Scammers

This city is rife with rapscallions

I guess I look like a juicy target. I’m just a goofy dude wandering down the street on the way to lunch. So a guy approaches me, begs my attention and spins the following tale: His car is around the corner with a flat tire, and he’s on his way to a job interview and needs to buy a patch kit to repair it. His wife is waiting in the car. If I “loan” him $15 for this patch kit, he’ll give me his driver’s license to hold as collateral, then come back and repay me after he goes to the bank.

The first thing that makes me laugh is that he needs a tire patch kit. A tire patch? What then, is he going to call his pit crew to come pull the tire off the rim, use an air compressor and a soapy water solution to locate the hole, then apply the patch and re-mount and balance that sucker as traffic whizzes by? A patch kit seems like something the Beverly Hillbillies might’ve kept on hand in their Model T in case Jethro done run over hisself a porkee’pine. In any case, the last time I got a flat tire, I bought a can of Fix-A-Flat, which cost only $8 even at the gas station, where they can pretty much charge whatever they want because they know you’re sitting somewhere with a damn flat tire.

The story is fishy on other levels, too—you don’t have an ATM card? Why is your wife coming with you to a job interview? This story has so many holes, it could be the plot for an episode of 24. So I do the compassionate thing: I agree to give him the $15. But I accept his driver’s license as collateral.

This is a development for which he is ill prepared. Obviously, the routine is to offer the license to demonstrate sincerity, then people hand over the money, then he goes a few blocks up the street and repeats the process. But my demand for his license throws him off. “But… how am I going to drive back over here without my license?” he says. I tell him that it’s only a few blocks, like he said, so it shouldn’t be a problem. All of a sudden he’s quite conscientious about driving without his license. He curses me out and storms away.

A few months later, at the same spot on Columbus Street, a guy in a pickup rolls up to me and jumps out. Surprise of surprises, he also needs $15, which appears to be the magic number. His truck has a broken gas gauge, he’s about to run out of gas and he left his wallet at home. He’s brandishing his cell phone in an unnatural, prominent way, as if to imply, “Would someone successful enough to own a cell phone lead you awry?” Yet he didn’t claim to be out of gas, he just said he was about to run out of gas. How would you know that you were about to run out of gas if your gas gauge didn’t work? Was the ol’ 4X4 just handling like she was low on petrol? Also, if I was out of gas and I had my cell phone, I’d call everyone in my address book before I started approaching strangers. Orderlies would let my nana out of the home and tell her she was now on a mission to bring five gallons of gas to her great-grandson in Boston. That guy drove away empty handed, though not, I suspect, with an empty tank.

Small-time con artists, here’s some advice: If you’re going to concoct schemes to raise your daily crack money, at least entertain me. For instance, don’t say, “I lost my shoe and I need $15 to buy a new pair to walk home.” Instead, go to Brookline on Marathon Monday dressed like a runner—but wear only one shoe. Tell people that during the race you spotted a chicken attacking a baby. Fearing the spread of Asian Bird Flu, you removed your shoe to beat away the chicken, which you did, thus saving the baby, but then your shoe was contaminated so you had to burn it, and now you need $15 to buy a new pair of shoes so you can finish the race and collect your pledges for the Jimmy Fund. Now that’s a story.

It’s sad—I used to be a kind-hearted, gullible Mainer, and this kind of thing has made me into a steely-eyed city-slicker. Well, scammers, you may have taken my naiveté, but you’ll never take my $15.