The Prettyman Plan

Don Vito Piazzagrande was holding a transistor radio in his hand and he had the earplug extension fixed in his ear, where it nested like a white bug in a cabbage leaf. He was laughing soundlessly at something he alone could hear and the gold crowns on his large, ugly teeth winked in the morning Caribbean sun.

Across the white tablecloth Don Vito's breakfast partner, the former director of the FBI, showed his annoyance and dug fiercely into his grapefruit with a spoon. There were standing orders that no one was to bring a newspaper or a radio into the director's vicinity unless requested to. But, for the year that they had been in exile here on Bat Key, Don Vito had always made it plain that he considered himself a coruler at least.

At last the joke got too rich and ripe to keep secret. "Dey nominated him, Chief," Don Vito gargled.

"Who nominated him?" the former director asked.

"I make you guess," the capo said.

If Don Vito's smile was loathsome, the director reflected, his grin suggested that some near relative--probably his mother--had been a crocodile. It was still difficult for a man who had been a Harvard graduate, holder of a law degree from Columbia and for many years one of the highest of Federal officials to live in this mixed small world of ex-criminals and ex-officers of the law, sharing authority with this ex-capo di capi of the Mafia. Even the luxurious quarters, the warm beaches, glittering azure waters and serene life of Bat Key didn't quite balance it off. The only thing they had in common was that the great Prettyman disaster--as the director thought of it--had undone them all.

"I hope the eggs is done right, Mr. Director," the waiter said. He was a pantherish black man who had been, before the exile, a leading supplier of cocaine to the Middle Atlantic States.

"They look splendid, Weston."

"Got us a new cook yesterday on the plane from Leavenworth. Was a mean shakedown man, they say, but he's a heavy chef."

"Give him my compliments." Although Don Vito shared top authority with him, the former chief of the FBI had been forced to take over direction of the staff. Morale, housekeeping, tables of organization--it had shocked him to see how inefficient the mafiosi were in running all these things. He had been tempted to ask Don Vito how he'd been able to stay in business with such inept caporegimi as he had. They couldn't even establish a viable duty roster for the kitchen.

Taking a spoonful of the eggs--which were superbly basted, gentled in white butter--the director began to feel a little more toletant. The former police chiefs, sheriffs and district attorneys in the colony hated Oran Prettyman, but they understood the logic of his strategy. For the criminals, he was something like an intelligence from outer space, alien and unfathomable, and their morale had been shattered.

Don Vito's predatory teeth nibbled at an anise-flavored biscotto. He inhaled the fumes from his cup of espresso. The radio whispered into his ear. "Yah don' wanna guess, Chief?"

The director hesitated again. Prettyman for President? Of course it would be the party that had been out of power for eight years. Irresponsible, opportunistic, willing to ride any wave of popularity--no matter how demeaning--back into control of the country. "Naturally, it was the Democrats."

Don Vito's laugh was like a clearing of phlegm in his throat. "Wrong, Chief. It's the Republicans."

For a moment, the director was astonished. Then his quick law-enforcement reflexes came to the rescue. Of course: the party that was better organized, more alert to the opinion polls, able to recognize the wave of the future. The issues they had for so long been delighted to denounce, the old horror stories that had served them well in so many elections past--crime, busing, welfare, excessive Government spending--all of those issues were vanishing. The director bowed his head to the will of his beloved Republican Party. But the eggs had turned bitter on his tongue: Prettyman for President, indeed!

Don Vito was taking a sly delight in his discomfort and he removed the earplug and turned up the transistor. A faraway crowd was in tumult and brass bands were playing. "Hear it, Chief. Dat's the tape from last night when dey nominated him. And he don't even show up at the convention to make a speech."

"Turn that thing off," the director snapped. He got up from the table and shuffled over to the balustrade. On the terrace below him, in the shade of palm and sea grape, the ex--chief of police from Atlanta and the ex-D.A. from Sacramento were playing the morning pinochle game with the Pietrasanta brothers. In the good old days, the bad old days, the pietrasantas had owned New Jersey.

• • •

"Keep your eye on the beauty parlor," Prettyman said.

Mrs. Casey squinted through the steamy air of a Brooklyn slum on an August morning. "Where it says Ashanti Hair Styles?"

Prettyman nodded. Their old and dirtcovered Ford was double-parked on Hamilton Avenue, the main shopping street in the Seaside Acres slum. (According to the Health, Education and Welfare computers that Mrs. Casey manned in Washington, Seaside Acres was an Inner City Developmental Model Area. This meant it had the highest crime rate in Brooklyn, higher than comparable neighborhoods in Cleveland, Washington and Chicago.)

"The fat lady," Prettyman said.

"In the yellow dress?" Mrs. Casey was hot and vaguely frightened. She was a remarkably beautiful widow in her 40s with lavish gray hair, an artfully corseted figure and a Neiman-Marcus suit fashioned of gray silk. Oil and Oklahoma Republicanism had elevated her to her job: inner-city coordinator for HEW, reporting directly to the Undersecretary.

"Now look at the boy coming out of the alley," Prettyman mumbled.

"The skinny one? In the long shirt?"

"They call it a dashiki."

Mrs. Casey crossed her legs. Silk rustled. A whiff of L'Heure Bleue pierced the street stenches. "Why is the fat lady wearing a red tag on her bodice?"

"You'll learn in a minute. Be quiet and watch."

His rudeness irritated her. Undersecretary Emil Foss had heard about Prettyman's demonstration program in Brooklyn. A friend at the Wettlaufer Foundation in Sandusky, Ohio, the organization that provided Prettyman's seed money, had phoned Foss. Mrs. Casey was assigned to report on his work.

