Too Mean to Die Read online

  “So do I,” replied Dolly.

  “Where should I sleep?”

  Dolly looked him over. “Anywhere you want.”

  He grinned. “Anywhere?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jesus, Frankie thought, is this old broad making eyes at me? He wouldn’t mind giving her a tumble, because she was a pretty good-looking old broad, and those tits of hers were gigantic, but Butsko would wring his neck if he found out.

  “Maybe I’d better sleep on the sofa,” Frankie said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Dolly replied. “I think I’ve had enough excitement around here for one day.”

  It was three-thirty in the morning and Longtree looked up at the neon light that said CURTIS HOTEL. He glanced around and saw a few groups of soldiers and sailors lurching about, and a Marine passed out on the sidewalk. Facing the door, he felt strange about going into the whorehouse alone, because he knew that a lot of white Americans didn’t like Indians. He didn’t want any trouble, and if he was smart, he’d go back to his hotel room; but he’d awakened an hour ago feeling horny as a billy goat, and he remembered Butsko telling Bannon about the Curtis Hotel, which turned out to be located only a few blocks from the hotel where Longtree was staying.

  Longtree looked to his right and left again and thought, What the hell? If there was any trouble, he’d just turn around and walk out. He wouldn’t get into any arguments or punch anybody in the mouth. Butsko said they had nice clean girls in the Curtis and it was worth a try.

  He opened the doors and climbed the stairs, entered a plush corridor, and approached the desk. The old madam looked at the patch on his shoulder and her gray hairs nearly stood on end.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “I only want a girl,” Longtree said meekly, because he knew that was how white Americans wanted him to act.

  “A lot of men from your division in town this week?” she asked.

  “I dunno,” Longtree said. He wondered what made her think that, but decided to keep his mouth shut.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sam Longtree.”

  “You an Indian?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but I’m not looking for any trouble. I’ll leave right now if you want me to.”

  “Your money’s as good as anybody else’s. Go on upstairs and have yourself a good time.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  Longtree moved out smartly before she could change her mind. He leaped up the stairs three at a time and saw Mae at the top, looking down.

  “Boy, you sure must be horny,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, we’re real slow this time of the night. You’ll have your pick of the girls.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have a seat in this room and I’ll round them up for you.”

  “There’s no rush, ma’am. You just take your time.”

  “Can I get you anything to drink.”

  “I don’t drink,” Longtree lied, because he knew white Americans thought all Indians went crazy when they drank alcohol.

  “I never heard of a soldier who doesn’t drink,” Mae said. “You sure you don’t want something?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Mae chuckled as she walked away. Longtree entered the room, which was empty. He sat on one of the chairs and felt uncomfortable, because he was all alone. He wished Bannon or Frankie La Barbara were there with him. He was so used to being with the men from the recon platoon that it was strange to be alone.

  The door opened and the whores filed in. They had thought no more customers would arrive and had been goofing off in their rooms when Mae called for them.

  Little Nettie was among them, and when she saw the patch on Longtree’s shoulder, she nearly had a heart attack. “Oh, no—not another one!” she screamed, turning and running out of the room.

  Longtree was scared shitless. “I didn’t do anything!” he said. “I’ll leave right now if you want me to!”

  Julie sat next to him. “That’s all right, soldier. Don’t worry about it.”

  A whore named LouAnn sat down on the other side of him. “Calm down,” she cooed. “Everything’s gonna be A-okay.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with her?” Longtree asked.

  “Well,” said Julie, “that little girl’s had a bad night.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, it seems that a couple of men from your division came in here and started some trouble. The first one tried to drag her out of here and then killed one of our bouncers with a knife, and then the second one threatened her with a bayonet.”

  “Golly,” said Longtree, “that sounds awful.”

  “Yeah, the poor kid’s really shaken up.” Julie narrowed her eyes and looked him up and down. “You’re not going to go crazy up here, are you?”

  “Hell no,” Longtree said. “Not me. Live and let live, that’s what I always say. I’d go a mile out of my way to avoid trouble. In fact, if you’re a little scared about me, I’ll leave right now.”

  Julie leaned over and slipped her fingers between the buttons of his shirt, massaging his chest. “You wouldn’t happen to have a knife on you by any chance?” she asked, gazing into his eyes for the lie.

  “No, ma’am. You can search me if you want. What the hell would I be carrying a knife for? The only thing I brought up here with me is my dick.”

  She winked. “You wanna go to bed?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “My name’s Julie.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Just call me Longtree.”

  “You’re an Indian, ain’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but I’m not one of them wild Indians. I’m a real calm Indian. I don’t want no trouble.”

  “That’s good,” she said, “because I don’t want any trouble either.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Let’s go.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Longtree held her hand and she led him out of the room. In the corridor they walked hand in hand toward her workshop. Longtree didn’t think she was the prettiest whore, but he was spooked by the situation and wanted to get alone with a woman—any woman—before any problems developed.

  “Nervous?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Yes you are. I can feel you shaking.”

