"OK."
"Maybe you better call your mother and ask her does she want to eat out someplace?"
"She said she was going to make a pot roast, and I was to bring you home no later than half past six."
"OK. So we'll have a couple of snorts and go home."
"OK, Pop."
"You got some money?"
"Yeah, sure."
"You said you went home from the airport. So what did an airplane ticket cost you? Where'd you get the money?" Captain Hart said, as he took a wad of bills from his pocket and peeled off two five-dollar bills. "Don't argue with me, I'm your father."
"OK, Pop. Thank you."
"Thirty minutes, George," Captain Hart said, and then there was another unexpected gesture of affection. He rubbed his hand over his son's head, but masked the affection by saying, "Jesus, I love your haircut."
Mooney's was crowded. Cops who had come off the four-in-the-afternoon shift change mingled with courthouse people who seldom waited until the clock said five before closing up.
George smiled at familiar faces and even shook a couple of hands, but there was no one in the bar he knew well enough to sit down with.
He found a stool toward the back of the room, near the Wurlitzer jukebox. Before he sat down, he reached behind the Wurlitzer and turned the volume control way down.
"Welcome home, George," Jerry the bartender said, offering his hand. He was a plump young man wearing a black vest and an immaculate white shirt with the cuffs turned up. "Your Uncle George was in a while ago, and Ramirez just left."
"I'll be around a while. My father's coming in."
"Seagram's and Seven? Or a beer?"
"Jerry, you got any Famous Grouse?"
"What the hell is that?"
"Scotch." The bartender shook his head, no. "I got some Dewar's and there's some..." He turned, searched the array of bottles against the mirror and put a bottle of Haig and Haig Pinch Bottle on the bar... of this."
"That. Straight. Water on the side."
"When'd you start drinking that?" Jerry the bartender asked as he poured a very generous shot in a small, round glass.
"As soon as I found out about it," George said. He took out his wallet and laid a ten-dollar bill on the bar.
"Put that away," Jerry said. "Your money's no good in here."
"Thanks, Jerry," George said, and started to put the twenty back in his wallet. Then he remembered the two fives his father had given him, and took them from his pocket.
The truth of the matter, Jerry, is that I was having a couple Of drinks with my pal Pick Pickering-you know, the guy whose grandfather owns Saint Louis' snootiest hotel, the Foster Pierre Marquette, and forty other hotels-right after we flew under the Golden Gate Bridge in his grandfather's airplane; and Ol' Pick said, "George, if we're going to drink as much as I think we are, you better get off that Seagram's and Seven and onto The Bird. " So I got onto The Bird, which is what my pal Pick calls Famous Grouse; and I got to like it, right from the first.
Would I bullshit you, Jerry?
He took a swallow of the water on the side and then poured scotch into it.
"My God, " Pick said, "you were a vice cop and I have to teach you about booze? Upon my word as an officer and a gentleman, Sergeant Hart, the way one drinks whiskey-and by whiskey, I mean scotch whiskey-is to mix it in equal portions with just a little bit of ice.
I wonder why I used to think scotch tasted like medicine?
George thought after he'd taken a sip of his drink. Well, what the hell, when I was a little kid and pop ate oysters, I used to want to throw up. And now I love them. They're what they call an acquired taste.
He turned on his stool and caught the arm of a waitress.
"Hey, George," she said, "I thought that was you. You look real nice in your uniform."
"Hazel, could you get me a dozen oysters?"
"You bet your life I could, honey." When he turned back to the bar, Jerry handed him a newspaper.
"Seen the paper?"
"No, I haven't. Thank you." He unfolded the paper and spread it on the bar. There was a four-column picture of an aircraft carrier, and below it the headline: AIRCRAFT CARRIER `WASP' SUNK IN PACIFIC.
He read the story: Washington, DC Sept 15 (AP) - In a terse announcement this afternoon, the I Navy announced that the aircraft carrier USS `Wasp' was lost at sea yesterday (Sept 14), with heavy loss of life, while operating in the Solomon Islands area.
The Navy said that initial reports indicate the `Wasp' was struck by at least three Japanese torpedoes from a submarine in an action which also saw a destroyer sunk, and serious, but not fatal, damage caused to the battleship USS `North Carolina."
There was other war news, some of it accompanied by photographs:
in North Africa, German airfields at Benghazi have been attacked by units of the British Long Range Desert Group, and severe damage is reported.
American bombers have attacked Japanese bases in the Aleutian Islands.
The Russian forces defending Stalingrad are in desperate shape. The defense perimeter has been reduced to a thirty-mile area. The German High Command has predicted the fall of the city within a matter of days.
Word has reached London that the Cunard liner `Laconia,' carrying British military dependent families and Italian prisoners of war, has been sunk off the Cape of Good Hope by the German submarine U-156.
On Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, the Marines have succeeded in turning back a Japanese attack on `Bloody Ridge' near the American air base, Henderson Field. Severe Japanese losses were reported.
Jesus Christ, Pick and Dick Stecker are on their way to Guadalcanal. It doesn't seem so fucking impersonal if you know people.
An elbow jabbed Hart in the ribs. He turned and saw that he'd been joined by a fellow noncommissioned officer of The United States Marine Corps, Staff Sergeant Howard H. Wertz, USMC, -the miserable, lying cocksucker who conned him into joining the crotch by telling him he could be sort of a Marine detective.
Sliding his beer glass around in a little puddle on the bar, Wertz gave him a smirking smile.
"You look good, kid," he said. "Parris Island must have been good for you."
"Yeah, all that fresh air," Hart said. "Still scrounging up all the warm bodies you can for the crotch, are you, Sergeant?"