“Why’s that?” Kirkwood asked, finishing his beer as the major handed him another one.
Buck Taylor looked at the two lawyers and laughed.
“That fucking monster killer over there wrestling with those girls,” Taylor said, pointing to Lobo who now had a Filipino go-go dancer kicking and screaming under each of his arms, “he has a genuine death wish. He keeps a case of hand grenades on the floor of his plane, in the space behind his feet, some other odds and ends explosives stashed here and there, an M79 grenade launcher and a sackful of blooper rounds hanging on the right-hand door, and an arsenal of assorted small arms and ammo in the backseat. The boy spends entirely too much time trimming treetops with his landing gear hunting Charlie. Gentlemen, I get pretty ice-cold up there flying my Phantom, but to be honest with you, Lobo scares the shit out of me. I do like living.”
“No shit,” O’Connor said, looking at the hulk tossing around the girls like rag dolls.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Taylor added. “I love that goon like my own flesh and blood. He, Tommy McKay, Wayne Ebberhardt, and me, we’re asshole tight as family. I just won’t fly with that insane Doctor Death because I would spend all my time talking to God instead of enjoying the ride. McKay and Ebberhardt, on the other hand, they go with Lobo all the time. But then they don’t know any better, because they’re both nearly as crazy as he is, even if they are lawyers.”
“I’ve only just met First Lieutenant McKay, and have not yet met First Lieutenant Ebberhardt,” Kirkwood admitted to the major. “I don’t believe that Terry has yet met either gentleman.”
“We’ll fix that,” Buck Taylor said, and then he put his fingers in his mouth and whistled an ear-splitting call to the two men, who stood across the crowded lawn, laughing at Lobo now with a go-go girl riding atop his shoulders and her miniskirt bunched over the top of his partially bald head. Archie Gunn immediately wheeled toward the signal, and offered a wide grin while pointing to the girl’s legs wrapped around his neck. Then he turned and pulled up the back of the girl’s miniskirt to reveal that she no longer wore any panties. McKay and Ebberhardt waved, and the major then motioned with his hand for them to come to him.
“I think that Archie is terminal as a captain,” Taylor said, opening the last beer in the six-pack after handing O’Connor one, and then dropping the opener in the lawyer’s palm. “He doesn’t give a shit about it, either. Great entertainment, but then look over there with Dicky Doo and Colonel Prunella, along with the Wing chief of staff. I’ll bet that those three have their assholes puckered equally as tight as they have their jaws locked right now, watching ole Lobo having fun with these girls. You couldn’t get a broom straw up any of them.”
“He burned out or what?” O’Connor said, punching a triangular hole in his beer can and handing the opener back to Major Taylor.
“Probably, burned to his boot laces, but nearly anyone who sees a lot of the enemy has that syndrome going on,” Taylor said, swigging beer and dropping the opener back in his pocket. “I think his shit-bird attitude comes from the Miss Goody Two Shoes he married and then discovered she was a slut.”
Terry O’Connor laughed. “I should have guessed it. Behind the misery of every good man lurks some form of skanky psycho bitch ready to perform a hose job on his ass.”
“Archie got hosed pretty good by this one,” Taylor said. “During his senior year at the University of New Mexico, where he played noseguard for the Lobos, hence the nickname, he ran into this girl one night sitting on the tailgate of some cowboy’s pickup truck outside a bloody bucket, rod and gun club honky-tonk on the north side of Albuquerque, crying her eyes out. Melted ole Archie’s gigantic heart right off. Her boyfriend was inside dancing with another girl, and she needed a ride home.
“Leave it to Archie Gunn to quickly oblige. When he dropped her off at her mother’s front door, she invited him to go to church with her the next morning. A good Baptist girl, just like big boy’s mama. Lobo fell in love. One thing leads to another, and he is head over heels, kissing his little buttercup’s ass, eating the peanuts out of her turds. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, she and her dear whore of a mother can’t get over their luck, having mister big-time New Mexico football star dangling by his sweet testicles on their little puppet strings.
“Right after graduation, Archie and this hog get married. Lobo gets his draft notice and joins the Marines, like about half of the people here tonight did. All during OCS and TBS, and all the while he is off at Naval Flight School, our little Baptist princess, named Bunny, and her mother, Mandy, are painting Albuquerque and Santa Fe red, white, and blue in Lobo’s little tricked-out Pontiac GTO, spending Archie’s money and fucking every truck driver and cowboy with a hard dick.