So she had come from Washington, an important personage from HEW, and this skinny, disheveled, laconic man in his dreadful seersucker suit and white Space shoes acted as if he were doing her a favor! She had a few surprises for him. The report would dismiss him as a crank and a crackpot, risking his life in a slum, wasting money....

"Sheeeeet! Sheeeet! Murder! Motherfucker!"

Laura Casey nailed her fists to her ears. Her ivory jaw pulled tight. She locked her eyes. "Good God. Do I have to listen to this?"

"Open your eyes. And look carefully."

The tan youth, lithe as an ocelot, had yanked a green purse from the woman's hands. She fought a few minutes, screaming curses that Laura Casey had never heard in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, then leaned sobbing against a lamppost. A dozen pedestrians walked by.

"He gone," a man said.

"They never catch Ole Roosevelt. He move too fast."

Prettyman gunned the motor of the Ford.

"And this is how you stop crime?" Mrs. Casey asked. "By watching purse snatchings and doing nothing about them?"

"Be patient, Mrs. Casey."

Police sirens razored the air. A green-and-white prowl car pulled to the curb. A policeman ran into the alley into which the young mugger had vanished. Another officer helped the woman into the car.

"What has any of this to do with stopping crime?" Mrs. Casey asked. Prettyman was speeding down Hamilton Avenue, ignoring red lights, rolling past stop signs, crossing double lines.

"No crime has been committed. At least not in the textbook sense."

He slammed the car into a space marked police cars only and sprinted up the stairs of the 184th Precinct. Police buffs and hangers-on admired Mrs. Casey's legs as she raced after him.

Prettyman guided her through a low swinging door, past policewomen at typewriters and into the main room. A young sergeant presided behind the tribunal. His red hair was long and lush and he stroked a red mustache. A sign read SGT. Blumberg.

"Honeycutt?" he asked. "Who is Roosevelt Honeycutt?" A policeman ushered the purse snatcher toward the desk.

"Mrs. Stakes? Amanda Stakes?" Another officer brought the fat woman forward. "I.D. cards?" Sergeant Blumberg asked.

The sergeant inspected two plastic-encased light-blue cards. "Ok, you are both registered under the Prettyman Plan." He winked at the professor. "I see Professor Prettyman is with us today. He'll be glad to see how efficient we are."

"Sheeeet," Mrs. Stakes observed. "Gimme my bread."

"Me, too, man," Roosevelt Honeycutt said. "Ah got me another hit comin'."

"Not under the plan you haven't. One hit every three days is your limit, Roosevelt. Read your rulebook. You people have to understand this is a two-way street. You've got to know the rules. The better you know them, the more you'll benefit."

"He grab mah purse. Ah wan' hit back."

"Back with interest, Mrs. Stakes," Sergeant Blumberg said. He turned to a Puetro Rican policewoman who stood at a bank of computers. "Patrolperson Diaz, run through two AD-23-Cs and two GT-74-Ls at standard daylight rate."

The girl punched a set of buttons. Lights flashed. Rotors whirred. From a slot four oblong slips of green paper emerged.

"Those look like checks," Laura Casey said.

"Of course they're checks," Prettyman said. "You don't think these people go around committing crimes for nothing, do you?"

"Honeycutt," Sergeant Blumberg said, "twenty dollars for a daylight hit. Mrs. Stakes, twenty dollars as a registered victim. Patrolmen Federico and Booth, (continued on page 100)Prettyman Plan(continued from page 78) fifteen dollars each. Mrs. Stakes gets back her purse Dismissed."

"Wait a damn minute," Mrs. Stakes protested. "I wearin' my red tag. You genocidin' me? Red tag mean forty bucks. Hit pay double."

The sergeant stroked his mustache. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Stakes. Only on a red-tag day. Please study your Prettyman Plan booklet."

"Sheeeet," Honeycutt whined. "Tha's why I hit her. I seen the red tag."

Blumberg leveled a finger at them. "You are both at fault. Red tags pay double on red-tag days only. Green tags pay triple. But it must be a green-tag day. You can't expect to improve yourself unless you study. I'll arrange for you to attend the courses on Wednesday nights at Lumumba Educational Society, if you wish. Purely voluntary. A few hours of schoolwork and you'll be able to increase your earning power. Education means money, remember that."

"Dumb kid," Mrs. Stakes sneered. "Now we can't make a hit of' three days."

"Sheeet. Ah git you when you wear yo' red paper."

"You git sheeet."

• • •

Prettyman worked out of a storefront office on a side street off Hamilton Avenue where garbage spilled from overloaded cans, winos and prostitutes lounged in doorways. The professor waved to a fearsome giant wobbling toward them. Mrs. Casey recoiled.

"Harmless," Prettyman said, opening the door for her. "He's enrolled." The office smelled of fresh paint. Two youths, one white, one Puerto Rican, manned a mimeograph machine. A stern black woman sat at a reception desk.

"Six more today, professor," the woman said, "Two junkies, a second-story man and three car thieves."

"Excellent," Prettyman said. He rushed past her. Mrs. Casey followed.

"Why are you enrolling them?" she cried. "To commit crimes and get paid for it?"

"Of course."

"But ... but ... that sergeant? And the policemen? Are they New York City officers?"

"Commissioner Bakaka lent them to me. They are on detached service. If the plan succeeds--I have no doubt that it will--he'll give me the entire borough of Brooklyn."

