enough, to do something drastic. There were times when Prewitt felt a special quality in himself, a strange unpleasant quality that seemed to force everyone he touched into making drastic decisions about their own lives, no wonder people did not like to be around him. The idea frightened him deeply, at such times, because he could not understand what it was and because he did not want to do it. Certainly, he did not try to do it. People went along, living their lives as best they could, not gaining much maybe, but not losing greatly either, and all the time, deeply hidden, the one great personal conflict of fear lay dormant and unhidden. Enter Kid Galahad Prewitt. The action precipitates. The conflict of fear rises flapping from the depths like a giant manta ray, looming big and bigger, looming huge, up out of the deep green depths that you can look down into through a water glass and see the anchor cable dwindling in a long arc down into invisibility, up from far below that even, flapping the two wing fins of choice and the ego caught square in the middle. And they had to choose, had to face it, and whichever way they chose they still got hurt. And all the time he did not want to do it, did not know he did it, until afterwards. It always frightened him, thinking this way, it was one of the things he could most of the time keep down, out of his mind, but sometimes it was too hard to keep the mind going in smooth even waves and he had to let it in and the mind started jumping around yawingly as if there were no bottom under the feet and it always frightened him. Maybe there were things in themselves men should not look at, just as there were things in the very deep bottom of the sea that it was better that men did not know about. He felt that was true, sometimes. Life frightened him, sometimes. But there was nothing to do, anyway. Because this special quality was a thing he could not control in himself, that he could not stop. But then when he was going good he knew it was better to face it, that it was always better to face things no matter what it cost anybody. He knew that. He believed it. Only in the bad spells did life frighten him with its unbelievable cruelty, its inconceivable injustice, its incredible pointlessness. He was going through one of the bad spells now, with Angelo in the Stockade waiting trial. He felt he should have been able to stop the little guy from going off the deep end that night, even though it was himself, he felt, who caused it. He should have foreseen it. He should have not left him alone to step to the water to jettison the trunks. He should have pitched into the fight, in spite of what the little guy had yelled. The two of them could have whipped the MPs, clubs and all, and gotten away, back to the Company and safety. He saw a thousand things he should have done, but had not done. He held himself responsible for what happened to Angelo. That was why he wanted to see Angelo so badly, maybe he could explain it to him. But he did not get to see Angelo.
In fact, he might never have gotten to see Angelo again at all, if it had not been for the queer investigation the city police started downtown.
They came for them in trucks, two of them, the big 21/2 ton jobs, from the MP Company at Shatter driven by an armed MP with another armed MP beside him in the cab, and led by a high-bellied recon driven by another armed MP. A big half-white, half-Hawaiian police lieutenant in the mustard worsted poplin of the city force, and with a build like a beachboy, was in charge of the expedition. He rode in the recon with the First Lieutenant from the Shafter MP Company who carried the blanket warrant signed by the Department Provost Marshal. Riding with them were the two young FBI men, looking like bright-faced rich men’s sons in their very conservative but expensive business suits, who were the liaison between the civilian police and the military.
The convoy descended upon the quadrangle and parked in front of G Company and assaulted Capt Holmes’s orderly room, the two shining, scrubbed, young graduate lawyers