The Mark Inside

by Amy Reading

  It was Furey’s job to introduce act four, in which he would tell the mark the tale of how he could earn a fabulous sum. Furey began by apologizing for his initial rudeness. “I thought you were newspaper reporters,” he confided. Lately he’d been hounded by journalists wanting interviews, and the more he refused, the harder they tried to obtain an audience. But the very last thing he could afford was publicity. Spencer and Norfleet leaned in. Furey answered their questioning gazes by reaching into his wallet and pulling out a letter from his employer, United Brokers, which warned him against talking with reporters. He explained that his company preferred to keep out of the limelight because it did not serve the average investor. It operated on behalf of a group of Wall Street firms that had formed a clandestine syndicate to control the market. His job was to play the stock exchange according to encrypted telegrams sent to him by his boss.

  “Gentlemen, without this wallet I would be helpless to do my company’s business today.” He pointed to his desk. “Here are six messages and without my code card in that book I could not do my company’s business.” He explained that he was due on the exchange in a few minutes, and with that he excused himself to decipher his instructions. He furrowed his brow, he flushed red, he perspired. He was the very picture of an important man under a great mental strain. At last he finished, and handing a sheaf of newspaper articles and documents to the two men to keep them busy, he dashed out of the hotel room.

  Spencer and Norfleet were as mystified as if Furey had himself spoken in cipher. In the opulent suite, surrounded by two trunks overflowing with the finest men’s attire that the cowpuncher had ever seen, Norfleet read through the businessman’s papers just as fast as Spencer fed them to him. The documents were so clouded with opaque references they did little to enlighten him. He gathered, though, that United Brokers wanted to consolidate financial power in New York and extinguish the smaller regional exchanges. They controlled large enough blocks of stock that they could swing the entire market with their buy and sell orders, and since Furey always knew their manipulations in advance, he could place opportunistic orders to extract money from the regional brokerage houses. Spencer amplified the suggestive power of Furey’s documents by murmuring at repeated intervals, “We are very fortunate in making the acquaintance of such a big man.”

  At length, Furey strode back into the room, electrified with the success of having taken $20,000 from the exchange. He turned to Norfleet. “I will have to go back to the Exchange to finish the day’s work. My brother, you refused to accept the $100.00 reward which I offered you for finding my pocketbook. Would you mind my placing that money on the market and would you accept what money it might earn?” Well, Norfleet could hardly say no to that. Spencer also put his reward money up for speculation, and Furey left. Twenty minutes later, he returned and proudly flourished $800 for each man. “This is what your $100.00 made for you!” he crowed.

  Who could resist the convincer? Furey was standing before Norfleet, holding out money with absolutely no strings attached, money that Norfleet had no reason to refuse because in no way did it violate his code of honor. The mark had reached the fifth act and the first psychological moment. Would he reach out and take the money? He did, and as soon as he accepted it, he also accepted the logic of the game. The convincer works even on marks who are not fundamentally motivated by greed, because it exploits empiricism, the most basic tool for perceiving reality. We have been evolutionarily programmed to believe only what we can experience with our five senses, and so all the swindler must do is embed a rigged proof in his script. It is a con man’s truism that no mark in history has ever walked away from the big con once the convincer has had its effect.

  As the three men said their good-byes that afternoon, Furey pulled Norfleet aside and asked if he might meet the Texan the next day in order to make him a proposition. Norfleet readily agreed. In the meantime, riding high on the exhilaration of his new acquaintances and conquests, he finalized the deal for the Slaughter land, known locally as the Sandhill Pasture, paying $5,000 in cash from the sale of his mules and signing a promissory note for the remaining $90,000, due in forty-five days. The next day, The Dallas Morning News admiringly reported the latest acquisition of Mr. Norfleet, who “started in as a $30-a-month ‘cowpuncher’ and has amassed large holdings.”

