The Young Man Who Read Brilliant Books

At the state unemployment office this morning, David met a woman in line who told him, after giving him the thorough once-over and then deploring the long wait and interminable California rain, that she had five beautiful daughters at home from whom he could just about take his pick if he liked. "You seem that good-natured and sensitive to me," she said, "and just look at the way you read those brilliant books. And then, strange as this sounds, sonny," and she looked around the room suspiciously and then stretched on her toes to speak into his ear, "I think it's high time they began seeing some men who aren't always so stupid and wild."

David thought the woman was a little eccentric, so he politely told her he wasn't interested. "What I'm saying is that, enticing as your offer seems, I'm really much too busy with my studies to go out with some women I don't even know."

"Girls," she said, "not women. Young gorgeous, unattached girls, the homeliest of which looks like nothing short of a glamorous movie starlet. And who said anything about going out with all five of them? One, just one, we're not perverts, you know. And my daughters are smart and obedient enough to realize that what I say is usually the right thing for them, so you can be sure you'll have your choice, like I say."

"Thanks again," he said, as he was trying to finish the last few pages of the paperback he was reading and then get to the one sticking out of his jacket pocket, "but I'm afraid I'll still have to say no."

"Why no? Listen some more before you shut me off. One's even a blonde, though with fantastic dark black eyes. You ever go out with a blonde with fantastic dark black eyes? Ever even see one, no less? Well, take it from me, they're the most magnificent female creatures on God's earth, bar none. Writers write endless sonnets about them, swoon at their feet. One handsome young biochemist actually wanted to commit suicide over my Sylvia, but I told him he was crazy and he'd be better off discovering new cures for cancer, instead. And listen: Each of them has a beautiful body. You interested, perhaps, in beautiful bodies?"

"Of course I am," and he closed the book on his finger. "I mean"--he tried to harden his face from showing his sudden interest--"well, every man is."

"Like Sophia Lorens they have bodies," she said dreamily. "And cook? Everything I know in the kitchen and my cordon bleu mother before me knew, I've taught my daughters. Now what do you say?"

She was next in line now and the clerk behind the desk asked her to come forward. "Listen to that jerk," she whispered to David. "A dullard like that I wouldn't let one foot into my house. Wouldn't even let him say hello on the phone to my daughters, even if he's pulling in three hundred a week from his job. But you?"

"Madam," the clerk said irritably, "if you don't mind?"

"You," she continued with her back to the clerk, "sandals, long hair, mustache, face blemishes and all, I'd make an elaborate dinner for and introduce around to my girls one by one. Then I'd give you a real Cuban cigar and Napoleon brandy and show you into our library till you made up your mind as to which of my beauties you want to take for a drive. And you want to know why? I like brains."

"That's nice of you to say that," David said. "Because nowadays----"

"Brains have always been taught to me by my father as the most important and cherishable part a man can bring to a woman. Clerks like that moron don't have brains, just fat behinds with sores on them through their whole lives. But you I can tell. Not only because of your intelligent frown and casual way you speak and dress but simply the way you concentrate on your brilliant English novel here," and she slapped the book he held. "Now, come on, sonny, because what do you really have to lose?"

"All right," he said, smiling for the first time since he met her, "you've broken my arm. But just for dinner, if you don't mind. And only to meet your lovely family and have a good home-cooked meal with some stimulating conversation."

"Now you're being smart." She wrote her name and address on his bookmark, told him to be at her home around six and stepped up to the clerk's desk to sign the form for her unemployment check.

"You act like you don't even need the money," the clerk said, shoving the form in front of her.

"This stinking forty dollars?" she said for everybody to hear. "Peanuts. But I and my employer put good money into your insurance plan, so why shouldn't I make a claim for it if I'm looking for work?"

"Next," he yelled over her shoulder, and David walked up, said good morning extra courteously, as he didn't want to give this man even the slightest excuse for becoming unfriendly and ultimately overinquisitive about him, and next answered the same two questions he'd been asked since he started getting the checks.

"Did you work any days last week?"

"No, sir."

"Received a salary or payment of any kind for any labor last week?"

"No, sir."

"See you tonight, then," the woman said from the side, twiddling her fingers goodbye and looking very cheerful as David signed the form. "And don't worry about any fancy dressing for our cozy dinner. We're very informal people at our home--very informal, though we're not exactly beggars, by any means."

