PAT KENNEDY: His name was Chad. A good solid guy name. He wasn’t especially handsome or tall. His
suits often needed a good pressing. And
sometimes I thought he could use a bit of a wash since he seemed to sweat an
awful lot. But there was something so engaging about his smile and voice when
he told me about his adventurous life as a teenager and very young man. I’ve always been a sucker for voices. I fell for him.
Chad was my day-to-day contact on a client project. We spoke (that voice!) every day and chuckled
about the foibles of his boss (mine too – as she was the project leader on the
website we were producing). We were, as we used to say back in the 50s when I was
a girl, in cahoots.
Have I mentioned that he was 28 and I was more than twice
his age? No matter, we began to hang out
a bit – for coffee or lunch. It wasn’t a
romantic relationship at all. He loved
telling stories and I loved listening. I
was enchanted by his rough Western-ranch upbringing – the days and nights he
and his brother spent camping and foraging for themselves when miles from home.
(His parents owned a 100,000 acre spread in Wyoming.) No cell phones, no fast
food outlets, no comfy beds – just Chad, his brother Ben, their pickup truck, a
tent and a couple of bedrolls.
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| Rocky Mountain Horse by Rennett Stowe |
Chad was also an internationally known – and reigning USA
champion – ski-mobile racer. He held the
all-time record for a long distance race. Because he was in such demand to
appear at ski-mobile shows across the country, he was often not available for
meetings if they were on Monday mornings or Friday afternoons. I reported on our collaborative work to the
larger team, happy to help him out.
On occasion he’d cut out of a group meeting to get to Logan
Airport where a private plane was waiting to whisk him off to yet another ski
mobile event.
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| Snowmobile Racing by Joe Ross |
His father-in-law was a New York City banker. The father-in-law owned the private plane and
sponsored Chad’s ski-mobile team.
Are you beginning to be suspicious? I wasn’t.
It wasn’t until almost a year later when he was abruptly
fired that I found out that he was actually from Bettendorf, Iowa, had probably
never been on a ski mobile or in a private airplane and….. was the father of
three children (he told me once that his wife couldn’t have children and that
had broken his heart! Imagine denying
your children’s existence!). There’s
more but I’m too embarrassed to tell you how much nonsense that I believed.
I’ve always been fascinated by con artists like Clark
Rockefeller or Bernard Madoff– consummate story-tellers who so easily fool the
gullible with increasingly complicated and unlikely tales.
I have a theory that once one of these scoundrels engages
your attention, he/she builds your trust bit by bit seeing if you will fall for
yet another fanciful story or request. Like a good suspense novel is developed. If truly criminal, like Madoff, they use your gullible
trust to fleece/rape/maybe-even murder you.
Maybe that’s why Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is so gripping as a suspense novel. Tom Ripley is compelling and believable
whether he is plain Tom or dashing Dickie.
And then he murders without conscience or regret -- and continues on
telling his stories to his next victims.
Characters like Talented Tommy or Charming Chad are out
there just waiting to start talking.
They’re fascinating story tellers if you’re willing to listen. And they
make great characters in novels.
And so, my Jungle Red friends, will you admit to having been
conned? Did it cost you? Could you turn your experience into a
character in a novel? Would you dare?
Patricia Kennedy is a marketing consultant for healthcare organizations. She lives in Boston with her husband Joe, and visits Key West during the winter. For more information on Pat, click here.
