Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond (10 page)

Chapter 26

T
he Magnolia Motor Court on the west end of Panama City Beach had eight yellow bungalows in a U shape built around a common area in the middle with landscaping in need of serious attention. Each bungalow had green trim and individual porticos and awnings.

It appeared the once nice motor lodge had suffered greatly during the war the way so many things had—especially tourist and travel-related businesses.

At the turn of the century, there were only about eight thousand registered automobiles in America. By 1930, that number had exploded to some twenty-three million. It looked as though the Magnolia Motor Court had been built in the 30s and probably did quite well until the start of the war.The night was cold and windy, the planted palms clacking and flapping in the brisk breeze when I walked into the front office of the motel beneath the green sign in the shape of an M.

“Hiya, soldier. Need a room for the night?”

“You Paul?”

He hesitated, the warm, open face he had greeted me with closing, growing suspicious.

“Ah … yeah. Yes. Why?”

He had blond hair and greenish eyes, a round boyish face with pale skin splotched with light pink patches.

He added, “How do you know my—”

“I’m looking for Miki Matsumoto.”

“Oh,” he said, seeming to relax again. “I see. You with the government?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Well … you’re ah … arm. And … the fact that she … ah … ran off with that soldier.”

“You’re awful friendly with the enemy,” I said.

“Miki and Rina? They’re just girls. They’re not dangerous, are they?”

“What’s his name?” I said.

“Who?”

“The soldier. Let me see where he signed in.”

“Gee, mister, I don’t know if I oughtna do that.”

“You oughtna,” I said.

“But—”

“A young girl is missing, son. We don’t have time for this. Show me where the soldier signed in or I’ll arrest you for obstructing justice.”

He hesitated for just a moment, then turned the sign-in book toward him, flipped one page back, found the name, and turned it back toward me with his index finger on it.

I looked at it.

Miles Russet. 176 Gray Avenue, Mobile, Ala. 36601.

“What can you tell me about him?”

“He and Miki hit it off. And in a hurry.”

“That bother you?” I asked. “What I hear, you were pretty sweet on her yourself.”

“No sir. I mean, I like her, but not really like that. A little, maybe, but … well, two things … I couldn’t be with a girl that likes a fella like him … and well, I couldn’t be with a Jap girl. My parents would kill me.”

I nodded. “What was wrong with the soldier?”

“Loud. Arrogant. Obnoxious. It surprised me out of her. But she’s young and he was in uniform. Nothing to get my pulleys tangled up about.”

“You know where he was headed? Back to Mobile or—”

“Camp Gordon Johnston and boy was he dreading it. Wouldn’t surprise me none if he took the girl away and went AWOL.”

Camp Gordon Johnston, known as Hell by the Sea, was a one-hundred-sixty-five-thousand-acre military training camp near Carrabelle—about fifty miles from Tallahassee.
Opened in 1942, when the War Department was challenged with finding amphibious training bases with favorable year-round climate, Camp Gordon Johnston stretched some twenty-one miles along the coast and included Dog Island, St. George Island, and the area around Alligator Harbor.

Though very little official information came out of the camp, even though it published a newspaper called the Amphibian, it had a reputation as one of the most difficult training facilities in the entire country, attempting, and many would say succeeding, at creating the harsh conditions of war.Sand-floor tents, bad meals eaten standing up, outdoor latrines, horrible odors, sliding under barbed wire carrying their weapons, machine gun rounds flying overhead, planted charges exploding all around, snakes slithering around everywhere, chiggers, ticks, and swarms and swarms of yellow and dog flies and hoards of mosquitos—this was Camp Gordon Johnston.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked.

“Sure. Why?”

I didn’t respond, and he placed the phone on the counter and turned it toward me.

I dialed the number Harry had given me. He had said he’d help me any way he could. I was about to put that to the test. I was also about to see just how much juice he really had.

“Hello?”

Harry sounded sleepy, as if I had woken him up.

“I need to find out if a soldier is at Camp Gordon Johnston and if he is, I need to talk to him. You got enough credit for something like that?”

“Jimmy?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure, fella. I can do that. How soon?”

“Now.”

“Okay,” he said, clearing his throat, trying to sound more awake. “Who’s the soldier?”

I told him.

“He have something to do with Lauren’s … with what happened to Lauren?”

“Could,” I said.

“Call you right back. Tell me where.”

H
alf an hour later, Ruth Ann and I were driving along the coast beneath a bright low-slung moon, racing toward Carrabelle and Camp Gordon Johnston.

We were in her car, but I was driving. Lights on low beams, the top half blacked out, providing very little illumination on the dim, desolate highway.

