"I spent this morning chatting with the borderline lady, part of my day-job," Merrion said. "A couple or three years ago the people who own the Burger Quik out on the pike, plus, I dunno, seven or eight others in the area, they dreamed up entirely on their own this very decent policy of reserving all the jobs they could for people like my kind-of-confused lady. Girl. People who are not super-bright but can learn to take directions, if there aren't too many of them and they aren't too complicated. That way they become reliable employees. This is a very fine thing for a person to be, no matter how bright he is.
Doing simple but real jobs, not make-work which they spot instantly and know right off they're being patronized. Out of those basic jobs they can make something that looks like a real life for themselves -because that's what it actually is. They wipe off tables high-fliers like you and me slobber all over and then walk away from, never cleaning up the mess we made. They pick up trays and stack them and collect trash and throw it in the bins. And then they empty the bins and heave all the rubbish in the Dumpster out in back and soak a mop in clean hot water and mop the dirt up off the floor that we fine citizens tracked in. Not particularly stimulating work, but good honest toil all the same.
"Nobody made the franchise people do this. They had this bright idea all by themselves. It looks a hell of a lot like something you and I would've been real proud of, wed been smart enough to think of it back when you were still up on the Hill showin' off. We could've passed a law to make 'em do it, hire the retards, ram it up their ass or else we're gonna take their common victualler's licenses away and put 'em outta business. Or bribe 'em with a fat tax-break to do it. We'd've been real pleased with ourselves, if wed've thought of that. But we didn't. Neither did any of the other public-spirited geniuses we hung around with all the time. This was purely a private idea.
"Initiatives," I think they're called now.
"Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences turns out to apply to private good ideas just like public ones. Full fucking force and effect. This humanitarian idea had something nasty in it nobody noticed. The franchise people were making these retards into targets for the predators. Someone's going to tell them if they're smart enough to do this donkey work and get four or five bucks an hour plus the benefits our nice franchise people also throw in, then it stands to reason they can also swindle people.
"Because that's the kind of company they start to keep, not meaning to, of course, as soon as they start getting actual paychecks. They may be small, but those paychecks represent money, and money draws serpents.
First to see if they can get those checks away from those hardworking people who aren't terribly bright, and then see if they can't think up some way to use them, manipulate them, get even larger sums of money from other people. Some other innocent person who'd be on his guard against a crook, but who'd never suspect a poor retard.
"This case the predator snared first another lady who's also not stunningly bright and who also happens to work out on the pike at the Burger Quik with the lady who's now under my supervision. The plan was to cheat an old lady in Canterbury out of her savings account. The old con game; what Miss Iscariot did to make a living before she got distracted and found herself pregnant with Judas. The drill was that the two retarded ladies pretend that they found a bag of money which would be a flash-wad, couple fives and some ones and a wad of newspapers cut up the same size. They'd show the wad to the lady that the snake selected as the sucker. She was then supposed to agree to demonstrate that they could trust her to take the bag of money to the bank which they're afraid to do themselves because they're not very bright and the banker might cheat them, and that's why they need her.
But she has to prove they can trust her. This she's supposed to do by going to the bank and withdrawing all her money from it and then giving it to them to hold while she takes the paper bag to the bank and opens a new account in all their names, and deposits what's in the bag into that account. Which all of them will then share.
"While they of course in fact will be running like hell to join up with the boss crook who, you can bank on it, has got no intention of splitting the take with them at all.
"Except that this time the Fagin picked the wrong old lady. She knows which end is up and her ass from third base. Instead of doing what they told her to do she tells the bank manager what's going on. He calls the cops.
"The cops grab the three of 'em, the two retarded ladies and the crook.
