Free The Big Con by David Maurer Page B

Louis may deliberately delay his arrival at the hotel to see his victim off. As the time for departure approaches and Louis fails to appear, Mr. Bates may get nervous and make a ’phone call to the police, or consult a detective already stationed inthe hotel. The tailer can predict the mark’s reactions with a good deal of accuracy, for he has had ample opportunity to study at first hand the psychology of the trimmed mark.
    Just before ten, at the tailer’s signal, Louis appears with a good excuse for lateness, bundles Mr. Bates carefully into a cab, hurries him to the station, buys his ticket for Providence, and puts him on the train. He waits solicitously until the train pulls out.
    As soon as the mark is safely on his way, Mr. Maxwell meets his roper, the manager and the boost at the hangout. He is a meticulous bookkeeper. He gives each one a plain envelope containing his share of the score, and drops a word about an appointment for eleven-thirty on Wednesday. And so the big store goes on.
    There is one fundamental weakness in the wire; the victim must furnish his own money.
2
The Pay-Off *
    Like the wire, the pay-off sprang from a humble beginning. It came as a bright idea to two hungry race-track touts in the city of Seattle. Their names were Hazel and Abbot. They seem to have been ingenious touts, for they are credited by their contemporaries with being the first to advertise in the newspapers for clients. Even so, money was tight in 1906.
    A contemporary who knew them well and himself had a finger in the early development of the pay-off says that Abbot gave him the following version of the inception of the greatest of all confidence games.
    The touts had been working the race-track at Seattle and were very discouraged because they could hardly make a living. “This touting is a dud,” said Hazel. “We’vegot to get something new or we’ll starve to death. The fans are getting hep to this old racket. I’ve been thinking that if we gave a mark a horse and then paid him off after the horse won, it would convince him that we were in the know.”
    “That’s fine,” said Abbot, “but how are you going to get him a winner?”
    “That’s easy,” said Hazel. “I’ll pick up a mark at the track and then you come around. I’ll point you out to him. Then I’ll put you away as that big plunger who won all that money at Frisco last winter. Then you cut in and tell your story. I’ll ask you to win us our hotel bill. I’ll give you a fin and get the mark to give you a fin. Then you can tighten us up not to talk about the race as it is fixed. You take the money and go away and tell us to watch No. 10. That’s all. The horse will be nameless, but no matter. The horse will win. I’ll come back and give you the tickets, but you hold both of them, as they will be phony ….”
    Thus, in a crude form, was conceived the very simple principle which could be applied to either races or stocks, and which has accounted for no one knows how many millions in illegal plunder taken by con men in the past thirty-odd years. But what Hazel and Abbot had invented was not the pay-off as we know it today; it was really a crude form of what is now known as the “short pay at the track” and is still played by touts who have the temerity to face the possibility of a prison sentence; very few have. Furthermore the touches almost always “come hot”—that is, the mark is likely to suspect that he has been swindled—and there are no facilities at the track to cool him out.
    During the 1906 racing season Hazel and Abbot played their little game at the track, but they were not satisfied with it. They took off very small touches because they could take only the ready money the mark had on him at he track. The touches came too hot, and, seeing the protectionenjoyed by other species of the grift which were played against one form or another of the store, they took their idea to two smart grifters who were engaged in other forms of