Jungle Rules (56 page)

“We just lock them in storage,” Schuller shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Speaking of locking men in storage,” Kirkwood said, narrowing his eyebrows at the lieutenant as he spoke, “I have a serious bone to pick with you. My client Donald T. Wilson, whom you have in pretrial confinement, has apparently joined the gang of convicted prisoners out in the yard these days. You know that is a major no-no, don’t you?”

“We only have so many monkey cages, Jon,” the brig officer said, defending his actions. “First you complained that we held him in solitary confinement, now you complain because he’s out in the general population.”

“It’s against regulations, first of all, Mikie, and secondly, it violates his constitutional rights, technically,” Kirkwood said, shaking his head at the lieutenant. “I’ve said it in the past and I will say it again: you guys need to set up a minimum-security compound for low-risk, pretrial inmates separate from the regular brig. Same goes for inmates convicted of these cockamamy infractions like disrespect and tardy to formation. Put these otherwise good Marines to work, and get them away from the really bad apples.”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Schuller said, shaking his head and shrugging. “That makes too much sense! Colonel Webster even supports that notion, and so does Colonel Prunella. However, we have a chief of staff, and a bunch of wing and division colonels who subscribe to the same code of discipline that Dicky Doo espouses. Burn them all and let God sort them out.”

“You know I will complain about this situation at trial,” Kirkwood said, furrowing his brow and pressing his lips thin.

“Maybe the judge will order Three-MAF to do what you suggested with the minimum-security work compounds,” Schuller said, nodding at the captain. “We have correctional custody platoons at the recruit depots for similar low-risk personnel. Why not do it here?”

“I see talking to you about it is about as useful as me talking to O’Connor,” Kirkwood said, putting his hand on his buddy’s shoulder.

“Like I told you,” Schuller said and sighed, “Colonel Webster, Colonel Prunella, all of us who deal with criminal justice, we agree. Right now that brig is a powder keg, ready to blow. It just needs the right kind of spark to set off a disaster. We are doing our best, putting the high-risk, most dangerous people in the layered confinement areas and allowing the low-risk inmates, whether pretrial or posttrial, to mingle in the general population. Still, we have an increase in fights among the men, especially those provoked by racial tension. We break up the polarized groups when we see them form, but we’re busting at the seams and we can only do so much.”

While Michael Schuller talked about the worsening conditions at Freedom Hill, Charles Heyster and his shadow, Stanley Tufts, joined the circle of defense lawyers.

Seeing the lead prosecutor and his Sancho sidekick sliding quietly into the defense section’s discussion group, Terry O’Connor raised the red flag for his mates, making a comment about the pipe that Heyster held clamped in his teeth, sucking with an irritating whistle.

“You know, it must be that we’re going to get a flood of a rainstorm,” O’Connor proclaimed, craning his neck and surveying the evening sky.

“What makes you believe that?” Michael Carter said, looking at the sky, too, and seeing only the purple and orange of a midsummer sunset, with no clue of rain in sight.

“Observe, if you will, my dear man,” O’Connor then said, pointing at Charles Heyster. “The pigs have put sticks in their mouths. A clear indication of heavy rain.”

“Heavy bullshit is more like it,” Charlie Heyster snapped back, taking the pipe from his teeth and shoving it in his pocket.

“A word with you, Miss Carter,” Heyster then said, taking Michael Carter by the arm and causing him to slosh sloe gin fizz out of his glass.

“Hold on,” Kirkwood said, taking Heyster’s hand away from Carter’s arm. “Anything you say to Mikie, you say in front of his attorney: me.”

“This isn’t about anything important,” Heyster said, grabbing Carter by the arm again.

“Wait, damn it,” Carter said, and pulled away from the major-select’s grip. “You say what you need to tell me in front of my friends and colleagues. I keep no secrets from them.”

Charlie Heyster rolled his eyes and looked at the circle of Wayne Ebberhardt, Mike Schuller, Terry O’Connor, and Jon Kirkwood. Then in the corner of his eye he also caught a glimpse of T. D. McKay ambling across the grass toward them, with Buck Taylor and Lobo at his sides.

“Captain Carter, congratulations, you’ve finally won a case,” Heyster said and shook his head. Stanley Tufts shook his head, too, mirroring his senior partner.

“I have?” Carter exclaimed and spread a smile across his pink-tinted yellow teeth.

