The Adjustment Read Online Free Page B

figured out some better use for him.
    The next candidate fit the bill better. Herman Park’s history of violence was all within societally approved norms: the army (1931–37, 1942–46), Golden Gloves, and a stint with the Emporia Police Department in between. Somewhere along the line he’d had his nose broken, probably more than once.
    “Why didn’t you go back to Emporia after you mustered out?” I asked him.
    “Wife moved down here for war work in ’43. Wants me to get a job in an office or on an assembly line. I’d rather get my teeth pulled.”
    “How about the Wichita PD?”
    “Not hiring. Too many ex-cops coming back, so many of them they’re letting go some of the 4-Fs they hired during the fighting.”
    “Yeah, I heard about that. Some of those guys were walking around with a chip on their shoulder.”
    “Sure, everybody thought they were yellow. Tell you what, there were days in Germany I’d have traded places with any one of those guys, though.”
    I told Park he was hired and said I’d introduce him to Collins as soon as he was ready to carouse again.
    “That’s swell, Mr. Ogden.”
     
    I WAS FEELING like a good citizen, having found jobs for two returning vets, and I headed back to the plant to notify the personnel department, the head of which hated me. He had reason, since I regularly forced him to hire people he didn’t want to on Everett Collins’s say so. He was all right with Park, understanding as he did the need for a bodyguard for the boss, but he tried to put his foot down regarding Rackey.
    “We’ve already got this Rackey fellow on file, and we’re not hiring him.” His reading glasses balanced on the tip of his nose, and on the word “not” he whipped them off for emphasis. He was right, of course; Rackey didn’t meet any of the minimum requirements. Nonetheless I didn’t like him telling me no.
    “Mr. Whittaker, you will give Mr. Rackey a job. A job on the line. You will clear it with the shop steward, and if he has any trouble you report it directly to me. Is that understood?”
    He picked up a manila file and waved it. “Do you know why he was thrown out of the Marines?”
    “Don’t care.”
    “He was court martialed and found guilty of cruelty to animals.”
    I thought he was kidding and started laughing.
    “It’s not funny. He killed a poodle that belonged to his colonel’s wife.”
    “I don’t believe you. There’s no such charge in the Military Code of Justice.”
    “And when they arrested him for it they needed four MPs, two of whom were hospitalized with broken bones.”
    “You get all this from the Marines?” I asked, impressed with his thoroughness.
    “You bet. We’re still a military contractor, bub, and when I have to check someone’s background I go to the source.”
    “Have him work on civilian planes, then,” I said, and left him steaming.
     
    I STOPPED IN at my own office and said hello to Mrs. Caspian, the secretary of the Publicity and Marketing Department. I liked her because she made no bones about not liking me. She knew enough about my real duties at Collins to hold me in contempt, and I admired her integrity in not pretending otherwise. She was a plump brunette who smelled of rosewater and Old Golds, and other than hating me she was an exemplary secretary. No one but Mrs. Caspian showed any resentment at working under a man who left the running of the department entirely to them and who took all the public credit for it. I didn’t know beans about publicity, anyway, or about the airplane industry, either. As a kid I was wild about airplanes, but I’d gotten over that well before the war, which had certainly drained whatever romance aviation had left for me. I might as well have been working for a company that manufactured washers or adding machines.
    As long as I drew a paycheck and was allowed to come and go as I pleased I was fine. And make no mistake, I earned my living, wrangling our drunken founder in and out of