  The following day, both Spencer and Norfleet met Furey in his hotel room, but the broker immediately sent Spencer downstairs to get a newspaper. Spencer had held the upper hand in their friendship until now, despite being twenty years Norfleet’s junior, by virtue of his business success and relative sophistication. Furey’s maneuver to separate the two suddenly elevated Norfleet over the excitable land dealer. Furey was now handing Norfleet responsibility for his own decisions.

  Furey confided that all the outward trappings of his success had become sources of worry rather than pleasure. He described the mortgage he held on the $300,000 apartment in Manhattan where he lived with his wife and three children. “I can wake up at night with a start of fear when I think of that heavy debt that is on the roof that shelters my wife and babies. If anything happens, I have only $12,500 to pay that $100,000 indebtedness.” With one stroke, Furey rendered Norfleet equal with him: virtually the same amount of savings and the same amount of debt. Across the cultural gap between a Manhattan apartment and a Texas ranch, their interests were aligned.

  Furey explained what he had in mind. He expected that today’s tips from United Brokers would net a significant profit, one that a private investor might reap as well as the company itself. He was not permitted to place his own money on United Brokers’ stock picks, but another man could. Only once before had he drawn money out of the market for a private individual, when he made $200,000 for his old friend Chief Justice Hughes of the New York Supreme Court (in the big con, the swindlers are forever invoking the unimpeachable authority of a judge, wise, wealthy, yet wholly outside the market). Would Norfleet consent to place Furey’s money on the exchange but sign his own name on the stock orders, then split the profits that would tumble out from United Brokers’ inside tips?

  Norfleet stood poised at the second psychological moment of the big con, the moment that has received the greatest amount of attention in the literature of confidence artistry: the moment when the mark is invited into a shady deal. To the swindlers themselves, the analysis of this moment couldn’t be simpler. You may not be able to cheat an honest man, but a dishonest man has it coming. The big con works because so many legitimate businessmen will so readily discard legality and morality if the money is easy enough. Over and over, con men have testified to their own sense of moral superiority over their marks. One insideman said that, like himself, “the men I swindled were also motivated by a desire to acquire money, and they didn’t care at whose expense they got it. I was particular. I took money only from those who could afford it and were willing to go in with me in schemes they fancied would fleece others.” Another swindler made allowances for his marks’ greed but detested their hypocrisy. “I have often wondered at the moral and ethical point of view of so many respectable men I have duped. These men were nearly all persons of substance and standing. They had the reputation of being absolutely upright; no breath of scandal ever touched them, and yet whenever and however I have encountered them they have invariably been ready to go in for sharp practices of this sort.”

  Norfleet later recalled that Furey “stated he was confident that I was an honest, straight-forward man in whom he could place confidence and trust, and asked if I would be willing to go into the proposition. I told him I would be willing, provided it was perfectly legitimate. He assured me it was strictly business and being done every day.” Confidence, trust, honesty, legitimacy, strictly business. Perhaps these words were a mere smoke screen for the wink that the two men exchanged as they uttered them. Or perhaps Norfleet truly did believe in Furey’s integrity, and therefore plunged into business with him on the strength of a few totemic words intoned with authority. Norfleet’s
later recollections played it straight: Furey invited him into the deal, Norfleet asked if it was aboveboard, and then he acquiesced. No questions about where United Brokers got its intelligence, no qualms about sharing this intelligence as an outside party, no hesitation about exposing himself to criminal charges in a potentially unethical transaction. And so this most loaded of scenes, when Norfleet turned over his confidence to a trickster, remains obscured.

  Note that at this stage Furey asked Norfleet only for his confidence, not his money. Shady or not, the threshold for Norfleet’s acquiescence was low because it cost him so little. An effective swindling script will never, ever appear to offer the mark something for nothing. Everyone is on guard against swindles, fraud, and even overly strident advertising pitches. The con man must circumvent this suspicion by seeming to be—and appealing to the mark as—homo economicus, that quintessentially capitalist creature whose every action is dictated by rational, perfectly informed economic self-interest.

