THE HAPPY HAT (11 page)

Chapter 17

LCDR Skagan

Consolidating the contaminated Vietnam plaster casts had greatly simplified the administrative aspects of Skagan’s life. In addition she now had Ike Kaplan who was as compulsive about his work as she was. She pulled his Navy file and couldn’t believe he was a college grad.
I have to know more about this man
.
He’s close to my age, intelligent, and has my work ethic. I sense he wants to get to know me better.

It was Friday and she had thrown out her web to Kaplan. She sensed some magnetism between them. She threw one more cupid’s arrow after the scumbag plaster disposal team left with their truck full of the bacteria laden plaster shells. Kaplan had just closed and locked the vertical metal accordion gate to the cast room. There was a slight chill from the developing cool night blown in during the loading dock activity. The cast room doors were closed. They were alone.

“We both live off the hospital compound Ike. There are things we need to talk about–together.” She locked her steel blues onto his agate jewel-brown eyes.

Kaplan didn’t smile or project any negative vibrations. He wrote on a piece of notepad paper three words. “Address. Time. Phone.”

Skagan received the note pressed into her hand without removing eye contact. She knew her pulse was racing but didn’t know why. She broke the vaporous connection. “I’ll page you before you leave tonight.”

‡

“Dr. Norman you have to sign off for the plaster pick-up van.” Kaplan caught Norman before he headed out to meet with Zettler. “LCDR Skagan already endorsed the invoice.”

“Good work. If it looks like I try to avoid Skagan it’s because I am trying to avoid her. She drives me nuts with her preoccupation with those festering casts. We have more important things to do like taking care of these patients.” Norman looked at his watch. “Okay, here you go. I’m off duty now.” Norman started to leave and then turned around. “Oh, by the way at the change of the watch Dr. Brisbane wants to add a page to the cast-off casts departure invoice.”

“Dr. Buzby Brisbane from infectious diseases?” Kaplan remembered the name.

“Yes. Brisbane is as obsessive compulsive about bacteria as Skagan is about Vietnam plaster but in a friendlier way. A senior corpsman from F-1 will be taking cultures from each cast at the time of removal. The ward corpsman from each G ward will actually do the swabs but t F-1 guy gets the reports, compiles the results and brings them here by the end of the month at cast pick-up time.” Norman turned to leave again.

“Who is this F-1 corpsman? Have I met him?”

“I doubt it. It’s Achilles Spinelli. F-1 is the major dirty surgical ward with mostly colostomy patients. He goes by the name of Acky. Kinda built like you and can move these Nam marine patients almost unassisted.” Norman left.

This Acky was the senior corpsman who sometimes gave him chow relief. Kaplan wrote the name down. He’d give the name to Adam Stokely at his next contact or his next phone call–whichever came first. He looked at the paging light and saw his number flashing.

603. 603. 603. Kaplan had gotten a feel for the page number. His intuition could tell if it was urgent, angry or friendly. This time it looked friendly and he was going off duty soon. It might possibly be LCDR Skagan.

“Chief Petty Officer Senior Corpsman Kaplan.”

“This is the hospital operator Chief Kaplan. Just a minute and I’ll connect you, it’s an outside line.”

Outside line. The only outside calls have been Stokely.
I wonder what’s up
. Kaplan could feel his heart rate speed up.

“Write this down. St. John’s Arms. 888 Symphony Blvd. 212-425-6671. Tomorrow at 1600 hours. Apartment 205. I’m cooking.” Skagan’s voice disappeared and was replaced with a dial tone.

‡

Kaplan slept late after a fitful night’s sleep dreaming about plaster clad soldiers selling hollow pencils at street corners. The pencils were filled with heroin. A sleek Cadillac would appear at hourly intervals to collect the cash, supply new pencils and write numbers on a clipboard in the Caddie. The accounting was done by a woman in a black pant suit who would give him only one instruction. “Okay, Ike. Drive to the next one.”