Bing Crosby was singing “Moonlight Becomes You” on the radio, while through the right-side window, the bright moon bathed the Gulf in shimmering liquid pearl that seemed to sparkle and fix effervescently.

We rode along in silence for a long time, listening to the radio, looking at the rural road and the magnificent Gulf, which even at night was truly something to see.

Eventually, I took the opportunity to broach the subject of her transformation again.

“Do you know how many times I’ve started to call you Lauren?” I said.

“Really?” she said, feigning surprise and suppressing the obvious pleasure that it brought her.

“Why the change?”

“I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“I know how much you miss her.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You do miss her something terrible, don’t you, soldier?”

“More than my right arm.”

“I thought so. So I thought why not … you know … bring her back. Look like her a little. I don’t mind. I don’t care how I look. Never have. I’m happy to do it for you, fella. Really I am. I know what it’s like to love someone that much that you can’t have.”

“But I miss you too,” I said. “My drinking buddy. My kid sister with the blond flip-out.”

She looked down and nodded. “I know,” she said softly. “I just …”

“What?”

She didn’t say anything.

“You just what?”

“I just don’t want to be your kid sister no more, soldier.”

That one hurt. I knew the way she felt. Hell, who hadn’t experienced the exact same thing. Two people going along as friends and then one of them decides they don’t want to be friends anymore, but the other doesn’t feel the same. There was nothing to be done for it, nothing I could say or do, and my heart hurt for her. And it wasn’t just that I couldn’t love her that way. I could never love anyone that way but Lauren. Not now. Not ever.

Chapter 27

W
e met with Miles Russet in a room in the old Lanark Inn, which had been used as the temporary headquarters when the camp originally opened.

East of Carrabelle, the Lanark Inn began operation as a seaside resort in the 1890s. Accessible by road from Tallahassee or Carrabelle and by rail on the Georgia Railroad, the inn catered to luxurious living, boasting an “extraordinary pure spring,” gas lights, spring beds, hair mattresses, a two-hundred-foot porch, dancing pavilion, a long dock, and an enclosed swimming area where bathers were protected from sharks.

The inn burned down in the 1930s but was rebuilt in time to serve as the original Camp Gordon Johnston headquarters and later the nurses’ quarters.

The “extraordinary pure spring” that had been one of the main attractions of the old hotel had been capped, its water flow diverted for use in the camp’s sewerage facilities.

We had been allowed through the military police shacks along Highway 98 and allowed to drive through to the old inn, showing just how much power and influence Harry really had—and this having little or nothing to do with him now being mayor of Panama City.

Hell by the Sea wasn’t only used for amphibious training, but had just this year become the home to the Pigeoneer Department under the 4th Engineer Special Brigade’s 828 Signal Corps. Pigeons carried messages, maps, and photographs in tube-and-saddle devices fastened to their backs. Traveling between thirty and seventy-five miles per hour, they could fly as many as six hundred miles in a day between first light and dark. They were even used in aircrafts, released at some twenty thousand feet from planes, in paper bags that helped protect them from the initial plunge.

Miles Russet was about as average as a body could be. Average build. Average height. Average looks. His nondescript uniform only adding to the averageness of his appearance.

We were seated in a small room off the main lobby, Russet and I across from each other at a large wooden desk, Ruth Ann behind me and to my right, pretending to take notes.

“That’s my second biggest fear,” he said, nodding toward my missing arm. “I’m most afraid of dying like everybody else, you know? But second to that is to come back with bits of me blown off. How’d it happen?”

“You stayed at the Magnolia Motor Court in Panama City Beach a couple of nights ago,” I said.

He didn’t say anything at first. “Ah, yeah. Why?”

“Who’d you stay with?”

“Huh? Nobody. Had my own room.”

“Who stayed with you?”

“Was just me.”

“We know that’s not true,” I said.

“Whatta you mean, fella? I swear it was just me.”

“Look, pal, you can level with us and we’ll be on our way or you can keep lying and we’ll FUBAR your life. And I mean but good. Got it? Now tell me who was with you in your room?”

“Nobody. Honest. I swear.”

“Do you know a Miki Matsumoto?”

“A what?”

“A young Japanese girl named Miki Matsumoto.”

“Oh. I thought you meant a real person. Sorry, sir. I wasn’t lying to you. Honest I wasn’t. What’s that little Jap whore sayin’?”

“Where is she?”

“Whatta you mean? How would I know?”

“Where’d you take her?”

“Back to my room for just a few minutes. She didn’t stay long at all. Little Jap bitch was just a tease. You know the type, soldier.”

