Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

Seven

Bump Oliver was a dapper little guy with a new haircut who played cards with his hat on. Billy met him when he sat down at the table in Nick Levine’s cellar, just under the electric meter and kitty-corner from the old asbestos coal furnace which smudged up the cellar air but didn’t heat it enough so you could take off your suit coat. New man on Broadway, Nick said of Bump when he introduced him to Billy; no more than that and who needs to know more?

And yet after Bump had dealt twice, Billy did want to know more. Because he sensed a cheater. Why? Don’t ask Billy to be precise about such things. He has been listening to cheater stories for ten years, has even seen some in action and found out about it later, to his chagrin. He has watched Ace Reilly, a would-be cheater, practicing his second-card deal for hours in front of a mirror. Billy even tried that one himself to see how it went, but didn’t like it, didn’t have the patience or the vocation for it. Because cheaters, you see, already know how it’s going to end, and what the hell good is that? Also, Billy saw a cheater caught once: a salesman who played in Corky Ronan’s clubroom on Van Woert Street, and when Corky saw he was using a shiner, he grabbed the cheater’s hand and showed everybody how he wore it, a little bit of a mirror under a long fingernail. Joe Dembski reached over and punched the cheater on the side of the neck, and the others were ready to move in for their licks, but Corky said never mind that, just take his money and he won’t come back, and they let the cheater go. Why? Well, Corky’s idea was that everybody’s got a trade, and that’s Billy’s idea too, now.

So Billy has seen all this and has thought about it, and because he knows so well how things should be when everything is straight, he also thinks he knows when it’s off center, even when it’s only a cunt hair off. That’s how sensitive Billy’s apparatus is. Maybe it was the way Bump beveled the deck and crooked a finger around it, or maybe it was his eyes and the fact that he was new on Broadway. Whatever it was, even though Bump lost twelve straight hands, Billy didn’t trust him.

The game was now five-card stud, quarter ante, no limit, and four flush beats a pair. The deal was walking and when it came to Bump, Billy gave him the full eyeball.

“Where you from, Bump?” he asked, just like a fellow who was looking for information.

“Troy,” Bump said. “Albia. You know it?”

“Sure, I know it. Who the hell don’t know Albia?”

“Well, I was asking. Lot of people know about Troy don’t know Albia.”

“I know Albia, for chrissake. I know Albia.”

“That’s terrific, really terrific. Congratulations.”

Bump looked at Billy; Billy looked at Bump. The others in the game looked at them both: dizzy-talking bastards. But Billy wanted the cheater thinking about something besides cheating, wanted him edgy. Billy smiled at Bump. Bump didn’t smile at Billy. Good.

Billy drew deuce, four, eight and folded. He was ahead $21, which was nice. He’d sat down with about $315 and change, which included his original $170, $20 from Peg, $40 from Tod, another $20 from Red Tom, and $67 from the Harvey Hess Benevolent Association. All he’d spent was carfare and the drinks at Becker’s. Roughly speaking he still needed about $455 to get straight with Martin, but he was winging it now, wasn’t he, getting where he had to go? And was there ever any doubt? Don’tcha know Billy can always get a buck?

Morrie Berman won the hand with three nines. He was a bigger winner than Billy.

“Your luck’s running,” Billy said to him.

“Yeah,” said Morrie. “Money coming in, name in the paper.”

Billy had told him as soon as they met in front of Nick’s that both their names were on the list. Morrie already knew. Max Rosen had called around supper to ask him to stay in town, keep himself on tap. Rosen was nice as pie, Morrie said. If you don’t mind, Mr. Berman. Naturally I don’t mind, Mr. Rosen, and if I can be of any help at all, just call me. What else do you tell a McCall flunky in a situation like this? Neither Billy nor Morrie mentioned the list to anybody else at Nick’s. Billy listened carefully to what Morrie said. He didn’t say a goddamn thing worth telling anybody.

“What’s that about name in the paper?” Nick Levine asked. Nick was his own house player, cutting the game. Nick would cut a deuce out of a $40 pot. Nick also had a nose for gossip when it moved into his cellar.

“Aw nothin’, just a thing,” Morrie said.

“What thing?”

“Forget it.”

“I’ll get the paper.”

“That’s it, get the paper.”

But Nick wasn’t satisfied. He was a persistent little man with double-thick glasses and he owned more suits of clothes personally than anybody Billy knew, except maybe George Quinn. But then Nick owned a suit store and George didn’t, and George looked a hell of a lot better in clothes than Nick. Some people don’t know how to wear clothes.