Kaplan’s pulse would race as he saw himself as the driver and respond, “Right away Phil. I can hardly wait until 4-o’clock when we can be alone and take time with each other.”

Skagan smiled a dimpled smile and put her left hand on his right thigh, “You know I’m worth the wait Ike dear.”

Kaplan awakened with a start and found he had slept on top of the bed clothes. He went straight to the shower and toweled off in front of a full length mirror. The reflection from his bedside digital clock read 10:15. He had slept late. The only time he remembered his dreams was if there was some relationship to his current situation. The few times he was near a combat line his dreams would be life-threatening scenes with him dodging bullets to rescue a combatant under fire in the Vietnam bush. It didn’t surprise him that his plaster patients and his ambivalent feelings toward LCDR Philomena Skagan became intertwined in sleep reverie.

What are my feelings? She may be the enemy…and then again she may not. Why does she want to meet me off duty? Get me alone? Make dinner and jump my bones?
He laughed aloud at the last consideration.
What’s the matter with me?
Is that wishful thinking? The woman is attractive, intelligent, but is totally aloof with everyone except for work. Is it a trap? Has she found out I’m FBI? Am I being set up for the kill?

Kaplan considered calling Stokely for advice or backup–maybe both. Somehow Stokely didn’t place Skagan in the cartel mix. To Adam Stokely she was just an obsessive compulsive neurotic with a fixation on her job.
Will I be walking into a cartel snare?
Kaplan decided to write his thoughts down and make note of his meeting today with Skagan. He addressed the envelope to Adam Stokely and left it on his dresser. If he returned alive to his apartment later tonight or tomorrow he could always destroy it.

He dressed in neat black casual slacks and shirt. Kaplan picked out a gray corduroy sport coat with darker gray suede elbow patches. He decided against having any lunch and made two hard-boiled eggs, rye toast and two oranges for his late breakfast. His errands for Saturday included some staple shopping items, gassing up his Mustang convertible and buying a bottle of wine as a token for his “date” with Phil Skagen.
Phil–sounds like a guy. In fact Skagan acts like a man with her assertive-aggressive work ethic. However, she is a beautiful woman…until her spoken rhetoric flies through the air like sharpened darts.

Kaplan made out his chore list with visiting the gas station last. He opened his road atlas and used a yellow highlighter to detail her street. A gas station close to his destination would fill up his tank and he’d get confirmatory directions from the attendant. He unlocked a metal footlocker he kept under his bed and removed a loaded .45 automatic. A bottle of wine and a loaded gun–Kaplan was ready for Philomena Skagan.

‡

Perkins arrived at Abe Linsky’s apartment with his laundry bag at exactly 1800 hours. Linsky was a nut about punctuality and it had to do with his plan to cook the plaster and extract the heroin. It was an all night operation.

“Right on time Perk. You know I count on that. Bring the bag into the kitchen. I have the saw and the blender all ready.” Linsky had a plastic apron on and moved a 3-M OR mask from the top of his head to his face. “Make sure you use the OR hat to cover your head. If we ever have to get a urine drug screen from Mindel we don’t even want a trace of heroin to show up.”

A sudden flash of the bloody evisceration scene came-and-went as Perkins removed his jacket, donned an apron, and put on his surgical hat and mask. He helped Linsky reduce the shoulder spica cast to powdered substance. “Hey Abe how much heroin in terms of dollars do you think we have here?”

“Let me test a sample.” Linsky quickly dissolved a measured amount of the plaster powder, 5cc of water and added a drop of a clear solution into the test tube. A deep red color immediately appeared. “Okay I take a drop of this, add more water and put it into the colorimeter.” The meter needle swung to the 55% marker. “My God the owner of this cast must have been pain free from the tiny amount of heroin constantly dissolved and absorbed by his sweat. We should harvest enough heroin to get over a hundred thousand dollars of pure product for our foreign dealers. They can cut it five times and get over a million street dollars.”

