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Clap for a Con

Two weeks ago I am sitting in a crowded sports bar in midtown Manhattan.  Young third–generation Italian Italian-American men pound the bar as the Ravens fumble on fifteen flatscreen TVs.   A tall hunched man orders a beer next to me.  Bernice the Bartender takes his money over to the register.  His wallet is stuffed with single bills, and he asks to exchange some of them for a ten.  He counts out the bills and hands them to her.  She counts them again and tells him that he is a dollar short.  Flustered, the man counts more ones on the bar and then adds a five.  As the money is counted and passed, and counted again, and rechecked, the man gets more flustered.  More money goes into the pot. His shoulders droop and he seems pathetically confused.  A a worried frown crosses his face, . and he finallyFinally, he sits back, defeated.

“Don’t worry hon.  That’s fifteen ones and three fives, so I give you thirty dollars.  No big thing.”

It’s beautiful.  The woman just lost twenty dollars and the price of a beer.  Never have I seen someone pull the Short Change with such masterful control and grace.  As soon as the money disappears off the bar, he the man straightens to his full height and takes a victorious sip from his Guinness.  I lean over and whisper, “well Well done.”  He smiles with his whole face.

Jesse is 36 and that night he sports his “down-and-out-professor” look.  His blond hair  is neatly parted, but flops sloppily down his forehead.   He wears small eyeglasses (with clear non-prescription lenses) low on his nose.  His clean but wrinkly wool suit is too big, and he wears it over a lime green t-shirt, which is too tight.

“Well, I’m not working tonight, but there’s no sense in paying for beer.  I don’t drink if I have to pay for it.  The last time I bought a beer was January 15, 1995.  Buy me another beer?  Great.   But this place is primed.  Just asking for it.  It’s juicy.  Juicy like a ripe plum.  Tell you what- —you want to see something cool?”

Jesse tells me my role.

Hailing the Bernice over again, Jesse asks if she wants to see a magic trick.  She raises her eyebrows, but agrees.

“You need to have a personal stake in the trick for it to be impressive.  I’ll need a fifty fifty-dollar bill.  Don’t worry, you’ll get it back.  Great.  Do me a favor and sign your name at the bottom right corner, there.  Now we’ll crumple it up and wrap it in this paper napkin.  Then let’s  drop it into this pint glass here… like that.”

Jesse produces a brushed steel Zippo and lights the napkin on fire.  He has a lot of trouble keeping it lit.  It’s embarrassing-, and he radiates he shows the shame of a failing magician. Bernice the Bartender makes is patient and encouraging.; her pity  Pity for this pathetic guy outweighs the discomfort of overlooking the taboo of an open flame in a the bar.  It The bill finally burns, and he Jesse pours out the ash and crushes it into oblivion.

“Well, it looks like you’re out fifty bucks.  But don’t worry.  Why don’t you go over and check the register?”

Bernice sprints to the register and discovers her signed bill.  She smacks her forehead in disbelief.

“What? How did you…  How’d you do that?  That is….that is something!  That is something!

The con is an elegant one called “The Magic Bill.”  Jesse handed the crumpled bill to me, and substituted his own single dollar bill for the burning.  I took the fifty down to the other end of the bar where I ordered two beers from the second bartender.  The bartender gave me forty dollars in change and I return with the beer.  The signed fifty went back into the register and the forty bucks went into my pocket.  Jesse’s trouble lighting the napkin gave me enough time to conduct my own transaction, and I return just as the trick concludes.

Jesse and I retreat to a free table, and I give him the forty dollars.  He slides a twenty over to me.  It’s my share of the take.

A week later, I knock on Jesse’s door.  The door flies open and Jesse gives me an urgent SHOOSH!  His girlfriend is angry with him and is brooding in the bedroom.  His warning is too late and she storms into the hallway, wearing nothing but a long Minnie Mouse t-shirt.  She is heavy-set, with short, curly black hair, and a bulldog expression.

