The Big Con (36 page)

Then, as a matter of establishing good faith, the mark is persuaded to put up $500 in cash. He goes to the bank and draws out the money. They open the handkerchief again, count the money, find everything intact, and tie it up again. The stranger takes the $500, puts it in the handkerchief, and instructs the mark to take the handkerchief full of money home, hide it under the mattress, and under no circumstances to open it until they are both
together. The mark takes it home and holds it until his curiosity or his cupidity, or both, get the better of him and opens the handkerchief—only to discover that the $1,000 has mysteriously been converted into newspaper clippings cut the same size as bills. The game takes its name from the argot word for the handkerchief used in the swindle, and the crucial point in the game is the “switch” by which the money is exchanged for the clippings, a sleight-of-hand trick which must be done with great dexterity. The mark, presumably an ignorant person, may be persuaded to yield up quite a sum in cash—often the savings of a lifetime. In many instances, superstition plays a large part in this game. Hardly a week passes that our American newspapers do not report a touch of this type somewhere in the country.

Three-card monte, too well known to occupy much space here, was once widely used by con men, many of whom got their start in the con rackets playing this very effective game. Since the present generation of big-timers do not use it, like the three-shell game, it has sunk to a rather low estate. One now sees it played only on the back-stretch of large race-tracks, at fairs, in New York City down along the Battery (sometimes played on a little boy’s back), and on trains carrying large holiday crowds. It is usually played “on the sneak”—that is, without protection.

The game itself is very simple, the important points being skilled manipulation of the cards and the cross-fire which goes with the play. The mob consists of an insideman, one or more outsidemen, and several shills or sticks who are local men and not a regular part of the mob; they are given money to play with and win or lose at the will of the insideman, who manipulates three cards
on a little board, picking them up deftly and throwing them face down on the board in any order he chooses. He invites the crowd to watch and offers to bet that no one can pick out the queen. The sticks come into play, making it look easy to do. The outsideman singles out a mark and whispers to him that they can beat this man at his own game; he offers to “crimp” or “put an ear” on the queen so that the mark cannot mistake the card he is betting on. So, under the pretense of examining the cards, the outsideman crimps the queen, winks at the mark, and the play goes on.

The mark does not see the insideman very cleverly remove the crimp which the outsideman put on the queen, then put a similar one on another card, an operation which cannot be detected with the eye; he bets on what he takes to be a sure-thing, only to find when the cards are turned up that he has lost. Of course, he has no recourse, for he lost while he was trying to fleece the insideman. Sometimes if he is good for an elaborate play, he is given quite a build-up, and then is allowed to win some small bets by this method before he is fleeced. Scores run from ten to fifty dollars, but pickings from the monte players these days are slim. When all circuses carried the grift, monte was played with the send and this arrangement was called the
big-joint.
In the old days when men like Canada Bill and Farmer Brown were operating monte stores very similar to the mitt stores, the game was a very lucrative one; there is still a saying among grifters, “He put a crimp in that card that Canada Bill couldn’t take out.” In Chicago alone Farmer Brown took off touches amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, taken largely from farmers and ranchers who came to Chicago. And there were scores of monte stores going full blast in all cities in the West, Midwest, and South until the World War, after which the game seemed to lose much of its popularity.

Many other games might be described, but they would hardly bear upon this account, for they are seldom if ever used by the big-con men. For a brief account of these short-con games, see the Glossary in the last chapter. It should be added that new short-con games are being invented every day and the best ones will doubtless be ultimately included in the repertoire of the big-con men. Perhaps here we should include one other—the “single-hand con.”

This is a simple and easy method for a competent professional to get a little cash if he is in need of it. He picks up an elderly man traveling alone, gets his confidence thoroughly, explains his embarrassed condition, and gets the old man to advance him some funds on a personal check. This is the only game used by big-con men in which the mark may be quite innocent of any cupidity. “Whenever I’m chicane,” comments one slick rascal, “I just step into the shed and borrow some nice old pappy’s bank roll on the single-hand con.”

It is a peculiar fact that every professional criminal group has its own language. This is true not only of the modern criminals who have streamlined crime and put it on a big-time basis, but also of professional criminals in all times and in all countries. Denizens of the Roman underworld seem to have had their argot. With the growth of cities in Europe, crime became a profession; by the time of the Renaissance, professional criminals appeared in hordes in all Continental cities. England had her share of them and from that time to the present the language of thieves and cut-purses (thieves’ language has been suggested as the origin of the word “slang”) has constituted an ever-vital source from which the literary language is enriched and freshened. But only an infinitesimal portion of the criminal argot of any age survives as a part of the literary language, for most of it perishes before it is written down.

Criminal argots are really artificial languages used by professionals for communication among themselves. The
professional criminal speaks one or more argots
in addition
to colloquial English. Each profession has its own argot, based on one or more of the several large systems of argot-formation which are at work in the American underworld. Intimately related professions usually have argots which are closely related; unrelated professions speak less similar argots. But all professional criminals speak at least one argot or lingo fluently—the argot of their own profession. It is a mark of professional affiliation, a union card, so to speak, which requires several years to acquire and which is difficult to counterfeit. Most criminals understand several argots other than their own and some, those with wide and varied experience, old-timers who have grown up with the rackets, speak and understand most of the professional argots.

