“Well that’s a hell of a how-do-you-do,” Lemon said. “I turn my hand over and show you I got a four flush.”
“Yes, you did that. And then I bet you forty dollars. You want to play five cards open, that’s okay by me. But, Lemon, my word to you is still four-oh.”
“You’re bluffing, Phelan.”
“You could find out.”
“What do you think of a guy like this, Nick?” Lemon said.
“It’s the game, Lemon. Who the hell ever told you to show your hole card before the bet?”
“He’s bluffing. I know the sevens were all played. He’s got a third eight? Aces,” Lemon said, now doing his private calculating out loud. “Nick folded an ace, I got an ace. So you got the case ace? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Forty dollars, Lemon.”
Lemon went to the sandwich table, bit a bologna sandwich, and drew a glass of beer. He came back and studied Billy’s hand. Still ace, seven and the eights.
Billy sat with his arms folded. Keeping cool. But folks, he was really feeling the sweet pressure, and had been, all through the hand: rising, rising. And he keeps winning on top of that. It was so great he was almost ready to cream. Goddamn, life is fun, ain’t it Billy? Win or lose, you’re in the mix. He ran his fingers over the table’s green felt, fingered his pile of quarters, flipped through his stack of bills while he waited for the Lemon squash. Goddamn, it’s good.
Bump watched him with a squinty eye.
Footers was smiling as he chewed his cigar, his nickel Headline. The Great Footers. Nobody like him. Drinking pal of Billy’s for years, always good for a touch. Footers knew how to survive, too. Told Billy once how he came off a four-day drunk and woke up broke and dirty, needing a shave bad. Called in a neighbor’s kid and gave him a nickel, the only cash Footers had. Sent him down to the Turk’s grocery for a razor blade. The kid came back with it and Footers shaved. Then he washed and dried the blade and folded it back in its wrapper and called the kid again and told him, take this back to the Turk and tell him you didn’t get it straight. Tell him Mr. O’Brien didn’t want a razor blade, he wanted a cigar. And the kid came back with the cigar.
Billy looked at Footers and laughed at the memory. Footers smiled and shook his head over the mousehole in Lemon’s character. Five minutes had passed since Lemon turned up the hole card.
“Thirty seconds, Lemon,” Nick said. “I give you thirty seconds and then you call it or the pot’s over.”
Lemon sat down and bit the bologna. He looked Billy in the eye as his time ticked away.
“You said it too fast when you bet,” Lemon said with a mouthful. “You probably got it.”
“I’ll be glad to show you,” Billy said.
“Yeah, well you’re good, you lucky bastard.”
“Ah,” said Billy, pulling in the pot at last. “My mother thanks you, my sister thanks you, my nephew thanks you, and above all, Lemon, I, William Francis Irish Catholic Democrat Phelan, I too thank you.”
And Billy shoved his hole card face down into the discards.
Lemon sulked, but life went on. Bump Oliver dealt and Billy came up with kings wired. Very lovely. Also Billy heard for the first time the unmistakable whipsaw snap of a real mechanic at work dealing seconds. Billy watched Bump deal, admiringly. Billy appreciated talent wherever he saw it. Nobody else seemed to notice, but the whipsaw was as loud as a brass band to Billy’s ear. It was not Billy’s music, however. He did not mind the music cheaters made, so long as they didn’t make it all over him. He caught Bump’s eye, smiled, and then folded the kings.
“No thanks,” was all he said to Bump, but it was plenty. Bump stopped looking at Billy and folded his own hand after the next card. He played two more hands and dropped out of the game. The cheater lost money. Never took a nickel from anybody, thanks to doughty Billy. Nobody knew Bump was really a wicked fellow at heart. Nobody knew either, how Billy absolutely neutralized him.
Billy, you’re a goddamned patent-leather wonder.
Martin arrived at the card game in time to see Lemon Lewis throw the deck across the room and hear Nick tell him, “Pick ’em up or get out. Do it again, I don’t want your action.” Lemon, the world’s only loser, picked up the cards and sat down, bent his shiny bald head over a new hand and continued, sullenly, to lose. Billy looked like a winner to Martin, but Morrie Berman had the heavyweight stack of cash.
“You’ve been doing all right, then,” Martin said, pulling a chair up behind Billy.
“Seem to be doing fine.” Half a glass of beer sat beside Billy’s winnings, his eyes at least six beers heavier than when Martin had last seen him.
“You coachin’ this fella, Martin?” Nick said.
“Doesn’t look to me as if he needs much coaching.”
“He’s got the luck of the fuckin’ Irish,” Lemon said.
“Be careful what you say about the Irish,” Footers said. “There’s Jews in this game.”
“So what? I’m a Jew.”
“You’re not a Jew, Lemon. You’re an asshole.”
“Up yours, too,” Lemon said, and he checked his hole card.
“Lemon, with repartee like that you belong on the stage,” Footers said, and he looked at his watch. “And there’s one leaving in ten minutes.”
“Play cards,” Nick said.
“The bet,” said Morrie, “is eighty dollars.”
“Eighty,” Nick said.
Morrie smiled and looked nothing like Isaac. He had a theatrical quality Martin found derivative-a touch of Valentino, a bit of George Raft, but very like Ricardo Cortez: dark, slick, sleek-haired Latin stud, as if Morrie had studied the type to energize his own image as a Broadway cocksmith and would-be gigolo, a heavy gambler, an engaging young pimp with one of the smartest whores on Broadway, name of Marsha. Marsha was still in business but had split with Morrie five years back and worked alone now. Pimping is enough to weight down a paternal brow, but Jake’s imputation of lead sluggery implied a far broader absence of quality in Morrie, and Martin could not see it.
What he saw was Morrie’s suavity, and an ominous reserve in that muscular smile which George Raft, at his most evil, could never have managed; for Raft was too intellectually soft, too ready for simple solutions. Morrie, like Cortez, and unlike the pliant, innocent Isaac, conveyed with that controlled smile that he understood thoroughly that life was shaped by will, wit, brains, a reverence for power, a sense of the comic; that things were never simple; and that the end of behavior was not action but comprehension on which to base action. George Raft, you are a champion, but how would you ever arrive at such a conclusion?
“K-K-K-Katy, he’s bettin’ me eighty,” sang Footers, and he folded. That left Nick, Billy, and Morrie with money to win. The pot fattened, and Nick cut it for the house.
The cellar door opened and a kid, twenty-two maybe, stepped in and was met by Nick’s doorman, the hefty Bud Bradt, an All-Albany fullback for Philip Schuyler High in the late twenties. The players looked up, saw the kid getting the okay from Bud, and went back to their cards. Then the kid came down the eight steps, stood with his back to the door that led to Nick’s furnace and coal bin, and, taking a small pistol from his sock, told the players: “Okay, it’s a holdup.”
“Cowboy,” Morrie said, and he reached for his cash.
“Don’t touch that, mister,” the kid said. “That’s what I came for,” and he threw a cloth bag on top of the pot. “Put your watches and rings in that.”
“This isn’t a healthy thing to do in Albany, young man,” Footers said to him. “They’ve got rules in this town.”
“Do what I say, Pop. Off with the jewelry and out with the wallets. Empty your pockets and then move over against that wall.” He pointed with his small pistol toward the bologna sandwiches.