Some of this small-time money—the greasy money—is filtered up to the big-time gamblers, the true professional men; but only—as Eddie was beginning to find out—seldom, and then in small amounts. The main sources of the big-timer—like Minnesota Fats—are only three: the well-to-do sportsman, the big con man, and the other big-timer. The well-to-do sportsman comes in two breeds: the tweedy philosopher with a gun collection and money, and the Miami Beach industrialist, with friends in the Senate and money. The big con man is hard to recognize, except that he is always personable and intelligent; but when he has money he has plenty, and he likes to lose it. And the other big-timer is somebody you don’t seek out when all you need is money. Games between full-scale, professional gamblers always have things at stake which are not as easily negotiable or recognizable as cash. It’s said that when whales fight whales it is never merely because one is hungry. And that makes sense; the sea is very full of smaller fish.
But these factors were working against Eddie, who, by nature, by skill, by ambition, by everything except income and experience, was a big-timer; and who was beginning to feel that he must have a thousand dollars before he was anything at all. In the first place it was summer. Wealthy sportsmen are seldom in the big northern cities in the summer; they are sunning or shading themselves in places created especially for wealthy sportsmen. And the con men are with the wealthy sportsmen, usually buying them drinks. Most of the big-timers are following the races—horse, boat, automobile—or the sportsman and the big con. (This makes a sort of procession: sportsman, con, gambler; with money in the lead, as is only fitting and proper.) True, some big gamblers remain behind, like Minnesota Fats. Either they have business connections at home, or they do not find it necessary to leave town in order to find action. A man like Minnesota Fats needs no agent; he attracts—as Eddie knew well—his own clientele.
Summer was against him, in Chicago. Also against him was the fact that now he had announced his presence in town and his high talents so clearly, in the one big game, it would be impossible for him to enter any major poolroom—any big-timers’ room—without being spotted. He would go back to Bennington’s; but not until he had money. And he had been depending on a manager, Charlie, for too long. Without Charlie his only hustle was to talk himself into a game and squeeze out what he could. He was good at the talking in part—was, in fact, phenomenal—but found the squeezing difficult. He had lost some of the touch—and all of the enthusiasm—for it….
After Sarah had come back from school and had taken him to bed, they talked, lying together, barely touching. He did not tell her much about himself, did not feel that he had to. He told her that his father was an electrician, his mother dead, that for a long time he had made his living “one way or another.” She asked him what that meant, but he did not answer her. He did not want to say, “I’m a pool hustler. I intend to be the best goddamn pool hustler in the business,” so he said nothing.
Her father and mother had been divorced for a long time. Her father, a moderately wealthy man, a car dealer of some kind, was remarried and living in St. Louis, where she had been raised and had gone to school. The first of every month she got a check for three hundred dollars from him.
Her mother lived in Toledo; they had not seen each other for five years. She spoke several times of herself as an alcoholic and as if they, she and Eddie, had some kind of contract of depravity between them. He did not like this; it was phony and mildly embarrassing. But, if she liked to think of herself that way, as harder, more dissolute than she actually was, it did not really make much difference. Maybe she would outgrow it. Maybe the kind of treatment that he was giving her would make for a change.
When he left the apartment he walked for a while, not heading for any particular place, but wanting to walk and to think.
Finally he came to the poolroom where he had won the forty dollars at snooker. He did not like the place; its walls were too bright, with glaring white tile like a subway station and bright incandescent lamps; but he had done well there before.
He did not do well this time. There was nothing happening, nothing at all. But then, he had something to go home to….
He did not often think of Minnesota Fats and of the game they had played, not explicitly; but he would think around the edges of it—the whole forty hours of it were now compressed in his mind into a single event, as if it had all happened in an instant, so that the memory was a kaleidoscopic picture of the fat man with the rings on his fingers and of the moment when the high ceiling of Bennington’s had spun, slid, and fallen on him, and of himself lying on the floor with the sound of the cue ball crashing in his dulled ears and his money and his victory gone. And, without detailing the events in sequence, his mind could skirt around the whole thing, licking at its edges, probing at it, wanting to twist it, ease it, pull it, jerk it out, as the restless tongue probes at a strand of food wedged between the teeth; or the fingers, working of their own volition, toy with the scab that overlays a cut.
And there was beginning to be a feeling of restlessness, the unformulated knowledge that he must be setting about his business, that there were things he had to do. There was money to be won, capital to be earned. And there was the need for practice….
It was several days later that he got into a poker game, got into it because he was becoming desperate for action. It seemed impossible to locate a pool game that had any chance of becoming worthwhile.
It was in the middle of an afternoon. He was in the little poolroom near the Loop, on Parmenter Street, trying to find some kind of game, any game at all. There was nothing doing, nothing whatever. There were only four men in the pool-playing part of the place, and all of them knew him. He offered to play one of them a handicap game where he would shoot with one hand in his pocket—jack-up pool—while the other man shot the usual way. The man laughed, pleasantly enough, and shook his head. “You’re outta my league, mister.”
The door to the back room was open and Eddie wandered back, not thinking of anything in particular, feeling disgusted with himself, irritated. He felt, for a minute, like giving the whole thing up for the day and going back to Sarah’s apartment and drinking with her. But there was something about that idea that made him uneasy. He looked around the room he was in; it was the first time he had been back there. Five men were sitting around a circular table covered with the faded green felt that could only have been a worn-out pool cloth, quietly playing cards. There were no other chairs in the room. He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall.