The Rip-Off Read Online Free PDF Page B

qualified to sell than I apparently was for any other gainful occupation.
    I continued to be nagged by Papa and Daughter Bannerman, but I was given up on after a few weeks. Grimly allowed to "play around" with my typewriter while they- "other people"-worked for a living. Neither would hear of a divorce, or the suggestion that I get the hell out of their lives. I was to "come to my senses" and "be a man"-or do something! Surely, I could do something!
    Well, though, the fact was that I couldn't do something. The something that I could do did not count as something with them. And they were keeping the score.
    Thus matters stood at the time of the accident which left me unscathed but almost killed Connie. I, an unemployed bum living on my father-in-law's bounty, was driving the car when the accident happened. And while I carried no insurance, my wife was heavily insured in my favor.
    ***
    "Dig this character." Albert, the maitre d', jerked a thumb at me, addressing the circle of onlooking diners. "These bums are getting fancier every day, but this one takes the brass ring. What did you say your name was, bum?"
    "Rainstar." A reassuring hand dropped on my shoulder. "He said it was, and I say it is. Any other questions?"
    "Oh, well, certainly not, sir! A stupid mistake on my part, sir, and I'm sure that-"
    "Come on, Britt. Let's get out of here."

6
    We stood waiting for the elevator, Albert and I and my friend, whoever he was. Albert was begging, seemingly almost on the point of tears.
    "… a terrible mistake, believe me, gentlemen! I can't think how I could have been guilty of it. I recall Mr. Rainstar perfectly now. Everything was exactly as he says, but-"
    "But it slipped your mind. You completely forgot."
    "Exactly!"
    "So you treated me like any other deadbeat. You were just following orders."
    "Then you do understand, sir?"
    "I understand," I said.
    We took the elevator up to the street, my friend and I. I accompanied him to his car, trying to remember who he was, knowing that I had had far more than a passing acquaintance with him at one time. At last, as we passed under a streetlight, it came to me.
    "Mr. Claggett, Jeff Claggett!" I wrung his hand. "How could I ever have forgotten?"
    "Oh, well, it's been a long time." He grinned deprecatingly. "You're looking good, Britt."
    "Not exactly a barometer of my true condition," I said. "But how about you? Still with the university?"
    "Police Department, Detective Sergeant." He nodded toward the lighted window of a nearby restaurant. "Let's have some coffee, and a talk."
    He was in his early sixties, a graying square-shouldered man with startlingly blue eyes. He had been chief of campus security when my father was on the university faculty. "I left shortly after your dad did," he said. "The cold-blooded way they dumped him was a little more than I could stomach."
    "It wasn't very nice," I admitted. "But what else could they do, Jeff? You know how he was drinking there at the last. You were always having to bring him home."
    "I wish I could have done more. I would have drunk more than he did, if I'd had his problems."
    "But he brought them all on himself," I pointed out. "He was slandered, sure. But if he'd just ignored it, instead of trying to get the UnAmerican Activities Committee abolished, it would all have been forgotten. As it was, well, what's the use talking?"
    "Not much," Claggett said. "Not any more."
    I said, Oh, for God's sake. It sounded like I was knocking the old man; and, of course, I didn't mean to. "I didn't mind his drinking, per se. It was just that it left him vulnerable to being kicked around by people who weren't fit to wipe his ass."
    Jeff Claggett nodded, saying that a lot of nominally good people seemed to have a crappy streak in them. "Give them any sort of excuse, and they trot it out. Yeah, and they're virtuous as all hell about it. So-and-so drinks, so that cleans the slate. They don't even owe him common decency."
    He put down his coffee cup with a