The Big Con (17 page)

Without raising the fundamental problem of the pot and the kettle, it can be reliably said that this attitude among con men is universal and that this almost childish insistence upon dealing with an honest man gets very gratifying results. Thus the mark’s ego is flattered at the start, while at the same time he feels a sense of security in the deal because he is convinced that the men he deals with trust and admire him for his honesty. And once a man admits complete and unshakable faith in his own integrity, he is in an excellent frame of mind to be approached by con men. The larceny begins to percolate ever so gently, and by the time it reaches the boiling point, he is helpless to cope with it—even assuming that he sincerely wishes to do so. Often his rationalization mechanisms are so perfectly developed that he never admits, even to himself, that he is fundamentally dishonest.

Many con men feel that marks have one characteristic in common—they are all liars. Whether this is true or not, I have no way of knowing first-hand, but we may assume that, if anyone is capable of giving expert testimony on this point, con men are, since lying is their profession. It is the consensus of opinion among many operators that marks usually lie about how much money they have, what kind of investments they make, how aristocratic their family connections are, and how good they are to their wives and families. Many marks love to dwell on the magnitude of their sexual adventures. These topics might be said to be universal, or almost so, as prevaricatory grist to the mill of most marks. The breadth of variation from these norms is limited only by the ingenuity of the mark and the daring with which he chooses to navigate the uncharted seas of the imagination. Individual
forays into fabrication may be amusing or spectacular, but they hardly contribute to the general picture. This tendency of marks to fourflush is, in the end, helpful to the con men. If marks were not so anxious to impress strangers, they would keep their bank accounts intact much longer.

The mark may usually be counted upon to lie (if only by omission) about the way in which he was swindled. This type of dissimulation, of course, takes place when the mark is telling his troubles to newspapermen, the police, or his family. It may be explained in two ways, either of which may be justifiable. First, he may feel that he must protect himself against publicly displaying his own chicanery; that is, he must carefully conceal that fact for business, social or purely egotistic reasons. No con man would hold a mark in contempt for this sort of protective lying. Second, a mark often does not understand exactly how he was swindled, and feels called upon to explain in some logical fashion, both to himself and to others, how he happened to lose so much money. So he fabricates the parts which are not clear to him and builds up a story which he himself comes to believe. This is regarded by con men as natural and looked upon indulgently. But sometimes a mark shows singular daring and originality. He denies he has been swindled, or never mentions the fact; then he swears out a warrant for the con men charging armed robbery, and tells a story which convinces the prosecutor and the grand jury. This is known as a “bum rap” and is contrary to all established canons of lying; it is looked upon by con men in much the same light as a fly-fisherman regards dynamiting fish.

Con men do not assume that fundamental dishonesty is universal in human nature. Any one of a number of simple tests will reveal to the grifter how well his prospect likes “the best of it” and enable him to judge the strength of this motive with uncanny accuracy.

Sometimes he finds otherwise promising prospects whose concepts of honesty and dishonesty are very clearly defined; these men refuse to respond to the lure because their own consciences speak in a still small voice—and they harken. Most con men have met this kind of man, and few of them show any tendency to ridicule him—their only feeling is one of being baffled because the man cannot be beaten. The Big Alabama Kid, proprietor of some of the most successful stores in Alabama and Florida during the most prosperous days of the big-con games, has this to say about honest marks: “Yes, I have seen men who were too honest to have anything to do with the pay-off, and most of them were the nicest men I’ve ever met. And they weren’t knockers, either. You could say to them, ‘Just don’t say anything about this,’ and their word was good. Just really folks.”

This sentiment is echoed, often in almost identical phrases, by experienced con men. Truly, “you can’t beat an honest man.”