  And so the swindler claims to possess a fabulous moneymaking secret, but it is crucial that the money not seem too free, or else it will strike the mark as miraculous, and he will wonder why the con man has approached him rather than keeping the profit to himself. The key is to structure the secret so that it is worthless unless the grifter can share it with someone trustworthy. The con man alone cannot realize the profit just beyond his reach, but he will let the mark in on the deal and split the pot if the mark contributes his own particular value. And so the con man extends generosity to the mark, but not in the way that you might expect. He grants the mark the opportunity to give the con man something he needs. The swindler has created a gratifying paradox, a situation in which the mark can act in the highest fulfillment of his own self-interest only by helping someone else.

  Norfleet was being reeled in gradually yet inexorably, but first Furey added a little flourish: Could Norfleet vouch for Spencer’s trustworthiness? At this question, Norfleet balked, momentarily upsetting the script that he didn’t know he was following. He said that he had known Spencer only for a few days and could not take responsibility for his participation. Furey smoothly ad-libbed, saying Spencer struck him as an “honest, hard working young business man”—those key words again—and with Norfleet’s consent they’d invite him into the scheme. Norfleet agreed, and the game was back on track. When Spencer returned to the room, he jumped at Furey’s idea, eagerly explaining that his father’s mill business had acquainted him with brokerages and he was, unlike Norfleet, comfortable with the financial details of the transactions.

  Furey took the men down to the exchange early the next morning and gave them a tour of the busy offices. Norfleet had every reason to be impressed with the bustle and gravity of the business being conducted in the suite of rooms. A man chalked prices on a blackboard as fast as they came scrolling out of the ticker. Every telephone was in use as clerks received and transmitted orders. Messengers weaved through men lined up to speak with brokers. The set that Norfleet’s swindlers had provided for his fleecing was jaw-dropping in its authenticity. It was, in fact, real. Furey was passing off the Dallas Cotton Exchange, which dealt strictly in futures contracts for cotton, as a stock exchange for shares in national and international corporations. The clerks and brokers were unwitting extras in Furey’s drama, and they acted their hearts out, until gradually one figure emerged from the background with his hand extended. Furey introduced him as Edward McDorney, the secretary of the exchange, a stolid, well-to-do man with a square face and an engaging professional manner whose real name was E. J. Ward. He greeted Norfleet and Spencer cordially but asked them if they were members of the exchange. When they answered in the negative, Ward said, “I am very sorry to do so, but I shall be forced to invite you outside as members only are allowed here.” Norfleet and Spencer instantly accepted the invitation and returned to the Adolphus to await Furey.

  Furey’s script here departs from the standard one. Furey and Spencer were, it seems, running a shoestring operation, playing the big con on Norfleet without the benefit of “a store,” or a rented suite of rooms that they could furnish as a brokerage house and to which they could steer victims in quick succession. Instead, they were running a variant known as “playing to the wall.” They ran the con out of Furey’s hotel room, with a script that permitted Norfleet to see the exchange but that included a plausible reason, the line about membership, to explain why he could only interact with it through an intermediary. Hereafter, only Furey and Spencer would enter the exchange, though Norfleet continued to be implicated in their dealings. Conceptually, the tale remained straightforward: Norfleet would play the stock market as if it were a fixed lottery.

  Back at the hotel, Furey studiously filled out the paperwork for the day’s trading. He filed two separate sheaves of orders, one with his name on behalf of United Brokers and a mirror set on joint behalf of Norfleet and Spencer. With their consent he added their $800 windfall to the investment pool. Once again, Norfleet’s memories of this moment are imprecise, but the annals of con literature contain many examples of the standard swindling script. Furey would most likely have claimed to be trading options contracts on margin. Let’s say the victim puts up $2,000—money he’d earned solely from the convincer—as a minimum margin against $20,000 borrowed from the broker. He’d then take out a call option on twenty thousand shares of, say, Mexican Petroleum on a two-point margin, opening at a share price of $174 and closing at $176⅛. If the stock acts as expected—as it always does—the price goes up, and the mark can call in his options at the strike price, then turn around and sell them at the market rate for a $2 profit per share (after broker’s fees). Once he repays the loan, he has cleared $40,000, a lavish return on his initial $2,000 investment.

