The Don Con

by Richard Armstrong

  “Prospero from The Tempest.”

  “Actors may be a bit slow,” said Nigel, “but you cannot deny they have prodigious memories. Rather like elephants, I should say.”

  We were silent for a while. A scary thought crossed my mind. So scary I almost didn’t say anything. But I couldn’t help myself.

  “These con jobs of yours, Nigel, do you always do them for money? Or do you sometimes do them for revenge?”

  “Money, mostly. That’s the beauty of con games. They work well for both money and revenge. Why do you ask? Is there someone you want vengeance on?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who?”

  “I’d rather not say. Besides, it probably wouldn’t work. He’s rich, but he’s not stupid. In fact, he’s very intelligent. Just a little unsophisticated.”

  “We’re not looking for stupid people, Joey. We’re looking for greedy people. Stupid people don’t work. They can’t grasp the opportunity and act on it quickly. But smart people who are too greedy for their own good work like a charm. They see the chance and grab it before they take the time to think it through.”

  “Well, the guy I have in mind is perfect for the part. But he’s too dangerous to mess with. Besides, I’m taking the straight and narrow when I get out of here. If I can’t make it as an actor, I’ll wash dishes to support my family.”

  “Not sure whether you want to take revenge or not, Prince Hamlet? I understand. If you ever want to talk more about it, you know where to find me. I’m not going anywhere for the next seven months and twenty-three days.”

  “Okay, but I’m too tired to talk any more tonight.”

  “Me too,” said Charlie.

  “Sweet dreams,” said Nigel.

  “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” I continued Prospero’s famous speech from The Tempest. “And our little lives are rounded with a sleep.”

  Soon the three of us were rounded with a sleep as well.

  24

  A week after Steve died, I was walking into our cubicle with my nose stuck in a copy of Richard II, when I saw somebody lying in Steve’s bunk.

  “Hello there,” I said.

  He stood up and held out his hand, “I’m Mario Spagnuola. People call me Spags. I’m your new cellie.”

  “Cubie.”

  “What?”

  “We call our roommates cubie’s here. Cellie is a word reserved for the big-boy jail.”

  “Oh, okay. This is my fourth time in the slammer. But I’ve got to say, I’ve never seen one cushier than this.”

  “Fourth time?”

  “Occupational hazard.”

  “Dare I ask what occupation?”

  “Waste management and related activities.”

  “That’s illegal?”

  “The waste management is not illegal. Some of the related activities are.”

  “I see.”

  “What’s your name? You look familiar,” he said.

  “Joey Volpe. I was on television once. Sometimes people recognize me.”

  “What show?”

  “Small role on The Sopranos. Then a slightly bigger one on Button Men.”

  “My two favorite shows! No wonder you look familiar. I remember you from Button Men.”

  I loved this guy at first sight. He recognized me from Button Men and he didn’t want to question me about The Sopranos. He was my favorite kind of fan.

  “Do I detect a Philly accent?” I said.

  “Born and raised a block from Geno’s. Cut open my veins and I bleed Cheese Whiz.”

  “Do you know a guy by the name of Tony Rosetti?”

  “Of course. Do you?”

  For a moment, he looked like he might strangle me.

  “No, no, no. Just what I’ve read in the newspapers.”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know him. When I say he’s a bad actor, I don’t mean he couldn’t remember his lines—if you know what I mean.”

  “You’ve worked with him?”

  “More like I’ve worked against him. I worked for one of his competitors, so to speak. Rosetti and I have worked together on a few projects, too. It’s complicated in my business. Listen, Joey, we just met. Maybe it’s best if we don’t talk about my work.”

  “I agree. I’m sorry to pry. Welcome to our cubicle.”

  “Thanks. I think I’m going to like it here. I could do twenty-five years here standing on my head.”

  “Twenty-five years, really?”

  “Naaah, just a few months. Even less if my lawyer gets off his lazy ass and does his job.”

  “I hear you.”

  Then I answered some of his questions about how to get along and get by at the Hoover Federal Correctional Complex.

  Getting along and getting by is exactly what I did for the next year and a half. Then one beautiful day in May, the most wonderful thing happened to me.

  I was released.

  And you’ll never guess who was standing outside the prison doors waiting to meet me.

  25

  It was Caitlin.

  This was the first time I’d seen her in over two years. We had agreed that she would not visit me in prison. For two reasons. Plus a third reason that was unspoken but understood.

  The first reason was that it was too expensive. She would have to fly from New York to Tucson, rent a car, and stay in a motel for at least one or two nights. We couldn’t afford it on her waitress’s salary. We knew that seeing each other in this setting would be depressing for both of us, so why spend a ton of money to feel sad?

  Secondly, we agreed it wouldn’t be good for Bianca to see her daddy in prison. We came up with a cover story that I was on the road with a national touring production of The Music Man, which was kind of an inside joke between Caitlin and me. As I mentioned before, I can’t dance worth shit. On the day I land a role in The Music Man, you’ll know the world has come to an end. But Bianca bought the story hook, line, and sinker. Caitlin went so far as to buy little postcards and write notes from me to Bianca so she could get them in the mail. She was too young to notice they all had New York postmarks on them.

