Screwed Read Free Page A

shells whistling overhead. I was swearing to Christ I could hear the tune of “Jealous Guy” in the whistles and thinking to myself, Mud? There’s not supposed to be mud in the Middle East.
    But the mud wasn’t the major gripe. Worse than that slick paste, or even the incoming fire, was the fear of death coming off the three-man watch in waves and how it manifested itself in our leader. The colonel who had been green enough to accompany his boys on watch rationalized that he wasn’t even supposed to be there and therefore he couldn’t possibly die.
    Don’t these stupid bastards understand? he repeated in a voice that grew increasingly shrill. I only came out to show a little solidarity, for God’s sake. They can’t kill a man for that.
    The colonel was right, the Hezbollah didn’t kill him, they just took one eye and one ear, which prompted one of Tommy’s immortal quotes in the billet a couple of hours later: Typical officer. Get on his bad side and he can’t hear nothing, can’t see nothing.
    Oscar Wilde had nothing on Corporal Thomas Fletcher when it came to sound bites.
    I decide to jog across to the Brass Ring. Downtown Cloisters is only a few square blocks, and a cab would have to follow the mayor’s new one-way system, which seems designed to transform honest citizens into raving psychopaths on their daily commute. Anyway, the run gives me a chance to clear my head, even though a shambling ape-man in a leather jacket is bound to draw what the hell was that looks from people who for a split second are convinced that they’re about to be mugged.
    Guys my size are not really supposed to move fast unless we’re in a cage match, and usually I take it nice and nonthreatening among the be-Starbucked civilians, but today is a quasi-emergency, so I pound the pavement over to the Brass Ring. I say quasi because I’m reasonably sure Mike is not gonna do anything violent in his own joint, plus if he wanted to kill me, Zeb would hardly be afforded the opportunity to give me the heads-up.
    Mike knows all about my specialized skill set, as another tall Irishman might say, and he has a proposition for me. I just bet that fat faux Mick has been planning his delivery.
    You see, laddie. I’m a businessman. And what we got here is a business opportunity.
    Except he says opera-toonity. For some reason he can’t pronounce the word right and I wouldn’t mind but he works it into every second sentence. Irish Mike Madden says opera-toonity more than the Pope says Jesus. And the Pope says Jesus a lot, especially when people sneak up on him.
    Little things like that really get to me. I can take a straight sock to the jaw, but someone tapping his nails on a table or repeatedly mispronouncing a word drives me crazy. I once slapped a coffee out of a guy’s hand on the subway because he was breathing into the cup before every sip. It was like sitting beside Darth Vader on his break. And I’ll tell you something else: three people applauded.
    It’s about half a mile over flat terrain to the Brass Ring, so I’m nice and loosened up by the time I get there. I don’t think I’m gonna have to crack any skulls, but it never hurts to have the kinks worked out. A person can’t just spring into action anymore once he gets past the forty mark. Once upon a time I could hump my sixty-pound backpack down twenty miles of Middle Eastern dust road; now I get short of breath putting out the garbage. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. I can put out the garbage just fine but I was trying to make a point. Ain’t none of us as young as we used to be except for the dead. They ain’t getting any older. And I might be joining their ranks if I don’t focus the hell up and stop drifting off on these mind tangents.
    Middle Eastern dust roads? Jesus Christ.
    Mike bought the Brass Ring at a knockdown price after the previous owner found himself with a few extra holes in his person. The joint is about as classy as clubs get in Cloisters, Essex