David Liss: The Ethical Assassin

But this trailer before me had been untouched by mooch. If the pickup hadn’t still been parked there, I would likely have skipped the house. Bobby said never to skip. Knocking on the door of a loser doesn’t take but a minute, and you never know. More than once I’d sold at places without a hint of moochiness, but it was getting late now, and I was tired, and I wanted matching Big Wheels or a naked Barbie or a company of toy soldiers crawling prone through the Quang Tri province of the lawn- anything to make me feel I was on the right track.

In the absence of moochiness, however, I’d take sanctuary, so I propped open the screen door, feeling a few tablespoons of sweat drop from my armpit down to my midtorso. Two small green lizards sat motionless on the other side of the gray mesh; one bobbed up and down, its scarlet throat fan flashing warning or love or something.

I knocked while the lizards stared with their little bullet heads cocked. Then I heard a distant shuffle of movement, the slightest hint of sound to which this job had made me sensitive. It took a moment before a woman came to the door. She propped it open just a little, glanced at me, and then looked to the pickup in the street. “What is it?” she asked in a harsh half whisper that nearly knocked me back in its urgency and desperation.

She was young, but getting old in a hurry. Her face, pretty at least in theory, was splattered with light freckles and punctuated by a pert little nose, but her eyes, the brown of the redneck’s Yoo-hoo, were raked with deep crow’s-feet and underscored by extraordinarily dark rings. Her fine, beach-sand-colored hair was pulled back in a ponytail that could be either youthful or haggard. There was something about her expression- she reminded me of a balloon from which the air was slowly leaking. Not so that you could see it deflate or hear its flatulence, but you’d leave that balloon looking fine and come back in an hour to find it drooping and slack.

I pretended I didn’t notice her misery, and I grinned. The grin hid my hunger, my thirst, my boredom, my fear of the bucktoothed redneck in the Ford pickup, my hopelessness in the absence of visible moochiness, my despair at the thought that Bobby would not come by the Kwick Stop to pick me up for another four hours.

At least I’d already scored that day, getting into a house in my first hour out. I’d made $200 right there, just like that, from those poor assholes. Not poor as in sad-sack, but poor as in ill-fitting clothes, broken furniture, leaking kitchen faucet, and a refrigerator empty but for Wonder bread, off-brand bologna, Miracle Whip, and Coke. Let me be absolutely clear about this. Not once, not one single time, no matter how happy I was to make a sale, did I ever do it without the acid tinge of regret. I felt evil and predatory, and often enough I had to bite back the urge to walk out halfway through the pitch, because I knew the prospects couldn’t afford the monthly payments. They would pass the credit app, I was almost sure of it, but when it came to paying the bills, they’d have to trade in the Coke for generic cola.

So why did I keep doing it? In part because I needed the money, but there was something else, something bigger and more seductive than money, drawing me in. I was good at sales, good at it in a way I’d never been good at anything in my life. Sure, I’d done well in school, on my SATs, that sort of thing. But those were solitary activities, this was public, communal, social. I, Lem Altick, was getting the best of others in a social situation, and let me tell you, that was new, and it was delicious. I would look at the prospects slouching into their sofa, people who’d never done anything to hurt me, and I had them. I had them, and they didn’t even know it. They’d hand over the check and shake my hand. They’d invite me back, ask me to stay for dinner, ask me to meet their parents. Half the people I tricked into buying told me if I ever needed anything, if I ever needed a place to stay, I shouldn’t hesitate. They lapped up everything I served, and, evil or not, it felt good. It made me ashamed, but it still felt good.

Now I wanted another one. The company offered a $200 bonus for a double, and I wanted to rack up another score before I saw Bobby again. Of course I wanted the money; $600 for the day would be pretty satisfying. And I’d done it before, my very first day on the job, in fact- an act that had all but anointed me the new boy wonder. The truth was, I loved the look on Bobby’s face- the happy surprise, the sheer giddiness of his expression. I couldn’t have said why Bobby’s approval was so important; it even troubled me that I cared so much. But I did care.

“Hi there. I’m Lem Altick,” I told the gaunt, sort-of-pretty-sort-of-bitter woman, “and I’m in your neighborhood today talking to parents, trying to get some feedback on how they feel about the local schools and the quality of education. Do you by any chance have children, ma’am?”

She blinked at me a couple of times- appraising sorts of blinks. The lizards were blinking, too, but more slowly, and their eyelids came up from the bottom. “Yeah,” she said after a moment to think. Her gaze went right past mine and toward the blue pickup, which was still parked alongside the road. “I got kids. But they ain’t here.”

“And may I ask how old they are?”

She blinked again, this time more suspiciously. It had been only a couple of years since a boy named Adam Walsh had disappeared from a mall in Hollywood, Florida. His head had been found a couple of weeks later a few hundred miles to the north. Nobody had ever again looked the same way at kids or at strangers who showed an interest in kids.

“Seven and ten.” Her hand gripped the side of the door more tightly, and her fingers went white around her chipped fuchsia-polished nails. She was still looking at the Ford.

“Those are great ages, aren’t they?” Not that I knew. I’d never spent much time around kids since being one myself, and in my experience, those ages were as unredeemably rotten as the rest. Still, parents liked to hear that sort of thing, or at least I figured they did. “So, if your husband is home, I was hoping I might be able to take just a few minutes to ask you some questions for a survey. Then I’ll be out of your hair. You’d like to answer a few questions about your ideas on education, wouldn’t you?”

“You with him?” she asked, gesturing toward the pickup with a flick of her first two fingers.

I shook my head. “No, ma’am. I am here in your neighborhood to talk to parents about education.”

“What are you selling?”

“Not a thing,” I told her. I feigned a slight, almost imperceptible surprise. Me? Ask you to buy something? How very silly. “I’m not a salesman, and if I were, I’d have nothing to sell you. I’m just asking some questions about the local educational system and your level of satisfaction. The people I work for would love to hear what you and your husband have to say. Wouldn’t you like to tell us what you think of the local schools?”

She pondered this for a moment, clearly unfamiliar with the idea that anyone could possibly care what she had to say. I’d seen the look before. “I don’t have the time,” she said.

“But that’s exactly why you should talk to me,” I said, using a technique called “the reverse.” You told the prospect that why they couldn’t do it or why they couldn’t afford it was exactly the reason they could. Then you dug deep and came up with a reason that it was true. “You know, studies show that the more time you dedicate to education, the more free time you have.” I made that up, but I thought it sounded reasonable.

I guess she did, too. She glanced again over to the Ford and then back to me. “Fine.” She pressed open the screen door. The lizards held their ground.