by Tim Wirkus
The receptionist hung up the phone and stepped out from behind the desk. Her heels clacked against the stone floor as she crossed the room to the missionaries.
“Come with me, please,” she said.
The missionaries stood up from the leather sofa and followed. She led them down a narrow hallway to an expensive-looking wood door, which she opened, gesturing for them to enter. They stepped into the office and she shut the door behind them.
An older version of the man from the photograph sat behind a massive battleship of a hardwood desk reading through a document, his once-graying hair and beard now completely white. Elder Schwartz noticed that his most distinguishing feature, or lack thereof, had been repaired in the years since the photograph was taken: He now had a complete left ear. Looking up at the missionaries, he removed his wire-rimmed glasses.
He said, “John, Mike, have a seat.” He gestured at two leather chairs in front of his desk.
Elder Schwartz, disconcerted, wondered how he knew their names.
“Actually, we prefer to be called ‘Elder,’” said Elder Toronto.
“And I prefer not to use silly titles,” said Junior Cabral. “Have a seat, boys.”
The missionaries sat down in the two leather chairs.
“The surgeons did a nice job with your ear,” said Elder Toronto.
“Thank you,” said Cabral. “I think so, too.”
His hand reached up and stroked the new ear.
“That particular deformity,” he said, “was a souvenir from my father. I grew up in the South, in a tiny armpit of a city. My father couldn’t hold down a job. He was bad at taking orders and good at drinking, which never endeared him to his employers. On weekends, for fun, he would beat up my mother. One Friday night—I was eleven—I tried to stop him. He hit me, knocked me to the ground, and then held me down and cut off my ear with a kitchen knife. He said that that should remind me who was the father and who was the son in our house. I left the next morning, struck out on my own, and never went back.”
“Impressive,” said Elder Toronto.
“I certainly think so,” said Junior Cabral. “I was an eleven-year-old kid, newly arrived in one of the largest cities in the world. For a couple of weeks I survived by stealing fruit and bread from stalls in the street markets when the vendors weren’t looking. It was enough to get by, but just barely.
“One day I was sitting on a curb near a church. It must have been a Sunday because bells were ringing and people were coming out of the church in their best clothes. I got an idea. I stood up. I watched the people walking by me until I spotted a sentimental-looking middle-aged woman. I started crying, pretty loudly, and she looked over at me. I kept crying and she approached me. I told her the name of the little town I came from. I told her my family was very poor, that my father was drunk and unemployed, that sometimes he beat my mother. All of this was true.
“Then I started to embellish. I told her my mother was sick, that we had saved up all of our money to get her to a doctor, but when the doctor examined her, he told us the only cure was a very expensive medicine that we could only find here in the city. I told the woman I hadn’t been able to get any money since I’d been here, and that my mother was going to die. What I told her wasn’t that clever or original, just basic panhandling stuff, and it didn’t hurt that I was a kid, but the story worked. The woman opened her purse and gave me a handful of bills. She stopped a bunch of her churchy friends and they gave me money as well, and told me I’d be in their prayers. What I learned that morning was that the best lies are the ones that are mostly true. That lesson served me well in my previous line of work.”
He scratched at his well-groomed beard.
“That’s a nice story,” said Elder Toronto. “You say your family lived in the South?”
Cabral nodded, a gleam in his eye.
“And poor?”
“That’s right,” said Cabral.
“That’s funny,” said Elder Toronto.
“And why’s that funny,” said Junior Cabral, leaning forward.
“What I mean is, it’s interesting,” said Elder Toronto. “See, I hear your father was a big downtown banker right here in the city. A really important guy. In fact, I hear his name still holds enough sway that it got you out of prison early, helped you land this nice consulting gig.”
“Is that right?” said Cabral with a soft chuckle.
“That’s what I hear.”
“And where did you hear this?”
“From a mutual acquaintance,” said Elder Toronto.
“I see,” said Cabral, leaning back in his chair, a satisfied smile on his face. “Very good. Very good.”
He stood up from his desk and slid open one of the burnished metal wall panels to reveal a small fridge and three shelves of glasses. He asked the missionaries if they were thirsty.
“Sure,” said Elder Toronto. Elder Schwartz just nodded.
He took down three tumblers from a shelf and set them on the desk.
“What about you, Mike?” said Cabral, opening the fridge and removing two bottled waters and two cans of guaraná. He set them on the desk. “Do you speak Portuguese?”
“Yes,” said Elder Schwartz.
Cabral pulled a bottle of whiskey from a shelf above the glasses and sat down.
“Please,” he said, “drink. The waters and sodas are for you.”
Elder Toronto opened a can of guaraná and poured some of the amber liquid into his glass. Elder Schwartz didn’t touch the drinks.
“So you do speak Portuguese, then,” said Cabral.
“That’s right,” said Elder Schwartz.
“Excuse me?” said Cabral.
“I said, yes I do,” said Elder Schwartz.
Cabral gave a slight shrug. He pointed to the drinks in front of Elder Schwartz.
“The drinks,” said Cabral, still addressing Elder Schwartz. He spoke slowly and loudly. “They are for you. You can drink them.” He mimed drinking.
