The Intern's Handbook: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

language copied from other contracts but never customized for the new contract, etc. And let me tell you, you are always busy. Being around lawyers is like being in a classroom full of kids with severe ADHD and low blood sugar. They have learned to despise detail so much that they subconsciously, or consciously, ignore it. For the most part, they are gunslingers, painting the town red with broad strokes, and they rely on the help to make sure the ship doesn’t sink and take their house in Montauk with it.
    In addition to my crash course in wills and torts, I am also immersing myself in the warm bath of my new persona. Let’s recap on why orphans make great assassins. All of our lives we’ve never been given the opportunity to develop our own identities. Many of us never had a real name and we certainly never had real parents or any kind of connection to our genealogies or cultures of origin. We never even had a room of our own—the great diorama of developing personalities festooned with posters, photos, tchotchkes, and all of the icons and totems that represent our every feeling, hope, and dream. We are the blank slate. Aristotle’s tabula rasa. And we are the masters of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
    Becoming someone else is one of my favorite parts of the job. It puts a silencer on my inhibitions and allows me to do and say things I would never say to people as my real self. That can be an extremely amusing exercise with the opposite sex. And it gives me a sense, although fleeting, of what a normal life might be like. It’s weird, but just having a taste of that has saved me from the rubber room on more than one occasion. As an added bonus, this well-developed skill will come in very handy when I finally molt out of my John Lago skin and slither into the real world of retirement.
    Tonight I’ll be taking a ride on the Bullshit Express. It’s one of my rituals when I prep for a job, and I strongly suggest you adopt it. I’ll go to a bar, buy anyone a drink, and start talking. When you buy someone a drink, they will almost always chat you up and ask you all about yourself, mainly because they want you to ask about them in return. People love to talk about themselves, especially white people. The Bullshit Express is how you field-test your knowledge of your cover dossier. You’ll be surprised at how well you do this when you have a real context. The more drinks you buy, the more practice you will get and the more you will find yourself adding to the story. This is a strong memorization technique that I like to call “owning it.” When you own it, you get to a point where you actually think it’s true, and then you are golden. Lies are, after all, the only things we tell ourselves that we truly believe.
    I spend a few hours casing the law firm building, a venerable, old money fortress holding court in the storied enclave of Central Park South. I pop into a local bar around quitting time. The dark wood paneling, $15 Heinekens, and $1,500 call girls lead me to believe there’s a good chance this is a Bendini, Lambert & Locke watering hole. This would be the best possible scenario for me to put my cover through the paces, so I roll in, looking for an ear to chew.
    Sitting at the bar, my favorite hunting ground, is a woman in her mid to late twenties with blond hair and brown eyes that make herbeautiful in a Roman Holiday meets True Romance kind of way. Her features are somewhat conventional, but there is something exotic underneath it all, something dark and sexy that reminds me of a young Liz Taylor. Her expensive shoes and pocketbook, at odds with her underwhelming suit and briefcase, tell me that she is a working stiff with the right priorities. Not to mention she is a woman sitting at a bar alone. This is a baller move in any town, and only girls with serious chops even attempt it. I like her immediately. All aboard.

United States Department of Justice
    Federal Bureau of Investigation
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    Washington,