"I loved your speech," she said.

"Thank you."

"Are they taking good care of you? I mean in the hotel?"

"Very nice."

"Nice rooms?"

"Very nice."

Mrs. Feaster's knee had not broken contact with his leg, Pick realized.

"Anyone sharing it with you?"

"No."

You don't want to do this, Pickering. You will regret it in the morning. As a matter of fact, even despite that last remark of hers, you don't know whether the knee is accidental or not. So get thee behind me, Satan.

Pickering turned in his seat to watch the others have their hands shaken and take their keys. Doing so removed his leg from Mrs. Feaster's knee. Mrs. Feaster's knee did not pursue Lieutenant Pickering's leg.

"And now, the Reverend Stanley O. White," the mayor announced, "of the Sage Avenue Baptist Church, will lead us in our closing prayer."

The Reverend White stepped to the lectern.

"May we please bow our heads in prayer," he began.

The Reverend, Pick adjudged after the opening phrases, is not afflicted with brevity.

Mrs. Feaster's hand suddenly appeared on Pick's leg, just above the knee, and then slid slowly upward. By the time her fingers found what she was looking for, his male appendage had reacted to the stimuli.

"Thank God," Mrs. Feaster whispered. "I was beginning to wonder if you were queer."

Oh, fuck it! Why not?

[SIX]

The John Charles Fremont Suite

The Foster Washingtonian Hotel

Seattle, Washington

1715 Hours 13 November 1942

"I didn't think you were going to show up," First Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, said to First Lieutenant William C. Dunn, when Dunn came into the-suite, "so I had supper without you."

Pickering was sitting on a couch, wearing a shirt and trousers. On the coffee table in front of him were the remnants of a T-bone steak and a baked potato.

"I am a Marine officer. I am at the proper place, at the proper time, although I must change into the properly appointed uniform. Why should that surprise you?" Dunn replied.

"The lady did not express her appreciation in the physical sense, in other words?"

After somehow recalling a previously long-forgotten lecture that the only civilians permitted to fly aboard Navy or Marine aircraft without specific permission were members of the press, Lieutenant Dunn had taken Miss Roberta Daiman to the Boeing Plant for an orientation ride in a Yellow Peril. Miss Daiman was a reporter for The Seattle Times.

"Let us say I was given a preview of the coming attraction," Dunn said. "What's on the menu for tonight? Or is that why you're eating a steak?"

"Chicken," Pick replied. "What else?"

"Do I have time to order a steak?"

"I think so," Pick said, and reached for the telephone.

"On the way over here," Dunn said. "It came over the radio that we lost the cruiser Atlanta. "

Pick dropped the handset back into the cradle. "No shit?"

"There wasn't much. Just a bulletin, 'The Navy Department has just announced the loss of the USS Atlanta...' "

"They say where?"

"Off Savo Island."

"Shit," Pickering said, then shrugged and picked up the telephone and asked for room service.

"I better change," Dunn said. "Which bedroom is mine?"

"The larger one. I thought from the look on the lady's face that you might be expecting an overnight guest."

"Shall I ask if she has a friend?"

"It is a sacred rule of the gentle gender that when two or more of them gather together, none of them would dream of doing that sort of thing outside of holy matrimony. And besides, I'm tired."

"Suit yourself," Dunn said, and repeated, "I better change."

About five minutes later, while Pickering was making himself a drink, there was a knock at the door. He went to open it, a little surprised at the quick service.

But it was not room service. It was Second Lieutenant Robert F. Easterbrook, USMCR... as surprised to see Pickering as Pickering was to see him.

"Easterbunny! I thought you were in Hollywood."

"I thought this was Major Dillon's room."

"Actually, it was Veronica Wood's, but when she and Dillon went to Los Angeles on business, Dunn and I moved in."

"He's in Hollywood?"

"That's the story for public consumption. If you really have to talk to him, he left a telephone number. A friend of his-maybe of hers-has a place on the water outside of town."

"I hate to bother him," Easterbrook said.

"Then, if it's not important, don't."

"Maybe later. Can I have a drink?"

Pick waved at the row of whiskey bottles on the bar. Easterbrook walked over to it and poured scotch in a glass.

"I found out that Sergeant Lomax's widow lives here," he said. "I want to give her the Leica."

"What Leica?"

"Lomax had a Leica. When he got killed, I took it. Or Lieutenant Hale took it. And when he got killed, I took it from him. Now I want to give it back."

"I wondered where that camera came from; I didn't think it was issued."

Dunn walked into the sitting room, tucking his shirt into his trousers.

Pickering spoke for Easterbrook, which was fortunate. For at that moment Lieutenant Easterbrook was incapable of speech-having swallowed all at once at least two ounces of scotch: "He found out that the widow of the sergeant who got killed lives here. He's going to return the sergeant's camera to her."

"I don't envy that job," Dunn said.

Easterbrook smiled weakly at him.

The story he'd just related was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. About the only true part of it was that he had found out that Sergeant Lomax's widow did live in Seattle.

But the real reason he was in Seattle was to tell Major Dillon that he wanted to resign his commission. He shouldn't have been made an officer in the first place.