“Jesse, why the FUCK are you letting some asshole write about you?  You are a stupid fuck, you know that?  You are such a fucking moron. I can’t believe it.  You know what?  Fuck you!  Fuck you, Jesse, you stupid fuck!”

Jesse ushers his girlfriend back into the bedroom.  He pokes his head out the door and says, “Make yourself at home, I’ll be there in a minute.”  Then he disappears back into the bedroom to placate.

The apartment is warm and lived-in.  A calico cat jumps down from the kitchen counter and does a figure- 8 eight around my legs.  There is a green plant in every corner and on every table.  I have no desire to stay in the kitchen, where I can hear the couplethem arguing next door, so I take a beer from the refrigerator and walk into the spacious living room.

A shoulder-mounted digital camcorder sits on a tripod in the corner next to the flat-screen TV.  DVDs are stacked side- by- side on the floor along every wall of the room.  They are organized by subject, and Jesse has written labels on the white wall in permanent marker where appropriate.  “Japanese.” “Horror.”  “Japanese Horror.”  “Lynch.”  “ Coen Bros.”  “Spielberg.”  “XXX.”  In the another corner, a straightjacket hangs on a mannequin torso.

I sit on the couch and Jesse walks back in with a desperately apologetic look on his face. Today he has his hair gelled into a “fo-hawk” and is wearing a shirt with “IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT, SHOW ME YOUR TITS” written on it in block letters.

“I’m sorry about that, she’s really a sweet girl.  Sweet, but paranoid.  Have you seen the DVDs?  I have some amateur porn of Kimber and I.  Want to watch?  We could put it on while you ask me questions.”

Jesse pulls out a DVD from the “XXX” section and puts it on the large, high-definition TV.  On the screen the camera centers on Kimber on the bed wearing a yellow nightgown.  Jesse steps in front of the camera stark naked and walks over to the bed.  Jesse seats me facing the screen, and he sits facing me.  I’m pretty sure he’s fucking with me. I clear my throat and start the interview.

Jesse was born in Belfast, and has never met his father.  His mother, Marie, moved them to Las Vegas when he was six.  Jesse, a fan of magic, was in heaven.  His mother gave him money every Friday for tickets to local magic shows, and indulged him endlessly at the magic shops.  In high school, Jesse studied to be an escape artist.

JesseHe shows me a picture of himself at graduation, dangling upside upside-down by a rope and, struggling to free himself from a straightjacket.  His long hair hangs two feet below him.

After high school Jesse moved to Manhattan to work as a street magician and escape artist.  After four years of failure, Jesse he bounced a rent check and was given a 24 24-hour eviction notice.

His last gig had backfired terribly.  Jesse was performing at a child’s birthday party, and asked two adults to tighten and buckle his straightjacket.  Two enormous college football players came onto the makeshift stage and tightened the straps to the point that Jesse couldn’t breathe.

Part of the trick to snaking out of a straightjacket is to expand your chest as much as possible as the straps are buckled tight.  After the jacket is secured, you deflate your lungs, which gives you an inch or so of  slack cloth.   But the football players pulled on the straps while he Jesse was in the middle of giving instructions, and they tookknocking the wind out of his lungs.  His vision tunneled, and he fell headlong into the audience of children.

He came back to his senses on the family’s couch, and was given a glass of water.  They were friendlynice about it, but he was not getting paid.  He packed up his props and started walking home.

D    Desperate for cash, Jesse cheated for the first time.  In front of the mirror, Jesse he peeled off the bandage on his head and rubbed the wound until it was bleeding again.  He took a file to his shirt until it was ragged. He slipped out onto the street and walked up to a house and knocked on the door, saying that he’d been was hit by a car, and needed to use the phone.  The elderly woman that who lived in the house took him in, and told him to clean up in the bathroom.  Jesse pocketed everything he could in the old woman’s house.  She gave Jesse a new shirt and blazer that had belonged to her late husband, made him a SPAM sandwich, and sent him on his way.   Jesse pPawned a the jewelry and a small gold clock he had stolen, and paid the rent.  The date was January 15, 1995.

