Fiddle Game

by Richard A. Thompson

  I think Redrock is where he always wanted to be, though I can’t tell him that to his face. If it isn’t, I’ll never figure out how somebody so street-smart couldn’t manage to stay on the outside. “Some things just aren’t worth worrying about, Hermie, my boy,” he used to say. Like keeping two sets of books for his front business and washable numbers sheets for his real operation. Uncle Fred was a bookie, a numbers man, and a loan shark, and he was very successful, except for when he got caught. I always thought he just couldn’t take the rarefied air of freedom for too long. But with respect to other people and the pitfalls and traps of the cruel old world, he is absolutely the wisest man I have ever known. He could figure out everybody and everything except himself. And if you think about it, that’s really not such bad odds to be playing with. He’s also the closest thing I ever had to a real father.

  I grew up in a Rust Belt slum of blue-collar Detroit. If I knew my father, I don’t remember him anymore. Uncle Fred would, of course, being his brother and all, but he never spoke of him. My mother, I would just as soon forget, though I can’t always manage that. I don’t know what it was she wanted out of life, but a son definitely wasn’t it. I spent my childhood running away from foster homes and orphanages, and working small street scams, always trying to build up enough of a stash so I could run so far I would never have to come back. Uncle Fred took me under his wing and made it more or less moot. He didn’t actually let me live with him, but he gave me a job and made me sort of an unofficial apprentice. Everything I know about money, numbers, and odds, plus a lot of what I know about human frailty, I learned from him. He gave me an identity. I became a numbers man. In any way that really counts, I still am.

  And he was proud of his student. He wasn’t big on the whole idea of family, but I often felt that he saw me as the son he never had. When he went away to prison the first time, he let me run the business for him in his absence. I rewarded this amazing display of trust by liquidating the whole operation and using the capital to start my first bonding agency. He didn’t like the idea much at first, his favorite nephew going legit, but as the money started to flow in, with no penal risk attached, he grudgingly approved and eventually even admired. Before he got out from his first stretch, I had salted away enough cash to repay him, and I was off and running on my own. Playing with the house money, they call it.

  The business worked, but my life didn’t. I got involved in the wrong way with one of my own clients and wound up having to flee Detroit permanently, walking away from a lot of money and a nominal wife who in any case was not the holding type. Also from my Uncle Fred. That’s the short version. I’m not especially fond of telling the longer one, though I have no bitterness about it. If there’s anything I learned from my apprenticeship, it’s that you play the hand you’re dealt and don’t whine about it, even to yourself.

  I’m 43 going on ancient now, reestablished and in some ways reborn. New business, new part of the country, new life. I might as well be in the Witness Relocation Program, except that I was never a witness to anything that I admitted. I seldom risk contacting Uncle Fred, though I think of him often. I’ve never been to Redrock to visit him before. It just wasn’t worth the worry. My friend Nickel Pete sometimes takes vacations in exotic places like Mexico, Hawaii, and Italy, and while he’s there, he mails cards and letters to Redrock for me. I like to imagine that my uncle knows perfectly well what kind of fraud is going on and laughs his ass off about it. It’s as much as I can do for him. And without any help from me, he himself had also managed to build up a new business and lose it again by going back to the slammer, not once but twice. So how much help could he stand? Maybe I’ll ask him someday.

  ***

  I stopped twice for gas and coffee on the road, and once for ham and eggs with some of those terrific fried potatoes that only small town diners know how to make. I also bought half a dozen candy bars and a carton of cigarettes at a truck stop, a standard visitor’s gift. I was feeling tired but eager as the blacktop road broke out of the autumn landscape of scrubby farms and small groves and into the last mile of low, blighted land that still surrounds Redrock. It loomed black and ugly on the horizon, and its leaning chimneys made it look like a set from a bad horror movie. The big archway through the outer wall had a rolling steel gate that was open, and the courtyard inside had a visitor parking lot where a big sign told me to lock my car, take my keys, and leave no valuables in plain sight. I guess they don’t get a very classy clientele there. Mostly lawyers, probably.

  Another sign told me that all visitors had to register at the front office, but it didn’t say I had to have a photo ID. I rummaged through the phony credentials in the briefcase and decided I would be Samuel Hill, Attorney at Law. A lame joke, maybe, but who was going to complain? I locked the Pontiac, leaving no valuables in plain sight, and went in. Five minutes later, a uniformed guard had searched me for lethal substances or devices and was escorting me into the compound. When I heard the massive steel gates clang shut behind me, even though I was just a visitor, I knew what doom sounded like. I decided to avoid it a while longer.

  The visitor area was just a big gym-sized room with a lot of tables and chairs. The tables were bolted to the floor in neat rows, and guards strolled the aisles between them. The fluorescent lighting was just a little brighter than the sun, and the place smelled of Lysol and cigarette smoke. It also had several video cameras, up high in the corners, but none of the glass separators with phones that you see in the high-security joints. Visitors and cons could actually touch here, as long as they didn’t get carried away about it.

