Finnegan's Week Read Online Free PDF

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