That evening, David shaved himself twice with his electric razor, as the rotary blades were in serious need of a cleaning, and trimmed his full mustache so that none of the hairs hung over the upper lip. Then he dressed in his only suit and tie, brushed down curly hair with cream oil till his skull was as flat and shiny as a football helmet and patted after-shave lotion on his face and neck and then at the underarms of his jacket, which also needed a good cleaning. But then, he thought, it wasn't every day of the week a lonely, sort of homely-looking guy like himself was invited to sit down at a fancy table with five beautiful young sisters.

The house he drove up to was in the cheapest part of town. It was small and boxlike, sticking out of a garden of weeds gone wild like an ancient, rundown mausoleum. He rang the bell, much less hopeful now of any grand time this evening; but, surprisingly, the girl who opened the door turned out to be as beautiful as her mother had said. She was about 21, black-eyed and as well built as Sophia Loren, whom she also resembled above the neck a great deal, except for her long blonde hair. "Come right in," she said in the sweetest voice imaginable; and David, feeling his neck knot up with excitement, managed to squeak out that he was the man her mother had met this morning and invited for dinner.

"You're Sylvia," he said. "I'd know you anywhere by your mother's glowing description." He stuck out his hand, but instead of having his fingers squeezed seductively as he had imagined, he was jerked past the door and thrown halfway across the large room. When he got up a few seconds later, a little dizzy and his pants ripped at the knee and all set to ask what kind of infantile practical joke she was playing on him, he saw that she was locking the front door with a key, which she promptly dropped down her bra.

"Now, how's that for a quick-change routine?" Sylvia said with a voice that was much tougher and throatier now, though that smile of unwavering sweetness remained on her face. "Years back, I was in show business, so I know what's what with costumes and make-up and things."

David tried to keep cool by examining the rip in his pants. "It's a damn good thing this is my oldest suit," he said, "that's all"; and, glancing up to see what kind of reaction his remark had, he nearly fainted dead away on the spot when Sylvia began peeling off her face skin from the forehead down and then her magnificent blonde hair.

"A Sophia Loren I can only pretend to be for minutes," the woman he had met at the unemployment office said, "but a svelte Audrey Hepburn I could play for you for hours. Not much padding then to bother my tush and ribs and hamper my walk, you know what I mean?" She placed the wig and Sophia Loren mask in a hatbox--neatly, as if she were preserving them to wear a few years from now--and unzipped her dress, removed the socks from her bra and the bandages around her buttocks and, from her waist, a black-satin cummerbund that had been as tight as a tourniquet. When she finished rezippering and hitching, and patting her gray hair back into place, she said: "Well, now, Davy boy, what do you say we get down to business?"

"Why, you big fraud!" he blustered. "I mean ... why, you big incredible fraud."

"Sure I'm a fraud: What then? You saying you would've come all the way out here just to see an old fart like me? But look who's talking about frauds. We're on to you, you know, the way you take unemployment-insurance money from our Government under somebody else's name and Social Security number--some good pal of yours in Paris who you send ten dollars to every week. We checked, so don't think you've been invited here just for your good looks, you weasel. At least I worked for my unemployment money--twenty miserable (continued on page 68)The young man(continued from page 58) weeks I worked, which is not one day over the minimum and which I don't ever expect to do again. But sit down." She motioned him to a chair. "A sense of decency I at least still got for your likes. You want a drink? Some good, gin? Oh, stop shaking your head like a clod. You're not going to get out of here till we've had our say, so you might as well sit back comfortably with a drink."

"About that unemployment insurance," David began uneasily. "Well, that's my business--my worry. And if you've invited me here to extort hush money out of me, well, forget it. I'm broke, flat, rien--comprenez-vous français? So I'll be leaving here, if you don't mind," and he stood up, a bit winded from having had to make even that short assertive speech, and very confidently stuck out his hand for the key; but she just laughed and slapped at his fingers and yelled in the direction of the stairs:

"Georgie? Little Davy's here and he's getting very impatient. You want to come down?"

From upstairs, a man answered in a soft lilting voice: "I'll be down in a sec, sweet."

"You'll be down in a sec nothing," she shrieked. "Get your ass here this instant, you big ox."

