Jungle Rules (80 page)

“He’s down at Hilton Head, South Carolina,” Wayne said, and smiled. “Pushing eighty years old, I guess, and Stanley tells me the old fart plays golf every day.”

“Good for Dicky Doo!” Terry said and looked at Gwen and laughed. “He and Stanley never figured out what gave them the shits, did they.”

“Terry, I have borne the guilt of doing that to those poor men like a millstone tied to my neck!” Gwen said, and then laughed, too. “Thank God they didn’t figure it out. I might have gone to jail! I certainly would have had no chance of ever working at any airline either.”

“Might be fun to tell Stanley now,” Terry said with a laugh.

“No, it might not,” Wayne said, and then sighed. “I called Dicky Doo, and invited him, too. He said he’d have to think it over and talk to his ball and chain—his words, not mine.”

“Ball and chain?” Gwen laughed. “Oh, I might find some more of that magic powder then and fix him another drink! Can you imagine a man these days calling his wife a ball and chain?”

“So, he’s listed in the directory, too?” Terry asked, and then looked at his watch, wondering what kept Lobo and Buck.

“Yeah,” Wayne said and smiled. “After Stanley called me, I got to looking and found our favorite mojo. It lists his home address, telephone number, and electronic mail. Want a good laugh? Guess what he has for an Internet address.”

“I wouldn’t have a clue,” Terry said, not wanting to think too hard about the man who tormented him during most of his tour in Vietnam.

“Believe it or not, its Dicky Doo at Earthlink dot com,” Wayne said and howled laughing.

“I don’t believe you!” O’Connor said with a laugh, and looked at Gwen and Vibeke, who laughed, too. “I wonder who told him?”

“I asked Colonel Dickinson about it and he laughed,” Ebberhardt said. “Charlie Heyster told him. Kept him filled in on all our dirty deeds.”

“He never figured out that Jon and Movie Star loosened the bolts on his furniture though, did he,” O’Connor said with a smile and nodded confidently. “Not even after he moved into Colonel Prunella’s old office. The stuff kept wobbling and the lamps kept flashing, and he never had a clue, did he.”

“I don’t know, he might surprise you,” Wayne said and noticed the lights above the elevators outside the double glass doors that led into the reception area flash across the numbers and stop on fifteen. “I didn’t think to ask him about the furniture, but I did inquire about his fair-haired boy Charlie Heyster.”

“All I ever knew about the shyster was that General Cushman didn’t even let him spend the night in Da Nang after Lieutenant Biggs arrested him. They put him on a gooney bird to the rock, and that’s the last anybody saw of him,” O’Connor said, looking out at the elevators, too. “Jon said that they kept him overnight in Okinawa, then flew him to Camp Pendleton, where they tossed him in the brig.”

“Matches pretty close to what Dickinson told me,” Ebberhardt said, nodding in agreement. “You ever wonder why nobody asked for those photographs, or none of us had to ever testify? It just all disappeared like fog?”

“Yeah!” Terry O’Connor said, sitting up. “I stayed pissed off for a couple of years. I figured they let him slide and reassigned him someplace, or worst case, let him resign.”

“Dicky Doo told me that Charlie bought a plea deal in exchange for all the names of the people he supplied with dope,” Wayne said and shook his head. “Of course, the Marine Corps yanked his commission, busted him to private, dismissed him from the service, and put him on ice for two years of hard labor at Portsmouth. However, he avoided serving ten. Got disbarred, though, thank goodness. The three deadly D’s—disgraced, dismissed, and disbarred.”

“So the dirty bastard did time after all,” O’Connor said, and let out a deep sigh. “Wonder what he’s doing now? Hell, I wonder what just about anyone we tried to keep out of the brig is doing these days.”

“Dickinson said that Heyster managed to put together enough money to open a used-car dealership in Oakland,” Ebberhardt said, noticing a familiar hulk stepping out of the elevator. “He’s been in touch with him off and on. I guess Heyster’s doing okay selling cars. It broke Dicky Doo’s heart, though, when Charlie went down in flames.”

“Kind of disproved his theory about the good guys and the bad guys,” O’Connor shrugged, and looked at the mass of humanity that ambled toward his reception area.

“Hey, shit for brains!” Archie Gunn bellowed at Terry O’Connor as he pushed open the double glass doors that led to his suite of offices. “You know, we need to get rocking and rolling if we’re going to swoop down to Dallas and pick up that jockstrap McKay and his little Mexican-cutie wife, Marguerite, and still get to Denver in time to have dinner tonight at Stockman’s Steakhouse.”

“Where’s Buck?” Terry said, grabbing his briefcase, and luggage he had staged in the corner of the reception area.

“Down there keeping that fruitcake company that’s driving our limo,” Lobo said, grabbing two handfuls of suitcases and helping the four people get to the elevator. “Good thing this is just for the holiday weekend, or I’d have to hire a truck for your extra shit.”

“Speaking of fruitcakes,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, pushing the down button on the elevator, “I take it that we’re not taking a jag to Boston to pick up Mikie and his life companion, Tab?”

“Fuck, no,” Lobo said, and then looked at the ladies. “Oh, sorry. Shit, no! The twirp has some kind of rally tonight. Something to do with gay marriage and taking it before the Supreme Court. He and Tab will fly tomorrow. I’ve got a car picking them up at DIA about noon.”

