The Hustler

4

When they got in the car Eddie was whistling softly between his teeth. He threw his coat, gaily, in the back seat, slipped behind the wheel, and started fishing the crumpled bills, mostly fives and tens, from his pants pockets. He smoothed them out on his knee, one at a time, counting them aloud as he did so.

Charlie’s face and voice were, as ever, expressionless. “Look,” he said, “it’s two hundred profit and you know it. So let’s drive.”

Eddie gave him an especially broad grin. He enjoyed doing this, knowing that the charm had no measurable effect on Charlie. “So who’s in a hurry,” he said, enjoying the simple pleasure of victory. “This is how I get my kicks. Counting the paper.”

The car was an incredibly dusty Packard sedan of middle age. After tiring of the money Eddie folded the bills neatly, slipped the roll into his pocket, and started the engine. “That poor guy behind the bar,” he said, grinning. “He’s gonna have a time explaining to the boss where that deuce went.”

“He asked for it,” Charlie said.

“Sure. We all ask for it, everybody. We all oughtta be goddamn glad we don’t get it, too.”

“He was greedy,” Charlie said. “I could see when we walked in he was the greedy type.”

They drove along the highway for about an hour, silently except for Eddie’s whistling through his teeth. He played the radio for a while, listened to some very bad music, was admonished to drink Mogen David wine, drive safely over the weekend, drink Royal Crown Cola (best by taste test) and buy bonds. After this last hustle Eddie flipped the radio off and said, “So how’re we doing?”

Charlie fished out his cigarette case and automatically pulled out a cigarette for Eddie before lighting his own. Then he said, “You got about six thousand now.”

Eddie seemed pleased with this, although he, of course, already knew where they stood. “That’s pretty good,” he said, “for a beginner. Four months out of Oakland; six thousand. And,” he laughed, “expenses. Hell,” he lit his cigarette with one hand, the other holding the wheel, “if I hadn’t of been a damn fool and dropped that eight hundred in Hot Springs we’d have seven thousand. I should of let that guy quit, Charlie, like you told me. I can’t give every hot shot I come heads up with two balls in a bank pool game.”

“That’s right.” Charlie lit his own cigarette.

Eddie laughed. “Well, live and learn,” he said. “I’m pretty good, but I ain’t that good.” Abruptly, he rammed the accelerator, cut the wheel and began shooting past a line of cars they had been dawdling behind for maybe ten minutes. Passing the fourth car he spotted a truck approaching and brake-squealed back into line.

“You aren’t that good either,” Charlie said, and Eddie laughed again.

“This car’s all right,” he said, grinning. “It plays a pretty tough game. And you know what, Charlie? After we finish up, after I get, say, fifteen thousand and enough money to fly back home, I’m gonna give you this car.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said, with gravity, “and ten per cent.”

“And ten per cent.” He laughed and cut back out into the passing lane. The old Packard, with surprising determination, shot past the rest of the line of traffic. Back in the driving lane Eddie settled it down to a steady seventy miles an hour.

After a minute Charlie spoke again. “What’s the hurry?”

“I want to get there. To Bennington’s.” He paused. “This is gonna be the part that counts. I been wanting to see Bennington’s place for a long time.”

Charlie seemed to think about this for a minute. Then he said, “Look, Eddie. Remember I asked you to stay out of Chicago? Altogether.”

Eddie tried to keep the annoyance from showing. He let the words sit a moment, then he said, “Why?”

Charlie’s voice was flat as ever. “You might get beat.”

Eddie kept his eyes on the road. “So maybe I shouldn’t gamble in the first place, I might get beat. Maybe I should be a salesman. Drugs, maybe.”

Charlie flipped his cigarette butt out of the window. “Maybe you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re the kind of pool hustler sells a bill of goods. The kind of high-class con man every mark gets friendly with. First time you ever walked into my place back home you weren’t sixteen years old and you were selling a bill of goods.”

Eddie grinned. “So I know how to set up a good game for myself, so what? Is that bad?”

“Look, Eddie, you want to play one of the big boys at Bennington’s? You want to leave off this penny-ante hustling and try and clean up in one big lick?”

“Who else is gonna let me win ten thousand in one night?”

“Look, Eddie.” Charlie turned to him, his face still impassive. “You’re not gonna charm those Chicago boys into a thing. Like in Hot Springs, only worse. You’re gonna be playing people who know what’s happening on a pool table.”

“In Hot Springs I made a bad bet. I learned something. I won’t make any bad bets in Chicago.”

“I heard people say that when you walk in Bennington’s you’re making a bad bet.”

Eddie, abruptly, laughed. “Charlie,” he said, “if you wasn’t my best friend, I’d make you get out and walk.”

They drove silently for a while. It was getting late in the afternoon, the air was beginning to cool off now and there was more shade. They were passing clumps of buildings, getting into country that was more thickly settled. Traffic in the other direction was becoming thicker too, the beginnings of the weekend exodus from the city. Billboards hustling beer and gasoline became frequent.

Finally Charlie spoke. Eddie had been waiting for it, wondering exactly what it was that he had on his mind. “Eddie,” he said, “you don’t have to go to Bennington’s at all. Why risk what we got? You can scuffle around in the little rooms and pick up at least a thousand, no chance of losing. Then we drive back home by a different way and you fill out your fifteen grand the same way you picked up what we already got.”

Eddie let it all sink in. Then he said, almost pleadingly, “Charlie, you’re trying to undermine my confidence. You know I got to play at Bennington’s. You know I been a scuffler all my life, a small man out West. You know when I beat Johnny Varges—that’s Johnny Varges, Charlie, the man who invented one-pocket pool—he said I was the best he ever seen. And back home there were people who said I was the best in the country. The best in the country, Charlie.”

“That’s right,” Charlie said, “and you let a nowhere bank hustler named Woody Fleming hit you for eight hundred dollars in Hot Springs.”

“Charlie,” Eddie said, “I gave him two balls out of eight. For Christ’s sake, that’s the first money I dropped since we left Oakland, California.”

“Okay. I take it back. I wanted to remind you that, sometimes, people lose.”

Eddie’s voice was still pained. “Look, Charlie. Did you ever see a better pool player than me? Did you ever see, in twenty years running a poolroom, anybody ever who I couldn’t beat, heads up, any day of the week, any game of pool he could name?”

“Okay. Okay.” A trace of irritation insinuated itself into Charlie’s voice. “Nobody can beat you.”

They passed through a suburb, then another. Eddie kept smoking continually, and he was beginning to feel intensely a thing that he had felt many times before, but never before quite so strongly: a kind of electric self-awareness, a fine, alert tension. And a sense of anxiety, too, and of expectation. He felt good. Nervous; his stomach tight; but good.