"Michael Stout."
Smack.
"Tell me about him."
Click.
Barnes laughed, then grinned at me as if he'd just executed some marvelous combination that would give him a forced checkmate. "You're not going to get much for your fifty bucks, Frederickson. I don't know a damn thing about him except his name, the fact that he's the most gifted natural chess player I've ever met, and he'd never played in a single tournament before he met me. Who gives a shit about anything else? He will win his section of the Open. You can bet on it. The people he'll be playing are probably two or three hundred rating points below him in real strength."
Click.
"Where does he come from?"
Click.
"I don't know."
Click.
"How did you meet him?"
Click.
"Your flag's going to fall pretty soon."
Click.
"It hasn't fallen yet. I'm paying big bucks for this little game, Theo, so answer the damn question."
Smack.
The chess hustler shrugged, then leaned back on the stone bench and crossed his legs. "He just came walking into the park a couple of weeks ago. He saw us playing, came over and stood around watching. He was wearing rags, and he looked like shit-scared, maybe a little dopey. But he was paying real close attention to what was going on. At first he was standing back quite a ways, but after a couple of hours he started coming closer-like a few inches at a time. He was real interested in the games. Finally he ended up actually standing between two tables, looking back and forth at the games on either side of him. We were busy playing, so nobody gave a shit where he stood as long as he didn't interfere with the paying customers. Then he lines up at the table where Buster Brown is playing. It comes his turn, and he takes sixty-seven cents out of his pocket and challenges Buster to a game. Can you believe it? Well, there's nobody else waiting, so Buster takes him on. Damned if the guy doesn't beat Buster." Click.
"Buster isn't that strong." Click.
"You've got that right. Buster's only a C, maybe low B player. But he talks trash, he's intimidating, and he's pretty good at speed chess, where the other guy is under pressure. Still, he's just been beaten by this dopey-looking guy, and we're all laughing our asses off at him. Buster Brown doesn't like that. He gives the guy sixty-seven cents, challenges him to play for double or nothing. They play again, the guy beats him again. Well, before you know it he's got ten bucks in his pocket. That's enough to interest me, so I challenge him to a game for the ten bucks, figuring I'll blow him away. Then the son of a bitch beats me! How would you rate my strength, Frederickson?"
Click.
Smack.
"Any questions you have get answered on your time, not mine. We've never played a serious game, but I'd rate your strength in the mid-nineteen hundreds, close to expert."
"I like you, Frederickson."
"I'm aware of that, Theo. You're a man who wears his heart on his sleeve."
"You're a player. You don't let the fact that you're little get you down."
"That's very good, Theo. A real howler."
"What?"
"Play me the rest of the story."
Barnes shrugged. "He ends up beating every one of us, over and over. By the time it got dark he's won close to a hundred and fifty dollars. Now we're not laughing anymore. Some of the other guys are getting downright pissy. Nobody hates being hustled more than a hustler, and that's what we figure he's been doing. I mean, like maybe this guy is a grandmaster from Liechtenstein or someplace like that, and he's come downtown to pick up some pocket money while he makes fools of the poor, dumb local yokels. Buster Brown's getting ready to clean his clock, but this guy-"
"Michael Stout."
"Yeah; that's who I'm talking about. He swears he hasn't played chess in years, not since he was a kid. He didn't say where he'd come from, only that he'd been kind of out of it-those were his words-for a long time. He swore he wasn't very good when he did play. He swore he'd never played in any tournaments, and had never heard of the United States Chess Federation or FIDE. By this time Buster Brown's got his fist up against the guy's nose, but the guy sticks to his story, says he doesn't have any idea why he's suddenly so good; he says he just discovered that afternoon that he was able to glance at a position on the board and know what each player had to do in order to defend or win. Well, who's going to believe a total bullshit story like that? Buster Brown still wants to punch his lights out. But, you know, there was something about him, something about the way he kept swearing that this fucking fairy tale was all true, that made me kind of start to think that maybe he was on the level. I mean, I've got a good bullshit antenna, and I wasn't picking up liar vibes."
"I'm constantly amazed by your fine-tuned sensibilities, Theo."
"Yeah. So, anyway, I get Buster Brown out of his face, and him and me cut a deal. What the hell. The guy's already taken thirty-five bucks from me, so I didn't have anything to lose by checking him out. If he was telling the truth about never having played in competition, he'd make the perfect sandbagger. We could clean up in at least one big tournament-and maybe even two or three, if they came close enough together, and if we could get him into the lower-class sections before his adjusted rating from the first tournament was published. He didn't have a place to stay; he'd been living on the street, picking food out of trash cans and riding the subway all night. The deal was that he could stay with me, and I'd teach him the ropes about hustling so he could start to earn his keep. We'd get him signed up with the USCF, put him in a beginners' tournament where he'd intentionally lose most of his games to ensure him a low provisional rating, and then enter him in the C or D section of the New York Open, and maybe a couple of others around the country if they offered decent prize money and fell within the next month or so. I was to be his manager. Since he was flopping at my place and eating my food, it seemed only fair that I get a percentage of his winnings at tournaments, or at hustling down here. Hell, I was giving him career training and a job. That's it, Frederickson. I don't know a goddamn thing about where he comes from or what he used to do. I think he may be either sick or psycho, or something like that, because he's on some kind of medication. He takes these pills-big suckers. But I don't give a damn about that just so long as he keeps his shit together long enough to earn us some big money. How come you're so interested?"
Smack.
"I assume you did check him out, and he wasn't a USCF member or a Liechtenstein grandmaster."
Smack.
"Right. We wouldn't have been at that tournament last week, and he wouldn't be living with me, if I'd found out he hustled us. I'd have put Buster Brown back on his case."
Smack.
"Theo, I think you did a decent thing by taking him in, and by looking out for him now. But just out of curiosity, what percentage of his earnings do you take?"
Smack.
"Uh-uh. Your flag's down."
So it was. I got up off the bench and walked back toward the stone chess tables.
Chapter 5
If the man with the boyish face, brown hair, high forehead, blue eyes, and slightly dazed expression had missed a couple of meals while he was living on the streets, he was rapidly trying to make up for it. He'd already wolfed down two cheeseburgers, a mound of french fries, a side order of coleslaw, and two large Cokes at the small luncheonette across from the park where I had taken him.
"I've never met a dwarf before," Michael Stout said, sipping at his chocolate ice cream soda. "I've never even seen one, except in pictures."
I smiled, said, "It looks like you're surviving the experience."
"You're a nice man, Mr. Mongo. I haven't met many nice people in New York; most can't even bother to be polite."