Somebody Owes Me Money

11

What with one thing and another I didn’t check the cab in till seven-thirty, and when I did I made no mention of the gunshot wound in the roof. It would have led to a very complicated conversation I didn’t particularly want to get into, and if somebody did notice the hole eventually, who was to say when it happened or that I was the one driving the cab at the time?

The reason I worked till seven-thirty, even though the game starts at seven, was because I was almost out of cash. I didn’t know if my losing streak was over or if Purple Pecunia had been a fluke, and if I lost tonight at least I didn’t want to have to write any markers in front of Abbie McKay. Don’t ask me why I thought that was so important, because I don’t know. But I did.

I’d already phoned my father a little after five that I wouldn’t be home for dinner, so I went to a greasy spoon near the garage and had franks and beans before going across town to Jerry Allen’s place. I kept being conscious of the weight of Abbie’s gun in my coat pocket. I didn’t particularly want to carry it around on me, but I couldn’t think of what else to do with it.

I took the 79th Street crosstown bus and walked up to Jerry’s apartment. And I do mean up. Jerry lives on the top floor of a five-story building with no elevator. People tend to arrive at his door out of breath.

As I did now. I rang the bell, and it was opened by Jerry himself. He’s part owner of a florist shop over on Lexington Avenue, and it’s possible he isn’t entirely heterosexual, but he isn’t obnoxious about it and none of us care what he does away from the card table, and besides that he’s a fish. I think in losing to us and hosting the game he’s sort of paying for the privilege of being accepted by a bunch of real guys, whether he realizes it or not. Anyway, he tends to laugh in an embarrassed way when he loses, and he loses a lot.

Jerry said hi, you’re late, and I breathed hard and nodded. He went back to the game and I shut the door behind myself, took off my coat, and hung it in the hall closet. Then I went into the living room, where Jerry has a nice round oak table over near the front windows, at which five guys were currently sitting. There were two empty chairs, and they were both between Jerry and Sid Falco, Sid being the guy those hoods had mentioned last night. Feeling suddenly very nervous about being in the same room with Sid Falco, a guy I had known without nervousness for about five years, I sat in the chair closer to Jerry and forced my attention on what was happening at the table.

There was a hand in progress, seven-card stud, which on the fifth card was down to a two-man race, Fred Stehl and Leo Morgentauser. Leo looked like a possible flush, Fred a possible straight. Doug Hallman was dealing. I looked at the hands and the faces and knew that Leo either had it in five or was on his way to buying, and that Fred was hanging in with a four-straight that wouldn’t ever fill, and even with Sid Falco over there to my right I began to calm down and get into the swing of things.

This twice-weekly poker game had been a Wednesday-and-Sunday institution with us for five or six years now, with only minor changes in personnel all that time. There were five regulars including me in the game these days, plus half a dozen other guys who’d drop in from time to time. Leo Morgentauser, the made flush currently betting up Fred Stehl’s unmade straight, was one of the irregulars, a teacher at a vocational high school in Queens, teaching automobiles or sewing machines or something. A tall skinny bushy-haired guy with a huge Adam’s apple, Leo was married and probably didn’t make a very good living, so he seldom came to the game, but when he did he was usually a winner. He was a good poker psychologist and could run a very beautiful bluff when he felt like it. His biggest failing was that he wouldn’t push a streak, so sometimes he’d go home with less of our money than he should have had. Not that I’m complaining.

Everybody else at the table tonight was a regular. Fred Stehl, the guy currently head to head with Leo, was a gambling fool, and next to Jerry Allen, was the closest thing to a fish among the regulars. He was a fairly consistent loser, maybe four times out of five, but as he would begin to lose he would also begin to get more cautious, so he rarely lost heavily. The big joke with Fred was his wife, Cora, who was death on gambling and was always trying to track Fred down. Almost every time she’d call during the game, wanting to know if Fred was there, and Jerry always covered for him. A couple of times she’d actually showed up at the apartment, but Jerry hadn’t let her in, and the last time, over a year ago, she punched him in the nose. It was really very funny, though Jerry, with a nosebleed, hadn’t seen the humor in it very much. Fred ran a laundromat on Flatbush Avenue over in Brooklyn, and I guess he had to make a pretty good living at it because on the average he had to drop ten or twenty bucks a week at our two games. Also, he plays the horses a lot. In fact, it was through him I started placing my own bets with Tommy McKay.