Perkins swallowed behind his mask. “Maybe we should sell it on the street ourselves. We’d be rich in no time.”

Linsky stared at Perkins. “We’d be dead in no time if we tried that. You know the kind of people we’re in business with. Don’t let me ever hear you talk like this again.”

Chapter 18

Feelings

Like Philomena Skagan, Ike Kaplan liked punctuality. The attendant at the gas station confirmed his destination and actually knew where both Symphony Blvd and St. John’s Arms condominiums and apartments were located. Kaplan looked at his Omega watch and had twenty-five minutes to get there. The attendant told him he was five minutes away.

I’ll get a parking space with good visuals and see if any cars have live parkers like me
. Kaplan was trained to imagine worst case scenarios by the FBI. Such training kept agents alive. Skagan could still be the enemy. What bothered him the most was that he hoped her invitation today was indeed social in nature although her suggestion of a “date” seemed more like an order. Sexually LT Dina Sparrow got his gonads twitching but he didn’t need such a distraction from his job. His feelings about Skagan were mixed. Skagan seemed capable of running the whole heroin operation at Queens Naval Hospital. On the other hand, his last minutes with her penetrated his FBI armor and sent impulses to his heart.
But how?
They hadn’t said or done anything on a personal level.
Agent Stokely advised checking out Skagan and, hell, this invite was made to order.
She was either a sharp foe checking him out or she was just human and reaching out for companionship. Kaplan still brought his .45.

‡

Skagan initially felt like a spider weaving her web. She felt intuitively or via pheromones or whatever biological magnetism God has wrought that Ike Kaplan was attracted to her. She was developing some feelings toward him but heaven knows what. This was something new. Intuition told her Kaplan was not what he seemed. He was more than just a hospital corpsman. The Navy seemed like a stepping stone in life to something else for him–
but what else
?

Her apartment had two bedrooms, a working kitchen with adjacent dining area, and a huge living room that could pass a white-glove inspection any day of the week. Her furnishings were all quality Mission style which were added step-wise as each of her living quarters increased in size. Skagan’s last apartment near Orlando Naval Hospital was a one-bedroom affair with 900-square feet of space. This Long Island apartment was just over 1200-square feet and felt very roomy.

She had advised Kaplan to wear casual attire. She wore black velour slacks, a shiny purple silk blouse, simple jewelry and two-inch wedge sandals for “needed” height. Overall she projected a very feminine and proper appearance. Skagan had only invited one other man to her living space and that was four years ago. He was also a Lieutenant Commander and in the Medical Service Corps assigned to the legal department at Orlando Naval Hospital. She remembered the episode with a shudder.

“Come in John.” She unlocked her door with her key. LCDR John Crane had already been in the apartment once to pick her up for dinner and a play at a local theatre. He had behaved like a gentlemen and although he lacked what she considered a magnetic personality maybe he would be different away from the public eye.

Crane took her invitation for a date as a boost for his already pumped up ego. He boasted to his friends at the BOQ he would be in bed with Skagan within an hour after their dinner date. “You have a wonderful place here Phil. I didn’t really see very much of it when I picked you up last time.”

“Why don’t you sit in the living room while I make some coffee?” She smiled. Compliments disarmed her.

“Coffee? How about after dinner drinks?” Crane still had glassy eyes from drinking at the play and at dinner.

“I do have wine and beer or if you think it won’t interfere with your driving home I have something stronger.” Her doubts about Crane were now fortified. He had already had several scotches too many. The ride to her apartment was a bit erratic and scary.

“Maybe just another scotch–if you have it.”

“Okay.”

She made coffee and gave him a tumbler of scotch-on-the-rocks like he’d ordered earlier in the evening. He drank it down within five minutes and stared at her sitting next to him on the sofa.

“Phil you are one pretty woman and I don’t need any alcohol to say that.” He moved closer.

