BY NOW YOU should be able to tell me what he had for breakfast the day Kennedy got shot,” Loughman fumed. “What’s the holdup?”

     “No holdup,” Salzeger said. “I’ve got reams of stuff on him. What’d you wanna know?”

     Loughman looked at him like he ought to already know the answer to that one. 

     “We’ve got a convicted felon on more than forty counts of fraud who wants a presidential pardon. Does he have a history of deception? Does he fit the profile of a confidence man?”

     “The short answer,” Salzeger said, “is no and no.”

     “No what?” Loughman asked.

     “No priors,” Salzeger said. “No trouble in school -- if anything, just the opposite.”

     “Humor me,” Loughman invited.

     “On your command,” Salzeger said.

     “His dad was a minister. He was singing three-part harmony with his two older brothers in church every week since he was three.

     “He was sketching senior-college-level artwork in the fifth grade.

     “Volunteered for two different rescue squads one night apiece each week since he was fourteen throughout high school.

     “Junior class sergeant-at-arms.

     “Student association pastor.

     “Won the John Phillips Sousa award his senior year in band -- first chair trumpet.

     “Went on a full scholarship to band camp.

     “Hosted and frequently was the main speaker on a fifteen-minute radio program starting when he was fifteen called The Bible and Youth.

     “Was a Red Cross First Aid instructor at sixteen and an American Heart Association CPR instructor at seventeen.

     “In college he was, at various tines, DJ, music director, news director and station manager of WSRL, the student radio station, as well as being the news director for the thirty-thousand-watt FM, NPR affiliate, WAUS-FM.

     “Had two feeds accepted by NPR that aired nationally.

     “Was editor of the university’s weekly student newspaper with a staff of seventeen. They put out four special editions that year.

     “Preached at local churches to earn his required religion credits for four years in a row.

     “Aced FORTRAN IV in college his freshmen year -- didn’t miss a single point on any test, quiz or assignment.

     “Was hired by his church’s world headquarters just outside of Washington D.C. to work in their Communications Department -- writing, editing, producing three weekly radio shows and running the darkroom.

     “Started his own typesetting and graphics shop in Maryland. The guy types 147 words a minute.

     “Expanded his business to include computer consulting. Clients included Boeing Computers, British Aerospace, Blue Cross of California and MetLife of California.

     “Developed a health-heart-age appraisal program for Loma Linda University that got more than ten thousand calls a day for its first week of operation in the D.C. market.

     “Programmed 3M’s word processor, the Linolex, to sort five thousand names and addresses -- both by last name and by zip code -- in less than three seconds using eight-inch floppy disks. This, on a computer with only 4K of active memory … 3M’s own software sorted the same list by name only in seventy-two hours.

     Designed and implemented a program to run Action Courier, a million-dollar-a-year Rosslyn, Virginia courier company, using PCs that that outperformed the competition’s Texas Instruments minicomputer. Action Courier licensed copies of this software for $20,000-$50,000 a copy.

     “Built an outdoor movable message sign with 1,640 light bulbs from scratch using an Apple ][ computer game socket to drive it at a total cost of $15,000. Commercial equivalents were selling for five times that.

     “Moved to Kauai just before Hurricane Iniki hit to teach high school -- pre-algebra, computer programming, music and substitute taught biology -- both in private and public schools.

     “Developed a phone-secretary system called SuperPhone during the year following Iniki. The system had more features and ran more smoothly than MCI’s equivalent.

     “Developed Homework Hotline for Oahu. It recorded teachers’ assignments for students and parents to listen to each evening at twenty-seven schools throughout the island.

     “Directed a small Japanese Christian church choir for six years.

     “Acted in South Pacific two nights a week for more than three years to audiences of up to three hundred who paid 

$85 apiece for dinner and the show.

     “Starred in the made-for-TV movie called Supergator with Kelly McGillis, which aired several times on the Sci-Fi channel.

     “Taught Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, HTML, and Photoshop for Work Force Development for several years on Kauai.

     “Developed the largest language-learning system on the Internet -- six languages with more than 17,000 lessons in each language -- English, Spanish, Japanese, Thai, Mandarin and Vietnamese.

     “Started trading stock options on Ameritrade in September of 2004--”

     “Enough, already.” Loughman held up his hands in an I-give-up gesture.