Kimes Kenneth - Son of a grifter: the twisted tale of Sante and Kenny Kimes, the most notorious con artists in America: a memoir by the other son

The Twisted Tale of Sante and Kenny Kimes, the Most Notorious Con Artists in America

A Memoir by the O ther Son

for

Lynn, Kristina, Carson, and Brandy

I make my living as a vacuum-cleaner salesman. Ive met a lot of good liars in my day. None of them are as good as my mother.

When people lie, the story goes, some tic gives them away. They blink or break their gaze or touch their noses with their fingers. Polygraph machines operate on the principle that these physical signs are inside the body too, and involuntary. Breathing quickens, heart rates jump, and the needle on the lie detector skitters over the graph when run-of-the-mill humans try to deny a criminal truth.

Who can beat a lie detector test? Swamis, maybe, with pulse and breath control, or con artists, or cold-blooded sociopaths. My mother claims to have relatives among the first category, and most observers probably think she belongs to the other two.

I agree that Mom would have no trouble fooling a machine. Ive seen her walk into parties filled with little clumps of people who each know her under a different alias. Instead of fleeing in panic, she works the room, remembering what fake name she used with each mark, never slipping, never breaking a sweat. A few electrodes and straps on her arms wouldnt faze her.

But its too easy to say her skill stems from the sangfroid of a grifter. Her gift for lying comes from passionate conviction. She never blinks or stutters in the midst of the most ornate fibs, because she believes what shes saying without reservation. A good liar always starts with a germ of truth and builds from there: thats Mom. She cant distinguish between whats real and what shes invented, which makes her preternaturally persuasive.

I can make a more educated guess than anyone on earth about when shes lying, though there are no outward symptoms. I just know when and why she does it, and about what. The hard part is reaching backward through decades of fabrications and embellishments to find what she started with, the first hard kernel of reality. Even when I think Ive found it, I dont always trust it.

If you ask me where Sante Kimes came from, then, I cant be sure, nor would I swear to anything under oath. All I can tell you is how the story evolved.

A t 9 A.M. on Wednesday, July 8, 1998, I pulled my white Corvette into a parking space and killed the engine. I unfolded a cardboard sunshade and spread it across the dashboard, just like all the other morning commuters in Greater Las Vegas, and then walked to the service entrance of the low cinderblock building on Decatur Avenue that housed my business. Id been out of town over the long holiday weekend and had a lot of catching up to do.

As soon as I was inside, my sales manager approached me. I heard Greg chirp Good morning, but what struck me was the pained expression on his face. Your mom and your brother have been calling here, he said. Thats why he looked uncomfortable. He knew I wouldnt consider this good newsI hated having my fifteen employees know anything about the antics of my estranged mother and brother. Theyve been calling nonstop for the last two days. There was a backlog of sixty messages, most of them aborted collect callsthe kind people in jail have to make.

Already I was embarrassed, but I played it nonchalant. If my mother or Kenny calls again, tell them Im not back yet. I really dont want to talk to them.

The last time theyd phoned so often was fourteen months before, when Kenny got arrested in Florida for shoplifting and aggravated assault on a police officer. His story was that he was with a girlfriend who happened to put something in her purse with every intention of paying for it, but the police got the wrong idea and he had to defend her, and so on.

I knew who the so-called girlfriend was: Mom. She not only liked to steal, she liked to dress conspicuously. A security cop with an eye out for shoplifters couldnt help but notice a senior citizen in fishnet blouse and bell-bottoms, wearing her trademark black wig and trailed by her gawky twenty-two-year-old son. On this occasion, at the Federal Discount store in downtown Miami, a plainclothes detective had stopped my sixty-two-year-old mother as she waltzed out of the store, her bag filled with stolen lipsticks. While Kenny defended his girlfriend, swinging at the detective, Mom slipped out the rear door and went into hiding at a motel. Kenny went to jail.

The phone calls that ensued were almost comical. The first came from Mom. In her breathy, high-pitched voice she fed me the usual stew of manipulative half-truths, lies, anger, and actual concern. Kent, you have to help your little brother. He didnt do anything. False. With my record, I cant help him. True. Youre all hes got. I often thought that was true.

What happened? I asked.

Oh, its just silly, no big deal. He was trying to cover for his girlfriend, and the cops roughed him up, and I am so worried about him.

His girlfriend wouldnt wear big black wigs, would she? I joked.

I had nothing to do with this, Kent, she lied. Her voice changed from pleading to demanding. This is your brother, for Gods sake, and he really needs your help!

I explained that I was two thousand miles and three time zones away from the Miami lockup and there was nothing I could do for either of them in the next fifteen minutes. The conversation ended, but in the time it took to pour a cup of coffee the phone rang again. Kenny, calling from jail. Id never heard him so panicked. This was his first real experience behind bars.

Kent, he barked, have you talked to Mom? His voice was even more hyper than usual.

Yes, we just hung up.

If she calls back, give her this message for me. Tell her to go, go, go! Ill be all right, but if those assholes get their hands on her, itll be the end of her.

So much for the girlfriend story, I thought. Aloud I said, Kenny, get a lawyer, and do what he says. You havent been in any major trouble before, and Im sure theyll go light on you. Part of me still held out hope that this would be the long overdue event that finally shook him. I wanted him to know there were consequences to the way he and Mom had been operating.

The Miami calls poured in hourly for another three days and then stopped dead. I found out later that Kenny had pleaded guilty on two counts and received probation, and as soon as he was released he and Mom had fled the state.

So when Greg told me on July 8, after more than a year had passed, that the calls had started up again, I assumed something similar had occurred. Mom and Kenny were in another misdemeanor of a jam and hadnt yet scratched their way out. They wanted, needed, my help, as usual.

But things were different now I was different. At least I hoped so. Id tried to stop caring. Asking Greg to cover for me wasnt a momentary impulse. Avoiding Mom and Kenny had become my policy, and I was praying I could stick to it. After Greg gave me the unwanted news that they were once again burning up the phone lines, I tried to put it out of my mind and get on with business as usual. At nine-thirty the whole staff assembled for our daily sales meeting. Then the reps went out into the field. I settled down at my desk to deal with stacks of accumulated paperwork.

Almost immediately, Greg poked his head into my office. Line one is for you, he said.

Its not them, is it?

No, its your friend Carl. Carl was a pal from my brief stab at college.

I picked up the phone. Hi, howre you doing? I was hoping he was going to buy me lunch.