By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)
“Thank you again, sir. Good night, sir.”
He put the cellular back in his pocket as the bartender approached with a glass of beer and a menu.
“What are those gentlemen eating?” Castillo asked, nodding his head slightly toward the four men sitting at the corner table.
“Two cheesesteaks, one meatball and one sausage-and-peppers, ” the bartender said.
“Italian sausage and peppers?” Castillo asked. The bartender nodded. “Get me one, will you please?”
“Are you some kind of a serviceman?” the brunette asked and moved to the stool next to him.
Wrong again, Charley, you master of analysis you.
“What gave you an idea like that?”
“Yes, sir . . . No, sir . . . Thank you, sir . . . Oh-seven-thirty, sir,” the brunette said.
“I’m a Texan; we talk that way.”
“You sounded as if whoever you were speaking to was a general or something.”
“Actually, he’s a member of the president’s cabinet and he was calling to tell me the president just did something very nice for a friend of mine who was in a little trouble.”
She chuckled, almost laughed.
Nice smile.
“What do you do, actually?”
I’ll be damned. She really doesn’t look like a hooker.
“Actually, I work for a company called Rig Service, Incorporated, of Corpus Christi, and what we do is service rigs.”
“What’s a ‘rig’?”
“An enormous oil well drilling platform, sitting in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“And how do you service them?”
“My end of it is the catering,” Castillo said. “You know, the food. And also the laundry. ‘Personal needs,’ they call it.”
“May I ask you something?”
Am I looking for a little action? Am I married? Am I a fag?
“Why not?”
“Could you keep talking to me for a little while?”
“Sure. I’d be happy to.”
“I have a little problem,” the brunette said.
My sainted, crippled mother desperately needs brain surgery. I don’t have the money and I’m willing to do anything —anything—to come up with it.
“My boyfriend was supposed to meet me here a half hour, no, forty-five minutes ago,” the brunette said.
“And he’s stood you up, you think?”