Nick looked across the table at Morrie and gave him a long stare while all play stopped. “They pull you in?”

“No, nothing like that,” Morrie said. “Look, play cards. I’ll tell you later.”

That satisfied Nick and he bet his kings.

Lemon Lewis was a pointy-headed bald man, which was how he got his nickname. Didn’t have a hair on his body. Not even a goddamn eyelash. When Lemon, who worked for Bindy McCall, didn’t say anything about Morrie’s name in the paper, Billy knew he hadn’t heard about the list. But Lemon wasn’t that close to Bindy anymore, not since he overdid it with kickbacks when he handled the gambling patronage. Bindy demoted Lemon for his greed and put him to work on the odds board in the Monte Carlo. Man with the chalk, just another mug.

Lemon was alongside Bump and when the deal reached Lemon, Billy asked for a new deck. If Bump, who would deal next, had been marking cards, beveling them, nicking edges, waiting for his time to handle them again, then the new deck would wipe out his work. Coming at Lemon’s deal, the request would also not point to Bump. But it did rattle Lemon, which was always nice.

“New deck, and you’re winning?” Lemon said.

“Double my luck,” Billy said.

“You think maybe Lemon knows something?” Footers O’Brien asked, and everybody laughed but Lemon. No mechanic, Lemon. Last man in town you’d accuse of cheating. A hound dog around the rackets all his life and he never learned how the game was played.

“Lemon shuffles like my mother when she deals Go Fish to my ten-year-old nephew,” Billy said.

Lemon dealt the new cards, delivering aces wired to Billy.

“Ace bets,” said Lemon, and when Billy bet five dollars, Bump, Morrie, and Nick all folded. Footers, a retired vaudevillian who sang Jolson tunes at local minstrel shows, stayed with a king. Lemon stayed with a queen.

On the third card nobody improved. Billy drew an eight and bet again with the ace. Lemon raised and so Billy read him for queens wired, because Lemon rarely bluffed. Footers called with king and jack showing, so probably he had a pair too. Footers wouldn’t chase a pair. Too good a player. But whatever either of them had, Billy had them beat.

On the fourth card, Billy paired the eights. Aces and eights now. Neither Lemon nor Footers looked like they improved. Very unlikely. Yet both called, even when Billy bet $20. We can beat your eights, Billy.

Footers’s last card was a seven, which didn’t help, and Lemon drew a spade, which gave him three spades up. The bet was still to Billy’s eights, but before he could bet them, Lemon turned over his hole card and showed the four flush.

“Can you beat it, boys?” he asked, smiling sunbeams.

“Only with a stick,” Footers said, and he folded his jacks.

“I bet forty dollars,” Billy said.

His hand, showing, was ace, seven and the pair of eights.

“Well that’s a hell of a how-do-you-do,” Lemon said. “I turn my hand over and show you I got a four flush.”

“Yes, you did that. And then I bet you forty dollars. You want to play five cards open, that’s okay by me. But, Lemon, my word to you is still four-oh.”

“You’re bluffing, Phelan.”

“You could find out.”

“What do you think of a guy like this, Nick?” Lemon said.

“It’s the game, Lemon. Who the hell ever told you to show your hole card before the bet?”

“He’s bluffing. I know the sevens were all played. He’s got a third eight? Aces,” Lemon said, now doing his private calculating out loud. “Nick folded an ace, I got an ace. So you got the case ace? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Forty dollars, Lemon.”

Lemon went to the sandwich table, bit a bologna sandwich, and drew a glass of beer. He came back and studied Billy’s hand. Still ace, seven and the eights.

Billy sat with his arms folded. Keeping cool. But folks, he was really feeling the sweet pressure, and had been, all through the hand: rising, rising. And he keeps winning on top of that. It was so great he was almost ready to cream. Goddamn, life is fun, ain’t it Billy? Win or lose, you’re in the mix. He ran his fingers over the table’s green felt, fingered his pile of quarters, flipped through his stack of bills while he waited for the Lemon squash. Goddamn, it’s good.

Bump watched him with a squinty eye.

Footers was smiling as he chewed his cigar, his nickel Headline. The Great Footers. Nobody like him. Drinking pal of Billy’s for years, always good for a touch. Footers knew how to survive, too. Told Billy once how he came off a four-day drunk and woke up broke and dirty, needing a shave bad. Called in a neighbor’s kid and gave him a nickel, the only cash Footers had. Sent him down to the Turk’s grocery for a razor blade. The kid came back with it and Footers shaved. Then he washed and dried the blade and folded it back in its wrapper and called the kid again and told him, take this back to the Turk and tell him you didn’t get it straight. Tell him Mr. O’Brien didn’t want a razor blade, he wanted a cigar. And the kid came back with the cigar.

