by Amy Reading
My huge appreciation goes to Mary Biggs, Marcia TenWolde, Heather Peluso, Anya Small, Ben Cayea, Bronwyn Losey, Katie Trojnor-Riley, Jude Keith Rose, Sandy Allen, and Sharon Champion, because I couldn’t do what I do if you didn’t do your jobs so well.
I cannot believe my good fortune to have landed at Writers House, where I thank Simon Lipskar, Josh Getzler, and Katie Zanecchia for unparalleled support. At Knopf, Edward Kastenmeier performed the difficult trick of suggesting revisions in a way that fostered more rather than less confidence in my writing. I am grateful to Emily Giglierano for undaunted professionalism and Ingrid Sterner for her exactitude.
Though I have mentioned them elsewhere, I cannot resist another opportunity to thank the descendants of the historical figures I write about. All of them were gracious, enthusiastic, and generous with their knowledge and time. Thank you to Sandi Clark, Susannah Touzel, Scott and Craig Johnson, Cindy Van Cise, Simon Peter O’Hanlon, and Rod Drake.
My final thanks go to my larger family, whose perennial interest in the manuscript as it grew was so vital to my energy for and pleasure in writing it: David, Lydia, Jeff, Timothy, Stephanie, Niki, Josephine, Ed and Pam Reading, Hallie MacDonald, Betty Rodgers, Jim and Sally Farmer, and Jamie and Ed Schiefen.
A Note on Sources
This is a work of nonfiction. Nothing has been invented; every line of dialogue and atmospheric detail has come from a published source. But, of course, just because something is published doesn’t mean it’s true. Moreover, what counts as historical evidence when the players in the drama are all professional liars?
My main source for this book is J. Frank Norfleet’s 1924 autobiography, Norfleet. I first read it in graduate school, as I wrote a dissertation on strategies of deception in American autobiography. I loved his story, but I wasn’t consumed by it. I thought I knew exactly what I was dealing with: a false autobiography in which the author passes as someone else, like Forrest Carter’s Education of Little Tree, Clifford Irving’s Autobiography of Howard Hughes, or, more recently, James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. I thought Norfleet was pretty clever, and I thought I’d made a nice little discovery of a writer who pretended to have been a mark who went on to masquerade as a mark. Very postmodern, I thought to myself, very knowing about the literary codes of autobiographical self-presentation. And then I did a little research and found out that the whole story was true. I felt abundantly foolish, duped by my own sophisticated skepticism. That feeling is what I wanted to probe, re-create, historicize.
Philip Van Cise’s 1936 autobiography, Fighting the Underworld, was my second major source for the second half of the book. I discuss the credibility of both memoirs within the main body. As I alternated between the two books, they came to sound like the straight man and the joker in an old comedy routine, which was at once reassuring and disconcerting. Norfleet and Van Cise were clearly talking to and working with each other in their books, and my task became to identify what kind of project they had undertaken.
My first strategy was, of course, to back up their autobiographies with primary documents, but this was more frustrating than it should have been. Like Norfleet on the trail of a hot tip, I headed straight to Denver to locate the district court documents from the Blonger trial. All the trials from 1923 have been microfilmed, and they are all there in orderly sequence—except for the Blonger case, which has been pilfered right out of the historical record, a single note photographed within the microfilm to testify to its disappearance. Newspaper accounts of the trial and Norfleet’s exploits were the best source, and luckily the principal actors in the drama attained such notoriety that the public coverage of their actions became reasonably complete, but the details were perennially wrong. Norfleet’s name was Jasper, he’d been swindled by six men, his total loss was a mere $50,000. These errors, unimportant in themselves, shook my confidence in the tellability of the whole chronicle. After all, when it came to telling the history of the big con, newspapers were all I had. Criminals don’t tend to leave traces of their moves; there are no university archives stuffed with con man correspondence, no brittle newspapers with breaking news from the underworld. I could only narrate them when they’d slipped up and entered the mainstream record of the newspapers, and those newspapers were disquietingly fallible. Even so, whenever in the research of this book I felt as if I’d fallen into the rabbit hole of noir fiction, the newspapers would tell me, “It happened. Put your cynicism aside and believe it.”
