Wariness glimmered for a moment in Mays’s flat gray eyes. Desperation crossed his face like a shadow, and he ran a hand through his thinning blond hair. He had his white shirtsleeves rolled up; when he raised an arm to lean on the doorjamb, Nudger glimpsed a faded blue anchor tattoo high on his forearm. “This a shakedown?” he asked.
Nudger didn’t answer. Mays stepped back to let him in, then closed the door and walked to the window. He stared down at the traffic on St. Charles, studiously not looking at Nudger. Nudger could almost hear the gears in Mays’s mind whirring.
“You got out of Raiford Prison in Florida last month,” Nudger said, “after serving seven years on a narcotics charge.”
Mays snorted. “Those aren’t old times.”
“But they pertain to old times on the Kelso. You peddled drugs and bootleg liquor on board ship back then, didn’t you?”
“Sure. No big deal. Half the guys in Nam used one thing or another. It was a bad war.”
“Especially for you, Mays. The Kelso’s captain found out about your drug-dealing and was going to have you court-martialed. There was a confrontation on the bridge, when the two of you were alone for a few minutes. That’s when the North Vietnamese attack occurred and the ship was hit. You used the opportunity to kill the captain so he couldn’t make good on his court-martial threat. When Artie Akron and Danny Evers got to their feet after the explosion, they saw the captain still standing. After the bridge had burned, his body was found in the debris.”
“They were mistaken about Captain Stevenson,” Mays said, looking at Nudger now. “They were disoriented. He was killed in the explosion on the bridge. Akron knew they’d been wrong about seeing the captain on his feet; five minutes after they thought they saw him, Akron was trying to pull him from the flames — got a medal for it even though he couldn’t reach Stevenson. It didn’t matter, though, because Captain Stevenson was already dead. He was killed almost instantly when the torpedo hit.”
“That’s what they thought all these years. But that’s not what you admitted to them in Honolulu, when the three of you were drunk.”
Mays smiled a mean smile. “You got to Danny Evers.”
“Sure. Danny and I are old friends. I did what you planned to do, what you were hanging around town waiting for the opportunity to do when enough time had passed after Mack Perry’s death. I got Danny drunk this afternoon. Only I did it with his permission, and in the presence of a doctor. And a stenographer.”
Mays took a step toward Nudger, then stood still, poised. Dangerous. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. His eyes were the color of a flat gray-green sea where sharks swam. Nudger’s stomach turned over, but he talked on despite his fear.
“You, Akron, and Danny were falling-down-drunk in Honolulu when you admitted having killed the captain and told how you did it. Then you tried to make amends for your slip of the tongue and your booze-affected judgment by saying you were only joking. But you all knew it hadn’t been a joke. The next morning, Akron and Danny didn’t remember any of the conversation, or didn’t seem to. And you weren’t about to bring it up. But you watched them, and whenever there was a Kelso St. Louis crew reunion, you showed up and reassured yourself that they still didn’t recall the drunken conversation in Hawaii so many years ago. When you got out of prison, you came here for the twentieth reunion, found out there wasn’t going to be one, and also discovered that Akron, Danny, and Mack Perry were attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. You didn’t know they’d become problem drinkers, but you knew what I confirmed this afternoon: When something happens to someone while very drunk, he tends to forget it when sober, but he might just remember it when he’s drunk again, even years later. Some doctors even say that’s the reason alcoholics drink, to try, usually futilely, to get in touch with the part of their lives they can only recall when extremely drunk; it’s as if a piece of their past is missing. You were afraid Akron or Danny would fall off the wagon, get blind drunk, and happen to remember the Honolulu conversation and mention it to the wrong party. But why did you kill Mack Perry?”
“He was going to AA meetings with Artie Akron and Danny. When alkies get into the bottle they sometimes spill their guts to a fellow AA member, especially if he’s an old friend and shipmate. If they’d just been social drinkers, I could have let them live. Perry always had a drinking problem, but how do you figure the other two, Danny and Akron, becoming alcoholics?”
“Maybe you gave them their reason to drink,” Nudger said. “One that was buried in their subconscious minds.”
“Freud stuff,” Mays said, grinning. He shrugged. “They couldn’t prove anything, not after all those years.”
“Sure they could. You told them you shot the Kelso’s captain with a pistol you stole from ordnance. If his body was exhumed, even now the bullet might be there in the coffin with him.”
“Might,” Mays said. “The bullet might have passed through him when I shot him. Or even fallen out of his body; he was burned almost to a cinder.”
“It’s a big might,” Nudger told him. “Too big not to act on if a murder charge is at stake. You could take a chance on your old shipmates not remembering, until you found out they were problem drinkers, alcoholics. Enough deep drunks, if any of them started drinking again, and the secret might unexpectedly pop out of the past. The only sure way to prevent that from happening was to kill them. But first you got them drunk, to make sure they were capable of falling off the wagon and might repeat what was said in Honolulu, to somehow justify the murders as well as to provide a cover for the deaths. You knew the police wouldn’t make a connection or look too closely into the street murders of a few middle-aged drunks, killed and rolled for their wallets. The thing about your old shipmates that frightened you, their alcoholism, was what provided a safe means of getting rid of them.”
A gradual change came over Mays, a darkening of his complexion and a hardening of his broad features. It was as if something in a far, shadowed corner of his mind had been flushed out of hiding. “I could live knowing they might have a few too many now and then,” he said. “It was unlikely they’d remember what I said all those years ago. But to a gut-deep, genuine alcoholic, time means nothing. Anything might surface. Twenty years ago is like twenty minutes ago. You’re right. I couldn’t take the chance anymore that they might talk.” He moved around so he was between Nudger and the door. “And I can’t take the chance that you might talk, no matter how much you shake me down for.” He scooped up a heavy glass ashtray and sprang at Nudger.
Nudger yelled in surprise, tried to back away, and lost his footing. It was a good thing; as he fell backward onto the carpet, he felt a swish of air and glimpsed the bulky ashtray arc past his head. Mays lost his grip on the ashtray at the end of his swing. It went skipping across the room and broke against the far wall. Snarling, he lunged at Nudger just as Nudger had gotten up on one knee.
They went down together, rolling on the floor and seeking handholds on each other. Nudger shoved the palm of his hand against Mays’s perspiring face; it slipped off, and he had the brief satisfaction of feeling his elbow crack into Mays’s cheekbone. He tried to grasp Mays’s hair, but there wasn’t enough of it to grip, and Nudger’s hand shot away with a few blond strands between the fingers of his clenched fist. Mays had one hand against Nudger’s chest, pressing him to the floor. His other hand found Nudger’s eyes and tried to gouge them out. Nudger twisted his neck, turning his face to the carpet. He could smell something garlicky Mays had had for lunch. He could hear Mays’s labored, rasping breathing. Or was that his own rasping struggle for air? Two middle-aged guys out of shape and fighting for their lives.