Jungle Rules (43 page)

“Of course, Dicky Doo took Stanley Tufts to Okinawa with him so he could get him off the case and put that shark Charlie in charge of the prosecution. He had to throw in his best gun considering how you and Wayne outplayed their hand and got the judge to reduce the charges from first-degree murder and all,” Carter said, standing and wiping his nose on his arm.

“Oh, hell, I know that,” O’Connor said, and then laughed. “I’m looking forward to seeing the circus that Charlie will want to unleash. However, we’ll concede those facts and jump right to mitigating circumstances, which will park most of his long train of witnesses on the siding, and leave him only these three bigots to confront our ax murderer, who has his own racial issues. Then we do have our straight-arrow kid from Houston, this young Marine, Wendell Carter. By the way, he any relation to you?”

“Of course not! The young man is a Negro,” Michael Carter exclaimed and frowned.

“He’s half Cherokee, from his full-blood mother, and his father’s grandfather was Irish, a railroad terrier named Carter who took a slave girl as his wife,” O’Connor said, spreading a big smile. “So if only a third or fourth of this guy’s heritage comes from African lines, what does that make him? I think more Cherokee than anything.”

“He regards himself, as do his friends consider him, a Negro,” Carter said, unconsciously raising his nose, showing his strong Boston elitist, limousine-liberal side.

“I just thought that since you’ve got Irish ancestry, and had the same last name, you might be kin,” O’Connor said, checking his uniform in the full-length mirror fastened to the barracks wall. “Also, when you’re around Wendell or Celestine, or any of the other defense witnesses, try using the term ‘black’ instead of ‘Negro.’ I think these guys prefer it. I know I do.”

“Well, excuse me, but I said ‘Negro,’ not ‘nigger,’ ” Carter huffed.

“These days, ‘Negro’ is not cool. Kind of reminds me of ‘Mick,’ if you know what I mean,” O’Connor said with a sharp edge to his voice and no smile.

Michael Carter put up his hands and conceded the point to Terry O’Connor.

“Now, tell me why you were on your knees, Michael,” O’Connor said, and put his arm across the gangly man’s shoulder.

“As you know, Lieutenant McKay and I have to face Major-Select Heyster and Major Dickinson next week in the trial of this boy who shot the prostitute in the ear,” Carter said, putting on his cover.

“So I hear,” O’Connor answered, walking toward the door with Carter. “They mean to humiliate you.”

“Hard to humiliate a person like me,” Carter said, hanging his head. “My client deserves better, though, and I am such a loser.”

“What the fuck happened, Mike?” O’Connor said, stopping on the barracks’ front porch and looking Carter in the eye.

“Dicky Doo is a pervert,” Carter said, and fought back tears. “I believe that he wants to make a spectacle of this trial because the hooker, well, the prostitute, she is not at all what we think.”

“What is she, Mata Hari?” O’Connor quipped, letting his growing impatience get the best of him. “Michael, spit it out. I don’t have but a minute to waste here.”

“Well, I interviewed Corporal James Gillette, finally,” Carter began and sighed. “I had to get over to the brig at six this morning because they had him going on a working party at seven o’clock.”

“Mike, the point!” O’Connor snapped.

“The reason he shot that hooker is because she has a dick!” Carter said, and then sighed and moaned.

“A dick?” O’Connor squawked, and then laughed.

“Yes! She’s one of those, you know, like the Benny boys in the Philippines,” Carter said, closing his eyes, embarrassed.

“Yeah, a horse of a different color, so to speak,” O’Connor chuckled. “Feminine housing but masculine plumbing. I’ve heard of them, you know, big tits and a dick, but never saw one. I thought that the police report said they had gotten into a lovers’ spat, he lost his temper, and blew off her ear.”

“It does,” Carter croaked, and let out another deep sigh. “This morning I asked what they had fought about, and Gillette whispered the answer to me. He said that instead of a blow job, he had changed his mind and wanted to have, you know, intercourse. The girl refused, so he pushed her down and pulled off her panties, and found, well—”

“So at the sight of her dick he lost it and started shooting,” O’Connor said with a laugh. “Hers was probably bigger than his, which pissed him off doubly bad.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Carter said, snuffing his nose and wiping away tears. “Dicky Doo and Charlie Heyster will have a riot with a transsexual whore. You think this morning will be a circus when the Ku Klux Klan meets the Black Panthers? Just wait!”