“I was still at Beeville when Archie got the letter from no less than his defensive line coach at UNM. Somebody had to finally tell him. The coach loves Lobo to this day like his own son, so he did the dirty job. Devastated the poor guy.
“Archie started to file for divorce, but then changed his mind. He decided on cold revenge. Then he couldn’t get to Vietnam fast enough. While he was still at El Toro, though, he started trying to fuck every skanky hole that looked like it could breed the clap or anything worse. He seriously wanted to catch every kind of VD known to man so he could go home on leave, before he shipped out to ’Nam, and give the creeping crud to Bunny. To this day, he still wants to give her the worst shit that he can catch, so that she can pass it around to these assholes fucking her behind his back.”
“He’s never gotten divorced from her?” Kirkwood said, surprised.
“Fuck no, because he found out that as long as he is in Vietnam, the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act prohibits her from taking any sort of legal action against him, like divorce. So he keeps extending over here, just to fuck with her,” T. D. McKay said, slapping Buck Taylor across the shoulder and putting out his hand to Terry O’Connor.
“You’re McKay?” O’Connor said, shaking the hand. “Right, and this skinny degenerate in my hip pocket here, helping me carry all these fresh beers for you lowlives, is Wayne Carolina Ebberhardt. He’s out of Duke University School of Law, and I am a University of Texas lawyer, through and through. Born in Dalhart, raised in Dumas, educated in Austin.”
“And you guys go flying with that maniac?” O’Connor said, tilting his head toward Lobo, who now headed their way, still holding the go-go girl on his shoulders while guzzling beer.
“Lobo’s a damned good pilot,” Ebberhardt said, shaking hands with Kirkwood. “Glad to meet you, Captain Kirkwood. And you, too, Captain O’Connor.
“As the man said, I’m Wayne Ebberhardt, born and bred in Boone, North Carolina. Home of the world’s best moonshine whiskey. If you’re real good, ole Tommy McKay and I might let you sample our little secret stash of homemade lightning that we have bottled up for most any special occasion. Some guys we know with the amtrac battalion have a nifty little still set up. Even has a copper boiler and condenser coils. I gave those boys a few pointers on preparing the corn mash, along with an old family recipe, and they went to work and made a pretty fair-sized batch before they ran out of corn. It tastes a lot like Jack Daniels, only better.”
“You two are on the defense team, right?” McKay said and smiled. “Otherwise I would swear that Wayne’s a liar.”
“We moved in today,” O’Connor said, drinking down the last of his beer. “Already met Mike Carter, and now with you two that makes up our whole section, doesn’t it?”
“You guys, me and Wayne, and our lead attorney, His Holiness, Father Michael Carter, Esquire,” McKay said, taking out a beer from a six-pack that he carried and handing it to O’Connor. “That’s it. We’re the defense that never rests.”
“However, Major Taylor does lend us moral support, and will moonlight a little homework and legal research for us when we can use a helping hand,” Ebberhardt offered, handing Kirkwood a fresh beer from the six-pack he had under his arm. “He’s our secret sixth man, if you want to count him, too. It pisses Dicky Doo the fuck off, though, to have him doing any legal work. The lifer prosecutors hate Buck because he betrayed the juristic cause to fly jets. However, the Right Honorable Major Monahan S. Taylor, after graduating Yale Law, passed both the New York and Massachusetts bars, and is a member in good standing of those fine fraternities. So fuck those tight assholes if they don’t like a jet jockey helping us with some case preparation.”
“Speaking of preparing a case,” Taylor said, handing Kirkwood the opener and looking at Lobo, now smiling with the rim of a cocktail glass firmly held in his teeth, “time for Archie Gunn to say good night. His alcohol consumption gauge just hit too much. When he starts to eat glass to impress everyone, it’s time to put him back in the cage.”
“He doesn’t have to do that to impress me. He did that at hello,” O’Connor said, cringing and offering a hopeful smile at Lobo, who then bit off half the side of the highball tumbler and started chewing.
“Archie, time to hit the rack,” Taylor said in a commanding voice, seeing Lobo crunch the broken glass. “You want to spit that crap in this napkin?”
“That’s okay, Buck,” Lobo slurred, the go-go girl still sitting atop his shoulders. “I’ll go spit it in that shit can by the bar.”
