He shrugged, drove a few blocks, made some turns, and we were on a downtown street. Not a first-class street — there were a few dumb little shops and bars, a hotel sign with all the lights knocked out — not the neighborhood I wanted to get the upbeat mood I was after. He had slowed, and now he pulled over to the curb.
He gave me a wise-guy look. “You look like a man in a hurry. You might be thinking of a card game to get back on your feet fast. In that hotel there, there’s a game goes on most nights. Should be going on now.”
“Yeah?” I felt the excitement inside me. I’d had the feeling that, one way or another, I’d turn up a game. And by luck this driver had set me down right in front of one. “You know the room number?”
“It floats around — but try four-seventeen.”
I pushed the door handle and the door fell open. I hitched across the seat and got out. “Thanks.”
He slid across the seat, got the door, pulled it shut, gave me a flip of his fingers, and put things in gear.
I got a funny feeling and almost called out, “Wait a minute.” Then I thought of the card game and the chance it’d give me to get things together in a hurry. All this guy had to offer me was a pipsqueak job, a bed in a dorm with a bunch of broken-down nobodies who had bottomed out, a group of insects crawling around on Hollywood’s floor. That wasn’t for me. I was Ranee Rangoon, Martyr to Love.
I gave him a creaky wave and watched him drive away. Then I turned and, moving pretty good, walked over to the beat-out old hotel.
In the lobby a few dismal specimens were zonked out in ratty-looking chairs and a clerk about eighty-five was collapsed across the desk. I went up the creaky stairs to the fourth floor, wobbly at first but getting used to it, walked down a dim corridor to 417, and knocked.
There were noises, then the door opened a crack. I said, “Card game? Zack’s Cabs tipped me.”
A short wait, then the door opened enough for me to slide in. The room was pretty dim, which was good. Four guys sat at a round green table. They all looked me over. They didn’t seem surprised at how I looked. The guy who had let me in was big and fat, with a hard hood’s face and mean little eyes that sized me up as someone who didn’t carry a gun and was no threat. He didn’t pat me down. I was glad of that — one pat from him could mean broken ribs. He had a rumbly voice. “What’s with the bandage, the gloves, the dopey-looking shades?”
“Bad accident. Burns.”
“You going to play with gloves, shades, a hat on?”
“If it’s O.K.”
He looked me over some more, then flopped a hand toward the table. I saw big stacks of bills, including hundreds, in front of the players. This was a big-time game. These guys weren’t flotsam like down in the lobby. They had good clothes. I didn’t recognize any of them but I’d sat in on games like this and gone to raunchy places to do it sometimes. And tonight I had in my pocket eighty-eight dollars.
I didn’t know if it was enough even to ante.
But the excitement was bubbling inside me. I had the feeling that the cards were going to run for me.
I sat down carefully, hearing a screech as some hip bones mashed together. I thought everybody must have heard it, but nobody seemed to.
The guy across from me had a skinny moustache on a spongy, unpleasant face. The ring on his pinky was money. The other players had different faces, all unpleasant, and all of them wore things that showed they were rich — cufflinks, rings, a jeweled tieclip. They looked at me. They didn’t like me but I was no worse than any other creep, because everyone was a creep. They didn’t look scared or surprised by my looks — I was just a super-skinny, bandaged creep in a mildewed overcoat and a stained hat.
The hood sat down at the far side of the table and picked up the deck of cards. He was the dealer. “Ante is twenty bucks.”
The guys all put in the ante. Still nobody said anything. I got out my little wad and pulled through it and got two tens out. “No limit,” said the dealer. He was the guy who ran the game. He was big enough to run any game anywhere.
He dealt. Fast, smooth — he was a dealer. I picked up my cards, finding I could manage them all right even with gloves on and nothing but bone under the gloves. I looked them over. I had tens full over treys.
The guy on the dealer’s left had the bet. He pulled hundreds from his stack, laid them in the pot.
“Bet’s four hundred,” the dealer growled at me.
I pushed my wad into the pot. “I’m in for that.”
He counted it with his eyes. “That’s sixty-eight dollars.”
“I know.”
He looked around the table. There were shrugs. They didn’t care. They’d let me play out my chickenfeed.
The guy on my left called the four hundred. The next guy raised to a thousand. The last guy dropped. The first guy called. The guy around me called.
The dealer said, “Cards.”
Everybody took one or two. I stood pat, and waited while the betting went around with another raise — big money now in the pot. Finally the calling was over, me just sitting there with my pat hand, and the raiser showed what he had. It was a high straight. The others folded their cards. I was left. I showed my full boat.
Somebody made change, and I got $136 plus my ante. The high straight took the rest.
That was the first hand.
The second was mine again. I doubled my $136 with three aces.
I doubled that the third hand.
“You’re having a run of luck,” said the dealer. The others nodded or shrugged.
The game went on, and it kept going that way. I won three more hands, then lost, then won five in a row, then lost again. Then I won twenty-two straight hands. All the big bills were in front of me now. Just a few bills were in front of the other players.
One of the guys got up from the table. His sour, skinny face was sick. “I’ve lost twenty-five thousand dollars. I have a wife and children. I’m not rich — this tieclip is glass. Most things that impress people are glass.” He took off the tieclip, went to the window, opened it wide, and threw the tieclip out. “I’m assistant manager of a bank. The money I lost was the bank’s. Now it’s jail for me, disgrace and ruin for my family.”
He stood at the window, staring down. I said to the dealer, who was closest to him, “Stop him.”
“Why?”
The man with the skinny moustache spoke. “This game has been boring.” He reached in his jacket and brought out bills — a huge handful of bills. “There’s two hundred grand here.” He dropped the bills on the table in a tumbled heap. He pulled the gold-mounted diamond ring from his pinky, dropped it on the bills. “That’s worth twenty-five grand. And here’s a platinum cigarette lighter.” It dropped by the ring. “Another twenty-five. I’ll play you for that,” he said to me, “against what you have on the table.”
“It’s not near what you have.”
“I didn’t ask that. I just want to win one hand, so that the night’s not a total loss.”
The man at the window stared down. “There’s no hope left for me.”
I said to the moustached man, “What do you want to play?”
“Cut for high card.”
One cut — one card. A hundred thousand to lose, $250,000 to win. I looked at the deck the dealer set between us and wondered if there was one more piece of luck left in there — one more card for me.
The man cut first, looked, turned his hand so we could all see. It was the ten of hearts. He placed his pile back on the deck.
I looked at the deck. I held my right hand bones over it and felt like I was waiting until the bones got the feel that they would make the right cut. I watched the glove move, close on the deck, and pluck up part of it — turning the cut first to the moustached man, then around the table so the others could see, finally to myself. The queen of spades.