Therefore they had to win every day, they had to win tonight, tomorrow and forever. The long chance was the pursuer’s luxury, the short one the necessity of the pursued. The pursued had to be certain beforehand, make no mistake in timing and do it all within rules laid down long ago by the hunter.
‘If this was a Polak game nobody’d drop,’ Sparrow decided.
For the Poles shoved the law of averages off the table and chased the longest possible chance down fantastic myriad ways. With three kings face up about the board and not enough in the pot to warrant a 5-1 risk, they took the 52-1 chance without hesitation and went for the case king as if it were a hope of heaven. If they did hit it the very idea of having had the brassbound nerve to play a chance that long was as exciting a reward to them as the money it had won.
So long as they could still borrow from the bartender they played like men who never lost a round; though they might have been losing steadily for a month. The Jews recalled last year’s losses and forgot this hand’s winnings. The Poles played the game for its own sake, to kill the monotony of their lives. The Jews played to make the hours return to them of what other hours, in other cities, had robbed their fathers; their lives were less boring away from the board than at it. The Pole, even when playing on borrowed money and the rent overdue, still felt, somehow, that he could afford to lose all night because he was so sure to win everything in the end. The Jew knew that the moment he felt he could afford to lose he would begin losing till the bottom of the world fell through and he himself went through the hole. It was more fun being a Polish gambler; it was safer to be a Jewish one.
Now, after he had raised the bet to a dollar on his three jacks, only two players came along with Sparrow. He hadn’t yet filled but had an open six and an open deuce to draw to and on the sixth card the player to his left suddenly bet into him. Sparrow raised it a dollar without faltering and the third hand dropped. The final card was down and the man who’d taken over the driver’s seat checked. Sparrow sensed him to be hiding. With only a single left in front of him he said, ‘Two in the dark – one buck light.’ He was that certain his card was there. It had to be there.
‘Owes the pot a buck,’ the dealer announced and Sparrow caught High Man’s eyes measuring him as if he were a badly marinated herring and shoved two singles and a silver trail of quarters into the pot. ‘Two and two better.’ The dealer counted swiftly – ‘but not so fast as Frankie’ – Sparrow thought loyally. Then lost courage and said, ‘I see.’
‘Three bucks light,’ the dealer warned him, and the punk’s greedy little heart fluttered weakly.
‘Turn ’em over.’
High Man flipped his hand: two little deucies and three little treys. He’d caught. Sparrow revealed his three jacks wired. Beside a six, a deuce and a queen. All the closed card had to be was a deuce – but the deuces were dead – a trey – but the treys were dead – a queen then or the case jack – the dealer flipped the card for him.
Nine of clubs.
‘That nine of clubs is the devil card every time,’ somebody sympathized.
‘I owe you t’ree, friend,’ Sparrow assured High Man. ‘Be right back with the bundle – save my seat, Dealer.’
‘It’s a long night till morning,’ someone surmised dryly. But Sparrow was almost to the door before the bouncer collared him. ‘You owe the gentmuns some money over there.’
‘Holy Jumped-up Jesus,’ Sparrow protested with real indignation,’ I just told the man what I owed him myself – it’s where I’m goin’ now, to get it. Where the hell you think I’m goin’?’
‘Out to steal it for all I know – but the gentmuns can’t wait.’
‘If he can’t wait let the house pay him off.’ Sparrow faltered then and he whispered in strict confidence, ‘I’m a steerer myself, friend. Us steerers got to stick together.’
‘Let him go, Ju-ju,’ someone said behind the bouncer. It was old man Kippel, looking as professionally tolerant as a Southern senator. Old man Kippel didn’t go for rough stuff for sums under five c’s. ‘Just see the lad don’t sit in the dollar game no more.’
‘I’ll remember you all the same, sheenie,’ Ju-ju told Sparrow, to let his boss know that his heart was in his work. But the punk had fled pockets empty and feelings wounded savagely. ‘Callin’ me a sheenie, him the biggest rag sheenie on Division – he couldn’t get no job except in a rag-sheenie joint.’
And wondered whether that kite was still caught up there, so high on the city wires.
That was how Sparrow was still feeling when he wandered back into the Tug & Maul hoping that his credit might still somehow rate a shot and a beer. His rating had slipped badly with Antek since Old Husband had checked out. A new sign above the register apprised him that it was lower than ever today:
I think you think you think you know what I’m think ing but I’m not thinking what I think you think I think: Credit.
While in the place of the Our cow is dead legend a more forceful one expressed Owner’s current attitude toward everyone:
Once a rat always a rat
And who, standing up to be counted, can say that not once has he played the rat?
So there wasn’t any use reminding Owner how freely he had spent Old Husband’s Christmas bonus and then had gone right on through the old man’s insurance money while Frankie was sitting in the bucket. Owner had a bad memory for long-spent rolls. It hadn’t even been a good idea to spend it with Owner, Sparrow realized regretfully now. ‘It seemed like I was buildin’ up my credit then. But I was oney tearin’ it down,’ he was forced to conclude these many months after. ‘All the good I done was to get Frankie saltyback at me.’ While the big bass juke mocked his present poverty.
‘Wrap your troubles in dreams
And dream your troubles away …’
In the back booth, where he and Frankie had so often drunk together, Umbrella Man sat with his great unskilled hands folded gently over his bell and his head lying sidewise upon his hands, so that the bell’s rain-rusted handle made a long crease in his unshaven cheek. The bottom had pretty well fallen out of things for Umbrellas when Frankie had taken the ride to Twenty-sixth and California. He had been drunk most of the time since. His credit had fallen to a state even lower than Sparrow’s.
Once Cousin Kvorka had had him locked up overnight to keep him from gambling and had then told him he was only out on parole. Umbrellas had believed, ever since, that if he should ever be caught gambling, at any table where anyone but Frankie Machine was dealing, he too would be sent out to Twenty-sixth and California.
Now he raised his battered brow, called to some dealer of his dreams for the one card that could save his life and waited, with a dull glaze over his eyes, till it seemed to fall right in front of him. He studied the hypothetical card, turning it over and over with fingers that seemed to feel it and read with heavy lids: ‘Fulled up. Aces.’ Then boggled his eyes about at the hypothetical players with whom he played so often of late: now one of them would have to buy him a drink. And fell forward across his bell as though he’d been struck from behind with the handle of his own umbrella.
They say it’s hard enough to find a needle in a haystack. Sometimes it’s even harder to find five dollars in a city of four million people, most of them millionaires. So that when Sparrow heard a familiar shuffle behind him he turned on the stool and said, ‘I want to talk to you, Piggy-O.’
Pig, wearing his everlasting smirk with that same air of fresh prosperity he’d worn ever since Nifty Louie had checked out, tapped on toward the eyeless juke without hearing a word, leaving behind the same old smell of unwashed underwear.