“Bruce and Russ, they have a jeep out back,” Dean said, pointing to his friends.
“You’ve got a camera, too!” O’Connor said, seeing the green canvas bag piled on the floor by one of the young men’s feet. “What luck! Come on, grab your gear and let’s go!”
“Where, sir?” Movie Star said, running behind the captain, along with his two buddies, who wrote stories and took pictures for the local Marine Corps newspaper, the
Sea Tiger
.
“Follow Captain Heyster! Like I said,” O’Connor squawked, jumping in the backseat of the jeep, and grabbing Movie Star by the arm and helping him into the rear compartment with him.
“I know that, but where?” Lance Corporal Bruce Dobbs said as he started the vehicle and put it in gear.
“Laundry! Head for the laundry. He had a laundry bag,” O’Connor said, looking and not seeing Charlie anywhere. “Let’s go! Step on it!”
“What’s going on with Captain Shithead?” Movie Star shouted as Lance Corporal Dobbs wheeled the utility vehicle around a corner, sliding against the curb, and nearly flipping the jeep over. “Hey, watch it, man! We about fell out!”
Terry O’Connor gripped the back of the passenger seat where Lance Corporal Russ Sherman rode, holding on to the handlebar on the jeep’s dash with both of his hands and keeping his feet on top of his camera bag to prevent it from flying out.
“Just get us there alive, Dobbs,” O’Connor said to the freewheeling driver, who maneuvered the jeep like a stock car on a figure-eight track.
“That missing dope, right?” Movie Star then said, and smiled at the captain. “Major Dickhead’s trying to blame the office snuffies for ripping it off. He’s been on our case for weeks.”
“Right,” O’Connor said, shaking his head at the lance corporal. “The shyster has accused everybody, including you guys and all of us in the defense section. He’s screamed just a little too loud, though. You know, the guilty dog barking. His hue and cry have got my suspicions up. Just suspicions, mind you.”
“Hell, sir,” Movie Star said and laughed. “Why don’t you just ask the snuffies in the office? Can’t you smell that shit in his pipe? Not even Cherry Blend can cover up burning weed, man. He’s been sampling the reefer you guys keep in that locked closet all fucking year. Happy Pounds said he even saw Heyster loading some of the shit in his tobacco pouch one morning when my man had the duty and got back early from turning off the night lights and unlocking the side hatches. Old Shithead still had the evidence room unlocked and the door standing wide open when Happy walked in the admin office, and caught a quick peek inside the prosecution section before the captain noticed him. So Hap goes out to his desk and starts rattling crap around, to let Shithead know he was back. He said that Heyster threw some kind of box in his bottom drawer and locked everything up real quick when he heard Happy rumbling around.”
Terry O’Connor looked at the lance corporal and blinked.
“Sounds interesting,” the lawyer said, and then looked at the parking area by the laundry. “However, Lance Corporal Pounds did not see dope. He saw the captain putting something in his tobacco pouch, throw something in his bottom drawer, and the evidence locker was standing open at the time. Very suspicious, but not conclusive. Plus what you guys smell him smoking may only be pipe tobacco. I’ve smelled a Canadian blend that has a very distinct aroma, much like reefer. I can’t say that I’ve noticed any scent of it in Heyster’s Cherry Blend when he’s smoked his pipe around me.”
“Well, sir, you’re the lawyer,” Movie Star said, looking for the captain that the enlisted Marines called Shithead. “As far as any of us low-life nonrates are concerned, Captain Heyster’s been ripping off the evidence locker all year long and smoking the shit. Now with a truckload of dope gone missing from the evidence locker, my bet’s that he’s selling it, too.”
“He’s not at the laundry,” O’Connor finally said after surveying the parking lot. “We either missed him or he didn’t come here.”
“He didn’t come here,” Russ Sherman said, and then pointed through a gap between buildings where he could see the roadway outside the base. “Because he went out the front gate, and looks like he’s headed to the ville.”
“Shit!” O’Connor said, seeing Charlie Heyster driving the jeep eastward toward the bridge that crossed the Han River.
“Ten to one he’s going down to the bar district,” Bruce Dobbs said as he tromped the gas and headed toward the front gate at Da Nang Air Force Base.
“Can we get off base in your jeep?” O’Connor said, grabbing the driver by the shoulder.
Lance Corporal Sherman then reached by his seat and pulled out a clipboard with a white form attached to it, and pointed to the top of the page where in bold, black letters it had stamped on it: “Off-Base Operation Authorized.”
