Free High Hunt by David Eddings Page A

against the side of his car. “Hey, man, you sure throw a sharp highball.” He grinned as I came up. “Why didn’t you just thumb your nose at the bastard?”
    I shrugged. “He’s still in and I’m out. Why should I bug him?”
    â€œYou all ready? I mean have you got any more bullshit to go through?”
    â€œAll finished,” I said. “I just done been civilianized. I got my divorce papers right here.” I waved the envelope at him.
    â€œLet’s cut out, then. I’ve got your civvies in the back seat.”
    I looked around once. The early afternoon sun blasted down on the parking lot, and the yellow barracks shimmered in the heat. It looked strange already. “Let’s go,” I said and climbed into the back seat.
    There was a guy sitting in the front seat. I didn’t know him.
    â€œOh,” Jack said, “this is Lou McKlearey, a buddy of mine. Works for Sloane.”
    McKlearey was lean and sort of blond. I’d have guessed him at about thirty. His eyes were a very cold blue and had a funny look to them. He stuck out his hand, and when we shook hands, he seemed to be trying to squeeze the juice out of my fingers.
    â€œHi, Dogface,” he said in a raspy voice. He gave me a funnyfeeling—almost like being in the vicinity of a fused bomb. Some guys are like that.
    â€œIgnore him,” Jack said. “Lou’s an ex-Marine gunnery sergeant. He just ain’t had time to get civilized yet.”
    â€œLet’s get out of here, huh?” Suddenly I couldn’t stand being on Army ground anymore.
    Jack fired up the car and wheeled out of the lot. We barreled on down to the gate and eased out into the real world.
    â€œMan,” I said “it’s like getting out of jail.”
    â€œAnyhow, Jackie,” McKlearey said, apparently continuing what he’d been talking about before I got to the car, “we unloaded that crippled Caddy on a Nigger sergeant from McChord Field for a flat grand. You know them fuckin’ Niggers; you can paint ‘Cadillac’ on a baby buggy, and they’ll buy it.”
    â€œCouldn’t he tell that the block was cracked?” Jack asked him.
    â€œShit! That dumb spade barely knew where the gas pedal was. So we upped the price on the Buick to four hundred over book, backed the speedometer to forty-seven thousand, put in new floor mats, and dumped it on a red-neck corporal from Georgia. He traded us a ’57 Chevy stick that was all gutted out. We gave him two hundred trade-in. Found out later that the crooked son of a bitch had packed sawdust in the transmission—oldest stunt in the book. You just can’t trust a reb. They’re so goddamn stupid that they’ll try stuff you think nobody’s dumb enough to try anymore, so you don’t even bother to check it out.
    â€œWell, we flushed out the fuckin’ sawdust and packed the box with heavy grease and then sold that pig for two and a quarter to some smart-ass high school kid who thought he knew all about cars. Shit! I could sell a three-wheel ’57 Chevy to the smartest fuckin’ kid in the world. They’re all hung up on that dog—Niggers and Caddies; kids and ’57 Chevies—it’s all the same.
    â€œSo, by the end of the week, we’d moved around eight cars, made a flat fifteen hundred clear profit, and didn’t have a damn thing left on the lot that hadn’t been there on Monday morning.”
    â€œChrist”—Jack laughed—“no wonder Sloane throws money around like a drunken sailor.”
    â€œThat lot of his is a fuckin’ gold mine,” McKlearey said. “It’s like havin’ a license to steal. Of course, the fact that he’sso crooked he has to screw himself out of bed in the morning doesn’t hurt either.”
    â€œMan, that’s the goddamn truth,” Jack agreed. “How you doin’ back there,