Cons, Scams, and Grifts

by Joe Gores

  “Aside from the ten thousand,” said Kearny, “what about that show last night? Is Freddie going to be doing carnival tricks the rest of his life?”

  “No! No!” Willem was aghast. “Robin Brantley will be the curator of our new primate center. He will continue with Freddie’s training. But last night I had a debt to pay. You were right about the Gypsies. My wife’s aunt is Lulu Zlachi. Staley Zlachi did me the great favor of recommending you for the job.”

  Kearny got to his feet, walked over to the window. Freddie and the silverback lolled in the sun in their temporary fenced enclosure. Looked like a nice life to Dan. He turned back.

  “You zoo guys always need philanthropists. If you can see a way to put Daniel Kearny Associates on a bronze plaque in that new primate center, then I guess we can just shake hands and go our separate ways.”

  Ramon sat on the edge of the bed and watched Yana in her nun’s habit interlard 100,000-lira notes between the pages of books, into brochures, journals, even empty audiocassette boxes. Then he helped her carefully pack them all into the sturdy yellow mailing box on the table below the window of her room.

  “They’re going to check this at the post office before you send it,” he warned.

  “At the Vatican? With hundreds of tourists sending off packages of Millennium year souvenirs? They’ll just take a quick peek inside and seal it. Besides . . .” She gestured at the declaration of contents. Under CONTENUTO she had printed in bold block letters: GIORNALI, LIBRI, RICERCHE ACADEMICHE. “Books, journals, academic research. Sent by a nun in habit? What could be more innocent than that?” She met his eyes. “You’ve got to face the facts, my brother. The virgin birth scam has another month at most to run.”

  “No! It will last at least until the end of the year.”“When our first marks realize they aren’t pregnant after all, the whole lesbian community will know it’s just a scam.”

  Ramon left to ready the boojo room in the house on the Via Tor dei Conti for that day’s operations, and Yana addressed the package. Then she threw back the wooden window shutters to sit on the sill and look down into the narrow sun-drenched street. Outside the convent-hotel kids played around a red metal trash can. A middle-aged woman in a shapeless robe watered the plants in her window boxes.

  She loved it here, but what would she do when the con was over. What then? She suddenly leaned farther out to stare down. The stocky grey-haired priest had just issued from the convent with a box of his own under his arm. She gave a joyous laugh and turned back into the room. Barìpe! Perfect!

  The branch post office just outside the Vatican walls sweltered under the noonday sun. Most Romans were behind closed shutters until the midday heat passed, but not the locust horde of sweating tourists who wanted the Roma Porta Angelica postmark on their packages. Among them was a stocky, hard-faced priest with a box under his arm and a fistful of garish tourist postcards in his hand.

  “Excuse me, father, do you speak English?”

  He turned. The pale slender nun with the heavy-looking yellow box in her arms seemed to droop under the heat of her full Franciscan habit.

  “I do, my daughter,” he said gravely.“Bene.” With almost a little girl’s gesture, she thrust her yellow box toward him. “I find I am feeling faint. Do you think you could mail this package for me, father?”

  He accepted the proffered box. “Certainly, sister.”

  “Bless you, father.”

  The ghost of a smile might have passed over the lips of each of them. She laid a small clever hand on his black-clad arm for just an instant, as if in benediction, then was gone.

  Dan Kearny looked at the address hand-printed in bold block letters on the box under DESTINATARIO.

  MR. DANIEL KEARNY

  DANIEL KEARNY ASSOCIATES

  340 11TH STREET

  SAN FRANCISCO CA 94103, U.S.A.

  He left the line. A few minutes later, in the secluded rear of a coffee bar across the street, he was not surprised to find bank-notes of large denomination between the pages of the books, Yana’s thanks for DKA getting her off the murder charges. Enough to cover DKA’s fee for the Xanadu caper. But where the hell was he going to be able to convert lira to dollars? He’d have to go to the Gypsies again.

  Inside the square, the very last of the Holy Year pilgrims slipped out of the huge bronze Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basil-ica just before it was sealed for the next twenty-five years. By passing through it just now they received a Plenary Indulgence—remission of punishment for all of the sins they had committed during the course of their lives.

  After a moment of silent prayer, slowly, with labored effort, the 80-year-old Pontiff Pope John Paul II pulled shut the twin thirteen-foot panels. Later, they would be bricked up until another Pope declared another Holy Year in 2025. Thunderous cheers went up from the 100,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square behind him to witness the event.