As Bruce wheeled the jeep through the main gate, his pal Russ held up the clipboard for the sentry to see, who, in turn, noticing the captain in the backseat, waved the vehicle through without even asking them to stop. Halfway into a sliding right turn, Lance Corporal Dobbs floorboarded the gas and sped down the main drag where they had last seen Charlie Heyster driving toward Da Nang’s popular section of bars, tourist shops, and restaurants that lined the boulevard that ran along the Han River.
After crossing the bridge and making a left turn, merging into the thoroughfare jammed with bicycles, cyclo-taxis, pushcarts, pedestrians, and little, multicolored taxicabs honking to get through the crush of people and traffic, Movie Star managed to pick out the top of Captain Heyster’s head three blocks away from them.
“Got him, sir,” James Dean said, and pointed at the prosecutor creeping slowly in front of the four Marines.
“Right, I see him, too,” O’Connor nodded, and then stood in the back of the jeep to see his target better. “It looks like he is trying to pull to the curb and park up there. Dobbs, find a spot anywhere along here and we can slip closer on foot.”
Bruce Dobbs sat in the jeep while the captain, Movie Star, and Russ Sherman, with his camera bag on his shoulder, made their way to an open-front restaurant with white wrought-iron tables set out on the sidewalk.
“This will work beautifully,” Terry O’Connor said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Grab a seat and get your camera ready.”
A smiling waiter immediately descended on the trio of Marines. While Lance Corporal Sherman focused his Nikon F with an 85-to-250-millimeter f/4 Nikkor zoom lens on Charlie Heyster, who now stood on the sidewalk next to a building, obviously waiting for someone, Terry O’Connor ordered four dishes of stir-fried noodles with pork and vegetables mixed in it, and Cokes all around.
While the three men waited for the meals, Lance Corporal Dobbs managed to pull the jeep to the curb in front of the restaurant, and then joined his cohorts at their outdoor table.
“The way he keeps checking his watch and looking around, I hope he doesn’t see us,” O’Connor said, slouching low in his chair as the prosecutor’s glance turned in their direction, obviously searching for someone. “Clearly, whoever he was supposed to meet is running behind schedule. That has to have old Charlie pissed off. He’s waited, what, more than fifteen minutes now?”
“Something like that, sir,” Movie Star said, scarfing down the fried noodles after he doctored them with a healthy dose of catsup.
“Hold on!” Dobbs said, looking across the street and seeing a familiar person weaving his way through traffic, and whistling to get Heyster’s attention. “That’s fucking Sergeant Randal Carnegie! You know who he is, don’t you, guys?”
“The Chu Lai Hippie!” Movie Star said and laughed. “Now, there’s a dude that crawled out of one flaky bag!”
Russ Sherman began snapping pictures as the captain and the Chu Lai Hippie exchanged greetings. Charlie Heyster walked to his jeep and took a brown package out of his laundry bag in the backseat and handed it to Carnegie. Then the sergeant gave the prosecutor a white envelope. They shook hands again, and Heyster got in his jeep and pulled back into the jam of traffic.
“Do we follow him, sir?” Dobbs said, pushing back his chair.
Terry O’Connor sat silent for a full minute, looking up the street and watching the man Movie Star had called the Chu Lai Hippie now pulling T-shirts off a display from a street vendor’s stand and stuffing them in a large shopping bag that the merchant handed to him. Then he took the package that Heyster had passed to him, dropped it in the sack, and shoved more shirts on top of it.
“I’ve seen enough,” O’Connor said, pushing his half-eaten dish of noodles to the center of the table and then taking a big drink of Coke.
“You not going to eat that, sir?” Movie Star said, grabbing the captain’s meal and raking the noodles and pork on top of what was left of his own dish.
“Go ahead, I lost my appetite,” O’Connor said, taking another sip of the Coke. Then he looked at the three lance corporals. “Tell me about that character.”
“Who, Sergeant Carnegie?” Dobbs said, finishing his food and then lighting a cigarette. “Everybody knows him. He peddles dope. Him and most of his flight crew out of Marble Mountain.”
“How come you call him the Chu Lai Hippie then, if he’s from Marble Mountain?” O’Connor said, watching the man now weaving his way back across the street with the big shopping bag in his hand.
“Hell if I know, sir,” Movie Star said, shrugging and talking with his mouth full. “I suppose he worked out of Chu Lai at some point and got the name there. I guess it just stuck with him. It sounds better than the Marble Mountain Hippie.”