  The third unspoken reason Caitlin never came to visit me in prison was because our marriage was still in tatters. She was still mad at me for cheating on her when suddenly I was arrested, tried, and convicted for armed robbery. Who could blame her?

  So every month she sent me an unemotional letter from home, filled with pictures of Bianca growing up—and Gizmo getting older—without a single word about us. Or whether there still was such a thing as “us.” I had to assume there wasn’t. I figured I’d take the prison bus back to Tucson, then hitchhike to New York—where I expected to find her dating a hedge-fund manager and ready to move on with her life.

  But when I saw her standing outside the prison gates in front of a little red rental car, I knew my plan had worked.

  “You listened to the tape?”

  “I did.”

  “Where’s Bianca?”

  “With my friend Patty from work.”

  “Is she doing okay?”

  “She’s doing fine.”

  “Where’d you tell her you were going?”

  “I told her I was going to Arizona to bring her daddy home.”

  “The Music Man tour is over?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Professor Hill has turned his life around. No more con games. No more girlfriends in every town. He’s going to settle down with Marian the Librarian in River City. And they’re going to live happily ever after.”

  I walked slowly toward her. I reached for her hand, and she gave it to me. I put my other hand on her shoulder to see if she’d let me hug her. She did. And the next thing I knew we were hugging like we hadn’t hugged since the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. We hugged so long I thought we’d stand there in the desert until we turned to dust.

  I got into the car, put on the seat belt, and immediately started to cry.

  Not just “cry.” I’m talking huge, heaving sobs. I was drawing deep breat
hs into my lungs and letting them out in whining, plaintive wails. My shoulders were rising and falling. My eyes were gushing with tears. My nose was overflowing with snot. I couldn’t catch my breath and was afraid I might pass out. Caitlin remained silent. I kept crying like this for five, ten, twenty miles down the road until she said something:

  “You remind me of Gizmo.”

  I started to laugh. But I couldn’t stop crying. So I was still making these pathetic sobs and laughing at the same time.

  What was so funny?

  Whenever we picked up Gizmo at the kennel after coming home from a trip, he’d cry exactly like that. We’d hop into a taxi and he’d whine and wail all the way the home, as if to say, “You people have no idea what you just put me through. You cannot even begin to comprehend the pain and misery I’ve been suffering. I hope you’re proud of yourselves for treating a helpless little dog with such cruelty.” He’d keep crying like that until we got home and then about five minutes later he’d be his happy old self.

  I was crying and laughing as we drove down the lonely Arizona two-lane highway. Gradually my laughter subsided and I continued to cry softly, tears streaming down my face. I saw a sign to Tucson, but Caitlin drove past it without turning off.

  “Where are we going?” I said, my voice still choked with tears.

  “Phoenix airport.”

  “Why?”

  “It was cheaper to fly into Phoenix than Tucson. One flight instead of two. Saves money.”

  “Even with the rental car?”

  “You have to rent a car no matter which airport you come into. Plus, the mileage is free. It just means we have to drive a little farther, that’s all.”

  It meant we had to drive a lot farther, but that was fine with me. It felt so good to be out of prison, I could drive all the way back to New York with my head out of the window and my tongue flapping in the wind. But we fell into a deep and lengthy silence. Ten miles passed. Then twenty. Then fifty miles without either one of us saying a word. Finally, I said something quietly.

  “I still love you, you know.”

  “And I never stopped loving you.”

  We fell silent again for another twenty miles or so. I spoke up in a tiny voice, almost a whisper:

  “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.”

  “It is twice blessed,” she said in that melodic voice she used whenever she quoted Shakespeare. “It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

  “It blesses her that gives and him that takes,” I said.

  She was silent.

  “I feel blessed,” I said.

  “Me too,” she said.

  Before I knew it we were back in New York City. Where my reunion with Bianca didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. For two years I’d pictured her jumping into my arms and smothering me with kisses, like a returning veteran from Iraq. Instead she was quiet and shy. At first she let me give her a long hug. Then she retreated behind her mother’s legs and observed me cautiously from there. “Give her time,” Caitlin whispered to me. I caught her watching me from a distance several times that first night. But when I waved her over to come talk to me, she turned away. After three hours of careful observation, she finally approached me and said something.

  “May I make you a mustard sandwich?”

  “Why yes,” I said, “I’d like that very much. But only if you’re having one yourself.”

  So the two of us sat on the living room floor eating mustard sandwiches, and I knew from that moment forward everything would be fine with me and Bianca.

  It also took me some time to adjust to my old bed. Caitlin and I didn’t have any problem making love there, that’s for sure. We did that several times the first night and every night afterward for a week or two. But I couldn’t fall asleep on the damn thing. It was too soft. My bunk bed at the Hoover Federal Correctional Complex had a mattress that was two inches thick with no box spring. I couldn’t sleep on our cushy queen-size bed at home. So I started sleeping on the floor.

