Lucky at Cards

17

There was poker, mostly, with a little gin when somebody arranged it. I moved to a different hotel and sold the Ford to a used-car dealer out in Brooklyn. Sometimes, during the tight parts of a game, I forgot all about Murray Rogers. Sometimes. Not often.

Every afternoon at the out-of-town newspaper stand behind the Times Tower I picked up papers. Every afternoon I checked them out. During the third week Murray’s case came up for trial. The trial didn’t take long, and neither did the jury of his peers. They found him guilty by reason of temporary insanity and let him go. That day there was a picture of him on the back page of the second section, a shot of Murray shaking hands with the foreman of the jury. The tax lawyer also had one arm around an uncertain-looking Joyce.

Murray wore a victor’s smile. I couldn’t help thinking the smile was for me.

Two days later there was mail for me at the hotel desk. I was using the name Robert Lyons, to whom the envelope was addressed. There was the fatal postmark, no return address. I shook all the way upstairs, locked the door and opened the envelope.

Inside, on a piece of plain white paper: “Soon.”

Corny as a field in Iowa, melodramatic as The Perils of Pauline. I left the room and spent the rest of the day peering over my shoulder to see if anybody were tailing me. I couldn’t spot anybody.

That night I took a jet to Cincinnati. I bought my ticket as Howard Foley and registered at a main-stem Cincy hotel as Louis Mapes. Cincy is a quiet town, with all of the action tucked across the river in Newport and Covington. I knew people there. I met one of them and moved into the swing of things.

The hell, Murray had to find me in New York. It was too obvious a place, and I couldn’t stay there forever. Newport was safer.

It took Murray ten days. Then another envelope came, addressed to Louis Mapes, postmarked New York. No message. Just a sheet of the same paper, and, folded into it, a small capsule marked Demerol.

I spent close to a month in Seattle. I was a little cuter about it this time. I flew from Cinci to Dallas under one name, caught a jet from Dallas to San Francisco under another, and rode north on a train to Seattle. I didn’t even play cards there. I laid low and stayed at the hotel. The money started to thin out, but I figured to stay put long enough for the heat to die down before I tried somewhere else and found a way to make a living.

I started feeling safe again. Murray Rogers was a human being, not a superman. He wasn’t even a particularly knowledgeable individual when it came to my side of life. He was a solid citizen, a mark, a square. He had stuck with me neatly, but now I had slipped him and he would stay lost. I was safe.

Until the letter came. More corn—an advertisement for an east coast funeral home enclosed in an envelope postmarked Los Angeles. I threw it away. I sweated. I called the desk and asked them to send up a bottle of Cutty Sark, and I sat on the edge of the bed drinking the scotch. Murray Rogers just didn’t give up. He just wouldn’t get lost.

So many cities. East, west, north, south—after a while each of the cities is pretty much the same. The weather is different and the names are different and the hotel rooms vary somewhat, but in time these subtle distinctions blur and it’s all one town, all one room.

In Kansas City, a truck backfired while I was strolling down the street. I fell to the ground and waited for the second shot. It didn’t come, of course. People looked at me as though I was crazy.

Maybe I was.

Running, always running. Running frenetically from a heavyset tax lawyer with nothing in the world but plenty of money and plenty of time, plenty of patience and plenty of drive.

Running.

You run for so long and then the string spins out. The money goes, but the money is only a very small part of the scene. You become tired, so very damned tired, and you run and run and search for a way out, and there isn’t one.

I read once about some psychologists who taught rats to solve mazes. Then the psychologists put the rodents in mazes with no exit. The animals scurried around and did their best. Then they sat down and chewed off their own feet.

I can understand why.

In Dayton, I wound up in a five-a-week furnished room on Webster off Payne. I hadn’t heard from Murray in a long time, but I knew he was close. I could sense it.

I left the room one day and, when I returned, there were two men waiting, a big one and a small one. I opened the door and saw them and knew what they were there for. I tried to duck out but the big man blocked my path. I struck out ahead and the little one swung a leather-covered sap at my head, and all the lights blacked out.

I came to in a fast-moving car, the little man at the wheel. I hadn’t expected to wake up. I started to say something but the big man spoke first. “Somebody wants to see you,” he said. “We better keep you nice and quiet in the meantime.”

A needle pricked my skin, a shot of something potent. Everything faded to black again and I slept. It was a long ride. I woke up five or six times, and each time I got another taste of the needle and slept some more. When we reached our destination I was semiconscious. They parked the car and carried me from the car to the house, the big man lifting me effortlessly, like a sack of dirty laundry. I felt like a sack of dirty laundry, as far as that goes. Dirty and damp and a little mildewed around the edges.

