The Big Con (33 page)

Of the several short-con games regularly used by big-con men perhaps the smack is the most popular and the most lucrative. It requires a minimum of equipment, no store, and two men only are necessary. A mark can always be found in any metropolitan railway station. Each smack mob has its own particular variation of the game, but the following version should make the principle clear.

The roper waits in the “shed” or railway station, in, let us say, Indianapolis, while the insideman “plants” himself at a pre-arranged spot a short distance from the station. The roper watches for a prospect—preferably a country man or a small-town merchant who is waiting for a train. He cuts into him and finds out where he is going. The mark says he is waiting for a connection to, shall we say, Marion, Indiana. “I’m going out on that same train,” says the roper. “It doesn’t pull out for an hour. Let’s walk up town and look over the city a little.” The mark sees no harm in this, so the two stroll out of the station, the roper meanwhile asking the mark all kinds of questions about Marion, Indiana, which is to be his destination also.

A short distance down the street they are accosted by the insideman, who has a marked Southern accent. “I beg your pardon,” he says, “but could you tell me where the Merchants’ Bank Building is?” The roper turns to him rather rudely and says, “No, we can’t.”

The stranger takes offense at the roper’s curt manner. “You wouldn’t tell me if you did know,” he sneers.

“What’s that?” says the roper, annoyed.

“I said you wouldn’t help me if you could, you damned cheap Yankees,” says the Southerner with a good deal of heat.

“What do you mean, cheap?” demands the roper. “We’ve got just as much money as you have. You can’t insult us just because we’re strangers here. I said we don’t know where the Merchants’ Bank is, and we don’t. Do we?” he asks, turning to the mark.

“No, we don’t,” says the mark.

“I beg your pardon,” says the Southerner politely, “I thought you gentlemen lived here. Down in Alabama where I come from folks try to help each other out. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“I’ll tell you what,” says the roper, “We don’t want you to think we’re cheap. We just didn’t realize you were a stranger here, too. I’d like to buy a round of drinks. Come on, and I’ll set ’em up.”

“No, thanks,” says the Southerner. “I don’t drink with Yankees. I don’t trust ’em.”

“Well, then, let me buy smokes all around,” says the roper.

“I’ve got plenty of money and can buy my own cigars,” says the Southerner.

“I don’t doubt that,” says the roper. “I just wanted to be sociable. Well, if you won’t let me buy them, I’ll match you for them.”

“All right,” agrees the Southerner, “I’ll match you for them.” He starts fishing for a coin.

The roper turns to the mark and whispers, “You call heads and I’ll call tails every time and we’ll have some fun with him.”

“Are you ready?” asks the Southerner, poising his coin.

“O.K.,” say the other two.

They match and of course the odd man wins the smokes and the Southerner, whatever he turns up, loses to one or the other of his opponents. He grows testy at this and proposes that he will match them for a whole box of cigars, punctuating his proposal with pungent remarks about cheap Yankees who want to gamble for the price of a cigar.

“I can’t use a whole box of cigars,” says the roper.

“Well, how much does a box of cigars cost, four dollars? All right. I’ll match you for the price of a box.”

The roper gives the mark a wink and they match again. Naturally the insideman loses, this time to the mark, who begins to see possibilities in this game. Then the roper begins to kid the touchy Southerner, whose temperature mounts perceptibly.

“We could take every cent you’ve got the same way,” he says.

“I don’t see how you could,” says the Southerner, heatedly. “I’ll just show you. I’ll match you dollar for dollar for all the money you have on you.” The roper and the mark get out their wallets, and they smack the coins on the back of their hands. (A smack-player, on reading this, comments: “Marks carry their money in the funniest places. They get it out of their shoes, their socks, their hat bands, and out of their seams. Some carry it all sewed in and have to cut it out before they can play.”) The roper whispers to the mark that they will divide up the winnings later. Again they match. Since the mark has called heads, the insideman throws heads also, which leaves the roper the odd man. The Southerner fumes and frets, but pays the roper all his money. The mark then pays the roper all his money, and the insideman takes his leave, cursing his luck.

