There was a hand in progress, seven-card stud, which on the fifth card was down to a two-man race, Fred Stehl and Leo Morgentauser. Leo looked like a possible flush, Fred a possible straight. Doug Hallman was dealing. I looked at the hands and the faces and knew that Leo either had it in five or was on his way to buying, and that Fred was hanging in with a four-straight that wouldn’t ever fill, and even with Sid Falco over there to my right I began to calm down and get into the swing of things.
This twice-weekly poker game had been a Wednesday-and-Sunday institution with us for five or six years now, with only minor changes in personnel all that time. There were five regulars including me in the game these days, plus half a dozen other guys who’d drop in from time to time. Leo Morgentauser, the made flush currently betting up Fred Stehl’s unmade straight, was one of the irregulars, a teacher at a vocational high school in Queens, teaching automobiles or sewing machines or something. A tall skinny bushy-haired guy with a huge Adam’s apple, Leo was married and probably didn’t make a very good living, so he seldom came to the game, but when he did he was usually a winner. He was a good poker psychologist and could run a very beautiful bluff when he felt like it. His biggest failing was that he wouldn’t push a streak, so sometimes he’d go home with less of our money than he should have had. Not that I’m complaining.
Everybody else at the table tonight was a regular. Fred Stehl, the guy currently head to head with Leo, was a gambling fool, and next to Jerry Allen, was the closest thing to a fish among the regulars. He was a fairly consistent loser, maybe four times out of five, but as he would begin to lose he would also begin to get more cautious, so he rarely lost heavily. The big joke with Fred was his wife, Cora, who was death on gambling and was always trying to track Fred down. Almost every time she’d call during the game, wanting to know if Fred was there, and Jerry always covered for him. A couple of times she’d actually showed up at the apartment, but Jerry hadn’t let her in, and the last time, over a year ago, she punched him in the nose. It was really very funny, though Jerry, with a nosebleed, hadn’t seen the humor in it very much. Fred ran a laundromat on Flatbush Avenue over in Brooklyn, and I guess he had to make a pretty good living at it because on the average he had to drop ten or twenty bucks a week at our two games. Also, he plays the horses a lot. In fact, it was through him I started placing my own bets with Tommy McKay.
Doug Hallman, currently dealing, was a huge hairy fat man who ran a gas station on Second Avenue not far from the Midtown Tunnel. He was a blustery sort of player, the kind who tries to look mean and menacing when he bluffs. Otherwise he was a pretty good poker player and won more often than he lost, and my only objection to him was the twelve-for-a-quarter cigars he smoked all the time.
And finally there was Sid Falco, thin, serious, narrow-headed, probably the youngest guy at the table. A deadly serious poker player, he was full of the math of the game, the only one at the table who could reel off the odds for making any hand given any situation and lie of the cards. He played strictly by the book, which meant very conservative, no imagination, and he was a small but consistent winner. Two or three times a night he’d try a bluff, because the book says you should bluff every once in a while to keep the other players guessing, but his bluffs were always as transparent as wax paper. A bluff being so unnatural to him, he would start acting weird, like a robot going crazy in a science-fiction story. He’d light a cigarette with funny jerky movements, or start telling a joke in a high-pitched voice, or start comparing the time on his watch with the time on everybody else’s watch. His bluffs tended to get called.
The current hand finally finished itself out, and when Fred Stehl bumped Leo Morgentauser’s bet on the last card, everybody knew he’d bought the straight after all. Which was too bad, because everybody but Fred had known for a long time that Leo already had the flush.
Leo, naturally, went into his Actors’ Studio number, frowning at his down cards, at Fred’s up cards, at the chips in front of himself, at the pot, at the opposite wall, and then finally sighing and shaking his head and raising Fred back.
And Fred gave him another raise. Because he’s a gambling fool, because his straight had come in and he couldn’t believe it was a loser, and because it was early in the evening and he hadn’t lost much yet.
And Leo cried, “Hah!” and with a great flourish and an evil grin of triumph he raised Fred back.
Fred’s face was pitiful to see. He understood now he’d been suckered, but Leo’s overacting had to keep him in because there was always that faint remote chance Leo was trying a double reverse bluff, which of course he wasn’t. But Fred had to call.
Leo showed him the flush and pulled in the pot.
Fred didn’t even bother to show the straight. He just folded his up cards and pushed them away.
Leo dealt next, seven-card stud again, the game he’d won at. I got a four and nine down and a Jack up, three different suits, and folded. I spent the rest of the hand watching Sid Falco, who was nursing a pair of showing Queens through a careful methodical hand in which his only competition was Jerry Allen, who looked to have Kings up with no pair showing.
So Sid Falco was a mobster. Or worked for a mobster. Or worked for somebody connected with mobsters. Or something. The point was, did he look any different now that I knew whatever it was I knew about him?
No. He looked like the exact same guy who’d always said he was a salesman for a wholesale liquor company.
Well, maybe that was true. There were still a lot of legitimate outfits that tended to have mob connections. Like bars, for instance, and soft-drink bottlers, and jukebox and vending-machine operators, and liquor wholesalers, and linen services, and real estate management companies, and God alone knows what all. So Sid Falco could have an apparently honest job and he could still be a mobster.
But why didn’t he look different to me? Tougher, maybe, or more dangerous, or dirtier, or more mysterious. Something. But he didn’t.
I wondered what would happen if I were to lean over close to him, as though interested in his hole cards (being out of the hand, so it was okay), and whisper in his ear, “Solomon Napoli.” Just that. And sit back, and innocently look around at the other hands still in the game.
I wondered, and I looked at Sid’s profile, and I decided not to find out. In spite of his not looking any different, I decided not to find out. No, that isn’t right, it was because he didn’t look any different. His surface was still the same, there was no sign of whatever it was that lurked beneath, and that was more intimidating than any kind of blatant toughness. He showed nothing at all, and that meant the reality could be anything at all, and that meant I didn’t want to know what it was. So I minded my own business, and did no whispering to Sid.
In the meantime Sid and his pair of Queens had pushed steadily but moderately through the hand, and at the finish there was no one left but Jerry with his probable Kings up. Sid made a limit bet, and Jerry had to stay in and make Sid show the trips, and Sid did. Jerry made that embarrassed unhappy laugh of his, and looked around the table to see if anybody had noticed his failure. We all know that move of his by now, so we were all looking some place else.
Fred dealt next. Seven-card stud again. Fred was the true gambling fool, he’d go back to the game that bit him time after time till he finally bit it back. This time I got a three and Jack down and a seven up, three suits again. I folded, naturally, and began to wonder if my luck with Purple Pecunia had been strictly a one-shot. These cards were costing me a quarter a hand.