The Big Con (23 page)

The tailer who follows the victim when he is not in the custody of one of the mob also has a set of signals by which he communicates with the mob. Suppose, for instance, that he has followed the mark home for his money and the mark has telegraphed the insideman by a prearranged code that he will arrive at such and such an hour. The insideman waits for him safely outside the station where he can see the tailer, who has been on the train, but who passes the mark in the crowd and slips past the insideman, giving him the office as he does so. If the mark has the money all safe and has not been tampered with, the tailer presses his hand over his heart as he passes by. Then the insideman approaches the mark and greets him. However, if the tailer knows that the mark has been “rumbled” or that he has brought back a detective, or that there is a detective awaiting him ready to arrest the insideman as soon as the mark identifies him, the tailer pulls casually at his nose. That means “Don’t contact the mark” and the insideman melts away without meeting his victim. These signals are standard and are used by most mobs, while of course there are other private ones which each mob may agree upon for its own members.

Thus mobs are organized. Even though their members are loosely held together and the functioning units are often flung far afield, there is a remarkable sense of professional unity. A highly developed group solidarity keeps intact a very strong morale. However, these mobs are not consciously “anti-social” groups set up to make war on legitimate society; they are the informal results of certain technical demands and certain very potent social pressures; they probably would not exist at all if confidence men could function as individuals instead of as groups. Although there are channels of communication from mob to mob, and, on occasion, even co-operation of a professional nature, these inter-relationships are casual and
personal. It should not be assumed that there is anything like an organization of mobs on a wide or even a national scale under the direction of “super criminals” so dear to the minds of a gullible public nourished since childhood on flamboyant film and fiction.

Confidence men are the elite of the underworld. They have reached the top in the grift
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(which includes crimes depending upon lightness of touch and quickness of wit, as contrasted to the
heavy-rackets
which involve violence); they have arrived at the ultimate in success and achievement; they have gone as far as any professional thief can go.

Other grifters recognize this fact; they look upon the confidence man with envy for his position, admiration for his success, or desire to emulate his feats, according to their individual inclinations. Some, with the predatory instincts almost universal in the underworld, have a very personal interest in the confidence man; they see in him a fat mark to be trimmed like any other sucker.

Confidence men are not unaware of their social preeminence. The underworld is shot through with numerous class lines. It is stratified very much like the upperworld, each social level being bounded by rather rigid lines determined largely by three factors: professional standing, income, and personal integrity. While, as in the upperworld, income has much to do with social position, professional excellence and personal “rightness” appear to play an even greater part among con men than they do in the upperworld.

There are rigidly observed class distinctions in the underworld. In a society where one’s reputation depends solely upon his individual exploits, and where one is judged by his peers or his superiors, social status is not easily attained. There is no public as a court of last appeal. If, for instance, a country physician is unknown to his confrères, he may find solace in the fact that he is regarded as an important person by the patients he serves. If a writer is panned by the critics and his colleagues, he may still be a hero to his public. But a con man—with the exception of that rare individual who seeks newspaper notoriety—has no public. He is judged by his colleagues alone. And the underworld has a very keen sense of professional values.

A confidence man must have plenty of ego. Once he loses his self-confidence, he is a failure; without the knowledge that he can trim a mark, he is incapable of trimming one. As a consequence, he sustains that self-confidence at all costs—or degenerates to some other
form of the grift where he can function more successfully. But he cannot fool his associates for long. Either he takes off the scores or he doesn’t, and he stands or falls in his profession by the record he makes for himself. Good confidence men take their standing for granted; they recognize the ability of others casually; they treat their own professional excellence lightly.

Professional jealousy is, however, rife; there is a widespread tendency to “knock” other con men; real or fancied wrongs lead to strong and bitter personal criticism; it is not difficult to find a confidence man who classes half the men he has worked with as tear-off rats. However, the smooth professionals know the tear-off rats for what they are and have little to say about their associates except among intimate friends. If a con man is really a tear-off rat—as all too many of them are—the news circulates rapidly and it is soon a widely accepted fact; if he is not, the “knocking” of a few cheap grifters will never seriously menace his professional standing. Some con men have worked for a lifetime with never a serious black mark against them. They know that a clean professional record is a most valuable asset.

