A Vignette from Criminal Underground
1900
“Dodge, you’re not going to believe this! Wake up!”
Roger knew, even in the disorientation that came at the end of a fitful night’s sleep, that the reason why he was being shaken and addressed so excitedly was that Jim had stumbled across something new and shiny and couldn’t wait to tell him about it. At least three out of every five mornings started this way for Roger. The quality of the shaking, which was applied to his upper arms, had the jitter of Jim’s own uncontained enthusiasm, which told Roger even before his eyes opened that Jim believed more than he usually believed that this was actually something. Roger kept his eyes closed just to razzle Jim.
Jim lifted Roger’s upper body and shook it in exactly the way one shouldn’t shake small animals or children, and Roger, with a smile, reluctantly opened his eyes, but suppressed a startled yawp at Jim’s blackened eye and bloody nose with a sprout of newspaper sticking out of the right nostril.
“You’re a sight.”
“You ain’t so pretty yourself. Now listen up. I won the purse last night.”
“And did the lady hit you with it when you tried to bob away with it?”
“The boxing purse.”
“How heavy was the box in this purse? Ten, twenty pounds?”
Jim put his hands on Roger’s peach fuzzy twelve-year-old cheeks and smushed them as he looked Roger in the eyes.
“I got fifty dollars from fighting last night, you goob.”
Roger pushed Jim off and stood, and as he stretched and surveyed their alley lean-to, he calculated.
“Fifty is good.”
“Good? We’re flush after the last couple of eyeball cons, and Billy’s worked them good with the crippled Pennsylvania coal miner bit. Dodge, we can do something fun.”
“Fun?” Roger puzzled over the word. He calculated how many cans of beans they might be able to stock up with that kind of money, but then transporting and storing them would create its own problems. Maybe if they kept a bean fund, they could buy five cans at a time and then carry them in their hats and pockets if gangs or coppers chased them out of this alley. Or maybe they could add in some salt pork on Sundays for the foreseeable future.
“Now Dodge, I know you’re figuring some responsible way to stretch this money, but we should really think of Billy. How many birthdays and Christmases have we really been able to do right by that kid? You and I know that money’s gone as soon as the next emergency comes up. Don’t you think we can give him a nice memory or two before he’s old and bitter like you and me?”
“I’m twelve.”
“So you’ve got five years of youth on me, but you’re five times as bitter so it shakes out.”
Billy, about seven, was still asleep, mumbling in his corner behind the crates on the remnants of a chaise lounge they’d scrounged. It was August, so there wasn’t need of a fire at night, but somehow, in the New York humidity, Billy seemed to shiver every so often, if not of cold, then of the anxious energy that kept him humming and working his mouth when he thought others weren’t looking.
“We save half.”
“I knew you’d say that. Dodge, I worked the numbers all up.” Jim unfolded a paper from his pocket and slapped it on the alley wall. It stuck.
“CONEY ISLAND FERRY NOW DEPARTING DAILY”
Jim’s eyes crackled with that electric carnival light, and he smiled crooked.
“Jim, truly?”
“Best part is, I bet you–” Jim poked Roger in the chest “–can find a way to run some short cons and turn this money into an investment. Who knows, Dodge? Maybe this purse cash is just seed money for us becoming beachside swindlers.”
Roger’s mind spun. “Let’s go, the ferry leaves in…” Roger looked around, realizing he had no way of telling the time. “Now, we need to go now!”
Soon both Roger and Jim were shaking Billy, calling his name, then as he slowly stood, they put his cap on him dusted him off, brushed his hair and whisked him out of the alley into the flow of pedestrians and carriages, turning left, then, looking around, whipping around to the right.
#
They made it to the ferry just in time, and while the ticket taker didn’t seem enthusiastic about a teenager, a gangly peach fuzz twelve-year-old, and a little boy who seemed bloodless and transparent in bright light chumming without a responsible adult, their fare was good and their tip was better. They had already loaded their pockets with candy and Roger was feeling the wild rush of a third lolly. Jim tottered close to the rail with Billy on his shoulders, the two of them watching Manhattan Island shrink away. The ferry hit some choppy water and Billy almost spilled over, but Jim caught him and spun him around. Billy giggled. It was a good sound.
