Finnegan's Week (4 page)

“The navy's working on sexist attitudes,” Bobbie had argued. “The secretary of the navy resigned, for crying out loud. Three admirals got stripped of their commands.”

“The women were the ones got stripped. What'd the one admiral say? Female pilots … excuse me,
aviators
are like hookers or go-go dancers? I wish you'd consider leaving it. You don't belong in the navy. You're not even twenty-eight years old. Your life's
ahead
of you.”

“I love the navy. I love my job.”

“You love being called Bad Dog?”

“It's not meant in any mean or sexist way. It's my name. Bobbie Ann Doggett. B-A-D. Doggett. Bad Dog. It's natural.”

Going home on leave to Kenosha, Wisconsin, had come to mean spending a few days with her parents, seeing her married brothers and their kids, and going out on the town with two high school girlfriends, both divorced. A surprising number of her classmates were gone from the Kenosha area, and before the leave was up, Bobbie was ready to go back to her
real
home. Back to the navy. At present, back to Naval Air Station, North Island, on the Coronado peninsula, across from downtown San Diego, where she served as a “command investigator.”

Whenever she'd tried to explain to her mother what sweet shore duty it was, and how lucky, and yes,
honored
, she felt to have the job, her mother would heave a sigh. And as soon as it was tactful, her mother would bring up the name of some blind-date yuppie puppy who worked with Bobbie's brother at his insurance office.

Her father had given up long ago. Having served in Korea as a dogface grunt, he knew a lifer when he saw one. When Bobbie had made 2nd class petty officer during the Gulf War, her dad had sent a congratulatory telegram that caught up with her in Saudi Arabia where her tender serviced the fighting ships. That's the kind of ship women got put on, big ships like tenders, machine shops that float. The male personnel, both officers and enlisted men, made bets on how many pregnancies would occur during their sea tour, and what made Bobbie
really
mad was that there were quite a few. Dumb. Sailors of either sex could be so
dumb
.

Her defense of the navy to her mother was always upbeat. To other females, navy or civilian, Bobbie said that the Tailhook aviators who assaulted the women as they ran a “gauntlet” ought to be sent to federal prison. There they should have their pubic hair shaved into hearts after which they should be made to run a gauntlet in the shower room between two rows of only those psychopaths who'd been longest in solitary confinement. That's what Bobbie said to women other than her mother. Still, Bobbie Ann Doggett truly believed that in her present assignment she had the greatest job in the navy, and she wouldn't trade with any sailor on ship or shore.

On the day that Bobbie left home to return to the base, her teary-eyed mother gave her some cookies to take on the plane. Her mother was at least glad that Bobbie's weight was “just right.” Her mother always thought Liz Taylor was “just right” before her diets, and “drawn and haggard” after them.

When Bobbie got harassed at the airport terminal by a persistent Krishna who couldn't've been stopped with a blowtorch, she tossed the homemade cookies to the skinhead, saying, “Phone your mom, Dribble-lips.”

On her first day back, Bobbie decided to bicycle to work. She could bike it because she lived nearby in an over-the-garage apartment at the rear of a residence belonging to a pair of elderly sisters. It would've been a lot cheaper to live in the barracks and eat navy chow, and her off-base allowance didn't cover her rent and food by any means, but the freedom and privacy meant a lot to Bobbie. Another reason she rode her bike that day was because she had to shoehorn her hips into a mulberry slim-skirt that she'd worn comfortably before going home on leave.

Even without her sweet assignment as a command investigator, Bobbie Ann Doggett would've considered any shore duty at North Island to be primo. NAS North Island had a twenty-four-hour operational air field, the only one of its kind in the state of California, and was headquarters for the largest over-haul and repair organization in the world, as well as being home to two carriers: USS
Ranger
and USS
Kitty Hawk
, each ship bringing with it about 2,500 personnel.

North Island was the birthplace of naval aviation, the point from which Charles Lindbergh took off bound for St. Louis, New York, Paris and immortality. The air station covers about 2,800 acres and requires a force of 24,000 workers, both military and civilian. It is a small city within the small city of Coronado, across the harbor from the sixth-largest city in America, San Diego.