  It took them about half an hour to find my Uncle Fred and get him there. I suppose he didn’t believe them at first, telling him he had a lawyer for a visitor. When they led him in, he looked confused and crabby, but when he saw me, he smiled slyly and gave me a wink, and the years since we had last seen each other dropped away. That was my uncle, all right. We shook hands just like a real lawyer and client would, then sat down to talk.

  “So, what’s up, Mr. Shyster?”

  “Hey, Mr. Con. Good to see you, too. Yes, I’ve been well thank you. How about yourself? Bernice and the kids send their love. We’re all praying for your appeal.”

  We sat down and leaned together, and he lowered his voice a notch.

  “Who the hell is Bernice?”

  “I just made her up.”

  He chuckled. “Cute. You just playing to the cameras, or are you trying to make me think you care about me?”

  “You trying to pretend that I don’t?”

  “You don’t visit me here, ever.”

  “If I did, I could wind up joining you.”

  “A smart guy like you? Never happen.”

  “Yeah, well, some days I’m smarter than others.”

  “Ain’t we all, though?” He laughed, then, and visibly relaxed. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you, Hermie.”

  “You, too, Unc. You look pretty good, for a geezer and a lifer.” Actually, I thought he looked like nine miles of bad road. His salt and pepper hair had gone to full white, his moustache had no shape to it anymore, and he seemed about two inches shorter than I remembered him. If he still had a jaw, it was lost now in the folds of his shapeless neck. The glint was still in the eyes, though, the hard intelligence and spirit of a game player who would die playing.

  “I’m only a borderline geezer,” he said, “and I get one more shot before I’m a lifer.”

  “Really? I thought three times down and you were out.”

  “Nah, that’s all political bullshit. Us nonviolent types get a little more slack. It’s not like they got a big shortage of inmates, you know? I’m figuring on parole in a couple years. Meanwhile, I keep my manly physique ready for all those eager women out there, by eating only organic foods and pumping iron every day, which I’m sure you can tell. What do you do?”

  “I pump wood at a place called Lefty’s Pool Hall.”

  “That’s better. We had a pool
table here, I’d be a rich man by now. You bring any smokes?”

  I pulled the paper bag from under my chair and plopped it on the table. He opened the top and peered in. “What the hell are these?” he demanded.

  “They’re called cigarettes. Old Golds, your usual brand. Remember?”

  “Yeah, but they’re regulars. I can’t take that kind no more. I got to have the sissy ultra lights, or I go all asthmatic, have to give up my daily marathon training and everything.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You wouldn’t know, I guess. Well, they’re good for capital, anyway. Thanks, kid.”

  “Do I need to ask what you need capital for?”

  “If you do, I didn’t teach you much. Book is a good business here. Cons will bet on any damn thing, and they got no clue what the odds ought to be. You gotta stay away from craps, though. Guys get crazy over craps, make me forsake all the nonviolent training I got from Hot Mama Gandhi. What about you? You still writing GET OUT OF JAIL FREE cards for exorbitant fees?”

  “That and pool are the only games I know anymore.”

  “And I’m up for sainthood next year. So what’s the problem?”

  “Did I say there was a problem?”

  “Don’t try to con an old con, Hermie. You didn’t come here just to listen to me lie about my health.”

  “Well, since you mentioned it…”

  “I mentioned, already. Give.”

  So I gave. I told Uncle Fred everything that had happened, from the time Amy Cox had first walked into my office until I had walked into the visitor lobby at Redrock. Shortly after I got started, he lit a cigarette from the carton he had said was the wrong kind, then offered me one. I figured he was letting me know that the video cameras were high-resolution. I took the offered smoke, and whenever I came to the parts about running afoul of the law, I made sure I had the cigarette and my hand in front of my mouth, to stymie any lip-readers. He sat back in his chair, crossed his legs, and listened. Once in a while, he would make a note on a little lined pad he had in his shirt pocket. He looked comfortable, and so was I. Focused. Talking business was more natural to either of us than talking sentiment.

  After I finished, he looked at his notes for a while, scowled a few times, and massaged his chin with his scrawny hand.

  “It’s a con,” he said.

  “Hey, no kidding? What gave you the first clue?” Sometimes Uncle Fred talks to me as if I were still a little kid, and since real fathers everywhere do that, too, I don’t even try to break him of it. Sooner or later, he would get to the paydirt.

  “But it’s not so simple,” he said.

  “Oh, I see. Did it look simple at some point? Somehow, I missed that part.”

  “You ever hear of the ‘old fiddle game?’”

  “Sure,” I said. “Of course. Everybody has, but it doesn’t apply here.”

  He was referring to a classic, two-man short con, the kind that doesn’t give the victim enough time to think things over before it’s already sprung.

  It works this way: Grifter Number One eats a meal in a fancy restaurant, then tells the manager he can’t pay because he just realized he left his wallet in his hotel room. But if the manager will wait for him to go get it, he will leave his violin for security. He opens an old-looking violin case, flashes the violin around a bit, and leaves, acting hurried and embarrassed. After he goes, another customer, Grifter Number Two, comes up to pay his own bill and asks to have a closer look at the instrument. He’s a collector, he says, and would like to buy it. He offers a huge chunk of money, at least ten times what the restaurant is likely to have for cash on-hand. The manager, of course, says it’s not his to sell, but if Number Two will wait a bit, the owner will be back shortly. Number Two says sorry, but he has to catch a hot flight to Timbuktu, and he splits. But he leaves the manager his business card and asks him to have the owner of the fiddle call.