I blacked out again. I came to in a chair, an easy chair. I opened my eyes and blinked. I was in the basement of Murray’s house. The big man and the small man stood over to one side. Joyce, her eyes terrible, was sitting on a couch along the far wall. There was a table, two chairs. There was a score pad and a deck of cards and a gun that looked as big as a cannon.

Murray Rogers was sitting in one of those chairs.

“Well,” he said. “Hello, Maynard. It’s been a long time.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

Murray’s smile grew.

“Go ahead and get it over with,” I told him. “You’ve got a gun this time. Pick it up and shoot me.”

“Just like that?”

“You might as well,” I said. “I can’t run any more. I couldn’t hide well enough. Every damned time I thought I was clear you turned up on my tail again. I’ve had the course. Get it over with.”

The room stayed silent for a long time. I remembered my first visit to that basement game room, that first poker game, that first look at Joyce. It seemed so long ago.

“These past few months have been quite an experience for me,” Murray said. For me, too, I thought. “The role of the hunter is an interesting one,” he resumed. “It’s not without its moments. There’s a story called The Most Dangerous Game, about a crack hunter who grows bored with the sport and hunts men instead. You probably haven’t read it—”

I’d read the story. Just because a man is a crook people tend to assume he’s illiterate as well. “—but I can understand that story now,” Murray continued. “You know, at first I planned to chase you and let you run and chase you some more and then kill you.”

“And?”

“There’s not enough sport there,” he said. “I’ve got a better idea. We played some cards together, Maynard. Gin, poker. You won when you wanted to win. You’re quite a good card cheat, aren’t you?”

“Good enough.”

“Very good indeed. You know, after I found out about you there was one question that kept nagging at me. I suppose it always comes up in connection with a card cheat. I wondered how good a game you might play if you had to play it honest.”

I’d wondered the same thing myself, naturally. I’d never been forced to find out. If I were under pressure to win, I cheated. If I were just playing for the hell of it, I could afford to play a sloppy game.

“Get to the point,” I said.

“The point ought to be clear enough.” He stood up, stepped toward me. “I could have you killed right now. These men—” he indicated the tall one and the short one, my Mutt and Jeff friends “—these men would kill you if I told them to. Kill you quickly and easily and toss you in a lime pit somewhere on the lake shore. All I have to do is give them the word. But I’m offering you a chance. We’re going to sit down at that table, you and I. We’re going to play gin rummy. We’ll play ten sets of Hollywood, the usual rules. And you won’t cheat.”

“How would you know if I did?”

“I could tell.”

“You never knew the difference before.”

His eyes flashed—he hated to be a sucker, and I was reaching him. “I never looked for it before,” he said. “I trusted you, you bastard. This time I’ll be looking. So will the boys. If you cheat, you die on the spot. And badly.”

“Go on.”

“If you win, if you beat me fair and square, you pick up all of the marbles, Maynard. All of them.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means fifty thousand dollars in cash. It means Joyce. She can go with you, if you want her. I won’t be in your way.”

I glanced at Joyce. She was more beautiful than ever, but there was something wrong with her, something in her eyes. Before she had been vital and alive. Now, somewhere in the course of things, Murray had taken the spirit out of her. It showed.

I said, “And if I lose?”

“Then you die.”

I nodded slowly. It was as corny as some of his other slants, as corny as sending me funeral home advertisements through the mail. He had a real feeling for melodrama. But there was plenty underneath that layer of corn.

He couldn’t stand being a loser. And he couldn’t stand the idea I might be able to beat him in a straight game just as I’d beaten him cheating. Gin was his game. He was good at it, just as he was good at so many other things, and he was sure he could take me. When he did, it would cost me my life.

I’ve never been much of a gambler on the square. Cheating isn’t gambling. It’s a sure thing. I never liked to bet big money on horses or dice. And I never thought I’d wind up betting my life on a gin game.

“Well? Is it a deal?” he said.

A hell of a deal, I thought. What happened if I said no? Then I just died anyway.

“The way things sit,” I said, “you’ve got the cards stacked in your favor.”

“How?”

“I’m half-dead and half-drugged,” I said. “My mind’s not working straight and my body’s crapping out on me. I’ll play your game, but I’ve got to be in shape for it.”

That made sense to him. If I weren’t at the top of my form, it therefore would be no victory for him. He asked me what I wanted.

“First a shower,” I said. “Then about four hours in the sack. Then a lot of scrambled eggs and a pot of black coffee, and a thermos of coffee on the table throughout the game. And a few packs of my brand of cigarettes.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“Good enough,” he said.

I took the shower and hit the sack. I woke up by myself about fifteen minutes before my four hours were up. There was a change of clothing laid out for me. My size. I dressed, ate half a dozen eggs with bacon and drank four cups of inky black coffee. I went downstairs, and Murray was at the table waiting for me. The gold-dust twins were down there, too. They were going to help watch me to make sure I didn’t cheat. Between them, they had maybe three fifths of a brain.

