Troubleshooters - Into The Night Part 4

Junior didn't actually laugh, but he did manage another more genuine-seeming smile. "That would be a complete waste of money. In my opinion." His smile faded, and he fixed his gaze on a distant point. "Respectfully, of course. Ms. DaCosta."

h.e.l.lo. A Navy SEAL who actually blushed? Yes, color was rising from the collar of his uniform and tingeing his perfect, smoothly shaven cheeks.

Was this not turning into one of the weirdest days of her life?

Obviously Junior here wanted to make sure that she knew he wasn't hitting on her or being inappropriate in any way. Or maybe he thought that her mention of support hose was her way of hitting on him, rather than another of her pathetic attempts to be funny and to get him to relax already. Maybe he'd somehow found out that she'd asked his CO to dinner and expected her to do the same with him. But unless Paoletti had intercepted him and told him ... No, she just didn't see that happening. Still... Eek.

"So. This is called drown proofing," she said briskly, feeling her own face start to heat at the idea that he might think that she thought... Jesus G.o.d, he had to be ten years her junior. He couldn't possibly think she would ... Did he ... ? Unless he thought she was the female equivalent of Rear Admiral Tuckera"hitting on everyone in range, provided he had a p.e.n.i.s.

Maybe if she kept the conversation moving neither one of them would feel the urge to curl up and die. "G.o.d. Talk about extreme."

"This is one of the easier exercises," Muldoon informed her. "Believe me, this isn't extreme."

"Well, it's very ... visually extreme," Joan said. Enough of this embarra.s.sment already. Just talk to the kid. "One of the things I'm doing here is scouting locations for photo ops for the President's daughter's visit. The White House and the Navy want to turn this event into good PR for everyone. And a picture really is worth a thousand words, particularly when it's on the front page of USA Today. So what do you think? Should we recommend tying up Brooke Bryant and tossing her into the pool with these boys while the press is allowed to snap away?"

Laughter. Finally. It was only a chuckle, but hey, it counted. Muldoon the junior lieutenant actually had dimples, G.o.d bless him. He finally met her gaze again. "We?"

"Don't want your name on that report, huh?"

"No, thank you." He laughed again. "I'm just the liaison. I'd like to keep it that way. At least as far as the White House is concerned."

Coming from anyone else, that might've been a subtle come on. But from Junior... Joan simply could not think of it that way.

"How long have you been in the Navy?" she asked, using all of her so-called people skills to try to keep him from retreating back into the impersonal tour guide. Engage them in conversation about themselves, listen when they answer, smile and maintain eye contact, keep body language open and friendly. But not s.e.xual. It was a fine line, but one she'd walked many times before. It was one of her strengthsa"her ability to be "one of the boys."

G.o.d, she hoped he didn't think the support hose comment was her way of hitting on him, because that really was the last thing she'd been thinking.

"I joined while I was in college," he told her, relaxing another minute fraction of a smidgen. "I've been in eight years now, and I've been a SEAL for four of them."

She tried to do the math. "That would make you, what? Twenty-four?"

'Twenty-six," he corrected her.

So, okay, she wasn't all that much older than he was. At least not chronologically. And he'd crossed that do-not-touch, twenty-five-years-old-or-under-is-verboten barrier that automatically went up whenever a woman turned thirty.

"Well, I'm almost twenty-six," he admitted, as if G.o.d would strike him with a lightning bolt if he were caught lying. Who was this guy?

Joan laughed. At him and at herself. What did it really matter how old he was? This wasn't a date. And she wasn't looking for trouble.

"There was a time I always rounded up, too," she told him. "Amazing how age-ist people can be, huh? But it works on both ends of the spectrum, especially for women. Someone once told me that in my business, as a woman, you want to be perpetually thirty-five. Not too old and not too young. You know what I said when I heard that?"

"No. What?"

"I said, Screw that. I'm great nowa"I'm going to be off the charts when I turn forty. At fifty, honey, I may be older, but I certainly won't be too old, and as for you, at that point, you're not going to be able to afford to hire me. And when I finally turn seventya"look out."

He was smiling at her, and it was a big, fat, genuine smile that actually touched his eyes. Attaboy, Muldoon. Way to be a human being.

"Don't play the game by their rules," she told him, because, d.a.m.n, he actually seemed to be listening to what she had to say. "So come on, Gra.s.shopper. Give me the rest of the official tour, and then we can fight to the death about the parts of the base you've been told not to let me see, okay?"

She was leaving work early. What was that about?

One thing Husaam Abdul-Fataah had learned about Mary Lou Starrett was that she lived her life like clockwork.

Three days a week she dropped the kid at day care in the morning, then drove her rattletrap of a car over to the Coronado Naval Base, past the guards at the gate, and down the road to the McDonald's, where she parked in the shade alongside the Dumpster. She worked a four-hour shift, and she always arrived twenty to thirty minutes early and sat with a cup of coffee, her nose in whatever book she was currently reading.