“Hold on, Michael, let’s consider this for a moment,” O’Connor said, taking the dejected captain by the arm. “Don’t you see that this Miss Dick represents your ace in the hole? Hell, no Marine juror with a set of balls can blame this Gillette kid for blowing off this fruitcake’s ear. In the same pair of shoes, even Dicky Doo would have wanted to kill him or her or whatever you call this cocksucker.”

“You think so?” Carter said, smiling.

“What about the two guys McKay represented in this?” O’Connor said, cutting across the lawn toward the law center.

“McKay is another issue,” Carter said, biting his lower lip thoughtfully. “He’s got me concerned.”

“Yeah, you don’t even have to say it,” O’Connor answered, frowning and shaking his head. “He spends more time these days throwing grenades out Lobo’s airplane window than he does in the office. Tommy’s got a real short-timer attitude along with that baggage about his buddy’s death that he’s dragging around.”

“McKay bought a plea deal right off the bat for his two clients tied to Jim Gillette’s case. In this instance I think that even I could have gotten them off clean,” Carter said, still nibbling his lip. “My client said that his buddies knew nothing. They waited outside and had no idea of anything going on with him and this prostitute inside the apartment. Understandably, he never told them about the dick issue, either. These two guys just came running when they heard the gunshot. They only tried to help. Did everything they could, and even offered to get a doctor. However, the hooker called the cops, so they got scared and ran.”

“You can’t get the thing dropped?” O’Connor said, pulling open the law center’s main door.

“Everything has gone through,” Carter said, following O’Connor through the entrance. “These two guys accepted a bust to lance corporal and a month’s pay fine. What’s done is done.”

“So what about your guy?” O’Connor said, waving hello at Wendell Carter, who sat in the hallway across from Laddie Cross and the late Buster Rein’s two other cohorts. “Will he plea out?”

“He tried as soon as McKay got the papers on his buddies processed,” Carter said, waving at the black Marine, too. “He figured a bust to lance corporal and a fine seemed acceptable, considering that he did shoot the hooker’s ear off.”

“I think it’s fair,” O’Connor said, smiling, “even though the shooting was justifiable from the perspectives of most Marines.”

“Major Dickinson says that since it’s a high-profile incident, a case of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, and the command wants to satisfy the public outrage, it must at least go to a summary or special courts-martial. They are hellbent to put my client in the brig for a good long while,” Carter said, sighing.

Something about the whole story kept itching Terry O’Connor’s brain. He stopped in the hallway outside the courtroom and pondered: Why hadn’t anyone from the other side mentioned that the whore was a transsexual? Not even the police report detailed anything about it. It only listed the victim with a female name, when it should have shown a male name with a feminine alias. A gunshot wound to her ear apparently required no medical inspection of her plumbing. Then the lawyer’s eyes began to twinkle and he started laughing.

“Michael, have you told anyone else about this? You know, the true nature of the beast, so to speak?” O’Connor asked, taking his colleague by the arm and leading him away from earshot of the crowd.

“No,” Carter blinked. “Corporal Gillette only told me about it this morning. He’s terribly embarrassed, you know, going for sex with another man and all. When Charlie Heyster parades that in court, poor Corporal Gillette will be a laughingstock. That’s why I got so upset. Why I had to pray about it.”

“Cheer up, pal. Gillette will be fine with it, believe me. This isn’t bad at all. It’s really pretty good. The chick with a dick drops an atom bomb on the prosecution and thus becomes a big plus for your defense. You know what’s really funny? I’ll bet you anything that Dicky Doo and Charlie the shyster don’t have a clue that their little bimbo is really a guy,” O’Connor said in a low voice, and then spread a wide smile at Carter.

 
“GANGWAY! COMING THROUGH! Emergency. Sorry, fellows,” Dudley Dickinson roared as he rumbled his way past two lieutenants standing outside the forward lavatory on the Flying Tigers flight to Okinawa. Then when he got to the restroom’s closed entrance, its “occupied” sign showing above the latch, he began pounding.

