The Big Con (2 page)

The Big Con
may be the only one of Maurer’s books that can be read for purely literary value, but whether or not this is owed to a natural ability otherwise repressed in the interest of science, it flies along as if it had written itself. The language on display certainly must have had something to do with it—available vocabulary can lubricate a subject (or, alternatively, tie weights to its shoes and throw it into the river). But the jovial demeanor, linguistic invention, and casual hyperbole of the grift establish a natural rhythm that ties together accounts by retired con men, by police detectives, and by a linguist like Maurer all together into a common barstool chorus. And the slang is only part of it, although it’s hard to see how anyone could resist the joy of typing a sentence such as: “‘It’s a lot easier to just plug the roper and watch the
mark light a rag,’ he laughed.” Maurer’s informants can also sound a mythic note, straight from the frontier of Mike Fink: “‘At that time marks were so thick in Florida that you had to kick them out of your way.’” Of course the names themselves suggest an origin on the flatboats and in the lumber camps and along the railroad lines of an earlier America: The Square-Faced Kid, Slobbering Bob, The Hashhouse Kid, The High Ass Kid, The Indiana Wonder, Wildfire John, The Christ Kid. Throughout the narrative it is necessary to remind oneself that these various “kids” were distinguished-looking gentlemen in frock coats and homburgs and Vandyke beards. The Narrow-Gage Kid was so called because his “height was just the distance between the rails of a narrow-gage railway,” the Yenshee Kid because he chewed gum opium. (Maurer is wrong about Yellow Kid Weil, however, who derived his moniker not from the fact that he had peddled cheap watches but, according to his autobiography, from his fondness for the comic strip of the same name by R. F. Outcault.)

These grifters do emerge from American tradition, combining in their persons aspects of both the Yankee peddler and the backwoods trickster. The genre, furthermore, had been given its epic nearly a century earlier in Herman Melville’s famously “unreadable” novel
The Confidence Man: His Masquerade
(1857), apparently a parody of Plato’s
Republic
, in which the con artist keeps reappearing in different guises—land agent, herb doctor, charity supplicant, snake-oil butcher, etc.—aboard a Mississippi steamer. He later appears aboard other boats in the works of Mark Twain, notably as The King and The Duke in
Huckleberry Finn
, and continues making episodic appearances, as deathless as the Comte de Saint-Germain, throughout the course of American letters up to the present day. That
The Big Con
is nominally a work of popular sociology should not prevent it from numbering
among the landmarks of this serpentine traditional path. After all, a look around present-day American institutions should suffice to demonstrate that the character in question has now fully emerged from the underworld and entered the mainstream, where he may be far less colorful and imaginative, but no less on the grift.

This bit of journalism came into being in a rather curious fashion. It is really a by-product of linguistic research, in the course of which I have had to examine the backgrounds of many rackets. The impetus for it came from the half-humorous suggestion of a confidence man who was going through my files; the execution of it was made possible only by the co-operation of competent professionals.

The methods by which I collected my material were not in any way bizarre or unusual. I did not resort to false whiskers. I did not, like the author of a recent “exposé” of the arts of the professional gambler, feel it necessary to palm myself off as a detective. I did not try to join any mobs incognito. I simply talked to confidence men, who, little by little, supplied the necessary facts, facts which were not available in libraries or in police records, facts which could come only from the criminals themselves.

In the course of preparing the manuscript, it has
seemed advisable to suppress some material which might damage confidence men now operating and prominent individuals who have been victimized. Also, upon advice of attorney, I have omitted the names of some high police officials and politicians who act as fixers for criminals, and have attributed pseudonyms to others in order to avoid the repercussions which might result from linking ostensibly respectable citizens with the underworld. Often it has seemed better to generalize upon certain sensational material, retaining the essential facts but omitting or altering the specific circumstances. Some underworld folk and police officials who read this will observe that occasional episodes are here attributed to persons who did not actually figure in them, that, for very obvious reasons, the names of dead con men have sometimes been substituted for ones now operating; this has been done, not to reflect unfavorably upon anyone, but rather, in a few instances, to avoid embarrassing persons whom the exact truth might damage. To this extent it has seemed necessary to fictionize. But these changes are only superficial; they do not in any way vitiate the truth of the general principles which they illustrate.

This book is not intended as an exposé; it does not purport to reveal “forbidden” secrets of a dark and sinister underworld; it is not artificially colored or flavored. I have not attempted to appear as an apologist for the criminal. On the other hand, I have scrupulously refrained from passing any judgments with a moral bias. I have only attempted to tell, for the general reader, the story of American confidence men and confidence games, stripped of the romantic aura which commonly hovers over the literature of the modern big-time criminal.

Most of the names and “monickers” for confidence men appearing in this book are genuine. However, in some cases it has been desirable to disguise the identity of certain men under synthetic underworld nicknames. When this has been done, the monicker has been so composed that underworld figures may, without too much difficulty, discern the true identity underneath. For instance, 102nd St. George is so called because his first name is George and his swindling establishment is located in the 200 block on W. 102nd St., New York City. The Hashhouse Kid conceals the identity of a very successful modern big-con man who was a waiter before he turned out on the rackets. The Clinic Kid has made a fortune swindling wealthy patients who visited a famous mid-western clinic. However, there are relatively few of these counterfeit names and the lay reader will probably not be conscious of them.

The
grift
has a gentle touch. It takes its toll from the verdant sucker by means of the skilled hand or the sharp wit. In this, it differs from all other forms of crime, and especially from the
heavy-rackets.
It never employs violence to separate the mark from his money. Of all the
grifters
, the confidence man is the aristocrat.