But we must remember that, first of all, marks are human beings. As such, their reactions to being swindled are unpredictable, though they do fall into something of a pattern and con men depend upon their “grift-sense” to tell them roughly what those reactions will be. For instance, a mark who is hard to hook frequently exhibits a bulldog tenacity and, once he has taken the hook, can be played for all he has; on the other hand, a mark who is very easily led into a con game may “blow up” before the play has gone far. An “easy mark” sometimes lets his emotions get the better of him and, forgetting himself, sympathizes with the poor roper who has to face the insideman’s wrath when the mark is fleeced. Marks who immediately start to cry and complain are easy to handle. Some get violent immediately; some do foolish or ridiculous things. “I remember a redheaded fellow we beat in a Chicago hotel,” recalls John Henry Strosnider. “He went
haywire in the lobby after we cleaned him on the wire. I remember he had a little red stash, and he pulled it all out a few hairs at a time when he blew his chunk.” Some marks are tough and can cause plenty of trouble if they get out of hand. Some are well-bred and take their medicine like men. Laughing marks are usually considered the most dangerous; and there is an iron-clad maxim current among big-con men: “Never beat a mark when he is drunk.”

Some marks are mean, grasping and cunning. Just as soon as the insideman tells them the tale, they begin to scheme and connive for a way by which the roper can be done out of his share in the profits, or squeezed out of the deal entirely. Of course, there are really no profits—except what the mark ultimately furnishes—but con men feel that the mark’s attitude toward these hypothetical and never-to-be realized profits is justification for a good and proper skinning. In their eyes he is just as much a “tear-off rat” as if he were holding out on actual cash. “Grifters get a kick out of trimming a fink like that,” said one con man. “But,” he added, “on the other hand, some marks are fine fellows and it is a shame to trim them.”

“That’s exactly right,” said John Henry Strosnider, who, in his thirty-odd years of playing the inside on all rackets, had ample opportunity to study marks first-hand. “Why, some marks are the finest men you would want to meet, and I have heard grifters say, ‘It was hard to beat a good man like him, as he was no beefer, and when he blew his cush, he just laughed it off and said it might have been worse. And all the time he knew he had been trimmed ….’”

Many con men have fleeced marks who remained good fellows throughout the entire procedure, men whose good nature and restraint seemed inexhaustible.

Once in Shreveport, Louisiana, a con mob made up of Johnny Tolbert, Jerry Mugivan, and others trimmed a
Dutchman named Palmy Rinky on a con game. Palmy had a large saloon just across the street from the police station, and was well connected locally. Sometime later the con men were back in Shreveport beating a gambling house from the outside. They had just collected $3,000 of checks when the management was tipped off. “Stop the play,” said the dealer. “These men are cheaters.” The house refused to cash the checks. The con men found themselves outside. Two detectives immediately picked them up. They knew that the gambling house operated under very powerful local protection, and it looked bad. Then, too, they remembered the Palmy Rinky business. As the con men were being arraigned, who should come into the police court but Palmy. Their hearts sank. But Palmy had a big smile on his face. He was immediately pleased that the con men had taken the gamblers. “I lost my money and didn’t squawk,” he said, “why can’t they do the same?” Then he used his influence to have the con men freed and, with the aid of the local fixers, he persuaded the gambling house to cash in the $3,000 in checks. Forever afterward those con men had a warm spot in their hearts for Palmy.

Suspicious marks are not unusual; in fact all marks are suspicious at first, but once they fall under the spell of the con men, and once they become fascinated by the play in the big store, most of their suspicions are laid. “Marks don’t often get suspicious, or if they do, they get suspicious of details that really don’t matter,” said Claude King. “When they have a good insideman telling them the merits of the send, and how their paper will be handled by the insideman, who always knows what’s best to do, they follow his advice. An insideman is like your mother. Mother knows best ….”

Maybe all insidemen do not have the natural touch which Claude King cultivated. At any rate, the mark’s suspicions are not always so easily allayed. The roper
really bears the brunt of the mark’s suspicions while he is tied up; it is during this period that the “sucker feel-out” reaches its peak. The poor roper must be prepared to be awakened from a sound sleep at any moment during the night by some startling question, and promptly invent an answer to it.