Prettyman held open a door to an inner office. It was clean but impoverished. Inside were a desk, a folding chair, a filing cabinet, a cot. An air conditioner hummed.

"But you're encouraging people to commit crimes," Mrs. Casey protested.

"No. Rewarding them for not using violence. The twenty dollars Roosevelt Honeycutt got was much more than his average hit, indeed, as much as he usually gets in a forty-eight-hour period. Mrs. Stakes had four dollars and twenty-two cents in her purse. He didn't hurt her. She kept her money and got an additional twenty. The officers' fifteen-dollar reward was five dollars more than they get for shaking down a candy-store owner on Saturday night."

"But who supplies the money?"

The professor locked the door and pulled Laura Casey toward the cot. "Thus far, the foundation. But you're next, Mrs. Casey, you're next."

She could not resist him. Limber, lean, offhand, he had the power to command. He made love to her vigorously, but in a detached manner, as if reviewing a feasibility study. They wore their clothing. He talked about his plans to eliminate crime from every street in New York, to obliterate violence, to make crime bearable by recognizing it and making it pay.

"Vending machines for heroin, cocaine and morphine," he was saying, as she smoothed her skirt.

There was a knock at the door. The receptionist's Ivy League tones filtered through. "The women's permissible-rape committee is here, professor," she said.

"Be right out. Give them the forms, Cothal. Explain that this is all voluntary."

"Rape?" Mrs. Casey asked.

"Some women need it. Nothing personal."

"May I use the phone? I've got to call my boss. He'll never believe this."

• • •

Emil Foss, Undersecretary for HEW, was eager to hear Mrs. Casey's report. He was under fire from the director of the FBI. No matter how much the FBI jiggled the monthly figures, crimes increased.

"It's you and your damned permissiveness," the FBI director had raged at him that morning. "Welfare. Busing. Medicaid. You are creating a criminal class. Goddamn it, the President wants those Uniform Crime Reports down! He promised it, and he'll get it----"

Coldly, Undersecretary Foss had reminded the director that the FBI produced the figures, not he. Let him doctor them, let him fudge them. Every Government office did that.

A bad business, Foss thought. And who could blame the director or any Government official? Crime had become the norm, not the exception. Hundreds of thousands of angry Vietnam veterans, many of them blacks, chicanos, Indians. They roamed the streets, armed, reckless. Cities had become like the dacoit communities of India--societies founded on robbery and murder and pillage.

"Laura, darling?" Foss murmured into his telephone. "Are you back?"

"I'm still in Brooklyn," Mrs. Casey said. "I think I've seen the future, and I think it works." She was phoning while sitting on Prettyman's lap.

"What does this fellow do?" the Undersecretary asked. "Has he statistics? Is the crime rate really lower? Does he do it with extra police patrols? Sodium lights? Neighborhood auxiliaries? Shotguns?"

"He does it with money," Mrs. Casey said.

"Money? Welfare chiseling?"

"No, Emil. You'll have to come to Brooklyn and observe it."

Foss hated field work. But now he began to imagine a pleasant few days in New York with Laura. "Are you all right, Laura? You sound out of breath. Is it hot up there?"

"Oh, I'm fine, fine," she said dreamily.

Outside the locked door she heard the mimeographs spinning. Prettyman had picked up another phone. "I want the president of Hertz. The fellow who complained to the newspapers about car thefts. Tell him Professor Oran Prettyman can solve his problem."

• • •

On the flight to New York, Foss read a Xeroxed biography of Oran Prettyman from Who's Who in American Universities. It filled him with misgivings. The man seemed to be an academic ne'er-do-well. Gazing out at the endless rows of two-family homes in Queens (these peaceful neighborhoods were now as infested with burglars and muggers as Harlem and Brownsville), he studied the man's checkered past.

Prettyman, Oran, social engineer; b. Circleville, O., July 8, 1932; s. Matthew and Hannah (Underdahl) P.; B.A., Indian Mound College, Indian Mound, O., 1953; M.A., Ohio State, 1955....

Never held a job very long, Foss thought. Prettyman had spent a year teaching sociology at Ohio Wesleyan, a year at Defiance College, Ohio, some years knocking around in obscure foundations. And what in God's name was Eldridge Cleaver College in the Bronx, where he had taught "criminal dynamics" for a semester? Social engineer in residence at the Walopus School for Delinquent Boys in Mineville, New York? His published works were even less assuring: Sexual Themes in Violent Crime; Patterns of Crime Among the Affluent; Reinforcing Adults and the Criminal Response; Who Are the Deviates? A typical academic loser. A crank who had euchred some foundation into a grant and was playing dangerous games in a slum. He was annoyed with Laura Casey's phone call and her breathless excitement.

• • •

"I have to call Washington," Emil Foss said nervously as he, Mrs. Casey and (continued on page 148)Prettyman Plan(continued from page 100) Prettyman were walking through the Eastern Air Lines shuttle terminal at La Guardia Airport. The Undersecretary, aroused by the inner-city coordinator's firm rump and elegant legs--was there a more erotic gray-haired woman in the world?--decided he would need two, perhaps three days in New York.

Prettyman pointed to a row of new phone booths. "Try this one," he said to Foss.

"It's occupied."

"It won't be long."

The three stopped in front of a booth. Inside, a pimple-spotted blond teenager in a denim suit was jimmying open the coin box. He saw Prettyman's long face and withdrew his screwdriver. "I lost my dime, mister. Honest."

"It's all right, son," Prettyman said. "Jab it a few more times."

