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"No, sir."
"Neither have I. There's a room-service menu on the table there." Castillo gestured to it. "Order up."
"Thank you, sir."
He took the menu from the coffee table and began to study its possibilities.
"See anything you like?" Castillo asked after a moment.
"Yes, sir. They have buckwheat pancakes with genuine Vermont maple syrup, not that usual molasses crap they call pancake syrup."
"Well, that sounds good. Then that's what we'll have." He paused. "What kind of questions, Randy?"
"Like, what's going on here, sir?"
"I don't understand."
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Randy shrugged. "The last thing I heard was that you were getting kicked out of the Army."
Jesus H. Christ!
"Where did you hear that?"
"Last week my father came home . . ."
He's not your father.
I am.
". . . and told Mom that you were getting kicked out of the Army. Some guy he used to work for in the Pentagon . . . Colonel Remley? . . ."
"I know Colonel Remley," Castillo said evenly.
". . . told him General McNab was sending him to Argentina to get you to sign the papers."
Castillo didn't answer.
"And here you are," Randy finished, "with General McNab."
"Randy, what you got, what your father got, is called 'a garbled message.' I'm retiring from the service."
"And when he came to the motel last night, I was in the bathroom. I heard him tell Mom that she wouldn't believe it, but you were having a party with General McNab in McGuire's restaurant."
"And so we were. Your father was invited, of course, but he wanted to be with you and your mother."
"How are you going to retire? You don't have enough service to retire; you're a classmate of my father's."
I will be goddamned if I'll lie to my son and tell him I'm "psychologically unfit to remain on active service."
Damn that paper-pushing, straight-leg-chair-warming sonofabitch Remley!
"Medically," Castillo said. "I'm being medically retired."
"What's wrong with you?"
Sonofabitch!