With that he glanced over at Ruth Ann for the first time then quickly back to me. “Anyway. Nothing happened. She faded but fast and I hit my rack. I swear on my mother’s life that’s the truth.”

“W
as there anything in his room?” I asked. “Anything at all—left by him or her—that might help me figure out what happened or where she went?”

I was back at the Magnolia Motor Court after dropping Ruth Ann back at her place when we returned from Carrabelle.

“Well, gee, mister, I haven’t even been in it yet,” Paul said. “We’re kinda slow right now. Figured I’d clean it by the week’s end.”

“Can I look at it?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”

He grabbed a key off a hook on the board behind him, and I followed him out into the night.

The breeze was less brisk, but still strong, and the temperature had dropped even more. Clouds shrouded the moon and from somewhere a shudder banged against the boards beneath it, a continuous, monotonous knocking like a persistent visitor in the middle of the night.

“Guess I should’ve checked the room before now,” he said.

I looked around at the vacant motor court.

“Anybody staying here tonight?”

He shook his head. “Not at the moment.”

Nothing around us for miles. We could be the only two people on the planet—a thought made more disturbing by the wicked whine of the wind and the slapping of the shudder.

When he unlocked and opened the door, he reached in and slid his hand up to turn on the light, then stood aside to let me enter.

What I stepped into was a small but immaculate old room that smelled a little stale and musty.

“Huh,” he said behind me. “Guess Joe must’ve cleaned it when I wasn’t here. I didn’t realize.”

“Who?”

“My boss. The day manager.”

“You sure this is the right room?”

“Well yeah. I rented it to them myself.”

“Them?”

“I mean him. He rented the room. Didn’t bring her back ’til later. Became their room I guess.”

“Smells like it’s been a while since anybody was in here.”

“All our rooms smell like that. No matter what we do. We can’t get that old air smell out of ’em. They’ve just set up too long. I could ask Joe if he found anything when he comes in.”

I nodded. “Thanks. Do you mind if we look in every room? Just for my—”

“Sure. I don’t mind. Got nothing else to do. Let me grab the keys.”

“That’s not a master?”

He shook his head. “’Fraid not. I’ll be right back.”

He dashed away and I waited, wondering if Russet had told the truth, and if Miki Matsumoto had really left his room early and on her own, where she went.

When Paul got back, we began searching the place room by room.

Every room was more or less identical, and each time, as if a ritual, he would unlock and open the door, turn on the light, stand aside, and let me enter.

When he did it on the fourth room we looked in, cabin 5, the light didn’t come on at first.

When it finally did flicker on to offer a dim, ghostly greenish glow, I found what I was seeing shocking, but not surprising.

There, spread-eagle on the bed, wrists and ankles tied, blindfold over her eyes, gag in her mouth, Miki Matsumoto was naked, dried blood between her thighs, on the sheet between her legs, and crusted in her nostrils.

“She was alive when you were out here earlier,” he said.

And then … blow to the back of the head, knees buckling, body pitching forward, unconscious before I hit the floor.

Chapter 28

“G
oddamn Jap bitch,” he said, looking over at her. “Who the hell has you looking for her?”

He had me tied up in the bathroom, my arm bound to my body by a thick grass rope wrapped around me several times, my feet bound at the ankles. He had dumped me in the tub, my head next to the faucet. Beyond him through the door, I could see Miki’s body on the bed. I was dazed and weak, and he had me tied up but good. I didn’t see any possible way out of the situation. I was about to die in the bathtub at a roadside motor court in the middle of nowhere. How had I let this happen?

My head was full of snakes and they were crawling.

“Who all knows she even came here?” he said. “I guess that other Jap cunt is running her mouth to beat the band.
Goddamn it
.”

He had a large kitchen knife, which he waved as he spoke, looking wild-eyed back and forth between me and the girl as he did.

He kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. It was all I could do to think.

I thought about how if I died tonight I would have failed not only to save Lauren, but to settle things with those who helped rip her from this life she so loved.

I thought about how many people had tried to kill me, how many still were. Would I really die by the hand of this splotchy-faced boy? I had been shot, stabbed, had my arm blown off, withstood torture by a blonde Nazi bitch. I had survived a struggle to the death with the legendary Ray Parker, former Chicago cop and Pinkerton, and now a motel clerk was going to be the one to finally do it, finally finish me off.

I thought about how inept I was, how bad I was at this job I was doing, this type of work that had been the only type of work I had ever really done as an adult. And it wasn’t just that I was wounded and dismembered, but to let happen what just happened, to let a little weak blond boy get me in such a position showed just how compromised mentally I was these days. Was it
these days
? The loss of Lauren and the rest? Or had I never been as good as I thought I once was?

