The Good Old Stuff

Dead on the Pin

My name is Joe Desmon, and I’m manager of the Wonderland Bowling Alleys on the turnpike three miles out of town. I’ve held the job ever since I got back from Vietnam. The hours are long, but I’m not kicking. I’ve got a little stashed away and I’m getting the experience, and someday I’m going to have my own layout and hire some stupid guy to keep the crazy hours I keep.

The town needs more alleys, and so the leagues are stacked. The way it is now, they’ve got me working twenty-six hours a day during the season. All the time I’m yapping at the waitresses or calming down some clown full of beer or ducking the big looping passes made by the members of the Industrial Girls’ League. That in addition to paying all the bills, keeping track of the cash, running the snacks and beer business, seeing that the equipment stays in shape, renting shoes, and giving lessons.

So it seemed like almost too much to expect when one day about three months ago this little guy showed up and asked if I could hire him to do jobs around the place. Said his name was Johnson. He was edging close to fifty, with the top of his head up to about my chin. He was the sort of little man you would push out of your way, but not if you looked close. There were hard, blunt bones in his face and a pair of pale-blue expressionless eyes and a tight slit for a mouth. He had a thick look through the shoulders, and his arms hung almost down to his knees, with big square wrists.

He was well dressed, and I figured he’d be out of my salary range. I asked him how much he had to make and he said, “Whatever you can give me, kid.”

“How about seventy-five a week, and I’m not kid. I’m Mr. Desmon.”

“That’ll be fine, Mr. Desmon. Just dandy.”

“For that dough you brush down the alleys whenever they’re clear, mop the floors, empty the ashtrays, check the equipment, and scrub the restrooms. And anything else I can think up.”

He said mildly, “I’d like a chance to bowl a little, too.”

I took a quick look at his right thumb. It had that swollen, bent-back look of a man who has done a lot of it. But I didn’t see any calluses. His hands looked pink and soft.

I wasn’t behind and it was a slack hour. I said, “How about a quick one?”

I had my own ball and shoes behind the counter. He picked a pair of shoes out of the rental rack and spent at least five long minutes finding a ball to suit him.

With my double and spare in the first three frames and his two splits and a miss, I felt pretty arrogant. When I got my strike in the fourth, it made my fill on the third frame a fat 69 to his 27. I started to get bored, but in his fourth frame, his ball ducked into the pocket for one of the prettiest cleanest strikes I have ever seen. His ball had been curving in too fast before that, giving him those thin Brooklyn hits.

And so while I got spare, strike, spare, he got three more of those boomers, where all the pins jumped into the pit in unison.

He looked at me and said, “Mr. Desmon, do you fire people you can’t beat?”

“What do you think I am? No. And I’m not beat yet.”

“Just asking, ki — Mr. Desmon.”

So he kept chucking them in there, and in the end he had put eight strikes in a row together, and he wiped me out, 235 to 202.

So I said, “Okay. And I think you could keep right on wiping me out. You’re not fired.”

He grinned for the first time. It came and went so quickly I almost missed it. He wanted to know if he could practice a little when his work was done. I told him to be my guest.

I kept an eye on him. He did his work and got along well enough with the rest of my people. He got along by staying out of the way. After the first month I began to throw some lessons his way, giving him a cut. He had perfect style, laying the ball down so smoothly it wouldn’t have dented the top of a custard pie. He could pick up the flaws and point them out and demonstrate how to cure them. He eased the pressure on me, but I never did really get to know the man.

When he bowled, it was either alone or with me, just before we closed the joint in the small hours. I began to keep a pocket score on him.

As he was leaving one night I said, “Hey, Johnson. Wait a minute.”

He turned around. “What?”

“In the last ten games you’ve rolled, you’ve averaged two-twenty-one.”

“So?”

“So I’d like to wangle you a spot on one of the pro leagues. You’re as steady as a rock. How about it? I know an outfit that could use a new anchor man.”

He walked slowly back toward me. For one funny moment he was the boss and I was a stooge working for him. He said, “Drop the idea, Desmon. I don’t like it.”

“But why? I should think it would please you.”

“Just say that I don’t like to bowl with people. Maybe I blow up under pressure. Put it any way you want, but don’t go talking up my game. Understand?”

I almost said, Yes, sir.

He walked off into the night. I shrugged and went back to the books.

All of that should have been a tip-off. I should have gotten wise, maybe, the night Billy Carr came in. Billy has the sort of reputation that makes me wish I had the nerve to tell him not to come back. He’s young and tall and sleek, somehow like a big cat. He had two of his boys with him. He’s considered locally to be a pretty heavy stud. Anyway, the three of them came in, got shoes, shucked off their coats, and changed shoes down at the semicircular bench, ready to do some bowling.

Johnson was walking down the alley pushing the wide brush, wearing the lamb’s wool mitts over his shoes.

I was too far away to stop it. Billy Carr grabbed a ball off the rack and rolled it down at Johnson. Johnson heard it coming. He looked around and sidestepped it, but it hit the brush and knocked it out of his hands.

He turned and walked slowly back up the middle of the alley toward where Billy stood laughing.

Between laughs, Billy said, “Did I scare you, pop?”

“You scared me plenty,” Johnson said mildly. He grabbed the front of Billy’s shirt and tossed him into the rack. Billy tumbled over it and landed on his shoulders. One of the hired boys reached for a sap as he moved in on Johnson. Johnson caught his wrist, ripped the sap out of his hand, and belted him flush across the mouth with it. The hired boy sat down and began to spit out teeth.