Doug Hallman, currently dealing, was a huge hairy fat man who ran a gas station on Second Avenue not far from the Midtown Tunnel. He was a blustery sort of player, the kind who tries to look mean and menacing when he bluffs. Otherwise he was a pretty good poker player and won more often than he lost, and my only objection to him was the twelve-for-a-quarter cigars he smoked all the time.

And finally there was Sid Falco, thin, serious, narrow-headed, probably the youngest guy at the table. A deadly serious poker player, he was full of the math of the game, the only one at the table who could reel off the odds for making any hand given any situation and lie of the cards. He played strictly by the book, which meant very conservative, no imagination, and he was a small but consistent winner. Two or three times a night he’d try a bluff, because the book says you should bluff every once in a while to keep the other players guessing, but his bluffs were always as transparent as wax paper. A bluff being so unnatural to him, he would start acting weird, like a robot going crazy in a science-fiction story. He’d light a cigarette with funny jerky movements, or start telling a joke in a high-pitched voice, or start comparing the time on his watch with the time on everybody else’s watch. His bluffs tended to get called.

The current hand finally finished itself out, and when Fred Stehl bumped Leo Morgentauser’s bet on the last card, everybody knew he’d bought the straight after all. Which was too bad, because everybody but Fred had known for a long time that Leo already had the flush.

Leo, naturally, went into his Actors’ Studio number, frowning at his down cards, at Fred’s up cards, at the chips in front of himself, at the pot, at the opposite wall, and then finally sighing and shaking his head and raising Fred back.

And Fred gave him another raise. Because he’s a gambling fool, because his straight had come in and he couldn’t believe it was a loser, and because it was early in the evening and he hadn’t lost much yet.

And Leo cried, “Hah!” and with a great flourish and an evil grin of triumph he raised Fred back.

Fred’s face was pitiful to see. He understood now he’d been suckered, but Leo’s overacting had to keep him in because there was always that faint remote chance Leo was trying a double reverse bluff, which of course he wasn’t. But Fred had to call.

Leo showed him the flush and pulled in the pot.

Fred didn’t even bother to show the straight. He just folded his up cards and pushed them away.

Leo dealt next, seven-card stud again, the game he’d won at. I got a four and nine down and a Jack up, three different suits, and folded. I spent the rest of the hand watching Sid Falco, who was nursing a pair of showing Queens through a careful methodical hand in which his only competition was Jerry Allen, who looked to have Kings up with no pair showing.

So Sid Falco was a mobster. Or worked for a mobster. Or worked for somebody connected with mobsters. Or something. The point was, did he look any different now that I knew whatever it was I knew about him?

No. He looked like the exact same guy who’d always said he was a salesman for a wholesale liquor company.

Well, maybe that was true. There were still a lot of legitimate outfits that tended to have mob connections. Like bars, for instance, and soft-drink bottlers, and jukebox and vending-machine operators, and liquor wholesalers, and linen services, and real estate management companies, and God alone knows what all. So Sid Falco could have an apparently honest job and he could still be a mobster.

But why didn’t he look different to me? Tougher, maybe, or more dangerous, or dirtier, or more mysterious. Something. But he didn’t.

I wondered what would happen if I were to lean over close to him, as though interested in his hole cards (being out of the hand, so it was okay), and whisper in his ear, “Solomon Napoli.” Just that. And sit back, and innocently look around at the other hands still in the game.

I wondered, and I looked at Sid’s profile, and I decided not to find out. In spite of his not looking any different, I decided not to find out. No, that isn’t right, it was because he didn’t look any different. His surface was still the same, there was no sign of whatever it was that lurked beneath, and that was more intimidating than any kind of blatant toughness. He showed nothing at all, and that meant the reality could be anything at all, and that meant I didn’t want to know what it was. So I minded my own business, and did no whispering to Sid.

In the meantime Sid and his pair of Queens had pushed steadily but moderately through the hand, and at the finish there was no one left but Jerry with his probable Kings up. Sid made a limit bet, and Jerry had to stay in and make Sid show the trips, and Sid did. Jerry made that embarrassed unhappy laugh of his, and looked around the table to see if anybody had noticed his failure. We all know that move of his by now, so we were all looking some place else.

