The Don Con

by Richard Armstrong

  “We’ll use the window, too,” said Carlo. “We’re on the ground floor.”

  “Pete is waiting for us in the driveway of the hotel.”

  “So we’ll walk around to the front. Would it kill you to walk a little?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Okay, listen up, everybody,” said Carlo. “Stand there and be quiet. Sit down if you want. Don’t try to follow us or we’ll shoot you. I’m not kidding. If you try to crawl through that broken window naked, some of you are going to get your balls sliced off.”

  I winced.

  “Before long, they’ll break the door down and save you. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Stay calm, and everything will turn out fine. Thanks for your cooperation.”

  “Thanks for your money, too,” said Paulie with a laugh.

  They both chuckled and started to walk toward the broken window.

  13

  I didn’t know it at the time. Or maybe I’d forgotten. But Steven Dubois had been a real swashbuckler on his television series. He might have been a bit effeminate in real life, but on the show he was constantly getting into (and winning) fist fights with various alien life forms. His character knew all sorts of fancy martial-arts moves and no matter how overwhelming the odds against him—even if two or three monsters from outer space were ganging up on him—he usually came out on top.

  Funny thing about being an actor. Once you’ve played a role, some little part of that character stays with you. If you were a tough guy on a television show twenty years ago, a little voice in your head says you’re still a tough guy.

  Unfortunately for Steven Dubois, he chose to listen to that voice.

  Paulie was halfway through the window, trying to make sure his crotch cleared the jagged edge of broken glass by at least two inches. Carlo was standing right behind him, waiting. Both of them were still holding their guns.

  Steven Dubois grabbed a butter knife from one of the tables and started charging toward Carlo. He was swinging the knife around his head and screaming some sort of banshee battle cry.

  Carlo swung around and saw this seventy-year-old actor coming at him, stark naked, with a butter knife in his hands and murder in his eyes. So he did the sensible thing.

  He shot Dubois in the foot.

  Dubois dropped to the floor and grabbed his bleeding foot, howling in pain.

  But the gunshot surprised Paulie and he lost his grip on the windowsill. He slipped ever so slightly, but enough for his crotch to land dead center on the same shard of broken glass he’d been trying so hard to avoid. Paulie let out a blood-curdling scream that was louder and more shrill than Steven’s. Meanwhile, the pounding on the door was getting louder.

  Carlo shoved Paulie the rest of the way through the window to make room for himself to go through. He clambered up and out without harm. I could hear Paulie’s screams getting lower and lower in pitch as he moved farther away—the Doppler effect. Meanwhile, Steven Dubois was crying softly near the window and massaging his bleeding foot.

  “Is there a doctor in the house?” I said. I kicked myself mentally for saying something so clichéd.

  “I’m not a doctor, but I played one on TV,” said one of the actors. Talk about clichéd!

  “Which show? How many seasons?” said another.

  “Two seasons. ER with George Clooney.”

  This was an old actor’s trick for padding your résumé. If the part you played in a movie or TV show was so small it was hardly worth mentioning, you mentioned the star in the leading role to make it sound more impressive.

  “Did you get residuals?” said the second actor to the one who claimed to be a TV doctor.

  “Yes, I’m still getting some. Just a few dollars a month nowadays.”

  “Still. That’s not bad.”

  I’d heard enough of this nonsense.

  “Did George Clooney teach you anything about medicine?” I said. “If so, maybe you could go help Mr. Dubois.”

  The actor’s face turned red. Not because he was stark naked, but because I called him out as a fake doctor. He grabbed a couple of napkins and walked over to where Dubois was sitting on the floor. Together they managed to stop the bleeding. Luckily, it turned out to be a flesh wound.

  “What do we do now?” said an actress I remembered from an old sitcom.

  “We should wait until they find us,” said another aging actress.

  “Do you want them to find us naked? How’s that going to look in the gossip magazines?”

  It had been at least thirty years since any gossip magazine had mentioned this woman’s name.

  “We can’t do much of anything until we get our clothes on,” said a third actress. “Some brave man has to climb out that window and toss our clothing back inside.”

  “Not me,” said every male actor in the room at the same time.

  “What the devil is wrong with you guys?” said Gillian Baker. “Oh, hells bells, I’ll do it.” And she did. Without any penis or testicles to worry about, she scurried out the window and started tossing clothes back inside.

  The mood in the room brightened as we sorted through our clothing and began to put it on piece by piece. It looked like Steven Dubois was going to be fine. Some people made a few jokes to make light of the situation. I can’t remember exactly what they said, but I remember we all laughed. Nothing is more exhilarating, Winston Churchill had once said, than being shot at without result. I guess each of us was enjoying some of that sense of exhilaration. (Except for Steven, of course.)

  But then Karen—dear, sweet Karen, my loyal assistant—said something that sent a chill down my spine.

  “I know it was you, Mr. Volpe,” she said. “Those robbers were your friends. You were the inside guy. The three of you planned this whole thing.”

  Caught.

  That was my cue to do the first real acting I’d done in twenty years.

