The Big Con (14 page)

“I have just had word from the bank that there are no funds to back this check,” says he. “Which one of you men is Mr. Meade?”

“I am,” says Meade. “Mr. Duff said that arrangements had been made here for us to have credit if we needed it.”

“I know he did, but a hundred-thousand-dollar check is a pretty large one to put through without any account in the bank. I had no idea you wanted time on a check that large.”

Then he turns to the cashier and puts him on the carpet for having accepted such a large check. The cashier says he thought Mr. Duff had vouched for these men. The manager says that he did, but no amount was specified and that it was wrong to let them deposit a check for that amount. The cashier still has the money (or the check, as the case may be) in his hands to pay them off. Mr. Meade and Mr. Savage contend that they made the investment in good faith, and that they should have their profit. The manager agrees.

“I will hold this check for a short time,” says he. “And meanwhile your profits will be impounded in our vault. When you deposit $100,000 in the bank to take up the check, you will be paid. But we can’t hold it long. It is a bit irregular to hold it at all. I don’t mind telling you that it is only because Mr. Duff is vouching for you that we can do it.”

Mr. Savage raises the question of the $3,000 in cash. Couldn’t they be paid off on that part of the investment?

The manager looks at the receipt which Mr. Meade holds. “It is true,” he says, “that you invested $3,000 cash. But this is entered as a single purchase and must be settled for as such. It is now almost closing time, gentlemen. You must excuse me. Don’t let that matter of the check wait too long.”

“I think we can arrange to take care of it one way or another,” says Meade. “Just hold it here and give us a little time.”

They return to the hotel to await the return of Mr. Duff. Then they will give Mr. Savage the breakdown to find out how much he can really invest.

From this moment on the mark is tied up with the
roper, as in the pay-off. Next day Mr. Duff returns and is acquainted with the situation. He tries to help them discover a way to raise the necessary $100,000. They try frantically to scrape it all together. Mr. Savage can get $55,000. Mr. Meade sells some bonds for $20,000. He also borrows $12,000 more by wire from a brother in San Francisco. They now have $87,000. Where in the world will they turn up the other $13,000? Mr. Duff comes to their rescue. He will arrange to loan them that much in order to save their investment. He has treated them both like brothers through all this. Mr. Savage resolves to reward him with a handsome gift when this is all settled up.

Now the parallels to the pay-off continue. Mr. Savage is kept tied up until his money comes. The days of agony, sweat and worry follow. Time drags with leaden slowness. The money comes. Mr. Meade gets his also. Mr. Savage is taken to the bank and an account is opened for him. Mr. Duff not only makes everything smooth sailing through the bank but makes his word good and contributes $13,000 as he has promised.

They are requested, as in the pay-off, to bring the money to the brokerage to show that they could have paid had their stock gone down instead of up. They remove it from the bank. Meade is given the package. He shows it at the cashier’s window to be checked, as in the pay-off. Mr. Savage sees the fortune he has dreamed about for the past ten days suddenly within his grasp. The cashier is pushing out the packs of bills, sealed with little tan labels, to Meade, whose arms are full of them.

Suddenly Duff steps forward with a telegram. He speaks swiftly of its contents to Mr. Meade. It is an order to sell up to 20,000 shares of Gypsum Consolidated at 20½.

“You handle 11,000 of it and put up this money as security. I’ll take the rest. Between us we’ll clean up.”

Mr. Duff steps back to talk to Mr. Savage. He explains
how this stock is to be sold short on a tip, then bought in at a much lower price, and delivered at 20½. Mr. Savage sees a vast fortune developing. He speculates and figures. Mr. Meade turns about with the cashier’s receipt. Mr. Duff looks at it aghast.

“My God! man,” he roars. “You bought 11,000 shares. I meant for you to sell that block. Sell it short! Don’t you see this telegram?
Sell!
Now you’ve ruined us all ….”
*

The world reels for Mr. Savage. His house of cards has slithered down and buried him in the ruins. He vaguely hears Duff berating Meade in the strongest of language. Meade is begging and pleading. He says that Duff did not tell him to sell. He said that they could
handle
11,000 shares. He thought they were going to buy it. He turns to the manager, who has come over when the trouble starts.