"You fuzz?"

"Quite the opposite. Go on."

"This is lunacy," Foss said. "He's encouraging crime. Just as I expected."

The teenager jammed the screwdriver into the slot. A warm voice emerged from the telephone. "Hello, there," it said. "This is the board chairman of your friendly phone company----"

"What the Devil?" Foss exclaimed.

The youth drew away. He looked at the door of the booth, as if eager to bolt. Prettyman was blocking his way. His arms and legs formed a restraining X.

"Why destroy our property?" the voice went on. "Why not play the phone-booth game with us? You may be arrested. It might blight your career. All you have to do is dial nine and get your redeemable coupon, which you can cash at any Prettyman Plan precinct. Ready? Dial nine!"

"What the fuck is this?" the boy whimpered.

"Do as the chairman said," Prettyman ordered.

The youth complied. There was a humming noise. From the return slot a green ticket issued forth. "Shit, he wasn't kiddin'," the boy said. He looked at the chit. "Five bucks. This for real, mister?"

"Redemption centers are listed on the reverse side. When you go to collect, you'll have to register under the plan. You'll get a rulebook and a list of registered phones. You can put that screwdriver away forever."

• • •

After dinner at a soul-food restaurant at which Prettyman distributed leaflets inviting patrons to enroll in the plan (the "introductory special" allowed one armed robbery with rewards up to $40, depending on the victim's category), the three of them drove to Prettyman's office.

"I understand this too well," Foss said. "You're paying people to commit crime."

"Crime without violence," Prettyman said.

"It doesn't stand a chance," Foss said.

"Oran, explain it to Emil the way you did to me yesterday," Laura Casey said. "That is," she corrected, "you don't have to go into all the details." Her face glowed. Prettyman had explained it to her as they lay locked in passion in a private room in Kings County Hospital, where he had gone to lecture the doctors on his Heroin Saturation program and to supervise a demonstration of the VendoSkag machine. Foss caught the expression on her face. He suspected the worst.

"It's simple reinforcing," Prettyman said irritably. "They have their fun, they get paid, no one gets hurt."

Roosevelt Honeycutt walked into the office cradling a batch of green folders in his arms and Prettyman introduced him, explaining that Roosevelt was a field demonstrator who doubled as office manager here. "Twenny-fi' mo' registrants today," he said, showing the files to Prettyman.

"Hmm," said the professor, "not so good. Roosevelt, I think it's time we called a meeting of the Socialistic Gents, the Black Death Nation and the Hispanic Killers tomorrow and made the pitch for a mass conversion. I could give the speech, if necessary."

"Naw, man, I handle it. They come around."

Foss was shaking his head thoughtfully. "I think I can see your general strategy, Prettyman, but I think you're heading for a ground flop. First, there's money--your funds will run out before you touch even a tiny percentage of crime. Second, criminals have an emotional need for action quite apart from the rewards."

Prettyman smiled with his fearsome, maddening confidence. "The money will come. Don't you see, Foss, cities are the most expensive things we own--they're multibillion-dollar investments. Right now, they're dying of a disease called crime; but I can save them. Look--say you're an ordinary citizen. You expect to pay a yearly tribute in the form of the five-dollar bills you carry to pay out when you get mugged. You count on having your apartment ripped off at least once a year. Isn't it cheaper to have the Government insure you against this?

"Say you're a criminal," he went on. "It's exciting, but cop brutality, time in jail and other drawbacks aren't much to look forward to. Under my plan, you'd get all your kicks and thrills with a strictly limited risk. By accepting a few game rules, you get to be a winner instead of a loser most of the time. But, enough of theory. I want to show you a demonstration on our closed-circuit monitor."

The lights went off and a TV screen glowed with a bluish light. "This the Flatbush apartment house we sign up, all forty-two tenants," announced Roosevelt. The scene came into focus as a shadowy bedroom with two figures asleep in a double bed.

Suddenly, a woman's voice was heard. "Sid! Sid! I hear a noise. Somebody's in the apartment! Get up and go see."

"Shaddup, for Chris' sake," came the male voice. "Can't you never remember we're signed up in the plan? The burglar always comes on Tuesday."

"Sid, this is Monday! It's one of them unregistered free-lances an' he'll kill us."

As Sid lumbered out of bed, an automatic switcher brought in the picture from the dining room. Sid, with a baseball bat in his hand, was just looming over a scrawny man who was taking silver dishes from the sideboard and putting them in a satchel. The burglar looked up and froze in fright.

"Hold it, hold it!" he said. "I'm Charley Wozniak, your burglar. Remember me?"

"You dumb schmuck. It's Monday."

"Ain't this 11-D? Ain't you Goldman?" A slow zoom revealed his ratty face.

"Sure it's 11-D. And I'm Goldman. But the instruction sheet we got says you come on Tuesday. You're a day early. You pull crap like this on me once more and I'll report you to the professor."

"Sorry, pal. Don't get sore." He replaced the silver.

"Beat it," Sid said. "You come tomorrow, when ya supposeta."

The monitor went black. Prettyman leaned back in his chair. "That was a deliberate mistake. Merely to show you how cooperative our members are. Wozniak will make his haul tomorrow and redeem the silver for cash. The Goldmans will also be paid."

Foss got up. "I've heard enough. This is worse than the pauperizing of the nation under the New Deal. It's the ultimate corruption of everything we value in America."

"Now, Emil, we really should give Oran a chance...."

Prettyman ignored them. On the monitor, a new scene appeared. Honeycutt applauded. "Man, this one a gas. Hertz people sign up."

