“Very well, sir. May I ask what you’ll be doing in the meantime … in case I need to confer with you on any of this?”
“Me?” The commander smiled. “I’ll be doing my homework … seeing what I can learn about organized crime. I think I’ll drop into the settlement and pay a visit to our old friend Chief Goetz.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir.”
“Excuse me, Beek?”
“I believe you’ll find Chief Goetz at poolside here at The Club. He gave me a lift back from the settlement, and he rarely passes on the opportunity to mix with your troops.”
“You got the chief of police to play taxi driver for you?” Phule seemed genuinely impressed.
“Actually, sir, he offered. I was at his home at the time.”
“His home?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been tutoring his son in algebra on my days off.”
The commander laughed and shook his head.
“Beeker,” he said, “what would I do without you?”
The butler smiled. “I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”
CHAPTER TWO
Journal #173
As I have both noted and chronicled before, though he is more than effective on an overall basis, my employer is far from infallible. Not only do circumstances occasionally catch him off guard, there are times when his judgment turns out to be shortsighted or simply incorrect.
Such was the case in his estimation of how the Legionnaires under his command would respond to their new assignment.
As was our normal procedure, I was excluded from the actual briefing session, not being a member of the Legion. Of course, as was my normal procedure, I elected to keep informed of my employer’s activities by listening in on the meeting through The Club’s two-way paging/intercom system …