The Edge of Honor Read online

  But it had been more difficult to deal with the ethical and moral complications. He had been raised in a family that put a high value on having a solid job, turning in solid performance in return for solid benefits and security, and doing something with the flavor of public service to it.

  After twelve years in the Navy, Rocky was no longer bemused by any maudlin concepts of patriotism, but he also knew full well that going into the drug business would be a major insult to a value system that had served him well so far.

  Like most of his other career decisions, though, it came down to a matter of practicality. He had long since adopted the typical enlisted view of drugs on board ship: As long as people were discreet, doing an occasional joint or pipe of hash to take the edge off all the boredom, then there was nothing seriously wrong with it, other than the penalties for getting caught. His attitude was reinforced by the seemingly casual attitude held by the command in Hood, which, unlike his last ship, did not operate a high profile antidrug-use program. A couple of the chiefs were known to kick some ass if somebody was flagrant about what he was doing, but the key seemed to be discretion. As Rackman had put it, the command did not seem to be after him personally or his operation, and he had given Rocky the impression that the Old Man actually did not believe there were drugs in his ship. Just to be sure, though, Rackman took great pains not to attract attention to himself by flashing a lot of money or living visibly beyond his means, and the operation ran itself.

  But for Rocky, it was a girl named Lucy who opened his eyes to what was happening in America. He had met Lucy at one of those all-weekend beach parties that bloomed out on Ocean Beach when the coastal weather cooperated. He had been soaking up rays and nursing a six-pack with three other first class petty officers from the ship when this vision had come ambling down the beach: long, stringy beach blond hair, clingy bathing suit, legs up to h’yar, as the song went, enormous eyes, and a lopsided, lazy smile on her face that told every man who stared that she could read his mind and was not offended.

  Rocky had held up a cold beer and she had put the rudder over and joined him on his beach blanket.

  Lucy came from a well-to-do middle-class family in San Mateo who thought she was productively enrolled as an English major at UCSD. At the end of her first semester in Southern California, Lucy had aligned her orbit with the appropriate celestial spheres and declared her personal emancipation from all recognized conventions, especially those of the people who were paying her tuition. She focused single-mindedly on the task of expanding the horizons of her personal experience, adopting the rule that one should rule absolutely nothing out of the spectrum of personal experience, including this thoroughly square sailor with the pleasant manner and the dynamite black beard.

  Over the next few weeks that the ship was in port, Rocky became something of a project for her as she turned him on and tuned him in to the dizzying kaleidoscope of Southern California freedom, which included the uninhibited questioning of all existing value systems, decrying the Vietnam War, despising LBJ, embracing a host of ill-defined isms, indulging in mind-expanding substances, and screwing his brains out anytime he was in the mood and sometimes when he wasn’t. Rocky was mostly in it for the great sex, but he could not help but be affected by the views of Lucy and her friends.

  Collectively, they showed him that there was not only a whole new world out there but that it was altogether different from his world, and, even more disturbing, they actively disliked what he did for a living and even what he was. And there were lots of them, as even a cursory glance at the television revealed.

  When Lucy finally slipped down the ecliptic in search of new galaxies and experiences, Rocky was a changed man. Lucy’s breathtaking interpretations of what it meant to be a child of the sixties had shattered his complacent notions about the value of conformity, playing by the rules, and unquestioning cooperation with the system. By even his own admission, his successful career as an enlisted man in the Navy had been vividly exposed as a pawn’s game. While he had not bought into the whole scene, especially all the isms, and while he often wondered who was paying the rent for all these free spirits, if these were the people he was in the Navy to protect and defend and they thought that drugs were just one part of the process of personal enlightenment, not in themselves evil and wrong, then maybe Rackman’s deal wasn’t such a bad thing. Somebody would supply the ship: Why not him, especially when the whole deal was being handed to him on a silver platter? He had experienced a sudden ambition to do better, much better, than continuing with his complacent drift toward the holy grail of twenty. Rackman’s offer suddenly looked tailor-made.