“No thanks,” said Elder Schwartz.
Cabral turned to Elder Toronto.
“Can he understand what I’m saying?”
“He understands fine,” said Elder Toronto.
“Hmm,” said Cabral. “You should tell him to speak more clearly.”
“You can tell him yourself,” said Elder Toronto, taking a drink of guaraná.
Instead, Cabral opened the bottle of whiskey.
“Do you mind?” he said.
“It’s your office,” said Elder Toronto.
Cabral filled the glass a quarter of the way full and closed the bottle. He took a sip.
“This probably won’t come as any kind of surprise to you, but I’m not a religious man. I may not even be a very moral man. Who knows. But do you want to know why I was so successful in my former career?”
“Sure,” said Elder Toronto.
“Because most people aren’t too hard to figure out. Most people do the things they do because they want something. And the something that they want is rarely very noble. Even if they’re religious. Why should you be meek? Because blessed are the meek. Why should you be a peacemaker? Because blessed are the peacemakers. What does it mean to be blessed? It means God gives you one of his heavenly mansions; you get rewarded.”
Cabral ran a hand over his thick beard.
“A couple of you guys came to visit me not long after I got out of prison. They gave their little lesson about Joseph Smith, and then asked me if I wanted to be baptized. I asked what was in it for them if I got baptized. They said nothing was in it for them. I said I doubted that. They said they worked on a strictly volunteer basis. I told them I wasn’t talking about money. I asked them who their boss was, and told them I didn’t mean God. They said they had a mission president. I asked if their mission president would know if I got baptized. They said he would. I asked if he would give them any sort of praise for baptizing me. They said he probably would. I asked them how they thought God would feel about them if they baptized me. They
said they wouldn’t presume to guess. I asked them if they thought God might bless them. They said they imagined he might.
“‘Then don’t tell me there’s nothing in it for you,’ I said to them. ‘If I get baptized, you improve your reputation with your boss, and God adds another brick to your heavenly mansion.’”
Cabral chuckled and took a sip of whisky.
“There’s something satisfying about watching someone’s face as you perfectly articulate—better than they could, even—exactly what they want. I told your friends that if they were looking for rewards, they should find a sales job that pays a more immediate commission. They left my apartment with their tails between their legs.”
Cabral smiled at the two missionaries.
“I don’t think everyone’s that predictable,” said Elder Toronto.
“Neither do I,” said Cabral. “That’s why I said most people are easy to figure out. There are notable exceptions. Marco, for example—he’s always been a cipher to me. I can’t figure him out. Back when we worked together, I’d ask him all the time why he was in the business. I told him I needed to know—it’s good practice to know what drives your partner. But he would just shrug and say he needed the money.
“But that wasn’t it. Granted, he was always very smart about getting the most money possible out of our various business ventures. A truly canny young man. Once he got the money, though, he didn’t spend it on anything. I mean, he bought basic necessities—food, clothes, and whatnot—but that was it. So with Marco, I know it’s not the money.
“Now, with most guys in the business, if it’s not the money, it’s the sense of superiority that comes with duping people. It’s a smartest-guy-in-the-room kind of thing. Makes them feel big about themselves. If I’m being totally honest with you, that’s what drives me, or drove me, when I was still in the business. I got a thrill just thinking of some rich mark putting the pieces together after I’ve made off with his money, realizing how gullible he’d been, how trusting. I lived for that.
“But for Marco, that wasn’t it either. When we worked together—and I’m not even sure how to describe this to you—there was almost a gentleness, a kindness, even, in how he conned people. Sure, he was still tricking them, still taking their money, but it wasn’t like he got a thrill out of humiliating people. It was almost like he was helping them, but that’s not quite it. Like I said, I can’t describe it.”
Elder Toronto poured some more guaraná into his glass.
“Speaking of Marco,” said Elder Toronto. “When’s the last time you saw him?”
Cabral smiled. “We can talk about that in a minute,” he said. “I’m not finished yet.”
“Fine,” said Elder Toronto. “Go ahead.”
Elder Schwartz could see his senior companion’s patience wearing thin, the breeziness becoming more and more forced by the minute. Cabral polished away a smudge on the gleaming surface of his desk and returned his attention to the missionaries.
“Maybe the closest Marco ever came to revealing what made him tick was during this one summer—we had been working together four or five years by then, and if Marco had started out as my apprentice, by this point he had the skills to be my partner. We were on our way south to meet up with some colleagues for a job, but we stopped en route in a little beach town to try and earn some of the money we’d need to buy our way into the venture. It was in this little beach town that we met a small-time—and I mean small-time—grifter by the name of Fat Tiago. The guy wasn’t even that fat.
“Anyway, Fat Tiago’s racket was a shell game he ran down on the boardwalk. You know what a shell game is? It’s where the operator has three shells, or little cups, or thimbles, or whatever, and he shuffles around a coin or a nut or a pea, and when he’s done shuffling, the mark lays down a bet on which cup the pea is under. And the mark is always wrong because the operator’s using sleight of hand. Like I said, this is small-time stuff. If you run a shell game, you’re living hand-to-mouth, and that’s only if you’re very good at it. In the business, guys like Marco and me didn’t run around with guys who did shell games. Different worlds.