A very thin, sickly-looking man in his 50s came hurrying downstairs. He was panting, still full of sleep, a few days past his last shave and scratching his undershirt nervously when he gave David a limp wet hand to shake. "Pleased to meet you, son. Sylvia here's told me some very encouraging things about you. Very."

"You see," Sylvia said, edging David back into a couch beside Georgie, "both my husband and I have decided you're just the man we need for our work."

"That's right," Georgie said. "We need a smart boy with brains."

"What Mr. Peartree means is that just the idea of you carrying through your plans to finagle the Government is a very good sign to us. Besides which, of course, we can always use it against you if you don't go along with what we ask."

"Sylvia told me all about it," Georgie said, smacking his gums appreciatively. "Amazing. Just terrific. No, really, pal, because not many guys can get away with conning the Federal Government anymore."

David told them he still didn't know what they had in mind or even what the wages were for their mysterious work.

"Five dollars a day," Sylvia said, as if it were a hundred, "and, judging from what we have on you, consider it philanthropy."

"You're getting a bargain," Georgie nudged him. "Take it quick, before she lowers the offer."

"Offer for what?" David nearly yelled, and Sylvia, telling him to control himself for a minute, went into this long, detailed account of what they had in mind. She and Georgie were basically uneducated people, she said, and as he could see just by looking around their home, these were not the best of times for them, either. So what they needed now was an educated person to write bright uncrackpot letters to all sorts of big American companies, complaining about the products that some woman they'd made up had allegedly bought and how much trouble and even serious harm these defective goods had caused this woman and her family.

"We give you the names of the products," Sylvia went on, "and what you do, and which we know you're capable of because of your strong English-literature background, is think up something wrong with these goods, type up a nice neat letter telling about it and then sign our Mrs. O'Connell's name and this address. From these letters we expect all kinds of small and semilarge cash settlements, and if not that, then tremendous supplies of these same products Mrs. O'Connell's complaining about, which should keep us in most of the home goodies for a solid year."

"A friend of mine," Georgie confided, "once wrote a letter like that to a cigarette company, telling the truth about how the cig paper had pinholes in it, which made the damn things unsmokable. In a week he got back a nice hand-signed letter from the sales manager himself, saying how sorry they were and for his trouble they were sending along two cartons of the very same brand he made a stink about. Two cartons--can you imagine? Just think if he was a brainy guy like yourself and wrote a bright letter telling how he found some chemically tested rat hairs in his smokes."

"Letters like that," Sylvia said, "which shouldn't take you more than two days. Then you get your tenner and our sincerest promises that we won't leak a word to the Government about your little insurance embezzlement; is it a deal?"

David had 21 more weeks to go on his friend's unemployment insurance, which came to--after he had subtracted the weekly ten-spot he sent to Paris--more than $600, tax free and clear. He really had no other choice but to go along with these people, so he told them he agreed, though reluctantly, he wanted them to understand, and assured them both that he'd be at their home for work bright and early the following morning.

"Listen," Sylvia said sharply as she unlocked the door, "bright and early it better be. Or around nine tomorrow morning, the U. S. Government gets an anonymous call about one David P. Knopps, you know what I mean?"

David returned to their home the next morning and got right down to writing the letters. They already had a long list of the names and addresses of the companies he was to write to, so all he had to do was think up something wrong with the company's product, begin the letter with a brief, courteous description of what that difficulty was, mention that she (Mrs. O'Connell) had never written a letter like this before, make no monetary demands or threats about possible law suits but just say that she wanted to "bring this oversight to the attention of your organization, as I'm quite sure you'd want me to do." Then he was to sign her best wishes and name and, in a postscript, assure the company that, "although my five daughters and I are a bit less confident of your product these days, we still bear no grudges against you, realize that big institutions as well as small individuals can make mistakes, and that we've no plans to stop using your product in the future."