There isn’t a school for scammers, and yet there are enough con artists in the world to form a new ethnic group.  Some people can just seeimmediately spot the cracks in the great sidewalk of life that others just the rest of us step over without even thinking about it.  When you’re living on that frequency, opportunities just present themselves.  When If you can see the loopholeschinks in the system, and apply a modicum of intelligence and imagination, you can make money.  Bernard Madoff,  the guy on the street hustling Three Card Monty, and Jesse all run on this frequency.

It is a mistake to consider ones’ self completely con-proof.  There is no unified profile for scam victims, either. Not are all greedy, risk-taking, self-deceptive people looking to make a quick buck, naive, uneducated, or elderly. Sometimes they’re just horny. My first week in Shanghai  I met two lovely girls from Taiwan.  The three of us went out the weekend, saw the Suzhou water village, and fawned over each other.

The next week we went out again, and the girls directed me to a karaoke  bar off of the historic Bund district.  I stormed the place, a giggling girl under each arm, and said “We need a karaoke room.  Do you take credit cards?”  The bartender nodded hard enough to get whiplash and showed us in.  The drinks kept on coming, and when it was time to leave three hours later I asked for the bill.  $1200 American dollars.   I was swapping Chinese and English obscenities with the bartender, when the bar started filling with prostitutes, who started yelling at me as well to pay the bill.  Even the madam came downstairs chimed in.  “You real gentlemen! Why you no pay?  These girls show you a real good time! You no pay for their drinks?  This is Bund price!”

I made a break for the door, with prostitutes grabbing my clothes, and the bartender moving to block the way.   Like a football player dragging half the other team towards the end zone, I reached the door first and pushed through.  I took out my wallet and threw a handful of cash at the mob and jumped into the nearest taxi.

I’m riding shotgun in Jesse’s black Lincoln Town Car. It’s midnight in Queens, and there is very little activity on the streets.  A cop cruiser drives along the bridge above us.  Jesse has eight different credit cards from as many different people, a baggie of cocaine, and a laundry list of other contraband in the car with us, but.   But we fly down the street unmolested.

“Let me ask you one question.”,” he says.

The Town Car hits the curb at fifty miles per hour.   The airborne beer in the backseat crashes back down as the carthe tires makes contact with the asphalt.  The Town Car accelerates in the left lane and turns left through a red light.  Brian Johnson sings “Hells Bells” on the radio.

“Are you rock and roll?”

The Lincoln has full taxi credentials posted on the dashboard. Jesse occasionally uses the car in taxi schemes out of JFK airport.  He tells the victim that his last fare jumped out of the taxi without paying, so now he asks for a flat rate up front with no tip necessary.  As soon as Jesse drives the victim a few miles from the airport, he says that the police are cracking down on passengers not wearing seatbelts.  The back seat unfortunately has no seatbelts, so would the passenger please come up front.  The moment the victim steps out of the car, Jesse drives off with the fare and the luggage.

We accelerate towards a parallel parallel-parked car.  At the last possible nanosecond, Jesse SLAMS slams on the breaks and the tires squeal.  I’ll be damned if the Town Car doesn’t slide into a perfect park job.  We get out and walk across the street to a convenience store.  Jesse is wearing his “fun-loving-NYU-student” outfit.  He is clean clean-shaven, carries a book bag, and wears a hat that says “FUCK ME, I’M IRISH.”

Jesse grabs a six-pack of Heineken and a protein bar.  He pulls a credit card out of his wallet with a young redheaded girl’s face in the corner.  Jesse swipes the card, punches in a PIN number, and throws the card into the trashcan on his way out.

After leaving the beer in the car, we walk down the street to a small Irish pub.  I buy two beers to save Jesse the time of scamming free drinks.  The pub has a pool table, and we play a game or two, which he loses.  A fat, middle-aged mechanic is impatiently waiting to play, making snide comments at Jesse’s long and painful shots.  Jesse looks across the building at the bartender, who gives a slight nod.  Jesse swivels towards the mechanic and sputters, “I bet I could beat YOU.”

