Q:Build a movie plot around this: Which of Johnny Hooker's partners was murdered by Lonnegan's men? Luther Coleman
A:
It is 1936 and a money runner is carrying the week's take -- $11,000 -- from an illegal gambling outfit in Joliet, Illinois, to the main office. On the way, three men con him by replacing his money with tissue paper. Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), the mobster who was supposed to get the money, exacts revenge by having one of the con men, Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones), murdered. Lonnegan also orders a hit on Luther's partner, Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford). Hooker goes to Chicago to escape Lonnegan's wrath. In Chicago he meets Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman), an old friend of Luther's. To revenge Luther's death, they set up an elaborate plan -- a "long con" -- to swindle an enormous sum out of Lonnegan so neatly that he won't even realize he's been conned.Posing as an obnoxious gambling boss from Chicago, Gondorff gets into a high-stakes poker game with Lonnegan, who is known to cheat. Gondorff cheats better and wins $15,000 from Lonnegan -- but Lonnegan can't pay it right away because his wallet is missing. (One of Gondorff's associates picked his pocket before the game.) Gondorff sends Hooker to Lonnegan's room to pick up the money. Hooker, playing Gondorff's resentful second-in-command, tells Lonnegan he has a great plan to con Gondorff, but he needs "someone respectable" to place the bets. Lonnegan, furious at being out-cheated, bites.Gondorff and company do a lot of fast work to get ready for the final phase of the long con. First they assemble a mob and rent an empty basement, transforming it in a couple of days into a prosperous gambling parlor. An announcer in a back room describes horse races as if they were happening live -- but he's reading from a ticker tape, so the results are known in advance. They choose a race with odds they like -- maybe 3:1 or 4:1 -- and call in a tip (a particular horse or horses to win, place, or show) to the pay phone at the corner drugstore, where Lonnegan is waiting. Gondorff's gang has also rented a room with a view of the corner drugstore; when Lonnegan comes out on...