Free How To Succeed in Evil by Patrick E. McLean Page A

right thing. If her idiot son can be a villain, then she can be ten times the villain. This Edwin Windsor will merely be the tool, a technician in her employ. Besides, she does so enjoy making him uncomfortable.

Chapter Thirteen 
    Following the Protocol

    Topper is missing his tall friend. Perhaps, friend is not the exact word we are looking for here. Edwin doesn’t seem to have friends in the usual sense of the word, but Topper likes him all the same. There is no denying that Edwin is a source of fascinating clients.
    What Topper can’t understand about Edwin is how a guy who is surrounded by such interesting people and opportunities can be so dull? Edwin never lets himself go. Never lets it all hang out. Surely Edwin must have urges? Topper has urges. And if there is one thing that Topper believes – one firm principle amid the shifting quicksand of the little lawyer’s moral life – it’s that you have to enjoy yourself. Topper believes that repression causes thin lips, sexless women and cancer.
    Topper doesn’t think it’s wrong that Edwin pours so much of himself into his work. It’s good to like your work. In fact, Topper is having a great day at work. As a negotiation tactic, he has just thrown a chair through the side of a 500 gallon reef tank. Clearly, Topper enjoys his work. But at the end of the day, when the work is done, a man needs something else. A man needs vices.
    The way Topper sees it, that’s how the whole system works. If you don’t have vices, then you save money. And a man who saves money – who doesn’t gamble or drink or do drugs or spend money on professional female companionship – well, in Topper’s mind this is a man who will always be less creative and productive than a man who is profligate in his ways.
    Why would a Puritan need to work hard? Early to bed, early to rise. Whatever. But get yourself on the wrong side of a loanshark or develop a serious jones for real high-quality, first-class expensive bender these are the urges that inspire a man to greater efforts. You work hard to have the expensive extras. And you work even harder to pay them off before your legs are broken. This is the spirit that has made America great. This and the time-honored principle of sticking it to the other guy.

    As Topper enters the lobby he says to Agnes, “Hey toots, how’s tricks?”
    Agnes does not look up from what she is reading. “Deceptive, I should think. And no substitute for a sound strategy.”
    “Work, work, work. That’s all it ever is up here. C’mon, what say you and me take a break? Hit the strip club for lunch?”
    “I am afraid I will have to politely decline your revolting invitation.”
    “So, is he back yet?”
    “No,” says Agnes, she still hasn’t looked at Topper.
    “When is he coming back?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you mean you don’t know?” Topper asks. “You know everything about him.”
    “He hasn’t called,” Agnes says with an air of great boredom.
    “He hasn’t called?”
    “Ah, there is an echo in here,” she says, looking into the high corners of the room. 
    “What do you mean he hasn’t called?”
    “Perhaps a rug would dampen it.”
    “He hasn’t called? Is he in trouble?”
    “Or some tapestries.”
    “He’s in trouble. He’s got to be in trouble.”
    “Ah, but I fear Edwin would not care for tapestries. Perhaps one of those newfangled white noise generators?”
    “YOU CRAZY BROAD EDWIN’S IN TROUBLE! ANSWER MY QUESTION!”
    Agnes pauses to let Topper complete a twitching and cursing fit. Once again she has reduced him to a state of apoplexy. Mission accomplished, she thinks to herself. But she cannot not resist one last dig. “Quite enough noise in here already.”
    Topper sucks air into his lungs in preparation for a full-on tantrum. Agnes decides it best to cut him off, “I have not attempted to call him because we have a protocol.”
    “Protocol? What’s this protocol?” asks Topper.
    “It’s a set of