Mechanic: “Boy, save your money.”
Jesse:  “Come on, man!  You’re standing there talkin’ shit about how I play, but I could kick your ass!  Any fuckin’ day, man!”

Of courseNeedless to say, the mechanic is sucked in.  Jesse loses a game against him, then another, and then takes him for a hundred dollars the third time around.  The mechanic is beet beet-red, but doesn’t pick a fight.  He just leaves the bar.

Pat, the bartender, walks over to the pool table and they clasp fists and half-hug.  Jesse gives Pat twenty dollars from his wallet.  They, and they chit-chat about boxing for a few minutes.  Jesse asks us if we want a bump of cocaine, which Pat and I decline, and then disappears into the bathroom for a half of an hour.

Pat has a good thing going with Jesse.  He’s Jesse’s worked out the right nights, and can spot the right people.  Jesse He also knows he needs permission before he takes any mark.  There are regulars, who are off limits.  In fact, Jesse isn’t even allowed to work when a regular customer is in the bar.  The best time is late at night on week nights.  Students, truckers, and other passers-through are all fair game.  Jesse has similar arrangements in a half-dozen other bars.

But Pat isn’t exactly Jesse’s friend; i.  It’s an purely economic relationship.  Jesse doesn’t really have friends.  He has a bulldog-faced girlfriend who tolerates his presence, and a few business partners, who tolerate his presence, but he has only been able to rely on himself.  And even Jesse barely tolerates Jesse’s presence.  The lone con artist, working in New York, may have sounded romantic as little as five years ago—a small step away from Jesse’s early dreams of miraculous disappearances and narrow escapes—.  But years of but a certain amount of loneliness and self-loathing comes with the territoryhave gradually worn down the eternally cheerful-faced Jesse.  Cons don’t like cons, and they stay out of each other’s business.  Regular people don’t like cons, because they’re cons.  Only a magician gets to fool people for money and be publicly rewarded for it: when he bends the rules and suspends reality onstage, people clap for him.
Jesse is a magician at heart.  When people see a magician bend the rules and suspend reality on stage, people clap.

WhenEventually Jesse re-emerges, he rubs hisrubbing his nose furiously.  The time is 3:30 in the morning.  There is one person left in the bar, a young man playing video poker.  Jesse nudges me and says, “Watch this.”  We wait until the player goes outside for a cigarette break.  Jesse goes over to the poker machine, which still has the man’s credit card information.  He buys a hundred dollars worth of credits on the man’s card, and then waits for his return.  As the man comes back through the door, Jesse starts to play his first hand of poker.

The young man says “WAIT!” and explains that he still has credits on the machine.  Jesse explains that he just put sixty dollars of cash into the machine, thinking it was vacant.  Pat the bartender solves the problem by giving Jesse a hundred dollars in cash.  Jesse comments that it’s lucky he hadn’t played a hand yet; i.  n fact, he has just stolen a hundred dollars from the man’sThe young man just paid Jesse a hundred dollars from his credit card.   The young man cashes out, leaves the bar, and Jesse slips Pat another twenty.
It’s time for Jesse to go home.  It’s been a solid night’s work.  Jesse asks me where he should drop me off, but he’s drunk and high, and holds onto the pool table as he walks.  I tell him that I’m calling a cab.  He looks crestfallen.  I am clearlyClearly I am not rock n’ roll.  But Aa second later he brightens up again.

“Alright, but let’s have one more beer, alright?”

I buy the beer, and he tells me to put my hands together like I’m praying, and then put my thumbs on the table.  I tell him no, but he says that he’ll revoke permission to write about him if I don’t, so I do.  Jesse tells me to hold still, as he balances my beer on my thumbs.  A pint glass, filled to the brim, is precariously balanced on my two thumbs.  I’m trapped.  If I move, the pint glass spills.  Pat grins.  Jesse pats me on the shoulder and leaves.
“Catch you around, asshole!”