The archival research was not all frustration and perceptual confusion; it also proved to be full of serendipity and fortuitous connections. I had the benefit of several valuable archives, as well as the memories of many descendants of the story’s main characters. The biggest treasure trove was the Robert R. Maiden archive at the Denver Public Library. Maiden, one of the private detectives that Van Cise hired as part of his sting against Blonger, saved many of the documents they used to prepare the case against the bunco ring, including some of the transcripts of their interviews with Len Reamey. Cindy Van Cise, the granddaughter of the district attorney, hosted me in her home on the day that she cut the ribbon on the Van Cise–Simonet Detention Center, and she spread out on her dining room table an enormous two-volume scrapbook of Philip’s life and career. Susannah Touzel, the granddaughter of the Fort Worth district attorney Jesse Brown, sent me a copy of Brown’s limited-edition autobiography, A Judge Looks at Life. Sandi Clark, Norfleet’s grandniece, shared with me her photographs and memories. Craig and Scott Johnson, descendants of Lou Blonger, have put their archive up on the Web for everyone to enjoy. Their Web site, www.blongerbros.com, is a bottomless cache of primary sources on Blonger’s life, trial, and death, not to mention confidence artistry and the outlaw West in general.
My second strategy was to read the sources skeptically, to report what they say but also to register my bemusement. Perhaps this is the closest that a twenty-first-century reader can come to being engrossed and subsumed within an adventure tale from a simpler age. I became less interested in precisely what happened and more intrigued with how Norfleet chose to represent his tale. Even his distortions are telling, though we have to step into the realm of speculation in order to draw meaning from them. He wrote from within a set of literary codes learned by reading dime novels, detective fiction, and true-life stories serialized in the monthly magazines. Norfleet worked with several ghostwriters in the course of his long attempt to capitalize on his story, and those writers were surely more versed than he in such literary conventions. Ultimately, for me, the most generative question is not how historically accurate Norfleet was but how influential he was. Could his book have been found on the shelves of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Damon Runyon (who, before he moved to New York, was a Denver Post writer in the era of Blonger’s ascendance)?
Anyone interested in reading more on the subject should not consider the works of Norfleet and Van Cise exhausted by this retelling, because I have had to omit many thinner, shorter narrative strands in order to follow the twisting main thread. In Norfleet’s book you will find, for instance, the menacing character of one Mrs. Street, who turns up every so often to bedevil and endanger the wily sleuth. I’ve pared away the many, repetitious instances when Norfleet came close to catching Spencer. I’ve similarly concentrated on only the most colorful details of the unbelievably convoluted Blonger trial, and have skipped right over the story of the anonymous letters that Van Cise received when he first took office, which turned out to be from a disgruntled bunc snitching on the swindling gang. These stories are fantastic and almost—almost—too good to be true. The classics of the far-too-small con man literary genre are David Maurer’s Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man and Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil’s Con Man: A Master Swindler’s Own Story. More recent entries include Frank Abagnale’s Catch Me If You Can and Luc Sante’s Low Life.
The only exception to the rule of footnoted narrative history is the prologue, which I took the liberty of writing from Mulligan’s perspective. I
t’s a kind of literary impersonation along the lines of what I originally thought Norfleet was doing—me writing within the perspective of a mark impersonating a mark. Actually, let’s just call it what it is: a con. Do forgive me.
Notes
Unless otherwise indicated, all dialogue comes from J. Frank Norfleet’s first autobiography, Norfleet: The Actual Experiences of a Texas Rancher’s 30,000-Mile Transcontinental Chase After Five Confidence Men. Because of the similarity of their titles, this first autobiography will be referred to in the notes as Norfleet (1924), and his second autobiography, which he revised with Gordon Hines, will be referred to as Norfleet (1927).
CHAPTER ONE
Confidence
1 “I don’t drink”: Jamar, “Norfleet Pioneers of the Plains,” p. 14.
2 “I saw the best carload”: U.S. Congress, Hearing on the Relief of J. Frank Norfleet, p. 2.
3 When Norfleet stepped into: The nine stages come from Maurer, Big Con, p. 4. See also Edward H. Smith, Confessions of a Confidence Man, p. 35; and Conwell, Professional Thief, p. 57.
4 In fact the swindlers had framed: Goffman, Frame Analysis.
5 The big con works: Bell and Whaley, Cheating and Deception, pp. 124, 134–35.
6 Hamlin had sifted the crowd: Swann, “Wiles of the Confidence Man.”
7 “the cleverest bunco man”: Oakland Tribune, August 6, 1922.
