The Adjustment Read Online Free Page A

see them two farmboys that jumped us,” he said.
    “I sure did, I made their bail and paid ’em off and sent ’em back to Butler County. Now what the hell were you thinking starting a fight yourself? And don’t try telling me anything different because I talked to three people who watched it.”
    “I don’t know, Wayne. Something about them just set me off.”
    “Another thing. Mr. Collins knows about the incident that lost you your badge.”
    He reared back and craned his neck to look at the ceiling, a gesture meant to convey exasperation at the unfairness of the thing that instead suggested an inability to meet my eyes. “That business was a bunch of lies from start to finish.”
    “Nonetheless Mr. Collins feels it would be best if you sought employment elsewhere.”
    His mouth hung open and his eyes watered as if I’d just slapped him. All he’d expected was a reprimand. I was tired of looking at Billy, though, and I didn’t like his lying, and he’d proved that as a bodyguard he was useless. I handed him a check on Collins’s personal account. “Two weeks severance and you’re lucky to get it.”
     
    COLLINS HAD TAKEN to phoning me at home, a familiarity I was beginning to resent but hadn’t yet figured out how to stymie. That night when he called I told him I’d fired Billy. Might as well take the hit now if he was going to react badly.
    There was a long pause on the other end of the line, complete with tightly controlled breathing. “Son of a bitch had some balls calling himself a bodyguard. Put an ad in the paper for somebody new.”
    “Already set for tomorrow’s Beacon .”
    “Shit. That Jew rag? Put one in the Eagle instead. Nobody reads the Beacon but left-wing degenerates.”
    This I would ignore. I liked the busty girl who ran the Beacon ’s classified desk. “Anything else?”
    “Yeah. Come on over and see if you can’t sneak some booze in. Bring a flask or two. Make it three. I can hide ’em; we’ll tell the old bitch you’re here to discuss advertising strategy.”
     
    THE AD IN the Beacon read as follows:
    Man with police or military experience wanted for bodyguard work. Familiarity with firearms essential.
    References. Box 397, Beacon.
     
    The day after the notice first appeared I had half a dozen responses. One was a woman whose husband had taught her to use a rifle. Two were from ex-convicts who at least had the honesty to admit it. One was from Billy Clark, admirably already on the lookout for new opportunities. The two who remained were ex-servicemen, and I made arrangements to meet them both at Stanley’s diner at Kellogg and Oliver.
    The first was a barrel-chested ex-marine who sat across from me, seething over some unspecified grievance.
    “How’s civilian life agreeing with you?” I asked him.
    “Bitch don’t know when to quit.”
    “Yeah, ain’t that the way.”
    “I swear to Christ, Mister, I know she was fucking my brother while I was gone.”
    A hell of a thing to say to a stranger in the context of a job interview, I thought; this guy needed his head shrunk more than he needed a job. “That’s pretty rotten,” I said, as blandly as I could.
    “I’m going to prove it, and then I’m going to kill them both.”
    His name was Rackey, and though I knew he wasn’t going to work as a bodyguard, I had an idea I might find a use later on for that barely contained violent impulse of his. “Listen, Mr. Rackey, it looks like the bodyguard position’s already filled, but I have another proposition for you until a similar position opens up again. How would you like a job on the line at Collins aircraft?”
    “I already been told they won’t take me, on account of my dishonorable discharge.”
    “That’s all right, pal.” I sent him over to the plant with a strongly worded note of recommendation, complete with the suggestion that the order was coming from the old man himself. Whatever it was I figured Rackey could keep out of trouble on the floor until I