The roper and the mark pass on down the street, stopping just around the corner. The roper begins to sort out
the wallets and divide the money. Just as he is paying the mark off, the old Southerner pops around the corner.

“By God!” he says, “I might have known this was a trick. What are you men doing with that money? You are dividing it, aren’t you?”

“Why, no,” says the roper. “We were just talking.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me,” says the insideman. “It looks to me as if you two are in cahoots to swindle me.”

“Why,” says the roper, “we are total strangers. I never saw this man in my life before I met him just now in the station. I won and won fairly, and I intend to keep the money.”

“That’s right,” says the mark. “This man is telling you the truth. I never met him before I got off the train in the station there.”

The insideman is still suspicious, but finally agrees not to have them arrested. “Now,” he says, “to show me that you two are not together, and that there is no conspiracy here, you separate, and you go that way, and you go that way. Then I can watch you and see that you don’t get together.”

The two men agree, and the roper whispers to the mark, “I’ll see you on the train.” Then each goes his way, the mark to the station and the roper toward the city. The Southerner watches them angrily until they are out of sight.

The mark arrives at the station in time to board his train. He fully expects that his friend will get on and divide the profits with him, but the roper is at that moment dividing the touch with the Southerner. The train pulls out and the mark is disillusioned. The roper plants the old Southerner again and returns to the station for another mark.

Touches from this game run from fifty dollars to several hundreds of dollars. Marks have been found with several
thousands of dollars in cash, but touches over $3,000 are indeed rare. The blow-off is simple, for the mark has his ticket and is scheduled to leave immediately after the score. The con men usually make sure that he has boarded the train before they pick up another mark; also, the roper always makes sure that the victim has his fare or his ticket, and that he has enough money to buy his meals until he gets to his destination. This keeps him from getting panicky and going immediately to the police. Sometimes marks do go immediately to the police, but if the fix is in, the detectives cool him out just as they would on a big-con touch and the fixer settles for the whole thing.

Smack mobs work mostly in the early morning, take the afternoon off and work again at night. They know that strangers in a large city cannot sleep and that they are likely to arise early and wander about the streets until train time, or go early to the railway station. Hence, a good smack mob can usually stop work by noon with one or two good touches. At night, the same game, with some variations, is worked in night clubs and hotel bars where the roper and the mark start matching the insideman for drinks. There are many variations to the game, but the principle and the essential elements are always the same.

The send can be applied to the smack, and sometimes is, but it takes expert con men to do it. Briefly, the insideman becomes very earnest about this game. It develops that he has a very large sum of money with him, and wants to match for large stakes. They match for a while, with all of them winning and losing, but with most of the money going to the roper. The insideman insists on playing for very high stakes, so the roper and the mark agree to go home and get more cash so that they can trim this fellow. They return with the money and again both the mark and the insideman lose to the roper. Then the roper is split out from the mark, with an agreement to meet and divide the profits. But they never meet.

The smack is most convenient for big-con men because of the relative simplicity and speed—the whole play may come off in ten or fifteen minutes—with which a touch can be taken off. Some con men believe that it has taken off as much money, all told, as the pay-off. The scores, while never so large as those on the pay-off, come faster and as a rule the overhead is almost nil. It requires very little working capital; in fact, the story is told of Tommy Fells of Toledo, probably the best of the old-time smack players, that he once came out of prison broke. He picked up a partner and sent him to the station to rope a mark. He filled his handkerchief with green grass, made this pass for a bank roll, and took off a score. Most con men use the smack sporadically, and some mobs subsist almost entirely on its proceeds.

Next to the smack, the short-con game most used by big-con men is the
tat
, also known as “up and down Broadway” because it is much used in the night clubs and cafés along Broadway. “Mark it down and mark it well,” says a man who has taken off thousands with this game, “that a New Yorker is the best sucker that ever was born. He is made to order for anything. You can’t knock him. He loves to be taken because he’s wise. When you are on Broadway this little tat gets the jack, and how!”