  Longtree didn’t know what to say, because he was shaking a little. But it wasn’t fear. He hadn’t been laid for a long time and couldn’t wait to get started. She came to her room and opened the door, and he followed her inside.

  “Well,” she said with a smile, “what do you want?”

  “I just wanna get laid, that’s all.”

  “Five dollars for a straight lay, seven-fifty for a half-and-half, and ten for a full blowjob.”

  Longtree reached into his pocket and peeled five one-dollar bills off his roll. “I just want a straight lay,” he said. “I don’t go in for that funny stuff.”

  She laughed as she accepted the money. “Anything you say, soldier. I’ll be right back. You can take your clothes off.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She walked out the door and Longtree sat down on the chair, relieved that everything was going so well. He unlaced his shoes, took them off, and peeled away his khaki socks. Standing, he unknotted his necktie, unbuttoned his shirt, and took it off, revealing his bronzed body, covered with scars. The ugliest scar was on his back, where he’d been shot in the fight for the Gifu Line on Guadalcanal.

  Julie returned to the room, took off her white cocktail dress, and walked toward the sink. She was dumpy and flabby, and her tits sagged badly, but she was a woman and that was good enough for Longtree.

  “C’mere and let me look at your cock,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You don’t have any funny diseases, do you?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am.”

  “You sure?”
/>   “Yes, ma’am.”

  She got down on her knees and examined his cock, squeezing it to see if anything came out, twisting it around so she could look at its underside.

  “You look fine,” she said.

  She filled up the sink with warm water, and Longtree recalled what the whores had said about the two soldiers from the Eighty-first Division who’d made trouble in the whorehouse earlier that night. As far as Longtree knew, he, Butsko, Bannon and Frankie LaBarbara were the only soldiers from the Eighty-first Division in Honolulu, because the Eighty-first was stationed on Guadalcanal and furloughs were hard to get. He and the others got theirs only as a reward for the reconnaissance job they’d done on the Jap-held island of New Georgia. Of course, a few other soldiers from the Eighty-first might have earned furloughs, too, but he couldn’t help wondering if Butsko, Bannon, or Frankie La Barbara could have got into the trouble. They were all wild guys, and Longtree knew they were capable of anything.

  “Say, there,” Longtree said as Julie washed his cock, “did you happen to see those two guys who made the trouble here tonight?”

  “I sure did.”

  “Do you know their names by any chance?”

  “Why—you think you might know them?”

  “I might.”

  She stopped washing his cock and froze, stiff as a board. “If they were your friends, are you going to go crazy?”

  “I told you I’m not that kind of Indian.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. What do I have to do to prove it?”

  She wagged her finger at him. “You’d better not start any shit.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well,” she said, pulling his cock out of the water and patting it with a towel, “we don’t know the second one’s name, but the first one, the one who killed one of our bouncers, was named Bannon.”

  Longtree nearly collapsed onto the floor. His jaw fell open and he staggered to the bed, sitting down heavily, his back slumped, completely devastated. “Oh, shit,” he said. “I knew it. I just knew it.”

  “He was a friend of yours!”

  “Yes, ma’am. He was my squad leader.”

  She looked at him fearfully. “Are you all right.”

  He nodded. She could see that he was very unhappy. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would go berserk. It was as if he’d just found out that a close relative had died. He looked up at her with melancholy eyes.

  “You say he killed somebody?”

  “I’m afraid so.” She sat down next to him on the bed and put her arm around his shoulder to comfort him.

  “How’d it happen?”

  She explained how Bannon wanted to take Nettie out of the whorehouse, and about the subsequent bloody fight.

  “Oh, no,” Longtree said, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “This can’t be.”

  “I’m afraid it really happened,” Julie said.

  “Where is he now?”

  “The main Honolulu jail.”

  “What was the other one’s name?”

  “We didn’t get his name,” Julie said, “but he was an Italian-looking guy, an inch or two shorter than you. A real fast-talker.”

  Longtree closed his eyes and groaned, because that was a perfect description of Frankie La Barbara.

  “And he had a big roll of money with him—claimed he won it all in a poker game.”

  Now Longtree knew it was Frankie for sure. “What’d he do?”

  “Well, he didn’t kill anybody or anything like that. He just put a bayonet against Nettie’s throat and scared the shit out of her.”

  “Thank God he didn’t do anything,” Longtree said. His hard-on had gone limp and he didn’t feel like screwing anymore. “I need a cigarette.”

  “Have one of mine.”

  They took cigarettes from her pack and he lit them with his Zippo. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said, “but they’re both good men. I don’t know what happened. Maybe both of them were in combat too long. They’ve been through a lot.” He puffed the cigarette. “Listen, I’d better get going. Maybe I can get Bannon out of jail.”

  “Not at this time of night you won’t.” Julie grabbed his dick and squeezed gently. “You won’t be able to see him in the morning, so why don’t you relax?”

  “I can’t relax. My squad leader is in the hoosegow.”

  “You can’t relax?”