Five minutes before her shift started, she'd take her book bag back out to her car and stash it in the front seat. A trip to the ladies' room followed, and then four relentless hours of her beauty queen false smile and "Do you want fries with that?"

About a half hour in. the smile would start to wilt. And by the time the shift was over, she made a beeline out of there.

She got back into her car, drove back to San Diego, picked up the kid at day care.

And that was when she got wild and crazy. Every two to three days she went to the library with the baby in a stroller. She read like a maniaca"taking out an armload of books at a time. Once or twice a week, she stopped at the grocery store on her way back to the little house she shared with a husband who frequently wasn't home.

The kid probably napped every day from around 2:30 to 3:30, because Mary Lou always made sure they were home during that time. Occasionally she went out into the yard, carrying a book and some kind of radio receivera"probably something that allowed her to listen for the kid. And about once or twice a week, somewhat randomly, she went over to the little house right next door, where some kind of a shut-in lived.

She never stayed for long.

Her evenings were as organized as her days. She had an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to attend in various churches in the city, one for every night of the week. She'd wait until the last minute for her husband to come home. Sometimes he made it before she had to go. Sometimes she planned in advance and took the kid back to the sitter. But sometimes she'd pack up the baby and, loading her into the car with ill-concealed exasperation, she'd simply take her along.

The husband barely ever looked at her, hardly did much more than go to work or sleep in front of the TV Husaam couldn't have asked for it to be any easier.

When he'd first arrived in San Diego, he'd hung out in the local bars and restaurants, the places where the Navy personnel came to drink and gossip.

The SEALs were a closemouthed bunch, but they were a hot topic of conversation. And not just them, but their wives and girlfriends were often discussed to death by the folks in the regular Navy.

Because of that, he knew all kinds of things about them alla"most of which were probably wild rumors. But even the wildest of rumors tended to contain at least a grain of truth.

He'd heard that Meg Nilsson met her current husband while she was still married to her first.

That one he figured was probably true.

Teri and Stan Wolchonok had a hot tub in their backyard, and an invitation to their house would result in everyone getting naked.

He wasn't so sure about that.

Mary Lou Starrett was a bimbo SEAL groupie who had purposely gotten pregnant to trap Sam into marrying her.

A definite possibility.

Mark Jenkins was dating a kindergarten teacher from Escondido who had breast implants.

Only Jenkins and the teacher knew for sure.

Mike Muldoon was so good-looking and nice, he had to be gay.

Sounded like good, old-fashioned envy to him, but not impossible.

Jay Lopez's brother had overdosed on heroin, which had made Jay take a vow of celibacy, and Cosmo Richter had been recruited by the SEALs from his cell in the lifers wing on Rikers Island.

Yeah, right.

Last but not least, rumor had it that Team Sixteen's commanding officer Tom Paoletti had lost interest in his live-in girlfriend, Dr. Kelly Ashton. He kept postponing their wedding date. Rumor was they were fighting pretty much constantly. A day didn't go by in which Kelly didn't drive out to the base to check up on Tom and to exchange heated words.

That situation sounded perfect for what he wanted to do, and he'd targeted Kelly Ashton first, for a number of reasons. But the rumors and gossip about her fading relationship with Paoletti were backward and upside down.

He hadn't followed her for more than thirty-six hours before she met Paoletti at a dinner party at the posh Hotel del Coronado. Minutes after she arrived, she slipped out of the dining room.

And as Husaam had watched, Paoletti followed her. Right into a hotel utility closet.

Husaam had strolled past the closed door and well, well, well. There was definitely not an argument going on inside.

A little more investigation revealed that Kelly was the one who kept pushing back their wedding date. She had cold feet. But that's about all she had that was cold.

Regretfully, he'd crossed her off his list, and started following Mary Lou Starrett instead.

Who lived her boring little life with mind-numbing predictability. Which he couldn't really complain about, seeing how ita"as well as the broken lock on the trunk of her cara" made things much easier for him.

But right now, something most definitely was up.

It was 1:37. It was twenty-three whole minutes before Mary Lou's shift ended, and she was already in her car and pulling out of the naval base.

It was pure chance that brought him here early. Normally he wouldn't have bothered to come before 2:00 P.M. on the dot.

Mary Lou would take the long way back to the mainland so she wouldn't have to pay the toll. He knew that about her, too.

He went in the opposite direction, determined to get to San Diego before she did.

Because today was the day, after following her for weeks, that he was finally going to make contact.

Vincent DaCosta was jealous of a man who'd been dead for more than sixty years.

James Fletcher.

Vince thought of him as Jim or Jimmy, even though Charlie had never called him anything but James. Of course, sometimes, like right now, Vince thought of him as that son of a b.i.t.c.h. Which was, he knew, entirely unfair.

