The Floor of Heaven by Howard Blum Page A

Denver, would begin to mill about, he’d hitch the bay to a post. With elaborate ceremony, a performer taking his place on center stage, Soapy would remove his tripe and keister—as he called the stand and suitcase that were the essential tools of his grifter’s trade—and set them up on the cobblestones. Finally, when he felt the moment was right, when the audience’s curiosity was running hot, he’d stand tall and speak to the crowd with an authority inspired by his memories of his old trail boss setting the day’s agenda for the outfit. “This morning,” he’d announce, “it will be my pleasure to distribute several hundred dollars among those who gather here.”
    It was 1883, a time when Charlie Siringo was growing dispirited and George Carmack had in desperation joined the marines. But for Soapy Smith, life had taken a more promising turn. After near on two years in Denver, he’d transformed himself from the dazzled young pup who had stumbled into town. Now he cut quite an imposing figure. He habitually wore a well-cut black frock coat and had a somber black four-in-hand knotted tightly around the high collar of his immaculate white shirt. A wide-brimmed black hat sat flat on his head. His face was no less severe: a carefully trimmed coal-black beard, initially grown to disguise his youth, a thick ridge of black eyebrows, and deep-set, shining dark eyes—a grave and somber countenance. He was a man in black, the image calculated to suggest sober, ecclesiastical propriety as well as both position and expensively tailored success; and yet there was still a hint of menace. Soapy was dressed to do business.
    Selling soap was his game, and playing to the crowd, he’d throw himself day after day into the task. “My soap is a universal blessing,” he’d proclaim with a booming and fulsome sincerity, “and my untarnished name its heritage. It will cleanse your conscience. It will relieve your life’s burdens. It’s more than meat and drink in my scheme of the brotherhood of man.”
    Soapy, though, was too shrewd to bank on either his grandiose rhetoric or a circus barker’s promises to persuade customers to spend $10 or even more to buy a nickel cake of soap. Instead, he’d hit on a surefire inducement: money. In many of his bars of soap, he went on, a piece of currency, perhaps a hundred-dollar bill, or a fifty, or, worst come to worst, a ten or twenty, had been placed in the wrapper. As explanation for this startling generosity, he pleaded simple Christian kindness: “The profits from my soap sold in all lands will enable me to beat Old Nick and have 365 Christmas days every year.” Loaded down with his self-made bundle, Soapy now wanted to share his wealth. And “plain homely countrymen like yourselves,” he’d earnestly assure the rapidly expanding circle of onlookers, should by natural right be the recipients of his good fortune.
    Of course, it was all a scam. But shameless, and a born showman, Soapy played his grifter’s game with unhesitating sincerity. “Now, my friends,” he’d say to the marks as he slipped into his tale, “watch me while I fold the bills in the wrappers.” He’d extract a hundred from his wallet; he’d hold it high over his head like a sacred totem; then, each small gesture a performance, he’d fold the bill once, twice, and for good measure a third time; and finally he’d insert the currency deep into the soap wrapper so that it was a well-hidden prize. He’d repeat the process with a fifty and, often, a twenty and a ten, until the moment when, his instincts told him, he had his audience at a boil. They’d be near to bursting with curiosity, eager to get a notion about how those bills might end up in their own pockets.
    But Soapy still did not jump into his con. Instead, he paused; and the crowd turned quiet, too, in response. The silence was sudden, and as enveloping as a shared embrace.
    When he finally spoke, Soapy found a tone that was pure delicacy. He knew