Maxwell smiled happily, the beer foam covering his thick black mustache. “You’re a First Class Petty Officer last time I looked at your service record, old Ginch. First Class can’t give orders to a Chief, you know that.”
Ginty lowered his head and stared at Maxwell. “I don’t want no trouble with you, Chief. But a Chief tells another Chief not to do something, savvy? First Class don’t go tellin’ a Chief not to throw a silly fuckin’ Reserve offa no balcony. Chief’s gotta do something like that. Another thing, you’re nothin’ but a fucking ex-Marine joined the Navy because the chow was better. So go find Hindu and do your thing.”
Maxwell rose and flexed his wide, muscular shoulders.
“I had a Gunnery Sergeant when I was in the Corps was just like you, Ginty. He was so ugly that when he farted you couldn’t tell which end it came out of!” He whooped with joy and dodged the empty beer stein Ginty threw at him. He was still laughing as he went up through the white sand to the hotel.
Breakfast hours in the Royal Hawaiian were generous by Navy standards. The dining room served coffee and doughnuts from 0530 to 0700 for early risers and for those who wanted to get into town to be first in line at the crowded brothels. Regular breakfasts were served from seven until mid-morning. Each table was stocked with pitchers of ice-cold milk and tomato juice for those who had imbibed too well the evening before. Ginty left his room shortly after eight and padded down the hall. He passed an open door and heard Hindu Hendershot’s Kentucky twang singing. He went into the room. It was empty.
“You in here, Chief?” he bellowed. “I can hear you moanin’ but where the fuck are you?”
“In the head,” Hendershot’s voice floated out of the bathroom into the room.
Ginty walked into the big bathroom and saw Hendershot, stark naked, walking up and down in a bathtub that was a third full of soapy water.
“What in the fuck you doin’?”
“Washing my clothes,” Hendershot said happily. “Walkin’ up and down on ‘em is easier than bendin’ over and doin’ it by hand. Makes my head ache to bend over the tub. Where you goin’?”
“Breakfast,” Ginty said. “Gonna eat this hotel right out of hot cakes and sausages. Get dressed and let the clothes soak. Come on and eat.”
A duty Master at Arms hailed the two men as they walked across the lobby.
“You Mako people, Chief?”
Hendershot nodded.
“There’s a notice going up on the bulletin board right soon,” the MAA said. “All you people got to be in uniform of the day at fourteen hundred. They’re gonna take you back to your ship.”
Ginty pushed forward, his big face hard. “Whaddya mean, take us back! We only got here yesterday!”
“It’s only for an hour or two,” the MAA said. “You’re getting a new Skipper. It’s a change of command thing.” He turned to Hendershot.
“Would you pass the word, Chief? Much obliged if you would. Lotta people don’t know we got a bulletin board.”
Ginty was starting on his third stack of hotcakes when Johnny Paul, his Second Class Torpedoman, came up to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Who asked you to sit down?” Ginty growled.
“Ginch, a terrible thing happened!” Paul said.
“What’d you do, piss the bed?”
“It’s Hernandez. You know, the First Class got the After Room?”
“I know who Hernandez is and where he works,” Ginty said. He speared a wedge of hotcake and pushed in into his mouth and chewed, his eyes on Paul.
“I don’t have to have his name, rate, serial number and blood type. What about Spook?”
“He’s blind!” Paul said in a low voice.
“You crazy?” Ginty said. “He was drinkin’ beer with us on the beach yesterday afternoon.”
“They heard him screaming!” Paul said.
“You are the worst bastard I ever saw to tell anyone anything!” Ginty said. “Will you the fuck get it out?”
“The below-decks watch in the relief crew on the Mako heard Spook screaming!” Paul looked around the dining room and then he bent over the table and dropped his voice to just above a whisper.
“Guy I know came out here to tell me. Spook and Barney Saunders, the quartermaster, went aboard the ship yesterday afternoon, late. The below-decks watch said they went up in the Conning Tower and closed the hatch to the Control Room. He said they had a bottle looked like it was gin with them.
“After a while the below-decks watch heard a funny noise in the Conning Tower and then he heard someone screaming and he opened the hatch and went up. Spook was on his hands and knees by the helm pukin’ and screamin’ and in between pukin’ and screamin’ he was yellin’ that he was blind. And that ain’t the worst part!”
“What’s worse?” Hendershot said quietly.
“Barney Saunders is over the other end of the Conning Tower, aft by the periscopes, and he’s sittin’ on deck and he’d put the muzzle of a forty-five in his mouth and blowed his brains all over the overhead!”
Ginty reached out a huge hand and clamped it around Johnny Paul’s arm. “Don’t you spread this scuttlebutt around, sailor! You do and I’ll personally break all your arms and legs! The shit that you people talk about! Worse than a bunch of fucking old women!”
“This ain’t scuttlebutt, Ginch!” Paul began to massage his arm where Ginty’s hand had grabbed him. The guy who came here to tell me is my cousin, he’s a Pharmacist’s Mate at the hospital at Aiea. That’s where they took Barney and Spook, to Aiea. My cousin said Barney is awful dead and Spook is blind from drinkin’ wood alcohol!”
“Shit!” Ginty said as he got to his feet. “Hindu, see you can get hold of Dusty. His old lady’s phone number ought to be in the book. I’ll try to raise Grilley, he’s a good head and we ain’t got Mike Brannon now. He’d sure as hell know what to do.”
Hendershot fell into step beside Ginty as the big man’s legs ate up the distance across the hotel lobby.
“Where the hell did they get the wood alcohol?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Ginty growled. “Hernandez wanted me to give him the key to the alky locker in my Room. Anybody but a Spic I mighta said okay, that torpedo alky is a hundred and eighty proof, good stuff for drinkin’. I told him to suck ass, he wasn’t gettin’ no key to no alky locker from me. He went off with a sour puss. Bastard musta got Saunders and gone back to the Base and found some wood alky somewheres and didn’t test it. Fuckin’ wood alky will turn you crazy! What a mess this is going to be with the new Old Man coming aboard this afternoon!”
“You know Captain Mealey?” Hendershot said as he opened a telephone book.
“No,” Ginty grunted.
“You’ll know him this afternoon,” Hendershot said as he ran his finger down the line of R listings in the telephone book. “I had him on an R-boat in Panama. Captain Mealey doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t swear and he don’t like sailors that do any of those things!”
Chapter 11
The buses rolled to a stop at the land end of the pier where Mako was docked. The crew got out, sullen and silent. They were prepared to dislike their new Commanding Officer; to be taken away from the hotel, even for an hour or two, was an insult. Captain Severn’s Chief Yeoman found Dusty Rhodes and asked him to line up the crew. Rhodes formed the grumbling sailors into two ranks and took his position at the right hand end of the first rank, two paces apart from Chief Barber. Lieutenant Grilley walked over from the small group of Mako’s officers.
“I suggested to Commander Rudd that it might be better to hold this here, as far away from Mako as we could get and yet within sight of her,” he said quietly. “Naval Intelligence has the ship sealed off while they investigate. Probably won’t be over until sometime tomorrow.” Rhodes nodded.