“Hey, you inside the head! Hurry the fuck up!” the major bellowed, slamming his palm against the closed door. “You hear me? Break it off, and make way. I’ve got to get in there right now!”

In a moment the air force colonel from row six pushed the folding hatch open and stepped out with his
Stars and Stripes
newspaper clutched under his arm.

“Major, you don’t have to be rude,” the colonel said, shaking his head and walking past the two lieutenants, who now stood smiling at Dicky Doo.

Dickinson leaped inside the cramped lavatory and slammed the door shut. Gwen Ebberhardt stood in the forward galley area, smoking a cigarette, and laughed.

“Oh, God, please, God! Please help me!” Stanley Tufts whined, dancing on his toes as he finally reached the line for the two rear heads, joining three other Marines who waited their turns. A full bird colonel stood patiently ahead of two sergeants, so the captain dared not just barge his way to the front despite his emergency.

The senior officer and two enlisted men looked back at Tufts.

“Are you okay, Skipper?” the colonel asked, immediately concerned about the obviously distressed man.

The lawyer gasped for air and suddenly locked his heels while his arms levitated to their natural, hot-seagull stance. Gas pressure in Tufts’ bowels sent lightning-bolt pain through his gut, pushing him beyond his limits of internal control. Frozen in place, Stanley desperately pressed his legs and butt cheeks together as hard as he could hold them, hoping to keep anything from escaping. Nonetheless, as his gut rumbled again, his sphincter let go.

“Oh, God!” he shrieked, looking straight in the concerned colonel’s pale blue eyes while a flood of diarrhea exploded out of his ass with the force of a fire hose. The foul smell from it moved through the air inside the plane like a shock wave from an artillery round. Horrified passengers, mostly Marines, fled for cover.

Watery, brown excrement ran onto the floor after gushing along both legs of Stanley Tufts’ trousers, leaking down his socks and over his shoes as well as loading the seat of his drawers.

“Oh, God,” the lawyer whimpered as he stood with his arms out, his legs now spread wide, his lower regions covered in shit, and two brown puddles surrounding his feet, creeping across the airliner’s light blue carpet.

Just as his bowels rumbled again, and another bubbling eruption gushed into his boxer shorts, the Marine colonel grabbed Captain Tufts by the shoulder and shoved him inside the now open lavatory, where an army specialist fourth class had just escaped and leaped past them like a deer fleeing a lion.

Several more thunderous downpours struck the captain as he perched on the throne, feeling as though the violent contractions would turn him inside out. Then, after stripping off everything below his waist, Stanley Tufts spent nearly half an hour trying to wash out his boxer shorts in the lavatory’s tiny sink, holding the spring-loaded water valve open with his thumb while trying to scrub with the fingertips of his one free hand. Finally he simply tossed the soiled underwear into the trash bin under the bathroom counter.

He took off his shoes and socks, rinsed them in a small puddle of water in the little stainless steel basin, and hung his socks over the counter to dry while he ran a paper towel over his shoes. The reeking khaki trousers presented the greatest challenge, since the seat and inside of both legs had gotten soaked with his diarrhea.

While sitting on the toilet, emptying what remained in his bowels, the captain scrubbed and rubbed the fabric, using the liquid soap from the dispenser above the sink. Finally he just gave up and began to moan and stare at the floor.

“I think he may have died in there,” the Marine colonel said to the brunette flight attendant who with her blond partner oversaw the rear cabin area. After waiting so long, the officer had finally sat down on the armrest of an aisle seat on the last row, waiting to see if he could help the captain.

“Are you okay, sir?” the blond woman called, tapping on the lavatory door.

“Oh, probably,” Stanley answered, sighing. Like all the other passengers, he had checked his valise to the baggage compartment before boarding the plane. The airline allowed only briefcases and small satchels in the passenger area, stored under the seats or in the overhead luggage bins. On a Stateside flight he would have had a folding suit bag stuffed in the hold above his seat, and someone could have gotten him a fresh pair of pants from it. Now he had no choice but to put on the wet, stained, foul-smelling khaki trousers.

“Look, Captain,” the colonel finally said, rapping his knuckles on the door. “Want me to come in there and see if I can help you get squared away?”

“No, thank you, sir,” Tufts called back. “I’ll come out in a minute.”