The Big Con (4 page)

Buck Boatwright, who had this type of store in Joplin, Missouri, Webb City, Missouri, and Galena, Kansas, around 1900, made several innovations in the fight store and raised it to a high peak of perfection. Buck introduced the idea, later used in the pay-off, of furnishing the mark with part of the money for the play; his outsideman
carried the millionaire’s money in a satchel and, with the insideman (Buck) calling for bets, the outsideman would slip several hundred dollars out of the satchel and surreptitiously give them to the mark so that he could start by placing that much of a bet. This was important, for it “tightened up” the mark and made him ripe to be put on the send for more money. Buck also made some use of shills, who bet on the millionaire’s fighter with money which Buck furnished; the mark was thus impressed with the amount of money he would win when the fight was over, and would raise his own bet as high as possible—another principle which was later used in the pay-off. Boatwright placed all this money in a small safe which stood against the wall and the mark was impressed with the sheaves of greenbacks he saw being stored therein—not knowing, of course, that the safe had a door in the back from which the money was removed by an assistant in the next room who handed it to another shill to bet. This device was later to become one of the strongest elements in the modern big store.

Wrestle stores and foot-race stores worked on the same general principle as the fight store, with foot racers or wrestlers taking the place of the prize fighters. The stores were quite crude at first and $5,000 was regarded as a “banner score.” However, technique rapidly improved and stores spread over the country, prominent ones, in addition to those operated by Ben Marks and Buck Boatwright, doing quite a business and breaking the ground for the big-time games to come. One of the biggest of these early stores was opened in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1902, by Eddie Spears and George Ryan, who did their own fixing. Most of their scores were taken on the fight or foot-race racket. A short time later this store came to grief. At about the same time (1902) Byron Haynes of Colorado Springs opened up a fight and foot-race store which operated for some time. George Ryan also roped
for this store, and it fell to his lot to rope the first really lucrative mark ever taken into a fight store. The score was $50,000 and caused a sensation in the underworld. The mark beefed, but the fix was secure and there were no serious repercussions. In Springfield, Illinois, the Keystone Kid operated fight, wrestle, and foot-race stores. In Scranton, Pa., the Narrow Gage Kid and Pretty Billy, both from Chicago, opened a fight store and did their own fixing. It enjoyed its greatest prosperity from 1906 to 1908. Later the Narrow Gage Kid opened his own fight store in Philadelphia with. Tim O’Leary doing his fixing for him. In 1911, Gad Bryan and his partner, Jim O’Hara, later owners of the Bowie Race Track, opened up a fight store in the old Junction House in Baltimore. They did their own fixing.

The store for the early con games was a crude arrangement. Usually it consisted only of some place (often a saloon or a room off a saloon) in which to play the mark, and a private ring in which the “fights” took place. The mark was taken on the strength of the “con” which the roper “threw into him” and on the sight of the bag full of money which he had seen the millionaire bet on his fighter. Since he wanted to trim the millionaire rather than the store, as he does in the present-day big-con games, little attempt was made to build up the atmosphere of the store; in this respect the fight store remained similar to the older mitt and monte stores.

The fight store and its prototypes flourished prosperously for about fifteen years, then waned in popularity in favor of the modern big-con games which had meanwhile been developed. But the fight game was really a big-con game in principle. It offered the victim an opportunity to make money by swindling someone else; it displayed large sums of money to arouse his cupidity; it employed shills to stimulate his gambling instincts; it had an excellent device for fleecing him and sending him on his way; and
the scores were phenomenally large for that time. Confidence men discovered that, as in modern big-con games, the fix was frequently too delicate to be handled by a saloon keeper and consequently was negotiated directly by the proprietor of the fight store. But the games lacked subtlety. The proposition it offered to the sucker was too bare-faced a swindle. The store was not mobile like the modern big stores; it could not be knocked down and concealed between plays. And when prize fights became legal, the appeal to the average sucker decreased. By 1915 the game had practically disappeared and the big-con games had replaced it. But the principle was sound and even today an occasional touch is taken off with it.