“Good, and while you’re at it, leave the girl there, too. She may be tired of playing horsey,” Taylor said.
“She’s going to the barracks with me,” Lobo said with a broad grin, showing a mouthful of red teeth and blood trickling from his lips where the broken glass had cut him.
“I bet that Yamaguchi Ritter might not want you to do that with his go-go girl,” Taylor suggested.
“I’ll ask him if I can fuck her,” Lobo said, still grinning and bleeding. “If he says no, I’ll put her down.”
“Good man,” Taylor said, and shook his head as McKay, Ebberhardt, O’Connor, and Kirkwood watched the hulking giant amble to the bar, spit the broken glass in the trash can, and then walk to the stage, where he began talking to the Japanese-born country-western singer, who immediately began shaking an emphatic no at a pleading Lobo, his out-of-shape, straw cowboy hat nearly bobbing off his head.
“Gentlemen, having a good time this evening?” Michael Carter chirped as he approached the small group of friends. He held a red-colored drink that had a wad of maraschino cherries and some lime slices floating on top of a berg of shaved ice.
“What’s that, a cherry limeade?” O’Connor asked, eyeing the drink.
“Sort of my own concoction of one, yes,” Carter said. “With a healthy double shot of gin.”
“Bet that’d be good with a hamburger and french fries,” McKay said. “I know that cherry-lime drink would be a big hit at the Tastee-Freez back in Dumas.”
“Where have you been hiding all evening, Mike?” Kirkwood asked, sipping his beer.
“Before the party, I had to catch up on some paperwork back at the office, wrapping up today’s disaster, and I ran into Major Dickinson. He gave me a heads up on assignments for you two,” Carter answered.
“We’re not even checked in,” O’Connor said, making a basketball toss at a trash barrel with his empty beer can and missing. “We’re supposed to have five days.”
“You can check in, but Major Dickinson expects you to get started on these cases while you’re at it,” Carter said, sipping from the top of the gin-spiked limeade. “Staff Sergeant Pride will take care of most of the check-in for you anyway. He’ll get your pay records and OQRs to headquarters and service squadron first thing Monday morning. You’ll have to see medical, dental, and the chaplain on your own, but the rest he can get handled.”
Carter then furrowed his pale brow and deepened his voice to sound authoritarian. “First of all, Captain O’Connor, you will be defending a Private First Class Celestine Anderson, a radioman with Marine Wing Support Group 17. He was taken into custody at Chu Lai this evening after planting his field ax in the head of another Marine private who was apparently touting Private Anderson outside the mess hall.”
“We talking about a battery or a murder?” O’Connor said.
“Murder,” Carter said. “Major Dickinson has assigned Charlie Heyster to prosecute for murder in the first degree, along with a raft of mindless misconduct charges so that the man will be sure to serve a good deal of brig time after they hang him. Your client is a black Marine; the victim was, of course, white. Racism will be at issue.”
“Oh, I imagine Dicky Doo is delighted,” O’Connor said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “A lawyer fresh off the boat, no real practical experience, and suddenly I am the defense attorney on a murder-one rap. I am sure we have a whole host of eyewitnesses to this crime, too.”
“About a hundred fifty or so Marines saw the entire spectacle, all of them crowded outside the main dining facility just moments before it opened for early evening chow,” Carter said.
“Fucking great,” O’Connor said. “My client has a hundred fifty witnesses see him kill a guy.”
“Captain Kirkwood,” Carter said, “your case is also at Chu Lai. Your client is Lance Corporal Nathan L. Todd, an American Indian who I believe is a native of the Cheyenne nation in Colorado. Lance Corporal Todd is accused of homosexual conduct and sexual assault on a fellow Marine. Apparently Lance Corporal Todd tried to suck the dick of a black Marine who was sleeping in the rack above the accused. Todd protests his innocence, claiming that he never got near the man and that the whole thing is a lie.”
“At least its not murder,” Kirkwood said, smiling.
“Gentlemen, good evening,” Major Dudley Dickinson said, joining the slowly growing cluster of Marines. “You give them the good news, Captain Carter?”
“Yes, sir, Major Dickinson,” Carter said, stepping back to allow the Mojo to shoulder his way into the ongoing conversation.
“What do you think, gents?” Dickinson said.
“Welcome to First MAW Law?” O’Connor offered, taking a fresh beer from T. D. McKay.