Roger was unsettled by being on the water. Despite being surrounded by rivers his whole life, he’d never been on a boat, and the quease didn’t sit well with the flood of sugar in his gut. He turned around and took in the crowd on the ferry, losing himself in letting his grift sense pick over the other passengers. Parents, already exhausted by children who chased each other from deck to deck, leaned on rails or other fixtures. This wasn’t the luxury line, so there were no governesses to do the herding. Sour marks they would make: already feeling the pinch of a ticket and not excited to spend more. There was some potential if they were desperate for a quick dollar. His con artist’s eye envisioned some compelling document that could firm up a short-term Spanish Prisoner, where just a little more money was needed to unlock thousands, but he filed it away for another time.
Roger cast about for a more likely mark, sizing up a half dozen young ladies with their beaux. In flashy daytime jackets and crisp boater hats, the young men were pointing out the diminishing features of Manhattan or going on about some feature of the ferry, eager to be worldly and knowing, desperate to show that they were a winner and that money didn’t matter. The game of spinning the tale at the heart of the con moved Roger away from his sour stomach and the anxiety at money spent a day of fun. He calculated the amount of time they had left until they landed and considered, then discarded con game tales as he slipped through the throngs and found a few more likely couples, reading the eager glint in the men’s eyes and how far out of their league their lady friends were, and a score of other expressions, motions, and words that he didn’t need to fully understand in order to perceive and assess unconsciously. The game was good and if he timed it just right, the money could let him feel better about enjoying himself, and their dismbarkment would keep the mark from getting too hot.
Near the prow, he found his mark. The young man couldn’t have been more than nineteen and he was watching his pretty lady friend watch the ocean. He was homely, besotted, and had run out of things to say, and the lack of shine on his shoes told Roger that lack of money or experience was sinking this excursion before they were out of sight of Manhattan. The young man’s hat flew into the water and he looked like he wanted to jump over the rail after it just to end the date early.
Roger ran through the beats of the con as he shuffled the deck of cards he kept in his breast pocket. He’d offer a game to double the beau’s money, a light version of poker with the lady holding the deck to bring her in the game, cute-like. Roger had enough show money from the clip of singles that Jim had entrusted to him to let him keep winning in front of the lady for several rounds until the dock at Coney Island was in sight. He’d sweep him with the cards he’d slip in the deck when he caused the lady friend to drop them, taking back all the show money and whatever the mark had bet, then stay out of sight just until docking and slip among the crowd and be off on a jolly trip with Jim and Billy.
Roger pushed past a mother comforting a sobbing seasick girl, and as a few other people moved away, he saw a tall woman standing by the rail, looking into the distance.
He stopped.
The woman’s curls, catching the wind as they spilled from an undone braid or bun, were just the same color as his mother’s. He hadn’t thought about her smile or her voice in his waking hours for a long time. Her copper honey hair caught the light in a way that took him back before the forever season of alley lean-to’s and shivering over a garbage can fire. To stories told over candlelight about some other city where fireflies haunted the docks and marching bands played parades at funerals and where a bowl of soup could take you to the depths of the sea and farther. To a birthday snuck to the top of a ten-story building in a cleaning cart. To a day at the beach.
Part of him recognized that the mark walked away and a window had closed, but within his heart, an older, dustier, forgotten window had opened. A feeling different from that of a seasick sugar rush weighed his stomach. The tall woman kept looking in the distance as Jim chased Billy around the deck and jumped to slap Roger’s hat off his head. Roger ducked to pick it up, and the tall woman was gone. He craned his neck as Jim and Billy moved Roger’s body to see Coney Island looming nearer.
Over the wind and the crash of the waves, calliopes and brass band music carried as the wiry shapes of rides and attractions glinted through the thick atmosphere. As they came into view and became more real, their reality became more inscrutable. Roger had heard of the Ferris Wheel at least, so he knew what to make of the gently rotating circle, but the other buildings and structures had no context and so no meaning to him.
Jim, who apparently had a working knowledge of the place, was pointing things out to Billy, who still sat on Jim’s shoulders.
