"You'll like the seagoing life. I always did. You don't have to take as much shit as you do on shore duty. Shore duty is for fucking pussies! The worse day at sea is a hundred fucking times better than the best day ashore. That's what I always fucking say." Chief Mason raised his ass off his barstool and let loose with a thundering fart and a loud belch at the same time. He was shitfaced drunk and surprisingly in a very good mood. I was pounding them back myself but had fortified myself earlier with two jolting lines of crystal meth and the alcohol wasn't even close to cutting through that yet.
My orders were in. I was going to Long Beach to catch out on some Navy garbage scow called the Dixie that was in the yards there for a major overhaul. The remaining crew from the boathouse were giving me my final send off at some dive in Pearl City. Behind the bar there was a gigantic cage full of squirrel monkeys who seemingly non-stop ran around shrieking, gobbling peanuts, throwing feces, and jacking off.
"You don't want to blow me cause you're a motherfucking racist bitch! You know that? You fucking slut! Racist cracker twat! Why don't you just call me a nigger and get it over with!" We turned around from the bar to watch Brooks as he chased off some brunette bimbo with huge jugs that had been stupid enough to sit down with him. So far he had driven away three woman and the majority of the men with his ranting.
"Petty Officer Brooks! At fucking ease! Is that anyway to treat a lady?" Mason chastised him.
"Bitches! Goddamn fucking bitches!" he cried out as he slid down into his booth, his head in his hands. "Bitch was probably a guy with a tit job anyway." Brooks sobbed into his hands.
Mason turned back to me excitedly. "That reminds me of a helluva story..."
I was stationed on this cruiser out of Boston and when we were in port we used to go to the combat zone to go to the strip shows, get drunk, and maybe pick up a hooker. One Friday night we took a new guy fresh out of boot camp along. I think he was from Iowa or somewhere but all I remember was his name. Billy. Well, charming Billy got all loaded on draft beer and struck up a conversation with a transvestite. Since he was hitting it off so well we all decided not to tell him that the chick he was hitting on was really a dude! They must have sat there for an hour or so while Billy kept buying the him-shim vodka and Cokes. We could hardly contain our giggles and grins when Billy announced that he was going to go out to the alley for a blowjob which he had paid fifty dollars for. But the funny part was just beginning. When Billy came back in he had a grin like he had been eating shit sandwiches.
"So how was it, Billy? As good as you thought it was going to be?
Billy gave this big mid-western grin. "Better than I imagined. When she started to blow me I got so turned on I told her I'd just had to have her pussy. But she said that she was on her period so I'd have to screw her in her rear and it would cost another fifty bucks but I didn't give a shit."
"So you cornholed her?" asked one of my prankster shipmates.
Young Billy chugged down his Schlitz and slammed the mug down on the bar. "Big time! I nailed her so hard she'll call her Mom to tell her all about it."
"Was it like screwing a sheep back on the farm?" yelled out one wag.
"Better." Billy responded.
"Well you just fucked a guy in the ass!" We had all screamed out at once. Billy had look on his face like we had just told him that his dog had died, but it was all in good fun.
Then the Captain's clerk started dancing around chanting "Billy fucked a him-shim! Billy fucked a him-shim," until Billy freaked out, ran out of the bar, and jumped into a cab. We stayed in the bar and partied until closing and then staggered back to the ship. It wasn't until the next morning that we had heard that Billy had gone total bugshit when he got back to the ship and threatened to burn the goddamn thing down to the waterline. He had to be restrained and sedated by a corpsman and was carried off on a stretcher.
I wonder what the hell that was all about? We never saw Billy again. He was a good guy and I always missed him after he was gone. Last I heard was that he was locked up in some Navy hospital ward somewhere.
"Holy shit, Chief! That's quite a story." This bastard was psychotic. This asshole himself needed to be locked up in a room with padded walls.
"Those were the days. Those were the days." He tossed back another shot of Jack Daniel's and sighed. "It's all gone to shit now. Especially with Rose and Brewer gone."
What in the hell was he talking about? "What's gone to shit?"
Mason slammed down the rest of his beer chaser and signaled for an encore from the barkeep. He exhaled wearily. "We had a good thing going.
We were gonna make a lotta cash when it was over. Then those two stupid shits had to fuck it all up. All for some drugs and then that goddamn pimp had to get hooked up in everything. But then again Rose was stupid enough to hold out on him so she probably deserved what she got." Christ, I thought the big redneck was going to start weeping.
