Measure For Measure

Excuse me, but you don't look the part, no bandoliers, holsters, more of a guy most at home in an athletic jacket, have a beer with at the local Elks.

Right, with banker at one elbow and welder at the other etc.

It's so true.

And now...all these dead.

I hated to see it come to violence. But the city was really under siege. Jamaicans, gangs, orientals, Cajuns. Add Greek and Russian and Sicilian Mafias...white, black and all other shades, Cambodians even.

So you hired the army of Ecuador!

Block that hyperbole! Part of your job, yes? But, at any rate, we only contracted the green beret portion thereof.

And look at the result!

And how much worse it could've been! We're not talking these militia clowns, bellies like hammocks. We're talking discipline here. These guys were originally trained at Fort Benning, Georgia. This is a unit, cohesive. Well I mean, they're not choirboys. But before you go on - and on - one can't rule out accidental excess in any endeavor.

Well I mean your net proved rather wide. You got I would guess most of the drug people but...fragments of hair and flesh in this cyclone fence...women and children.

We have computer program to handle that sh...stuff. We can supply a DNA readout from a hair!

Is that what the family gets to bury? A hair?

Come on now! Most of what's on this particular fence is not innocent! - but some is, of course. Hey! Get with it, media-type. A revolution is not a cookie and koolaid party. Nor is anything else worth fighting for.

And those charges of prostitution in the Times?

Yeah, you'd have to come to that. That's the REAL story, right? Hey! Since the operation took much longer than acticipated...well any American should be proud to have his daughter, uh, these fine young men! Well I answered that one! At any rate, let's not shunt aside the lighter moments: like we got a tank through customs by telling them it was for a Disney movie.

Freebie and the Slaughter?

See? Even you can laugh in your way.


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About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.

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