  “What are you talking about, Karen?” I said. “I never met them before today. Just like I never met you before today.”

  “You acted like you knew them. You introduced them to me.”

  “Karen, I didn’t even know their names. Remember? I didn’t know which was Paulie and which was Carlo. I didn’t know their last names at all.”

  “But you were expecting them.”

  “I was expecting them because my agent told me she’d hired some guys to act as my bodyguards today. She thought it would help bring more fans to my autograph table and we’d make more money. That’s all there was to it. The whole thing was my agent’s idea.”

  Karen wasn’t buying it.

  “I saw one of those guys reach into your pocket and pull out a gun.”

  “Karen, those were toy guns.”

  “What do you mean they were toy guns? Tell that to Mr. Dubois. Look at all the blood on his foot. Look at the bullet holes in the ceiling. Look at the window, for heaven’s sake.”

  “No, I mean I thought they were just toy guns. Just like the machine guns those guys were carrying. They were plastic.”

  “The machine guns were toys, but the pistols were real.”

  I wondered if Karen was a federal prosecutor when she wasn’t volunteering at Fan-Cons.

  “I thought they were toys, just like the machine guns.”

  “You were carrying two pistols in your pockets and you couldn’t tell if they were real guns or toys? Isn’t a real gun ten times heavier than a plastic one?”

  She stumped me with this, and I couldn’t reply. Karen continued her final summation to the jury of my peers—a bunch of washed-up actors—who were listening to the whole conversation.

  “You did this, Mr. Volpe. Or at least you were in on it. I think you set the whole thing up. You had the two robbers carry plastic machine guns into the exhibit hall. They passed through security because their guns were just toys. But you had two real guns in your pockets. You got past security because you came in through the special guest entrance. The security guard at the door checked your name off the list and let you
in. He didn’t frisk you. He didn’t make you walk through a metal detector. You’re a big star, after all.”

  “Well, I’m just an—”

  “Then you met up with your accomplices at the autograph table. You passed the real guns to them. When it was time for lunch, you brought them back here to the greenroom. Then they robbed us blind. And they shot Mr. Dubois in the foot. You’re responsible for this, Joey. You’re the ringleader.”

  Her case was airtight. I was going to hold out my hands so she could cuff me, but the sheer stupidity, vanity, and greed of my fellow actors saved me.

  “Does your agent really help you book these Fan-Cons?” said a guy dressed up like the Green Lantern. “I have to book them myself. I even have to pay an application fee. My agent says they’re not worth his time.”

  “My agent sets them up for me,” I lied.

  “Do you have to pay him fifteen percent? That’s a little steep for something like this. When you subtract the application fee and the other expenses, there’s not much left for me. I’ve got to feed my family.”

  “Well, it’s a cash business,” I said. “Your agent doesn’t have to know how much you made.”

  “I don’t even tell my agent about this,” said an actress I didn’t recognize. “Why bother getting him involved? It’s just a way to make some money on the side. Would I tell my agent if I opened a lemonade stand at Hollywood and Vine?”

  The other actors started discussing this among themselves. They found the topic much more interesting than judging my guilt or innocence in the robbery.

  There was a loud bang and we all turned to the door just in time to see it come crashing into the room. With all the confusion and conversation, we had forgotten to unlock the door. Two security guards broke it down by hitting it with their shoulders at the same time. They came flying into the room and wound up splayed on the floor. Five or six other security guards followed them with their guns drawn.

  “What the hell happened in here?” said the one in charge. “We’ve been banging on the door for ten minutes.”

  “We were robbed,” said Karen. “And this guy did it!” She pointed at me. “Joey Volpe of The Sopranos.”

  “Who did you play on The Sopranos?” said the security guard.

  “Well …”

  14

  You’ve heard of the good cop/bad cop routine?

  Well, something like that happened to me at the downtown police station in Columbus, Ohio. Both cops questioning me knew me from The Sopranos. Or thought they did. Each of them had a different take on me. One of them thought I really was a member of the Mafia. The other thought I was just an actor and probably not smart enough to organize a circle jerk in a telephone booth, much less a grand larceny involving three robbers and more than a hundred thousand dollars in cash and jewelry. They argued their cases in front of me.

  “He’s a known member of an organized-crime family, Jim. According to the RICO statute, we can hold him on that basis alone.”

  “He’s an actor, Bob. Not even an important one. I don’t even remember which part he played on The Sopranos.” He looked at me. “What part did you play again?”

  “Well …”

  “I know which part he played,” said the bad cop. “He was the guy who hung himself in the basement because Tony wouldn’t let him retire to Florida.”

  “I thought he was the guy who died on the toilet,” said the good cop. He turned to me to settle the dispute.

  “Well …”

  “Oh, never mind,” said the good cop. “Does it really matter? Either way his character is dead. It’s a television show, Bob. Even James Gandolfini is dead now.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said. “That’s still in dispute. I mean, Gandolfini is dead, yes, but is Tony Soprano? The screen just went to black at the end. That could mean they killed Tony. Or it could mean David Chase couldn’t come up with a good ending.”