Hence, confidence men on the whole are wont to look with some condescension upon their lesser brethren in crime, especially grifters lower in the social categories and lesser professionals on the heavy-rackets. Pickpockets, because of the widespread reputation they bear as stool pigeons, are often shunned, though once a pickpocket has turned con man and established himself in that profession, he is accepted as a social equal provided he conducts himself according to the established code for con men. Small-time thieves, pimps, touts, traffickers in narcotics, hoodlums, some types of professional gamblers and all the numerous riffraff of the underworld are commonly excluded from the company of con men, who prefer association with their own kind, with higher-ups from
the heavy-rackets, or with the political bigwigs, criminal lawyers and fixers who, in one way or another, derive revenue in return for protection.

But it must not be assumed that con men confine their personal associations to underworld channels. The American underworld shades off almost imperceptibly into the upperworld. Many socially respectable citizens have useful underworld connections while, on the other hand, many criminals have equally useful or desirable connections with the upperworld. Furthermore, many good folk who would resent being classed with criminals wink at the violation of the law as long as it is to their political or financial advantage to do so; while the law on occasion might consider these persons criminals, the underworld would not accept them as such because they do not practice a recognized criminal profession. Practically all con men make friends in this area, and many establish themselves among folk who are both reasonably honest and quite legitimate, preferring association there to mingling with their own kind. How widely this type of association extends it is difficult to say for, from a desire for mutual protection, both the legitimate persons and the con men prefer not to reveal these friendships. On reading this manuscript, one con man makes this note: “You’d be surprised at the number of good businessmen who make friends with con men, loan them bank rolls, and entertain them at home. All con men have good legitimate friends in the cities where they live. They always play square with these friends, as they consider them ‘folks.’” The fact remains that con men are the most cosmopolitan of all thieves, for they travel widely and cultivate associations on a rather high cultural level. Some of them enjoy the friendship of celebrities, sportsmen and socially prominent persons from legitimate society who may consider it “smart” to be seen in the company of a confidence man.

Because of the advantages which accrue to his profession,
a confidence man, once he has established himself, seldom changes it for another in the underworld. He may “pack the racket in” and go into legitimate business (where some have notable success), but as long as he remains “on the grift” he prefers to play the confidence games. To step back down the scale permanently, returning to thievery or professional gambling, would be to lose professional status; more than that, there is a thrill about big-con work which no other branch of the grift can duplicate. The confidence man extends himself fully while he works; all his faculties and abilities are called into play; each mark is a new challenge to his ingenuity; and, perhaps most important, the stakes for which he plays are very high. “Once a heavy-gee [safeblower] always a heavy,” said the Postal Kid. “And it’s the same with the con. When the mark is being played for a big chunk, there is a kick in it just like there is to the heavy when a big peter [safe] is being knocked off.”

Consequently, once a con man “arrives” in his profession, he usually remains a con man until he dies or until he quits the rackets. There is a constant feverish social climbing among grifters desirous of attaining the rank of confidence men; relatively few of them succeed. Sometimes they resort to all sorts of subterfuges to get to work with the big-timers. For instance, the Sanctimonious Kid, well beloved for his inexhaustible stock of quotable poetry, always thought the way to the big-con games lay in the “smack”; he constantly hounded good smack players, showing them a bank roll he claimed to have taken on the smack, and begging to “cut them in” on the score. But whatever other professions the con man may have mastered during his lifetime (and some are indeed versatile) he always likes to be known as a con man because that assures his place among the smartest, merriest and most effective thieves who ever trimmed a sucker.

When we think of cheese, it’s Wisconsin; when we speak of oil, it’s Pennsylvania; but with grifters, it’s Indiana. Many a first-rate con man has hailed from that state, and many, many more second- and third-raters. Heading the list are the Indiana Wonder and Stewart Donnelly, two of the finest ropers who ever rode a fool in. Other top-notch grifters would include Jerry Mugivan, the Harmony Kid and many others whose names cannot be listed here.

