The crazy kill

15

It was 11:32 o'clock when Johnny parked his fishtail Cadillac on Madison Avenue near the corner and walked down 124th Street to the private staircase that led to his club on the second floor.

The name Tia Juana was lettered on the upper panel of the black steel door.

He touched the buzzer to the right of the doorknob once lightly, and an eye appeared immediately in the peephole within the letter u in the word Juana. The door swung open into the kitchen of a three-room flat.

A mild-mannered, skinny, bald-headed, brown-skinned man wearing starched khaki pants and a faded purple polo shirt said, "Tough, Johnny, two deaths back to back."

"Yeah," Johnny said. "How's the game going, Nubby?"

Nubby fitted the cushioned stump of his left arm, which was cut off just above the wrist, into the cup of his right hand and said, "Steady. Kid Nickels is running it."

"Who's winning?"

"I ain't seen. I been taking bets on the harness races for tonight at Yonkers."

Johnny had bathed, shaved and changed into a light green silk suit and a rose crepe shirt.

The phone rang and Nubby reached for the receiver on the paybox on the wall, but Johnny said, "I'll take it."

Mamie Pullen was calling to ask how Dulcy was.

"She's knocked herself out," Johnny said. "I left Alamena with her."

"How are you, son?" Mamie asked.

"Still kicking," Johnny said. "You get your sleep and don't worry 'bout us."

When he hung up Nubby said, "You look beat, boss. Why don't you just take a look about and cut back to the nest. Us three oughta be able to run it for one night."

Johnny turned toward his office without replying. It was located in the outer of the two bedrooms situated to the left of the kitchen. It contained an old-fashioned roll top desk, a small round table, six chairs and a safe. The room across from it, equipped with a big deal table, was used as a spare gambling room.

Johnny hung up his green coat neatly on a hanger on the wall beside his desk, opened the safe and took out a sheaf of money tied with brown paper tape on which was written: $1,000.

Beyond the kitchen was a bathroom, and then the hallway ran into a large front room the width of the flat with a three-window bay overlooking Madison Avenue. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn.

Nine players sat about a large round-top table, padded with felt and covered with soiled tan canvas, in the center of the room. They were playing a card game called Georgia Skin.

Kid Nickels was shuffling a brand-new deck of cards. He was a short black burr-headed man with red eyes and rough pockmarked skin, wearing a red silk shirt several shades brighter than Johnny's.

Johnny walked into the room, put the sheaf of money on the table and said, "I'll take over now, Kid."

Kid Nickels got up and gave him his seat.

Johnny patted the sheaf of bank notes. "Here's fresh money that ain't got nobody's brand."

"Let's hope I latch on to some of it," Bad Eye Lewis said.

Johnny shuffled the cards. Crying Shine, the first player to his right, cut them.

"Who wants to draw?" Johnny asked.

Three players drew cards from the deck, showed them to each other to avoid duplication and put them on the table face down.

Johnny bet them ten dollars each for drawing. They had to call or turn in their cards. They called.

In Georgia Skin the suits-spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds-have no rank. The cards are played by denomination. There are thirteen denominations in the deck, the ace through the king. Therefore thirteen cards may be played.

A player selects a card. When the next card for that denomination is dealt from the deck, the first card loses. Skin players say the card has fallen. It goes into the dead, and can't be played again that deal.

Therefore a player bets that his card does not fall before his opponents' cards fall. If a player selects a seven, and the cards of all other denominations in the deck have been dealt off twice before the second seven shows, that player wins all the bets he has made.

Johnny spun the top card face upward and it dropped in front of Doc, the player who sat across the table from him. It was an eight.

"My hatred," Bad Eye Lewis said.

"I ain't got no hatred unless it be death," Doc said. "Throw down, all you pikers."

The players carried their bets to him.

Johnny edged up the deck and fitted it into the deal box, which was open on one side with a thumb-hole for dealing. He spun the three of spades from the deck for his own card.

Soft intense curses rose in the smoky light as the cards spun face upward from the box. Each time a card fell the bets were picked up by the winners and the loser played the next clean card dealt from the deck.

Johnny played the three throughout the deal without it falling. He placed twelve bets and made a hundred and thirty dollars on the deal.

Chink Charlie staggered into the room, waving a handful of money.

"Make way for a skinner from way back," he said in a whisky-thickened voice.

Johnny was sitting with his back to the door and didn't look around. He shuffled the deck, edged it and put it down.