  Rackman had explained that being the main man required intelligence, a great deal of acting ability, and effective cover—the very reasons, he said, he had picked Rocky. Rocky was obviously intelligent enough to get to first class in a highly technical rating, and it was equally obvious that he was a consummate actor: All the officers thought Rocky was a model petty officer. Plus, Rocky had damn-near-perfect cover: He was a member of the

  “K*t

  master-at-arms force, which would give him an inside look at any program the command put in motion to quash drug use aboard the ship.

  Rackman had explained that the distribution system was already in place.

  Rocky would deal with only one man, a black electrician’s mate first class who went by the name of Bullet. It was well known among the crew that Bullet was the acknowledged, if unofficial, leader of the younger, more radicalized blacks in Hood. Bullet ran a network he called his “associates.” A doper interested in scoring a little relaxation would strike up a casual conversation with one of the associates about his needs and desires and the associate would speculate on where something might be found after a certain time had passed.

  The doper would then speculate about where a small wad of cash might be found and would then go off to wait a while before going exploring.

  Rackman did not know and didn’t want to know precisely who Bullet’s associates were, other than to assume that all them were black. His righteous brothers, Bullet called them, just like the hit rock band.

  Rocky could see that Bullet’s use of ancient racial fears as a tactic against infiltration or potential snitches was brilliant, especially since almost all of his customers were white.

  Continuing aft, Rocky smiled again at his sweet deal.

  Crewmen passing him in the passageway saw the smile and figured Rocky was thinking about his many women.

  San Diego

  “Tizzy, this is crazy!” Maddy Holcomb held on to what was left of her hairdo with her left hand while gripping the door-side armrest with her right. Tizzy Hudson just laughed and steered the convertible down the ramp from Highway 5 to the Rpsecrans exit at a speed that had Maddy pressing her right foot into the floorboards.

  “Maddy, relax, for crying out loud,” said Tizzy, turning onto Rosecrans with only passing deference to the stop sign at the bottom of the ramp.

  “Just because MCRD’s a meat market doesn’t mean you have to take one home with you. It’s perfectly okay just to go and watch. It’s even funny.”

  “But we’re married, Tizzy. Tiz-zy!” Maddy squeaked as Tizzy cut off a bus trying to pull away from the curb.

  “So’re half the women there, honey buns,” shouted Tizzy over the wind.

  “I’ve been a good little nun for a whole month, and now I need to get out and rock and roll, just a little bit. MCRD’s perfect; you can find whatever you need there—a little or a lot. Like I said earlier, lots of people go there just to enjoy the show. Especially the Marines. Or better yet, the Marine aviators. They’re so full of themselves, it’s kind of fun to pretend to take them seriously, like they were humans or something. You know, ‘Oooh, you fly a Phantoml How totally groo-oovy!”

  Then watch them squint their eyes trying to look like John Wayne while they light up a cigarette and say something really clever like ‘Yup.’ “

  Maddy laughed nervously and shook her
head as Tizzy sped up Rosecrans toward the base known throughout San Diego as MCRD, shorthand for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. Her right hand fingered her bare ring finger as she thought about what Tizzy had said. It was well after dark on a Thursday night, but the overcast San Diego sky reflected enough of the city lights to dilute any sense of nighttime. Tizzy had picked Maddy up at her Balboa apartment to go to a seven o’clock movie, after which they had put down a Big Mac attack. While stuffing debris into the white bag, Tizzy had proposed they go check out the scene at the MCRD Officers’ Club. Initially, Maddy had had some reservations. She tended to distance herself from knowing much about the Navy scene in San Diego, much to her husband’s annoyance.

  But even she had heard MCRD O-Club stories and was aware that Thursday night offered one of the city’s hotter body exchanges. She was also mildly apprehensive about Tizzy Hudson. She suspected Tizzy might have more on her mind than just spectator sports. It was rumored among the wardroom wives that the Hudsons’ high-flying, swinging sixties lifestyle was centered on what the wives delicately called an “open relationship.”

