The Directive

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THE POLICE CLOSED
in. I could feel his blood dry, tighten like scales on my skin. It marked me as the gunman. I knew I should raise my hands and surrender, trust my life to the laws I had sworn to uphold, the laws that had torn my family apart.

Or I could give myself to the killers. They waited in the black car beside me, my only escape. The rear door swung open. I was innocent, but I’d seen enough to know the truth no longer mattered.

A hand reached out for me.

The only way out was to go in deeper.

I stepped into the car.

NEVER BET IN
another man’s game. It’s a simple rule I picked up from my father. So what was I doing walking down a Manhattan alley, fingering twelve hundred dollars in my pocket, heading toward a three-card-monte gang who looked like they’d decided to take a break from knifing people today to fling cards instead?

I had no idea. But if I had been thinking straight, I probably would have guessed it had something to do with the eight hours I’d spent that day looking over china patterns, bookended by my fiancée Annie and my future grandmother-in-law.

Bergdorf Goodman has a little playpen they call the Engagement Suite, where a salesman in a three-piece suit and a string of well-maintained women parade luxury goods past you until finally a $1,500 pitcher starts to seem reasonable.

The grandmother, Vanessa, had stepped in for wedding duty, since Annie’s mother had passed away many years before. Our salesman had an accent that sounded Argentinean and walked us through every conceivable permutation of chargers, knives, forks, saucers, teacups, and bowls.

Annie didn’t care much about material things—she’d never had to—but I could see the grandmother working on her with the weight of the Clark name, the family expectations.

Hour four became hour five. This was our second stop of the day.

“Mike?” Annie asked. She and her grandmother stared at me. The salesman and his harem frowned behind them like a jury. I’d zoned out.

“Did you hear me?” Vanessa asked. “Flat cup and saucer, or footed?”

“Oh. I’d just go with something simple,” I said.

Vanessa offered me a smile that didn’t touch her eyes, and said, “Of course you would. Don’t you think this one is a little more refined, or is this a bit more…elegant?”

Annie looked at me. I’d do anything to make her happy, but after four days in New York in dude-on-wheels mode, getting dragged from store to overpriced store, I was running out of steam.

“Exactly,” I said.

Annie looked troubled, Vanessa angry.

“Well, which is it?” her grandmother asked. “It was a question.”

A couple of years ago Annie’s father had sent debarked German shepherds to kill me, but he was starting to look pretty good compared to Vanessa.

Annie looked from her grandmother to me. “Mike?”

The Argentine twisted his watch chain. Vanessa pulled a 600-thread-count napkin tight as a garrote. My eyes were so dry from the endless staring and overbright glare of the department store lights I could almost feel the lids scrape as I shut them.

Flipping out—maybe clearing the table with a sweep of the arm—was growing in appeal, but probably not my best move.

I stood and clicked my tongue. “Sorry,” I said. “Will you excuse me? I just remembered that I have to get a call in to my accountant by the close of business.”

It was a lie, but an effective one. If there was one thing Annie’s family held sacred, it was money. This would spring me.

I fast-walked for the exits. The Argentine waved me back—maybe they had some emergency recovery area with rib-eye and ESPN for overwhelmed fiancés—but I needed air and the streets.

I HAD CAUGHT
the monte game out of the corner of my eye on our way to Bergdorf’s. It was down a side street piled high with garbage, about halfway between the marble showrooms of Fifth Avenue and the Middle American mall that Times Square had become.

Making my way through the crowded sidewalks, I saw the swindlers at work among the tourists. A pickpocket plied the crowd that had gathered around a Chinese portrait-sketcher. Across the street a few aspiring rappers roped in passersby, writing their names on a ten-dollar CD and then using unsubtle threats to complete the sale. Being around all that noise and mischief did me good after hours of forced manners and conditioned air.

With no real thought about where I was going, I soon found myself turning toward the monte game I had seen earlier. I was surprised to see it was still going on, though they’d moved it to the other end of the street.

The operator throwing the cards was a lanky white guy with a wiry, desperate strength to him. He wore an oversized Yankees cap pulled down over his eyes, and jeans hanging around the middle of his ass.

For a table, he had three milk crates stacked vertically with a newspaper on top. The cards and the patter flew: “Twos lose and the ace gets paid. Find the honey, find the honey, find the honey.”

He glanced at me, but pretended not to notice as I approached. With the slightest rise of an eyebrow, he indicated to the rest of the crew that the game was on. There were four players.