The television showed the interior of a Hertz Rent A Car office. A girl with the golden look of a Seventeen model was behind the counter. A young man in a white turtleneck sweater and a black suit approached her.

"This dude a new one," Honeycutt said. "Pantarelli. He a smalltime Mafia."

"Good evening, sir," the girl said. "Rent or steal?"

"Steal."

"May I see your Prettyman Plan card? Also your driver's license and one more identity card. American Express will do."

The customer shuffled cards and spread them on the counter. "Got a Continental?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Pantarelli, but we're out. Anyway, under the rules, you have to stealup to a big car. You're allowed a Continental or a Cadillac only after three successful P.P. thefts of compacts and intermediates. I can begin you with a Torino. Where would you like to steal it?"

"West Eighty-fourt' Street corner Riverside Drive in New York."

"I see. An out-of-area theft. That's permissible as long as you abandon it in Brooklyn."

"I can't ditch it in, in the Bronx?"

"Rules were made to be obeyed, Mr. Pantarelli."

"Jeez. They make it tough for a guy."

"It's easier than getting into trouble, isn't it?" The girl had a nasal cheeriness about her. Prettyman made a note to congratulate Hertz. "Keys in or out? Doors locked?"

"No keys. Door unlocked. I'll start it myself. I got a master key."

"You understand that the car isn't to be damaged?"

"Sure, sure."

"We'll redeem your gas receipts. Sign these forms, please. Full insurance?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"Oh, dear, you want a three-day theft. Let me consult the book. Yes, that's OK. But if you intend to use it for another crime, like robbery or hijacking, I'm afraid you'll have to let us know in advance and check the head office. There's someone on duty twenty-four hours."

"I just wanna take my broad for a ride inna country."

"Good. If you get another member of the plan to report the theft, you both get the good-criminal bonus--ten dollars each."

Prettyman turned the set off. "Convinced?"he asked Foss.

"I am," Mrs. Casey said. "It's the future."

Foss got up. He was white. "It will wreck the fabric of society. It will drive the entire nation into criminal pursuits. Why work when you are rewarded for stealing cars and snatching purses?"

Prettyman shook his head. "The rewards are not that great. There will always be incentive to rise higher into more lucrative activities--stock manipulation, insurance, art dealing, oil speculation, literary criticism. Any shoplifter can still become a banker."

"Yeah," Roosevelt said. "Professor gittin' me a scholarship to study price fixin' at NYU."

"Laura?" Foss asked. "Shall we return to Washington? We can still make the last shuttle."

"I...ah...Oran thought I should stay another day. He's dedicating the Vendo-Skag?"

"Vendo-Skag?"

"Heroin for a dime," Prettyman said. "It comes out packaged and pure. No addict need ever commit a crime for the rest of his life."

• • •

Shortly after Foss got to his Washington office the next morning, his phone rang. It was Mrs. Casey, telling him she was resigning her job as inner-city coordinator to work with Prettyman.

"I take it, Laura, that your fascination with his scheme to reward criminals is not all that has induced you to throw your life away in a slum?"

Her voice was offhand, mirroring Prettyman's own impatience with trivia."Oh, to heck with that. He's attractive, but that isn't important. Oran says he can end store robberies in Washington in three days."

"Does he?" Foss wondered. There was no more pressing matter in the nation's capital. The President's Committee on the Poor had withdrawn Head Start funds, closed playgrounds, abolished narcotics clinics, terminated adult-training centers and reinforced union rules barring anyone with membership in the NAACP from apprentice training, and this had hardly improved matters. There were vast areas in Washington where not a store remained open. Services had ended. Food, drugs and household needs were distributed from armored cars provided by the National Guard.

"He wants to come to Washington and give a demonstration."

"Tell him not to waste his time. I intend to file a report on your professor with the FBI, with copies to the New York City police commissioner and the Urban Coalition. The man is a menace to civilization."

• • •

A week later, with 543 people in Seaside Acres enrolled in the plan and the crime rate down 57 percent, Prettyman and Mrs. Casey were invited to Washington.

A nervous Emil Foss had changed his mind about cooperation--somewhat influenced by a front-page Washington Post story revealing a dramatic lessening of crime in the New York metropolitan area in contrast to a rise in the District. He promised Prettyman all facilities for a complete demonstration.

The stake-out they agreed upon was in the storage room of Jack Dugan's Liquor City on Wisconsin Avenue. It was a huge discount store that sold everything from vintage Mouton-Rothschild at $85 a bottle to California Red Dreams at 99 cents a gallon. It was on the verge of closing its doors. Dugan, a sad, florid man in his 60s, was ready to surrender. One clerk had been shot dead in the past year. Another had been winged in the left arm as he opened the cash register.

Behind a one-way mirror, Prettyman, Emil Foss, Laura Casey and four armed police officers waited. It was 11:30 at night, a half hour before closing time. The policemen wore bulletproof vests. Each carried a shotgun and a .30-caliber automatic rifle.

"I don't like this," Foss whispered. "If it hadn't been for Laura's talking me into it----"

"It's perfectly safe," Mrs. Casey said. She patted Foss's knee. "Oran's done this before."

"No, he hasn't. He's plunging us into an unstructured situation. Nobody in Washington knows about the Prettyman Plan. None of those hoodlums is enrolled. Mr. Dugan has no idea what he's letting himself in for...."

"It will all be clear in a minute," Prettyman said. He addressed a policeman. "Shoot only to disable, and not at all if possible. We'll close the automatic lock on the outside door. Mr. Dugan will hide beneath the counter and the clerks can fall to the floor."

