dummy-chucker

探偵物やサスペンスなどは今まで余り読んでいなかったのでTROUBLE IS MY BUSINESSを読んでいると見慣れない単語が山ほど出てきます。読んでいる時は分からない単語があっても辞書を引かずに飛ばして読みますが、調べたい単語はメモをして、後で辞書で調べています。今日取り上げる次の単語は事件物でなければ余り出てこない単語のようです。
Finlayson studied me. Nothing I had said made an impression on him. Nothing Sebold said made any impression on him. He had an idea and he was holding it like a sick baby.
"You know a little rat named Frisky Lavon?" he sighed. "Used to be a dummy-chucker, then found out he could bug his way outa raps. Been doing that for say twelve years. Totes a gun and acts simple. But he quit acting tonight at seventhirty about. Quit cold-with a slug in his head."
"dummy-chucker" とは何をする人のことでしょうか？　辞書を見ます。
・Urban Dictionary: Any person who fakes injury or illness in order to gain sympathy, charity or compensation.
Dummy-chucking is a fraud in which a mannequin (or dummy) is placed on a roadway on a dark night. If a vehicle runs over the dummy then the confidence man runs onto the road, throws (chucks) the dummy out of sight and then lays down in its place and pretends to have painful injuries. If the driver stops to see what happened then the dummy-chucker begs for monetary compensation.
当たり屋ですね。