“See, that’s the Steeplechase race track where you can be a real-life jockey on a fake horse! And the Shoot-the-Chutes, where you fall down a track in a boat into the water at upwards of forty miles an hour! And there’s a Flip-Flap Railroad where the train cars go in a loop so fast you might have to see a doctor!”
“Whoa.” Billy’s eyes were wide and he held his hands under Jim’s chin absently, taking in all the spectacle.
Roger thought about going and looking for the tall woman. The logical, thinking, grift-sensing part of his brain knew that it couldn’t be his mother because his mother was…gone. But some part of him just wanted to see her face. Just to be sure.
“Jim, I’m going to be right back.”
They were lost in their reverie as Jim listed everything there was to know about Coney Island, and Roger pushed his way through the crowds, who had surged onto the deck to catch a glimpse of what awaited them. More children were crying now, and all of them were being swooped up by their mothers who held them and comforted them by singing or dabbing at their brow, or distracting them by pointing out different features of the boats or other passengers. Even the ones who were exhausted and yelled at their other children, had a quiet, burning attention to their children.
Roger went on alone.
He looked over the railing and caught a flash of the tall woman from above. He tried to think of something to call out to her, but she turned and walked out of his view. The boat slowed as it approached the dock and the throngs all stood and made it impossible to push through. He shuffled his way toward Jim and Billy and walked with them down the steps and the ramp to the pier.
The clamor of music now mixed with roars of people moving very quickly up or down on the different attractions, and the calls of barkers, and the rabble of hundreds of excited people on a summer day. Smells of popcorn and roasting hot dogs wafted in the salt sea breeze and made Roger’s queasy stomach rumble. There was a boom and in the distance, they saw a man being shot from a cannon into the sky.
The three of them approached the ticket-taker who gave them an admission ticket with a smiling face on it. The smile had a half dozen too many teeth and seemed more menacing than joyful to Roger. They walked through the gates and took in everything around them: buildings of all different styles from all different eras stood next to each other, with replicas of what Roger assumed to be monuments from around the world. A costumed Napoleon greeted a couple in a bizarre accent, and an Abraham Lincoln stepped forward in a stately way to pat the head of a confused young boy. They could take a trip to the moon, or dance in a ballroom, or see scenes from the Bible re-enacted. An enormous American flag waved over the whole thing. It was all meant to take your attention, if just for a little while, and make you forget that you were spending money to be there.
“This is the biggest con I’ve ever seen,” Roger said.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Billy?”
“Yeah!”
Roger thought he caught sight of the tall woman in the crowd, but she was gone or was never there to begin with.
Jim broke him out of it. “All right, Dodge. I’ll scope out the Bowery for some likely marks. I can play off my shiner and split lip on some drunkards or saloon girls and see what I can make of the day. Take Billy on some of the rides and see what games you two might run.”
There was a certain lack of eye contact that made Roger think Jim was going to find some amusement of his own while he was unsupervised.
“Jim, I’m going to need at least fifteen from your money clip if we’re going to run anything serious here.”
Jim looked sideways at Roger, and Roger knew that Jim was aware of Roger’s grift sense picking up on Jim’s dishonesty, but Jim was smart enough not to fight him on it.
“I’ll give you ten.”
“Twelve.”
“Done. Meet me at the pier at seven and we’ll catch the last ferry out.” Jim passed the money from the clip and disappeared into the crowd.
Billy held Roger’s hand and bounced up and down in silent excitement.
“What would you like to do, before we find some marks?”
“I wanna be a jockey!”
They made their way through the crowds to stand in line for the horse race, which was an intricate sloping track where gravity made metal horses slide down. The parallel tracks made it like the riders were racing each other. Roger had visited Yonkers once with a squirrely ginger kid named Nibs with the promise of easy short con money. After a lengthy streetcar ride north, they’d arrived at a jungle of vendors, marks, other likely con artists, and people who Roger’s grift sense had told him were capable of great violence. It was noisy, colorful, and overwhelming.