"You are a cold-blooded monster," Foss said. "I have the feeling you don't care whom you kill or maim."

"Quite the contrary, Foss. Sssh. Visitors."

Two seedy-looking white men, hillbillies with burnsides, rodeo shirts and flared denims, entered and began waving guns. Dugan's twin Doberman pinschers set up a resonant barking. The clerk at the cash register threw a shower of bank notes at the holdup men.

"We want it all, nigger," one of them said. "Y'all give us what's underneath, too."

"Clean out yo' pockets and throw us the wallets," the other cried. "An' keep them dogs leashed, elsen they gon' be dead dogs."

"Should I blast 'em?" the police sergeant asked Prettyman.

"No. This can be handled without a shot being fired."

"He's mad," Foss said, shivering. "If the Secretary finds out----"

One of Dugan's clerks, trying to play the hero in spite of Prettyman's warnings at the dress rehearsal, threw a gallon of Old Rabbinical at the robbers. Guns exploded. From beneath the counter, Dugan threw switches. A siren wailed. Lights were extinguished. A dozen shots bounced around the room, smashing bottles. An aroma of bourbon filled the air. Wafts of gin and Scotch drifted into the back room, where the police obediently held fire.

Prettyman addressed an officer: "I want you to cover me. They can't get out. No one's been hurt. Laura, pull the circuit breaker and flood the store with light."

Mrs. Casey did as ordered. The instant the store was illuminated, Prettyman, armed only with a clipboard, walked out of the back room.

"Fuzz," one of the hillbillies said.

"Shoot the fucker. Whut in hail he think he doin'?"

The professor raised a hand. "I am not an officer. I have come to show you the way. Put down your guns."

"Cow's ass," the other hillbilly said. "Open them doors and let us out. Shoot him oncet in the head. Waldo."

"Cain't," Waldo said. "He got the evil eye on me."

"Then Ah will." He leveled his gun. A blast from the hidden policeman struck, his right arm. The officers emerged.

"Ah tole you he was a cop," Waldo wailed. He tossed his Saturday-night special to the floor. Dugan scanned the wreckage. An entire shelf of name brands was reduced to jagged hunks of glass. A lake of lost booze formed on the floor. Twice refused insurance, he was now ruined.

"My name is Prettyman and I am going to enroll you in my plan. You will be guaranteed a monthly payoff if you avoid violence. You may commit two crimes a month, attacking only registered storekeepers. No one will be arrested. No one will get hurt. Mr. Dugan will be reimbursed for losses. Incurred medical expenses, like your arm, will be paid. If you take advantage of a red-tag store on a bonus day, you are allowed to double your score. I'm going to pass out booklets and you can spend fifteen minutes studying them----"

"Ah cain't read," Waldo said.

"Me neither," his friend said.

"Mrs. Casey will sit down with you and explain it in the back room."

"Y'all mean we ain't busted?" Waldo asked.

"Not unless you break the rules. Play it out way, gentlemen, and you can continue your life of crime, harm no one and make a decent living wage."

Sergeant Farrell of the Washington police sidled up to Prettyman. He was carrying his shotgun at port arms, watching the backs of the men as they retired to the rear.

"Now, now, Sergeant," Prettyman warned. "No fair shooting ducks in a barrel. They are disarmed. In more ways than one."

"Huh? What about us? Me and the boys volunteered our time for this screwball thing. Coddling criminals, that's all."

"Coddling everyone, Sergeant, including policemen." Prettyman turned to Dugan. "A case of Scotch for each officer, Mr. Dugan. It's part of our incentive plan. And you will be paid in full for broken bottles, cleanup and security needs. Incidentally, what does security cost you?"

Dugan wiped his seamed face. "Oh, ten, eleven thousand a year."

Prettyman made a note. "You won't need it any longer."

"He's insane," Foss whispered to Mrs. Casey. She was sitting on a case of Michelob, filling out I.D. cards for the robbers.

"Maybe that's what's needed," she said. She had dismissed the four servants from her mansion in Cleveland Park. Oran would be all hers. Alone. Oran with his terrifying indifference, his insatiable lust.

• • •

Undersecretary Foss dragged his feet on proposing the Prettyman Plan to his superiors, because he still had great doubts about the weedy man in the seersucker suit. Undeterred, Prettyman accumulated data on the Brooklyn experiment.

"An expectable success," he told Laura. "My computations were off by less than one quarter of one percent."

They were in her bedroom. He left unpacked the red-velvet dressing gown she had bought for him in Garfinckel's. In droopy green shorts and a T-shirt laced with holes, he paced the ocher-and-chocolate room, reading from computer printouts sent to him by Roosevelt Honeycutt.

"New York has accepted us," he said. "Mayor Del Vecchio and Police Commissioner Bakaka have agreed to establish fifteen demonstration areas for implementation of the Prettyman Plan. Ten are high-crime--South Jamaica, Brownsville, Hunt's Point--and five are middle-class control groups. If we can get a fifty percent enrollment of criminals, and a comparable registration of victims and police, the spread effect sets in."

"You are a genius, Oran." She shifted her seamless body. Recently, she had read that women were capable of interminable orgasm. They never bottomed out. But it had never been proved to her satisfaction until she met the social engineer.

"It's manifesting itself already," Prettyman said, turning in front of the Chippendale dresser and crossing to the Florentine vanity. "Bedford-Stuyvesant has reduced police patrols by forty percent."

