Greene - American Hustle

... I have nothin to hide. Im an open book; if I can make a buck, I make a buck.

MEL WEINBERG, 1979

The United States Courthouse for the Eastern District of New York is a white, concrete rectangle in what is known as downtown Brooklyn. It is a clean, efficient but graceless building, with a shabbily kept park fringed with maple trees opposite the main entrance, a cool haven from the hot summer sun and a nighttime refuge for muggers and perverts. A few blocks away, over the gargoyled faades of turn-of-the-century office buildings, the pillars of the Brooklyn Bridge spear the sky, dimly visible through a blue haze of exhaust fumes.

Motorists fight for parking spaces on the narrow street fronting the courthouse amid a confusion of signs warning that the block has been reserved for the parking convenience of government bureaucrats.

It was the shank of August 1980; at 9:00 A.M. on this day it was characteristically hot and humid in Brooklyn, and Federal workers raced the last few steps to reach the air-conditioned coolness of the lobby.

Despite the humidity the air was electric with anticipation. Television newsmen with their camera crews were assembling on the sidewalks, and press photographers congregated against the row of parked cars at the curb. It was during this preparatory moment of relative calm that a nondescript car with government plates eased down the street and abruptly nosed into a reserved parking spot.

The driver, a modishly slim FBI agent, quickly exited and walked around to the passenger side, glancing up and down the street as he moved. The agent nodded quickly and the passenger door sprang open. Out stepped Melvin (no middle initial) Weinberg.

Blinking owlishly in the sun despite his tinted, aviator-style sunglasses, Mel Weinberg snipped the end from a huge Te-Amo Toros cigar, jammed it into the corner of his mouth and scanned the sidewalk running to the courthouse door. Photographers, he said to his companion, FBI Agent Tony Amoroso. Weinberg spoke softly. The only visual indication that he was talking was a slight up-and-down jiggle of the Churchillian cigar.

Walk like we belong and theyll think were part of the scenery, said Amoroso. Weinberg grinned agreement and the two men moved down the street, past the idle photographers and into the courthouse. They took the elevator up to the third-floor offices of the Eastern District Federal Strike Force.

When the two men strolled into the large, nearly empty ready-room, several agents murmured automatic greetings before returning to their gin-rummy game. Weinberg and Amoroso slumped into easy chairs and sat quietly. They had worked together for nearly two years and felt no need to fill comfortable silence with useless words. Each was deep in his own thoughts.

Mel Weinberg took stock of himself. For a fifty-five-year-old confidence man, swindler, avid hustler of the fast buck, the avenues of life seemed to be merging this morning at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse. He couldnt complain. For a runny-nosed kid who had barely graduated from grammar school, he hadnt done badly. Learning, always learning, he had progressed through a thirty-five-year career in white-collar crimefrom hustling phony gold contracts over Formica-topped tables at all-night diners to lavish office suites on Long Island, a staff of 500 franchised salesmen and an annual cash income of more than $500,000.

He had worked North America and five other continents, fleecing public officials, movie stars, dictators, generals, mobsters, political terrorists and ordinary businessmen with democratic impartiality. His enemies regarded him as a conniving crook; neutrals called him a rogue, and a small army of underworld admirers and incredulous cops added to the legend daily as they swapped Weinberg stories in the worlds bars, jails, cafs, courtrooms and whorehouses.

The money was good and, through the years, Weinberg had developed an appetite for first-class living. But, as he readily admits to himself and his few close friends, the real reward of scamming is the fun of the game. Each new mark, or potential victim, was a new mind to be wrestled to the ground in a one-on-one battle of wits.