The Big Con (5 page)

At first, as was natural, New York and Chicago were the centers for the most lucrative big-con activities. They were railroad centers which made the victims readily available, the machinery for the fix was already set up, and the type of high life which con men love was right at hand. However, as the politicians demanded increasingly large payments, as the police grew ever more avaricious in their shakedown tactics, and the fix became not only more expensive but also more complicated and less reliable, many con men of the better class chose to find small cities which could be easily “righted up”; here they located and, avoiding the competition of the bigger stores, operated with much greater profit and security. Further-more,
this movement away from the large cities was hastened by the fact that both New York and Chicago had the name of harboring swindlers and con men of all kinds. It was much better psychology to take the victim to a smaller city for the trimming. Hence many of the best stores scattered out over the country and in towns like Rochester, Minnesota, and Amsterdam, New York, some of the very best professionals were to be found.

At one time or another during the past thirty years, big stores were established in most of the cities of the United States, but these were ephemeral. The fix went bad, con men found better pickings elsewhere, or the surrounding districts ceased to yield a supply of victims. Gradually certain cities became well known because of the success of the stores located there. In these cities con men gathered for both social and business reasons; the fix was solidly established; every facility was available for trimming a mark.

These cities, known as “right towns,” are indelibly identified with the big store because at one time or another since 1900 the best big stores have prospered there and the finest ropers brought their victims there to be trimmed. If we arrange the more important ones in the form of a chart we can see, in a general way, both the chronological development and the geographical spread of the big store.

The advent of the big store brought about two major changes in confidence games. First, the rather shaky fixing machinery of the old days had to be discarded or bolstered up to cushion the heavy repercussions caused by separating important persons from large amounts of money. The friendly saloon-keeper no longer sufficed. The fix had to be pushed into high places. The chief of detectives, the chief of police or the sheriff in each locality were the logical persons to delay or prevent prosecution of the con men. They were bought by the dozens. These men, in turn, had to have
the protection of prominent party politicians and the co-operation of police judges, prosecutors, district judges, and even, in some cases, federal judges and state senators. Modern con men must be able to buy officers, judges and juries; they do it so successfully that many a top-notcher has never served a prison sentence.

Second, the size of the touches (the gross amount taken from the victim) has increased beyond the fondest dreams of old-timers. Exact information on the size of touches is exceedingly difficult to obtain, for neither the con man nor the victim likes to discuss them; when they do, their testimony in any given case may differ. The reason for this is that either the insideman has cheated his partners and wishes to conceal the exact size of the score, or that the victim has some reason of his own for raising or lowering the size of the score if the case becomes public. And only a very small proportion of the touches taken off ever come to light. The really big ones come from wealthy and prominent persons who cannot afford to admit that they have been swindled on a con game. Collection of reliable data is rendered more difficult by the fact that con men do not discuss the size of touches readily, even among themselves; it is a matter of etiquette that one is not asked directly about the size of a touch he is known to have taken off. But news leaks out and travels fast; the essence of the gossip which circulates in the underworld is often a fairly accurate index to the facts in any particular case.

Before 1900 the scores were universally small. Touches in monte and mitt stores were considered good if they went as high as $500. The tip might bring as much as $1,500 or $2,000 but was more often played for less. The
spud
and the gold-brick games might bring scores of $1,500.
Wire-tapping
was played for whatever the operators could wangle from the victim and the score usually came in installments. Scores of $5,000 from the fight and foot-race stores were considered highly satisfactory. Grifters
worked feverishly for what would look like pin money to modern big-con men.

With the introduction of the big store for the wire, Christ Tracy took off the first known big score—$50,000 taken from a Broadway music-store owner. In 1902, George Ryan matched this score in the foot-race store, which was on its way out while the wire was in its infancy. Once the principle of the wire was established and con men learned that big scores could be taken off, they became common. Most of the good ones ran from $50,000 to $100,000, with one as high as $200,000 appearing occasionally.

The World War brought a crop of millionaires and sub-millionaires whose purses were swelled out of all proportion to their knowledge of investments. As often as not these men had made their money slightly on the shady side and to them the rag and the pay-off appeared as very logical methods of taking profit. There was a boom in the big-con games which kept con men working day and night to take care of the rush. “The stores were kept busy all the time,” says one con man. “You had a hard time getting a mark played for. The joint wanted to know how much your egg would blow. If it was ten grand, the insideman would say, ‘Are you daffy, coming in here with a measly ten grand?’”

The scores, known during the 1920’s as “war babies,” increased rapidly not only in number but in size. Representative of this class were the $350,000 which Glouster Jack took from an Australian in Cuba; the $200,000 which Plunk Drucker took from a Cleveland mark whom he fleeced in Buffalo; the $250,000 which the Indiana Wonder took from a wealthy Pittsburgher; the $375,000 which Big W—–and Charley Gondorff took from a New Britain banker; the $375,000 taken by the Hash-house Kid from a visiting Englishman in Montreal; the $245,000 taken by Louis Mushnick from a British sugar
merchant in Cuba. And there were an infinite number of smaller ones—up to $50,000 or $100,000—which were simply lost in the shuffle. Stores in the centers for con games like New York and Miami were, in those boom years, running full blast, with ropers literally waiting their turns to play their marks against the store. Ten thousand dollars became the minimum amount—and still is—for which top-notch professionals would play a victim.

Some con men think that the $375,000 scores taken off by the Hashhouse Kid and Gondorff are the largest; certainly they are the largest which are generally recognized. Rumors of larger ones float about, but they cannot be verified, even though there may well be some basis for them in fact. Typical of these is the gigantic score rumored to have been taken off by the Big Alabama Kid shortly after the close of the War. Estimates of its size run from $1,000,000 to $2,800,000. The roper is supposed to have been a novice who was never paid in full for his share of the score. Whether or not this tale is true, it is certain that many large scores must lie buried in the memories of three men only—the roper, the insideman and the victim. And con men are not always either modest or truthful in estimating the size of the scores they have taken off.

The tendency among con men to exaggerate the size or number of their touches is the source of much good-humored ribbing. A tale is told about Jack Jewett from Texas and the Umbrella Kid from New York, partners for many years. Jack liked to draw the long bow when he told about the touches he and the Kid took off. If they took off $10,000, Jack made it $50,000 when he told the tale. One night, so it is said, the two were invited to a party given by some big-con friends. So the Kid lectured Jack in advance. “Jack,” he said, “when you tell about scores tonight, be careful. And if you make them too strong, I’ll give you the office by coughing.
Then you’ll know you’re getting them too high and can cut them down.”