You Can't Catch Me(36)

“Okay, then.”

I take two singles out of my wallet and put them down on the table. He goes through his routine, showing me the red queen, then dealing the three bent cards onto the table one by one. Then he moves them around as he patters about following the lady. First slowly, then more quickly. I watch his hands, and not the cards, and so I see him palm the queen while he shuffles the other two cards, then pull it out again as he moves in for the flop.

“Follow the card now, don’t lose sight. Follow the card, or hope you guess right.”

His hands stop moving.

“All set?” he asks. “You know where that pretty lady’s at?”

I hesitate, acting uncertain, then point to the far right.

“You sure?” he asks, smirking.

I’ve picked the right card, but this is another tactic. If someone guesses right, then they try to undermine their confidence and convince them to switch their initial choice.

“Yes, I think so.”

He turns it over. The red queen looks back at me, minx-like.

“We have a winner!”

A few people clap and press closer. Jessie bounces on her heels.

“Beginner’s luck,” I say.

I reach for the money.

“Again?” Hal says. “Double or nothing?”

I look at Jessie. She nods enthusiastically. I make a show of considering what I’m agreeing to.

“So, I bet four dollars and if I win, I get eight?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh, come on,” one of the lookie-loos says. “It’s only eight dollars.”

“True! Okay, let’s go.”

We go through it all again; then I point to the card in the middle. He doesn’t ask me if I’m sure this time. He frowns and flips over the queen.

“Oh! You won!” the woman standing behind me says.

“Go again,” Jessie says.

“What do you think?” I ask Hal. “Eight dollars for a chance at sixteen?”

He considers. He isn’t sure, yet, that I’m onto his game. And it’s not as if my bet is big at this point. Besides, the people watching will think they can win now, and that will help him draw more people in. I can sense the crowd getting bigger behind me. I’ve become the assistant, good for business.

He calculates his odds and agrees. “All right.”

He shuffles his cards. The longer I look at him, the older he seems. He’s got deep lines in his forehead, and his skin is tinged in that way that happens to longtime smokers. He gives me a look as he exposes his queen, then shuffles the cards quickly. I take even longer to decide which card is right, and in the end, I pick the one in the middle. He’s giving me a hard stare now. These guys like taking people. They do not like to be taken.

He turns the card over, the queen appears, and the crowd claps. He shuffles some bills together and hands them to me. He knows he’s been beaten, but he’s still in charge.

“Show’s over,” he says to me in a way so we understand each other. “Who’s next?”

We spend the next couple of hours wandering around the waterfront. Jessie is strangely keyed up after my modest takedown of the three-card monte man.

“That was pretty great,” she says. The sun is glinting off the water, and the crowd has multiplied as the day’s gotten nicer.

“Thanks.”

Jessie’s gesturing with her hands as she talks. “No, I mean it. Beating someone at their own game like that . . .”

“He was onto me pretty quickly.”

“But you didn’t care about getting caught. I bet you could’ve had him going for much longer if you mixed up your winning and losing.”

“Yeah, that’s how it’s done.”

“How come you didn’t do that?”

“I wanted to show you I could beat the guy. I didn’t care about tricking him for real.”

“How long do you think you could have kept him going, though?”

“Liam’s taken some of them for a couple hundred. But he gives the money to homeless guys.”

Her hands fall. “Oh, Liam.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t ask about him; I asked about you. How much do you think you could make?”

“Maybe the same. Why do you want to know?”

Her eyes are bright and glistening. It’s a look I’ve seen before, the glint of power when you realize you can get something over on someone.

“Just curious.”

I think about that for a moment, and then I say, “We could do it.”

“Do what?”

“Con someone.”

“What? Why?”

“For the fun of it.”

“Umm . . .”

I smile. “Oh, come on. You’re telling me you’ve never thought about it?”

“You have?”

“Sure. I read up on them a while back, for an article I was writing. Confidence tricks.”

“You did?”

“You think it’s weird?”

Jessie gives me a look. “I’m not sure what I think, to be honest.”

“Fair enough. But didn’t what happened to us make you wonder? How easy it would be to get away with it?”