Working an eight-to-five shift, it took David three days to complete these letters, all typed on personally engraved stationery that Georgie had a printer friend run off for the occasion. The first letter, to a multimillion-dollar soap company in Chicago, took him about three hours to compose and type. The letter suggested that one of its employees--"perhaps an anarchist or somebody, though with jobs being as hard to get now as they are, I'm hardly the person to place a man's work in jeopardy--had substituted sand for soap powder in your jumbo-size box of Flash, which, if you must know, ruined my seminew washing machine and an estimated value of $96 worth of clothes." But after the first few letters, David became more adept at grinding out these lies and he was able to knock off a new one every 15 minutes. One went to the president of the country's largest canned-soup company: "Unbelievable as this may sound, sir--and because of its importance, I'm directing this missive to you alone--the bottom half of a white mouse was found in a can of your cream-of-chicken soup, which, when dumped into the pot, gave my aging mother such a fright that she's been under heavy sedation ever since." Another letter went to a chocolate company in Georgia that, in its magazine advertisements, prided itself on its cleanliness: "You can imagine our shock, gentlemen, when we discovered, after removing the wrapper of our family's favorite candy for more than 30 years, that your milk-chocolate bar had teeth marks all over it and a tiny end square bitten out." And about a hundred other letters, all very civil and somewhat squeamish, all initially self-critical for even thinking of writing this giant (continued on page 118)The young man(continued from page 68) reputable company in the first place, all very crafty and subtle, David thought, in getting his main message across: that in one ugly or harmful way or another, the product had caused considerable damage and Mrs. O'Connell wanted some kind of indemnification.

When the letters had been read, edited and approved by the Peartrees, and a few retyped by David, they thanked him for a job well done, gave him his $15 wages and a $5 bonus for the quick, efficient way he had handled his chores and, like his favorite uncle and aunt, waved goodbye to him from their front steps as his car pulled away. David drove home, merrily humming a peppy tune along with the car radio and convinced that he'd done the only right thing for himself in going along with their scheme. Now, with a clear mind and 20 extra dollars, he could resume collecting his unemployment checks without fear of being caught, with that money complete his master's thesis on Henry James, whom he hated but at least understood, and begin applying to the English departments of the better universities for a teaching assistantship as he went on for his Ph.D. He had a good life ahead of him--the academic life, which was the only one he could contend with and still be financially secure--and at times there wasn't a more satisfying thought than that.

But a month later, Sylvia called, asking in the most gentle of motherly voices if he'd care to drop by one afternoon that week for homemade peanut-butter cookies and Lipton tea. When he refused, saying how much he appreciated the offer but was too tied down in completing his thesis to even go out for the more essential groceries, she said: "Lookit, you jerk. You drag that fat butt of yours right over here, or my next call's going to be to the state unemployment commissioner himself."

"Call him," David said. "And J. Edgar Hoover, while you're at it. But remember: Whatever you have on me goes double for you with your mail scheme."

"What mail scheme? That was your scheme, Davy, if you don't know it by now. We got two God-fearing, respectable witnesses, me and Mr. Peartree, who'll swear under oath that you threatened us with force to use our home to accept your goodies and then to even buy them from you. Those were your signatures, your words that went into those letters--because we sure as hell haven't the brains or education for that kind of prose. You couldn't pin a thing on us without going to jail for twenty years yourself, which doesn't even account for how much time you'd get for your insurance theft. Now what do you say? You going to take down our new address, or do I make my next call to Mr. Hoover?"

The Peartrees lived in a much better neighborhood now. David observed as he drove along their street. And entering their home, Sylvia bowing him in with a wily grin as if she never had any doubts about him rushing over, he was stunned by the number of boxes and cartons in the living room of so many of the products he'd complained about in his letters for them. Flour, sugar, fruit juice, canned soup, cellophane paper that wouldn't stick, alkalizers that wouldn't fizz, ballpoint pens that leaked onto $20 blouses with the first stroke, linens that frayed apart in the first wash--enough food staples and home supplies to keep them going for a good year, as Sylvia had said.

"But no money to speak of, those misers," she told him after conducting a tour of the four other rooms, each of them furnitureless but with more boxes of food and cleaning products than the back room of a neighborhood grocery store. "And that's what we were mainly after, if you recall."

"Though what we got we owe all to you," Georgie said. "Some smart boy you are, Davy. And my Sylvia's some judge of people," and he beamed at her proudly.

David, feeling a lot shrewder and pluckier than the last time he was there, told them to stop buttering him up with such ridiculous trivia and level with him straight: off why they summoned him over.

"We've another deal you might be interested in," Sylvia said; and when he flapped his hands at her to just forget it, she added: "Only one more; we're not gluttons. Now take a load off your feet and let me speak." And while Georgie prepared him a Scotch sour, Sylvia explained that with all this food around, they still hadn't a good stove to cook it on or even a decent bed to put the linens on, and so all they were asking from him was to steal the day's receipts of a movie house they had in mind, which would be enough money to keep them going for a year.

