"Major Robert B. Macklin," McCoy said.
"No shit?"
"I saw his name on his office door when I was in the G-l building," McCoy said. "I didn't see him."
"That figures, G-l," Zimmerman said. "That chair-warmer is a real G-l type."
Banning and McCoy chuckled.
"Killer," Zimmerman went on, conversationally, "you really should have let me shoot that no-good sonofabitch on the beach on Mindanao."
Banning and McCoy chuckled again, louder, almost laughed.
"Jack NMI Stecker said I could," Zimmerman argued. "You should have let me."
"I was there, Ernie," Banning said. "What Colonel Stecker said was that you could deal with Captain Macklin in any way you felt you had to, if, if, he got out of line. As I understand it, he behaved in the Philippines...."
"That sonofabitch was never in line," Zimmerman said. "And now he's a goddamn major, and they're giving you me boot? Jesus H. Christ!"
"Ernie, I told Ken we wouldn't talk about... that... un-less he brought up the subject," Banning said.
"How are you not going to talk about it?"
"By not talking about it," Banning said.
"So what are you going to do? Take the stripes they offer you, or get out?" Zimmerman asked, ignoring Banning.
"Would you take the stripes, Ernie?" McCoy countered.
"I thought about that," Zimmerman said. "Christ, when we were in the Fourth in Shanghai, I was hoping I could make maybe staff sergeant before I got my twenty years in. But that was then, Ken. A lot's happened to us-especially you-since then. No, I don't want to be a sergeant again, having to kiss the ass of some dipshit like Macklin, or some nice kid who got out of the Naval Academy last year."
"Spoken like a true master gunner," Banning said, chuckling.
Master gunners are the Marine equivalent of Army war-rant officers. While not commissioned officers, they are en-titled to being saluted and to other officer privileges. They are invariably former senior noncommissioned officers with long service, and expertise in one or more fields of the military profession. Their pay and allowances, depending on their rank within the master gunner category, approxi-mates that of second lieutenants through majors.
"What did they offer you?" Zimmerman asked.
"I won't know that until I get back to Pendleton," Mc-Coy said.
"You give any thought to what you would do if you do get out?"
"Fill toothpaste tubes at American Personal Pharmaceu-tical," McCoy said. "I've got an in with the boss's daugh-ter. I don't know, Ernie. I'm going to think about it on the way to California. Right now, I have no goddamn idea."
"Colonel, you tell him about the island?" Zimmerman said.
"There hasn't been time," Banning said.
"Island?" McCoy asked. "What island? The one where your great-grandfather buried the champagne glasses?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Banning said. "You know where Hilton Head Island is?"
"Across from Parris Island? To the south?"
"Right. They're starting to develop Hilton Head, you know, put in a golf course, nice houses, that sort of thing. The family's got some property on Hilton Head..."
"Like five thousand acres," Zimmerman interjected.
"... and south of Hilton Head," Banning went on, ignor-ing him, "the family has an island."
"You own that one? That's where you buried glasses?" McCoy asked.
"Buried what glasses?" Zimmerman asked.
"Yes, we own it," Banning replied, again ignoring Zim-merman. "And Luddy and I, and Mae-Su and Ernie, have been talking about developing that ourselves."
"Where are you going to get the money?"
"Well, I have some," Banning said.
"And Mae-Su's made us a real bundle, Killer," Zimmer-man said. "Mae-Su figures that if we start now, don't get ourselves over our ass in debt, put everything we make back in the pot, starting about 1960,1961, we'll be in a po-sition to make a killing."
"Why a killing?" McCoy asked. "Why 1960?"
"Mae-Su asked me what a Marine lieutenant colonel has in common with an Army lieutenant colonel and a Navy commander."
"None of the above can find their asses with both hands?" McCoy quipped. "OK. I'll bite, what?"
"They don't have any place to go when they retire. They don't own houses, most of them, and they're going to have to have someplace to go, and they would like to be around their own kind. Plus, they have pretty decent pensions."
"And 1960, 1961, because that's when the first of the World War Two guys can start to retire at twenty years?" McCoy asked.
"Exactly. The buildup started in 1940," Banning said.
"So what are you going to do between now and 1960?" McCoy asked.
`Two things," Banning said. "One: Develop the property on Hilton Head. They're planning to sell houses, et cetera, to well-to-do people looking for a second home or a retire-ment home. We'll see how that's done, learn how to do it, and with a little luck make a little money, and invest that in the development of the other island."
"What's `two'?" McCoy asked.
"See if we can come up with some friendly investors, working partners," Banning said.
"And you're loaded, Killer," Zimmerman said. "Think about it."
"My wife is loaded," McCoy corrected him.
"I'm as broke as any other marine gunner," Zimmerman said. "Mae-Su's made a lot of money. We're loaded. Not like you and The Colonel, but loaded."
"It's more than the money, Ken," Banning said. "It would be something for you and Ernie to do, all three of us to do, when we hang up the uniform for the last time."
"Like what?"
"You know who's harder to cheat than an honest man?" Zimmerman asked, then answered his own question. "A China Marine, that's who. A graduate of the Bund School of Hard Knocks."
"Most construction, Ken," Banning said, "is done by subcontractors. One firm puts in the sewers, another one the streets, another one the electricity, et cetera. What the builder, the contractor, has to do is make sure-"
"They don't rob you blind," Zimmerman finished the thought for him. "And yeah, I do know what I'm talking about. When we built the last house in Beaufort, the one we're in now, I did the subcontracting. The first house we had, we got screwed by the numbers. This house, believe you me, we didn't."
McCoy suddenly had a thought, from out of nowhere.
When The Colonel said that General Pickering had called and told him what was going on, I presumed that he meant he told him everything. Why I got the boot from the Dai Ichi Building.
But he didn't. He just told him that I was being involun-tarily relieved from active duty as an officer. And that's all that The Colonel told Ernie, because it was all he knew.
They don't know what's going to happen in Korea.
I don't know what's going to happen to me after what happens in Korea happens. If it happens before 30 May, will they keep me in the Corps as a captain? Or what? If they of-fer me, say, gunnery sergeant, and I take it, then what? Go to war as a gunnery sergeant in a line company? But if they of-fer me gunnery sergeant and I turn it down, and get out, they damned sure won't call me back as a captain.
But I'm a Marine, and Marines are supposed to go-what's that line?-"to the sound of the musketry"-not the other way, to build houses on golf courses on islands for well-to-do people.
"Why do I get the idea you're not listening to me?" Zim-merman asked, bringing him back to The Colonel's study.