“Our regular rules,” Murray said. “Hollywood, spades doubled, ten for underknock, twenty for gin, thirty for gin-off. We’ll play ten sets with no break until we’re finished.”

“Fine.”

He broke open a deck of cards, passed them to me. I flipped through them to see if they were readers. They weren’t.

“Cut,” he said.

I cut a seven, he cut a jack. He dealt.

Murray Rogers took the first set clear, with a blitz in the third game. I couldn’t keep my mind on the cards the way you have to. My head wasn’t working right.

I drank coffee until my teeth were floating, and I buckled down and riveted my mind to the game. I forgot the money I’d have if I won and I forgot the bullet I’d win if I lost. I concentrated on the cards.

And I played him, too. You can get hurt in gin if you just play the cards on the table. You have to play the person as well. You have to tip your opponent off balance, to smart under his skin so that he begins to make mistakes. It’s a war of attrition and nerves, and you have to handle yourself just right.

On the second set, I softened Murray up with a series of fast knocks. The brand of gin we were playing was stacked against the quick knock. All the bonus boxes came for going gin, and a knocker was going to a lot of trouble to make a damned few points.

But I was softening him up. I went down quick five hands in a row and I was setting up a pattern. The sixth hand, I drew very good cards right from the gun. It was a spade hand, too. I sat there like a stone, and Murray made his bid for the only good defense against a fast knock. He got down fast himself, and he knocked before I did, with eight points in his hand.

I was sitting with one loose card, a six of hearts that played off against a run of his. That made it a gin-off, good for six boxes and sixty points. It put me out in two games and close to out in the third.

We continued that way. He was better at playing gin rummy, but I was damned good at playing Murray Rogers, playing him like a fish on a line. He became lucky and took the third set, and I came back in the fourth and very strong in the fifth. He blitzed me two games out of three in the sixth set. When we finished it I asked for a summary of the score. He tore off a clean score sheet and added up all the figures. With six of ten sets completed, we stood fairly close.

But he was a few hundred points to the good. I gulped more coffee. We were even enough, I thought. Even on the score and even as far as ability was concerned. Over the long haul, I figured I could probably beat him. If we played gin every day for a year I would win more than I lost.

Fine.

But we had only four more sets to go, and we were evenly matched enough so that anything could happen in four short sets. It could be a simple matter of him winning the spade hands and me winning the regular ones. If he had a little break in the luck department, he would come out on top. And I would wind up in that lime pit on the lake shore.

I was gambling for my life.

And I remembered that moral that had occurred to me on my way to New York. Don’t gamble. Stick to your trade and don’t take chances. My trade was the card mechanic’s trade, and here I was staking my life in a straight card game.

It was purely crazy.

There was no question of honor involved, not as far as I could see. He had brought me here by force and he had arranged the game on threat of death. The game was being played on his terms, not mine. And honor had never been my long suit to begin with. I was playing to stay alive, and he was playing to see me dead.

So I started doing what I had always done well.

Gin is a beautiful game for a good mechanic. If you know what you’re doing you can cheat on center-stage with every eye on you and still get away with it. Knowing the position of one card in the deck can make the difference on a hand. Setting up just one or two things can make you a winner every time out.

It was nerve-wracking. The Mutt and Jeff team was sitting in close, never taking their eyes from my hands. But we had been playing for a long time and the boys had watched for a long time without seeing anything remarkable. They were tired, and they weren’t as sharp as they might have been. And Murray was under enough pressure so that he couldn’t watch me all that close and still pay full attention to his cards. He had to study the cards to beat me, and that gave me just enough room to swing.

I won the seventh set big. I knew the bottom three cards in the deck every time I dealt, and that’s a big edge—when you know what you don’t have to look for, when you know what cards are out of the hand, you’ve got a healthy advantage. And this was a kind of cheating no one could pin down. All I did was manage to see those bottom cards in the course of the deal. I didn’t move anything or stack anything, just managed a peek.

There were other tricks. On one hand, I went for an early knock. I had a lay of four kings in my hand. When I scooped up the cards for the deal, I made sure those four cowboys wound up all together on the bottom of the deck. They stayed there during the shuffles, until the last shuffle when they wound up all in a row about a third of the way up from the bottom. When Murray cut, the kings were grouped among the first twenty cards. He got a pair and I got a pair. Fair enough. Only I knew what Murray was holding and he didn’t know what I held. All I had to do was wait. He couldn’t do anything as long as he held on to the kings because I wasn’t about to break up mine. And when he did break his, finally, I picked up his discard and ginned with it. That happened to come on a spade hand, too, and it put me out in two games.