As I moved in, he signaled them subtly, and they made just enough room for me to get close to the action. They played four rounds as I stood there: cards dancing, money falling and flying in the operator’s hands between winners and losers. Not that it mattered. They were all working on the same team, all pooling the same money, all on the operator’s side. That’s how the monte con worked.

And that’s why it was so stupid to risk a dime in it. Even if I knew their tricks, I’d have to beat them at their own rigged game.

I should have stopped and thought for a second about what the hell I was doing, then walked away, back to Bergdorf’s and the sterling-silver sorbet spoons.

But instead I stepped into the game. The operator started working me: “Money or walk.
The Lion King
’s down the street if you wanna gawk at something. This is players only.”

I ignored him, acted a little scared, a little tough, like your typical mark putting up a front of sophistication. Jesus, I looked the part. I’d been so busy working that week that I told Annie to throw some clothes into a bag for me for the trip. I had on a V-neck sweater under a blue blazer, some kind of moleskin pants, and boat shoes—I guess she was trying to yacht-club me up for the meeting with grandma. I looked like stupid money. I would have mugged myself.

The crew closed in behind me, pushed me closer to the game. “Shutting the gates,” it was called, part of hooking the mark, the first stage of the short con. There was only one woman playing, and she’d just won twice. The stakes were up to forty-dollar bets. After the operator threw the cards around, you placed your bet in front of the card you thought was the ace of spades. Someone could outbid you by doubling your bet on another card. The highest bet played, leaving only one player and one bet per round. That was key to the hustle.

“He’s not taking my bets anymore,” she whispered to me. “I’m too good. I got this figured out.”

She was about five feet four, pale and blond, a city creature with a fierce look in her eyes and a body that was hard to ignore. “Help me out,” she said with a knowing look. She slipped me eighty dollars in worn twenties as she pressed against me. “Lay that down, on the left.”

Some pasty, mouth-breathing kid put forty in the center. I took her money and laid it down on the left. “Eighty,” I said. The operator looked down at the bet, seemed pissed, then flipped the ace of spades next to my bet and handed me $160.

The monte con has its classic roles. The love interest to my left was “the booster,” and her job was to give me a risk-free taste of the action, to make me believe that the operator was beatable, to convince me to get my own money in the mix. I pushed the cash I’d just won across the newspaper to her. As she went to scoop it up, the operator grabbed her wrist. “What the fuck?” he said. “My man here won. Beginner’s luck.”

“It’s her money,” I said. “I put a bet down for her.”

He wheeled on me. “Don’t pull that Wall Street bullshit up here, Thurston Howell. You want to play? Money up. Or you spend it all on your little sailor suit?”

Berate the mark. That usually wrapped up the hooking portion of the show. I was insulted, angry, and eager for revenge—ripe for a rip-off.

“The corner’s bent on the ace,” the woman whispered in my ear. She was hanging on to me like a Bond girl now, pumping up my confidence. The corner was bent back, but a skilled operator can crimp and uncrimp at will. It was another way to draw me in, convince me I couldn’t lose. I took out my wallet and pulled out a twenty.

I watched him throw the cards, picking up two at a time and tossing one. Everyone assumes you drop the bottom card, but you actually throw the top with a sleight-of-hand move called a hype. This guy wasn’t very good at it, but it’s a convincing technique even when poorly done.

The cards fell. The ace was obvious with the crimp. I put my twenty down. Then the mouth-breather did his part. He was a “capper.” If you ever hit the right card, his role was to immediately double the bet so you couldn’t win. When you bet wrong, the capper just stands back and lets the dealer take your money. The game is hopeless.

And so it went. The capper’s bet played. He lost, and then the dealer flipped over the ace where I had bet.

“You would have won, see,” the girl whispered in my ear.

I took out a few more twenties from my wallet. The operator’s eyes lit up. By now we had a decent crowd going. To my right stood a few well-dressed, well-built guys who I gathered were in town for some kind of black fraternity event. To my left was an older Chinese woman carrying a big woven plastic shopping bag.

She ventured a ten-dollar bet, correctly, on the center. Maybe the capper, who seemed a little slow, missed what was happening, because he forgot to double the bet, and the lady’s ten bucks stood.

It didn’t matter. The operator slid the right-hand card—which I had followed and knew was a two—under her winning ace in the middle to flip it over. Somehow, as it landed, the winning ace became a losing deuce. The operator had swapped them during the turnover. That’s why, even with all the money in the world to outbid the capper, you can never win.

I knew everything I needed to know to beat these guys. I pulled all of my money out of my pocket, about $900 minus what I had spent today, and palmed it. I tend to keep a lot of cash on hand: old habits.

