Story: The Ex-Con (Part 2)

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One of the tricks used by a good white collar criminal is to cover his tracks with a layer of boredom. If he is cooking the books (and there's no reason why he is necessarily a "he") then the transactions are broken down in countless futile baby steps, in the hope that anyone examining them will soon get a headache and just give up. Well, life depends on trust, the inspector will say, closing the books with a sigh. Or: only God would have the patience to scrutinize this fully.

When Dave took a small part in a small capital campaign for the church, he glanced at the account books, then looked a bit harder. Something in the back of his head began to tingle, as he spotted the unnecessary breakings down of simple payments. It wasn't really anything, just a style that he noticed. He felt he recognized it. An attack of accountant's nausea swept over him. He said nothing and was quieter than before.

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The church's bookkeeper was an outgoing woman named Mary Louise. She had no enemies, no one ever criticized her. She'd had some domestic sorrow that no one directly talked about so it hung undismissed as part of every incomplete conversation concerning her. Now she was a single mother with 2 small unruly kids. She had a couple of part-time unstable jobs. Somehow she managed o survive from month to month in a community where most people drove expensive cars and traveled to Europe. In that one way, she and the ex-con were similar.

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They tended to regard each other with suspicion. What are you doing in this church? each of them seemed to be asking the other. Why aren't you out there explicitly among the broken? Who *invited* you?

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Drop this whole thing, babe, Dave's sister said, rubbing her little brother's temples. Matt her boyfriend sat in the corner and whistled to himself. Matt was of course uninvolved.

Dave, whatever is happening over there is none of your business, Dinah said. *Your* business is to keep your nose out of, that is, never ever ever again, nunca, jamas, even *touch* an account book, baby. Picture those numbers as surrounded by an electric field. Mushrooms in the meadow with evil drooping gills. Please. You don't need that stuff.

Baby, for you, opening account books is the same as me walking into a casino.

Just

don't -- and then

that's solved.

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