Billy looked at Footers and laughed at the memory. Footers smiled and shook his head over the mousehole in Lemon’s character. Five minutes had passed since Lemon turned up the hole card.

“Thirty seconds, Lemon,” Nick said. “I give you thirty seconds and then you call it or the pot’s over.”

Lemon sat down and bit the bologna. He looked Billy in the eye as his time ticked away.

“You said it too fast when you bet,” Lemon said with a mouthful. “You probably got it.”

“I’ll be glad to show you,” Billy said.

“Yeah, well you’re good, you lucky bastard.”

“Ah,” said Billy, pulling in the pot at last. “My mother thanks you, my sister thanks you, my nephew thanks you, and above all, Lemon, I, William Francis Irish Catholic Democrat Phelan, I too thank you.”

And Billy shoved his hole card face down into the discards.

Lemon sulked, but life went on. Bump Oliver dealt and Billy came up with kings wired. Very lovely. Also Billy heard for the first time the unmistakable whipsaw snap of a real mechanic at work dealing seconds. Billy watched Bump deal, admiringly. Billy appreciated talent wherever he saw it. Nobody else seemed to notice, but the whipsaw was as loud as a brass band to Billy’s ear. It was not Billy’s music, however. He did not mind the music cheaters made, so long as they didn’t make it all over him. He caught Bump’s eye, smiled, and then folded the kings.

“No thanks,” was all he said to Bump, but it was plenty. Bump stopped looking at Billy and folded his own hand after the next card. He played two more hands and dropped out of the game. The cheater lost money. Never took a nickel from anybody, thanks to doughty Billy. Nobody knew Bump was really a wicked fellow at heart. Nobody knew either, how Billy absolutely neutralized him.

Billy, you’re a goddamned patent-leather wonder.

Martin arrived at the card game in time to see Lemon Lewis throw the deck across the room and hear Nick tell him, “Pick ’em up or get out. Do it again, I don’t want your action.” Lemon, the world’s only loser, picked up the cards and sat down, bent his shiny bald head over a new hand and continued, sullenly, to lose. Billy looked like a winner to Martin, but Morrie Berman had the heavyweight stack of cash.

“You’ve been doing all right, then,” Martin said, pulling a chair up behind Billy.

“Seem to be doing fine.” Half a glass of beer sat beside Billy’s winnings, his eyes at least six beers heavier than when Martin had last seen him.

“You coachin’ this fella, Martin?” Nick said.

“Doesn’t look to me as if he needs much coaching.”

“He’s got the luck of the fuckin’ Irish,” Lemon said.

“Be careful what you say about the Irish,” Footers said. “There’s Jews in this game.”

“So what? I’m a Jew.”

“You’re not a Jew, Lemon. You’re an asshole.”

“Up yours, too,” Lemon said, and he checked his hole card.

“Lemon, with repartee like that you belong on the stage,” Footers said, and he looked at his watch. “And there’s one leaving in ten minutes.”

“Play cards,” Nick said.

“The bet,” said Morrie, “is eighty dollars.”

“Eighty,” Nick said.

Morrie smiled and looked nothing like Isaac. He had a theatrical quality Martin found derivative-a touch of Valentino, a bit of George Raft, but very like Ricardo Cortez: dark, slick, sleek-haired Latin stud, as if Morrie had studied the type to energize his own image as a Broadway cocksmith and would-be gigolo, a heavy gambler, an engaging young pimp with one of the smartest whores on Broadway, name of Marsha. Marsha was still in business but had split with Morrie five years back and worked alone now. Pimping is enough to weight down a paternal brow, but Jake’s imputation of lead sluggery implied a far broader absence of quality in Morrie, and Martin could not see it.

What he saw was Morrie’s suavity, and an ominous reserve in that muscular smile which George Raft, at his most evil, could never have managed; for Raft was too intellectually soft, too ready for simple solutions. Morrie, like Cortez, and unlike the pliant, innocent Isaac, conveyed with that controlled smile that he understood thoroughly that life was shaped by will, wit, brains, a reverence for power, a sense of the comic; that things were never simple; and that the end of behavior was not action but comprehension on which to base action. George Raft, you are a champion, but how would you ever arrive at such a conclusion?