There were no clean breaks between the short-con games and the fight store, and in turn between the fight game and the modern big-con games, but rather they overlapped one another, with the fight stores constituting an intermediary stage between the short-con and the big-con games. Let us return briefly to the turn of the century for the origins of the present-day confidence games, of which there are three: the wire, the rag and the pay-off.

The wire, the first of the big-con games, was invented just prior to 1900. It was a racing swindle in which the con men convinced the victim that with the connivance of a corrupt Western Union official they could delay the race results long enough for him to place a bet after the race had been run, but before the bookmakers received the results. For this game two fake set-ups were used. The first was a Western Union office, complete with operators, telegraph instruments, clerks and a “manager”; some mobs economized by sneaking in and using real Western Union offices until the company put a stop to it. The second, where the actual play took place, was a horse-poolroom
with all the paraphernalia which would naturally be used in such a place—a ticker or telegraph instrument, tables and chairs, a large odds-board on which results were chalked, a cigar counter, a bookmaker, etc., and a staff of shills who won and lost large sums of cash to stimulate the victim’s desire for easy money.

The pay-off, another form of racing swindle, followed in 1906. In this swindle the victim is permitted to share in the illicit profits presumably taken by operators who are fleecing gambling clubs by means of fixed races. The victim first bets with money furnished by the con men, is then sent home for a large sum of money, and is fleeced. In the pay-off, the store is either a horse-poolroom as in the wire or, usually, a more luxurious club, elaborately furnished with impressive appointments. Of course, a large number of telephones, wired so that they can be rung at will from a concealed switch, are always a part of the set-up. The ever-present blackboard is there, too, with a board-marker who wears headphones which are supposed to be wired directly to the “track service” which all bookmakers get. These phones are sometimes attached to a loop which slides on a wire overhead, so that the marker can move rapidly about, at the same time continuing to receive the race results. The atmosphere created is one of reckless plunging and betting, and the store makes a most effective stage upon which to enact the play.

The rag developed shortly after the invention of the pay-off, when con men found that the principle of this game could be applied to stocks and convinced the victim that the insideman of the mob was the confidential agent of a powerful Wall Street syndicate which was breaking the small branch exchanges and bucket shops by manipulating the stock prices on the New York Exchange. Their agent buys or sells according to their instructions and of course has a sure thing. As in the pay-off, the initial investments for the victim are made with money furnished
by the operators, then he is “put on the send” for a large amount, and fleeced. For the rag the store depicts a broker’s office complete with tickers, phone service, brokers, clerks and customers. The same board which did duty for the races is often turned over to reveal a set-up for recording stock prices. The board-marker performs in an identical manner, except that he chalks up changes in stock prices instead of race results. Charley Gondorff, at the height of the rag swindle in New York City, made use of a legitimate broker’s office on the second floor of a prominent mid-town hotel after hours for his big store. Most mobs, however, set up their own brokerage establishments.

Although today the best con men prefer to use a store, occasionally, under certain pressing circumstances, they play the mark without one. This is called “playing a man against the wall.” The mark, who never sees a store, is kept in a hotel room while the con men bring him his winnings from the investments they claim to have made for him in the gambling club or brokerage. Naturally, this form of the swindle is hardly as effective as exposing the mark to the suggestive influences and the impressive demonstration of the store. But many a mark has been swindled that way. For instance, Frank Norfleet, a Texas rancher, was swindled twice in rapid succession for a total of $45,000 and never saw anything but the exterior of the Fort Worth Cotton Exchange after dark and the lobby of a legitimate broker’s office in the Dallas Cotton Exchange Building where the con men claimed they were dealing.