  Tizzy’s instructions to take off her rings hadn’t helped.

  Maddy gave up on her hair, clasped her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes, as much an attempt to relax as to ignore Tizzy’s outrageous driving. The ship had been gone how long? Four weeks, two days, twelve hours, seven minutes—but who’s counting? Only six months to go. What’s half a year between friends? As she listened to Tizzy’s hilarious description of several standard MCRD opening lines, she realized that Tizzy knew more about that scene than any proper Navy wife should.

  Tizzy Hudson was a tall, dark-haired, vivacious woman whose appearance inevitably inspired the adjective cute. She seemed to be irreverent about wardroom protocol in general and the intricate network of Navy wives’ social functions in particular. Maddy had been attracted to her from their first meeting at Brian’s hailand-farewell party.

  They had become even closer friends now that the ship was gone, if only because Tizzy displayed no inhibitions about saying what many of the wives so obviously felt.

  Like Maddy, Tizzy had a day job, while most of the other wardroom wives stayed at home raising children. The two of them generally declined invitations to join the coffee klatches, shopping trips, and playground gatherings that united the wives.

  Maddy’s quiet sigh was snatched away by the wind.

  Her life had gone into limbo with Brian’s departure to WESTPAC. She woke up each morning with an oppressive amalgam of sadness, self-pity, rejection, and even despair puddled in her stomach like a lump of yesterday’s oatmeal—the “poor me’s,” as the captain’s wife, Mrs.

  Huntington, described it, feelings we endure but do not enunciate, especially in letters to the ship, girls. Or, as Tizzy was wont to put it, “Deployments really suck.”

  Maddy experienced the familiar flash of guilt for being so self-centered about the separation, realizing that her own anger and sense of abandonment implied that Brian felt none of these things as he chased around some godforsaken place everyone called the Gulf on his oversized “frigate.” And all because of this tragically absurd war in Vietnam.

  Like most Navy wives, Maddy despised the disheveled, screeching antiwar protestors who were paraded nightly on the television news by supercilious anchormen. But as the deployment dragged on, she sometimes found herself wishing they would prevail. At least now, President Nixon was talking about ending it.

  She tugged on her skirt as Tizzy swung the white convertible into the bright lights of the MCRD main gate area. She noted that Tizzy didn’t bother and that the Marine guard very definitely did not keep his eyes in the boat as they drove through. Tizzy, who was almost five ten, wore a very short bright yellow one-piece summer dress that complimented her trim figure nicely, even if it did not leave her many secrets when she sat down.

  Maddy realized now that Tizzy must have had MCRD on her mind right from the start. She, on the other hand, had not had time to change after work. She wore a straight white above-the-knee skirt with a cream-colored sleeveless blouse and a short-sleeved white linen jacket over her shoulders. She was always surprised at how cool San Diego could get at night.

  Maddy Holcomb had an arresting face, with finely arched eyebrows over large violet-blue eyes. Her upper lip described a perfect red bow; her lower lip was prominent and pendulous, giving her mouth a slightly breathless look. Her dense blond hair was cut in a long pageboy that framed her face and fell around her shoulders in a shimmering mantle.

  With her face in repose, she had a direct gaze that bordered on a stare, an expression accentuated by a slightly down-curving nose and a tendency, because of her height, to tilt her face slightly to one side to look up at people. Where Tizzy was the tall, slim, athletic, and outgoing California girl, Maddy was barely five six in low heels and presented an image of curves and soft roundness, accentuated by wide shoulders and the graceful poise of her Atlanta upbringing.

  She had lost a good deal of her southern accent and Georgia idiom after four years at school in Boston, although she could turn it on if the situation warranted.

  Maddy’s real first name was Madison, in deference to the southern tradition of a daughter taking her mother’s maiden name as a given name.

