W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

"Bullshit," Koznowski said, "How the hell do you know?"

"I was there when he shot the Chinks," Zimmerman said. "I shot a couple of them myself."

Koznowski looked at him for a moment, and finally decided he had been told the truth.

"I'll be goddamned," he said.

(Three)

Tony, the Sages' chauffeur, had parked the Bentley on Thirty-fourth Street, in a NO PARKING zone across from Pennsylvania Station in front of George's Bar Grill. Ten minutes after Ernestine Sage had gone into the station with Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, a policeman walked up to the car, rapped on the window with his knuckles, and gestured with a jerk of his thumb for Tony to get moving.

On the second trip around the block, they saw Ernestine Sage standing on the curb. Tony tapped the horn twice, quickly, and she saw the car and ran to it and got in.

"Just so you won't feel left out," Ernie Sage said to Second Lieutenant Malcolm Pickering, "I will now put you on your airplane."

"Where to, Miss Ernie?" Tony asked, cocking his head to one side in the front seat.

"My apartment, please, Tony," Ernie Sage said, and turned to Pickering. "I'll make you a cup of coffee."

"The Foster Park, Tony," Pickering ordered. "She makes a lousy cup of coffee."

They were stopped in traffic. There was a chance for Tony to turn to look into the backseat. Ernestine Sage nodded her approval.

Tony made the next right turn and pointed the Bentley uptown.

"You're not going to work?" Pickering asked. When she shook her head no, he asked, "What happened to Nose to the Grindstone?"

"When we get there," Ernie Sage said, "I will call in. I will say that I have just put my boyfriend-the-Marine on a train, that I am consequently in a lousy mood, and will be in later this afternoon."

"Patriotism," Pickering said solemnly, "is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

She laughed, and took his arm.

"He's only going to Washington, Ernie," Pickering said.

"He ever tell you about a Marine named Zimmerman?" Ernie asked. "When he was in China?"

Pickering shook his head. "No."

"The one who had a Chinese wife and a bunch of children?"

"Yeah," Pickering said, remembering. "Why?"

"He was in the station, by the gate," Ernie said. "With another Marine. A sergeant. Another sergeant."

"Really?"

"They looked like Marines, Pick," she said. "I mean, they were Marines. And they saluted Ken and stood stiff… what do they call it?"

"At attention," he furnished. "And?"

"I can't really understand that he's really a Marine officer… or you either, for that matter."

"I'm not so sure about me," Pickering said, "but you better get used to the idea that that's what Ken is. Hell, he's already been in the war, and it's hardly a month old."

"He was shot before the war, when he was in China, with Zimmerman," she said. "He told me about it. It's not that I didn't believe him, but it wasn't real until just now, when I saw Zimmerman. It wasn't at all hard to imagine Zimmerman with a gun in his hands, shooting people."

"The fact of the matter, Ernie, is that your boyfriend is one tough cookie. He may look like he's up for the weekend from Princeton, but he's not. What are you doing, having second thoughts about the great romance? Are you just a little afraid of him?"

"For him," she said, and then corrected herself. "No. For me. Oh, God, Pick, I don't want to lose him!"

"For the moment, Ernie, you can relax," Pickering said. "He's only going to Washington."

"Yeah, but where does he go from Washington?" she replied.

The Bentley turned right again onto Fifty-ninth Street, and halfway down the block pulled to the curb before a canvas marquee with THE FOSTER PARK HOTEL lettered on it.

A tall, florid-faced doorman in a heavy overcoat festooned with gold braid scurried quickly across the sidewalk and opened the door.

"Oh, good morning, Mr. Pickering," he said, as Pickering got out. "Nice to see you again, sir."

"Nice to see you, too, Charley," Pickering said, shaking his hand, "but it's 'Lieutenant Pickering.' We second lieutenants are very fussy about that."

"I was glad to hear your folks are all right," the doorman said. "And you're Miss Sage, right?"

"Hello," Ernie Sage said.

Pickering opened the front door of the Bentley.

"No sense you hanging around, Tony," he said. "I'll catch a cab to the airlines terminal."

"I don't mind, Mr. Pick," the chauffeur said.

"You go ahead," Pickering insisted.

The chauffeur leaned across the seat and offered his hand.

"You take care of yourself, young fella," he said. "We want you back in one piece."

"Thank you, Tony," Pickering said. "And keep your eye on Whatsername for me, will you?"

The chauffeur chuckled, and then Pickering closed the door.

When the bellman spun the revolving glass door, passing first Ernie Sage and then Pickering into the lobby of the Foster Park Hotel, an assistant manager was waiting for them.

"Mr. Pickering, I'm Cannell, the assistant manager. How can I be of service?"

"I've got to be at the airlines terminal at half-past ten," Pickering said. "Will you make sure there's a cab outside at quarter-past?"

"Why don't we just run you out to the airport in the limousine, Mr. Pickering?"

"Because the limousine is for paying guests," Pickering said. "A cab will do fine."

Pickering took Ernie Sage's arm and steered her across the lobby of the luxury-class hotel to the coffee shop, and then to a red leather banquette in the rear.

"Just coffee, please," Pickering ordered when a waitress appeared.

His order was ignored. With the coffee came toast and biscuits and slices of melon and an array of preserves.

The Foster Park Hotel was one of forty-one hotels in the Foster chain. Mr. Andrew Foster, the Chairman of the Board of the closely held Foster Hotels Corporation, who made his home in the penthouse atop the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco, had one child, a daughter; and his daughter had one child, a son; and his name was Malcolm Pickering.

"Oh, nice!" Ernie Sage said, pulling a slice of melon before her and picking up a spoon.

"Amazing, isn't it," Pickering said, "what romance does for the appetite?"

"Meaning what?" Sage asked.

"Meaning that your mother went to your room last night to have a little between-us-girls tкte-а-tкte," Pickering said.

"Oh, my God!" Ernie Sage said, and then challenged: "You're sure? How do you know?"

"She told me," Pickering said. "As we watched you and Ken billing and cooing down by the duck pond."

"Okay," Ernie Sage said. "So she knows. I don't care."

"And if she tells Daddy?" Pickering asked.

Ernie Sage thought that over.

"She won't tell him," she announced. "She knows how he would react."

"You being his precious little girl and such?"

"She knows it would change nothing," Ernie Sage said. She spread strawberry preserve on a slice of toast and handed it to him. "My mother is a very level-headed woman."

"Her tactic for the moment is to praise your boyfriend to the skies," Pickering said. "If that fails, she's considering poison."

"Your goddamned Marine Corps may solve the problem for her," Ernie Sage said.

"For the third time, Ernie, he's only going to Washington."

"Yeah, and for the third time, where's your damned Marine Corps going to send him from Washington?"

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, Ernie," Pickering said. "But I don't think there's much chance that the Corps is going to hand Ken a rifle and send him off to lead a platoon onto some exotic South Pacific beach."

"Tell me more about that," she said sarcastically.

"It's true. He's an intelligence officer," Pickering said. "He speaks and reads Chinese and Japanese. That's why they sent him to Quantico to officer candidate school. And that's why they're not going to hand him a rifle and tell him to go forth and do heroic things. There are very few Marines who speak Chinese or Japanese, much less both, and they are far too valuable to send off to get shot up."