The kid looked barely twenty to Martin, if that. Yet here he was committed to an irrevocably bold act. Psychopathic? Suicidal? Early criminal? Breadwinner desperate for cash? An aberrant gesture in the young, in any case. The kid’s shoulders were spotted with rain, a drizzle that had begun as Martin arrived. The kid wore a black fedora with brim down, and rubbers. A holdup man in shiny rubbers with large tongues that protected his shoelaces from the damp night. What’s wrong with this picture?
“Come on, move,” the kid said, in a louder voice. And Martin felt his body readying to stand and obey, shed wallet, watch, and gold wedding band bought and inscribed in Galway: Martin and Maire, Together. Never another like that. Give it up? Well, there are priorities beyond the staunchest sentiment. And yet, and yet. Martin contained his impulse, for the other players still stared at the kid and his.22 target pistol. Gentlemen, do you realize that psychopaths snap under stress? Are you snapping, young crazy? Is blood in the cards tonight? Martin envisioned a bleeding corpus and trembled at the possibilities.
And then Billy reached for the kid’s swag bag, picked it off the money pile, and threw it back at the gunny boy. Billy grabbed a fistful of cash from the pot and stuffed it into his coat. The kid stepped behind Bump Oliver’s chair and shoved the pistol into the light. “Hey,” he said to Billy, yelling. But Billy went back for a second handful of bills.
“That pea-shooter you got there wouldn’t even poison me,” he said.
Martin’s thought was: Billy’s snapped; the kid will kill him. But the kid could not move, his response to Billy lost, perhaps, inside his rubbers. The kid’s holding position deteriorated entirely with the arrival of a sucker punch to the back of his neck by Bud Bradt, a man of heft, yes, but also of stealth, who had been edging toward the kid from the rear and then made a sudden leap to deliver his massive dose of fist to the sucker spot, sending the kid sprawling over the empty chair, gun hand sliding through the money, gun clattering to the floor on the far side of the table. Lemon pulled the kid off the table, punched his face, and threw him to the floor. Then he and Morrie kicked the kid body in dual celebration of the vanquishing until Nick said, “Shit, that’s enough.” Bud Bradt took over, kicked the kid once more, and then lifted him by collar and leg up the stairs, a bleeding carcass.
“Don’t leave him in my alley,” Nick said.
Bud Bradt came right back and Nick said, “Where’d you put him?”
“In the gutter between two cars.”
“Good,” said Nick. “Maybe they’ll run over him.”
“I would guess,” said Martin, “that that would look very like a murder to somebody. And that’s not only illegal, it also requires explanations.”
“Yeah,” said Nick, crestfallen. “Put him up on the sidewalk.”
Martin went outside with Bud in time to see the kid hoisting himself up from the gutter with the help of the bumper of a parked car. The kid drew up to full height, full pain, and a fully bloodied face. He looked toward the alley and saw Martin and Bud, and then, with strength rising up from the secret reservoir fear draws upon, he turned from them and ran with a punishing limp across Clinton Avenue, down Quackenbush Street, down toward the waterworks and the New York Central tracks, and was gone then, fitfully gone into the darkness.
“Didn’t kick him enough,” Bud said. “The son of a bitch can still run. But he’ll think twice before he does that again.”
“Or shoot somebody first to make his point.”
“Yeah, there’s that.”
Footers had come up behind them in time to see the kid limp into the blackness. “I was in a crap game once,” Footers said, “and a fellow went broke and put a pistol on the table to cover his bet. Five guys faded him.”
Martin saw the kid limping into the beginning of his manhood, victim of crazy need, but insufficient control of his craziness. Martin had been delighted to see the kid sucker-punched five minutes earlier, salvation of the Galway wedding band. Now he felt only compassion for a victim, lugubrious emotions having to do with pity at pain, foreboding over concussions, lungs punctured by broken ribs, internal ruptures, and other leaky avenues to death or lesser grievings. Victims, villains were interchangeable. Have it both ways, lads. Weep for Judas at the last gasp. We knew he’d come to the end of his rope. He couldn’t beat the fate the Big Boy knew was on him, poor bastard.
“I don’t know what the hell to do with this pot,” Nick was saying as they reentered the cellar. He was still picking quarters off the floor.
“Give it to Billy,” Morrie said. “He deserves it.”
“You’re a genuine hero,” Martin said to Billy. “Like the quarterback who makes the touchdown with a broken leg. There’s a heroic edge to such behavior. You think bullets don’t kill the single-minded.”
“Weird day,” Billy said. “I took a knife away from a looney in the Grand Lunch a few hours ago.”
The others stopped talking.
“This kid was poking near my belly,” and Billy showed them and told them about the coffee game.
“But you had a weapon in the coffee,” Martin said. “Tonight you had nothing. You know a twenty-two slug can damage you just as permanently as five rounds from a machine gun. Or is your education lacking in this?”
“I didn’t think like that,” Billy said. “I just wasn’t ready to hand over a night’s work to that drippy little bastard. His gun didn’t even look real. Looked like a handful of candy. Like one of them popguns my nephew has that shoots corks. Worst I’m gonna get is a cork in the ear, that’s how it went. But the money counted, Martin. I owe people, and I was hot for that pot, too. I had kings and nines, ready to fill up.”
“Billy should get a chunk of that pot, Nick,” Morrie said.
“He got two handfuls,” Nick said.
“That was his own dough going back home,” Morrie said. “What about the rest? And Bud ought to get something. Without them guys, I’d have personally lost one hell of a bundle.”
“Everybody oughta split the pot,” Lemon said. “Nobody had a winning hand.”
“Especially you,” Footers said.
“You folded, Lemon, forget it,” Morrie said.
“Fuck you guys,” Lemon said.
“Why you gommy, stupid shit,” Morrie said. “You might be dead if it wasn’t for Billy and Bud. Your head is up your ass.”
“While it’s up there, Lemon,” Footers said, “see if you can see Judge Crater anywhere. He’s been gone a long time.”
“The only three had the power in that last hand,” said Morrie, “was Billy, me, and you, Nick. Everybody else was out of it. So it’s a three-way split. I say Billy gets half my share and Bud the other half.”
“I got enough,” Billy said.
“I’ll take it,” said Bud.
“It’s about forty apiece, what’s left, three ways. One-twenty and some silver here.” Nick counted out the split, forty to each, and pocketed his own share.
“You really keeping your whole forty, Nick?” Morrie asked, divvying his share between Billy and Bud. “After what those boys did for you and your joint?”
“Whataya got in mind now?”
“The house buys them steaks at Becker’s.”
“I don’t fight that,” Billy said.
“I ate,” Nick said.
“So eat again, or send money.”
Nick snapped a five on the table to Morrie, who looked at it, looked at Nick, didn’t pick it up. Nick peeled off another five.
“I give ten to the meal. Eat up. But is the game dead here? What the hell, everybody gonna eat? Nobody gonna play cards?”
“Dead for me,” Morrie said, picking up the fivers. And clearly, Billy and Martin were pointed elsewhere when Nick took a good look, and Footers was drawing himself another beer.