"Cut 'em, K.C.," he said.

The other players had looked once at Chink. Now they looked once at Johnny. Then they stopped looking.

"I don't suppose I'm barred from this mother-raping game," Chink said.

"I ain't never barred a gambler with money," Johnny said in his toneless voice without looking about. "Pony, get up and give the gambler your seat."

Pony Boy got up and Chink flopped into his seat.

"I feel lucky tonight," Chink said, slapping the money on the table in front of him. "All I want to win is ten grand. How 'bout it, Johnny boy? You got ten grand to lose?"

Once again the players looked at Chink, then back to Johnny, then at nothing.

Johnny's face didn't flicker, his voice didn't change. "I don't play to lose, buddy boy, you'd better find out that. But you can gamble here in my club as long as you got money, and walk out of here with everything you've won. Now who wants to draw?" he asked.

No one moved to draw a card from the deck.

"You don't scare me," Chink said, and drew one from the bottom.

Johnny charged him a hundred dollars. When Chink covered it he had only nineteen dollars left.

Johnny turned off the queen.

Doc played it.

Chink bet him ten dollars.

The queen of hearts doubled off.

"Some black snake is sucking my rider's tongue," somebody said.

Chink picked up the twenty dollars.

Johnny put the deck in the deal box and turned himself the three of spades again.

"Lightning never strikes twice in the same place," Bad Eye Lewis said.

"Man, don't start talking about lightning striking," Crying Shine said. "You're sitting right in the middle of a thunder storm."

Johnny turned off the deuce of clubs for Doc, who had first choice for a clean card.

Doc looked at it with distaste. "I'd rather be bit in the ass by a boa constrictor than play a mother-raping black deuce," he said.

"You want to pass it?" Johnny asked.

"Hell," Doc said, "I ain't gambling my rathers. Throw back, yellow kid," he said to Chink.

"That'll cost you twenty bucks," Chink said.

"That don't hurt the money, son," Doc said, covering it. Johnny carried fifteen dollars to Doc, and began turning off the cards. Players reached for them, and bets were made. No one spoke. The silence grew.

Johnny spun the cards in the tight white silence.

A card fell. Hands reached for bets.

Doc fell again and looked through the deal for a clean card, but there wasn't any.

Johnny spun the cards and the cards fell. Chink's card held up. Johnny and Chink raked in the bets.

"I'll bet you some more, gambler," Johnny said to Chink.

"Throw down," Chink said.

Johnny carried him another hundred dollars. Chink covered it and had money left.

Johnny spun another card, then another. The veins roped in his forehead and the tentacles of his scar began to move. Blood left Chink's face until it looked like yellow wax.

"Some more," Johnny said.

"Throw down," Chink said. He was beginning to lose his voice.

They pressed their bet another twenty dollars.

Johnny eyed the money Chink had left. He pulled a card halfway out of the box and knocked it back.

"Some more, gambler," he said.

"Throw down," Chink whispered.

Johnny carried fifty dollars to Chink.

Chink covered twenty-nine and passed the rest back. Johnny spun the card. The seven of diamonds flashed in the spill of light and fell on its face.

"Dead men falls on their face," Bad Eye Lewis said.

Blood rushed to Chink's face, and his jowls began to swell.

"That's you, ain't it?" Johnny said.

"How the hell you know it's me, lest you reading these cards," Chink said thickly.

"It's got to be you," Johnny said. "It's the only clean card left."

The blood left Chink's face again, and it turned ashy. Johnny reached over and turned up the card that lay in front of Chink. The seven of spades looked up.

Johnny raked in the stack of money.

"You shot me, didn't you," Chink accused. "You shot me. You saw the seven-spot on the turn when you pulled it halfway out the box."

"You ain't got but one more time to say that, gambler," Johnny said. "Then you goin' to have to prove it."

Chink didn't speak.

"If you bet fast you can't last," Doc said.

Chink got up without speaking and left the club.

Johnny began losing. He lost all his winnings and seven hundred dollars from the bank. Finally he stood up and said to Kid Nickels, "You take over, Kid."

He went back into his office, took a. 38 Army Colt revolver from the safe and stuck it inside of his belt to the left of the buckle, put his green suit jacket over his rose crepe shirt. Before leaving the club he said to Nubby, "If I don't come back, tell Kid to take the money home with him."

Pony Boy came back to the kitchen to see if Johnny needed him, but Johnny was gone.

"That Chink Charlie," he said. "Death ain't two feet off him."