Like any small city, NAS North Island had its own police and fire departments and its own crime. Bobbie Ann Doggett was a plainclothes detective assigned to investigate those crimes, most of which were misdemeanors. When they were felony crimes, the Naval Investigative Service usually handled the cases.

Because she was a command investigator Bobbie was “designated” by the base commander to interrogate anyone regardless of rank. This meant that an E-5 like Bobbie could, theoretically, grill a command officer. She hadn't felt so powerful since those days when she'd first earned the “crow” of a petty officer, taking on the responsibility of command over subordinates.

Hers would be an exciting job for an E-5 of either sex, but was especially so for Bobbie, whose career hadn't been easy but
had
been interesting. She'd especially loved the schools: master-at-arms school where she'd learned about policing, and later, investigator's school.

There'd been two tours at sea, one of them in the Gulf War, and Bobbie had learned very quickly that master-at-arms is not a popular rate on a navy ship. She'd been made to feel like a cop from the very beginning, in a job that didn't attract the most feminine of females. A lot of the female masters-at-arms were butch and looked it. But it was easier for Bobbie to deal with them than with the male personnel who assumed
she
was gay because of her master-at-arms rate, and because she preferred to wear her blond curly hair loose, short and uncoiffed, avoiding eyeliner, skin toners, and excessive lipstick. Bobbie figured that was their problem.

The funny thing was, Bobbie Ann Doggett didn't mind feeling like a cop. She'd never dated a cop but had always wanted to, and like the rest of her generation she'd grown up watching television cop shows. The first time Bobbie got to introduce herself as “Detective Doggett,” it was
awesome
.

Bobbie worked with two other investigators, both civilians, both men. She was the only military investigator in that nontraditional job. Like a city police detective, she wore civilian clothes, and unless something unusual occurred, she worked 7:30
A.M.
to 4:00
P.M.,
Monday through Friday.

Her civilian colleagues were okay guys, but they
were
civilians, and much older. They didn't bring the same enthusiasm that a young military investigator brought to the job, and no wonder—they made about $1,000 less a month than their counterparts at nearby San Diego Police Department. In fact, when they factored in Bobbie's pay and her military fringe benefits, she cost the navy twenty-five thousand a year more than her civilian colleagues did.

Civilian investigators tended to stay on the job a long time except for one who'd recently resigned to take a position with a police department in northern California. He was the one who took a look at Bobbie Ann Doggett and said in a stage whisper to a senior chief petty officer: “Bad Dog, my ass. Five foot three in platforms. It's what the navy's come to: runts 'n cunts!”

On the evening he'd said goodbye, Bobbie promised him she'd only sniffle, and try not to grieve hysterically when she saw his taillights disappear. The pissant!

Bobbie sometimes toyed with the fantasy of retiring from the navy after twenty years and then joining the San Diego P.D. She'd be only thirty-eight years old, still young enough to do police work. But that was almost eleven years away. Right now, Bobbie was doing a job she loved, and she wanted to do it for the full three-year tour and maybe even get an extension. Sea duty she did
not
love.

When Fin Finnegan was busy learning that tomorrow is another day, Bobbie Ann Doggett had already settled back into the office routine. The investigators and all other security personnel worked out of one-story wood-frame buildings just inside the main gate, buildings that had served as the base hospital in the 1920's, as evidenced by the extra-wide doorways.

Both of her colleagues said they were glad to see Bobbie back, but that it was mildly depressing to have someone so happy and cheerful around the office again. They asked her if Kenosha had changed much. And did the kids still go to school with animal traps in their book bags. And did they have credit cards by now or did they still trade in pelts. The female civilians gave her a welcoming hug with no wisecracks.

Bobbie especially liked the oldest investigator, Reggie Cole, who claimed he'd been at North Island since aids were admiral's helpers, but the guy smoked more than Kuwait in the war. During the lunch hour, Bobbie told Reggie she was going to mosey over to the post office to buy some stamps, but really, she wanted to get some fresh air. Even though he'd taken to smoking outside at the insistence of everyone, Reggie reeked like an ashtray. It was in his hair and in his pores.

