Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [207]
“Where’s the Caine now?” said Greenwald.
“Drydocks, Hunters Point,” said Challee.
“May I go out and talk to Maryk before I commit myself?”
Breakstone nodded. “Challee, provide transportation for Lieutenant Greenwald.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Greenwald rose. “I’ll go now, I guess.”
“Jeep will be at the main entrance in ten minutes, Barney,” said Challee.
“Okay.” The pilot put on his white peaked cap. The braid was crusty and green. He had the look of a poverty-stricken college boy, one who waited on tables and spent his money for phonograph records instead of food. He went out, his big scarred hands swinging.
Challee said, “He’ll take the case, sir.”
“Queer buzzard,” said the legal officer. “Looks so futile and apologetic, but he has a damn high opinion of himself.”
“He’s a good lawyer,” said the assistant. “But he won’t get Maryk off.”
Lieutenant Greenwald was used to aircraft carriers. The Caine, resting on keelblocks in a drydock, rusty and cluttered, looked to him like a little river boat. He went down the long steep wooden gangway stretching across the gulf of the dock to the minesweeper. Amid the rubble on the main deck he noticed a jagged hole, perhaps four feet across, roped off near the after davit of the motor whaleboat. Twisted rusty cables and pipes like entrails projected around the hole. “Like to see Lieutenant Maryk,” he said to the moon-faced short sailor in whites at the gangway desk.
“He ain’t here, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“I guess the Chrysanthemum, sir. Excursion boat they got rigged up for a BOQ at Pier 6.”
“Where’s your captain?”
“Captain White won’t be back till six o’clock, sir.”
“Captain who? White?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Urban, sir.”
“Oh, yes. Urban.” Greenwald inspected the sailor who was going to be a star witness for Challee. “Where’s Captain Queeg, Urban?”
“Captain White has the ship now, sir.” A wary, sullen look clouded the signalman’s face.
“Don’t you know where Queeg is?”
“I don’t know nothing about Captain Queeg, sir.”
“What’s that hole in the deck?”
“We took a suicide in Lingayen.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Nobody hurt. It bounced and fell over the side.”
“Who was commanding the ship then? Captain White?”
“No, sir.” Urban scowled very suspiciously, and turned to the gangway desk.
“Well, who, then? Was Mr. Maryk still in charge?”
Urban grunted, opened the quartermaster’s log, and made a show of scribbling in it. Greenwald turned, went up the gangway, and made his way to the Chrysanthemum.
His first sight of Maryk astonished the lawyer. On the basis of the board of investigation’s report he had formed a clear picture of the exec: slight, thin, nervous, dark, and with the self-satisfied expression of a petty intellectual. In fact he had pictured Bill Pelham, a loud-mouthed Marxist of his college days, in a naval uniform. The husky, bullet-headed, blunt-faced officer who sat blinking amid tumbled bedclothes on the edge of his cot, rubbing his palms on his broad naked chest, dislocated Greenwald’s entire conception of the Caine affair.
“Well, anyone they want to appoint is okay with me,” Maryk said dully. “I don’t know anybody. It doesn’t matter a whole hell of a lot, I guess. You’ll be buying yourself a lot of trouble-”
“What are you going to plead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did you relieve him?”
“I thought he was nuts.”
“Don’t you still think so?”
“I don’t know what I think any more.”
“Where did you get all that dope on paranoia you put out to the investigating officer?”
“Read it in a book,” Maryk growled.
“Well, pardon me, Maryk, you don’t seem to know much about it.”
“I never claimed to. Christ, instead of asking me about the ship or the typhoon or the captain he cross-examined me for an hour about paranoia. I’m a stoop about those things and I know it. I made a jackass of myself, and I knew I would. And I will again, at the court-martial.” He glanced at Greenwald, his brows contracted in a baffled, hurt way over hollow eyes. “I’ll tell you this, the same things seem goddamn different in the middle of a typhoon when they’re happening, and six thousand miles