“Well, yes, in a way. Yes, you’ve won a case,” Heyster sighed, and then took a deep breath. “The Corporal James Gillette case.”

“But I lost that hands down,” Carter said, frowning. “The jury found him guilty, unanimously.”

“Right,” Heyster said with a laugh. “Your defense of momentary insanity because the chick had a dick did not quite fly. However, powers greater than ours have intervened and have acquitted Corporal Gillette.”

“The bomb dump fire, right?” O’Connor said and laughed. “Michael, the bomb dump over by First Division CP. When it took a rocket attack last week, the fire burned the legal admin office at division, too. Major Dickinson must have sent our overflow transcription work to division legal. Your court record went up in smoke, right, Charlie?”

Heyster bowed his head and shrugged.

“Yes, that and a deposition we took from this rat fink down at Chu Lai who rolled over on some dope dealers,” Heyster said, shaking his head. “We can get a new deposition from the fink as soon as he decides to cooperate again.”

“Isn’t that my client James Elmore?” O’Connor then exclaimed. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you!”

“Look, we would have told you,” Heyster said, looking at the suddenly angry Irish defense lawyer.

“But not just yet!” O’Connor snapped, glaring at the prosecutor. “Not until after you and your interrogators had regained your lost testimony, plus a little extra, I imagine. After you had sweated a few more miles of life out of my client, without benefit of counsel.”

“Your client is sitting in a cell as we speak at Freedom Hill, for his own protection,” Heyster snapped back at O’Connor.

“Oh, you’ve locked him up, have you?” Terry O’Connor bellowed, throwing his half-full beer into a nearby garbage can. “You lost his deposition, so now you lock him up to sweat another one out of him.”

“It’s for his protection!” Heyster shouted back. “We locked up the guy who tried to kill him, but we believe that this character Pitts may now have him in his sights.”

“That was April, Charlie!” O’Connor snarled, stepping close to the major-select and still yelling. “Today is July Fourth! Nothing’s changed except you got your deposition burned, and now you think you can sweat a new one out of my client without making good on the original promises you made him.”

“Oh, we kept our promises,” the prosecutor fired back.

“He’s still in Vietnam, you shyster!” O’Connor retorted. “You’ve held him in custody here since February, March, whenever it was you first arrested him. You were going to nail his suppliers and send him packing home. What happened to that deal?”

“We just now got Harris,” Heyster said, wide-eyed and backing away from the red-haired, irate captain.

“Just now last April!” O’Connor hissed. “Check your calendar, Charlie!”

“Can we discuss this later?” Heyster said, lowering his voice after seeing Major Dickinson frowning at them because of the noise. He had taken Gwen Ebberhardt to meet Lieutenant Colonels Prunella and Webster, and First Wing’s commander, Major General Norman Anderson, who had gathered under the fly tent by the table covered with platters of fresh pineapple, cheeses, and fondu pans filled with pigs-in-a-blanket. The shouting had drawn everyone’s attention.

“What about Mikie’s win?” T. D. McKay shouted at Heyster just as he and Stanley started to step away from the unwelcome group.

“Oh, yes,” Heyster said. “General Cushman agreed with Colonel Prunella that as far as the Vietnamese know, we took care of the matter. We cannot re-create the transcripts and all the other trial documents that burned in the fire. We would have to reinvestigate, and retry the whole case from scratch. So he said to just let it slide.”

“So no conviction, no record at all?” McKay asked, smiling.

“That’s how it has to go down, I guess,” Heyster said, smiling back.

“What about Gillette’s page eleven?” O’Connor chirped, jutting out his jaw at the prosecutor.

“What about it?” Heyster answered, raising his eyebrows at the still-angry Irishman.

“Corporal Gillette should have no reference to any of this matter in his military record, if the command is just going to let it slide, as you say,” O’Connor said, pointing his finger at the major-select as he spoke. “You think about it, and you know I am right.”

“I thought it would go in the record as an acquittal,” Heyster said, frowning.

“No,” O’Connor said, shaking his head. “With no record of trial, and no due process taken, then it is as though the event never took place. No record whatsoever.”

“Well, Miss Carter will have to follow up at the Marines’ command section then, and ensure that everything gets expunged from his record,” Heyster said, walking away.

