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In the confidence game, if you didn’t want to get caught like Lenny’s father, like some arrogant politicians, you kept your lies for special occasions, for the big ideas and the broad concepts. Any serial cheater who didn’t end up with a divorce on his hands knew that. Day to day, you told the truth as much as possible and let your marks twist in the wind on their own lies, and the truth was Cal wanted everything with Fin. The banter and silences. The hand holding and snuggles. The friendship and partnership. And he’d take cramps and crappy movies and her weirdly named cat and her fear she wasn’t a grown-up, and he’d love those things about her, too.
Except, what he wanted and what he could have were separated by a war of falsehoods and a fortress of reasons why Fin could never know the truth and why she wouldn’t want to know him if she did.
They walked in silence until they came to a sidewalk shell game in progress. As if that wasn’t ironic. Fin stopped to watch, and Cal stood close to her as the three cups were rapidly switched around until a Jets cap wearing guy picked the middle one. The bottle cap was revealed, and he won.
“Lucky,” Fin said, as the player walked past them, pocketing his cash.
Cal whispered in her ear. “Not lucky. It’s a con.”
She leaned against him, watching the next player take a turn. “But people win. That guy did.”
“That guy is part of the scam.”
“What do you mean?”
“He takes a turn and wins to show that it’s possible but watch what happens. He’ll wait until the crowd has turned over and come back and do it again.”
Player after player lost and fifteen minutes later, once the crowd had turned over, Jets cap came back.
“That’s not the same guy,” F
in said, when Cal pointed him out.
“Same guy. Different cap and shirt.” He’d swapped the Jets for the Rangers cap. “He’ll win.”
Fin elbowed him hard in the side when that happened. “How did you know?”
My basic training. “My wild and reckless youth.”
“Cap guy and cup guy are in it together?”
“Yeah. Sometimes it’s just one guy with quick hands who lets a player win a few times before he palms the bottle cap and they lose, but the pros who make money work it as a team. There could be four or five of them. No genuine player off the street is winning anything.”
“No wonder the cops move them on,” she said. He could hear the disappointment in her voice.
“You thought it was fair play.”
She looked down at her feet in sneakers. “I thought it was a game of skill, you know, like a ring toss or whack-a-mole.”
“It’s a basic shakedown. It’s how most cons work. Plausibility, misdirection, and attracting people who’re—”
“Gullible like me.”
“Ah, Fin.” He pulled her close. This woman was going to rip the skin off him and turn him inside out. “A New Yorker is the best sucker ever born. He’s made to measure because he thinks he’s too streetwise to be fooled. Mom hates these guys. She’d call the cops on them, but they’re like cockroaches. There’s always another one.”
She thumped her forehead on his chest. “That’s supposed to make me feel better.”
It made him feel raw and fiercely defensive of her. “Stay away from cons.”
She would’ve heard the tension in his voice. She pulled away and snapped off a salute. “Yes, sir.”
They walked the rest of the way hand in hand, and at her apartment, she asked him to come up.
“You could meet Scungy,” she said.
“What made you name him that?”
“It’s Australian slang for heroic.”