"What are you talking about, Chief?"
He leaned over on to the bar on his forearms and looked at me with a sneaky grin. "Guess I can tell you now with you shipping out tomorrow.
Wouldn't hurt much I guess." He did an exaggerated look around the empty bar. "Past couple of years me and Brewer and Rose were taking snapshots of a bunch of visiting dignitaries and high ranking officers when they were fucking Rose."
What in the fuck? "How in the hell were you pulling that off?"
"Rose would take them up to her place and we had a little camera area set up in a crawl space with a two way mirror in her bedroom. That fucking Brewer is as skinny as a garden snake so he could slide in and hide in there and burn up a roll of film. Rose would turn on the stereo with some romantic shit so they'd never hear the camera. Worked like a fucking charm."
Holy shit! "How many guys did you do that to?"
Mason tried to process that through all the booze floating around in his booze soaked brain. "Fuck, maybe thirty or forty guys and four or five women. Rose didn't mind going down on a woman, that's for damn sure." He tugged at the crotch of his pants. "Holy shit! Was that hot to watch or what?"
I found myself wishing I had been there. "What in the hell were you going to do with the pictures?"
"Blackmail the sons of bitches. We were going to wait until Brewer and I retired and Rose got discharged. Couple more years and then we were going to blackmail 'em all. I got all the negatives in a big binder." He gave me a wink and whispered, “Some of those assholes are pretty famous. Some real bigwigs. Politicians, actors, the whole shit and kaboodle. We're sitting on a goldmine.” He stood up and staggered towards the men’s room.
I thought my brain was going to explode it was so far into overdrive. Brewer, the Chief, and Rose had been in business together the whole time. Did Brewer tell Mason about the NIS agent? He couldn't be that goddamn stupid but who knows.
The Chief didn't act like he knew, but was he holding out on me? If he did know, I don't think he would have told me about their dirty little blackmail business. Man, if I could just get my hands on those photographs. That could buy me a little bargaining power down the road if things got hinky for me.
Who knew long it would take Brewer to start bumping his gums at the penitentiary about killing a NIS agents and some snitch would feed that info to the administration in hopes of an early release.
Mason and his wife, an old Filipino hooker that he referred to as "Mommy" - "Mommy" once blew me behind the boathouse at a wild drunken party - lived in a shitty little one bedroom apartment in Pearl City. I couldn't imagine that he would be stupid enough to keep that kind of sensitive and hot material in his house where his wife could find it.
The floor safe in his office at the boathouse! That had to be it. The old bastard seemed to have his head down inside of it every time I walked in his office. And I think I knew where the combination would be. He was too much of a rummy to keep it memorized. I could see it in my head like I was watching a movie. The Chief, looking pissed, would slam the safe shut, sit up, and close the desk drawer on his right side and then bark out "what the fuck is it?" He then would take his keys out of his pocket and luck up the desk with a flourish.
I waved to the bartender just as I heard the bathroom door slam shut.
Two double shots of Jack Black and a frosty beer chaser were waiting for the Chief when he sat his fat ass down on the stool.
***
The Chief's car was a new model Thunderbird and was a breeze to drive. Power steering so smooth you could turn the car on a dime with one finger. I had driven it many times after the Chief had gotten too loaded to get behind the wheel. Those last two shots of Jack I knew would put him over the edge. Brooks was sprawled out in the back, passed out, but still muttering racial epitaphs - “cracker” “fucking honky” “white slut” - in his alcohol inspired nightmares. The Chief had rested his head against the passenger window and was snoring lightly. I was fingering his key chain trying to feel for the desk key that I knew was on there when I pulled up in front of the house that Brooks and his wife rented.
I quickly turned the car off and jumped out and walked around the back of the car as I slid the desk key off the ring and slid it into my pocket. I opened up the passenger door. “Chief, I need a hand to get Brooks up on to his porch.” Mason stood up shakily and suddenly bent over and heaved out a huge amount of Tennessee sipping whiskey on to Hawaiian soil. I quickly jumped back to avoid the splatter. “Watch it, goddamn it!”