“We’ll expect a letter from you supporting it, so we can get the record expunged!” O’Connor shouted, and looked at Michael Carter, who now hung his head and sucked on the red swizzle-stick straw sticking out of his crimson-colored cocktail.

“Mikie, you won!” Wayne Ebberhardt said, slapping the captain on his back. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Oh, that’s not a win, and you know it,” Carter said, still sucking sloe gin fizz through the plastic tube.

“Your man is free!” Kirkwood said, laughing and shaking the skinny, tall captain by his shoulders.

“Oh, my stars, that’s right!” Carter said and then smiled wide. “We need to get him out of the brig! Mike, can we do that?”

“I will take you there myself, tonight,” Schuller said, smiling and putting his arm around the stick man.

“Hold on,” T. D. McKay said, looking at the happy crowd. “I’ve got two clients who took a bust, a fine, and did a little confinement to quarters. They get expunged, too?”

Jon Kirkwood looked at Terry O’Connor and then at Wayne Ebberhardt. Both men shook their heads.

“Of course, it’s always up to General Cushman, but I am confident that your two guys won’t get any relief,” Kirkwood said, shaking his head, too. “It’s already gone down the river. They pled guilty, took the punishment. The trigger puller walks free, and the guys standing outside, who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, they get their dicks and balls cut off. That’s how it goes sometimes. Jungle Rules, man.”

T. D. McKay shrugged and then smiled, looking across the lawn at the dance floor, where Gwen Ebberhardt now skipped a lively two-step with Lieutenant Colonel Prunella.

“She’s quite a number, Wayne. How do you stand it?” McKay laughed.

Lobo had stood silent behind the group of lawyers during the exchange with Charlie Heyster, and now bobbed his head watching the tall, sexy redhead stretching her legs on the dance floor. Buck Taylor had his arm looped inside Archie Gunn’s, just in case the lumbering ox decided he needed a turn with the flight attendant.

“I don’t know,” Wayne Ebberhardt sighed. “Life with her sometimes, well, its sort of like wearing somebody else’s shoes. Some things you can never get used to.”

“That lady loves you, though, cowboy,” Buck Taylor said, and nudged Archie Gunn to stop drooling at her.

The lieutenant smiled at the two pilots.

“Enjoy the sight while you can, gentlemen,” Ebberhardt said, turning toward the half circle of men, all looking at his wife dance with the staff judge advocate. “Tuesday, when she flies out, she’s gone for good. She’s headed to Atlanta, and her old job with Delta Airlines. I rotate in September, and get out of the crotch in October, so this is it.”

“You’re headed to Atlanta for sure?” Kirkwood asked the lieutenant.

“Contract law,” Ebberhardt answered, smiling. “No criminals, just negotiations. I’m joining a firm that represents Delta, as a matter of fact. Thanks to that long-legged redhead out there who is the master of saying the phrase that pays to the ears that count.”

“Tuesday, the colonel and I hit the ville in Okinawa,” McKay said, spreading a rare smile on his face. “Then on to Norton, a bus to Pendleton for outprocessing, and after that I fly from Los Angeles to Dallas, where my mom and dad promised to pick me up a week from this Thursday night.”

Tears began to fill the lieutenant’s eyes as he looked at his buddies and thought of his home and family.

“I got to go see Jimmy’s mom, you know,” McKay choked, and then took a big drink of beer.

“Yeah,” Kirkwood said, shrugging and bowing his head. “We know.”

“Do me a favor, Tommy,” Buck Taylor said, walking to the lieutenant and putting his arm around his shoulders. “Don’t try to kill all the demons at once when you get home. Take them on one at a time, and don’t try to do it alone. Don’t shut people out, either, when you need to let go of some of that grief you’ve got all bottled up. Wounds have to air out to heal. Give it some time and you’ll be fine. When you talk to Mrs. Sanchez, and Jimmy’s brothers and sisters, try listening a little bit. Hey, and you stay in touch with us back here, too. That’s an order.”

Tommy McKay nodded and wiped his eyes.

“I never thought it would be hard to say good-bye to you bums, but it is,” he said, and smiled again.

“Tommy Touchdown, we will all see you back in the world,” O’Connor chirped and raised his can of Budweiser in a toast.

“How about a year from today?” McKay said, looking at his pals. “What about Denver? Fourth of July 1969 in Denver, Colorado!”