The Girl With the Long Green Heart, by Lawrence Block

Discovering the Hard Case Crime imprint has led me toward the early work of a few widely-known crime authors, including those of Lawrence Block. I’ve found the early Block novels variable in quality, but usually interesting for the characters and plot devices that show up later in his Scudder titles. So far, Borderline has been the worst and Lucky at Cards the best out of the group. The latter book illustrates a grifter’s tricky navigating of a scam he is not really prepared to perpetrate, and this difficulty puts it a mark above an earlier grifter story, Grifter’s Game.

The Girl With the Long Green Heart (1965) is still another grifter story, this time with an ex-convict teaming with an old friend to carry out one last scam. I found it to be both patient in its buildup and efficiently told, with a cast of interesting – if familiar – characters.

The four principal characters of TGWtLGH are all described well enough so that we know why they take their actions, but not so much that they feel predictable:

Gold Medal edition.

* The narrator is Johnny, an ex-convict acclimating to the slow rewards of an honest living as a night manager of a bowling alley. His talent as a confidence man came from being able to “push the honest and sincere bit,” as he states without explanation. Johnny may not understand where this ability comes from, but Block manages to illustrate it through contrast with the other male characters. He is generally risk-averse but has an admitted weakness for women.

* Johnny’s once-and-future partner is Doug, an outwardly charming criminal who never had to serve much hard time for his sins. Doug catches up with Johnny in Colorado and, with some effort, ropes him into a real estate scam operation, where the two of them pose as a Canadian corporation. We actually do not see much of Doug, but his slick manners and aggressive style make their presence felt.

* Wally Gunderman is their intended target, or “mooch” in the grifters’ parlance. He is a classic speculator of distressed land, buying up large plots from the financially desperate and holding on to them until the opportunity for profit arrives. His method of accumulating wealth is legitimate but exploitative, something Block goes through substantial effort to show as comparable to Doug and Johnny’s operation.

* Evvie Stone is Wally’s secretary and “kept woman,” living on her own in a dingy apartment. Wally had been sleeping with for her for some time, and when Mrs. Gunderson suddenly died, Evvie harbored expectations of a marriage proposal. Alas, Wally wanted to keep their arrangement as-is, leading to her solo trip to Las Vegas — where she met Doug. The cover art of the two paperback editions shown here advertise the fact that she is up to more than she seems at first.

Robert McGinnis cover for Hard Case Crime. hardcasecrime.com

These characters are all introduced through a surprisingly patient build-up section that spans several chapters. The plan, hatched by Doug, is to pretend to offer to buy some remote Canadian land (“moose pasture”) from Gunderson. Gunderson has this land only because he was suckered into believing it had uranium deposits, and he paid an outrageously inflated price. Johnny poses as the paid gopher, flying in town to set up a meeting by phone. A company would obviously reach out with a letter, but the grifters rely on their personal act to sell the fiction: Evvie agrees to plant the letter in Gunderson’s papers, so that he actively looks for it after a conversation with Johnny. Johnny’s offer is to buy at pennies-on-the-dollar, which Gunderson refuses, but not before becoming intrigued in the “company” he represents.

It is a meticulously planned scam operation, pitting Gunderson’s shrewdness against him, seeking a large briefcase of cash for the entire company. It reminded me of the private equity horror stories from the past couple of years; in particular, Theranos, the blood-testing company that reached a value of 9 billion dollars before the truth about its horrifically bad science came to light. There are numerous other examples of new corporations hyped to incredible (and not in a good way) valuations.

The combination of Doug’s charm and Johnny’s ability to look trustworthy seem to be enough to keep Gunderson hooked. The interactions between Johnny and his mooch, with Johnny playing a role that lies somewhere between innocent and small-time schemer, build a clever sequence of cerebral contests:

“There’s a lot of land up in that neck of the woods,” I said.

“Yes, I know that.”

“And we’ve had little difficulty buying it at our price so  far,” I went on, and then stopped abruptly and studied the tablecloth in front of me.

“You’re interested in more than just my land, then.”

…

His eyes probed mine. I met his glance for a moment, then averted my eyes. When I looked back he was still scanning my face.

Gunderson even encourages Evvie to spend time showing Johnny “around town,” to buy him time to dig into the company’s holdings. Even this is part of the plan, as Evvie feeds her boss enough chum to think he’s at the controls. However, the build-up ends when Johnny and Evvie end up in bed together for the first time, an event that Johnny keeps secret by lying to Doug.

From then on we know that the scam may unravel at any point, and certainly won’t finish as planned. Block fits in a few unexpected turns, even at the late stages, and allows Evvie to become more of a factor in the plot – both as someone who seeks control over her own fate, and as the secret sitting between Johnny and Doug. It’s not as rich as his better Scudder novels, but TGWtLGH sits with Lucky at Cards as the best of Block’s early work. 7/10.