“K-K-K-Katy, he’s bettin’ me eighty,” sang Footers, and he folded. That left Nick, Billy, and Morrie with money to win. The pot fattened, and Nick cut it for the house.

The cellar door opened and a kid, twenty-two maybe, stepped in and was met by Nick’s doorman, the hefty Bud Bradt, an All-Albany fullback for Philip Schuyler High in the late twenties. The players looked up, saw the kid getting the okay from Bud, and went back to their cards. Then the kid came down the eight steps, stood with his back to the door that led to Nick’s furnace and coal bin, and, taking a small pistol from his sock, told the players: “Okay, it’s a holdup.”

“Cowboy,” Morrie said, and he reached for his cash.

“Don’t touch that, mister,” the kid said. “That’s what I came for,” and he threw a cloth bag on top of the pot. “Put your watches and rings in that.”

“This isn’t a healthy thing to do in Albany, young man,” Footers said to him. “They’ve got rules in this town.”

“Do what I say, Pop. Off with the jewelry and out with the wallets. Empty your pockets and then move over against that wall.” He pointed with his small pistol toward the bologna sandwiches.

The kid looked barely twenty to Martin, if that. Yet here he was committed to an irrevocably bold act. Psychopathic? Suicidal? Early criminal? Breadwinner desperate for cash? An aberrant gesture in the young, in any case. The kid’s shoulders were spotted with rain, a drizzle that had begun as Martin arrived. The kid wore a black fedora with brim down, and rubbers. A holdup man in shiny rubbers with large tongues that protected his shoelaces from the damp night. What’s wrong with this picture?

“Come on, move,” the kid said, in a louder voice. And Martin felt his body readying to stand and obey, shed wallet, watch, and gold wedding band bought and inscribed in Galway: Martin and Maire, Together. Never another like that. Give it up? Well, there are priorities beyond the staunchest sentiment. And yet, and yet. Martin contained his impulse, for the other players still stared at the kid and his.22 target pistol. Gentlemen, do you realize that psychopaths snap under stress? Are you snapping, young crazy? Is blood in the cards tonight? Martin envisioned a bleeding corpus and trembled at the possibilities.

And then Billy reached for the kid’s swag bag, picked it off the money pile, and threw it back at the gunny boy. Billy grabbed a fistful of cash from the pot and stuffed it into his coat. The kid stepped behind Bump Oliver’s chair and shoved the pistol into the light. “Hey,” he said to Billy, yelling. But Billy went back for a second handful of bills.

“That pea-shooter you got there wouldn’t even poison me,” he said.

Martin’s thought was: Billy’s snapped; the kid will kill him. But the kid could not move, his response to Billy lost, perhaps, inside his rubbers. The kid’s holding position deteriorated entirely with the arrival of a sucker punch to the back of his neck by Bud Bradt, a man of heft, yes, but also of stealth, who had been edging toward the kid from the rear and then made a sudden leap to deliver his massive dose of fist to the sucker spot, sending the kid sprawling over the empty chair, gun hand sliding through the money, gun clattering to the floor on the far side of the table. Lemon pulled the kid off the table, punched his face, and threw him to the floor. Then he and Morrie kicked the kid body in dual celebration of the vanquishing until Nick said, “Shit, that’s enough.” Bud Bradt took over, kicked the kid once more, and then lifted him by collar and leg up the stairs, a bleeding carcass.

“Don’t leave him in my alley,” Nick said.

Bud Bradt came right back and Nick said, “Where’d you put him?”

“In the gutter between two cars.”

“Good,” said Nick. “Maybe they’ll run over him.”

“I would guess,” said Martin, “that that would look very like a murder to somebody. And that’s not only illegal, it also requires explanations.”

“Yeah,” said Nick, crestfallen. “Put him up on the sidewalk.”

Martin went outside with Bud in time to see the kid hoisting himself up from the gutter with the help of the bumper of a parked car. The kid drew up to full height, full pain, and a fully bloodied face. He looked toward the alley and saw Martin and Bud, and then, with strength rising up from the secret reservoir fear draws upon, he turned from them and ran with a punishing limp across Clinton Avenue, down Quackenbush Street, down toward the waterworks and the New York Central tracks, and was gone then, fitfully gone into the darkness.

“Didn’t kick him enough,” Bud said. “The son of a bitch can still run. But he’ll think twice before he does that again.”

“Or shoot somebody first to make his point.”

“Yeah, there’s that.”

