Three-Card Monte
It’s June, I’m downtown. Canal Street, a little west of Broadway, Chinatown. It’s high tourist season. The white tennis shoes and the mid-Western hair-dos are everywhere. Kids from all neighborhoods are hanging out. Everything’s for sale. Shopping bags everywhere.
It’s three card monte paradise.
During the last seven years, I’ve made a habit of casual observation of the three card monte tables. It’s a good show and equal to a university education: human nature at its worst, best and most curious.
Let’s make this clear from the start: Three card monte is a con game. The house always wins. You can’t. Ever. They will always get your money. Always.
Of course, this is the point at which somebody usually says, “But my friend’s friend, he said…“ No way. He was lying. Unless he was a she. Sometimes, dealers get an itch and they let pretty girls win. It draws more people to the table, and the dealer thinks he might just have a shot with the girl. If it looks like it’s not going to happen, or once the crowd is big enough, the dealer’ll take the cutie’s winnings in one last round and shut the show down. A dealer might grab the cash out of a winning beauty’s hand because she refuses to play the final, losing round. But that’s rare.
Three card monte presents itself as a game of chance. Your goal is to pick, out of the three cards sliding around the table, the one red card. If you win, the dealer doubles your money.
First the dealer shows you two black suit playing cards and one red. Then he asks you to show him your money. He tries not to use words like “cash”, “money”, “dollars” or any synonym. He wants to bring you in easy. This helps take the sting out.
So he slides the cards around. You lay down your money. You pick the card you think is red. He shows you it’s black, he takes your money.
The key is this: after he showed you he had a red card, he replaced it with a black one. He palmed it. This is the dealer’s primary skill. He hides the red one in his large palm, up a sleeve, in a pocket, wherever. Did you see David Copperfield hide the Statue of Liberty? This is the same trick, only a lot easier.
By way of further explaining the scam, here’s what I saw in June.
There’s a make-shift table. A board on two milk crates. An energetic black man in trim clothes is giving his patter to his two shills in front of him. The average pedestrian won’t stick around long enough to notice they never leave the table, but I know the shills because I’ve seen them at the game before. One shill is a woman, snaggle-toothed, Latin, older. She’s neat, clutching a large vinyl purse. The other is a short white guy, bony, wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt with a wife-beater on underneath. Gold chains, slicked back hair. They both look happy.
I take a seat nearby. In the past, I’ve had to stop watching the three card monte dealers for a couple months. They thought I was a cop. Sometimes they’d break down the setup and walk away when I came around. They kick the crates over, walk off in different directions, and meet up at a pre-arranged spot to start again.
Anyway, I’m watching. There’s lots of noise. The dealer, not even inhaling, says to the woman:
“Okay now who’s it gonna be who’s it gonna be you give me five I give you ten you’re a winner! there you go you’re a winner all yours free and clear okay one more time one more time you give me ten I give you twenny you give me ten I give you twenny you wanna go for forty? for forty? okay okay you give me twenny I give you forty I give you forty twenny forty twenny forty…“
On and on he goes, with lots of clapping and the three of them cheering and looking around like they can’t believe this big gold bar they just discovered, like they’re saying, Will you come get a look at this?
Up and down they go. The woman, the shill, never loses. She’s on top of it. Her role is to bring in the people who say to themselves, “Look at that! She’s making a killing! If she can, and look at her, just think what I can do!“
The male shill plays a different role. He always loses. He loses so bad you say to yourself, “Look at that! What a dope! Even I could see which card was the red card! I could make a fortune!“
Sometimes they switch to Spanish. There are a lot of Latinos around, and the little teenage Latin girls from the outer boroughs, they’re drawn to the game. The boyfriends are always arguing with them, “No, honey, you don’t wanna do that. It’s no good, let’s go get something to eat.“
But the boyfriends always lose, and in a minute, so do the girlfriends. I’ve seen the boyfriends come back to demand the lost funds. It never happens. There are two spotters, standing within whistling distance in each direction, watching for cops. A signal from the dealer, the spotters gather around, looking threatening, always asking, in kind of the same way cops do, “Is there a problem here?“ The spotters and the dealers are almost always men that look like they’ve seen the inside of Rikers Island. Not to be messed with.
So when a chump walks by, a sucker, a target, a mark, a victim, the patter changes. The already fast game gets hyper. Fan-tailed cash is waved around. Arms are flailing. The Latin woman looks like she just hit it big at a slot machine down the shore.
There’s a good crowd now. Some of us knowing, but many unaware of the kind of game being played. This pale kid walks by. Late teens, an obvious tourist. He walks too slow. He’s got new shades, new shoes, an Urban Outfitters bag. He watches for a minute. The shills part the crowd, cleverly, and the kid just gets sucked right in.