She had to hike up her skirt to mount the bike, and three sailors in civvies made the usual sounds of adolescent angst that teenagers make when they see the exposed thigh of an older woman. Bobbie looked at them and considered that in little more than two years she'd be
thirty
. Those sailors were children.

Bobbie decided to ride along the quay and sniff the ocean breeze blowing in from the sea on that warm October day. She thought that San Diego had America's most beautiful big-city harbor, maybe one of the world's most beautiful big-city harbors. It was incredibly clean, and the postmodern architecture looked acceptable in the slanting autumn light. Geometric glass buildings—hexes, octagons, emerald shapes—dominated the skyline. Bobbie didn't like smoked and mirrored windows, and there was a lot of that.

In fact, she didn't like much of the new architectural experiments. Horton Plaza, where she often shopped, was a multicolored set of mammoth Lego toys with a dizzying maze of walkways. She thought the upper level should post suicide-prevention signs for trapped patrons. Bobbie figured that San Diego must be a haven for architects who flunked drafting in their freshman year.

But the fortuitous geography of her adopted city defied the modern architects' efforts. Short of employing nuclear devices, nobody could compromise the site of San Diego, with its promontories, and the glorious harbor sparkling and glittering at twilight when the sun was setting beyond Point Loma.

Bobbie's favorite time was twilight when the city view softened the geometry of the modern skyline and made the buildings glow in hues ranging from rose to burnt sienna. Even the sandstone color of the air station was warmed by that light, and the naval base then reminded Bobbie of an old California mission.

Bobbie was interested in nuclear-powered attack submarines, and several times had visited the sub base in the lee of Point Loma, even going aboard one of the huge boats that carried well over a hundred people. And when she was there she always visited the Cabrillo National Monument named for the Portuguese who discovered San Diego Harbor in the sixteenth century. From Point Loma, she could look south and see all of the twelve-mile harbor, and maybe take a tour through the old lighthouse.

That was the kind of San Diego architecture that Bobbie loved, the nineteenth-century lighthouse on top of the point, and the newer one down at the water's edge, still operated by the U.S. Coast Guard. She thought it would be interesting to be stationed out there and watch the migration of California gray whales. Certainly it'd be better than a tour of sea duty.

And Bobbie Ann Doggett loved the lighthouse because during the wars of the twentieth century it had represented the last look at their country for thousands of American sailors. The final look that some would
ever
have.

Now that she was back Bobbie had to make some short-term plans. First, she'd begin a rigorous aerobics program at the women's fitness center. Maybe she'd start swimming laps, anything to get rid of the disgusting blubber that delighted her mom. The thought made her pedal more vigorously.

While cruising along the quay, Bobbie saw that there were a large number of tractor-trailers and smaller vans loading and unloading at the monster warehouses, buildings huge enough to receive the contents of ships. She noticed an AOE docked at the quay wall. The big oiler had picked up two H-46 helicopters at Johnston Atoll, the U.S. possession just south of the Hawaiian chain. The choppers were in the process of being unloaded by crane, and they looked like huge larvae in white cocoons of rubberized plastic.

The ship had some other cargo that the skipper had picked up on Johnston Island in what the supply people called an “opportunistic lift.” The “lift” consisted of drums with special flanged ring seals, the flange being constructed so that it could easily be handled by robot arms. Inside the big drums were smaller drums, vacuum-sealed like giant cans of peanuts. On each outer drum was a packing list and a port through which one could look to see the packing surrounding the inner peanut cans. The packing contained granules that would, with a change in color, inform the viewer of a toxic leak inside. At that point the outer drum would be gingerly handled and not opened except in a clean and protected environment. Some of the less hazardous waste such as two drums of contaminated fuel mixtures had been dollied into the warehouse to await the civilian contractor who would haul it away.

As Bobbie Ann Doggett bicycled, fretting about being ten pounds past bikini-secure, a navy bosun was bitching to another that there was nobody there to take control of all the waste they'd off-loaded.