“Oh, yes, he called me about wanting to hire one of our partners at this firm to argue the gay marriage case before the Supreme Court, if they can get it heard by the Court, of course,” Terry said, and smiled. “Mikie’s their lead man in pressing the issue before the courts.”

“As long as they have that nitwit Carter in charge,” Lobo said, shoving the double armloads of luggage onto the elevator as the doors opened, “we won’t have to worry about gay marriage anytime soon.”

“So Archie, how’s business with that chain of sporting goods stores you have, Lobo Sports?” Wayne Ebberhardt said, getting on the elevator.

“We’re opening a super center in Atlanta,” Lobo said, putting his arm around Gwen’s shoulders and giving her a lusty squeeze. “That makes me coast to coast. One hundred seventeen stores. Amazing what a guy can do with a handful of fishing reels and hunting rifles.”

“Buck’s still your chief financial officer and vice chairman of the board?” Terry said, and slapped his old friend across the back.

“Yeah, but the shithead’s talking about wanting to retire and go fishing every day at Corpus Christi,” Lobo said and laughed. “Shit, he doesn’t have to retire to do that!”

 
A FINE MIST lay over Bangkok and formed a halo of light above the Normandy Restaurant, which sat atop the main tower of the famous, old Oriental Hotel. Its luminance caught the eye of Brian Pitts, who stood dressed in black silk pajamas and matching velvet slippers at one of the ten cathedral widows that lined one side of his five-thousand-square-foot penthouse atop the skyscraper owned by his construction company. He gazed into the lonely wet night and at the lifeless lights below, and he watched the endless traffic of barges pushing their loads down the river, past the grand, five-star hotel set at the water’s edge, and its restaurant with its circle of light.

For the past several years he found himself sleeping less and less as he spent night after night alone with only his thoughts, his memories, and his regrets for company as he looked out the big windows of his palace, gazing upon the city that waited at his feet. While he stood his solitary vigil, night after monotonous night, he often thought of his Aunt Winnie Russell, now ninety-two years old, stubbornly living in her modest frame house in Olathe, Kansas, despite his incessant invitations to come reside with him in Thailand. Never giving up on the boy she loved as a son, she had the housekeepers and home health nurse, whose wages her dear nephew paid, keep the room above the garage tidy, in case Brian ever decided to come home.

INDEX

AA form

ADF.
See
Automatic Direction Finder

Aerial photos, at CCOC

AFVN.
See
American Forces Vietnam Radio

AHCobra helicopter

Air America

hijacking of

in Vietnam

Alcohol, consumption of .
See also
Entertainment; Marine Corps

Alice pack

Ambush, of trucks

Americal division.
See
d Infantry “Americal” Division

American Communist Party

American Forces Vietnam Radio (AFVN) .
See also
Radio

Anderson, Norman J.

Animal Tracks
(album)

ARcarbine

Armed services, U.S.

buying off from

draft dodgers from

draft for

politics and

regulations/justice for

service choice under

Army Special Forces

Article fifteen.
See also
Nonjudicial punishment

Articles of War, British, as Rocks and Shoals

Artillery

call in

as cover

of Eleventh Marine Regiment

from LZ Ross

of Seventh Marine Regiment

ARVN units

A Shau Valley

Assault and battery, charges of

Assault, sexual, by Marine

Associated Press

Automatic Direction Finder (ADF)

 
B-rocket launcher

Bachelor Officers’ Quarters (BOQ)

Bandits.
See
North Vietnam Army

Basic School, at Quantico

Battle of Belleau Wood

Beef and rocks.
See
-rations

Belleau Wood Battle

Big Bend

Bigotry .
See also
Racism

Binoculars

Bird Airways

Black market, in Dogpatch

Black Panthers

Blacks, racism against

Black Stone Rangers

charges for

cooperation by

demands by

escape by

at Freedom Hill

hierarchy of

kangaroo court by

leadership by

negotiation by

prisoner release by

release of

riot by

surrender by

threats by

trial by

Black syphilis

Blood of Dead Marines

Blue Angels

Body odor, diet for

Bomb, general-purpose

Booby traps

along roads

by NVA

BOQ.
See
Bachelor Officers’ Quarters

Bordellos.
See also
Prostitution

in Dogpatch

Boredom, from nonaction

Brig

Da Nang Air Base

defense, negotiation and

drugs for dispensary of

on Freedom Hill

for Marine Amphibious Force (MAF)

British Articles of War.
See
Articles of War, British

Bronze Star with Combat

Brown, Bernice Layne

Brown, Edmund G.

Buddha, as drug

Bunker, operations

Burdon, Eric

Burma white.
See also
Drugs

Burned out syndrome

 
C-

C-Starlifter

Call of the Wild
(London)

Call sign.
See also
Radio for radio shark bait as

Cambodia, special teams in Camp Butler

Camp Carroll

Camp Courtney.
See also
Okinawa

Camp Pendleton

Canada, draft dodgers in

Cannons, fire power of

Carter, Michael

CCOC, aerial photos at

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development under

ICEX under

Ceremony, decoration.
See also
Heroism

CH-Sea Knight helicopter

Chaplains, Marine

Chapman, Leonard F., Jr.

Charge sheet .
See also
Disciplinary action

Charlie.
See
Viet Cong

Charlie Med

as hospital

med evac to

Charlie Ridge

Cheney, Richard

China Beach

military facilities near

party at

R and R at

Chosin Reservoir

Chu Lai

Americal division at

dope supply for

holding facility at

homicide at

Marine Wing Support Group Seventeen at

murder at

PMO at

racism at