Investigative Classics is a weekly feature on noteworthy past examples of the reporting craft.
As one of the most enduring short cons of the grifter’s trade, it naturally goes by many names: the shell game, three-card monte, find the lady.
At first glance, it couldn’t be simpler – just a man, three cards (or shells and peas), and some people gullible enough to believe he’s on the up and up.
In fact, as J. Peder Zane reported in a 1989 article for New York magazine, “The Sticks, the Slides and the Shaker,” it is an intricate, tightly scripted performance featuring a skilled ensemble cast. Zane, who edits for RealClearInvestigations, spent three months earning the trust of a monte gang in New York City who revealed the secrets of their con to him. He reports:
A team is usually made up of two “slides,” or lookouts; two “sticks,” who pretend to be bettors; and a “shaker,” who skedaddles the ball.
Mike is a slide. Slides live by their eyes and ears. They stand away from the curb, back to back, trying to pick out the uniformed officers (bluecoats) and undercover detectives (the "d’s”) trying to blend into the crowded streets.
When Mike spots trouble, he yells, “Slide!” Immediately the shaker says, “Gotta go now, but I be right back,” and knocks down the boxes.
The slides are important but the shaker and sticks are the real artists. Standing around the cardboard boxes, pretending to bet and argue, win and lose, they create a tableau for their victims.
Any indication that the shaker and sticks are working together would ruin the con. Yet the monte game hinges on the precise coordination of their activities. They accomplish this with a code the shaker peppers through his patter. It lets him tell the sticks exactly what to do: when to bet, which cap to bet on, how much to bet, and whether they should win or lose.
“Blow,” he says, and they lose. “Cop,” and they win. He also tells them the amount: “Blow the hundred,” or “Cop the 40.”
To make sure the sticks don’t cop when they should blow, he tells them which cap to bet on. Each cap has a name. The shaker always holds the bankroll in one hand, and the cap near the wad of money is called, appropriately enough, ‘money.” The cap in the middle is the “see,” and the one on the end is the “switch.”
So the patter might be “All right, we going to blow the 40 on the switch where you find the little red ball.” That tells the stick he’s going to bet $40 on the red cap. Or the shaker might say, “It’s a gambling game. Cop the hundred on the money.”
The shaker likes a tight feeling around the table. If the crowd spreads out, he’ll mix “close” into his patter to tell the sticks to move the marks toward the table. If he sees that a curious onlooker is blocked out, he’ll say, “Open,” which tells the sticks to spread out. Once that victim approaches, they close him into the table.
The result is a carefully constructed narrative that sounds like gibberish:
“It’s a gambling game, this game. Find the little ball and you win. Open it up now to blow 40 on the switch. I don’t get mad when I lose; I just grin when I win.”
Rarely, if ever, does a potential mark recognize a code in the patter. The victims – mostly in their twenties, usually dressed casually, of all racial groups – are too busy watching the shaker’s hands as he skedaddles the ball like a Japanese chef slices vegetables. All they seem to hear is “20 get 40, 40 get a hundred.”
