Weapons of choice

Cherry subsided. "Okay," he said. "Because, you know, she could have gone upside the head of her boyfriend over there." He waved a meaty paw at Sub-Lieutenant Miyazaki's corpse. "The whole damn thing's probably a lovers' tiff."

"Hey, just a minute-," said Wassman.

Francois ground her teeth and placed a restraining arm on her colleague.

"Detective, I can assure you that Captain Anderson was not having a relationship with Lieutenant Miyazaki."

Cherry rolled his eyes.

"Please don't tell me she had a little man waiting for her at home."

Francois gave him a poisonous look. She paused the recording, waited for just a beat, and then spoke again.

"Captain Anderson was gay."

The three locals were visibly perplexed.

"Are you saying that she was a happy individual?" ventured Dr. Brumm.

Captain Lunn rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Wassman swore under her breath.

Francois prayed for the patience to get her through this.

"Captain Anderson was a lesbian," she said.

She expected astonishment, even embarrassment, but in fact she herself was surprised when Detective Cherry actually laughed.

"Three strikes, hey? A nigger, a broad, and a rug muncher. Christ, what the fuck happened to America?"

27

HONOLULU, 1534 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942

Down at Wo Fats, the bar and grill favored by the chiefs and warrant officers, Eddie Mohr nursed the second of the two beers he was allowed to purchase on any given day, and held court. Half a dozen Old Navy men had gathered around him to hear him tell of the Astoria's bizarre fate.

"It was like crawling through a fucking Chinese puzzle box in there, I'm telling you," he assured the doubters. "You never seen anything like it your whole goddamn life. And these guns they got, tear a man to pieces like a fucking grizzly bear they would, but they hit steel or wood and it's like getting dusted by some dame's powder puff. That's what they call the bullets, powder puffs. A fucking obscenity, if you ask me. They got Bud Kelly with one of them. Turned his fucking head into something looked like chopped liver."

"Fuckers," somebody muttered. Mohr wasn't sure who.

"Well," said Pete Craven, "he was never that pretty a sight to begin with."

A few, sad smiles acknowledged the point. Craven, a heavily tattooed former longshoreman, now serving on the Enterprise, raised his glass.

"To Chief Kelly."

Half a dozen thick voices responded, "To Chief Kelly."

Around them the familiar chaos of Wo Fats roared on, as eternal and reassuring as the sea itself. Men cursed and bellowed. Beer steins clinked and sometimes crashed. The turntable spun and speakers crackled and blared with the hits of the day, "Goodbye Mama I'm Off to Yokohama" and "Let's Put the Axe to the Axis." A handwritten poster announced a special showing of Andy Hardy's Double Life throughout August at the Marine Canteen.

Mohr tapped himself another Camel out of the pack resting amid the confusion of empty glasses, cigar and cigarette butts, and spilled beer.

"Did I tell you about the well-deserved knuckling of Seaman Finch?" he asked nobody in particular.

Pete Craven blew a thick, blue stream of smoke down at the table.

"Only about four times so far," he said. "You heard she got topped, didn't you, Eddie? That Anderson broad. The nigger. And someone interfered with her, too, they reckon."

Mohr's beer stopped halfway to his lips.

"You're shitting me! That was her? Fuck! I heard one of their dames washed up on the beach with a Jap, but I never woulda thought it was her."

He took a meditative pull on the stein.

"Jeez, that's a fucking pity, you know. She wasn't so bad, that Anderson. For a black dame."

The other men at the table didn't visibly react to the statement, but their silence spoke for them. The fact that such a thing as a black female captain even existed was a source of amazement and not a little disbelief to those who hadn't been there. That she'd then turned up dead, and "interfered with," was kind of interesting. But Eddie Mohr sitting in Wo Fats, looking upset and glum, and saying that he thought she was all right, well that was downright disturbing.

The silence at their table seemed to balloon outward as the background roar suddenly fell right away. All around them, heads began to turn toward the front door. Soon the only sound Mohr could hear was the crackling of the speakers as Sammy Kaye crooned "Remember Pearl Harbor."

Mohr stood up, craning to see over dozens of ugly, shaven boxheads in front of him. He could just make out the silhouettes of three figures near the front of the bar. He guessed from the cut of their uniforms that they were off one of Kolhammer's ships. He was surprised. They were supposed to keep to themselves at the Moana and the Royal. As he pushed his way through the crush of thick, sweaty bodies, a hunch began forming. A few seconds later he'd confirmed it.