“What’s the matter?”
“The armory’s always locked. There’s a padlock on the door.”
“Who’s got the key?”
“It’s in the safe,” Cates said.
“What safe?”
“The one here. Right here in my cabin.”
It was five minutes to seven and he wasn’t back yet, and she didn’t know what to do. She stood near the window in the big old house on the beach, the house silent and gray around her, looking out over the road and to the town beyond, where she had first seen the fire and later the fire engines coming to put it out. She hadn’t supposed anything had happened to him. They had put the fire out, hadn’t they?
She wondered suddenly if he’d taken off.
Well, no, he wouldn’t do that.
No, she didn’t suppose he’d do anything like that.
Still, he’d been acting very jumpy ever since those two came to the door. What had that fellow been doing with a rifle, anyway? Even Rog said it was the rifle that bothered him — it bothers me too, I’ll tell you the truth.
Maybe I ought to take a walk across the road.
He wouldn’t just walk out on me, would he?
I don’t know. Who knows with married men? I should never have started up with him in the first place, in the snow that day, he wasn’t wearing a hat. She had thought at first his hair was white, but that was only the snow in it. He had parked the Cadillac around the corner from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, and walked in the snow to where she was standing by the bus stop, and then had just asked her right out if he could drop her someplace. She’d looked at the white hair and then realized it was only snow, and thought he was very good-looking and said, “I live in Maryland.”
“Did I ask?”
“No.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
“What’s this?” she said. “A pickup?”
“Yes.”
“Well, so it’s a pickup,” she answered, and shrugged, and went with him to where the car was parked, noticing the VIP license plate immediately.
He wouldn’t just walk out on her, would he?
And leave her here in the middle of the swamp all alone with alligators or whatever was outside, fellows coming to the door with rifles no less?
Well, she thought.
Well, gee, what am I going to do? And suddenly she laughed.
Her laughter came back to her hollowly in the empty house.
Fatboy and Rodiz were sitting in chairs near the chart table, smoking and talking in quiet voices. Rodiz said something in Spanish, and Fatboy, apparently understanding, broke into quiet laughter. Their earlier dispute about leaving the dead policemen in the automobile seemed to have been forgotten. Jason watched them from the wheelhouse, and smiled in pleasure. Everything would be all right. There was a feel to the entire operation that told him nothing could go wrong any more. He closed his eyes and felt the gentle rocking of the ship, listened to the pleasant hum of Rodiz talking in Spanish.
It started with the sale of the foul-weather jacket, for which he got what amounted to a hundred and twelve dollars in yen. He began stealing regularly after that, he didn’t know why. The 832 would pull into a Japanese port and her skipper would go ashore and visit here and there, and then the 832 would vanish for a little while and a little sugar would vanish with her, or a few machine parts, or some grapefruit juice, or some rice, all of which he would later trade in Tokyo or Yokohama for more paper money than he knew existed in the world, money that could buy saki or broads or crumby souvenirs, but not much of anything else — or so he thought, at first. He enjoyed taking money from the Japanese. He enjoyed hearing them plead, watching their eyes grow round with greed and longing, holding to his price each time, ten dollars in yen for a sack of sugar, fifty-three dollars in yen for an Army blanket he stole in Fukuoka, two hundred dollars in yen for a Jeep tire he stole in Sasebo and then smuggled ashore in a crate he said was full of souvenirs he wanted to ship back home. That was the first and only time anyone ever asked him what he was taking ashore with him. The person who asked was a new Shore Patrolman at the gate. He apologized and giggled and kept calling him “sir” afterward. “Yes, sir, sorry, sir, but I’m supposed to ask, sir. All kinds of stuff has been finding its way ashore, sir,” two hundred bucks in yen for the tire.
He counted up his money in February and discovered he had close to fifteen thousand dollars in occupation yen, which was real money to the Japs, the only money in circulation in the country, the only money that could buy fish or rice or vegetables. It seemed grossly unfair to Jason that these dirty little cockeyed brown bastards could spend the money on things they actually needed, and here he had a fortune in the stuff and all he could do was wipe his ass with it. He couldn’t cash it in for dollars because of the strict monetary regulations, and he couldn’t send it home to Annabelle to cash because it was clearly marked “Occupation,” and was about as valuable in the States as the fake money in a game of Monopoly.
Along about that time, well, maybe it was a little later, yes, it must have been early in March, he heard about a machinist’s mate who had taken apart a motor launch and was shipping it home piece by piece, the rudder, the screw, the carburetor, the whole damn thing, part by part, listing each separate part as a souvenir he was sending to his mother. Jason knew intuitively that the story was exaggerated, but the machinist’s ingenuity gave him an idea. If he couldn’t cash in his yen or send it home, why not spend it on something he could send home?
Why not spend it on something like pearls?
Kemo was a smart little whore he was shacking up with in Tokyo. It was Kemo he sounded out about maybe buying some Japanese pearls. He had already hinted to her that he was picking up a few things here and there, making a few bucks on the side by selling a few choice items to her countrymen, all of which Kemo understood perfectly because first of all she was forty-three years old, a good deal older than he at the time, and also she was a whore with a whore’s honest enjoyment of larceny. He didn’t trust her enough to tell her exactly how much he was pulling in — no sense getting her all excited, right? — but he did give her some idea of his operation, and the kind of stuff he was picking up. Like one night he told her about the fan he’d stolen in Kagoshima, right from under the eyes of the yeoman first class in the office. That was back in January. He still had to laugh when he thought about that fan. Kemo laughed, too. She always covered her mouth when she laughed. He thought that was cute as hell. Kemo knew he thought it was cute, and she did it because she knew he thought it was cute. She referred to her genitals as her “monkey.” “Monkey catch Jasonn,” she would say. “Monkey take Jasonn from Anna-burr.” Jason would laugh and tell her nobody in the world was going to take him from Annaburr, especially not an old Jap whore who lived in a bombed-out Tokyo alley. “You better be careful,” he said, “or I’ll report you to the M.P.s and MacArthur himself will come down in person and put a scarlet letter right here on your left one.”
Maybe she believed him.
Anyway, it was natural for him to sound her out about the pearls, and it was natural for her to know somebody who knew somebody — everybody in Japan always knew somebody who knew somebody, especially the whores. Especially the smart whores like Kemo.
“It coss much,” she said.
Jason said it was up to her to find some that didn’t cost much, you dig? and Kemo said she would investigate the matter. She then asked him to get out because an Army sergeant friend of hers was coming in ten minutes, and he was a very jealous man. Jason wanted to know if she had warned the sergeant that he might easily catch the clap from her, and then he left and didn’t see her again until the boat came back to Sasebo in the middle of March. He borrowed a jeep from the base and drove up to Tokyo, parking the jeep outside the makeshift tin-and-wood shack where Kemo lived, and rapping on the door and then going in to find her asleep near the small burning hibachi.