  Don’t peer too hard at these details. Furey’s account of what he was doing on the exchange was not meant to withstand the level of scrutiny that a skeptical outsider would bring. His story only needed to cohere for a short time, to be roughly plausible. Norfleet certainly didn’t muster any objections. He had no reason to be in a skeptical frame of mind, having risked nothing of his own. Furthermore, he would not even have been able to find the right vocabulary to interrogate this logic, so foreign was he to the realm of high finance.

  While Furey pretended to execute his arcane investment rites in the members-only exchange, he let Norfleet pace the floor of his luxurious cage. At last, upon the close of the markets, Furey sauntered into the hotel room with his arms full of bundled cash. He opened his arms over the bed, and the money tumbled out—$68,000 in all. Norfleet’s share of the profits, between the earnings from his $800 and his cut of Furey’s money, came to an unbelievable $28,000, or what would be $350,000 today. Of course, there was probably only about $5,000 in real currency on that bed. Furey would have made up a boodle of newsprint sandwiched between real $100 bills. He might have dramatically counted out a few thousand dollars in real currency into Norfleet’s hands. But did Norfleet take the time to unwrap the bundles and inspect each bill? No, he did not, and no sucker before him ever discovered the deception either. As fast as he could, Norfleet wrapped his cash into newspaper and rolled it under his arm. He was just heading toward the door of Furey’s room, when it opened on its own. In rushed E. J. Ward, the secretary of the exchange, waving his hands to stop Norfleet from leaving. Their bets had been improperly placed, he explained, because neither man was a member of the exchange. “I have to ask,” Ward continued, “if you are in a position to confirm the bids in case you had lost?” Spencer and Norfleet looked at each other, their fat fortunes suddenly vulnerable in their arms. Of course they could not back their bids. As quickly as they had won it, their money threatened to vanish.

  Furey, Spencer, and Ward had pulled off the third psychological moment. Once threatened, the mark’s profit grows even more valuable, and he will do virtually anything to protect it. He has held the money in his hands, felt its heft and solidity. It is at once magical—because he has done so little to acquire it—and ma
terial. His friends have consistently framed it as “winnings,” as if he’d been harmlessly gambling, but in fact he hasn’t spent or speculated his own money. Nor does he need to do so now.

  Furey stepped in with a solution, pointing out that the rules of the exchange stipulate that so-called settlement days are the first and fifteenth of each month. As the fifteenth of that month fell on a Saturday, Spencer and Norfleet technically had until Monday the seventeenth to guarantee their bids. Ward conceded Furey’s point. He insisted on reclaiming the cash, but he agreed to hold it in the exchange’s safe and issue the men a due bill, which would itself be good for credit on the exchange, until they could retroactively back their initial bid with cash. Norfleet would not need to spend his own money, merely flourish it to prove his creditworthiness, in order to get his treasure out of hock. He had no trouble agreeing to the arrangement.

  This was simultaneously the most important and the weakest scene in the con men’s script. Aside from the obvious fiction of United Brokers’ infallible predictions of the market, the tale that Furey and Ward told does not make sound financial sense. For one thing, even in the bull market of the postwar era, the swindlers riotously exaggerated how far they could leverage the mark’s small pool of cash. Second, it is difficult to envision a scenario in which the mark would need to match the full amount of the investment he’d just made. Con men, though, were entirely untroubled by these holes. Everything Furey said needed only to nudge Norfleet to the next line in the play.

  After Ward left with the boodle, Furey turned to Spencer and Norfleet and gravely promised to get their money back. It was his fault they were in this mess, since he had assumed his introduction would be as good as a membership card, and as a gentleman he intended to do right by them. Of course, the matter was quite delicate because of his fear of publicity. If his bondman at McLean & Company caught scent of their transactions, he’d be ruined. Fortunately, he knew just the man to trust, Judge Hughes, the man for whom he’d made $200,000. Furey immediately wired Hughes and almost immediately received a telegram stating that the judge was on a bear hunt and would be out of contact for days.