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Raychell Meadow came back on: “In related news, police sources report that Tyrone Banks, known by his hip-hop artist name King Two-One-Five, who was to perform at Monday’s canceled Feed Philly Day event, was found dead this morning. An unnamed confidential source said the twenty-five-year-old singer was found wearing a Lucky Stars Casino hat and holding a seven of clubs and two of diamonds from a deck of cards bearing the Philadelphia Police Department’s shield on the back and two Homicide Cold Cases on their face.”
Payne exchanged glances with Harris.
“Getting dealt a seven and a two,” Payne said. “Arguably the worst beginning hand in poker. Can’t do shit with it.”
“Kind of like what he did with his life,” Harris said.
Harris gestured at the television.
“There’s more to the story about how they found Hooks dead.”
“I guessing what Sully said—someone wanted to send a message about what happens to those who rob casinos.”
Harris nodded.
Payne impatiently gestured Give it to me with his tube-covered hand, and said, “You’re gonna tell me, I’m sure.”
Harris grinned.
“That microphone he loved so much?”
“That one with the big chrome mesh ball at the top?”
“Yeah. You won’t guess where they found it . . .” He paused, then said, “Wait. You’re sick enough that you would guess.”
Payne grinned as he shook his head.
“Well, don’t let your guard down just because Cross and Hooks got their due,” Harris said. “While the good news is you’re out of ICU and going to survive the shooting—”
“The bad is?”
“Your fiancée is going to kill you, she’s so pissed off at you.”
Keep reading for an exciting preview of W.E.B. Griffin’s (writing as William E. Butterworth III) new novel
THE HUNTING TRIP
[ Four ]
U.S. Army Reception Center
Fort Dix, New Jersey
Monday Morning October 7, 1946
On Phil’s first day in the Army, he was issued about fifty pounds of uniforms and given inoculations against every disease known to medical science. In the morning of his second day, he was given the Army General Classification Test, known as the AGCT, to see where he would best fit into the nation’s war machine.
In the afternoon, he faced a Classification Specialist, who took one look at Phil, his AGCT score, and then arranged for him to take the test again.
“Secondary school dropouts” are not supposed to score 144 on the AGCT test. All it took to get into Officer Candidate School was an AGCT score of 110. The second time Phil took the test, this time under supervision to make sure no one was slipping him the answers, he scored 146.
The next morning, he faced another Classification Specialist, this one an officer, who explained to him the doors his amazing AGCT score had opened for him in the nation’s war machine. Heading the list of these, the captain told Phil, was that he could apply for competitive entrance to the United States Military Academy at West Point. If accepted, he would be assigned to the USMA Preparatory School, and on graduation therefrom be appointed to the Corps of Cadets at West Point.
That suggested to Phil that he was being offered the privilege of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. He had had experience with a military academy, specifically the Bordentown Military Academy, and it had not been pleasant. He had been sent home after seven weeks of military service, so to speak, after having been found guilty of having talked a fellow cadet, PFC Edwin W. Bitter, into stuffing three unrolled rolls of toilet tissue down the muzzle of the saluting cannon. When the cannon had fired at the next morning’s reveille formation, it looked for a minute or so as if Southern New Jersey was experiencing a blizzard in early October.
On the Greyhound bus back to north New Jersey later that October day, ex–Cadet Private P. W. Williams had been enormously relieved that his military service was over.
Another option, the captain explained, was for Phil to apply for the Army Security Agency. The ASA was charged with listening to enemy radio communications, copying them down, and if necessary, decrypting them. Personnel selected to be “Intercept Operators,” the captain said, had to have the same intellectual qualifications as officer candidates, that is to say an AGCT score of 110 or better.