"Oh, just a small theater," she quickly said when David jumped up from the couch and started to leave. "And not the box office itself, which would be too risky. All you do is approach this small fat theater manager from behind, ask him into an alley, take his money satchel, which he's on his way to night deposit, and bring it here. Now what could be easier? He'll never even see your face, and then you get a fifty for your labor and we say our final goodbyes."

David told them it would be impossible. "I'd be petrified, too scared out of my skull to say a word," and he turned away from them and, unable to control himself any longer, began to cry into his sleeve. But they saw right through his little ploy, he thought, even though he was weeping real tears. And when he was finished, had wiped his eyes, having made sure to irritate them, and after Sylvia had restated what they had on him, he said he might go along with their plan if they didn't insist he use a gun. "I'd rather go to jail than terrify some innocent man with a weapon. I'm sorry, but that's how I am."

Around one that evening, Georgie drove David to a bar in a nearby suburban town, bought a couple of beers and, from the bar's front window, pointed across the main street to a very small fat man leaving a darkened theater. The man was holding a black bag, which Georgie said contained about $2000 in ones, fives, tens and twenties--"None of it traceable. And no heavy burdensome change, either, which he leaves in the theater. We also understand that this idiot refuses to call the local police station for an escort, since he doesn't like tipping them the customary five dollars they expect for the four-block walk. Now watch him, Davy. At the end of the street, he went left, though if he wasn't in such a hurry, he'd continue along the better-lit avenues to reach the bank. Well, halfway up that short cut is an alley, which we'll want you to suddenly pop out of, say a few standard words about his money or his life and such, take his bag, order him to lie on his belly and then urge him to stay put or by the time he reaches home he'll have found that an accomplice of yours has blown off the heads of his two six-year-old twin sons. It's all very simple. And once you get back with the bag, we promise--and you have my solemn oath for both Syl and myself--to leave you in peace for the rest of your life."

David told him that if he was able to draw up the necessary courage to perform such an act, he'd do it the following evening. But he knew the Peartrees were quite confident he'd go through with it. Naturally, he had a great deal to lose if he were caught. But in a month his thesis would be finished, he already had acceptances from two good Eastern schools for assistantships, and again that pleasant, almost idyllic image of his future arose in his mind: David as teaching assistant for two years, then instructor, assistant professor and ultimately as a professor pulling in $10,000 to $12,000 a year at a job at which he only had to put in some ten hours a week, besides all those long vacations and paid sabbaticals and weekly faculty parties. Considering all this, he didn't feel that one evening's scary escapade was too great a sacrifice to make to help him consummate these beautiful goals. He had come much too far now. He was 25, too advanced an age to have to start at a new profession right from the beginning.

The next evening, David, sweating profusely and shivering, could barely stand straight by the time the manager, black bag in hand and a sunny after-work smile on his face, came waddling up the side street to where David was waiting for him. When the manager was adjacent to the alley, David stepped out behind him, said--louder than he'd planned, though nobody else was on this nonresidential street--"All right, fella, if you're wise, you'll hand me that ... I mean ... what I'm saying, fella, is ... well, give me that damn bag already, you big fool, you know what the hell I mean."

But the manager refused. He swiveled around, at precisely the moment when Sylvia's Sophia Loren mask dropped below David's chin, and called him a disgrace to the town, state and country and then tugged at the bag that David was now trying to wrestle out of his hands. David, not knowing what else to do but realizing that, small and slight as he was, he was still a half foot taller and twice as strong as the man, slammed the manager in the mouth, which sent him sprawling on his back like a water beetle. The manager knew he was licked. He threw the bag at David's feet, curled up like an embryo and said he wanted to the, he wanted to die this very instant, and began bawling like a boy who had broken his favorite toy. David patted the manager's head. "Don't feel too bad. I'm sorry, but this money's not even for me. I had to do it. They're after me. My whole future depends on this--doesn't that mean anything to you? Don't you see: I'm just as much of a victim as you," and he ran out of the alley, got into his car at the end of the block and drove to the Peartrees'.