This? This was what was left after everything natural and unpredictable about that environment was sliced away, but when Roger saw the looks on people’s faces as they climbed on the horses, he knew that the tale that made this con run was that they got to be at the center of the action, as contrived as it all was. It wasn’t a diminishment; it was a distillation. There was a lesson in this, as far as Roger’s craft went, that it’s fun to bet on the horses, but it’s the thrill of a lifetime to ride them, even if the horses are metal. As a confidence artist, Roger felt inspired. He imagined that this was the kind of epiphany that fancy people had when they looked at paintings in museums.
Billy couldn’t be more excited. He made a clicking gallop noise and skipped around Roger, to the amusement of the people standing in line around them, until he stepped on a lady’s toe.
“Excuse him,” Roger said. The people behind him were dressed in clean, fancy Sunday-best duds. He considered the amount of time they’d be standing in line and thought through a con he might run about Billy needing money for brain medication, but if the con went south, they’d be stuck in line together and likely get kicked out of the park. And Billy wouldn’t get his ride. Roger held back.
They climbed the final flight of stairs and Roger saw the tall woman sitting astride the horses in the round just before theirs. The operator released the horses and she slid away.
Roger lifted Billy up so that they could push past a fighting couple and get in the next round. They were led to a black artificial stallion. Roger deposited Billy in the saddle and clambered up himself. Billy waved his page boy cap like it was a cowboy hat and swung an imaginary lasso. For a moment, Roger forgot his weary inner world.
“Did you rope a big old steer, Billy?”
“I’m Billy the Kid, alright, yeeeeehaaaaaw!” He fired imaginary six-shooters. Billy was so loud that it caught the eye of the surrounding couples and families, even amidst all the Coney Island buzz. Roger blushed a little, but held Billy tight. There were no safety restraints.
With a dip in his gut, they were off down the metal rails. Billy screamed with a mixture of delight and terror. He leaned over, threw up, then kept cheering, firing his imaginary six-shooters again.
Roger held on to the horse and to Billy, and looked ahead at the dips and hills in the track to catch sight of the tall woman. After one of the curves, he saw her far ahead. An old, old memory of sitting in the handlebar basket of a bicycle came back to him. He was facing his mother as she rode, so he didn’t know what was ahead, but his whole world was her smile, the green of her eyes, and her hair in the wind. When he thought about how simple it had been then, with that warm, safe feeling, and thought about where he was now, Roger got a lump in his throat. He held Billy a little closer. Billy put his arms out like he was flying and screamed like an eagle.
By the time Roger could see the end of the track, the tall woman was standing, dusting herself off, and walking away toward one of the pavilions. Jim was also standing and waiting for them.
They were helped off and Jim walked up close to them.
“Here, Billy, keep this in your breast pocket.” Jim pressed a gold pocketwatch into Billy’s chest.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Dodge, keep this one on you.” Roger felt a hefty billfold drop into his pocket.
“What’s this?”
“We’re heading out on the next ferry.”
“What? He only got to go on one ride!”
“One’s more than we would have gone on if I hadn’t won last night.”
“What’d you get up to in the Bowery?”
“Making this profitable. How much did you make?”
“Nothing, but…”
“Let’s go.”
Jim lowered his hat over his eyes and walked a few steps ahead of them, pushing through the crowd.
“Come on! Next ferry’s out in two minutes!”
“Dodge, can’t I ride again?”
Roger’s anger at Jim rose in his gorge, but his grift sense told him that the toughs would be trouble, and seeing Jim and Roger get muscled would make the day even worse for Billy. So Roger did what he could.
“I’ll be the horsey, Billy!” Roger pulled Billy up onto his shoulders and Billy quietly made a clopping noise with his tongue. By now Jim was walking so fast as to nearly be running and Roger had to gallop through the crowd.
“Slow down, Jim!”
Jim didn’t acknowledge him and kept pushing through. They went out the gate and onto the ferry just as they closed the barrier.
Back behind them, two scary-looking toughs were pushing through the crowd, pointing at Jim, who folded himself into the crowd and disappeared from sight.
Roger watched the beach slip away. He thought he saw the tall woman sitting on the sand, watching the sun light up the water at the approach of golden hour, but as the shore became more distant, and just one more memory, he told himself it could have been anyone.
“When will we come back, Dodge?” Billy asked.
“Someday, Billy. Until then, we’ll make our own fun.”
