Mohr tapped himself another Camel out of the pack resting amid the confusion of empty glasses, cigar and cigarette butts, and spilled beer.

“Did I tell you about the well-deserved knuckling of Seaman Finch?” he asked nobody in particular.

Pete Craven blew a thick, blue stream of smoke down at the table.

“Only about four times so far,” he said. “You heard she got topped, didn’t you, Eddie? That Anderson broad. The nigger. And someone interfered with her, too, they reckon.”

Mohr’s beer stopped halfway to his lips.

“You’re shitting me! That was her? Fuck! I heard one of their dames washed up on the beach with a Jap, but I never woulda thought it was her.”

He took a meditative pull on the stein.

“Jeez, that’s a fucking pity, you know. She wasn’t so bad, that Anderson. For a black dame.”

The other men at the table didn’t visibly react to the statement, but their silence spoke for them. The fact that such a thing as a black female captain even existed was a source of amazement and not a little disbelief to those who hadn’t been there. That she’d then turned up dead, and “interfered with,” was kind of interesting. But Eddie Mohr sitting in Wo Fats, looking upset and glum, and saying that he thought she was all right, well that was downright disturbing.

The silence at their table seemed to balloon outward as the background roar suddenly fell right away. All around them, heads began to turn toward the front door. Soon the only sound Mohr could hear was the crackling of the speakers as Sammy Kaye crooned “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

Mohr stood up, craning to see over dozens of ugly, shaven boxheads in front of him. He could just make out the silhouettes of three figures near the front of the bar. He guessed from the cut of their uniforms that they were off one of Kolhammer’s ships. He was surprised. They were supposed to keep to themselves at the Moana and the Royal. As he pushed his way through the crush of thick, sweaty bodies, a hunch began forming. A few seconds later he’d confirmed it.

Two white guys and a nigger—sorry, Negro—sorry, African American serviceman—were standing at the entrance. He could see that the confusion on their faces was quickly congealing into anger and there, a few feet away, was the cause. A Marine Corps sergeant and half a dozen of his buds were barring their way.

“Shit,” he said to himself as he started to hustle forward. Unfortunately he wasn’t the only one with the same idea. The crowd heaved toward the scene of the confrontation, and the resulting crush actually slowed his progress. He could see the marine sergeant blocking their entrance with one arm as a phalanx of men packed in behind him.