He’d already grabbed and stashed away two of them electrical books, three electrical watches, one pair of goggles—also electrical—and a pistol that looked like it’d stop a bull elephant. The hand cannon he understood. The watches, sort of. They had to be like something out of Dick Tracy, radio watches or something. But the other stuff, that was a mystery. He just took them because he recognized a first-class score. There was just something about those gadgets that cried out, Take me Slim Jim. I’m yours. At some point he was going to have to drop the loot off and start again. Or else Mohr was certain to get wise.

But it was worth the risk. That’s why he’d allowed himself to be “volunteered” by the chief for the gruesome business of cleaning up the body parts that lay throughout the dense labyrinth created by the intersection of the two cruisers. The confusion and darkness created endless opportunities for profit. One of the watches, for instance, had just “slipped off” a severed arm and into Slim Jim’s pocket as he cleared out a niche where the Astoria’s electrical storeroom met a small crew cabin on the Leyte Gulf.

It was hotter than hell down here, maybe even hotter than Alabama in high summer, which Slim Jim knew from personal experience was worse than being trapped in the Devil’s own butt hole. In July of ’36 he’d done three months on a road gang just outside Montgomery. At the time he’d sworn never to get himself into that sort of trouble again, but here he was, picking up dead meat, Chief Mohr kicking his ass, Moose Molloy stepping on his toes, the Imperial Japanese Navy hell-bent on killing him, and now this crazy bullshit thrown in for good measure. He’d be a damn fool if he didn’t take what little chance he had to profit from these unpleasant circumstances.

And Slim Jim’s mama didn’t raise no fools. Sharpies, grifters, and one crooked jockey, for sure. But no fools.

Slim Jim’s normal approach to a job like this would have been to affect an impression of grim industry while goofing off at every turn. But now he hurried to fill his burlap bag with its obscene cargo and the occasional item of plunder, trying to look like the world’s busiest little beaver. Moose Molloy, who was working beside him, droned on without letup, his tiny pea brain grappling with the night’s events. Slim Jim upheld his side of the conversation only when necessary. His mind worked furiously behind a mask of barely contained disgust.