about me? I just came in for a drink. I'll never be back.”
“The ship,” said Evans suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
“There's a Navy ship just docked today. You're off it, aren't you? I was in the Army myself. Artillery, in Germany.” As he started to respond, Evans held up his hand. “Wait … I understand, all
right? Say no more. Have your drink. Circulate. Enjoy your night on the town. Have you had dinner yet?”
“Thanks, I'm okay.”
Evans patted his back and moved away, nodding to the others, exchanging quick hugs. Leighty stood there feeling threatened, warned, vulnerable. Maybe it would be better to go, after all, if he was that conspicuous that someone could pick him out like that, tell exactly who he was and where he'd come from.
He was strolling toward the door when Evans returned and took him into the back, to a table in the dimness, and introduced him to a couple of people and then left. Jason and Kurt, if he caught their names right. “These are some of the Air Force people I told you about. Tom here is Navy, guys. You can tell each other war stories, okay?” Patting him again, Evans dashed off.
And actually that was what they did, tell war stories, and gradually he relaxed and eventually even had a good time. But he didn't feel anything for them, or meet anyone interesting until he was leaving the club and heard footsteps behind him. He turned, going tense, ready—for what, he didn't know.
He was younger than Leighty, a bit chubby, friendly and anxious. He said his name was Vernon. “I think we're complementary,” he said. “I like older men. Not that you're old, but you have a presence, you know? I saw it when you came in. Did you see me? By the door? Then I saw you talking with Evans, but I knew you wouldn't hit it off with him … well, I just knew. What do you like to do? I pretty much like to do just about anything. I'm pretty flexible, but I don't like anything rough.”
He stood in the dark, listening to the other persuading, hearing the anxious tone in his voice. “Want to go to the Sailing Club? I'm a member; I have a friend who leaves his boat unlocked. Or we could go into the park.”
He stared at the pale face hovering in the dark. He both wanted the boy and did not, was both attracted and repelled. Another onenight stand, or not even that, half-hour acquaintance. After which he would feel both complete and incomplete, satiated but guilty. While at home, he had someone who cared, a family … . He thought with reflective sadness that he was caught between two eras. Thirty years ago, he could have denied what he was, even to himself. Thirty years from now, he could probably be free … . But this was a time of transition, of change, and no matter what he did or how he lived, he would probably always have this feeling of uncertainty and impending retribution. And nothing he did or did not do would ever change that.
The seesaw whine of sirens sounded in the distance, crying over the dark streets. “All right, Vern,” he said, touching his wallet and keys lightly through his slacks. “Show me the way to the park.”

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