“The very same. At the time, Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Well, MacArthur certainly has the pedigree and connections and certainly the perfectly aggrandizing nature. Yet MacArthur proves too extreme a choice. Even for them. In 1932, MacArthur had led a crackdown on the famous ‘Bonus Army’—WWI military vets who converged on Washington, there to protest nonpayment of their bonuses long overdue. They and their families were going to starve without the reward they’d earned through so much blood and sacrifice to the nation. Ah, but the great General MacArthur sees things otherwise. He orders in troops and tanks and rides at the head of the charge, his men attacking with fixed bayonets and sabers drawn, and when that isn’t brutal enough, our grand general deploys tear gas—goddamn tear gas, Lett—just as the enemy did to these heroic vets in the Great War.”

“I don’t think it sounds cuckoo, not at all,” Lett said.

“No? It’s documented, too. There were hearings in Congress, on ‘Un-American Activities,’ they called it—to investigate Nazi propaganda and other schemes. Though you wouldn’t find much in the big newspapers and magazines except the briefest mention and those, well, they’re dismissive at best. Sanitized, like I said.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“That General Smedley Butler wrote a book about it.”

“War Is a Racket,” Lett said. “I remember that now.”

“Correct,” Selfer said. But this time he only sighed. He sat and pulled his knees up like a GI still rattled after a long firefight. “Then, there was my father. It doesn’t hurt to tell you. He did some small-time hustling for those bastards behind the Business Plot, basically playing their messenger boy. Shameful. He probably thought he could finally get a leg up. Finally. And you want to know the real tearjerker? Back in ’32 he should’ve been in the Bonus Army, standing up to them strong and tall. That’s right. He was a WWI vet, Lett. In the dark woods like you. The Argonne. But, no. He was too damn busy running penny-ante numbers rackets. So I know. And meanwhile my dear mother and me were always wondering where and how and when the milk would come, stolen or no.”

Lett only glared at Selfer. “You’re a lackey here. Their tool. You make your dad look good.”

Selfer recoiled. “I should slap you for that, seeing how you’re so weak, but I’m afraid you might be right.”

“You know where I was in the Philippines, and what I saw?”

“I didn’t even know it was the Philippines.” Selfer added a bitter chuckle. “Of course.”

Lett told Selfer that he had seen and even met MacArthur.

Selfer lost color in his face, and the bare light bulb wasn’t helping.

“That’s more like it,” Lett said.

“You know what they’re going to do exactly?” Selfer said. “Do you?”