Con men look puzzled and scratch their heads when you ask them why this should be so. A former insideman for the Wonder says, “I don’t know why, but the state of Indiana is out in front in turning out grifters of all kinds. At one time you could go to almost any county fair and some farmer would take you aside and show you some new kind of flat-joint [crooked gambling device] that he had invented.” Another con man who got his start on the grift playing the short con with circuses adds: “It’s an old saying among grifters that any Hoosier farmer would come up to you and ask you where the squeeze [controlling device] was on your joint, and then show you that he had figured out a better one. So I guess the farmer boys thought flat-jointing was better than looking at a horse’s tail all day for about a buck.”

Perhaps the fact that for many years it was customary for circuses to winter in Indiana may help to explain the number of grifters who come from that state. The American circus was a grifter’s paradise on wheels. Until very recently, most circuses carried grifters and confidence men as a matter of course, for the grift was a source of great profit—as men like old Ben Wallace and Jerry Mugivan could testify. Circuses carried their own private
menders
(fixers) who cooled out any irate citizens who might cause trouble for the show; the grifters, who paid the show management a fixed percentage of their takings,
shared with the management the “privilege-car” (which not a few circuses lined with sheet-iron to stop bullets fired by trimmed marks with a primitive sense of vengeance), took their food with the owners and their chief henchmen. Many of the best big-con men operating today learned how to handle marks with some form of circus grift, notably flat-jointing; many more first-rate short-con men were developed there. Hence it would seem no more than natural for grifters of all types to congregate in Indiana.

Although New York was for years—and still is—a center for all kinds of confidence men, few outstanding ones hail from that area, and relatively few from the East. The West appears to have produced more good grifters than the East, with Texas heading the list, while the Deep South, like the East, trails behind. “That’s about right,” comments an old-timer. “New York doesn’t turn out many good con men—but there are a few. In olden times [around 1910–1915] in Dan the Dude’s place, you could see a hundred con men there at once, and not one of them would be a native New Yorker. Indiana, I think, has turned out more good grifters than any other state.” Since the 1920’s, Australia has contributed a number of prominent professionals to the racket, among whom we should mention Pretty Sid, Australian Harry, Snowy T—–, Snowy P—–, Kangaroo John, and Melbourne Murray. So much, then, for the geographical derivation of con men.

Their social origins stand out much more clearly. Most of the best ones grew up with the rackets, especially with the short con, before they were turned out on the big con. A large proportion of the outstanding early con men were developed on the gold brick, the spud and the smack. Some started passing counterfeit money. The short-change rackets, the circus grift with all its numerous rackets, flat-jointing, and railroad grift all account for a
considerable number. But the best ones had their early training with the short-con games in which the fundamental set-up for the big con was used in a small way and in which the forces employed in the big con were latent, or already emerging in forms which obviously presaged the big con. These games, the tip, the mitt, monte involving the use of a store, and others were really fine training for big-con men-to-be, and con men who had experience with playing the double-cross with foot races and fight stores graduated easily to the big con when it developed.
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It has been estimated by one informant that in Chicago alone in 1898 there were, to his personal knowledge, more than two hundred ropers working for five permanent and protected monte stores alone; there were hundreds more roping against unprotected stores which ran “on the sneak,” while the railroad lines running into Chicago were infested with mitt mobs. And similar conditions prevailed in New Orleans, San Francisco, New York City—in fact, in any city which was a railroad center. Most of these ropers were youngsters who played against older and more experienced insidemen. From these ropers, as they matured, sprang a generation of big-con men who have never been surpassed. These men got into the rackets young, had the benefit of training under the best con men then operating, and were fortunate in that they lived in an era when every man believed himself a potential millionaire. When, shortly after the turn of the century, the big con developed, they were still young men, but seasoned, experienced, with a heart for anything.