8 “Gentlemen, without this wallet”: U.S. Congress, Hearing on the Relief of J. Frank Norfleet, p. 4.
9 “started in as”: Dallas Morning News, December 10, 1919.
10 “the men I swindled”: Weil and Brannon, Con Man, pp. 322–23.
11 “I have often wondered”: Edward H. Smith, Confessions of a Confidence Man, p. 134.
12 And so the swindler claims: Leff, Swindling and Selling, pp. 12, 45.
13 Furey was passing off: Bentley, “Norfleet—Man-Hunter,” p. 35.
14 Furey would most likely have claimed: Van Cise, Fighting the Underworld, pp. 277–79.
15 Norfleet’s share of the profits: Measuring Worth, “Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to Present.”
16 “This is our last day”: U.S. Congress, Hearing on the Relief of J. Frank Norfleet, p. 6.
17 The swindlers design the endgame: Goffman, “On Cooling the Mark Out.”
18 In one, Furey gave in: Bentley “Norfleet—Man-Hunter,” p. 37.
19 In the second version: Norfleet, Norfleet (1924), p. 16, and Norfleet (1927), p. 33.
CHAPTER TWO
Benjamin Franklin’s Disciples
1 “Have you confidence”: New York Herald, July 8, 1849.
2 In the span of just a few days: New York Herald, July 10, 1849.
3 A few weeks later: New York Herald, July 9, 1849.
4 “a graduate of the college”: New York Herald, July 8, 1849.
5 One visitor from Philadelphia: National Police Gazette, September 22, 1849.
6 “The prisoner, yesterday”: New York Herald, July 10, 1849.
7 “putting them to sleep”: New York Herald, July 14, 1849.
8 a second confidence man: New York Herald, August 5 and October 9 and 10, 1849.
9 “We trust this word”: National Police Gazette, October 20, 1849.
10 Two weeks after Williams’s arrest: Bergmann, “Original Confidence Man,” p. 568. For a similar account of the activities and legacy of the first confidence man, see Reynolds, “Prototype for Melville’s Confidence-Man.”
11 “What are you?”: Melville, Confidence-Man, p. 227.
12 “CONFIDENCE MAN”: Quoted in Bergmann, “Original Confidence Man,” p. 574.
13 As early as 1860: Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, p. 7.
14 Con men differ: Hyde, Gift, p. 89.
15 In 1739, Benjamin Franklin: Bullock, “Mumper Among the Gentle.”
16 “In order to secure”: Franklin, Autobiography, p. 73.
17 It is passages like this: Zuckerman, “Selling of the Self”; Gary Lindberg, Confidence Man in American Literature, pp. 73–89; and Hauck, Cheerful Nihilism, pp. 32–39.
18 “an inveterate impersonator”: Updike, “Many Bens,” p. 106.
19 The trouble was, Bell’s pretenses: Bullock, “Mumper Among the Gentle,” pp. 246–50.
20 In January 1792: Matson, “Public Vices, Private Benefit.”
21 “From ill-placed Confidence”: Quoted in Mann, Republic of Debtors, p. 145.
22 “gains of money or estate”: Quoted in Fraser, Every Man a Speculator, p. 13.
23 “He that goes a borrowing”: Quoted in Mann, Republic of Debtors, p. 56.
24 “that all the capital employed”: Randall, Life of Thomas Jefferson, p. 62.
25 Duer went much further: Matson, “Public Vices, Private Benefit,” pp. 77–91.
26 In the 1780s: Mann, Republic of Debtors, pp. 175–76.
27 “Every thing that has value”: Hamilton, Papers of Alexander Hamilton, pp. 246–47.
28 Duer, of course, was one of those elites: Matson, “Public Vices, Private Benefit,” p. 101.
29 The unraveling came quickly: Gordon, “Great Crash (of 1792).”
30 He owed an astonishing: Matson, “Public Vices, Private Benefit,” pp. 104–7.
31 One contemporary calculated: Measuring Worth, “Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to Present.”
32 Thomas Jefferson, for one: Jefferson and Madison quoted in Chernow, Alexander Hamilton, p. 383.
33 “it must have, thickened here and there”: Melville, Confidence-Man, p. 294.