The total take of the robbery came to a little more than $1500, which disappointed Georgie tremendously. "I told Sylvia we should wait till Wednesday, when the flicks change and every lonely person in the area goes to the movies; but no. She's always got to have her way."

"Maybe the manager's been cheating on the owners," Sylvia suggested. "You also get his wallet, Davy?"

David was still shaking from the robbery, and flashlike images of that fat man curled up on the ground and bawling made him so sick and heady that he had to stretch out on the couch. "What you say--wallet? Never a wallet? Would've been too much like a real crime," he muttered to himself. "Never a wallet."

Sylvia, seeing how miserable he felt, stuck a $50 bill in his shirt pocket and told him to forget the incident. "It's over, done with. Now, drink up this nice brandy alexander Georgie made for you and let's call it a night."

Before leaving, David made them promise that they'd never contact him again. "If you do, I swear I'll call the police myself. I don't care anymore. Jail would be preferable to going through another night like this. That poor man. Lying there like that."

"That fat thief," Sylvia said with all her disgust. "I'm sure a few hundred dollars of the receipts are in his wallet right now. Anyway, you'll never hear from us again"; and to prove how sincere she was, she'd even place her hand on a Bible, if he insisted, but he told her not to bother.

David changed his residence the following day. Without telling his landlady where he was going, he rented a one-room cabin on someone's dilapidated ranch in the hills overlooking the campus. Working without letup, he finished his thesis in two weeks and so now stayed in the area only till the English department gave the work its approval. His friend had returned from Paris and resumed collecting his own unemployment insurance; so, for money, David worked as a bartender in one of the smelly beer joints that serviced the college community. About a month after he'd last seen the Peartrees, at a time when they were a couple of weeks out of his daytime thoughts and only barely hounding his dreams, they turned up at the Overlook, took two counter seats and asked David, whom they greeted as if he were just another well-thought-of bartender, for a large pitcher of beer and two cheeseburgers, medium rare.

"Go somewhere else," David whispered. "This place is hot."

"And maybe you could rustle us up a side order of French fries," Georgie said. "Crisp. We like them crisp."

"Please," David said. "Things are finally going well with me. I've a girl. We're going to be married. She's going to have my baby--my first child--mine, you hear? In six months, I'm going to be both father and husband, so leave me alone."

"You ain't got no girl," Georgie said, though he had listened patiently. "We know all about you. Where you live and what sensitive people your folks are in Idaho and even what a fine university you settled on near Boston, and even that your buddy Harold's back and you haven't been able to cheat the Government anymore."

"You look terrible," Sylvia said, shaking her head. "An apron on a man is such an unmasculine-looking thing. What're you making here--a dollar seventy-five an hour?"

"That's right," David said, "and it's more than sufficient."

"What about your expenses to Cambridge?" she said. "Motels, gas, food and just living there before your college money comes in. Throw that apron away and come over to our house. Next job for us we pay two hundred--think of it. That's three weeks' work here for just one day's job, and we don't take off for taxes."

"Definitely no," and with a hand that he tried his best to make tremble, he served them up tea with lemon and a stale doughnut apiece. "I'm sick. My mind: It forgets. Even this job's too much. Got into a car accident last week and, because of my dizzy spells since, my physician thinks I've a mild concussion. I'm going crazy, is the truth, and a crazy man can shoot off his mouth without knowing it and ruin all your good plans."

"Then you're better off not working here," Sylvia said. "And don't worry about your mind. This job we need muscle, not brains, and looking and acting like a lunatic will even be an asset. You see, we've gone into the loan business with most of that theater money you gave us, and our very best customer won't pay off."

"And this guy's even smaller than the last one," Georgie said, "and old, more than seventy, besides being an out-and-out coward. But he's a horseplayer, a real loser, and all you've got to do is talk tough, flash him your cold sparkling teeth and maybe give him just a slight rabbit punch below the ears to show we haven't hired just a blowhard for the job. That'll be all we need to get back our loan and interest, and then we leave the loan business and move upstate to invest in and help run my brother's dairy."

"As you can see, David," Sylvia said, "we want to get out of the rackets as much as you. We're getting old and simply want to lead a good country life again and not always be rattled by the thoughts of policemen at our door. But we can't go unless Abe Goff pays us back. So come on: Do we have to be spiteful and tell your boss you spit in our teas and later tip off the police about your movie theft? You know, that manager said in the papers he'd recognize your face even in his afterlife."

