Free Guns [John Hardin 01] by Phil Bowie Page A

He’ll tell you my hours flown and you pay him. He’ll get some money for his trouble. You give me a number where I can reach you or get a message to you if you’re not still at the Pony Island.”
    “You came up with all that just now? Sam, I like the way you think. What we could do is we get one of those hats for Spud, too. That way if we both got ‘em on it means one thing. If just one of us’s got it on it means something else. If the one who’s got the cap on is standing in the bow it means something else, you see? If he’s in the stern—”
    “Let’s keep it simple, Bo.”
    “Maybe you’re right. So. We got us a deal?”
    “We’ll give it a shot. One thing, though. Since this is illegal, I couldn’t shut my conscience up for anything less than seventy-five an hour.”
    “You sure you ain’t a lawyer, Sam? You’re a bandit. But, okay. Far as what’s illegal it’s all how you look at it, ain’t it? Over in the South China Sea they go fishin’ with bombs they make from fertilizer and fuel oil, or they use cyanide. Kill
every
damn thing in a couple acres of water, including the coral. Go around after and pick up what they want and leave the rest. All we’re trying to do here is put a little food on my gray-haired momma’s table and maybe pay some on her QVC bill.”
    “Sure.”
    “Look, Sam, how many people you know always drive the speed limit? Nobody, right? They sell a lot of radar detectors. Come April fifteenth after supper how many people shave a little on their taxes? Everybody, right? Tell Uncle Sam they been givin’ fifty a week to their favorite church. They got to go look one up in the phone book. That trip to Busch Gardens or Mickeyworld with the kids and the mother-in-law was really a job interview. Waitresses only make about seven bucks a month on tips. Everybody’s got a real short memory about any cash they take in, don’t you? Hell, I do. The smart ones, they get some bookkeeper with a real good pencil sharpener knows all the rich man’s tricks, and he helps ‘em shave even more. Then the bookkeeper lays a big flat fee on ‘em but his secretary really only spent two hours ticklin’ her computer mouse to work it all out. The secretary herself’s doing a little thing with the petty cash the bookkeeper don’t know about. You give the lawyers and the doctors and the politicians and the inboard motor mechanics half a chance, what are they gonna do? Carve just as big a slice out of you as they can make off with, is what. Here’s another one.
    “How many people you believe have cheated, or thought about cheating, on the little lady, or on the hard-workin’ hubby? Everybody, right? It ain’t been that long ago the
President’s
getting laid in the War Room, sayin’ hey, no, baby, don’t touch them
red
buttons over there and the next thing you know there’s a half-dozen cruise missiles headed for some empty mountain in Afghanistan. President says later hey, honest to gosh, I wouldn’t think of even trying to
spell
Lewbowski, much less prod one.
    “Hell, Sam, there’s outlaw in us all. And we like our big-time outlaws, too. Look around. If Blackbeard was nothin’ but a cold-hearted thievin’ killer, why’s he treated like some kinda hero up and down this coast? He walked in here right now his money’d be no good and everybody would want his damn autograph. You know that’s so. Who got more write-ups, Mother Teresa or that asshole Gotti, what’d they call him, the Dapper Don? They did what, half a dozen movies on the godfather thing. Just about everybody in there was a stone killer, but we sit down and watch it all on TV with the kids, see do they discover happiness in the end. What was that most popular series on TV for a while there? The thing about the mob jerk with his wife and kids and his shrink, right? What’s the most important thing in this whole country? Money, right? And the more you’ve got the less everybody else cares about how you got it. Where did