Chickenhawk: Back in the World

“It’s not hard, Bob.” Jules said. We were walking beside the beach, on the jogging trail.

“C’mon,” I said. “You say you need a few million dollars. How can a person get that kind of money together?”

Jules nodded, looked at me seriously. “If you are willing to do what has to be done, then it is easy.”

“Yes?” I said. The way he said it made me wonder if I wanted to hear the rest.

“Yes. I’ve been busted before, Bob. Ten years ago, when I got out of prison, I was flat broke. A year later I had five million dollars in a bank in Austria.”

I laughed nervously. “What’d you do? Rob a bank?”

“Exactly,” Jules said.

“C’mon,” I said. “That never works.”

“It is child’s play. Do you want to know how?” Jules and I were at the lonely stretch of the trail, beside the swamp. The feral cats watched us. Jules’s tone of voice made my skin crawl.

“Why would you tell me? I might write it down someday.”

“Fine. Do it. You don’t know if I’m lying.”

“Are you lying?”

“No.”

I shrugged. There is no way out of a cycle like this. It’s an example of a self-referential conundrum I’d been reading about, like: “This sentence is false.”

“You walk into the bank, after you have found out who is the president, and—”

“You’re telling me how?”

“Yes. It’s part of the real world, Bob. In the real world power rules. Powerful people take what they want.”

I saw John Tillerman in the weight shack. He was bench pressing a very large set of weights. He didn’t see me. “You promise me you’re lying, and I’ll listen.”

“Everything I am telling you is a lie,” Jules said.

“Tell me.”

“You know who the banker is, you know where he lives. You have grown a full but distinguished beard, dyed your hair. As you walk in the front door of the bank, your two partners are inside his house, with his family. When the secretary asks your business, you give her an envelope to give to the president, an envelope with a picture of his wife and kids. A minute later the secretary says he will see you.

“When you are sitting together, in his office, discussing how much money you want, you suggest he call home. He does. One of your partners answers.”

We passed the bocci courts. We were once again skirting the swampy side of the camp. Long shadows of sunset enclosed us.

“The banker is not a power person. When your partner answers, the banker is pissing in his pants. He makes a couple of calls. A clerk delivers the money, gives it to the ‘important client’ in the office. You pack it carefully in your briefcase.”

“What keeps him from calling the police when you leave?”

“He leaves with you. He is going to lunch with the important client.”

“Where do you go?”

Jules smiled slightly. “Fishing.”

I nodded, quickly. Why did I know what that meant? “The family?”

“Nothing. You are not a brute. They know nothing. They have been with two men wearing ski masks for a couple of hours.”

I nodded. We walked in silence.

“It is shocking to you? This real world?”

“I’ve seen people killed. Women and children have died because of me. That’s real. I’ve just never met anyone who’d kill in cold blood, except in war—that’s not… well, it has a purpose. I’d be shocked, if I thought you were telling the truth,” I said, staring at Jules.

Jules laughed, but his smile wasn’t happy. “Yes. Luckily, nothing like that really happens.”

I turned away from Jules and shrugged.

“Isn’t that nice?” Jules said.

One morning, out of the blue, Baker told me that Grumbles the commissary clerk was leaving in a week and Miss Reed wanted me to come work for her. “I’d really like you to stay, Bob. You know how to do everything around here. But Miss Reed has a lot of clout with administration. I think she can get you even if I don’t agree.” Baker leaned back in his big executive chair and rested his chin on his fists. “I’ve talked to her about it, and the deal is that it’s up to you. You say you want to go, and I’ll agree. You want to go?”

Baker was pulling my strings. It wasn’t that he was dependent on me, personally; he just dreaded the hassle of finding somebody to take my place. “Well, Mr. Baker. I like working here—”

“Good—”

“—but I wouldn’t mind a change, you know?”

Baker looked very sad. “Who’s going to take your place?” he said.

I thought for a minute. “Well, we got that new guy, Winkler, the college professor?” Winkler, a tenured professor, was sent to Eglin, he said, over a three-hundred-dollar discrepancy in his tax return. He claimed he made a mistake, deducted the same business trip twice, but the government chose to prosecute. He got a year, would serve eight months. Because he wasn’t able to honor his teaching contract, he lost his job and his tenure. He was collecting stories about how people get into places like Eglin.

“Winkler? The shrink?”

“He’s a psychologist. Anyway, he can type great—good as me. He’s just being wasted now.”

“What’s he do here, anyway?” Baker asked.

“Nothing, really. I set him up with his own desk, you know, that little table in the supply room? He’s working on a book or something.”

“How long would it take? To train him?”