“Did you enjoy the play John?”

“Faulkner is a bit heavy but it did take me back to my college days. Most of the girls I dated went in for campy stuff like Faulkner.” He reached for her hand. “I had hoped you might have chosen a romantic comedy. The play kind of matched your business-like rapport at work. Can’t you let your hair down outside the hospital?” Crane put his hand on her right shoulder.

“Don’t you think the play projected that there is life to be lived amidst the death and dying? I mean we see the ravages of the Vietnam War every day and our job is to help put people’s lives back together.” She moved away from under his hand.

“You know I haven’t seen the rest of your place. I do need to use the bathroom and then you can show me around.” Crane stood up a little shaky.

“All right follow me. The bathroom is opposite the bedroom.”

Crane emerged from the bathroom after flushing and went directly to the bedroom and sat on the impeccably made bed. “C’mon Phil sit next to me.”

“I think we should go back to the living room John.” She motioned him to stand up.

“Give me your hand so I can get up. Your mattress is a little too soft for me to navigate.” He extended his hand which she took.

Crane smiled and pulled her on top of him trying to plant a kiss on her lips. “Phil, I know there’s a woman inside your stone façade.”

Skagan wriggled free and stood up leaving Crane lying down on the bed with his legs hanging bent at the knee. “John I think it’s time for you to leave.”

LCDR John Crane’s eyes closed and he began snoring. Skagan waited two hours before rousing him to wakefulness. He went again to the bathroom and she escorted him to the door. “Thanks for your company tonight, John. I think it could have turned out better without the scotch.”

Crane reached out again to grab her.

“No. John. Please just leave.” The combination of the tone and loudness in her voice prompted a dark shadow into action.

“Holy Christ! What the hell is this?” Crane felt sharp needle-like pains in his arm and shoulder.

Bork had launched himself from atop a narrow knick-knack cabinet onto Crane’s left shoulder and dug his claws into his neck. The huge dark-furred feline hissed and growled. Crane brought a fist up to knock Bork from his shoulder and Bork sunk his teeth and claws into his knuckled hand.

“Oh my God. What is that?” He fumbled with a handkerchief to stop the bleeding points on his hand.

Skagan reached for Bork. “Down Bork. Down…down…down.”

Bork released his attachment and dropped to a position beside Skagan’s ankles.

“Just go John.” She closed and locked the door after him.
How could I have made such a blunder? He seemed genuinely interested in me and in going to the play.

‡

She looked at her watch.
Kaplan will be here in five minutes
. She went into her bedroom and stood in front of the mirror looking to make last minute adjustments and making none. The tomato sauce had been cooking all day and her place had an inviting homey aroma.
I hope I’m not wrong about you Ike Kaplan.

‡

Kaplan had driven around the condo building and found a parking space giving a good visual of the entrance and of other parked cars. He noted no outstanding irregularities and no “live” parkers. He left the car and reflexly reached under his sportcoat to touch his holstered .45 for reassurance. He’d have to take his sport coat off so he put the clip holster containing the .45 into the left inside pocket. It was a tight fit and he’d have to use two hands to get the Colt out. The .45 automatic was not intended for Skagan unless she came at him with a firearm. He really took the Colt in case unexpected muscle showed up.

He stared at the condo entryway doorbell and the letter to Stokely on his apartment dresser appeared in his thoughts for a second. He pressed the doorbell button. The buzzer unlocked the entry door after he stated his name to her softened voice. At room 205 Kaplan pressed the lit condo unit doorbell button. He could sense movement behind the door peep-hole and the oak door opened after he heard the chain lock release.

Skagan opened the door wide and looked at him. “Hello Ike. You look good out of uniform.” She stepped aside to let him in.

“You sound like my uniform is a barrier to civilized interaction.”