That tat is a crooked die with fives on four sides and sixes on two sides. It has a mate which is an exact replica in size and weight, but which is numbered in the usual manner, from one to six. Tats are made of ivory, bone or some synthetic substance. Others are made of sugar-cubes; con men find that the sugar-cube tat is more effective because it does not arouse the mark’s suspicions as quickly as a commercially manufactured one.

The mob consists of two players whom we might designate
as roper and insideman for purposes of distinguishing them, although these terms hardly apply in the strict sense to a tat mob. The roper moves into a night club where he selects a party of men at a table; he is careful to avoid parties with women. He hangs around closely for a short time until he gets the drift of their conversation. He finds that they are part of a delegation attending a convention; they are from Chicago. The roper cuts into them, saying, “Aren’t you boys from Chicago?” The party has been drinking and is feeling convivial. They admit that they are from Chicago. The roper starts a conversation with them, pretends to be slightly tipsy, and orders a round of drinks for them. The roper is witty and amusing; he establishes himself solidly with the party. More drinks follow. Then his partner enters and passes the table. He looks quizzically at the roper, then greets him with a handshake. “Why, Mr. Swift,” he says, “what are you doing here in New York?” Mr. Swift mumbles something about business and introduces his partner to the party. His partner orders drinks for everyone and joins the group. Meanwhile, the square die has been placed on the floor where one of the party is likely to see it. If no one notices it, one of the con men says, “Look there. Somebody has lost a watch charm.”

The man looks on the floor and there is the die. He picks it up and examines it. Then the other con man reaches over and takes it away from him. “Why,” says he, “this is a part of somebody’s game. Here, let me show you a little game I saw in West Baden last summer. It goes like this. You give me a dollar. And you, and you, and you, and you.” He collects a dollar bill from everyone. “Now,” he continues, “we’ll put this one die in a hat and we’ll each shake it three times. We’ll add up the number of spots each one gets, and the one who gets the highest number wins and has to buy the next round of drinks for all seven of us.”

He drops the die into the hat and starts the game, appointing one of the party to keep score. The derby passes around the table and each one gives his score. The natural law of averages takes care of the first couple of rounds; in other words, the con men “cop and blow” so that no one will suspect them. Interest in the game increases. The roper suggests that they put in enough money to make it interesting, so the stakes are doubled. He puts the tat in for his partner who “cops” that round. And so it goes, until they have “cleaned” the party. One of the pair always holds the tat in his hand except when his partner shakes, at which time the tat is momentarily substituted for the square die, the numbers are shown to anyone who wishes to see, the tat removed, and the square die replaced. The die is always kept in the hat so that the players will not notice that the tat has all fives and sixes on it. Naturally when the tat is in, the con men cannot help running up a higher score than anyone else in the game. When the con men depart, they leave the square die on the table for anyone who wishes to examine it. They do not both leave at once, but the partner who has won the money leaves first, then the roper takes a friendly leave; only after the con men have gone do the marks, rather tipsy by this time, suspect that they have been swindled. And, since the square die still remains there, they do not know of the existence of the duplicate tat. They may attribute their misfortune to a run of luck on the part of their visitors and go on with their party.

The con men may take off a fifty-dollar score by this method. As soon as the roper leaves, he enters another night club, selects another party, and the game starts all over again. The mob may visit three or even four places during the night and take off a score in each one. All they need is a highly developed technique for conviviality, stomachs strong enough to stand the large amounts of liquor they must consume, the necessary sleight of hand
for handling the dice, and the nerve to cheat strangers for money. “The clip-joints are filled every night with marks who crave the tat,” said one con man. “If you gave one of them an even break, it would spoil his evening.”

The
tip
is a game for con men who are also gamblers, for it requires some dexterity in the manipulation of the cards. It is really no more than a crooked poker game with the confidence element added. However, the confidence element is the thing that hooks the mark and makes a good score possible, while at the same time it reduces the possibility of trouble resulting from the swindle. There are many different versions of the tip, and many different approaches used to hook the mark, but fundamentally the game differs little from time to time and place to place. Each mob works out the method which is best adapted to its needs, its abilities, and to the mark at hand. It is essential that the insideman have some experience at dishonest gambling and that he can successfully manipulate cards.