my childhood. I perpetrated the fiction that she was taking care of me, though of course it was the other way around. In the end, I had to forge some papers, reinvent her as a navy nurse (with Antarctica Service Medal, because if you’re going to lie, lie big) and park her in a VA hospital where liberal applications of morphine derivatives eased her transition from this life to the next.
And by the way, if you want to know why I got kicked out of Harvard, really the apse and the absinthe were just the tip of the icebag. I always said that the thing with the provost’s daughter was an affair of the heart, but in the wake of that myocardial infraction they went back and exhumed my application, cut through the Gordian knot of its lies—so I made up the Finnemore World Prize for Teen Excellence and awarded myself one, so sue me—and gave me the boot. I think they should have given me a scholarship. Doesn’t imagination count for anything in this world?
Still, Harvard at fifteen, that was something. I’ve always had a restless mind.
But a real problem with honesty.
It gets me into trouble sometimes.
* * *
*An invention. Like this word.
* * *
2.
the noochis of this world
L ook at this flapdoodle. I mean, just look at it.
My name is Patrick Noochi, the Fund/Property Manager to Mr. Kim Woo Koo, Daewong Group founder. Last November, my client Mr. Kim come to South Amfrica and made a fixed deposit valued at US$55.5M with Rand Bank South Africa. Howsomever, Mr. Kim has been sentenced to ten year’s in prison for fruad and embezzelment relating to the collapes of the firm under $8.2 billion dollars of debt. I am contacting you to asist in repatriating the money and will renumerate your effort to the some of 20per:Cent of the gross.
Ignoring for the moment all the heinous crimes against syntax, is this not the weakest, most obvious sort of scam spam you’ve ever seen in your life? You wouldn’t fall for it. I wouldn’t fall for it. No soul in his right mind would fall for it. Which means that the Patrick Noochis of this world, if they expect to make a living, must find souls in their wrong minds. While these are not exactly plentiful, lesser life forms do rise to a Noochi’s bait every day. And I suppose you could argue that the Noochis of this world are doing us all a service by systematically financially culling the ignorant herd. But that argument is a slippery slope for a grifter, one that slides straight downhill into a big, steaming pile of smug. Because if you figure that the dense deserve to be punished for density, you soon become an avenging angel for stamping out stupidity, which can never happen because they’ll always have more stupidity than you have stamp. So you end up just wasting your time, plus ignoring the manifest difference between moral and morally superior. I will tell you this much: I never hold my marks in contempt. I respect them as people. I do. Which is why I cherish my wins.
It’s not easy. Do you know what the failure rate is in my line of work? For every ten scams you try, nine won’t work. The mook is either too clueless or timid to catch your pitch or, at the other end of the spectrum, too wary or chary to buy in. Really, the population of possible marks exists on the narrowest bulb curve between too dim and too bright. That’s why these days so many use the Noochi method, casting a worldwide net on the web. You’ve won the lottery! Lose weight by osmosis! Mr. Kim needs your help! Be a secret shopper! Have a ten-inch johnson! Yeah, their win rate is micrometric, but they make it up in volume. Like tossing dynamite in a stock pond—you’re bound to kill something. Me, I prefer a more sporting approach. Hook a big fish, see if you can land him. You want to work for your get. That’s how you earn your sense of self.
And by the way, being a good con artist takes much more than knowing how to copy and paste the text of someone else’s snuke: Make thousands at home stuffing envelopes! Even the gift of gab is not enough; hell, any fast talker can sell you a car or a condo. Or even nothing. Do you know how many scut-level grifters are working door-to-door