  She held her cigarette high in the air and bent over, placing Longtree’s flaccid cock in her mouth. Longtree felt his spine unravel suddenly, and the room spun around. He tried to think of Bannon and Frankie La Barbara, but somehow he couldn’t. Julie was moaning softly, licking and slurping, and he was getting hard again. He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling as her head bobbed up and down.

  “I thought you said you didn’t like fancy stuff,” she said, although her mouth was full.

  Longtree sighed and closed his eyes. After all those lonely months on Guadalcanal he was finally getting some sex. He’d worry about Bannon tomorrow; now he had to take care of himself.

  “Don’t stop,” Longtree whispered, wiggling his hips. “Just keep on going.”

  EIGHT . . .

  It was morning on Guadalcanal, and Colonel Stockton walked across the clearing to his headquarters building. The sun was low on the horizon, and the troops in Headquarters Company were doing their calisthenic drill on the other side of the clearing. A pfc. walked toward him and threw a salute, and Colonel Stockton saluted back as he climbed the stairs to his headquarters, a small one-story wooden structure not far from Henderson Field. He pushed open the door and entered the orderly room, where Sergeant Major Ramsay sat behind his desk. Sergeant Major Ramsay looked up at Colonel Stockton over his, reading glasses; he didn’t look happy.

  “We’ve got a problem, sir,” he said.

  “What is it?” Colonel Stockton asked, taking off his green fatigue hat with the silver eagle pinned on front.

  Sergeant Major Ramsay stood and handed Colonel Stockton a document. It was a teletype message from the Provost Marshal of Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, advising Colonel Stockton that Butsko and Bannon were in the Honolulu jail pending trial.

  Colonel Stockton turned pale. “Good grief!”

  “They haven’t even been gone twenty-four hours,” Sergeant Major Ramsay said, shaking his head sadly.

  Colonel Stockton sat on the chair beside Sergeant Major Ramsay’s desk and read the message again. Bannon was charged with manslaughter, and Butsko with aggravated assault. An officer from the judge advocate general’s corps at Schofield Barracks would represent them. Colonel Stockton would be kept apprised of the proceedings.

  Colonel Stockton sighed. “I was afraid something like this would happen. That goddamned recon platoon of mine just can’t stay out of trouble.”

  “They’re sure a tough bunch, sir.”

  “Bunch of damned hotheads—that’s what they are.” Colonel Stockton was getting angry, because this was one more thing to worry about, and he had enough to worry about as it was. Also, when a soldier killed a civilian, it was bad publicity for the Army and a reflection on the soldier’s commmanding officer. It was unfair, but that’s the way it worked. Colonel Stockton didn’t need this now that he was up for his star.

  Colonel Stockton stood and straightened his back, walking toward his office. “If any new information comes in on this, let me know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Stockton entered his office, hung up his hat on the peg, and sat behind his desk. He took a pipe off his rack, filled it with Briggs smoking mixture, tamped it down, and lit it, filling the air around him with clouds of blue smoke.

  He couldn’t stop thinking of Butsko and Bannon. He knew that both of them were outstanding front-line soldiers, but the same qualities that made them outstanding soldiers—aggressiveness and unwillingness to back down from tough challenges—were the same qualities that had landed them in jail. They were fighting son of
bitches no matter where they were. Colonel Stockton knew them well enough to suspect that they hadn’t started the trouble. Somebody else must have started it, and they had finished it in their usual bloody fashion.

  He wondered about the two other men, Frankie La Barbara and Sam Longtree, who also were in Honolulu. I hope they stay the hell out of trouble, Colonel Stockton thought. All I need is for them to wind up in jail too. He scowled and drummed his fingers on his desk. I probably should go to Honolulu myself to see what I can do. After all, I can’ t let those damned civilians railroad one of my men into the electric chair.

  Bannon lay on a slab of wood in the basement of the Honolulu jail. He was alone in a tiny cell furnished only with a wooden cot and a commode that stank to high heaven. A corridor passed by the bars in front of his cell, and the bare light bulbs in the corridor had been on all night. There were no windows anywhere, no ventilation, and the basement was warm and smelly from the odor of men’s bodies and stinky commodes. Guards passed by occasionally, looking into the cells. Men coughed, farted, and swore all around the cellblock. Bannon couldn’t see into any other cells, but he’d heard them filling up all through the night.

  He lay on his back with his head on his hands and was completely disgusted with himself. He knew that he never should have made a scene in that whorehouse the night before, but it was too late now. He never should have insisted that the whore leave with him, but he’d been drunk and obsessed with the thought of saving her.

  What’s the matter with me? he thought. Am I crazy? He was actually worried that he didn’t have all his marbles, because only a lunatic would do what he had done. The girl was a whore and he wanted to marry her. Now that he was sober and penned up like an animal, he realized how idiotic he’d been, especially when the bouncers arrived. He just should have walked the hell out of there.

  But there was something about the whore that had touched his soul. She’d seemed so sweet and angelic. How could he not want to save her? How could any man walk away from such a tragic person? A man had to stand for something in his life. A man couldn’t look the other way when he was in the presence of someone needy.