When the big-con games came in, out went the more primitive stores which sufficed for the mitt, monte and fight games, the bare rooms sparsely furnished with a few chairs and a table. The store was now a much more pretentious institution where men high in the social and financial world could be played for scores which ran into
the hundreds of thousands of dollars, a prosperous establishment which was well calculated to arouse the larceny in the soul of the mark once he saw it in action. The roper no longer connived with the mark to swindle the insideman, but all three conspired to beat the store. The most effective swindling device which man has ever invented was now in the hands of the confidence men.

But a big store will never beat a mark; it will not take off a score by itself. It is effective only when it is manned by good professionals, and when the props and personnel are used most strategically. Little by little, con men discovered which parts they could fill best; some showed special talents which they developed and perfected to a truly remarkable degree. Division of labor increased and, in direct proportion, specialization became essential. The post of manager developed and some managers, like Willie Loftus (the Sleepy Kid) became real experts in stagecraft and direction. The shills were no longer mere local boys who got a dollar or two for putting up fake bets on a prize fight; they were skilled professionals, good actors and competent con men in their own right, the backbone of any successful store. The size of the touches increased until most good con men have, at one time or another, helped to take off at least one that ran into six figures. Thus the crude and unpretentious store originated by Ben Marks grew to assume a great importance; it became the big store of modern times, owned and financed by the insideman, set up and operated by a manager under the insideman’s direction, protected by powerful politicians, and supplied with victims by a corps of expert ropers who scoured the country for wealthy men who liked the “best of it.”

While many grifters before the advent of the big-con games had been actors of a sort and certain grifting teams had learned to complement one another’s little acts in order to obtain the desired reactions from the victim,
there was no organization, little division of labor, and much lost motion. The invention of the big store reduced all big-con games to a broadly conventionalized pattern—leaving ample room for individual variations from the pattern to take care of individual idiosyncrasies among marks and to give grifters an opportunity to develop individual techniques—while at the same time it provided a standardized background against which certain methods, perfected by trial and error, were known to be successful. Specialization made for maximum efficiency; histrionic abilities were cultivated with the support of costume, stage setting, and rehearsal; the efforts of all participants were synchronized with the result that the size of scores increased precipitously and losses were reduced to an absolute minimum. In other words, con men, following trends current in the legitimate world, have employed techniques very similar to those used by big business in order to make mass production effective.

By 1898 the wire had started in New York. Christ Tracy, a fine insideman, opened up the first of the big stores there in that year. His phenomenal success soon became known; the big store was “dynamite.” By 1900 Charley Gondorff, John Henry Strosnider, 102nd St. George, Limehouse Chappie and Larry the Lug had all come to the big city and set up stores of their own, each with its own manager, ropers, shills, etc. These men were the best in their profession, destined to remain in business for many years and to take off a high proportion of large scores. A host of fly-by-night places came and went, but few of them ever enjoyed either the prestige or the success that these insidemen brought to their stores. The pay-off and the rag followed rapidly and both are still played there.

Chicago, long a center for short-con activities and ridden with short-con men, gamblers, fight-store men and thieves, swung over to the big con very easily. In 1902 Jim
the Rooter opened the first wire store in that city. He was followed by Ora Cornell in the same year. Limehouse Chappie moved his store from New York in 1910 or thereabouts and Barney the Patch, who had John Henry Strosnider doing the playing for him, opened a successful store at the same time. The Yellow Kid Weil also began operations at about this time. These men played the inside for literally hundreds of good ropers who brought well-to-do farmers, merchants and bankers into Chicago. When the pay-off developed, these men all adopted the new game and left the wire for any second-raters who cared for it.

When the pay-off was invented in 1906, the first store for that game appeared in the same year in Seattle, Washington. It was owned and operated by Hazel, Abbot and MacSherry, the last-named later becoming a famous insideman. The second store, manned by the same crew, opened a year later in Oakland, California. This was followed by a store operated by Kent Marshall in San Francisco where Golden Gate Mike handled the fix, which was now becoming a problem. The next store appeared in Spokane, Washington, the next in Salt Lake City. By this time the news of the strength of the pay-off had spread and stores were mushrooming all over the country.