"You mean the police are out of work?"

"Of course not. They stay in the station house and play cards or go out to moonlight. They simply aren't needed. Eventually, some are licensed as narcotics dealers or as servicemen for the vending machines."

"Fantastic."

"Insurance rates have been reduced in Brooklyn. Hospital costs have been cut a third. Sales of firearms are down forty-three percent. Expenditures for sodium streetlights have been canceled. Retail stores are among our best customers--profits are up, losses from theft and robbery down. The rest of the country will follow New York's lead."

"Come to me. darling."

"Not until I finish reading these. Hah! The director of the FBI refuses to accept our statistics. He says we're faking them."

Laura, nude and rosy, got up from the bed. "He will when he sees our statistics for Washington. I still have contacts. Oran. I stole contingency funds. We can set up a Prettyman Plan office in the Southwest Quadrant."

Prettyman nodded. "Good, good. But this expansion will require a great expenditure of funds. I'm ready to take over organized crime. Once the street criminal is on the public payroll, the big operations will have to be absorbed. I should be getting a phone call about that any time now," While he waited, he passed the time by making love to Laura and, over her white shoulder, rereading the print-outs on Brooklyn.

It was just about one hour later when the bedside phone rang. When Prettyman lifted the receiver, a harsh New York voice began without introduction. "We got your niggers. I think we blow dere heads off. Puttin" in vendin' machines which pay out a baggie of horse for a dime. What kinna shit is dat? You be here, 346 Park Avenue, tomorrow ten A.M. That's orders."

"Si, si, bene. D'accordo," said Prettyman, hanging up. And to Laura, as he gently unhooked himself from her arms and legs, he said, "Lovely! The Mafia is about to join up."

• • •

On the plane. Prettyman had a chance to read the Times's front-page report of a press conference with Mayor Del Vecchio, who had, the professor reflected, swept into office on the toughest law-and-order platform since the late Colonel Charles Lynch's. "We are," announced the mayor, "putting every crook, mugger, pusher, con man and rapist on the city payroll, I am happy to announce .... And thus, without any courts, drug clinics, jails or reformatories, the city looks like it will have a surplus for the first time since La Guardia."

Oran Prettyman walked through the door labeled Coalition of Concerned Citizens and was ushered into the board room. Sitting around the conference table was a group of beautifully tailored, carefully barbered old men with faces out of Dante's Inferno. They were completely silent. They glared at Prettyman and waited.

"Gentlemen," said the professor in his cheerful voice, "you are doomed. But I have come to save you with an offer you--that is to say, a proposal you cannot decline. I offer you all the rackets and the narcotics trade complete--under the control of the Prettyman Plan and with all violence ruled out." He went on to explain in detail.

When he had finished, there was another silence and some shaking of the sinister old heads. Finally, the ponderous capo at the head of the table spoke with the voice of a rusty saw. "We hear what Don Vito say. Kill this ficcanaso? Or give us the fermata? Bring in Lewisburg."

The television screen on the wall turned brilliant. Don Vito Piazzagrande's wormwood face appeared behind a pattern of cell bars. He began to speak. "I been gettin' the news. Bad news. Everybody's joining up wit' dis professore. Soon we are alone and the police can spend all the time they want, on us. Some of you who remember the good days of old times will say, 'No more fun wit' choppers or meathooks or squashin' guys wit' cars?' But I say that our sons, even now, have no guts for it. We must bring in a siciliano to do a good hit in the old style. I say we make a truce wit' il professore and try the plan for a month."

Prettyman noticed a certain look in the old, dishonest eyes and he made a mental note to see what he could do about getting Don Vito put in the deepest, tightest solitary confinement--without television--before the month was up.

• • •

Mrs. Casey, stark-naked on the pool table in her basement playroom, had just recovered from her sixth transcendental climax--which was her way of welcoming Prettyman home. They sat up on the edge of the table and she began to tell him the troublesome developments.

"The Congress has cracked down on Emil and HEW--no more funds."

"What!" exclaimed Prettyman. "Don't they realize that you can walk anywhere in Washington without getting mugged or murdered? Free-lance crime has almost disappeared."

"But Emil says that the great issue has left a terrible vacuum behind it. Most Congressmen hardly know what kind of a campaign speech to give anymore. How much fire can you get into a plea for the free-school-lunch program?"

"I'll fix that," said Prettyman. "Senator Claymore McGoggin is chairman of the Senate Crime Committee. I want you to check on what route his limousine takes coming into the city every morning."

• • •

Senator McGoggin, rapidly turning purple, was sitting in his stalled Chrysler Imperial at eight o'clock the next morning as a mob of screaming black teenagers surged back and forth across the street in front of him. He had just reached bursting point when a helmeted policeman appeared and tapped on the car window. The Senator rolled it down. "Get me out of here!" he roared. "Then you rally yoah boys an' start bustin' somma them kinky heads, heah? I mean right quick!"

"Sorry, sir," said the cop, "it's free-play time now. Window breaking and looting begin in two minutes. I have to move off now to see that none of these citizens gets cut by accident."

Across the street there was a shuddering crash as a brick went through the show window of Cousin Kaplan's Appliance City. There was a shout and people--some white and some black--began leaping through the gap. The Senator gasped. Then he noticed that a fat man in a checked vest was standing by the door, shouting, "Watch your step. Color televisions on aisle two. Tape recorders at the rear; radios on the mezzanine. All name brands with a year's service guarantee. Home appliances on the second floor. Step along and get yours!"

The Senator was so infuriated that he climbed from his car and strode over to the fat man.

