The Con Men: Hustling in New York City by Terry Williams & Trevor Milton

Author:Terry Williams & Trevor Milton [Williams, Terry & Milton, Trevor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Criminology, New York, Non-Fiction, Social Science, True Crime
ISBN: 9780231170826
Google: EFi1CgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0231170823
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

Field Note Entry: December 1

I mentioned to Alibi that I had met the writer Louise Meriwether at a party years ago and asked about her book Daddy Was a Number Runner, and she said it was all true. A tall, lanky woman with a warm smile, she told me, “My daddy was a numbers runner, and he used to tell us stories about the daily business. I wrote the book because my life was impacted by what my father did and how I grew up as a girl in the neighborhood.”

Alibi told me he never met Meriwether but knew about her social activism. “I read that book back in the day and loved it, though it wasn’t fiction to me but real life. Of course there was a lotta things that wasn’t in that book about the numbers though, like shipping numbers, which is for regular bettors if they hit [guess the correct numbers], they take it to the spot [the location where players are paid]. Also a lot of guys can be runners, but not many get to be bankers, in part because bankers are usually tied to the mob.”

The numbers are arranged from 000 to 999 and pay thousand-to-one odds. “The payoff is divided between the banker and the player. The banker takes 400 off the top and only pays out 600 to one, sometimes 500 to one. In certain instances some numbers are ‘cut’ to pay out 300 to one or 400 to one. One cut number, 796, comes out with regularity and is called the ‘dead number’ because it is the number listed for death in the family in the dream book.”

The dream book is a compendium of everyday events and items—such as birthdays, colors, horses, cars—that are assigned numbers. If any of these items appear in the bettor’s dreams, they are told to play that number, as it will bring them luck. The use of dreams to find a winning number is very common, and there are many resources available to interpret dreams, including specific people who are experts in dream interpretation, a series of dream books, and even consultations via phone available in English and Spanish. Among Latin American and Caribbean immigrants, the practice of reading the numbers behind the dreams is very common.

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