All three start to talk at once. The customers form a knot about the three men. Finally Mr. Duff succeeds in making the manager understand what has happened. Meade, white-faced and tearful, begs the manager to countermand the order.

“I can’t possibly do that,” says the manager. “That order has already been ’phoned in to New York. Look at that board. Gypsum Consolidated has already begun to drop. The only thing you can do is to raise more margin, and raise it quickly if you want to save your investment. Look, there is Consolidated at 18⅜. What is that new quotation? 17¾. That stock is falling rapidly. Gentlemen, I’ll have to sell you out!”
†

Mr. Savage feels the numbness which comes with disaster. Somehow he and the insideman find themselves out on the street. Meade is beside them sniveling and
crying. Savage feels murder in his heart. He would like to tear that cringing, stupid Meade into shreds. Duff tries to drive Meade away; he follows them up the street. Duff becomes very abusive and Savage joins in. They head for the hotel.

At the desk Mr. Duff is given a telegram. They go up to the room. Duff pours Savage a good drink. “This has been a terrible blow,” he says. “A drink will straighten you up. Then we’ll think about how you can get that money back.”

The door opens and Meade comes swiftly in. He is pleading, begging, apologizing, weeping, howling. He has lost heavily. He is ruined. He wants just one more chance to recoup. Won’t Duff have pity on him and take him back for another deal tomorrow so that he won’t be penniless? Won’t Savage or Duff loan him a hundred dollars to live on until he can get on his feet? He is completely broke, and his poor brother will go bankrupt because his $12,000 is gone.

In this account it will be observed that Mr. Savage is being given only one play—the play for the “little block,” as the first big plunge is called. There are several methods of lining him up for the “big block,” or second play, provided the con men decide he is good for another play. For instance, when Duff and Savage return to the hotel after the swindle and Meade follows them crying, and begging to be forgiven for his mistake, Meade confesses that he lied during the “breakdown” when they were trying to raise the money. He says that he had more than $32,000, but that he was afraid to invest all of it. Now, however, he is convinced, and if Mr. Duff will let him in on another deal, he has $23,000 more which he is willing to put up in order that they can all make back what they have lost. Mr. Savage is called upon for his share on the second deal. Mr. Duff forgives Meade and agrees to help them recoup and so the second play is on.

However, in our version, Mr. Duff is firm. He denounces Meade mercilessly. He pushes him out of the door and bolts it from the inside. Then he turns to Savage.

“Look what they gave me downstairs,” says he, pulling out the telegram.

It reads:
WHAT TROUBLE DENVER? PROCEED LOS ANGELES FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS
.

“What does that mean?” asks Savage.

“It means that the big boys in New York know what has happened when that order to sell wasn’t carried out. Now all their manipulation is for nothing. And I think the brokers here are suspicious. I’ve got to go to Los Angeles and wait till they get another set-up ready for me to work on. You certainly have had a tough break. I think I can help you get some of that money back. You go right on to the Avocado Hotel in Los Angeles. I’ll follow you just as soon as I settle up some business here. You be very careful that Meade doesn’t follow you, for he may suspect that we will work together again. I’ll take you down to the eleven o’clock train and see that he doesn’t follow either of us. Now let’s get your things packed and get started.”

The same precautions regarding the police as those described under The Wire are taken here.

Mr. Savage is still in a daze. The faint glimmering of hope which he sees bolsters him up. He drags himself out of his chair and listlessly prepares to leave. He doesn’t quite know why he feels that he should follow Duff’s instructions, but he cannot think for himself. He is glad Duff is there to think for him. He packs and Duff sees him off, cheering him with many promises.

But Duff never shows up at Los Angeles. He writes Savage to proceed to San Francisco, as he has had trouble with the authorities at Los Angeles. Savage waits in San Francisco until further word comes. He is instructed to move to San Antonio. There he receives a telegram from
Galveston:
SYNDICATE BROKEN UP. EVERYTHING WENT BAD. SAILING SOUTH AMERICA TODAY.