The other hired boy was reaching. “I wouldn’t!” Johnson said in a low voice. And the boy didn’t.

Their sole remaining gesture of defiance was to throw the shoes at me as they went out.

I said to Johnson, “That wasn’t smart. They might give you a bad time outside.”

He gave me a look of surprise. “Those three? Grow up, ki — Mr. Desmon.”

They didn’t bother Johnson, and they didn’t come back.

Last week I woke up and there was a man sitting on a chair beside my bed. I shut my eyes hard, and when I opened them again he was still there.

“Good morning, Joe,” he said.

“How did you get in here? What do you want? Is this a gag?”

He handed me a picture. A double picture. Full face and profile. With numbers. “Know this man?”

“Johnson. He works for me.”

“Not exactly Johnson. Dan Brankel is a better name. Wanted in five western states for armed robbery and murder. Rumored to be a one-time associate and business partner of Al Nussbaum. Did some work with the King gang. That was a long time ago. He skipped the country with a fat bankroll. He’s been where we couldn’t touch him. By we, I mean the FBI. A while back we got a tip that he had moved. Since then we’ve been waiting for him to show up. We’ve been checking bowling alleys. That was his passion in the old days. So with your help, Joe...”

I was a wreck all day. I tried to charge people for more games than they’d rolled. I cussed out the waitresses, and one of my best ones quit on me. I even broke down and drank some of my own beer during business hours.

While the leagues were on, I was worse. No matter how tightly I held onto the edge of the desk, my hands still shook.

But I couldn’t hold the clock back. The diehards finally pulled out, the last of them, at quarter to two. I said to Johnson, “Game tonight?” I barely managed to keep the quiver out of my voice.

He nodded and went to get his ball and shoes. Somehow he’d managed to buy them out of his pay. When he came back, I said, “Back in a minute. Got to check the doors.”

Just the two of us were left in the place. I went to the side door, slammed it hard, then opened it silently and put the little wedge in it to hold it open.

The light controls were near my desk. I killed everything except the small light over the desk and the lights on the one alley we would use. My heart was swinging from my tonsils.

Johnson popped his thumb out of the hole on the ball, lined his sights, and swung a sweet ball down the alley. It made a low drone as it rolled. Then it hooked into the pocket, and the pins went down with a single smash.

The rack crashed down and I took my first ball. Even though I had used a lot of chalk, my hands were still greasy with sweat. The ball slipped, hung on the edge all the way down, and plinked off the ten pm.

Johnson said mildly, “Getting the hard one first?”

I laughed too loud and too long and stopped too abruptly. I got eight more on my second ball and Johnson marked the miss.

A nightmare game. I didn’t dare turn around. I was afraid I’d see one of the men slipping silently in, and my face would give me away. Johnson was bowling like a machine. I piled up misses and splits, and I even threw one gutter ball. Each ball he rolled was just right. Once in the sixth frame one pin wavered and threatened to stay up, but finally it went down.

We had never talked much while bowling. I had to bite my tongue to keep from babbling to him. It might have made him suspicious.

It didn’t hit me between the eyes until he marked up his eighth straight strike. And suddenly I realized, that if he kept on, I might see the first perfect game I have ever seen. It was a little bit easier then to forget the figures silently closing in.

He put in the ninth strike and the tenth. I had a miss on the ninth, for a score to that point of one-twenty-one. Worst game of the past three years.

After the tenth strike he said softly, “You know, this might be it. I never had one of those fat three-hundred games before. I’ve always wanted one.”

“Don’t jinx yourself talking about it,” I said.

He put the eleventh ball in the pocket for a clean strike. “One more,” he said. The ball was trundling back up the rails when I saw the little flurry of movement down near the pin setter. That was my signal.

I said, as nonchalantly as I could, “Wait a second. Got to get cigarettes.”

As I turned and walked up the stairs he took his ball off the rack, walked slowly back, and chalked his fingers, pulling the towel through them.

I ran the last few steps to the desk, wiped my hand across the light panel, turning on every light in the place.

They had crept up in the darkness. They were in a half circle around him. He looked very small and old and tired standing down there.

“Okay, Dan,” one of them said. “End of the line. All out. Put the ball down slowly and lie on the floor, your arms spread.”

A dozen weapons were pointed at him.

In a weary voice he said, “You win. Let me heave this last ball down the alley.”

Before he could get an answer, he moved over and turned to face the pins. From the angle where I stood, higher than the others, I saw his left hand flick from his belt up to his mouth. He swallowed something.

He stood for a long second, then started his stride. Half-way to the foul line his smooth stride wavered. The ball thumped hard, bounced, and he went down on his face across the foul line.

He was a dead man when he hit the floor. Even I knew that. I dimly heard the hoarse shout of anger and disappointment.

But I had my eyes on the ball. It rolled with pathetic slowness. It wavered in toward the head pin, hit the head pin on the left side. The pins toppled slowly, all but the six pin. It stood without a waver. A pin rolled slowly across the alley, nudged the rebel, and tumbled it off into the pit.

As though I was walking in my sleep, I went back down the stairs, took the black crayon, marked in the last strike, and drew the 300, making the zeros fat and bold.

I knew he was a crook. I knew he was cruel and lawless. They told me about the way he shot the Nevada bank clerk in the stomach. But I also know that he was a homesick guy who came back to the only thing he liked to do and scrubbed out lavatories for the privilege of doing it.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me.

Because I don’t think I’m ever going to like the game as much as I used to.