  But that drove Gizmo crazy, because he wanted all three of us on the bed. So Gizmo would join me on the floor for a while, then jump up and nestle under the covers with Caitlin, then get back down with me. None of us were getting any sleep. Finally Caitlin got out of bed and all three of us slept on the floor. Bianca, who slept in a little nook off the living room, would join us in the morning. We slept like that for a month until I got used to living softly again.

  But New York City is not a soft place to live. For two years at Hoover I’d harbored this ridiculous notion that I would get back to New York and immediately start working as an actor. What a pipe dream that turned out to be! New York City was as good as ever at taking someone’s dream and grinding it like a cigarette on the sidewalk.

  While Caitlin kept supporting our family as a waitress, I mailed out thousands of eight-by-ten photos, résumés, and postcards to agents and casting directors. The response was minimal as usual. For every hundred I sent out, I might get one agent to call me in for an interview. He’d make me wait in his reception room for an hour or two. Then call me back into his office long enough to say, “We’re not really looking for your type right now.”

  Plus, I was facing a new obstacle. I’d sprouted some gray hair in prison and I was looking older than my years. Theatrical agents and casting directors weren’t known for their tact. They took a certain pleasure in being rude. I started hearing something along these lines: “This résumé is mighty thin for someone your age. What are you, fifty? Sixty?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “Yeah, right. Well, even if you were still in your forties, this résumé tells me you’ve spent most of your career on the moon. You got your MFA in acting from Yale twenty years ago and since that time you’ve had a few walk-ons in The Sopranos and another bit part on a cable television show that got canceled after a year. No movies. No Broadway. No off-Broadway. Just a bunch of equity showcases from fifteen years ago. What’s your problem? Have you been in prison?”

  “Well …”

  “Look, I’m sorry, Mr. Volpe. I’m just not seeing enough evidence of acting ability to send you out on any auditions, much less sign you as a client of this agency. Even if I got a casting call for elderly Italians with blue eyes, I’d hesitate to send you out. Thanks for coming in. Good luck to you.”

  I spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in postage to land one interview with an agent and that was how it went. Discouraging? My first day in prison was more encouraging than trying to get traction as an actor in New York.

  I turned to the way I used to make money before I went into prison—signing autographs at Fan-Cons. This was even more discouraging. Convention after convention turned me down. Had I gone from being a D-minus celebrity to an F-minus celebrity? After getting rejected two dozen times—including a convention in Gary, Indiana, for heaven’s sake—I called the woman responsible for hiring talent at the convention and asked her point-blank why they rejected me.

  “Are you kidding me, Mr. Volpe?”

  “No, I’m serious. I’d like an answer. I want to know why my application was denied. Am I not famous enough anymore?”

  “Oh, you’re famous all right, Mr. Volpe, but not in a good way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the guy who ripped off the Columbus Fan-Con and shot that Star Trek star in the foot.”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly shoot …”

  “Do you think word doesn’t get around in this business, Mr. Volpe? Do you think I’d invite someone to our convention so he could rob the other celebrities and take a potshot at them?”

  I had to admit she had a point. What a fool I’d been to think I could ever sign autographs at a Fan-Con again. I also had to admit to myself I wasn’t an actor anymore. I wasn’t even an ex-actor. I didn’t know what the hell I was. I’d spent so many years of my life dreaming about becoming a rich and famous actor, I never gave much thought
to becoming a man. One thing was for sure, though. Unless I wanted my family to starve, I had to find some way to make money.

  Getting a regular job like a dishwasher or office clerk wasn’t easy either. Do you know what the first question on nearly every job application is? “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Do you know what happens when you answer that question with a yes?

  After six months of banging my head against the wall trying to find work in New York, I took the step I didn’t want to take. The business card was exactly where I’d left it three years earlier—sitting on the kitchen counter. Caitlin, bless her heart, wasn’t the world’s best housekeeper. Neither was I. I dialed the phone number and held my breath.

  Two rings. Three rings. Four rings. Finally, he answered:

  “Who the fuck is this and what do you want?”

  ACT TWO

  THE CONVINCER

  26

  “It’s Joey Volpe. I want to talk to you.”

  “Joey Volpe?”

  “That’s right. I want to talk to you. When can I see you?”

  “If you want to talk, then talk.”

  “Is it safe to talk on the telephone?”

  “My phone is swept every day. As far as your phone goes, well, you’ve already been tried and convicted. I doubt if anybody wants to bug your phone anymore.”

  “Tried, convicted, and served two years in prison.”

  “Take it easy, Joey. It’s not like you’re the first guy in the world to go to the joint for something you didn’t do. Hell, I did two stretches in jail for shit I didn’t do. But I kept my mouth shut and did my time. That’s what you should do, too.”

  “I already did.”

  “So why make a fuss about ancient history? There’s nothing more to talk about.”

  “I want to come visit you.”

  “To kill me? Joey, do you have any idea how stupid that would be?”

  “I need money, Mr. Rosetti.”

  “Oh, don’t get me started on that, Joey. You promised us a million bucks. Do you know how much we made?”