David knew quite well what the manager had told the papers. At least ten times he'd read the article about the night that man got held up, had his wallet stolen, the movie receipts taken and his ring, $300 watch and $200 cuff links lifted from him after he'd been beaten unconscious. David wasn't sure how eager the manager would be to recognize him, after he'd collected $1000 more than he was due from his insurance firm, but David still couldn't take any chances. But he wasn't able to give in to the Peartrees so easily as he felt he had always done, so he begged them in an invalid voice: "Listen. You've got to find another patsy. I'm hopeless. As I said: in the worst physical and mental condition of my life."

"College life has really ruined you," Sylvia said. "Made you soft, parasitic, vulnerable and a little stupid, which for us is a perfect setup. Besides, you're obliged to us up to your neck; so now, do I start by phoning your boss," whose home number she waved in front of him, "or do you leave this place for good tonight and do what we say?"

The following night, David visited Abe Goff in his cleaning store, just before closing time. Abe, a very small man, as all the victims of the Peartrees seemed to be, had photographs of victorious race horses and mud-caked grinning jockeys hanging around his room, and standing on top of the cash register was a shiny bronze of Man o' War. Abe seemed annoyed that a customer had come so late, but he quickly dropped that look, gave David his most accommodating professional smile and said: "Well, what can I do for you, son? Suit, coat, two pairs of pants with the cuffs removed? Let me guess. Old Abe's the best guesser you ever seen. Your girlfriend's yellow mohair G string that she had French cleaned? You come for that? Well, no tickie, no stringie, friend, so let's have it," and he stuck out his hand for David's cleaning ticket.

David didn't say anything more than he'd been instructed to say. "This is from the Altruistic Loan Company," he told Abe, with a face--without any effort at all--empty of emotion and hard. And, like some well-oiled, finely tuned machine, he grabbed Abe by the neck with his left hand, punched him twice in his surprised but still accommodating face with his right hand and, when Abe was on the floor, moaning, coughing, pointing feebly to what he murmured was a bum ticker, David kicked him in the chin and heard a bone crack, though he had aimed for his shoulder. Then he fled to the street, past a screaming woman carrying an armload of smelly clothes and around the corner to where his car was parked. His instructions were to drive to his cabin and wait there till they contacted him, but he went to their home and continued to knock on the door till the upstairs light was turned on. Sylvia let him in with a remark that alluded to his unique idiocy, but he brushed past her and searched through a few cabinets till he came up with an unopened bottle of Scotch. He had downed three quick drinks from the bottle by the time Georgie, in his pajamas and yawning, dragged himself downstairs.

"We've created a Frankenstein," Sylvia said, pointing at David, who was now filling up a tumbler of Scotch.

"I've nearly killed a man tonight," David said, drinking up. "I'm through with you both. I've had it, which is all I came here to tell you."

"So who's asking you for more favors?" Sylvia said. "Go home. Sleep it off. Even take that ten-dollar bottle of Scotch, if you want."

"I can't go home. They'll find me. I've been recognized," and he glanced around as if other people were spying at him from behind sofas and chairs. "I've got to stay here--just until you get your money from Goff and I my money from you--and then I'll be heading East and out of your way for good."

"You're heading nowhere but home," Sylvia said, "and you're never going East. You're into us for more counts than a police blotter could hold. Even Abe the cleaning man will testify on our behalf. At least he knows the rules of this game, which is just another thing you're too damn smart to be aware of. Now, enough. Your college security is gone, so realize that. It was an illusion, anyway, because you haven't got the heart and mind for college life, as you do for our kind of work. Be satisfied you're a decent enough criminal with a financially secure future ahead of you and you'll be happy with your lot," and she headed upstairs. "Lock up after you get him to leave, Georgie, sweet."

Georgie didn't much like the prospect of that. Stepping back a few inches and smiling like a preacher saying goodbye to his congregation at the church's front door, he said: "Come on, son, now go home peaceably. We don't aim for no rough stuff."

