His name was Beauregard, actually, but most of his friends called him Bull, because that was what he did. He was a conman, a stage performer fallen upon hard times and who swindled and tricked his way into people's wallets not just for the money, but for the chance to show off in front of a crowd again. He loved it. It was something we had in common, we quickly discovered. It's probably why we stuck for as long as we did.
It was just supposed to be for one job, originally: he needed someone to serve as a fake mark, and I looked enough like a respectable youth to pass for a schoolboy, add an air of credibility to his routine by winning my wages with a turn or two. The fact that I actually knew how to read and write helped, when a passing Suit decided to see if he couldn't up his arrest count with me and him. It was a bit close: I had no idea what 'tmesis' was and apparently I should have, but in the end we got away with it and the rest was history.
I loved it. Out of all the jobs I've had I think that one was the most fun. I know, it's shocking, isn't it? But there was something so exhilarating about going up against someone who had the advantage by most measures, and managing to win anyway. You know what I'm talking about. It's sort of the same way you get all bouncy after demonstrating for the beginner's class at the start of a semester how you are very capable of wiping the floor with any six of the men.
Yeah, I thought so.
Anyway, Bull was a great showman, with quick hands and an even quicker mind but he wasn't much one for practicalities. He was always going to the same three places, which really weren't exactly great locations for attracting a crowd of passersby in the first place and made him a predictable target for overly-zealous Suits to boot. He said that is people couldn't figure out that he was the best in the business without either coming to him or leaving him alone as applicable then it was their own fault. You can see how much trouble that sort of attitude could get a guy into. So, after a while I began to handle keeping us in the black and out of prison, and he taught me how to run some cons of my own. The hat tricks I knew already- it sort of runs in the family, my parents were around long enough to pass it along- but he taught me sleight of hand things with shells and cards and dice and the like. Between the two of us, we managed to make enough to sublet a little room in addition to keeping us in food and clothing. Things were pretty good for a while. Naturally, that only lasted a year and a half.
There was another crackdown. They were just looking for hunger mongers at first-
Hunger mongers? Well. That famine that I keep mentioning never actually happened, legally speaking. Legally speaking, the Queen provided for all of a citizen's dietary needs, and the only people who needed black market products to survive were those who were no longer considered citizens. Wanted criminals, resistance fighters, you get the picture. It was completely untrue, by the way. You got three meals out of your government rations, yes, but you'd have to string them out over the course of a week, which did absolutely nothing to alleviate the fact that you were starving. So, people began to buy from alternative sources. It all had to be produced in the city, because, well, you've seen Wonderland roads. There was the dairy I used to work for, and all her competitors, and then there were people who would pay to have dirt bought in, and then farm in condemned buildings with whatever seeds you could get your hands on. Chickens were pretty popular for your average family to keep, because if you just had one or two or even three you could pass them off as pets, and still produce enough to keep everyone fed. Later on I knew people who had goats as well, using the same excuse.
And all of that stuff that kept everyone from dying of starvation was called hunger mongering in legalese, because it encouraged the idea that there was a famine and the Queen couldn't provide for all her citizen's needs. Those sorts of round ups would happen every few weeks, normally very little would come of it, but this one was different. The logic that people who were wanted by the government wouldn't be buying from them was essentially true, after all, and they managed to get their hands on one of the Resistance's leading men at the time, Humpty Dumpty. It didn't take long for him to fall all to pieces and start naming names, and then things got really ugly.
It was the biggest mass round-up and execution in Wonderland's history, or they said at the time. A lot of people were also saying that they'd managed to kill as many Resistance members as they had knights, although I'm pretty sure that was actually just some bigwig's idea of propaganda. I wasn't in the apartment when the Suits came, I'd made a run for a farm I'd been fairly certain was still in operation and was talking my way into a dozen ears of corn. When I came back the place had been emptied and had a notice stuck to the front door.
The thing is, I know Bull had nothing to do with the Resistance. Our landlady did, that was a secret she never kept as well as she could have, but he was too busy being out with me working a crowd to get involved with much of anything political. He fit the profile, though, and that's what did him in. He worked for himself, because he enjoyed it rather than because he needed to eat or wanted the money. It's a dangerous sort of person who can do that, you know. They tend to be difficult to manipulate.
I waited until the hullabaloo died down, then sold most of his stuff before the looters could get a hold of it. I hoofed it to another part of the city and began doing his routines. I never made as much as he had, but then again, it was a different sort of neighborhood I was working, and I never quite got the hang of making potential customers feel like they were special, so much as I could make them feel like they were getting something special. That didn't work as well with con games as I'd hoped. Even without the right sort of shine I was able to make enough to get by. Mostly.
I wasn't making nearly enough to turn down an opportunity to get into the tea business, though. Not even close.