W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

It did not work out quite the way Steve envisioned it.

The first thing that went wrong was that his mother was not only home but looking out the window when Sergeant Galloway stopped to let him out of the blond lady’s station wagon.

By the time he got to the foyer, she had run downstairs and was waiting for him. She threw her arms around him and started crying, for Christ’s sake.

Steve hadn’t even thought of his mother. As she gave him the weepy bear hug, he was conscious that if she hadn’t been looking out the window, he could have gone straight to Dianne’s and started things off the way he planned.

But he was caught now. He was only too aware that he would have to spend a little time with her before going to see Dianne.

His mother’s husband appeared and shook his hand and, for the first time ever, seemed glad to see him. The sonofabitch even worked up a smile and said, "Come on up, I’ll make us a little Seven-and-Seven."

As they were going up the stairs, Dianne came down them. Dianne and Leonard.

"Hi!" Steve said.

"Hey, kid," Leonard said. "I saw your picture in the paper."

"Hello, Steve," Dianne said. "Nice to see you."

"Great to see you."

That was it. The next second, Dianne and Leonard were down the stairs and gone.

The phone was ringing when they got in the apartment. It was Mrs. Danielli. She had probably seen his picture in the Newark Evening News, because his mother said to her, "Yeah, sure, we seen it. He’s here, Anna, he just this minute walked in the door."

And then Mrs. Danielli must have told Vinny that he was home, because his mother handed him the telephone and said, "Say hello to Vinny, Stevie."

"Ask them if they want to go out with us and get some spaghetti or something, why don’t you?" Steve’s mother’s husband chimed in. Steve pretended not to hear him. If he got involved with the Daniellis, he would never get loose to go look for Dianne.

His mother jerked the phone out of his hand.

"Vinny, tell your mother Stanley asked do you and your mother and father want to go out with us and get some spaghetti."

It was agreed they would meet the Daniellis at the Naples Restaurant on Orange Street by Branch Brook Park in half an hour.

His mother hung up the telephone and turned to him.

"What were you so nice to that tramp about?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I’m talking about Dianne Marshall whatever-her-married-name-is, is what tramp I’m talking about-the one whose husband threw her out because she was fooling around."

"You don’t know what you’re talking about!"

"Don’t you ever dare talk to me like that!"

"You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Ma!"

She slapped him.

"Don’t think you’re a big shot, Mr. Big Shot, who can swear at his mother!"

"What the hell is going on out there?" his mother’s husband called from the kitchen.

"Nothing, dear."

They had to wait for a table at the Naples Restaurant. The Daniellis-Mr. and Mrs., and Maria and Beryl, Vinny’s little sisters, and Vinny-showed up just before they finally got one.

When they got inside, Dianne and Leonard were there, sitting at a table for two with a candle in a Chianti bottle. The table was over against the wall-sized mural of what was supposed to be, Steve guessed, Naples and some volcano with smoke coming out of it.

They were just finishing up their meal. Leonard hadn’t seen them, and Steve wasn’t sure whether Dianne had or not. She wasn’t looking in their direction, anyhow. And then she got up to go to the John.

She saw me. She pretended she didn’t see me. She must know what my mother thinks about her, so she wanted to avoid trouble. And she doesn’t really have to go to the toilet; she knows I’ll see her go in there and will meet her outside, in that little corridor or whatever the hell it is.

"Excuse me, please, I have to visit the little boys’ room."

"Again?" his mother said. "You just went before we left the apartment!"

He prayed his mother had not seen Dianne.

He had to wait a long time in the little corridor between the door that saidrest rooms and the doors to the men’s and ladies’ Johns, but finally Dianne came out.

"Hi!"

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you."

"You crazy, or what? Christ!"

Steve tried to kiss her. She averted her face. When he tried harder, and started putting his arms around her, she kneed him in the balls.

"Jesus Christ," Dianne said, as he leaned against the wall, faint and in agony. "Can’t you take the hint? Stay the hell away from me. You come near me again, I’ll tell my father, and he’ll beat the shit out of you!"

Chapter Eight

(One)

The Foster Lafayette Hotel

Washington, D.C.

17 February 1942

Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, got out from behind the wheel of the black Buick Roadmaster two-door sedan and tiptoed through the slush to the marquee. He had purchased the Buick, used, three days before, from a classified advertisement in the Washington Post.

"You should have slid out the driver’s side, Captain Pickering," the doorman said, chuckling.

"But that would have been the intelligent thing to do," Pickering said. "I won’t need it anymore today. But presuming you can make it run, can you have it out here at half past seven in the morning?"

"It’ll start. The garage told me all it needed was a battery." "We’ll see," Pickering said. "I would be very surprised." "Senator Fowler came in a couple of minutes ago, Captain," the doorman said. "Asked if I’d seen you."

"As soon as I thaw my frozen feet, I’ll call him," Pickering said. "Thank you."

He checked at the desk for mail, but his slot was empty. Then he remembered that it would of course be empty. If they hadn’t sent it up with a bellboy, the ever-efficient Mrs. Ellen Feller would have picked it up when she came to the apartment.

Pickering and Mrs. Feller had been assigned office space in the Navy Department. He thought of it as "the closet," but it was just outside Secretary Knox’s suite. Since there was really no reason for him to spend much time there, he had had Max Telford, the hotel manager, install a desk and a typewriter in his suite for Mrs. Feller. She brought whatever papers needed his attention to the hotel, and he went to his official office as seldom as possible.

Am I getting old? Or am I just tired?

The junior United States Senator from California, the Hon. Richardson S. Fowler, was in the sitting room of Pickering’s suite when Pickering let himself in.

"Senator, finding a politician sitting in my chair tossing down my booze is not an entirely unexpected cap to an all-around lousy day," Pickering greeted him.

Fowler swung his feet off the footstool of a high-backed leather overstuffed chair, and started to get up.

"Oh, for Christ’s sake, stay there. I was only kidding."

"I never know with you."

"Whenever I call you ‘Senator,’ I’m kidding," Pickering said. "OK?"

He took off his uniform overcoat, tossed it on the back of one of the two couches facing a coffee table before the fireplace, laid his gold-encrusted uniform cap on top, sat down on the left couch, and started taking off his shoes and socks.

"My God," Ellen Feller said, coming into the room from the small bedroom that was now more or less converted into an office for her, "you’re all wet!"

She wore a dark green silk dress with an unbuttoned cardigan over it. Her hair was combed upward from the base of her neck.

"I’ve noticed," he said.

"You look frozen. Can I get you a cup of coffee?" she asked. "Or a drink?"

"I don’t suppose that’s in your official job description, Ellen, but yes, thank you, both."

"Sir?"