Undercover: Not a Very Good Painter

Tom: I don’t ever know what danger I might be in, but I was a painter in one case, and we were playing poker that night, and I got this money out and a gas ticket — I had unlimited gas with these special tickets — a fellow at the table saw when I pulled out my billfold to get some money. One of them said “what’s that?” I said “oh, that’s something they gave me when they sent me out of the Army, but they gave me that so I could get to wherever I was going but I haven’t had to use it.” And that didn’t go over too great.

And his buddy, his partner, he went to me and said “he’s got a problem about that gas card.” I said “what is it?” He said — a big ol’ brawny fellow — he said “he said we ought to take you out in the woods, and get a stick and beat the truth out of you.” He said “I want to know if you’re an FBI agent,” and I said “well, I can tell you very honestly that I am not an FBI agent,” and I said “there’s no harm to anybody, and even if I was I can’t see you doing any wrong.”

So they decided not to do that.

And as a painter, these fellows paint, paint, paint. They’d leave me and I was way back here trying to keep up, then one of them, he’d go back and he’d paint back and catch me up then walk back up. So the foreman, he said “we’re not going to be able to use you, you’re not a good enough painter.” So I said “well, alright.”

So I went to the owner of the paint company, and I said “I’m going to tell you something that could get me in a lot of trouble if you mention it.” So I told him why I was there, and he said “that’s alright, as far as it goes I won’t say a word but I’ll give you an assignment that you can handle.” So I stayed there until I decided what the results was and I quit.

I was to mix with them and see if — truth was, what caused it, this fellow drove a big huge Lincoln, and a painter driving the biggest deluxe Lincoln brings a lot of questions. So I got friendly enough with him and I said “why you driving with such a big car anyway?” He said “well, you know the gas conditions, and I had a Chevrolet. This fellow had this big Lincoln just drinking gas and he said ‘I’ll trade with you even,’ so we traded even my little Chevrolet for his big car because it drank too much gas,” and that’s the way he got it. So I ended my story back at the office on that.