“Yeah.”
“I had the misfortune to be delivering some fell-off-the-truck stuff to Feeny when the cops raided his place and took me downtown with everybody else. Judge Markowitz was sitting that day. Said the group I was hanging with didn’t bode well for my future.”
“You’re talking about Maximum Markowitz?”
“That’s the one. Told me that one way or the other, I was gonna get a change of scenery out of this. He then give me a choice of signing papers with an army recruiter happened to be in the back of the courtroom that day or going to trial followed by a trip upriver to state prison with him doing the sentencing.”
“Neither one sounds like a nice vacation, but ol’ Maximum Mark would’ve had you busting rocks with a sledge hammer if he could still do that.”
“My thoughts exactly, so I took a chance on the army. Found out later, the army recruiter who happened to be standing at the back of the room was the judge’s son-in-law and he was looking to make some bonus money if he filled his quota of new recruits for that month.”
“That don’t sound good,” said Yarnell.
“It wasn’t,” said Beaumont. “They had me on a green army bus that same afternoon, me with a window seat and a big recruit sitting between me and the aisle, blocking any escape I might’ve had in mind. Guy was big enough to play left guard for the Giants.”
“They might as well have locked you up in a paddy wagon.”
“No kidding. After a half-hour, the swaying motion of the bus on the road put me to sleep while I was still figuring on ways to get out of this situation.”
“So what’d you come up with?” asked Yarnell.
“The way it went,” replied Beaumont, “There wasn’t much I could do.”
“How’s that?”
“Next thing I know, before I could even put any plans into motion, I woke up at some training camp way out in the woods with several muscled-up sergeants in starched fatigues and Smokey the Bear hats screaming at us to get our asses off the bus. I tell you, that was one scary time in my life. Seems this was one of them places what was supposed to turn tame civilians into fighting mad soldiers.”
“A guy can get hurt in them kind of situations.”
“Gets worse,” said Beaumont. “Wasn’t but a few months after training that they handed me transfer orders to an outfit on other side of the world. I was going there as an Eleven Bravo.”
“Eleven what?”
“Bravo. That’s a rifleman. You know, them guys on the ground doing the shooting and getting shot at.”
Yarnell lowered his crab leg.
“You never said nothing about being a war veteran.”
Beaumont made a gesture with his hands, both palms spread out and facing forward.
“Well, I was and I wasn’t.”
Yarnell finally laid the crab leg down on his plate.
“How do you...? Never mind.”
“It’s like this,” said Beaumont. “When I reported to the company first sergeant at our camp in Saudi Arabia prior to the invasion of ninety-one, the sarge looked me up and down and then said he had a proposition for me.”
“What kinda proposition?”
“Turned out he knew how and why I come to join the army, plus a lot of other things about my alleged unsavory past, all of which he alluded to in conversation. And, being the First Shirt in what was about to be a war zone, he mentioned he just so happened to have need of a special man for a special job.” Beaumont paused for a moment. “Did I ever tell you I about the time I was a bartender in my youth at an Irish mob joint? It might help explain part of this.”
“Nope, don’t think it ever come up in conversation.”
“It was an after-hours blind pig across the river, mostly hijacked liquor and untaxed cigarettes in a storefront with the windows painted black so nobody could see in. Place was populated by up-and-comers in the criminal life, that is until the Russians took it over for themselves when our boss wouldn’t pay off for protection.”
“Putin’s boys do get a little touchy when it’s their opinion other people owe them money.”
“Yeah, put me out of a job.”
Yarnell was trying to decide whether or not to re-dip his crab leg in hot butter while his brain running in a parallel tunnel opted to put the discussion back on track.
“Tough about the job,” he said, “but let’s get the story back to what happened in Iraq.”
“Sorry,” replied Beaumont. “Anyway, Arabia’s one of them Muslim countries what don’t believe in alcohol. But since soldiers are a thirsty lot, the First Shirt needed someone to run an off-the-books NCO club for corporals and up. The club was concealed inside a couple of Conex boxes out in the supply yard, a place where the troops could safely unwind after a hard day in the field and not come to the attention of any stiff-neck officers. That’s where I was supposed to come in with my bartending experience from back home.”
“Let me guess, he made you a tempting offer and you went for it.”
“Right. If I ran the club, I wouldn’t have to go out in the boondocks and get my hindquarters shot off. Also as incentive for my services, he would finagle the paperwork for an early discharge. This was to be an undated document which he would hold in his private files, the date to be filled in after he saw how well I worked out. This way, I find out much later, if the club got busted by the MP’s, he’d get the discharge backdated, giving himself deniability that the army itself was running a club serving illegal booze in a Muslim country.”
“Leaving you to take the fall as if he didn’t know what was going on.”
“You got it.”
“Sounds like he knew all the angles.”
“I thought so at the time. And he did keep me from losing any body parts I’d grown fond of. Plus he kept his word after my year was up, sending me home in one piece with an early out.”
Beaumont scooted Yarnell’s glass of beer over to his own side of the table and took a drink.
“However,” he continued after placing the glass down in front of himself, “last month, a long time after his own army retirement, it seems our local vice squad popped the sarge for running a fake computer chip distribution operation. Had to do with counterfeit chips from China.”
“I heard something about them things being on the street.”
“As for myself, I hadn’t seen or talked to this guy in twenty-some years, didn’t even know he was in our town, fake chips or not. Now it looks like he’s going away for a while.”
“So where’s your problem?”
“He called me to come down to the holding facility and have a chat with him. Said I owed him, so to speak, so I went. Turns out when Sarge got arrested, his pet dog was at the local veterinarian shop for his annual tune-up, plus any required shots the pooch was supposed to get. Problem is, if the dog don’t get paid up and out in the next two days, the vet’s gonna put him down to keep the kenneling bill from getting any higher.”
“That’s a little harsh,” said Yarnell.
Beaumont nodded.
“And, since the vet figured out Sarge is probably going away for a long while, he wants his money right quick.”
“Then go bond the dog out.”
“Can’t. This vet is very exclusive, probably runs the most expensive kennel in town. Me, I can’t afford to even pay the dog’s room and board much less his annual tune-up fee.”
“Get Sarge to give you the money. It’s his pet.”
“No dice. All of Sarge’s assets got seized by the IRS when he got busted, so there’s no help there.”
“In which case, what did you have in mind for us?”
Beaumont leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“I thought maybe tonight we’d go in and get him out.”
Yarnell thought about this for a moment.