Pick a Crime by Richard Rein Smith (read novel full .TXT) 📖

Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to

By RICHARD R. SMITH

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy instead of straight.

"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside Joe's table.

"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."

The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it. "What's the job?"

"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring it down his throat.

"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"

"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.

"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"

"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room and board for a month while they give me a treatment."

It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do. The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted, but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.

Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.

The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like everyone else?"

As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal Tendencies.

When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and show it upon request.

"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."

"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score. When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man, street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"

On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.

Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"

The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big plans, don't you?"

He smiled at her admiration. It was something big to plan a crime. A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting, blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.

No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could afford the CPA hospitals.

The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.

And, ironically, a man who did commit a crime was a sort of hero. He was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money. And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.

"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten. Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."

"Okay. Let's go."

The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door, down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.

She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped her blouse and skirt.

He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away, her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"

"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."

The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc., were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the CPA had once again functioned properly.

The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"

"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything wrong."

"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in the WSDA!"

Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in those new techniques.

The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my rank if you were convicted of—"

"Do I have to make you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced toward the girl.

"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey! Stop it!"

Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body, and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.

The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it. There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed in on him.

When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."

He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.

Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men to high political positions were women.

Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly, likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.

"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.

"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"

"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted rape. I confess."

Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys. You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in alleys!"

Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of machines on the walls, "Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you." And then the girl's voice, "Sorry, buddy. Can't help—"

He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."

Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."

Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime. Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly once again. That meant the CPA had once again prevented crime, and the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt to prevent crimes by punishment. If it did, that would be a violation of the New Civil Rights.

Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.

When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before. And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a DCT First Class.

"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know what that means?"

Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face. "That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers. You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently at Walt's Tavern.

"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone, so they can be the first ones to yell 'Police!' They'll watch you because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they