In this connection there is a tale told of a crotchety old mark whom Red Lager once had tied up in a hotel in Havana. Frank MacSherry, who was playing the inside, gave the mark the customary instructions to watch the roper so that he could not get out and talk about the deal. Red tried putting on a little play with the mark, pleading all sorts of excuses to get out, but the mark stood pat. As soon as the mark’s money came, Red made the “mistake” which cost the old man $75,000. After the roper had gone, the mark looked ruefully at MacSherry and wailed, “Now I wish I’d let him go out. Maybe a car would have hit him and then we would have saved our money. Even if he did talk, you and I could have gone somewhere else and put over the deal. But things happen that way when you’ve got an airtight thing. I know, because it happened to me right here in Havana! It made a difference to me of about $200,000 just because I wouldn’t let that flighty guy out of the room for a week.”

But not all marks are so easily quieted. Some grow restive and take precipitous leave without further ado. “Any mark might get a brain-blow,” said Jackie French, “and take a powder any time. You just can’t do anything about it. He just blows—a message from Heaven.”

Mean and vicious marks are sometimes encountered. There are instances of marks who went so far as to plot with one con man against the life of another for profit. Eddie Mines, perhaps one of the best ropers for the tip who ever lived, once found himself in such a situation. Eddie, a kindly, dignified man, interviewed a real-estate man in St. Louis and told him the tale. He was traveling,
he said, with the scapegrace son of a very dear friend. The young man had just inherited half a million dollars in securities from his father and was rapidly dissipating the estate. In fact, he was carrying at the time more than $200,000 in a money belt. He was a fool for gambling and the roper feared that his charge (played by Johnny on the Spot) would run through his fortune before he could persuade him to invest it soundly. Eddie sought the real-estate broker’s aid in getting some of this money into property. The real-estate man was impressed; he became more than co-operative.

“I have a big farm away up in the country,” he told Eddie. “Let’s bump him off, and split the two hundred thousand. We can bury him on this farm and no one will ever know what happened to him.”

Eddie talked this proposal over with Johnny and their moral indignation was aroused to such an extent that they trimmed their mark unmercifully.

It is only natural to expect that some marks become incensed when they learn that they have been swindled and try to kill or injure the con men, although it is very seldom that any mark actually hurts a con man. Nevertheless, because this is always a possibility, a con man always guards himself as best he can. His greatest danger threatens from other underworld characters. For instance, it is rumored that a well known East Coast gambler tried to have Stewart Donnelly put on the spot for swindling him of $38,000. He hired Legs Diamond to have the killing done, but Diamond was a friend of Donnelly and prevented the execution. On the whole, however, con men show little fear of physical violence from the marks they trim.

Some con men have observed that marks respond to con games differently according to nationality, with well-to-do American businessmen being the easiest. “Give me an American businessman every time,” declared one of
the most successful of the present generation of ropers, “preferably an elderly executive. He has been telling other people what to do for so long that he knows he can’t be wrong.” Perhaps it naturally follows that, if a mark has made money in a speculative business, his acquisitive instincts will lead him naturally into a confidence game; in the light of his past experience and his own philosophy of profit, it is a natural and normal way of increasing his wealth; to him, money is of value primarily for the purpose of making more.

“All Latin races like the best of it,” says Limehouse Chappie, distinguished British con man working both sides of the Atlantic and the steamship lines between all with equal ease, “but when they lose their dust, they lose it the hard way and are hard to cool out. They get highly excited when they blow, and it takes a good man to see that they are cooled out properly.”

The large number of Britishers and Canadians who are swindled on big-con games in America would seem to indicate that the Latins are not alone in liking the “best of it.” “People of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian extraction have always been easy for me,” said Plunk Drucker, one of the Postal Kid’s best ropers. “Germans and Swedes are easy. Irish are hard to beat, and, boy, how they can beef! For my part, give me an Englishman, and you can have all the rest. Our dear country cousin just blows his money like the gentleman he is supposed to be. An Englishman is so different from other marks that there is no comparison. He just takes hold with that bulldog tenacity and holds on—until he is trimmed good and proper.”