Neither was Harry, come down to it. His shrug exuded Shameful Confession.
"Yeah, I been corrupted." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "It's Sherrilyn's fault. She's been playing so hard to get lately that it's twisting me inside."
"Harry, you're a jackass," said Sherrilyn.
"Two women in one night," said Harry smugly. "Maybe there's hope for me yet."
Julie and Sherrilyn blew simultaneous raspberries.
"It's true," Harry insisted stoutly. "A real man measures his macho by the number of times women dump on him. That's why we only watch chick flicks under protest. Might screw up the readings on the wimp-o-meter."
Julie and Sherrilyn looked simultaneously cross-eyed, trying to follow the logic. "What the hell is a wimp-o-meter?" Julie demanded.
"You wouldn't understand. It's a guy thing."
Chapter 26
"She says she wants us to lock everything down, for the moment, until she can find out what's happening with Wentworth. Do nothing until she gives us the word." The expression on Paul Maczka's face was just as dubious as the tone of his voice. In some indefinable manner, so was the way he tossed the radio note onto the kitchen table.
"What the hell for?" demand Donald Ohde, sitting at the far end. "Who cares which minister they throw in the Tower this week? Give it a few days, and you'll see Wentworth out and Cork inside, staring at the walls." Irritably, he slapped the table. "You ask me, I think the woman's just losing her nerve."
Harry Lefferts wagged his fingers in a gesture of restraint. "Easy, Don, easy. I know Melissa Mailey; you don't. High school kids don't call her the Devil's Bitch for nothing. She is one tough old broad." A little reminiscent smile came to his face. "I always liked her myself, even if none of the other guys did. Even after she made me write I will not be a smartass in front of a way smarter teacher two hundred times on the blackboard. What the hell, I had been a smartass—and, more to the point here, she is smarter than me."
Ohde made a face. "Fine. I still say, so what? She can be the Devil's counselor as well as his bitch, what difference does it make? We're commandos, for Christ's sake, not monks in a cell. We don't meditate patiently, we break things."
Like all of Harry's unit, whatever seventeenth-century inhibitions against blasphemy Ohde had ever possessed, he'd long since cast aside.
Harry repeated the finger-wagging gesture. "I think she's got something in mind. And if I'm right . . ."
Slowly, a huge grin spread across his face. Amazingly huge, given that there was really not a trace of humor in the expression at all. "Great Escape, indeed. Stalag 17,000. Von Ryan's great big long freight train. Piss on 'Express.' "
Ohde stared at him. So did everyone else gathered around the table. Maczka looked around for a vacant chair; finding none, he leaned back against a wall.
"Holy shit," he said. "Are you serious?"
"I told you. She is one tough broad—and don't ever let that prim and proper manner of hers fool you any. Underneath it all, she's got a temper like you wouldn't believe, even if she's the only person I ever knew who could chew you up one side and down the other in grammatically correct sentences and never use a single cuss word."
He glanced around the table. "Guys, we're talking about a sixty-year-old woman who's spent her whole life giving the finger to the establishment. And now that same establishment"—this time, he waved his whole hand, not just the fingers—"close enough, anyway, the Devil's Bitch never saw much distinction between one establishment and another—just went and locked her up for over half a year."
The grin came back, though not as large and with some actual humor in it. "I don't remember it myself, 'cause I was just a little kid then. But she got herself tossed in jail during the big '78–'79 coal miners strike for heckling the cops too much. Soon as they let her out she went home just long enough to make up a picket sign and then—I mean, she didn't stop for a hamburger, nothing—she made a beeline right to the big police station in Fairmont and started up a one-woman picket line of her own. Sign read: You're STILL assholes."
Everybody laughed. "I thought you said she never used cuss words," said Felix.
"Well . . . she never did, dealing with kids. Not even a 'damn.' But I guess she figured it was okay if she was picking on somebody bigger'n her."
"Did they arrest her again?"
"Naw. Truth is, the Fairmont cops weren't really bad guys. I think most of them thought it was pretty funny themselves. And what would be the point, anyway? They'd have to let her out sooner or later, and—given Melissa—who knows what she'd have come up with next?"