The Comeback

A debonair confidence man with a taste for impossible jobs has hit a dry spell. His bank balance is thin, his treasured prospect list is full of tempting marks, and the richest of them all proves to be a pillar of Chicago banking with one very old-fashioned weakness: the ponies. Against the frantic warnings of his superstitious partner, the master swindler resolves to revive a long-dead racket — the notorious wire-tapping scheme — and reel in a fortune.

What follows is a con of exquisite construction: a staged friendship, a rented family of professional beggars, a cigar-store bookshop, and a telegraph operator who receives the New Orleans results minutes before the bookmakers do. Every detail clicks into place, and the mark himself talks his way into the trap. But when the winning horse crosses the line, the scheme takes a turn nobody planned — and the price of a perfect sting arrives where the con man least expects it.