Why do criminals speak a lingo? There are several reasons, perhaps the most widely accepted of which is that criminals must have a secret language in order to conceal their plans from their victims or from the police. In some instances it is undoubtedly used for this purpose—for instance, flat-jointers, three-card monte men, and other short-con workers sometimes use it to confuse or deceive their victims. But most professional criminals speak argot only among themselves; they are amused at the idea that crooks are supposed to deceive people with their lingo, for the mere fact that they speak argot in public would mark them as underworld characters whether or not they were understood. It is a fact that argots are unintelligible to the layman, but I think that we should not assume that this is a deliberate protective device invented by criminals; we might as well conclude that, because the professional lingo of railroaders, doctors, sailors or tobacco auctioneers is not readily understood by outsiders, it was created to deceive the public. The argot is inherent to the profession; secrecy is a very minor motive for its formation and use.

There are other much more important factors which govern the creation and use of argots. Criminal groups or
mobs
work outside the law and consequently count very little upon it for protection. There is a very strong sense of camaraderie among criminals, a highly developed group-solidarity, which is further increased by internal “organization” and by external pressures from both the upperworld and the predatory underworld. A common language helps to bind these groups together and gives expression to the strong fraternal spirit which prevails among them. This is true of the entire underworld, with the partial exception of prostitutes. On the other hand, each specific trade or profession develops a feeling of mutual exclusiveness among its members; this feeling springs from the fact that they are all criminals, that they have a commonalty of life-experience, that their training and backgrounds are somewhat similar, that they face identical mechanical problems which must be solved with somewhat similar tools and techniques, and that certain professional attitudes or “ethics” must be recognized if the mob is to prosper. Professional crime is in reality nothing more than a great variety of highly specialized trades; hence it is only natural that many of the same factors which operate among legitimate craftsmen should affect criminal speech. Especially in criminal professions, elements exist for which there are no words in the legitimate vocabulary; it is quite natural that criminals should coin or adapt words to meet these needs. It is, I think, significant, that the occasional criminal or the lone-wolf professional, however skillful he may be, usually has no knowledge of criminal argots unless he has at some time or other been connected with organized professional mobs.

Perhaps we have oversimplified in an attempt to generalize. Different attitudes toward argots prevail among different individuals and are markedly apparent among
different criminal groups. Pickpockets, for instance, are generally very talkative among themselves and like to use their argot in private; peter-gees (safe-blowers) are usually silent boys who have a very well-developed professional argot which they appear to dust off and use only on very special occasions; because the profession is dwindling, that argot seems on the road to extinction. Criminal narcotic addicts, in general shunned by other criminal groups, are extremely clannish and when they are together talk or
jive
incessantly in their own argot about the one subject which obsesses them—dope. Prostitutes have almost no argot of their own, but borrow freely from other professions. Grifters, and especially confidence men, like to talk and tell merry tales among themselves; in private they compensate for the fact that they must speak a conventional language while they are working by indulging in the excessive use of an argot which is very highly developed. In general all professionals share certain attitudes toward the lingo of their profession; they recognize it as an artificial language to be assumed or dropped at will; they have a certain professional pride in a fluent command of the lingo; they frequently judge strangers or outsiders by their use of the professional jargon; they restrict its use to their own group or to friends whom they trust.

Of all criminals, confidence men probably have the most extensive and colorful argot. They not only number among their ranks some of the most brilliant of professional criminals, but the minds of confidence men have a peculiar nimbleness which makes them particularly adept at coining and using argot. They derive a pleasure which is genuinely creative from toying with language. They love to talk and they have markedly original minds, minds which are singularly agile and which see and express rather grotesque relationships in terms of the flickering, vastly connotative metaphor which characterizes their argot.

The lingo of confidence men is one of the most extensive in the underworld. The large number of technical situations which arise in the course of confidence games make for a very complete technical vocabulary which covers many different types of game, the nature of the victims, standard situations within the games, etc. Con men are continually studying to improve their games, all of which make for a rapid enlargement of the technical vocabulary. Furthermore, the fact that con men are recruited largely from other branches of the grift means that they bring with them methods, techniques, and attitudes which require argot for expression; this fact also links the argot of con men closely with the general argot of the grift.

But con men, as contrasted to other professional criminals, have creative imagination. Their proclivity for coining and using argot extends much beyond the necessary technical vocabulary. They like to express all life-situations in argot, to give their sense of humor free play, to revolt against conventional language. Thus they have a large stock of words and idioms for expressing ideas connected with travel, love-making, the creature-comforts including food, drink, clothing, etc., recreation, money, people, the law, social relationships, etc. In fact, if con men find it necessary or convenient to discuss any topic for long, they will soon have an argot vocabulary pertaining to that particular subject. And one may rest assured that they will use good rich, roistering, ribald words which will radiate connotations for the initiate.