The Grifters Read Online Free PDF Page B

things even…"
    They rolled. Roy won. Which naturally wouldn't do at all. They rolled again, for the price of four drinks, and this time the guy won. And, of course, that wouldn't do either. He just wouldn't allow it. Hell, they were just swapping drinks, friendly like, and he certainly wasn't going to walk out of here winner.
    "We'll roll for eight drinks this time, well, call it five bucks even, and then…"
    The tat , with its rapidly doubling bets, is murder on a fool. That is its vicious beauty. Unless he is carrying very heavy, the man with-the-best-of-it strips him on a relatively innocent number of winning rolls.
    Roy's griftings were down the drain in twenty minutes.
    In another ten, all of his honest money had followed it. The guy felt very bad about it; he said so himself. Roy must take back a couple bucks of his loss, and…
    But the taste of the grift was strong in Roy's mouth, the taste and the smell. He said firmly that he would take back half of the money. The grifter-his name was Mintz-could keep the other half for his services as an instructor in swindling.
    "You can begin the lessons right now," he said. "Start with that dice gimmick you just worked on me."
    There were some indignant protests from Mintz, some stern language from Roy. But in the end they adjourned to one of the booths, and that night and for some nights afterward they played the roles of teacher and pupil. Mintz held back nothing. On the contrary, he talked almost to the point of becoming tiresome. For here was a blessed chance to drop pretense. He could show how smart he was, as his existence normally precluded doing, and do it in absolute safety.
    Mintz did not like the twenties. It took a certain indefinable something which he did not have. And he never worked it without a partner, someone to distract the chump while the play was being made. As for working with a partner, he didn't like that either. It cut the score right down the middle. It put an apple on your head, and handed the other guy a shotgun. Because grifters, it seemed, suffered an irresistible urge to beat their colleagues. There was little glory in whipping a fool-hell, fools were made to be whipped. But to take a professional, even if it cost you in the long run, ah, that was something to polish your pride.
    Mintz liked the smack. It was natural, you know. Everyone matched coins.
    He particularly liked the tat, whose many virtues were almost beyond enumeration. Hook a group of guys on that tat, and you had it made for the week.
    The tat must always be played on a very restricted surface, a bar or a booth table. Thus, you could not actually roll the die, although, of course, you appeared to. You shook your hand vigorously, holding the cube on a high point, never shaking it at all, and then you spun it out, letting it skid and topple but never turn. If the marks became suspicious, you shot out of a cup, or, more likely, a glass, since you were in a bar room. But again you did not really shake the die. You held it, as before, clicking it vigorously against the glass in a simulated rattle, and then you spun it out as before.
    It took practice, sure. Everything did.
    If things got too warm, the bartender would often give you a take-out for a good tip. Call you to the phone or say that the cops were coming or something like that. Bartenders were chronically fed up with drinkers. They'd as soon see them chumped as not, if it made them a buck, and unless the guys were their friends.
    Mintz knew of many gimmicks other than the three standards. Some of them promised payoffs exceeding the normal short-con top of a thousand dollars. But these invariably required more than one man, as well as considerable time and preparation; were, in short, bordering big-con stuff. And they had one very serious disadvantage: if the fool tipped, you were caught. You hadn't made a mistake. You hadn't just been unlucky. You'd just had it.
    There were two highly essential details of grifting which Mintz