A Windowless White Van

A Windowless White Van

Prologue

Decades ago, at some point in my preteens, I read a book exposing the machinations behind several age-old flimflams. One especially memorable grift was the “Speaker Scam,” which consisted of repackaging secondhand speakers in state-of-the-art speaker packaging and selling the hoax to hapless saps.

As I ambulated through one of Fort Lauderdale’s most blighted urban badlands, a hail of verbal gunfire showered an unspecified someone close by. As I turned toward the sound's source, two Florida men archetypes pulled alongside me in a decrepit off-white panel van. Their subpar grooming standards alone outed them as gainfully unemployed.

The van's driver clumsily uncorked his sales pitch: “My Man, I’ve got these-” His contrived urgency triggered memories from multiple previous viewings of this same film. I cut in: “Speakers to offload before your boss tumbles to their absence?” His passenger’s face went slack in slow motion. The pair’s point man, in contrast, maintained an unflappability worthy of Kenny Rogers’ fabled gambler. Under normal circumstances, I would have waved these mulletheaded grifters off without so much as eye contact. That day, broad daylight and youthful bravado emboldened me to twist the knife: “And you’re willing to sell me these top-of-the-line stacks for half of their MSRP,” I continued with increasing insolence, “provided I pay in cash. That about the size of it?”

He'd been made and he knew it. That's when things got weird. Rather than throw one of the crushed beer cans that more than likely littered the van's floorboards at me and speed off, the deuce's alpha began going with my flow. He encouraged me to continue orating his monologue as if I were an improviser and he an audience member tossing out scene suggestions. At some point, he stopped trying to suppress his smile or conceal his laughter as he egged me on. The binary's beta took a wholly different tack. He sat in silence the entire time, his face that of a wife who'd just resolved to file for divorce first chance she gets.

Prior to parting ways, I counseled my would-be deceivers to ditch their windowless pervert-on-the-prowl mobile if they ever planned to climb the con man corporate ladder. In turn, they cautioned me against ambling about that part of town, particularly while flying solo, as “you never know whose attention you’ll attract.”