“Ace pays and deuces lose. Follow the honey, honey’s in the hive, money with the honey.”

The operator threw the cards and kept up the patter. The crimp disappeared from the card as the operator shuffled. He didn’t need it now that my money was out and my trust in Pussy Galore was absolute. I followed the ace. The cards fell.

“Left,” the woman clinging to me whispered, leading me wrong. I laid ten on the center where the ace had landed. They wouldn’t let me win, so the capper laid twenty on the right. All according to plan. I double him to forty on my ace. We went back and forth, 80, 160, 320…

“Six hundred forty,” I said and laid it on the newspaper next to the ace. The beauty of a bet that big is that when you lay it down, the bundle of cash is wide enough to cover the cards for a split second.

The capper looked at me, dumbfounded, then at his roll—there were maybe six twenties left over. He couldn’t double my bet. He licked his lips, then turned to the dealer for help.

I’d been watching them as they went for their money. I knew they didn’t have me covered. The dealer didn’t seem fazed.

“Gekko’s greedy. Greed is good! Six hundred and forty’s the bet.” All he needed to do was swap the center ace I had correctly picked with one of the deuces on the side, and the whole stack was his. He should have pretended he was a little concerned, but the guy was beaming. I was having second thoughts myself. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining to Vanessa and Annie that we’d be eating at Wendy’s because I got rooked at three-card monte.

I watched as he lifted the right-hand deuce and used it to flip over the ace I’d bet my money on. He switched them in the process, of course, and laid down what he was sure was the losing card.

“Twos lose,” he began, triumphantly. But then he bothered to actually look down at the cards, and saw the ace of spades staring up at him next to my $640 in cash. His eyes bugged out.

The spectators who weren’t in on the con whooped with joy. One guy grabbed me around the shoulders.

I hadn’t messed around with cards for years. Still, it wasn’t too much trouble, especially with a sloppy operator like this one, to switch the cards myself with my pinky and ring finger as I laid my money down. I knew what his next move would be, so when he switched them later, he actually ended up giving me the winning card.

I’d won fair and square. And crooked.

“Cops!” the capper shouted.

I should have expected it. If the game goes south, or he takes a mark for enough money, the lookout shouts “Police!” and everyone scrambles. It’s the last resort of the short con. Even if the mark wins, he loses. The gang bolted. In one swipe of his hand the operator pocketed the money and the cards, and tried to dart away. My new friends from Alpha Phi Alpha looked like they might lend some muscle to the principle of fair play, and blocked him on two sides. As a result, he had to come through me, with a right hook to my kidneys as he knocked me out of the way and his milk crates tumbled to the ground.

The other guys shouted some very inventive threats after him. I just watched him go.

“You going to let that punk rob you like that?” one of the spectators shouted. “You won straight up, man. I’d find that dude, and I would get my money back.”

“Never bet in another man’s game,” I said, shrugged, and walked away. As I turned out of the alley, I realized I was smiling. I hadn’t had that much fun in a long time. After surviving my run-in with the grifters of New York, I could certainly face down my 120-pound fiancée, her grandmother, and a footed teacup.

The whole incident took twenty minutes. Soon I was back in Bergdorf’s, between Annie and Vanessa. The pain under my ribs had mellowed to a dull throb. Arturo was demonstrating the merits of different fish forks.

“Mike,” Annie said, and looked at me sweetly. “You doing okay? Are you weddinged out for the day?”

In my lap, out of sight of the rest of the party, I examined what I had lifted from the dealer as he crashed past me. When your target is wearing pants that baggy, picking someone’s pocket is easy.

He’d run off with nothing. I walked away with my $640, plus another $800 or so for my troubles and a knife unlike any I’d ever seen. It was slim, with a beautifully grained rosewood handle and brass bolsters. It must have been eighty years old, Spanish or Italian. It wasn’t a switchblade, but it flicked open with such speed and ease it might as well have been. I had a feeling the kid had ripped it off from someone. That knife was one of the more lethal-looking items I’d ever held. I closed it carefully, then put it and the money away.

As I rested my hand on the cash in my pocket, I smiled. “I’m having the time of my life,” I said, then turned to Annie’s grandmother. “You’re right about the gravy boat, Vanessa. Limoges all the way. And Arturo,” I said, rubbing my hands together, “do you still have those Haviland catalogs?”

That was the moment, flanked by my fiancée and her grandma in the Engagement Suite, fingering the six-inch blade in my pocket and the grimy roll of twenties I’d lifted off a street hustler, when I realized maybe something wasn’t quite right with me, and with this dream I’d been chasing for years of a quiet, respectable life.