  With a mental smile, she recalled a remark Brian had made once, comparing Maddy with Tizzy, after it had become evident they were going to be friends. Tizzy, he had said, was eminently streetable, a tall bundle of fun and flash, the perfect partner for a night on the town, especially in Southern California. Maddy, on the other hand, had the kind of looks that men wanted to get off the street and into the bedroom before some other man saw her and wanted to fight.

  “Here we are, boys and girls,” announced Tizzy, whisking the car into a parking place with a scrunch of complaining gravel. She shut off the engine, twisted the rearview mirror toward her, and began to fix her own hair.

  Maddy let out a breath and looked around. The MCRD Officers’ Club was a low, sprawling Spanish hacienda style building complete with red tiled roof and rose colored stucco walls. The club was surrounded by groves of palm and eucalyptus trees interlaced with gravel walkways.

  The manicured lawns and lush shrubbery bespoke Mexican gardeners and generous irrigation. The grounds and the walkways were illuminated by faux gaslights placed strategically near the trees. The distinctive smell of eucalyptus blended with the tang of salt air from the nearby harbor. She could hear the whining rush of jet engines from the San Diego airport, which adjoined MCRD on the harbor side. She noticed that the parking lot was full and that a steady stream of young people filed into the 0-Club’s main entrance, the men and women arriving separately but already giving one another the once-over. The sounds of a rock band thumped through the gardens surrounding the club. There were even a few couples strolling around the gravel pathways in the gardens. Maddy felt torn: She was definitely up for a night out but uncomfortable at coming to a singles watering hole.

  “This place looks jammed,” she said, brushing out her own hair and appraising her day-old makeup in a compact mirror. The flickering yellow lights made the assessment difficult. “If we get separated, what time do you want to meet back here?”

  “Separated? Separated?” asked Tizzy, giving Maddy a speculative look from under her own busy hairbrush.

  “The southern belle thinking of maybe scoring a little Marine action tonight?”

  “Oh, Tizzy, don’t be ridiculous. Really. I just meant …”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, look—it’s ten-thirty. Let’s say midnight back here at the car. After midnight, they’re all so drunk, they, uh

  …”

  It was Maddy’s turn to cock her head to one side.

  “Yes, Tizzy? Something you want to tell me?” To remove any implied criticism, she half-smiled when she said it. But she was a bit curious.

  Tizzy grinned and looked down, smoothing her dress over her legs. “Well, not exactly,” she said. “Although if som
ething fun came up, er, along—I mean, I might not be opposed to going somewhere to party a little bit.

  Just for a while. You know.”

  “Tizzy, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” said Maddy, her expression suddenly serious. “We don’t really belong here, and I’ve got to get home at a reasonable hour. So do you—we have jobs, remember?”

  Tizzy made a face. “Oh, Maddy, ease up. I just want to go in and have a glass of wine and dance a little—it’s so crowded in there, you can just let yourself go, dance with whomever turns up; everyone’s anonymous.

  You’ll see. Pretend for a little while that you’re not some old married hag stuck in an empty apartment for the next half a year. MCRD’s always got a great band. You want to, you can just sit and watch, although I’ll bet you don’t.

  Anyway, if we do get split up, I promise I’ll meet you back here at the car around midnight and I promise to get you home. It’s not like your husband’s going to call and check up on you or anything.”

  “Okay, but I’m serious about the witching hour.”

  Tizzy rolled her eyes. “Yes, dear.”

  They left the car and joined the stream at the main entrance, small groups of two or three women and a similar number of young officers, each group trying to eye the action without seeming to do so. The noise from the band and the exuberant crowd within washed over them as Maddy and Tizzy stepped through the front doors. The entrance portico led to a large hallway, rest rooms, and offices to the right and a large combination dance floor and main bar to the left. The hallway was crowded with people milling about or going to and from the rest rooms, and groups of men were standing along the wall, talking, smoking cigarettes, and holding drinks.