  Among them was a slender pale nun, in full habit, who had been the very last person to slip through the Holy Door before the Holy Father closed it.

  author’s note

  Con games are by their very nature cruel. They are also sometimes astonishingly inventive, and often amusing because the victims should have known better. Most of the cons, scams, and grifts in this novel are real; but if you feel that nobody in our sophisticated age would fall for them, consider that, since 1950:

  An English businessman bought the Scandinavian fishing fleet in Norway. A South African company bought an RAF military airfield in England. An Italian consortium bought several U.S. Navy ships anchored in the Naples harbor. A Japanese investor bought a BOAC airliner during its three-day stopover in Tokyo. Several different buyers purchased the Eiffel Tower to tear down for seven thousand tons of scrap metal. An American tourist leased the Colosseum for ten years to stick a restaurant on top of it.

  All paid cash to the putative owners. All received nothing in return. All were conned. None got any money back.

  In this new Millennium, such hoary scams as auction fraud, adoption fraud, stock fraud, credit card theft, and trademark theft have gone online with a relative newcomer, identity theft.

  During my years as a repoman at the real DKA, I took part in more than one split-second dealer raid like that on Big John’s UpScale Motors. DKA always later recovered the pilfered demos.

  Kearny’s day in court happened exactly as in the novel; I merely substituted Dan Kearny for Dave Kikkert, Larry for me.

  The novel’s murderous “magic salt” long con stems from a 1993 San Francisco case of alleged digitalis poisoning: purple foxglove seemed to have been put into the food of five old men who died. Allegedly involved were corrupt cops, unauthorized cremations that destroyed forensic evidence, and members of the infamous Bimbo (as in Tough Guy) Gypsy clan known for its nationwide mayhem since the early 1900s. In 2000 a few slap-on-the-wrist sentences were passed out, none for murder.

  I watched the fake-mentalist sealed-envelope gag nightly on a carny midway when I was a “roughie” with a traveling tent show touring the American Midwest in 1955. For the novel, I added a computer and an ape. Primate studies show that nothing Freddie does—including the use of sign language—is farfetched.

  The House of Pain stories are real.

  Concerning Yana’s Rome scam, I offer the following, without comment, from Leah Garchik’s San Francisco Chronicle “Grab Bag” column for Saturday, March 27, 1999: “10,113 virgins bought insurance against immaculate conception next year.”

  None of the characters in this book are real, of course; I made them all up. Mere fictions, mere figments, every one. Having said that, I have to state that, as always, I owe profound thanks to all those who helped me write it.

  First and foremost, always and forever, Dori. Wife, lover, best friend, best person (and best editor) I have ever known, who right down to the very last second worked much harder on this book than I did to make it right.

  Henry Morrison and Danny Baror, my book agents, who labor long and hard all over the wor
ld in every medium on my behalf.

  Bill Malloy, Editor-in-Chief at Mysterious Press, for being such a good friend and dynamic editor. Also long-suffering Harvey-Jane Kowal, Executive Managing Editor of Time Warner Trade Publishing, who takes the time for my work.

  Paul Sandberg, entertainment attorney and film producer extraordinaire (Picking up the Pieces), who tells the world’s best jokes, many of which have found their way into these pages.

  Novelist Michael Connelly for letting me borrow Harry Bosch (in name only) as a fun foil for Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern.

  Rick Robinson for lending me his name and physical being for one of the novel’s quasi-bad guys. In real life he is a gentle giant who edits the excellent mystery fanzine The Perp.

  Sis Moeller of Global Travel in Mill Valley worked out how to get my Gypsies to Rome on short notice during Millennium year.

  Jean Jong of Gold Dream Jewelers at San Anselmo’s Red Hill Shopping Center gave me invaluable data concerning the color, size, origin, and price of emeralds I needed for my jewelry scam.

  Bill Corfitzen supplied me with a great deal of material about Rome in Millennium year not elsewhere available.

  Blair Allen did likewise for the “magic salt” case.

  Stan Croner, one of the world’s true good guys, lets me continue to bash him about as Stan Groner of Cal-Cit Bank.

  Dick Mercure and Vicky McPhee opened their premises and their hearts to Dori and me during the novel’s early stages.

  Finally, many Gypsies told me their stories, their cons and scams and grifts, their folktales and spells and charms and legends, on condition they remain anonymous. And so they do.

  This novel was begun at Frederiksted, St. Croix, American Virgin Islands, worked on in Arizona and New Mexico and Colorado, and completed in the San Francisco Bay Area.

  Joe Gores

  January 2001