“She’s a Jap,” he was saying. “A Jap. A whore Jap at that. Well hell, I guess they all are. But why would anybody be looking for her? What the fuck’s wrong with you, fella?”

He still wasn’t looking at me. Not really. He was mostly glancing over his shoulder at Miki, and buzzing all around, his eyes darting from surface to surface like a housefly.

In order to put me in the tub, he was forced to fold me up, placing my legs beneath me. With my arm tied straight down my body, my hand wasn’t far from my ankle and the holster strapped to it. I was sure he would have removed the weapon, but realized how crazy it would be not to confirm.

“All you had to do was ask,” he said. “I’d’ve let you fuck her.”

Reaching down with my hand and shifting my weight so I could bring my leg back and up a bit, I felt my trouser for the holster and gun beneath. Neither were there.

Think. What can I do? How can I …

It occurred to me that I might be able to push up with my legs and lunge toward him, but even if I could, which was doubtful from my folded, numb legs, I wouldn’t be able to do more than bump into him. I couldn’t even wrestle him for the knife, couldn’t grab it even if I was able to knock it out of his hand.

I was a blunt object. Dead weight. Useless.

A young girl had lived a nightmare of rape and torture and imprisonment. I had had a chance to save her and failed. Hell, I couldn’t even save myself.

There was nothing I could do, but I had to do something, had to try. Something.

Without a plan, without hope, without a prayer, I pushed myself up out of the tub just high enough to fall over the edge flat on the floor.

Paul’s reaction was one of surprise then laughter.

In genuine amusement, he began laughing so hard I thought he might wet himself.

“What’re you supposed to be? A log? You gonna roll over here and hurt me? Huh?”

Jerking back as far as I could, I kicked my bound legs as hard as I could at him, sweeping his legs out from underneath him.

He fell hard.

His back bent over the side of the tub as his head crashed into the other side, making a loud crack.

The knife fell to the floor and bounced toward me.

I reached for it, but couldn’t get it, couldn’t grasp the handle because my hand was bound too tight against my leg.

I leaned up to look at him.

He was not moving.

Had the blow to the head knocked him unconscious?

A few seconds later when he started moving, I realized he’d just had the wind knocked out of him.

I grasped for the knife again but it was no good.

I had no idea what to do, and I felt so weak and helpless.

Slinging myself around and rolling and pushing up as best I could, I got to my feet, slamming into the door frame and bouncing back.

But somehow I managed to remain on my feet.

Having no other options, I jumped on top of him in the tub.

Jumping over and over again—and over again, I stomped him.

I stomped his chest and abdomen, his head and neck.

I jumped on him like a kid on a motel bed, only far more violently and far less fun.

I could hear bones cracking and fracturing, hear him moaning and groaning, crying and shrieking, but I didn’t stop, just continued to stomp.

Eventually, exhausted and lightheaded, blood dripping from the stitches I had ripped loose in my abdomen, I lost my balance and collapsed on top of the kid.

Out of breath, out of my mind, for a long time I was unable to move.

Wheezing, coughing, panting, bleeding, I could feel my body coming down off the adrenaline high.

Soon I began to tremble, tremors running the length of my three limbs.

It took a while, but eventually I was able to get up again and work myself free.

Stumbling into the room and over to the bed, I could see that Miki was still breathing, was still alive. I staggered out of the room and into Ruth Ann’s car with her.

Unsure exactly where the group was hiding, I went back to the area near the dunes where I had met with both Bunko and Rina. Parking on the side of the highway, I began blowing my horn and flashing my headlights.

Over and over again. Blowing. Flashing. Flashing. Blowing.

Inside of ten minutes, one of the young Japanese gunsels who worked for Miki’s uncle appeared at my door, tapping on the glass with the butt of his revolver.

His eyes grew wide when he saw the condition Miki was in on the seat beside me.

“Get her mom and uncle now,” I said. “Hurry.”

He did.

Help arrived within minutes.

Bunko, Rina, and a handful of other young men and women whisked Miki away and I wondered if I’d ever see her again.

I then led her uncle and two carloads of young men back to the Magnolia and watched as they took Paul away to give him the big sendoff kill, if I hadn’t already beaten them to it, then cleaned away all evidence and every trace that Miki, Rina, or I had ever been at the motel. They then torched the cabin where it had all happened—this after I talked them out of burning down the entire place.

Afterward, my head still filled with snakes, I drove back to Ruth Ann’s, collapsed onto the couch, and fell fast asleep.

The nightmares came right away. And stayed.