"You're really going in the Corps?" McCoy asked, his curiosity aroused'-and his suspicions diminished just a little by the pretty girls.

"I'm really going in the Corps," the young man said. He put out his hand. "Malcolm Pickering," he said.

McCoy took it.

"Ken McCoy," he said. Pickering's grip was firm, not like a pansy's.

The steward set their drinks on the table.

"Put that on my tab," Pickering said.

"I can buy my own drink," McCoy said.

"Put the next round on your tab," Pickering said reasonably.

McCoy nodded. He twisted the cap off the miniature bottle and wondered idly if putting it in its own little bottle was how they got away charging half a buck for one lousy drink. He picked it up and read the lable. It held 1.6 ounces. That brought it down to 37.5 cents an ounce, which was still a hell of a lot more than he was used to paying for liquor.

"Can I ask you a question, Corporal McCoy?" Malcolm Pickering asked.

McCoy looked at him and nodded.

"I saw you in Chicago on the track with some strange-looking guys," Pickering said. "What was that all about?"

Chicago? What the hell does he mean by that?

And then he understood. There had been an hour's wait while the railroad switched locomotives. The lieutenant had the bright idea that the prisoners should exercise. Since they couldn't do calisthenics or close-order drill handcuffed and with their feet shackled, what the lieutenant had done was send them shuffling up and back down the track for half a mile or so. This Pickering guy had obviously seen that.

"We were exercising the prisoners," he said. "That what you mean?"

"What did they do?" Pickering asked.

"Three of them were fags," McCoy said. "One of them slugged an officer. The rest of them found out the hard way that once you enlist, you're in until they let you out."

"They were Marines?"

"Sailors," McCoy said. "The Marine Corps does the Navy's dirty work, like guarding and transporting prisoners."

"What happened to them?"

"We took them to the Naval Prison at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to serve their sentences," McCoy said.

"Is that what you do in the Marine Corps?" Pickering asked.

"No," McCoy said. "I just got to San Diego when they needed a couple of corporals for the guard detail."

"What do you do?" Pickering asked.

"I'm a motor transport corporal," McCoy said. Though he didn't like the sound of it, that's what he was on paper. "I work in the motor pool."

"You like it?"

"No. I told you, I'm just waiting to get out of the Marine Corps."

"Then what will you do?"

McCoy didn't want to tell this nosy guy that he was going back to China. That would trigger a whole new line of questions. And aside from going back to China, he couldn't think of a thing he was likely to do. He had been in the Marine Corps since he was seventeen. It was the only thing he had ever done.

"What made you join the Corps?" McCoy asked.

"My father was a Marine," Pickering said. "In the World War."

"And he didn't warn you off?" McCoy said.

"He was a corporal," Pickering said. "What he warned me to do was get a commission."

Then he realized what he had said.

"I didn't mean to offend…" he began.

"Your father was right," McCoy said.

"So, with war coming, I figured I had better get one," Pickering said. "A commission, I mean."

"You seem sure that we're going to get into this war," McCoy said.

"You don't?"

"Christ, I hope not," McCoy said.

"We're probably going to have to do something about the Japanese," Pickering argued.

"The Japs are probably thinking the same thing about us," McCoy said. "And you wouldn't believe how many of the bastards there are."

"But they're not like Americans, are they?" Pickering asked.

"The ones I've seen are first-class soldiers," McCoy said. He saw the surprise on Pickering's face.

"The ones you've seen?" Pickering asked.

"I just came from China," McCoy said. "I was with the Fourth Marines in Shanghai."

Now why the fuck did I start in on that?

"I'd like to hear about that," Pickering said.

'I'd rather talk about something else," McCoy said.

"Like what?" Pickering said, agreeably.

"I'm going to be stationed in Philly," McCoy said. "For a while, I mean, say a month or six weeks, until I can get my discharge. If you know anything about it, why don't we talk about the best way to get laid in Philadelphia?"

"The best way, I've found," Pickering said, "is to use a bed. But there is a school of thought that says that turning them upside down in a shower is the way to go."

McCoy looked at him for a moment and then laughed out loud.

"You tell me about the Marines in China, McCoy," Pickering said. "And then I will tell you about getting laid in Philadelphia. Maybe with a little luck, when we get there- that's where I'm going, too, to the Navy Yard, to give them my college records-we could conduct what they call a 'practical experiment.' "

If I keep drinking with this guy and then start chasing whores with him, I am probably going to get my ass in deep trouble. But right now, I don't give a fuck.

He raised his hand above his head, snapped his fingers at the steward for another drink, and turned to Malcolm Pickering.

"You can buy a fourteen-year-old virgin in Shanghai for three dollars," he said. "What's the going rate these days in Philly?"

"There are no fourteen-year-old virgins in Philadelphia," Malcolm Pickering said solemnly.

I'll be goddamned if I don't really like this candy-ass civilian.

(Three)

The Bellevue Stratford Hotel Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 0905 Hours 17 July 1941

The first thing McCoy remembered when he woke up was that there had been a woman in bed with him, which meant he was likely to find his money and his watch gone.

The second thought was more frightening: The "Guaranteed Officer's Checque" from Barclays Bank, Ltd., Shanghai, had been in his money belt with the three hundred bucks. The whore probably wouldn't be able to cash it; but sure as Christ, she would have taken it, and it was going to be a real pain in the ass to get it replaced.

When he sat up, his head hurt like a toothache, as if his brain had shrunk and was banging around loose inside his skull. His lips were dry and cracked and the tip of his tongue felt like the sole of a boot.

How the hell am I going to get from wherever the hell I am to the Navy Yard without any fucking money? Or for that matter, out of the hotel? Jesus Christ, I hope at least they made me pay in advance!

He looked around the room, and that made it worse. This was no dollar-a-night hot-sheet joint. This was not only a real hotel, but a fancy-hotel hotel. Great big fucking room, drapes over the windows, a couch and a couple of armchairs, and Christ only knows what he had paid for the bottles sitting on a chest of drawers across the room. Before the whore got his money, he thought, at least he'd spent a hell of a lot of it.

And then he saw the money belt. It was on the little shelf over the wash basin in the bathroom. That figured. Just before she left, the whore had taken the money belt into the bathroom, just in case he should wake up and see her going through it. Once she'd emptied it, she hadn't given a damn where she left it.

He needed a glass of water, and desperately. Maybe, if he hadn't been rolled, too, he could borrow say, ten bucks, from Pickering. It wasn't the end of the fucking world. He had his pay record with him, and he had at least two months' back pay on the books. All he had to do was come up with enough money to get from here to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and he could draw enough money to keep him going.

And he would go to some bank and ask them what you were supposed to do when you lost a 'Guaranteed Officer's Checque.' He would say he lost it. And since he hadn't signed it, they would have to sooner or later make it good.