From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [235]
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 of the FBI in the lead, looking bright and mild and innocent almost to the point of adolescence, low voiced and tactful and flowing over with discretion, but underneath this erroneous impression immitigable with that calm implacability a man gets when he knows his word is revered as law and is to be feared. The CQ was dispatched out to the drillfield with a list of names immediately.
He came back marching a detail that appeared to be at least two-thirds of G Company, and drill for G Company the rest of that day was a skeletal sophism. The detail lined up before the barracks were counted off and answered another check roll call, looking sheepish and shuffling and very badly scared (the CQ had mentioned the presence of the FBI), yet wearing underneath the fear that unmistakable festive air that any holiday from the monotony of drill will bring, even if the holiday is an investigation by the FBI. They all knew the FBI, that it had jurisdiction over civil crimes committed by the Army, and they had all read the gang-buster comic books. The CQ had no idea why they were wanted, but there was only one civil crime that could have called in so many participants. It could only be a queer investigation.
Nearly all the Waikiki Tavern gang were there. Corp Knapp was there, so was Sgt Harris, so was Martuscelli. Polack Dyzbinski was there, so was Bull Nair, so was Dusty Rhodes, The Scholar, so was fat Readall Treadwell. Champ Wilson and Liddell Henderson were both there, so was Corp Miller, so was Sgt Lindsay, so were Anderson and Friday Clark, and Prewitt.
They were allowed to go upstairs to wash and change to CKCs since they were being taken to town. Neither the CQ nor the armed MP guards were sent up with them. Nobody was worried about anybody trying to escape. The names were on the roll call.
They came downstairs to catch one fleeting glimpse of the departing recon with the city police mustard, the Shafter suntan and black brassard, and the dark conservative business suits that were more of a uniform than either of the others, and were fallen in and counted off and given another check roll call, and then were herded into the open trucks to find Pvt 1cl Bloom and one other Pvt 1cl from the NCO School sitting disconsolately waiting for them. The MP guards rode in the cabs with the drivers boredly. There was no fear of anybody trying to jump out and escape a roster of the FBI.
Having the entire backs of the trucks to themselves, conferences of strategy were called in the backs of both trucks simultaneously, as if by the same natural instinct that makes southbound geese and schools of fish rendezvous at certain predetermined places, both conferences following instinctively the same identical pattern, each truckload instinctively knowing and trusting that the other truckload was doing the same thing, so that in effect it was really one big conference of strategy, instead of two.
By checking back and utilizing each man’s memory, each truckload was able to determine just who was in the other truckload, and from that to deduce just who was missing. It was discovered, then, that there were at least six queer-chasers from G Company as persevering and proficient as any queer-chaser present, who had not been called at all.
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