Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins Page B

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    Perhaps the most astonishing characteristic of Plucky's criminal career is the ethics with which he practices it. His fees are more than fair: he seeks to make a living, not a killing. The times are not rare when a girl in trouble without adequate funds has had her surgery bill paid out of Plucky's own pocket. Lest he sound the altruist he is not, however, it should be disclosed that he usually required the girl to share a weekend with him inspecting ceilings in some modest hotel. While he is untainted by monetary greed it cannot be denied that he is a pig for pussy.
    There is more to say in Purcell's behalf. He does not escort women to abattoirs—he represents trained physicians who are skilled and compassionate and who wash their hands before and after. As for drugs, he carries a line of the most reliable marijuana and hashish. To a client whom he feels is sound enough to handle it, he also will sell LSD, mescaline, STP, DMT or psilocybin. He does not deal in hard narcotics or amphetamines. He does not tolerate those who do. When he meets pushers of smack and speed, as he does not infrequently in his profession, he attempts to convince them that it is a vile and murderous act to peddle chemicals which can ultimately only destroy their imbibers. If his pleas fail, he batters heads and breaks bones. That makes him unpopular with racketeers and police alike.
    Try as they might, neither the Mafia nor the police nor any combination thereof can win the respect of Plucky Purcell. It is possible that Plucky is narrow-minded where mobsters and cops are concerned. Possibly, he does not try to understand the reasons for their boorish manners, their mutual greed, their artless authority. Something in his nature has always been intolerant of authority, especially when it is violently imposed upon those who seem neither to need it nor want it—as is usually the case. Rash boy, his conscience does not even twitch when in his small-fry way he upsets the delicate symbiotic relationship between organized crime and organized crime-prevention. He is insensitive to the losses his prejudices have inflicted upon the international heroin cartel, the embarrassment his interference has caused the police. And as if to add insult to injury, he is always taking part in social protests, marching in demonstrations and otherwise exercising his moral and constitutional rights in a manner that cannot be helpful to the establishment, not the “legal” establishment or the “illegal” one. Thus, with officialdom he is less popular than a tough cut of beef. In fact, Purcell, long before Amanda and John Paul's marriage, had become so hot that he was obliged to spend four to six months each year outside of his chosen profession. During the cooling-off periods he would ship out as a merchant seaman, labor as a cowboy in Texas or Wyoming, enlist as a smoke jumper in Montana, fly crop-dusting duty in California (he has maintained his enthusiasm for flying and is a licensed pilot) or cut timber in the Great Northwest. While he shares Amanda's disdain for tree-exploiters, it is in the big woods that he feels safest. Logging keeps him in top physical shape, and the pure forest air sweetens his brain and his lungs.
    “If they really decide to do you in, all the trees in Washington and Oregon can't hide you,” a leading painter had warned.
    “Oh, man, I'm only a nuisance,” Plucky answered. “They won't get their Italian loafers muddy to slap a mosquito.” And cranking out his five-pound grin, he grabbed his calked boots and headed for tall timber.
    Bravado aside, however, Purcell would have to admit that Ziller's concern for him was not irrational. Amanda, after she had absorbed his background, joined her husband in his unease. Of course, as the reader might have surmised, neither Syndicate exterminator nor super narcotics sleuth reached Purcell in his hard-labor up-country hideaway. It was an event a bit more startling than a rub-out or arrest