Savage is broke. He is tired and discouraged. The weary road he has traveled, the strain and tension under which he has lived for the past three weeks, have left him almost a nervous wreck. He goes home to Dallas and takes up again the broken threads of his wholesale fruit business. But deep down in his heart he hopes that some day again he will find Duff, and together they will be able to make a fortune.

Another form of blow-off for handling recalcitrant marks is the “button.” If the mark gets out of hand, two burly detectives appear with a warrant for the insideman, who is charged with fraudulent stock manipulation (in the pay-off, with swindling the bookmakers). The manager accuses the mark and the roper of being accomplices to the swindle. The insideman admits his guilt but protests that they have nothing to do with it and talks the detectives into allowing his friends to go free. Then the insideman is led away while the roper cools the mark out and gets him to another city. However, neither the button nor the cackle-bladder is used extensively unless the mark really causes trouble, although Curley Carter, in his store in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, used the cackle-bladder almost exclusively. “It’s a lot easier to just plug the roper and watch the mark light a rag,” he laughed.

In treating these big-con games, the wire, the rag and the pay-off, composite illustrations have been used. That is, an ideal mark has been placed in an ideal situation so that the reader may see the games progress with few variations from the norm. This is done because no two marks are ever played in just the same manner. Both the roper and the insideman vary their techniques infinitely to suit the
situation. And the situation is determined by first, the mark—his intelligence, his interests, his business, and the amount of native larceny in his blood. Second, by the physical conditions under which he must be roped and played, where he must be taken, how long he must be held there, how closely his normal and natural movements will coincide with the movements which the con men desire him to make, conflicts, if any, between the demands of his ordinary business and the demands on his time made by the con game, the distance he must be sent for his money, the ease with which he can liquidate his property, and possible interference by outsiders such as members of his family, bankers, attorneys, etc. Third, the relations with the law maintained by the con men in the city where the store is located. The final decision as to how the mark is to be played rests with the insideman; even with the detailed information (based on careful study of the mark over a period of several days) brought in by the roper, the insideman is frequently forced to vary his play considerably as he goes along, depending upon his wide experience and his acutely developed “grift sense” to guide him.

Whenever a mark objects at any stage of the game, his arguments are met immediately by one or the other of the con men; for instance, if, after the convincers, the mark wants to back out, the roper professes to be so thoroughly convinced that he offers to sign an agreement by which he will buy out the mark’s interest in the deal for a liberal consideration; usually, after one of these “chills” the mark comes back into the deal with greater confidence than he has ever had before. Any one play may involve a great number of deviations of this sort, impossible to include in a written version of the game because it is impossible to determine where any given mark may balk, and it is even more difficult to foresee how the con men might
meet his objections. Hence, it seems much better here to present an hypothetical case that the reader may not be lost in a maze of details.

Big-time confidence games are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast
except the mark
knows his part perfectly. The insideman is the star of the cast; while the minor participants are competent actors and can learn their lines perfectly, they must look to the insideman for their cues; he must be not only a fine actor, but a playwright extempore as well. And he must be able to retain the confidence of an intelligent man even after that man has been swindled at his hands.

The reader may be able to get a better view of the situation if he will imagine for a moment what would happen if, say, fifteen of his friends decided to play a prank on him. They get together without his knowledge and write the script for a play which will last for an entire week. There are parts for all of them. The victim of the prank is isolated from everyone except the friends who have parts. His every probable reaction has been calculated in advance and the script prepared to meet these reactions. Furthermore, this drama is motivated by some fundamental weakness of the victim—liquor, money, women, or even some harmless personal crotchet. The victim is forced to go along with the play, speaking approximately the lines which are demanded of him; they spring unconsciously to his lips. He has no choice but to go along, because most of the probable objections that he can raise have been charted and logical reactions to them have been provided in the script. Very shortly the victim’s feet are quite off the ground. He is living in a play-world which he cannot distinguish from the real world. His natural but latent motives are called forth in perfectly contrived situations; actions which, under other circumstances, he would never perform seem natural and logical. He is living in a fantastic, grotesque world which
resembles the real one so closely that he cannot distinguish the difference. He is the victim of a confidence game.