"Why not?" David said, stumbling forward drunkenly. "Get tough. Throw me out, you skinny wreck. I'm just as crafty as the two of you now and surely as mean." He slapped Georgie in the face--not a very hard slap, as he felt a little sorry for the sickly guy, another victim, in a way; but Georgie's reaction to it was as if he'd received a powerful blow to the teeth. "See what you created?" David taunted him. "A monster of Frankenstein's, rather than the doctor himself, and vicious, cunning, mean." He slapped him again, this time so hard that Georgie reeled back and nearly toppled over. "See what you made me do, Georgie boy? I was just an honest thief when you met me--petty stuff, barely out of my diapers. Now I'm a man full of rage and violence, perhaps even a possible killer." Georgie sensed something ominous and dropped back but was too slow and David's foot caught him square in the groin. When Georgie fell to the floor, clutching his belly, David pounced on him, howling like a wild man and tearing at Georgie's thin hair, and then turned Georgie over on his back and began slapping his face so swiftly that both his hands became one whirring propeller motion in the air.

Sylvia, running and screaming hysterically all the way from her bedroom upstairs, leaped on David's back like a barroom brawler and tried to pry him off her husband. "Let go of him, you big boob. Let go or you'll kill him," and she scratched, punched and tore at David's head till he rolled over in a semifaint and lay face up on the floor, peering at their crystal chandelier.

David remained on the floor, pretending to be unconscious. Through a slight parting of his eyelids, he saw Georgie sit up and take a drink as he whispered to Sylvia whether she was going to call the police as she had said.

"Not the police, sweetheart, but the unemployment office you can be sure I'll call. You want him to get away with what he done to us?"

Georgie just shook his head. He was still in so much pain that even the liquor tasted bad.

"And if he's so stupid as to blab about us, we'll say, 'Sure, we knew that horrible young man. Met him at the state office myself and tried to mend his ways and lead him back to the Lord's path. But then we saw that the Devil was hopelessly inside the boy, laughing at us, besides Mr. Knopps' being one incorrigible pathological liar himself.'"

"But who we going to have work for us? Even if Abe pays off, we won't have enough money for long, and I'm in no condition now to find a job."

"A woman," Sylvia said, as if she'd been thinking over the solution for a week. "Women are more dependable and gullible, carry out orders better and take more guff. And they aren't potential murderers and maniacs, as all these overpressured students."

"Make her a blonde," Georgie said. "They're always prettier and get away with more, and they're weaker in spirit, I read someplace."

"And this one I'll find at the city art museum. We want a cultured one. I'll put on my old lady's costume, Grandma Moses mask and go up to some starry-eyed single girl and make small talk about beautiful paintings and things. Then I'll mention all the antique jewelry I have, that being the rage among girl intellectuals these days, and say how I don't need it, my being old and not so pretty anymore. And once she's over here, I'll give her the jewelry, then contact her and say unless she does us a small favor, I'm calling the police to report she stole the jewelry from me. I'm sure a beautiful young woman will be able to give us a job that five Davids couldn't carry out."

"Ten Davids," Georgie said jubilantly. "Twenty Davids, even. Now you're using your brains, love. Now we're really going to hustle us up some cash." He handed her some Scotch and raised his own glass for a toast. "To beautiful young women," he said.

"To beautiful young women." she answered, "and no more brilliant young men," and they clinked glasses, gulped down their drinks and, laughing and giggling excitedly, poured themselves another.

David stood up, patting the back of his neck, which Sylvia had opened up with her two-inch fingernails. But the Peartrees kept on drinking and toasting, not even giving an indication that they knew he was still in the room. He grabbed the Scotch away from them, guzzled straight from the bottle and yelled, "Bastards. Lunatics. Animals. You'll never get away with your schemes--not in a dozen years." But Sylvia only cupped her free hand to her ear, asked Georgie if he recognized the kind of bird that was cooing from the tree outside the loggia window and pulled out an unopened bottle from a case of Scotch underneath the couch and poured them each another.

David, still furious, picked up the bottle of Scotch and ran out of the house. He went home, packed his clothes and drove East, where, with unexpected ease, he got an instructor's job at a new branch of the State University of New York.

With equal ease, he outwitted his students, conned deans and department heads and within a few short years became an associate professor and a power in the department. Sometimes, when people asked him about his astonishing success, he'd reply, "If you can graduate from Peartree College in one piece, you can do anything." Ambitious students eager to find the magic short cut would then ask him where Peartree was.

"Out West, man, out West," David always replied. "But it's tough. It's a sort of Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, like. In its own field. They'd never let you in."