'If — for any reason — I can't come back, would you come for it? If Mac or Larkin asked you to?'
The King thought a moment. 'Sure.'
'Your word?'
'Yes.' The King smiled faintly. 'You put quite a store by the 'word' jazz, don't you, Peter?'
'How else can you judge a man?'
It took Peter Marlowe only a moment to snap the two wires joining the condenser to the innards of the radio. Another minute and the radio was wrapped in its protective cloth and a small hole scraped away in the jungle earth. They put a flat stone on the bottom of the hole, then covered the radio with a good thickness of leaves and smoothed the earth back and pulled a tree trunk over the spot. A couple of weeks in the dampness of its tomb would destroy its usefulness, but two weeks would be enough time to come back and pick it up if the bottles still didn't work.
Peter Marlowe wiped the sweat away, for a sudden layer of heat had settled on them and the sweat smell frenzied the increasing waves of insects clouding them. 'These blasted bugs!' He looked up at the night sky, judging the time a little nervously. 'Do you think we'd better go on now?'
'Not yet. It's only four-fifteen. Our best time is just before dawn. We'd better wait another ten minutes, then we'll be in position in plenty of time.'
He grinned. 'First time I went through the wire I was scared and anxious too. Coming back I had to wait at the wire. I had to wait half an hour or more before the coast was clear. Jesus! I sweated.' He waved his hands at the insects. 'Goddam bugs.'
They sat awhile listening to the constant movement of the jungle. Swaths of fireflies cut patches of brilliance in the small rain ditches beside the path.
'Just like Broadway at night,' said the King.
'I saw a film once called Times Square. It was a newspaper yarn. Let me see. I think it was Cagney.'
'Don't remember that one. But Broadway, you got to see it for real. It's just like day in the middle of the night. Huge neon signs and lights all over the place.'
'Is that your home? New York?'
'No. I've been there a couple of times. Been all over.'
'Where's your home?'
The King shrugged. 'My pa moves around.'
'What's his work?'
'That's a good question. Little of this, little of that. He's drunk most of the time.'
'Oh! That must be pretty rough.'
'Tough on a kid.'
'Do you have any family?'
'My ma's dead. She died when I was three. Got no brothers or sisters. My pa brought me up. He's a bum, but he taught me a lot about life. Number one, poverty's a sickness. Number two, money's everything. Number three, it doesn't matter how you get it as long as you get it.'
'You know, I've never thought much about money. I suppose in the service — well, there's always a monthly pay check, there's always a certain standard of living, so money doesn't mean much.'
'How much does your father make?'
'I don't know exactly. I suppose around six hundred pounds a year.'
'Jesus. That's only twenty-four hundred bucks. Why, I make thirteen hundred as a corporal myself. I sure as hell wouldn't work for that nothing dough.'
'Perhaps it's different in the States. But in England you can get by quite well. Of course our car is quite old, but that doesn't matter, and at the end of your service you get a pension.'
'How much?'
'Half your pay approximately.'
'That seems to me to be nothing. Can't understand why people go in the service. Guess because they're failures as people.'
The King saw Peter Marlowe stiffen slightly. 'Of course,' he added quickly, 'that doesn't apply in England. I was talking about the States.'
'The service is a good life for a man. Enough money — an exciting life in all parts of the world. Social life's good. Then, well, an officer always has a great deal of prestige.' Peter Marlowe added almost apologetically, 'You know, tradition and all that.'
'You going to stay in after the war?'
'Of course.'
'Seems to me,' the King said, picking at his teeth with a little thread of bark, 'that it's too easy. There's no excitement or future in taking orders from guys who are mostly bums. That's the way it looks to me. And hell, you don't get paid nothing. Why Pete, you should take a look at the States.
There's nothing like it in the world. No place. Every man for himself and every man's as good as the next guy. And all you have to do is figure an angle and be better than the next guy. Now that's excitement.'
'I don't think I'd fit in. Somehow I know I'm not a moneymaker. I'm better off doing what I was born to do.'
