Cherry subsided. “Okay,” he said. “Because, you know, she could have gone upside the head of her boyfriend over there.” He waved a meaty paw at Sub-Lieutenant Miyazaki’s corpse. “The whole damn thing’s probably a lovers’ tiff.”

“Hey, just a minute—,” said Wassman.

Francois ground her teeth and placed a restraining arm on her colleague.

“Detective, I can assure you that Captain Anderson was not having a relationship with Lieutenant Miyazaki.”

Cherry rolled his eyes.

“Please don’t tell me she had a little man waiting for her at home.”

Francois gave him a poisonous look. She paused the recording, waited for just a beat, and then spoke again.

“Captain Anderson was gay.”

The three locals were visibly perplexed.

“Are you saying that she was a happy individual?” ventured Dr. Brumm.

Captain Lunn rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Wassman swore under her breath.

Francois prayed for the patience to get her through this.

“Captain Anderson was a lesbian,” she said.

She expected astonishment, even embarrassment, but in fact she herself was surprised when Detective Cherry actually laughed.

“Three strikes, hey? A nigger, a broad, and a rug muncher. Christ, what the fuck happened to America?”

Chapter 27

27

HONOLULU, 1534 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942

Down at Wo Fats, the bar and grill favored by the chiefs and warrant officers, Eddie Mohr nursed the second of the two beers he was allowed to purchase on any given day, and held court. Half a dozen Old Navy men had gathered around him to hear him tell of the Astoria’s bizarre fate.

“It was like crawling through a fucking Chinese puzzle box in there, I’m telling you,” he assured the doubters. “You never seen anything like it your whole goddamn life. And these guns they got, tear a man to pieces like a fucking grizzly bear they would, but they hit steel or wood and it’s like getting dusted by some dame’s powder puff. That’s what they call the bullets, powder puffs. A fucking obscenity, if you ask me. They got Bud Kelly with one of them. Turned his fucking head into something looked like chopped liver.”

“Fuckers,” somebody muttered. Mohr wasn’t sure who.

“Well,” said Pete Craven, “he was never that pretty a sight to begin with.”

A few, sad smiles acknowledged the point. Craven, a heavily tattooed former longshoreman, now serving on the Enterprise, raised his glass.

“To Chief Kelly.”

Half a dozen thick voices responded, “To Chief Kelly.”

Around them the familiar chaos of Wo Fats roared on, as eternal and reassuring as the sea itself. Men cursed and bellowed. Beer steins clinked and sometimes crashed. The turntable spun and speakers crackled and blared with the hits of the day, “Goodbye Mama I’m Off to Yokohama” and “Let’s Put the Axe to the Axis.” A handwritten poster announced a special showing of Andy Hardy’s Double Life throughout August at the Marine Canteen.