Son of a bitch

>> Kent Walker's Son of a Grifter is a survivor's tale

by JULIET WATERS

Kent Walker recounts the time he asked one of his mother's ex-attorneys whether he'd ever had a client as evil as Sante Kimes (aka Sandy Walker). After a moment he answers, "Charles Manson." If there's a hint of pride in Walker's voice it's merited, if only for having survived to write a book as level-headed as Son of a Grifter: The Twisted Tale of Sante and Kenny Kimes, The Most Notorious Con Artists in America--a Memoir by The Other Son.

Anyone who's forgotten Sante Kimes, may remember Kenny (her son and Kent's half brother) for recently taking a reporter hostage by holding a pen to her throat. He was trying to escape extradition to California from New York. On June 27, 2000, Sante and son were sentenced to 120 and 125 years respectively for defrauding and murdering a Manhattan landlady who was smart enough to keep notes on her suspicious tenants. They are suspected in two other murders in California and stand a good chance of being served the death penalty there.

Sante will probably go down as the grifter who is to the history of true crime what Elizabeth Taylor is to the history of Hollywood. Just as Liz has more happening in one chapter of her life than most stars will ever have in one biography, Sante Kimes commits more larceny in one chapter of Son of a Grifter than the entire population of most medium security prisons. Kimes even affected a bloated Liz Taylor look for most of her life (and gave Kent a pub shot of Liz, signing it "All the love there is! Mom").

Impulsive, abusive and addicted to getting away with it, Kimes never met a person she didn't lie to, entered a store she didn't steal from, loved a man she didn't clean out, lived in a house she didn't torch, or paid a servant she employed. The attorney Walker mentions was her lawyer on slavery charges for which she was eventually indicted. She kidnapped countless illegal aliens, beat them and forced them into indentured servitude. After she spent a few years in prison, she switched to kidnapping the homeless, who were more vulnerable and less likely to spark the concern of authorities.

Walker, with the help of Spin reporter Mark Shone, comes off as remarkably authentic and normal given the circumstances. Kimes' love is so feral that when Kent is threatened by a bully she shows up at the bully's house, whips his father with a garden hose and drags his mother around by the hair. So selfish, that once to evade shoplifting charges, she punches Kent in the face and accuses the store manager of assaulting him. So extravagant, she buys her sons ponies, cars and throws parties that make them the envy of their friends. So neglectful, that in the same term Kent is senior class president he is picking garbage from an alley because he believes the police are closing in on his family and is afraid to go home. So insidious and inescapable that Kent's burgeoning career as an army helicopter pilot is ruined when Sante cons the army into giving him a "hardship discharge" against Kent's will.

Kent is no saint. He became addicted to the adrenaline of grifting, was just as much a sucker as anyone else for his mother's constant promise of the good life, could have done more to save his children and his wife and his younger brother from her tentacles. Yet he's as believably human as his mother is not. If he's not the relatively decent, doomed son he comes off as--a son who actually continues to love and sometimes even miss Sante, despite everything--then he's an even more gifted grifter than his mom.

Son of a Grifter by Kent Walker with Mark Schone, William Morrow, hc, 405 pp, $37.95