“How about these pictures, sir?” Russ Sherman said, winding the roll of film in his camera and taking it out.
“Can you develop them and make me some eight-by-ten blowups?” O’Connor asked, laying a dollar bill on the table as a tip for the waiter.
“Sure thing, sir,” the lance corporal said. “I’ll knock it out this afternoon and tonight, and bring them by your office first thing tomorrow morning.”
“How about I pick them up from you in the barracks, at Movie Star’s rack, say, seven-thirty in the morning,” O’Connor said, considering that he didn’t want the photographs seen by any unwelcome eyes. “Be sure to put them inside a big envelope, too, and don’t show them to anyone.”
“Got you covered, sir,” Sherman said, and finished his drink.
“Whenever you’re ready, gentlemen,” O’Connor said, and looked at his wristwatch and then at Lance Corporal Dean. “I never thought about it when we left, but won’t Major Dickinson be looking for you, Movie Star?”
“Let him look, sir,” Dean laughed, getting the last forkful of fried noodles off his dish and downing a final gulp of his drink. “It’ll be good for him.”
“He’ll give you a hard time if he can’t find you,” O’Connor said, walking to the back of the jeep and climbing in.
“He does that anyway,” Dean said, climbing in the vehicle next to the captain. “Besides, I’m too short to give a shit. Forty-six days and a wake-up.”
“Oh, fuck, if I had that much time I’d jump off a cliff. You call that short?” Dobbs said from the driver’s seat as he pulled into traffic. “I’ve got twenty-seven days and a wake-up, and my pal Russ here, he’s down to twenty.”
“Yeah, man,” Russ Sherman said, looking over his shoulder at the two Marines. “I’m so short that I have to look up to see down.”
“You think that’s short,” Movie Star cackled, not to be outdone. “I’m so short I can walk under a snake’s belly wearing a top hat. Oh, and I’m so short I’ve got to use a stepladder to get out of my rack.”
“Yes, sir, all three of us are two-digit midgets,” Dobbs said, making a right turn and moving down a side street back toward the air base. “We can stack BBs while standing on our heads. There’s no amount of grief that anybody can hand to us these days that will make us lose a minute of sleep.”
“That’s right, sir,” Movie Star said, leaning back in the seat and slipping on his black plastic-rimmed sunglasses. “Dicky Doo don’t mean shit. In a little over a month, I’ll be back at Malibu looking at all the chicks with big tits and tight asses and living large, man. Living large.”
“Sir, how much time you got left?” Sherman asked the captain, leaning his arm over the back of the passenger seat and looking toward the rear of the jeep at the officer.
“I’m still a three-digit midget,” O’Connor said, and shook his head. “Something like a hundred and fifty-five days, and a wake-up, of course.”
“Oh, my God, sir!” Dobbs hooted as he drew near the air base. “If I had that much time left, I think I would slash my wrists!”
“MY, MY, IF it isn’t Sergeant Randal Carnegie if I live and breathe,” Melvin Biggs said, stepping in front of the Marine with a black leather thong tied around his wrist and another one with a brass peace symbol hanging on it tied around his neck.
Just as the Chu Lai Hippie tried to turn and go in the opposite direction, Gunnery Sergeant Jack Jackson cut him off and stopped him in his tracks.
“Not so fast, sweetpea,” the gunny said, taking the Marine by the arm and reaching for the big shopping bag he carried.
“You don’t mind if we take a peek inside, do you?” the CID lieutenant said, grabbing the sack as Randal Carnegie pulled it from the gunny’s hands.
“Man, you can’t do that,” Carnegie pled, and reached to take back the shopping bag from the sandy-haired officer. “You got to have a warrant to search my shit, man.”
“Maybe back in the world,” Gunny Jackson said, pulling out a handful of T-shirts and dropping them on the sidewalk. “Not here, pal.”
“Look, man, I know my rights, and you can’t search me without cause,” the sergeant protested, picking up the T-shirts and trying to put them back in the sack. “Besides, you’re fucking up my clothes. You’re going to have to pay for them that you ruined. I’ve got lawyers that will see to that. I got friends in high places, too, that will fix you guys. You wait.”
“No, you wait, shit-for-brains!” Gunny Jackson snarled. “You don’t fucking threaten me or my lieutenant. We can strip you naked right here on the street and I can shove my flashlight up your ass looking for dope if I want to. You’re under military rules over here, smart-ass! Now, kiss the pavement for me while I take a look in this sack of crap you’re holding.”