  When Number One comes back, the manager, if he’s as greedy as the grifters hope and trust, negotiates a quick purchase of the violin. Grifter Number One doesn’t want to sell, he says, but he finally agrees to do so for all the money in the place, cash only. Then he, also, suddenly remembers a hot date somewhere very far away, and he takes the money and runs. The “collector’s” business card, of course, is as phony as the two grifters, and the violin turns out to be worth maybe fifty bucks, tops. But by the time the manager knows he’s been had, both players are long gone. There are lots of variations, but that’s the purest version.

  “I thought of it right away,” I said, “but the only thing I can see that it has in common with my situation is an old violin and a security arrangement. What are you seeing that I’m not?”

  “I’m seeing two completely different operations, Hermie.”

  “You want to lay that out for me?”

  “Look, when you wipe away all the byplay, like the limp that the cute broad had, and…”

  “Did I say she was cute?”

  “You didn’t have to. You wipe away that, and the business with the kneeled tights…”

  “Neo-Luddites, Uncle Fred.”

  “Will you cut that shit out and listen for a minute?”

  “Yes.”

  He glared at me for a bit, daring me to interrupt him again. When I didn’t, he lit another cigarette and continued. “You sift through all the byplay, I’m saying, and if the scam still looks too complicated, then there’s something else going on.”

  I waited. He made a gesture with his hand that said, Your turn.

  “Like murder?” I said.

  “Just like that. The killing wasn’t part of the grift. Con men aren’t hit men. If they were, they’d give up conning and go to armed robbery or extortion or murder for hire. Something with a lot more loot and a faster payoff.”

  “Excuse me for being a little slow,” I said, “but I don’t see where there’s any payoff in this scheme, fast or slow. If I have to give eighteen grand to the court, that doesn’t help anybody else.”

  “You won’t have to. You got a bent cop in on the scam…”

  “Evans.”

  “Yeah, Evans. You watch. When the time comes for the Cox kid’s trial, something will show up in the police records, makes the whole thing go away, null and void. The arrest was just to get your attention, get you to look at the violin.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because bondsmen have more money than restaurant managers.”

  “Fair enough. But I still don’t see where the payoff comes in.”

  “That’s because we haven’t seen the hook yet, only the bait.”

  “But I don’t have to buy the violin from any phony musician. I already have it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, Pete does.”

  “Does he?”

  “Sure, he does.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What are you saying, Unc? That Pete’s in on the con?”

  “He wouldn’t have to be. You trust him, that’s good enough for me. I’m just saying I’d look, that’s all. Maybe there’s a little pigeon drop going on here, too.”

  The “pigeon drop” is another classic short con, in which the victim literally winds up holding the bag. The bag is supposed to be full of money, but it turns out to be stuffed with worthless paper. I sighed.

  “Couldn’t just one thing be what it looks like?” I said.

  “In this sorry old world, probably not much.”

  “What about the killing? You figure Evans for it?”

  “Could be, but I don’t think so. If he did it, it was a mistake, and he’s trying to pin it on you. But if he’s clean, then he might really think you did it. Either way, you’ve got some running time.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I figure Evans is in on the con, no matter what. He’ll let you be a wanted man for a while, just to keep you off balance, but he isn’t going to let you go down until the game plays itself out and some money chang
es hands. If Plan A didn’t work, he’ll go to Plan B or Z, but he won’t give up on it. There’s too much invested at this point, and the gang has its little hearts set on the payoff.”

  “Which I’m not going to give them.”

  “Are you sure? People who do this for a living are awfully good at it, you know. You might not see the hook until it’s too late. At this point, you probably haven’t even seen all the players.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “Well, you can’t turn State’s evidence, because you don’t have any evidence.”

  “This is true.”

  “So the only thing to do is see another card. Then turn the hook back on the grifters, if you can. If you can’t, at least you might find out who killed the girl, get clear of it yourself.”

  “Play the hand I’m dealt? Where have I heard that before?”

  “Play the hand out, damn straight. But keep a gun under the table, you hear? This thing is going to get ugly before it’s done.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so. Murder by automobile is not the professional’s method of choice. It’s a caper with a lot more rage than thought. Believe me, there’s still plenty of it left floating around for you.”

  “Okay, so I need a gun.”

  “An untraceable gun.”

  “Absolutely. Who do I shoot with it?”

  “Well, that’s the art of it, you know? If it’s not clear by the time the last card’s turned, you could be in deep shit.”

  “You’re just full of good advice today, aren’t you?”

  “You remember the story I used to tell about the horse trader in Constantinople?”

  A guard was going around the tables, telling people their time was up.

  “You mean the one with the little kid who saw…” I began. Uncle Fred motioned to me to cut it off.

  “Yeah, that one,” he said. “You keep that one in mind, and you’ll be fine.”