David Liss: The Ethical Assassin

Would your child benefit from greater access to knowledge? Would you be happier if your child was learning more? Do your children have questions left unanswered by their education? The last one was my personal favorite: Do you believe that people continue to learn even after they complete their schooling?

“They say you learn something new every day,” Bastard announced cheerfully. “Isn’t that right? Hell, just last week I learned I was even stupider than I thought.” He let out a big laugh and then slapped his leg. Then he slapped my leg. Not hard, but even so.

Karen watched Bastard. There was a kind of suspicion there, even a wariness. If I had not known they were married, I might have thought they’d never met before. As it was, I figured they were well on their way to petty claims divorce court. Not the best environment in which to sell, but pickings were, at the moment, slim.

I dutifully wrote down their answers and took a moment to review the responses, to study them. I put on a serious face, knit my brow, contemplated the gravity of their answers.

“All right,” I said. “I just want to be sure I understand you now. So you think that education for children is important?”

“Sure,” Bastard said.

“Karen?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She nodded.

This was all part of the pitch- make them agree as much and as often as possible. Get them in the habit of saying yes, and they’ll forget how to say no.

“And you think that items, products, or services that aid in a child’s education are good ideas? Bastard? Karen?”

They both agreed.

“You know,” I said with an expression of puzzled amazement- I hoped it looked spontaneous, but I’d practiced it in the mirror-“looking over all of this, it seems like you two are just the sort of parents my employers would love to have me talk to. You obviously care a great deal about your children’s education, and you have a deep commitment to seeing that their educational needs are met. My company has sent us out here to try to measure the level of interest for a product they intend to introduce in this area. Now- Karen, Bastard- since you two are obviously such education-oriented parents, it occurs to me that you’re exactly the sort of people I’ve been authorized to show a preview of these products, assuming, of course, you’re interested. Do you think you’d like to look at something that is beautiful, affordable, and, best of all, will significantly increase the education and, ultimately, income potential of your children?”

“Okay,” Bastard said.

Karen said nothing. The lines around her eyes deepened, her cheeks collapsed, and her thin lips parted as she began to speak.

I would not let her. I’d never been asked to leave at this point, but I knew perfectly well that it could happen, that it would happen here if I let it. Outside, the redneck in the pickup might still be waiting, and I didn’t want to find out one way or the other.

“Let me tell you up front,” I said, barely managing to beat her to the punch, “that I’ve got a lot of people I need to see in this area. I’m happy to take the time out to show you this stuff, but first we need to make a contract, the three of us. If at any point you lose interest or you think that it’s not the sort of educational tool you’d like to provide for your children, just let me know. I’ll get up and leave. I don’t want to waste your time, and I’m sure you understand that I don’t want to waste my time, either. So can you promise me that? The minute you don’t want to see any more, you’ll speak up? That’s fair, isn’t it?”

“Fair.” Bastard let out a loud, phlegmy snort. “Congress never passed a law saying life had to be fair. Not unless you’re a Spanish, a black, a woman, or a congressman.”

I smiled politely, doing my best to appear nonjudgmental, another skill I’d honed over the past three months. “C’mon, Bastard. Let’s be serious. It’s fair, isn’t it.”

“Sure. Fair,” he agreed. He looked up at the ceiling and let out a long sigh.

“How about you, Karen? Do you think you would be able to tell me if you lose interest in these valuable educational tools that will improve the quality of your children’s lives?”

She exchanged a look with her husband and then reached over to the counter for a pack of Virginia Slims and a cherry red Bic. “Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, then. You guys ready?” Just another gratuitous yes question.

“We said we’re ready,” Bastard grumbled toward the ceiling.

I nodded in the kindly but authoritative way Bobby had taught me and reached into my bag for the first brochure, a glossy, colorful little booklet with a couple of well-groomed, successful-looking kids spread out on a carpeted floor with their books. These were kids like they would never raise, in all likelihood never know. These were the kids they wanted instead of the ones they had. And that made Bastard and Karen the perfect candidates for me.

Bobby had taught us that there was pretty much no way to sell books to comfortable suburbanites. It had taken me a while to understand, but I understood now. Karen and Bastard looked at their first pamphlet and soaked in their first glimpse of the future of their children, and they saw what they were supposed to see- a different life. The kids in the pamphlets weren’t the ignorant, ill-behaved, destructive children of ignorant, ill-behaved, destructive adults. They weren’t living in trailer park squalor, but lounging in affluent suburban bliss. They laughed and played and learned, their inner potential and outer grooming nurtured by unceasing exposure to wonderful tomes of secret knowledge. The ability to discover the five principal exports of Greece or the social structure of bonobo groups or the mysterious history of the Mayan Empire would make everything different. The mere proximity to books that contained these glorious facts and more meant the difference between success and failure.

I managed a quick peek at my watch. Almost seven-thirty now. I was confident that by ten o’clock these people would be financing a $1,200 set of encyclopedias.

The resistance, not surprisingly, came from the aptly named Bastard. I made it through the bonus books- the handbook of emergency health care, the field guide to local wildlife, the compendium of educational games for kids- but hadn’t yet reached the presentation of the sample volume of Champion Encyclopedias when I’d had about all I could take of Bastard. He interrupted me, made fun of the books, imitated my voice, tickled his wife, tried to tickle me once, got up to make a sandwich.

“Now,” I said, holding up the children’s history of the United States, “you can see how this is the sort of book your children would find educational and would improve their understanding of American history, can’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Karen.

Somewhere along the way, consumer longing had taken the place of blank apathy. The rugged skepticism on her face had smoothed away, and her lips had parted not in preparation to object, but in slack acquisitive desire.

“You think they’ll ever have a woman president?” Bastard asked. “I bet she’ll be a real honey. With big knockers. Great big knockers, man. Bigger than Karen’s, anyhow.”

“And you understand, don’t you, that an improved understanding of American history will be of use to your children?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Karen said, jamming a cigarette, smoked down to the scorched filter, into the makeshift ashtray- the bottom third of a torn-open Pepsi can, whose jagged edges she avoided with grace. “There’s all kinds of tests in school where they have to know those things, and that book would help them get better grades.” She’d learned along the way that I liked to hear concrete examples of how the books would help, and she was now working hard to come up with good ones.