I won two games of the eighth set and he came back and won the other. With two sets to go, the tables had turned a little. I was three hundred points out in front. "You’re luck’s getting better,” Murray said.

“It’s not luck. I’m outplaying you.”

“You bastard,” he said.

I kept the needle in. “You don’t play a bad game,” I said, “but you’re not flexible enough.”

“Shut up and deal.”

“I want more coffee.”

One of the heavies went for coffee. I shuffled the cards and kept up a running stream of chatter until I had a cup of mud at my elbow. I drank it down and dealt out the hands. By this time he was so tensed up that I beat hell out of him without cheating at all.

Then, toward the end of the ninth set, he hit a streak of luck. He was doing everything right and I couldn’t get to him. We had just broken open the eighth new deck of cards, and he couldn’t seem to lose with them.

I won a hand, finally. And I shuffled the cards and stopped suddenly and boxed them and looked through them.

He had brought in a deck of readers.

I glanced up at him. He had a sick look on his face. I called the cards off one at a time, then turned them face up. I called ten cards right in a row. They were Bee brand, the diamond back design, and the markings were in the little diamonds near the corners.

Marked cards are strictly for amateurs. A pro never uses anything phony—he gets by on his own abilities at sleight-of-hand and misdirection. Whenever you see daub or marked cards or luminous readers or hold-out machines, you know you are dealing with a wiseass amateur looking for the best of it.

“These are your cards,” I said.

“I—”

“They came in at the beginning of this set,” I said. “I think we ought to forget this set and go back to the end of the eighth. I think we ought to play two more sets with straight cards.”

He just nodded.

From there on in I didn’t have to cheat. He was beaten all the way. Even when the cards ran his way he couldn’t do things right. He had tried to do some cheating on his own hook, and he had been caught at it, and he was through. On the tenth and final set I blitzed him three games straight. The bastard never won a hand.

Murray sent the boys away. He gazed at me and his shoulders sagged. “You win,” he said. “It’s all yours. Fifty thousand dollars. And Joyce, if you want her.”

I turned to her. As desirable as ever, unless you saw the death in her eyes.

“I don’t want her,” I said.

Murray was tremendously relieved. Then he said, “The money—”

“I don’t want the money, either,” I said. I pushed back my chair and turned away from him. I didn’t want to look at either Murray Rogers or Joyce now.

I got out of there and closed the door.

I traveled as far as a drug store and called a cab from there. He travels fastest who travels alone, I thought. But I wasn’t in such a hurry now. There were more important things than traveling fast.

The cabby found the high school and let me off in front of it. In the lobby a girl with straight hair and braces on her teeth told me how to find Mrs. Lambert’s classroom.

Barb was standing at the blackboard with a piece of chalk in her hand. She looked as fresh and sweet as a mouthwash ad. I stood in the doorway for a few seconds and gazed at her. She didn’t see me.

I thought, Jesus, go away, leave her alone.

But I stepped into the room and she turned and stared.

And I said, “Did you mean it? The whole whither-thou-goest routine?”

“I meant it.”

“All the way?”

“All the way. Bill, I—”

“Have you got a car outside?”

“Yes,” Barb said.

“Are you ready to go?”

“I’ll have to pack. I—”

“No time. You can buy things.”

The kids in that class could never have understood. They sat there with their eyes bulging out of their heads while I took her by the elbow and steered her out of the room. We rushed past everybody and into her car and got going. We were on the road.

“This is crazy,” Barb said.

“I know.”

“All my clothes and everything. And just rushing away like this. Maybe we ought to stop.”

“We’ll stop.”

“We will?”

“Sure,” I said. “As soon as I find a motel.”

So here we are. The town is Phoenix, although we’re never in one town long enough for it to matter too very much where we are. And Barb’s last name is Maynard, thanks to a Baptist Minister in Orchard Falls. But she uses her maiden name in the act.

The act is nothing too very special. We’re playing a small club called the Desert Points now. I’m Maynard the Magnificent, deft and agile as always, and Barb is my assistant, the girl I saw in half, the girl who drags out the prop wagon and enchants the customers with her mammary development. We go on before the stripper and after the female impersonator. We’re not exactly the World’s Fair, but we like it.

Sometimes I meet someone who knows me as Wizard. Once in a while somebody from the bad old days wants to know if I still like to take a crooked hand in a crooked game. I don’t. Some of them discourage easy and some of them try to push, but they all give up sooner or later.

The money is nothing exciting and the life itself is chaotic and uncertain. But we like it. Barb doesn’t seem to care about heavy furniture or charge accounts. There will be a kid or two some day, but we figure they can get used to the life. They may miss out on some schooling, but they’ll learn their geography first-hand. And they’ll be pulling rabbits out of hats before they’re toilet-trained.

It could be worse. Hell, it has been worse.

It’s never been better.