“Oh, yes. Feeling better already.” He pulled open the back door and pulled Brooks out by both feet. Standing him up, we each took an arm and draped it over a shoulder, and dragged him up to front porch. We laid him down on a reclining lawn chair. Brooks had a wife who was a notorious bitch and neither of us was willing to ring the doorbell to wake her up and hear her shit at this hour. The Chief began to giggle and then started to undo the front of pants of the passed out sailor.
“Chief! What in the hell are you doing?” I whispered urgently. What the hell was the crazy old bastard going to do? Blow him?
“Go to the car and look under the passenger seat. I got a fuck book under there.”
Pulling out the magazine from under the seat I quickly glanced at the title. Anal Adventures From The Beaver Trail. The cover had a buxom blonde on it who was bent over and spreading her cheeks as she leered at the camera from between her legs. Her asshole was spread so wide you could have thrown a silver dollar inside. When I got back to the porch, Mason had posed Brooks half naked with his hand wrapped around his dick. He set the magazine gingerly on his lap.
“That ought to start some fireworks in the morning for old Brooks.”
“Without a doubt.”
***
“You can drive Mommy’s Vespa over to the barracks. Leave it at the Master of Arms office and I’ll send someone over to get in the morning.”
We were standing in front of his apartment building. I had pulled his wife’s scooter out of their covered parking space and was trying to get it started. The booze had kicked in again with the Chief and he was having a hard time standing up.
The Vespa finally fired up - the damn thing sounded like a chainsaw as I revved it up.
“Good luck, asshole. Been nice knowing you. Enjoy your time at sea,” he mumbled as he headed up the sidewalk.
“Thanks, Chief.” As I dropped the kickstand and started to pull away I looked over my shoulder and saw Mason leaning against the building and taking a leak on the front door.
I pulled on to the street and headed for the boathouse.
***
There was a guy fresh out of boot camp on duty at the boathouse that night. Arnold something or another. Born again Christian and world class loser. What the hell was the Navy coming to? The front door was locked but that meant nothing since the boathouse was merely half a Quonset hut bolted over a long pier. The tide was going out so I walked under the pier and hoisted myself up into the boathouse. I could hear the rookie snoring in the duty room. Chief’s office door was unlocked. I closed the door quietly behind me and turned the lamp on that was on the desk. I unlocked the desk and pulled out the top drawer. There sat the combination to the safe. It was written on the bottom of a business card to a local Korean bar known for it’s waitresses giving hum jobs to the customers under the table and for it's excellent barbecue chicken. The card was taped down on to the bottom of the drawer. 4-11-0. 4-11-0?
Goddamn! The poor alky couldn’t keep that in his head? I pulled back the floor rug and gave the dial a couple of spins and entered the combo. I got it on the first try. The leather briefcase filled almost half of the safe. The other half had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bottle of what appeared to be white cross speeders. I pulled out the briefcase and unzipped the sides of it. The assholes had done a really nice job. Each future blackmail victim - looked like damn near fifty people - had their name typed out on a sheet of paper with the date of his/her dalliance with Rose. There was one photo of the act paper clipped to the side and on the other side of the sheet were the negatives which were also paper clipped in place. Then each package had been neatly slipped into a clear plastic sleeve. Very classy and well done considering that it was accomplished by three total dipshits.
I looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost five in the morning. My flight to Los Angeles left in less than three hours. I locked the desk, dropped the key into the safe and closed it up, and slipped the case under my arm and turned the lights out. When I opened the office door I could still hear the watch-stander snoring.
I slipped out the front door, fired up the scooter, and headed for the barracks.
***
I wouldn’t know until several years later that my first and only successful attempt at safecracking would lead to an unbelievable chain of events. I found this out after I had bumped into Mason's wife, "Mommy," who was working a strip club in Long Beach that I had waltzed into after a long day of unloading bananas down on the docks. The morning after my going away bash, Chief Mason, in the midst of a crippling hangover, arrived two hours late for work. Too his horror, he would discover the key to his desk missing. It would take him several minutes to bust his desk open with a mallet and a crowbar. Witnesses reported hearing a shriek of agony followed by a string of curses and the sound of furniture being destroyed. Chief Mason would step out of his door, sweat covering his beet red face, and walk Frankenstein-like - arms stretched out in front of him as if to strangle - towards the previous evenings watch-stander, poor Arnold the Jesus loving sailor. His last words were “What in the fuck happened here last night you ignorant fucking..”
And then he dropped dead in his tracks.