The dealer slows down his talk. The Latin woman, the shill, wins big, but slowly. Anybody can see the money to be made. The patter changes again. The dealer says, hardly inhaling, to the kid:
“You want in on this? look at that look at that twenny forty sixty eighty one hundred one hunnert all hers [The shill’s almost crying for joy, and she’s got a hanky out] whaddya got whaddya got pick the red card pick the red card red card red card whaddya got show me whatcha got you gimme twenny I give you forty you gimme twenny I give you forty…“
The kid makes a mistake. He pulls out his travelling cash. A wad of twenties, newly minted, in a just-bought leather wallet. The dealer jumps up the exchange:
“You gimme forty I give you eighty you gimme forty I give you eighty forty eighty forty eighty pick the red card…“
In a flash, the kid lays down his money, the dealer slides the cards, the kid chooses. It’s a black card, naturally.
“Go again go again forty eight forty eighty forty eighty…“
The shuffle, the draw, the loss.
“You wanna get it back get it back get it back double up double up you gimme one hunnert I give you two you gimme one hunnert I give you two…“
The kid puts one hundred dollars on the board. Again, the shuffle, the draw, the loss. After less than a minute at the table, the kid walks with no cash.
I ask the kid how much he got taken for. He looks confused. His face is cloudy, his eyes are watery. He might be on dope if I don’t know the story. He’s hoarse. “Almost 200 hundred dollars.“ He looks at his shopping bags. “Guess I have to take these back. That’s all I had.“
This year, three card monte was finally made illegal, but I don’t expect it to disappear any time soon. It’s too profitable.
Carnies
Carnies. Buck let this slip in an unguarded moment. He won’t repeat it to let me record it, so here’s what I can reconstruct from notes I made right after.
“I used to work for a carnival. For a year. It was great. I was a guesser, guessed weights and everything. Ages, weight, height, birth months, how old their car was and whether it was a truck. We made a killing. We charged two or three bucks a pop. Even the big prizes didn’t cost us more than 35 cents. I got good. I was really good and after a month or two I could nail any guess I wanted sixty percent of the time. That’s good enough to draw a crowd but just short of being too good, which might frustrate people. Some of them want you to beat them, take their money. They want you to be good. Others want to beat you, take your prize. Those kind probably take the prize and talk about it for a week, how you couldn’t guess their height or age or whatever. It makes them feel like a mystery, makes them unknowable. Those kind grunt with satisfaction when they get some saw-dust teddy bear or whatever.
“I was really good, though. Sometimes they’d close me down. My crowd would be blocking the fairway, stopping up traffic to the other booths, but also causing a dangerous situation. I’d razz the crowd, get them all riled up. I’d see how far I could take it, making fun of people. They saw it as part of the show. Paid for a little abuse.
“I perfected the Jerry line. Looks something like this:
“What I’m supposed to do is guess birthdays within in one month either way. So I write my guess down as a Jerry line. It could be January, July or June, so it cuts my odds to one chance in six rather than one in twelve. And since it’s easier with kids, anyway, and that’s what people usually asked about, my guesses were right on.
“I got the job through a friend, third generation carnie. The family owned a show and ran a string of stands in it. I hemmed and hawed and finally said yes and ran out there where they were already going on.
“It was a lot of work. Lots of days, I’d work sixteen, seventeen hours. At first I did the guessing booth. I’d make oats in like the first hour, and everything after that was cream. Making oats is, like, making enough money to eat off of. Kind of approved corruption: everybody does it, takes the first few dollars of the day aside for lunch or booze or whatever.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for making a little on the side. I never did, except when I had to. If you’re not a little corrupt like the rest of them you might be in for a good beating. But most of the carnies (yeah, they do use the word, though some see different things in it), they’d take every chance they could to make a few dollars. The other guessers, some days, they’d bring in a third of what I was bringing in. At least, that’s what they’d report to the office. No, they’d never get caught. Only a dumbass would get caught. You have to start taking from the very first day. One dollar in the right pocket for the office, two in the left pocket for whiskey. The office can’t know how much to expect from you on upcoming days that way. If the amount changes, that’s where you get caught.
“Some of the carnies, and not just the guessers (who had the least chance out of anybody for lifting a little free green), would take their apron, the entire day’s take, to the local watering hole and buy everybody rounds. They were supposed to bring it back to the office, of course. Sometimes there’d be someone who’d take off with the rolls not to be seen until the next season. They’re always hired back. They know the ropes. The losses are built in, and there’s cash everywhere, enough for everybody and a little grift. My friend had a new Jeep Cherokee, guns, a massive stereo system, everything he wanted. The whole family was rich.