“But this Fat Tiago had a gimmick. He used clear cups. Shot glasses, actually. And instead of a pea, he used a red rubber ball, which, if you’ve ever run a shell game before, you know is a terrible idea. I actually did a little shell work as a kid—it’s good training—and you want everything to be small so it’s harder for the mark to see and easier to hide in your hand.
“So we’re walking along the boardwalk, Marco and I, and I see Fat Tiago’s rig. I say to Marco that this guy’s either an idiot or some kind of two-bit savant. I’m intrigued, so we stop to watch. There’s one other variation to the act. Next to the cups there’s one of those bells they have at customer service counters—you know, the kind you tap to ring? So Fat Tiago tells his marks that as soon as he’s done shuffling the shot glasses around, he’s going to reach over and ring this bell, and once the bell rings, the mark—except he doesn’t call him the mark, he calls him the player—has to have his hand on the cup of his choice. This is only fair, says Fat Tiago, since the cups are clear.
“Now, by this point—hats off to Fat Tiago—I was hooked. Even with the bell gimmick it seemed much too easy for the marks to choose the right cup. I’ll tell you, though, we watched a dozen of them play the game and not a single one put their finger on the right cup. They’d watch him shuffling the shot glasses and you could see the ball moving around, a red blur shooting back and forth. Then he’d stop shuffling, his hand darting for the bell, and the mark—thinking they’d followed the path of the red rubber ball pretty well—would put their finger down on the cup of their choice. Of course, all of this happened nearly simultaneously, but the bell would ring, and the mark would look down and see an empty cup under their finger, the red ball always sitting under a different shot glass, and Fat Tiago’s hands nowhere near the playing surface. It was, I’ll admit, an impressive little act. We probably watched him for over an hour, until it got dark and he closed down for the night.
“As he was packing his supplies into a little duffel bag, I said, ‘That’s a nice shell game you’ve got going.’
“And Marco said, ‘Really impressive.’
“‘Thank you,’ said Fat Tiago. ‘I noticed you two watching. You don’t look like cops, so can I assume you’re fellow members of the guild?’
“I told him, ‘You can assume what you want,’ and we both shook his hand.
“He said, ‘If you enjoyed the performance, why don’t you two buy me a drink,’ so the three of us set off for a bar to do just that.
“Like I said, I was impressed by Fat Tiago’s game, but Marco was captivated. After a few drinks, he convinced the guy to pull out the shot glasses and the ball and give an encore performance.
“Marco said, ‘You’ve got to tell me how to do that.’
“‘Sorry,’ said Fat Tiago. ‘Trade secret.’
“I have to admit, the guy was good. Even watching him up close, I couldn’t figure out how he did it. Anyway, after another drink or two, we parted ways, and that was the last we saw of Fat Tiago.
“Well, about a year later, Marco and I were sitting in another bar having just successfully finished a pretty tough job. We were talking broadly about our future plans, when the topic of the Ultimate Con came up. Now, everyone I know in the business has their own Ultimate Con, and it’s different for everybody. For some guys, it’s the amount of money at stake, for other guys, it’s the complexity—how many layers, how many operators, that kind of thing. It really varies. So Marco and I were chatting and, as part of my ongoing efforts to figure out what makes him tick, I asked him what his Ultimate Con would be. And he surprised me by answering right away—he’d obviously given it some thought.
“‘Fat Tiago,’ he said.
“It took me a minute to remember who that was. When I did, I said, ‘A shell game?’
“‘No,’ said Marco. ‘Not literally. What I mean is, a long con where eve
rything’s transparent for the mark.’
“I said, ‘So the mark knows he’s being conned?”
“‘Right,’ said Marco.
“I said, ‘That’s just a Shuffle.’
“He said, ‘No, this would be different. For one thing, you need at least three people working a Shuffle. Mine would be a one-man job. Other people might be involved, but they wouldn’t know they were involved. Or they’d be involved, but not in the way they thought they were, if that makes sense. Also, with a Shuffle, you make the mark feel like they’re smarter than they actually are—that’s the hook. You only let them know obliquely that you’re conning them. In mine, I’d be completely straightforward with the mark.’
“‘So what,’ I said, ‘you just walk up to the mark and say, Hello, I’m going to con you?’
“Marco said, ‘I know you’re joking, but yeah, that’s basically what I have in mind. I would approach the mark and say something like, Hello, my name is Marco Aurélio, I’m a con artist, and I’m very good at what I do. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to con you into giving me a million reaís. Or whatever it is I want from them. It wouldn’t have to be money.’
“‘Fine,’ I said, ‘But you’re telling me it’s not a misdirection, right? You won’t tell them, for instance, that you’ll con them out of their prize racehorse, and then while they’re focused on the horse, you get the deed to their mansion on the beach or something?’
“‘That’s right,’ said Marco. ‘If I tell them I’m conning them out of their racehorse, I’ll walk away with their racehorse and not something else.’
“I said, ‘It’s all completely straightforward, then. You tell them who you are, you tell them what you’re after, and then they give it to you?’