Fred dealt next. Seven-card stud again. Fred was the true gambling fool, he’d go back to the game that bit him time after time till he finally bit it back. This time I got a three and Jack down and a seven up, three suits again. I folded, naturally, and began to wonder if my luck with Purple Pecunia had been strictly a one-shot. These cards were costing me a quarter a hand.

Jerry took this one, with an eight-high straight that had obviously come in on the seventh card, against Doug Hallman’s unimproved aces up. Doug puffed a lot of cigar smoke over that hand, but didn’t say anything.

Sid was the next dealer. He switched to five-card stud and gave me a Jack in the hole, nine on top. I stayed, paired the Jack on the fourth card, and had only Fred to contend with at the end. Two other Jacks had been folded in other hands, which Fred had to be aware of. The highest card he had showing was a ten, so I had a lock, so naturally I bet the limit, which is two dollars, and when he bumped two dollars back to prove he had a pair of tens, I considered doing Leo’s Actors’ Studio bit, but then decided the hell with it and just threw in my two-buck raise. Fred called and I showed him my other Jack. “I didn’t believe it,” he said, and showed me his other ten. “I believed that,” I said, which was maybe cruel.

Then, as I drew in my first pot of the evening, I said, “You guys hear what happened to Tommy McKay Monday?” Fred and Doug and Leo all knew Tommy, and Sid and Jerry had both heard us mention him at one time or another.

Doug said, “I been trying to call him.”

“He’s dead,” I said.

None of them had heard. So I told them, and of course no more hands were dealt till I finished. When I told them Tommy had a beautiful sister from Las Vegas who was going to sit in a little later, though, all the other elements in the story suddenly grew very pale. At first the questions had been about Tommy, and then about the guy who’d given me the tip on the horse, but by the end there was nothing but questions about Abbie. “You’ll see her,” I kept saying. “She’ll be here around nine-thirty.”

Then Doug Hallman, who had a marker of mine, said something about me being rolling in dough now, and I told him not yet, with Tommy dead I hadn’t been able to get my payoff yet, I was going to have to see about that tomorrow. He nodded, and looked a little unhappy. Jerry, who also had a marker of mine, also looked unhappy.

Finally we got back to the game, and in the next two hours I did very well indeed. Doug Hallman was having a streak of cards almost as rotten as his cigars; Fred Stehl and Jerry were both chasing too much and staying in hands too long; and Sid was just about holding his own, which meant the money was all coming to Leo and me, and most of it was coming to me. By the time the doorbell rang at quarter to ten I was almost forty bucks to the good, which was fantastic for that game, particularly in only two hours.

The ring had come at one of the odd moments when I wasn’t in a hand, so I pushed my chair back and said, “That’ll be Abbie now.” I left the living room and went to the door and threw it open and there was Abbie, still in her orange fur and black boots. “Hi, there,” I said.

She came in and smiled and panted and waved at her mouth to let me know she couldn’t talk yet.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I understand.” I helped her out of the coat, and the boots continued on up under the miniskirt of her baby-blue wool dress. She was a very sexy-looking girl.

I hung up her coat and turned back to her, and she said, “Boy. Those are some stairs.”

“You don’t get used to them,” I assured her.

“I believe it.”

“You’re going to have an unfair advantage, you know,” I said. “None of us are going to be able to look at our cards.”

She smiled. “What a nice thing to say.”

“Did you find out anything at the wake?”

“Nothing important. I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay,” I said, and led her into the living room to introduce her to the boys, all of whom acted very natural and nonchalant, except that Doug began puffing so much cigar smoke he looked like a low-pressure system, Leo knocked over all his little stacks of chips, Fred managed to kick over his chair when he blurted to his feet, Jerry began to giggle with the kind of unhappy laugh he makes when he loses, and Sid started to blink very rapidly as though he was trying a bluff.

Finally, though, everybody settled down. Abbie sat between Sid and me and got ten dollars’ worth of chips from Jerry; we filled her in on the house rules; Leo dealt a hand of guts draw; and Abbie took a nice pot with Queens over treys. Welcome to the club.