  “I hated that ending,” said the good cop. “I ran to the television set to make sure it wasn’t disconnected.”

  “The ending was a cop-out,” said the bad cop. “But that doesn’t mean we should cut this guy loose.”

  So it went back and forth for what seemed like seventy-two hours. Five hours into it, I requested an attorney. They called the public defender’s office. Seven hours after that, my attorney showed up. She was a pretty young black woman. She was wearing a visitor’s badge that read Sharon Talley, Public Defender’s Office.

  Ms. Talley walked into the interrogation room and pointed at me.

  “You, shut up.”

  Then she pointed at the two cops.

  “You two, scram.”

  They stood up grudgingly and walked out of the room. The bad cop turned over his shoulder and said, “We’re not finished with you yet, paesano.”

  “I told you to GET OUT,” said the woman. She stared at them until they closed the door. Then she turned to me and held out her hand.

  “I’m Sharon Talley. Nice to meet you.”

  “Joey Volpe. Likewise.”

  “What did you tell them, Joey?”

  “Nothing. We talked a lot about television.”

  “Television?”

  “I’m an actor. They recognized me from TV. They wanted to talk about that.”

  “Good. So tell me what happened at the hotel. Don’t leave anything out.”

  I gave her my version of the story, the same version I gave Karen. She asked a few questions. She took notes. When I finished, she looked up at the ceiling, tapped her ballpoint pen on her pursed lips, and thought for a few moments.

  “Have you ever been in trouble with the law before, Joey?”

  “No, never. Not even a parking ticket.”

  I lived in New York City. I didn’t even have a car.

  “Have you ever owned a handgun?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Don’t lie to me. They can check nowadays, you know.”

  “Sharon, I live in New York City. The only legal way to own a gun in New York is to join the police force.”

  She laughed.

  “Sit tight, Joey. I’ll have you out of here in less than an hour.”

  In the end, the Columbus police couldn’t hold me. Oh, they wanted to. But they didn’t have enough evidence to book me. It was Karen’s word against mine. She didn’t have enough evidence to support her theory—even though it was perfectly accurate.

  “You’ll have to come back if they find any new evidence that incriminates you,” my lawyer said when she returned to the interrogation room. “But they don’t have enough to hold you now.”

  “Can I go back to New York?”

  “They will tell you not to leave town, but they’re bullshitting. Once they let you go, you can go anywhere you want. If you were involved, Joey—and I don’t believe you were—they can always extradite you. Ohio and New York smokum peace pipe and make treaty.”

  I laughed. I loved this woman. I wanted to marry her.

  Then I remembered I was already married. And my wife would have some questions of her own.

  15

  “You’re almost two days late getting home,” said Caitlin.

  “I can explain,” I said. “And it’s not what you think. It’s not another woman. But it’s a long story. We need to sit down and talk about it. Hey, what happened to the window?”

  Our living room window, the one facing the street, was broken. We lived on the second floor of a small brick apartment building on West 112th Street near Broadway. We were almost living in Harlem, but it was all we could afford. Broken windows were not unusual on our block. But this was the first time someone had broken ours. It was the second broken window I’d seen in as many days. Little did I know the same charming group of guys broke both of them.

  “I should tell you my story before you tell me yours,” said Caitlin.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I was sitting here watching television late last night when I heard something come crashing through the window. It was a brick.�
��

  “A brick?”

  “Yes, but wait, the story gets weirder. The brick had an envelope taped to it. The envelope was addressed to Joey Volpe. Maybe I shouldn’t have opened it, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  “That’s okay. What was inside?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Five thousand dollars in cash. Fifty hundred-dollar bills. And there was a note, too.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “It was strange. The note said, ‘Joey, this is less than we talked about. But you lied to us. You promised us more. We’re not amused.’”

  I was silent.

  “Can you explain that?” said Caitlin.

  “Was the note signed?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “You don’t have it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it was a threatening note. You had disappeared. I thought maybe someone had kidnapped you. So I called the police.”

  “You called the police?”

  “Of course.”

  “Caitlin, when someone is kidnapped, you’re supposed to give the kidnappers money. They don’t give you money.”

  “What do I know about kidnapping?”

  “Jesus Christ. Just give me the note and the money.”

  “I said I don’t have it.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “The police took it. They said it was evidence of a crime.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I’m sorry. Did I do the wrong thing?”

  “Please tell me you at least took some of the money out of the envelope.”

  “No, the cops took all the money. And the note. The brick, too.”

  Too bad, I thought. We could’ve used that money. I could’ve hired a decent lawyer.

  16

  Speaking of throwing bricks, Caitlin hit me with a ton of bricks a couple of weeks later. Not literally. But when you consider the damage it did to my mental and emotional health, it was almost as bad.

  The public defender assigned to my case in New York got me released on my own recognizance. I was sitting in our living room, watching television, and drinking a beer. Ever since my release, I was drinking and watching television constantly. It was a desperate attempt to deaden my senses and forget about the trial and possibly prison. I was on my fifth beer and third rerun of Law & Order when Caitlin walked in and nailed me.