Footers had come up behind them in time to see the kid limp into the blackness. “I was in a crap game once,” Footers said, “and a fellow went broke and put a pistol on the table to cover his bet. Five guys faded him.”

Martin saw the kid limping into the beginning of his manhood, victim of crazy need, but insufficient control of his craziness. Martin had been delighted to see the kid sucker-punched five minutes earlier, salvation of the Galway wedding band. Now he felt only compassion for a victim, lugubrious emotions having to do with pity at pain, foreboding over concussions, lungs punctured by broken ribs, internal ruptures, and other leaky avenues to death or lesser grievings. Victims, villains were interchangeable. Have it both ways, lads. Weep for Judas at the last gasp. We knew he’d come to the end of his rope. He couldn’t beat the fate the Big Boy knew was on him, poor bastard.

“I don’t know what the hell to do with this pot,” Nick was saying as they reentered the cellar. He was still picking quarters off the floor.

“Give it to Billy,” Morrie said. “He deserves it.”

“You’re a genuine hero,” Martin said to Billy. “Like the quarterback who makes the touchdown with a broken leg. There’s a heroic edge to such behavior. You think bullets don’t kill the single-minded.”

“Weird day,” Billy said. “I took a knife away from a looney in the Grand Lunch a few hours ago.”

The others stopped talking.

“This kid was poking near my belly,” and Billy showed them and told them about the coffee game.

“But you had a weapon in the coffee,” Martin said. “Tonight you had nothing. You know a twenty-two slug can damage you just as permanently as five rounds from a machine gun. Or is your education lacking in this?”

“I didn’t think like that,” Billy said. “I just wasn’t ready to hand over a night’s work to that drippy little bastard. His gun didn’t even look real. Looked like a handful of candy. Like one of them popguns my nephew has that shoots corks. Worst I’m gonna get is a cork in the ear, that’s how it went. But the money counted, Martin. I owe people, and I was hot for that pot, too. I had kings and nines, ready to fill up.”

“Billy should get a chunk of that pot, Nick,” Morrie said.

“He got two handfuls,” Nick said.

“That was his own dough going back home,” Morrie said. “What about the rest? And Bud ought to get something. Without them guys, I’d have personally lost one hell of a bundle.”

“Everybody oughta split the pot,” Lemon said. “Nobody had a winning hand.”

“Especially you,” Footers said.

“You folded, Lemon, forget it,” Morrie said.

“Fuck you guys,” Lemon said.

“Why you gommy, stupid shit,” Morrie said. “You might be dead if it wasn’t for Billy and Bud. Your head is up your ass.”

“While it’s up there, Lemon,” Footers said, “see if you can see Judge Crater anywhere. He’s been gone a long time.”

“The only three had the power in that last hand,” said Morrie, “was Billy, me, and you, Nick. Everybody else was out of it. So it’s a three-way split. I say Billy gets half my share and Bud the other half.”

“I got enough,” Billy said.

“I’ll take it,” said Bud.

“It’s about forty apiece, what’s left, three ways. One-twenty and some silver here.” Nick counted out the split, forty to each, and pocketed his own share.

“You really keeping your whole forty, Nick?” Morrie asked, divvying his share between Billy and Bud. “After what those boys did for you and your joint?”

“Whataya got in mind now?”

“The house buys them steaks at Becker’s.”

“I don’t fight that,” Billy said.

“I ate,” Nick said.

“So eat again, or send money.”

Nick snapped a five on the table to Morrie, who looked at it, looked at Nick, didn’t pick it up. Nick peeled off another five.

“I give ten to the meal. Eat up. But is the game dead here? What the hell, everybody gonna eat? Nobody gonna play cards?”

“Dead for me,” Morrie said, picking up the fivers. And clearly, Billy and Martin were pointed elsewhere when Nick took a good look, and Footers was drawing himself another beer.

“I do believe I’ll pass, Nick, me boy,” Footers said. “That last one was a tough act to follow.”

“I’m still playing,” Lemon said, sitting alone at the table.

“You’re playing with yourself,” Footers said. “As usual.”

“Tomorrow night, nine-thirty,” Nick said. “Same time, same station.”

“Steak time, boys,” Morrie said.

Billy found Nick’s toilet and pissed before they left. While the old beer sudsed up in the bowl, he consolidated his cash. Out of the coat pocket came the handfuls of bills. He counted it all. Nice. He’d pulled more out of the pot than he put in. He wrapped it all around the rest of the wad. He still needed $275 to pay off Martin, his bankroll now up to $514.

It mounts up. No question about that. Put your mind to it and it mounts up.