Two hands later it was her deal. “My favorite game is stud,” she said.

Doug, who wanted to make time with this beautiful girl but hadn’t yet figured out how to go about it in the middle of a poker game, said, “Five-card or seven?”

“Five,” she said. “Naturally.” In the silence following that put-down she shuffled like a pro, slid Sid the deck to be cut, and fired the cards out like John Scarne. My ace up looked good, but it was the ten in the hole that paired with the fourth card that did the trick, and I raked in a small but pleasant pot. It was then my deal, and it just wasn’t possible for me to deal anything but five-card stud.

Nor could anybody else switch, not after that announcement of Abbie’s, so for the next hour or so we played nothing but five-card stud. Abbie did well, playing a fairly conservative game and winning small amounts. My streak slowed a bit, but didn’t entirely turn off. Leo seemed to be holding his own, and Jerry just grew wilder and wilder, like a centrifuge going too fast and spinning all its money away. But the big surprises were Fred and Sid. Fred suddenly settled down and became a tight, sharp, wary, brilliant player, reading bluffs incredibly, betting his hands with the cunning of a tax lawyer, and all in all coming on like a graduate of Gardena. Sid, on the other hand, broke down totally. All math seemed to have left his head, and he played so erratically it was as though he was out of phase with the rest of us and was actually playing his hands five deals too late. Abbie was sitting at his left elbow, and the proximity was obviously more than he could handle. It was a great encouragement to know a gangster could also be human. If he’d been handy enough, I might even have whispered the magic name to him now, though come to think of it erratic people are more dangerous than any other kind, aren’t they? Hmm.

Anyway, along about eleven o’clock, at a time when Abbie was just about to deal, Doug asked her what she did for a living in Las Vegas, was she a dancer or what, and she said, “I deal blackjack.” And began to deal out the cards for stud.

Talk about a bombshell. Nobody looked at their cards at all, everybody just stared at Abbie.

It was Doug who asked the question in all our minds. Taking the cigar out of his face for once, he said, “Are you by any chance a mechanic?”

“We run strictly legitimate in Vegas,” she said. “The house makes its money on the percentages.”

“Yeah,” Doug said, and pointed his cigar at the deck in her hand. “But can you do crooked dealing?”

She looked around at all of us, and reluctantly she nodded. “I know how to do some things,” she said. “I wouldn’t do them, I promise, but I do know how.”

“Like what?” Doug asked her.

She shrugged. “I can deal seconds,” she said. “Or bottoms. I can mark a deck at the table, all that sort of thing.”

“Show us some stunts,” Doug said. He pushed the cards he’d been dealt over toward her. “Show us how it’s done.”

“But what about the hand?” she asked.

“The hell with the hand,” he said, and the rest of us said yes, the hell with the hand. We all pushed our cards toward Abbie, and she shrugged and picked them up and began to show us things.

Fascinating. She spent half an hour going through her bag of tricks, and it was lovely to watch. She had long slender fingers with pale red polish on the nails, and it was really great to see those fingers do things with the cards. Ace of spades on top of the deck, the fingers would flick flick flick, cards would be dealt out to all of us, and there on top of the deck would still be the ace of spades. She palmed cards, she did fake cuts, she did one-handed cuts, she dealt out hands and then stacked the deck while pulling in the discards and then made the stack survive shuffling and cutting and everything else we could think of. She took an old deck Jerry had around and showed us how to mark it with thumbnail indentations on the edges of the cards while the deck was in play. She showed us how to crimp the deck to get it cut where you wanted.

That was the end of poker for that night. Jerry broke out beer and Scotch and we all sat around and talked about gambling and cheating and one thing and another, cutting up old jackpots as they say, and we had a great time. Even Sid relaxed after a while. Fred’s wife Cora didn’t call, amazingly enough, and that simply rounded out the perfection of the night.

We split up about twelve-thirty, everybody agreeing Abbie should come back Sunday if she was still in town, and then we all went our separate ways. It had been one of my finest moments. Not only was I the guy who knew this girl and had introduced her to the game, she and I were leaving together. Besides that, I’d won fifty-three bucks tonight, which was very healthy for that game. The losing streak was over, I could feel it.