Got something heavy? Call Willy. Need to smuggle someone past security? Hide them in a suitcase and have the gym rat carry them through the lobby like they were full of down comforters. Nobody will ever suspect a thing!
Yeah, right.
You can't do jobs like that unless you look like you can do jobs like that.
I don't care if the guy did weigh a buck-ten in his skivvies, carrying a weight takes muscle and wearing that doesn't look like anything else than what it is. But Briggs goes "Oh no, nobody's going to suspect a thing. Just make it look natural and it'll be natural."
Great. It's so easy, you do it.
Job after job, year after year, I'm riding in the back of one rattletrap car or another, or I'm driving some truck that is more of an idea and less of a functioning vehicle.
We had ropers and we had inside men and then there was Barney and me. The ropers and inside men all traveled in style. Even Barney some times. Me, I was more of the underneath man and, since nobody saw me, it didn't matter how I got where I was needed. That bitch Cinnamon never got tossed out of the back of a cargo plane, I guarantee that.
I read a thing the other day about the toshers who used to sift through the shit in the sewers of Victorian London looking for anything of value. By all accounts, the worst job ever and I remember thinking, "been there, done that." There were days and there were places when that would have looked like a promotion with stock options.
It's the belief that you are going to find a gold coin or a priceless family jewel that keeps you going in a job like that. It's what makes the working conditions tolerable. It took me the longest time to find my own way. A way to make doing all those jobs make sense for me.
Seriously, you try spending every waking minute with Barney: he'll talk your ears off. Smart as a whip, do doubt about it, but obsessive, you know? Guess it helped him in his work, but if I never see or hear about another Bonsai tree it will be too soon.
Anyway.... Where was I? Oh yeah.... I still hadn't found my thing, you know? I was really frustrated doing all these shitty jobs. It's important work, for your country and all, but still it gets to you. I hear that the guys that do the wet work burn out pretty quick, but I can tell you that I was less than a year in and I was more than ready to go back to New York and do copy work.
It was in the line at some cafeteria. I don't remember where at the moment. Anyway, I met someone. It was one of those things, you know? I wasn't looking. Didn't know I was even interested, but there was this kind of electric thing, like they talk about in the magazines. Thought that was a bunch of bullshit and then it happened to me. Electric. Working with Barney I have been shocked plenty of times, believe me. Son of a bitch doesn't know the meaning of a ground wire. But that was never like this.
Anyway, if they were making a movie of my life, this would be the part where they would play the song by the pop star and show a series of shots of us walking and talking and eating and riding horses and laughing. And we did do all of that, just without musical accompaniment.
We talked a whole lot. Never about work: that's one of the first rules you learn in my business.
It took some doing, but I figured it out. I think he wanted me to.
For obvious reasons, I can't be too specific here, but "Peter" was involved in scouting and securing the drop sites where IMF leaders would pick up their assignments.
Doesn't sound very important, but I can tell you it made the hours of hot, sweaty, dangerous work fly by knowing that we were going to run Brigg's fat ass all over town to get the next assignment. And believe me, the worse the job, the greater the runaround on the next one.
That's all it took and I was ready for the next mission.
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