Although the confidence man is sometimes classed with professional thieves, pickpockets, and gamblers, he is really not a thief at all because he does no actual stealing. The trusting victim literally thrusts a fat bank roll into his hands. It is a point of pride with him that he does not have to steal.

Confidence men are not “crooks” in the ordinary sense of the word. They are suave, slick, and capable. Their depredations are very much on the genteel side. Because of their high intelligence, their solid organization, the widespread connivance of the law, and the fact that the victim must virtually admit criminal intentions himself if
he wishes to prosecute, society has been neither willing nor able to avenge itself effectively. Relatively few good con men are ever brought to trial; of those who are tried, few are convicted; of those who are convicted, even fewer ever serve out their full sentences. Many successful operators have never a day in prison to pay for their merry and lucrative lives spent in fleecing willing marks on the big-con games.

A confidence man prospers only because of the fundamental dishonesty of his victim. First, he inspires a firm belief in his own integrity. Second, he brings into play powerful and well-nigh irresistible forces to excite the cupidity of the mark. Then he allows the victim to make large sums of money by means of dealings which are explained to him as being dishonest—and hence a “sure thing.” As the lust for large and easy profits is fanned into a hot flame, the mark puts all his scruples behind him. He closes out his bank account, liquidates his property, borrows from his friends, embezzles from his employer or his clients. In the mad frenzy of cheating someone else, he is unaware of the fact that he is the real victim, carefully selected and fatted for the kill. Thus arises the trite but none the less sage maxim: “You can’t cheat an honest man.”

This fine old principle rules all confidence games, big and little, from a simple three-card monte or shell game in a shady corner of a country fair grounds to the intricate
pay-off
or
rag
, played against a
big store
replete with expensive props and manned by suave experts. The three-card-monte grifter takes a few dollars from a willing farmer here and there; the big-con men take thousands or hundreds of thousands from those who have it. But the principle is always the same.

This accounts for the fact that it has been found very difficult to prosecute confidence men successfully. At the same time it explains why so little of the true nature of
confidence games is known to the public, for once a victim is fleeced he often proves to be a most reluctant and untruthful witness against the men who have taken his money. By the same token, confidence men are hardly criminals in the usual sense of the word, for they prosper through a superb knowledge of human nature; they are set apart from those who employ the machine-gun, the blackjack, or the acetylene torch. Their methods differ more in degree than in kind from those employed by more legitimate forms of business.

Modern con men use at present only three
big-con
games, and only two of these are now used extensively. In addition, there are scores of
short-con
games which seem to enjoy periodic bursts of activity, followed by alternate periods of obsolescence. Some of these short-con games, when played by big-time professionals who apply the principles of the big con to them, attain very respectable status as devices to separate the mark from his money.

The three big-con games, the
wire
, the
rag
, and the
pay-off
, have in some forty years of their existence taken a staggering toll from a gullible public. No one knows just how much the total is because many touches, especially large ones, never come to light; both con men and police officials agree that roughly ninety per cent of the victims never complain to the police. Some professionals estimate that these three games alone have produced more illicit profit for the operators and for the law than
all other forms of professional crime
(excepting violations of the prohibition law) over the same period of time. However that may be, it is very certain that they have been immensely profitable.

All confidence games, big and little, have certain similar underlying principles; all of them progress through certain fundamental stages to an inevitable conclusion; while these stages or steps may vary widely in detail from type to type of game, the principles upon which they are
based remain the same and are immediately recognizable. In the big-con games the steps are these:

1. Locating and investigating a well-to-do victim. (
Putting the mark up.
)

2. Gaining the victim’s confidence. (
Playing the con for him.
)

3. Steering him to meet the insideman. (
Roping the mark.
)

4. Permitting the insideman to show him how he can make a large amount of money dishonestly. (
Telling him the tale.
)

5. Allowing the victim to make a substantial profit. (
Giving him the convincer.
)

6. Determining exactly how much he will invest. (
Giving him the breakdown.
)

7. Sending him home for this amount of money. (
Putting him on the send.
)

8. Playing him against a
big store
and fleecing him. (
Taking off the touch.
)

9. Getting him out of the way as quietly as possible. (
Blowing him off.
)

10. Forestalling action by the law. (
Putting in the fix.
)

The big-con games did not spring full-fledged into existence. The principles on which they operate are as old as civilization. But their immediate evolution is closely knit with the invention and development of the
big store
, a fake gambling club or broker’s office, in which the victim is swindled. And within the twentieth century they have, from the criminal’s point of view, reached a very high state of perfection.

In the fall of 1867 the Union Pacific Railway reached Cheyenne, Wyoming, and that hurly-burly outpost became the spearhead of a frenzied effort which thrust its way relentlessly up the canyons, through the passes, and over the badlands ever toward the West. Its population increased many fold. It swelled until the frontier town became a teeming little city, sprawling on the plateau like a heavily muscled giant in a suit too small, threatening momentarily to burst every seam. Close-packed frame buildings lined the mud streets, ridiculous in their raw elegance, while around the outskirts clustered the shacks and tents of the myriads of adventurers who sought they knew not what in this new country. In the dust-swirled streets cattlemen, miners, laborers, engineers, land speculators, soldiers and gamblers surged in a tangle of men, horses and material; the gunman elbowed the itinerant
evangelist and the Oriental jostled the American Indian. Over the odor of horses and men and raw whisky and wood smoke there hung a more elusive smell, one which emanated from the fevered blood of the men and tainted the air with an electric quality. It was the odor of an ancient lust, the lust for easy money.