* mark n. An easy victim; a ready subject for the
practices of a confidence man, thief, beggar, etc.; a
sucker.-Dictionary of American Slang, Thomas Y. Crowell
Co., 1960That's the long definition of a mark. But there's
a shorter one. It goes: * mark n. Fred FitchWhat, you ask,
is a Fred Fitch? Well, for one thing, Fred Fitch is the
man with the most extensive collection of fake receipts,
phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets
in the Western Hemisphere, and possibly in the entire
world. For another thing, Fred Fitch may be the only New
York City resident in the twentieth century to buy a money
machine. When Barnum said, "There's one born every minute,
and two to take him," he didn't know about Fred Fitch;
when Fred Fitch was born, there were two million to take
him. Every itinerant grifter, hypester, bunk artist, short-
conner, amuser, shearer, short-changer, green-goods
worker, pennyweighter, ring dropper, and yentzer to hit
New York City considers his trip incomplete until he's
also hit Fred Fitch. He's sort of the con-man's version of
Go: Pass Fred Fitch, collect two hundred dollars, and move
on. What happens to Fred Fitch when his long-lost Uncle
Matt dies and leaves Fred three hundred thousand dollars
shouldn't happen to the ball in a pinball machine. Fred
Fitch with three hundred thousand dollars is like a mouse
with a sack of catnip: He's likely to attract the wrong
kind of attention. Add to this the fact that Uncle Matt
was murdered, by person or persons unknown, and that
someone now seems determined to murder Fred as well, mix
in two daffily charming beauties of totally different
types, and you have a perfect setup for the busiest
fictional hero since the well-known one-armed paperhanger.
As Fred Fitch careers across the New York City landscape-
and sometimes skyline-in his meetings with cops, con men,
beautiful girls, and (maybe) murderers, he takes on some
of the loonier aspects of a Dante without a Virgil. Take
one part comedy and one part suspense and shake well-
mostly with laughter.
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