"I'm Cousin Kaplan, sir," the man said. "Interested in a motorized barbecue grill?"

"Are you out of yoah head?" the Senator shouted. "These criminals are looting you!" A 300-pound woman wearing lavender slacks, gold wedgies and a mass of curlers lurched out of the store. In her arms were a toaster, a blender, an iron, an electric carving knife and an LP album of Das Rheingold.

"Not at all, sir, not at all," said Cousin Kaplan. "I'm fully registered under the Prettyman Plan. I get list price and replacement for all damage. And I do a terrific day's business--sorta like a riot sale, you might say."

Bug-eyed and mumbling, the Senator was led back to the car by his chauffeur. And it was thus that Prettyman, just as he had foreseen, was called upon to testify before the Senate Crime Committee.

• • •

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress," Prettyman stated to the committee. With frowns and tightened lips, the members leaned forward to stare at him severely.

"The witness will refrain from slanderous remarks of that sort or he may find himself in contempt," Chairman McGoggin declared.

"Just a quotation from a good old country writer, sir--Mark Twain said it."

The counsel began the interrogation. Was it true, he asked, that Prettyman, as reported, had been paying people to commit crimes? Bribing policemen? Rewarding muggers and rapists? Saturating the cities with narcotics?

"I have done all that and more," said the professor calmly. "And now I propose to move my plan to the national level." He went on to give a brief but exact outline of his operations while the astounded Congressmen listened. "And finally," he said, "I propose that all members of the Congress, all Justices of the Federal judiciary and all members of the President's staff be enrolled in the Prettyman Plan."

"The witness will explain that tendentious and derogatory statement!" broke in one of the committee.

"Of course," said Prettyman, producing a manila folder. "Senator Mudge, I have here documentary evidence showing that you have on thirty-three occasions used campaign funds for personal expenses. I have a fairly complete account of your activities from January sixth to twelfth of this year, when you entertained Miss Mindi Boyce in your suite at the Peruviana Hotel in Miami Beach and paid with campaign funds." Senator Mudge seemed to be choking.

"And Senator Erst, to you I would mention the matter of nine hundred acres in Clabber County that you do not own and do not farm but for which you draw annual farm subsidies of nearly three hundred thousand dollars. As for Senator O'Mara, my documents show that your law firm has as clients two ball-bearing companies, a tool-and-die plant and a foundry--all involved in questionable financial dealings. I also have records of your secret intervention with various Governmental agencies, including the Department of Justice, to get prosecution dropped. As for Senator Bayberry...." But the committee had frozen into silence and Prettyman decided to be merciful. He launched persuasively into his argument. "It is now within our power to make perfectly legal and respectable every kind of double-dealing, payoff, bribe, secret fund, favored treatment, and so on. You will no longer have to live in trepidation, gentlemen."

"What about Jack Anderson?" Senator Mudge asked.

"Jack Anderson?" said Prettyman emphatically. "We'll put him out of business!"

Two weeks later, the McGoggin-Higgs Bill, adopting the Prettyman Plan, passed both houses of Congress. Carefully leaked stories from the White House suggested that the President would veto it in the face of popular opinion.

• • •

"Mr. President," Prettyman was saying, and his voice sounded sharp in the hushed air of the Oval Office, "you have had to take an enormous onslaught of accusation from your enemies. None of this, I submit, would have been at all necessary if you had not been forced to countenance lying, stealing, break-ins, cover-ups and other deceptions. But under my game plan, sir, none of that would have been necessary. Under this plan, any crimes committed by the White House could be carried out openly and be fully subsidized."

At this explanation, the President's eyes lit up and he began nodding happily as Prettyman continued explaining the details of his program.

• • •

Laura prevailed upon Prettyman to put aside his dingy seersucker and to buy a new black suit for the ceremony of his swearing-in as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. As the President made his speech afterward, she dreamed about their new life together in the mansion in Cleveland Park. She would make a new man of Oran. She noticed only casually that there was a twinkle in the President's eyes and a happy smile that hadn't been seen for months on his face. He was saying something about making the Defense Department, Justice, the CIA, in fact, practically everything in the Executive branch subordinate to HEW. Because she was in such a pleasant daze, Laura nearly missed one of the great turning points in American history.

• • •

Weeks passed on Bat Key and the sunkissed mornings, torpid afternoons and perfumed nights followed their regular turns. The director, who still abhorred news in any medium, knew it must be Wednesday, because today he would be drinking rum slings. Tom-collins day was tomorrow and Piña Coladas day the next. Don Vito approached, shuffling through the door onto their private patio. The earplug from the transistor radio was, as usual, stuck in his gnarled ear. The director turned and gazed out to sea. This morning he had been musing about an appeal to Prettyman--in the event that he won the election--for Executive clemency. He thought of the several arguments he could use in a memorandum: Exile was unfair. He had been a nonpolitical head of the FBI. It was not his fault there was no more crime in America. Perhaps a new job ...? A university appointment? He wondered how long he could tolerate Don Vito's garglings.

"Good morning, Director," Don Vito rasped. "The Democrats. Last night. Dey nominated----"

"I don't care."

"Him."

"Him?"

"The professore. First time in Namerican history, you hear? Both parties."

The director, to his surprise, felt a smile curl his mouth. How stupid they all had been! He found himself eating his eggs with gusto, calling for a second cup of tea. Prettyman would understand him. Prettyman would let him return. Had the professor not said to him, on the day the FBI building was turned into a national shrine, that he bore him no personal rancor?