That son of a b.i.t.c.h had died December 7,1941a"a day that had very definitely managed to live in infamy for at least these past sixty-something years. That son of a b.i.t.c.h had left behind a beautiful young wife who had loved him dearly.

Even after nearly eighty years of living, Vince knew few things absolutely for sure. But one of those things he knew in his heart was that if he had been at Pearl Harbor and mortally wounded from shrapnel from a j.a.panese bomb, he would have fought death tooth and claw to keep from leaving behind a world that had sweet Charlie Fletcher living in it.

She was sitting, right now, on a chair in a living room-like set in this TV studio, her knees primly together, her back straight as a board. She'd been sitting just like that, at her secretary's desk in the senator's office in Washington, D.C., the first day Vince laid eyes on her.

Another thing Vince knew after all those years, well over fifty of 'em spent married to sweet Charlie, was that in truth he had no G.o.dd.a.m.ned right to be jealous of Jim Fletcher.

Fletcher'd had Charlie for one year.

Vince had had her for a lifetime.

"He truly was a remarkable man," Charlie was saying now to young Tim Bradley, the host of this show being made for the History Channel, as the studio cameras rolled.

December was approaching and the anniversary of the j.a.panese attack was rolling around again. Since most of the men who'd actually been at Pearl Harbor during the battle were finding it more and more difficult to walk and talk, folks like Bradley were interested in interviewing the people who'd known the heroes of that fateful day.

And Medal of Honor winner Lieutenant James T. Fletcher had been one h.e.l.l of a hero, there was no denying that.

The man had thrown himself on top of an admiral, saving the officer's life, shielding him from shrapnel that would have torn him apart. And then when other mena"medicsa"tried to keep Fletcher from bleeding to death, he'd refused to go to the hospital. Instead he'd led those very mena"untrained, untried mena"to an antiaircraft gun. With Fletcher's lead, they got it up and firing. Took out a fair number of j.a.panese planes. Enough to make a significant difference to save G.o.d knows how many American lives.

But it had not been without a price.

Vince watched the TV monitor, watched Charlie as she spoke in her usual no-nonsense manner to Tim Bradley.

"The sacrifice he madea"that all the young men who fought and died to defend our country madea"is awe inspiring." She smiled so sadly, so like she'd smiled in the early days of their friendship, that it nearly broke Vince's heart. "Of course, at the time, I was not inspired. I was devastated. I loved him, and he was dead."

"What did you think when you heard the news that your husband was being given a posthumous Medal of Honor?" Bradley asked.

"First husband," Vince muttered a correction. What was he? Chopped liver? It was weird, hearing Charlie talk about Fletcher again. During all these years they'd been married, neither of them ever mentioned him.

But maybe that had been a mistake. Maybe she'd needed to talk about the guy.

Look at the way she'd jumped at being interviewed when the producer of this show had called.

She'd loved him, she said, and he was dead.

On the video monitor, Charlie shifted her weight and crossed her legs. At eighty-three, she still had a great pair of legs. She looked like she belonged on that TV screen. Like a movie star. But then again, Vince had always thought that. Right from day one. The woman was gorgeous. She still was.

"What did I think? I thought, "Posthumousa"what an awful word.' "

"And when you heard the stories of his bravery at Pearl Harbor... ?"

"I thought, 'Why did you do that? James, you stupid a.s.s.' "

Bradley gave a burst of laughter, and Charlie made a face. "I'm sorry," she said. "I probably can't say that on television, can I? But you did ask."

"It's okay," Bradley a.s.sured her. "It's fine."

"I was twenty-two when he died," she told him. "I didn't read the reports and records of what happened until years later. I couldn't stand to. My mother-in-lawa"his mothera" somehow managed to read them. She told me what James had done."

She laughed softly, sadly, her eyes out of focus, remembering.

Vince remembered, too. He remembered how wounded she'd been when he'd almost literally fallen into her and Edna Fletcher's lives. Jim had been dead for nearly two years, and Charlie was still raw from it.

"I'd asked her to come and stay with me in Washington when the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor was first announced. We knew James was stationed in Hawaii, we knew the attack was horrendous, that lots of our boys had died, but that's all we knew. So I called Mother Fletcher and asked her to come. I pretended it was so I could comfort her in case we got bad news, but the truth was she came and she comforted me. Can you imagine getting a telegram telling you that your only child is dead?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, she lived it. We lived it. Lots of mothers and wives did after December seventh. Edna Fletcher was a Gold Star Mother after the j.a.panese bombed Pearl Harbor. And at twenty-two, I was a war widow. And yes, we were presented with James's Medal of Honor shortly after that. But it was cold comfort, sir. I know from shows like this one that James will be forever remembered and revered as a hero. That's as it should be. But I hope he'll also be remembered as a greatly loved husband and son. That's how I remember him."

"Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, Mrs. Fletcher," Bradley said.

Mrs. Fletcher.