“Out of the various workers on the track (we set up the booths always in a circle that ran people around counterclockwise; I don’t know why), the ticket-takers probably had the best chance for grift.
“Say you had two tiers of ticket prices. You could either buy 10 tickets for 12.50 dollars or 20 tickets for 17.50. The ticket-taker probably sells a lot of each. But when she (and she’s always a she) counts up the take at night, she’ll count the number of tickets she sold, figure them all as the lower-priced tickets with a few expensive ones thrown in for disguise and to keep the balance. So while a 100 tickets at 12.50 per ten would bring in 125.00, 100 tickets at 17.50 per 20 would bring in 87.50. She’d just keep the 37.5 difference, making out all the while that the 100 tickets were all discounted tickets. Think about it a while, and then figure that some of the big carnivals would see ten, fifteen thousand visitors a day. Some of those ticket-takers had it down. You could tell who was doing it: their money always came out exactly to the last nickel.
“The other ticket-taker trick is the slowdown. Ticket prices are almost always going to be odd numbers, so there should be change. So when a kid or even anybody comes up and buys tickets, the ticket-taker hands out the long string of tickets kind of final, as if it’s like, ‘That’s it. That’s all.‘ Really, though, the person should get change, but the money drawer is probably behind the ticket taker, and she’s slow about it, so when she turns her back to slowly count out change it seems like there’s no change deserved. You’d be surprised how many people just walk off. That’s where good counting comes in. That kind of grift can’t ever show up in the tally; it’s got to go in the ticket-taker’s pocket or else it’ll be obvious what’s going on. There’ll be a lot more money than tickets sold, at any price.
“Later I got the office job. That’s the sweet spot. That’s where you really get the opportunities. The office counts everybody’s money and most of it’s in cash. You’ve got all kinds of opportunities. The first spot on the track, the first booth to the right as you enter the fairway, is the prime spot. It costs extra, maybe 5,000 to the office manager to get it. But this booth also gets a certain amount of money from the office manager everyday over the course of the week or so. I don’t know why. It’s just the way it is. Sometimes, when I was training to run the office, I’d take the cut down to first position and it’d be, like, in all coins, because the office hated paying it out, and I was sure they’d beat me silly. But they never did.
“Of course, the office counts all the money for the first position, or is supposed to, so we could adjust the numbers like we wanted. All this comes about because of all that cash. There’s no way you can make that kind of killing and not have abuses.
“They blow it all usually. They don’t know any better. Some just work the warm months and when winter rolls around they just scatter. Next spring they pop up one at a time from all directions and start over.“
National Lampoon
National Lampoon. Platform, uptown No. 1 at Houston Street. Guy sits down on the wooden bench two seats from me. Not From Here. Late forties, khakis, penny-loafers, outdoorsy woodsy LL Beansy jacket. Gray hair, round head. Short. Inexpensive looking. “Is there a train schedule? What time does the next train come?“ No, there’s no schedule. “There isn’t?“ If there were, it’d be the city’s greatest piece of creative writing. “You’d think…“ It’s not a train train, it’s a subway. They come when they come.
“Well, then how do you know?“ He smirks. He could do it better: if he were in charge, it would all work perfectly. Obviously, here in New York City, there is not the talent for perfection. You just know. You ride the train everyday, you learn when they come and when they don’t come and you learn how long you should have to wait. This time, right now, maybe five, ten minutes. Real trains like the Long Island Railroad and the Metro North have schedules, and keep them.
Where are you from? “Los Angeles. I’m here in town looking for money. National Lampoon. I work for National Lampoon dot com.“ Oh yeah? Did you already try in the Valley? “Our investment banker is here. We’ve had an enormous response.“ I’m getting the canned remarks designed for pitches, presentations and recruiting. “CNN, CNNfn, Newsweek, USA Today, all over.“ Sounds like a lot of old media for a new media company. What kind of online promotions are you putting out? “Well, we’ve gotten a huge response. Maybe 2.5 million hits since October.“ We get on the train. He’s defensive. He asks how far to Times Square. He’s uncomfortable. How many unique visitors? “About, I’d say, 175,000.“ Hmmm. What kind of stickiness? “Twelve minutes.“ His answers are terse. “Are you in the web?“ This is how he phrases it: “in the web.“ I do a few small web sites, but I’ve spent years on the periphery of advertising. “Oh.“ I ask if he has a card. He doesn’t, he says. He gets off at Times Square. The visitors are too low to claim success, particularly since the hits are so high. Why are the hits so high? Visit to the site reveals long downloads, questionable navigation schemes, long drill-downs to real content, over-reliance on video media, Shockwave and (relatively) large graphic files. Weak site, in other words. Looks like National Lampoon licensed a mickey-mouse outfit hellbent on diluting and mucking up the brand. Welcome to it.