34 One commentator in 1839: Quoted in Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters, p. 9.
35 Paper money, for all its glaring flaws: Baker, Securing the Commonwealth, p. 20.
36 In 1729, just twenty-three years old: Franklin, Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency.
37 “My Friends there”: Franklin, Autobiography, p. 72.
38 Yet there were precisely as many ways: Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters, pp. 255, 257.
39 “Proves what I’ve always thought”: Melville, Confidence-Man, p. 294.
40 “Money, of itself”: Burroughs, Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs, p. 83.
41 Stealing a page from Bell’s playbook: There is another eighteenth-century impostor whose career matches Bell’s and Burroughs’s. See Tufts, Autobiography of a Criminal; and Higginson, “New England Vagabond.”
42 After his release: Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters, pp. 20–62.
43 For Burroughs, the turn from imposture: Williams, “In Defense of Self,” pp. 100, 114. See also Gross, “Confidence Man and the Preacher.”
44 At the very close: Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 189–91; and Baker, Securing the Commonwealth, p. 91.
45 “counterfeiting and issuing worthless”: Quoted in Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters, p. 159.
46 “plodding, methodical, gradual”: Ibid., p. 15.
CHAPTER THREE
Cowboy Justice
1 One of Reno Hamlin’s marks: Dallas Morning News, November 27, 1919.
2 The Norfleet families: U.S. Census Bureau, 1850 and 1860.
3 Jasper came of age: Jamar, “From Virginia to Texas”; U.S. Census Bureau, 1900 and 1910.
4 Frank would often tell: Norfleet, Norfleet (1927), pp. 3–6.
5 When tanners learned: Lott, American Bison, p. 176.
6 In just three years: Hornaday, Extermination of the American Bison, pp. 419, 444–45, 465–69.
7 While Norfleet was on the buffalo hunt: San Antonio Light, January 14, 1945.
8 Norfleet’s main task: Hamner, Short Grass and Longhorns, pp. 208–9.
9 Ellwood’s company expanded: Handbook of Texas Online, “Ellwood, Isaac L.”
10 “The drouth is at last broken”: Norfleet to Arnett, June 18, 1892, Arnett Papers.
11 Several summers later: Norfleet to Arnett, July 13, 1907, Arnett Papers.
12 “I took a notion”: Cox, History of Hale County, Texas, pp. 212–13.
&
nbsp; 13 There’s the version steeped: San Antonio Light, January 14, 1945.
14 There’s the melodramatic version: Danville Bee, April 10, 1925.
15 And then there is the likely version: Plainview Daily Herald, June 10, 1990.
16 In all three versions: Lubbock Avalanche, June 13, 1952.
17 “I was the only woman”: Hale Center American, January 19, 1972. Emphasis mine.
18 “I got her cut off”: Jamar, “Norfleet Women,” p. 49.
19 Over 4.8 million Texas acres: Rathjen, Texas Panhandle Frontier, pp. 189–90.
20 This was a dugout: Hamner, Short Grass and Longhorns, p. 6; and Cox, History of Hale County, Texas, p. 186.
21 The Norfleets’ second child: Norfleet, Norfleet (1927), p. 9.
22 “From this time on”: Ibid., p. 3.
23 One day, the family: Plainview Daily Herald, May 10, 1968.
24 In 1907, the Panhandle Short Line Railroad: Cox, History of Hale County, Texas, pp. 20–21; and Wofford, Hale County Facts and Folklore, p. 383.
25 “Quite frank”: Norfleet, Norfleet (1927), p. 3.
26 “It’s the degree of confidence”: Gober, Cowboy Justice, p. 315.
27 “I tell you every[one]”: American Life Histories, “Mrs. Cicero Russell.”
28 “Bones, do you know”: American Life Histories, “Bones Hooks.”
29 He wrote it in conjunction: Plainview Reporter News, November 24, 1974.
30 Cowboy stories from Bret Harte: Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, pp. 125–55.
CHAPTER FOUR
Humbug
1 “organ of acquisitiveness”: Barnum, Life of P. T. Barnum, p. 20.
2 “Sharp trades, especially dishonest tricks”: Ibid., p. 39.
3 “The public appears disposed”: Ibid., p. 171.
4 One Sunday morning in July: New York Mercury, New York Atlas, and New York Herald, July 17, 1842.
5 “eminent Professor of Natural History”: Reprinted in Cook, Colossal P. T. Barnum Reader, pp. 110–11.