She walked bedside him to the comfortable mauve textured two-cushioned sofa. “Our uniforms place us in the world of the U.S. Navy and its book of regulations. You better not call me ma’am in here or when we’re in civvies.” She turned to him. “I’m Phil and never Philomena unless you’re having trouble getting my attention.” She let her hand touch his. “Would you like something to drink while our dinner is in the oven?” The slight dimples in her chin appeared with her natural disarming smile. She took the bottle of wine from his hand.

“Your place smells great. It reminds me of home and my mother’s Sunday cooking.” He maintained the light finger contact. “I’ll start with iced tea if it’s convenient.”

“Tea is available but so are wine, liquor and beer.” She moved toward the kitchen. “What do you mean your mother’s cooking?”

“My mother was Italian. I actually grew up Italian. When my mother married my father and outside the Catholic faith she was excommunicated but we lived in one of my Italian grandfather’s houses. Every Sunday my mother and I would cook an Italian sauce. We’d start at breakfast time and by two in the afternoon dinner would be ready. Our house smelled like your apartment. It’s wonderful.” He watched her open the refrigerator, put the wine bottle in and extract the pitcher of iced tea. She looked even more attractive in her slacks and blouse than in her Navy nurse uniform.

“My mother was Italian. I knew there was a common thread besides our compulsive work attitude.” She brought a glass of ice water for herself and sat beside him on the sofa. She looked into his face.

Kaplan saw no aggression lurking in her appearance or demeanor
. For what purpose have you lured me into your den, my dear?
He’d let her lead the conversation and anything else.
Or do I have any choice?

“Ike you’re probably wondering why I took the initiative in furthering our relationship?” She sat with her back at the angle of the sofa armrest facing him. “First let me tell you I’m really glad you accepted my invitation for dinner. I want to get to know you better and I want you to see that I’m not all work and U.S. Navy.”

Kaplan turned with his left arm over the top of the sofa back, sipped his iced tea and put it on the coaster on the thick glass-top coffee table. “You realize you’re breaking the officer-enlisted barrier regardless of being in-or-out of uniform.”

“Usually the only difference between officer and enlisted is a college degree. You have a college degree. You carry yourself like an officer Ike. When I order others around they just do what I say without question–like trained pets.”

“I don’t recall doubting your directives Phil.”
Phil?
It came natural
. He had gazed at the living area of her apartment and from his living room perspective he could see no male residue. The place was spit-and-polish clean. The fact that it appeared unthreatening might mean he should be on guard.
So why am I starting to relax?

“No. You’re not like other enlisteds. You understand the job and never question how to implement it. Most corpsman will ask the how and sometimes the why. You seem to understand what you’re doing is important and go about your work as if to see what’s going to happen next. You also have a way with others. I’ve seen how you get them to do their job with minimal complaint. You command respect and get it. We’re alike in that Ike.”

“Phil it must be easy to gain access to my personnel file. LT Sparrow knows about my academic background.”

“Dina Sparrow? She’s only a Lieutenant and confined to the nursing element. She should not have had access to your records.” She leaned forward. “I don’t want to know if she’s been forward with you Ike. I might have to take steps to correct the situation as a superior officer.” She sat back and moved forward again. “Did she?”

“Did she what?” Kaplan had caught her off guard but had to smile at her normal female reaction.

“Did she ask if you were available after hours–you know–for discrete social things?”

“I’ll answer that if you promise not to put her on report or have her shot out of a torpedo tube or anything like that.”

Skagan’s serious look changed to a grin. “Oh my. I’m being girlish.” She reached and touched his hand. “Did she?”

“Yes, but I immediately corrected her about the possible consequences.” Kaplan knew what was next.

“But not with me. Why?” Her tone was soft but urgent. It was non-threatening.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to.” Their fingers intertwined just as a bell began ringing from the kitchen.

She stared at him and got up slowly letting their hands release in slow motion. “The manicotti is done. We’ll go into the dining room. I have a salad before the manicotti. It’ll take me a few minutes to set the table with the food.”