Each night he slipped singles and fives and deuces into the green silk bag. Frankie dealt the fastest game in the Near Northwest Side when he was right, and he was more right now with every night; at moments it seemed to him he was faster and steadier than he had ever been. At any second, through all the hours, he knew to a nickel how the pot stood and controlled the players like the deck. They too were aces and deuces, they too were at his fingertips once more.
For like the deuces and aces they all came home to him toward closing time. Turned face up at last, their night-long secret bluffing was exposed at last: the fat florid kings, the lean and menacing black jacks and those sneaky little gray deuces, all betrayed the sucker by morning.
In the early light Schwiefka, with his fry-cook’s complexion, called ‘Change it up!’ to the steerer for the last time. And went south with the bundle.
There had been only one serious argument at Schwiefka’s while Frankie was in the slot, for Frankie had the knack of anticipating funny business. He sensed the sort of desperation which would tempt a man to slip a single exposed ace around the hole card, flashing it so fast it gave the impression of a pair. It had been that one pulled, for the sake of caution, on the slow-witted umbrella man, in which Frankie had trapped Louie cold.
Everyone knew immediately what had happened – everyone but Umbrellas. All Umbrellas knew was that Louie had said ‘bullets’ and reached for the pot. Frankie had flipped Louie’s cards open before the fixer had had time to get them back into the deck.
‘I swear I seen bullets,’ Louie had pretended casually, and nobody told him he lied. But Umbrellas had gotten the pot and Louie had never quite forgiven the dealer for exposing him. ‘You’d think it was comin’ out of his own pocket,’ he complained later of Frankie.
Since that time there came a moment every night, before the first suckers started knocking, when Frankie would look uneasily at Louie and say, ‘I call the hands. What I say goes. That’s how it’s always been ’n that’s how it’s gonna stay ’n nobody’s gonna change it.’ He told Louie that exactly as some sergeant had once told it to him when he’d questioned an order. It had worked on Private Majcinek. So ex-Private Majcinek assumed it had an effect on the fixer’s narrow head.
And studied each fresh sucker with a practiced eye. Schwiefka sent occasional stooges into the game to keep his dealer straight – usually one wearing a loudly flowered tie and sideburns; with a habit of finding the dealer’s toe under the table to indicate that a bit of co-operation with that deck wouldn’t go unappreciated. Good-time Charlies with the usual whisky glass in the middle of the forehead and that certain faraway look which never troubled to count a winning pot to see whether it was right. ‘We trust each other, Dealer,’ was the implication of that look.
The dealer trusted no man on the other side of the slot. He had outlasted forty such touts. They didn’t call him Machine just because he was fast. They called him Machine because he was regular.
He couldn’t risk being anything else; dealing was the sole skill he owned. ‘The day I get my musician’s union card is the day I’ll steal Schwiefka blind,’ he planned in his tough-skinned larcenous little heart. Until that day he would be as straight as one of Widow Wieczorek’s ivory-tipped cues.
One by one Schwiefka’s shills would give place; as the winter night wore on, the stakes would grow higher as the air grew heavier and the marks grew lighter; to be replaced, one by one, like so many sausages into the same sure grinder.
While at the door Sparrow urged losers and winners alike: ‘Tell ’em where you got it ’n how easy it was.’
Till Frankie would sit back wearily, sick of seeing them come on begging to be hustled, wondering where in the world they all came from and how in the world they all earned it and what in the world they told their wives and what, especially, they told themselves and why in the world they always, always, always, always came back for more.
‘More, more, I keep cryin’ for more more-’
Some tattered walkathon tune of the early thirties went banging like a one-wheeled Good Humor cart of those same years through his head as the cards slipped mechanically about the board and his fingers went lightly dividing change in the middle, taking the house’s percentage without making the winner too sharply aware of the cut. It was one thing for a player to understand he was bucking a percentage and quite another to see it taken before his eyes. To the mark it always seemed, vaguely, that the dealer might have overlooked the cut, just this once, out of sportsmanship. For when the sucker held a hot hand five per cent didn’t trouble him – he’d be feeling too smug about having the case ace concealed while that chump across the board was pitching in his last desperate dollar in the hope of hooking that same ace. And when he wasn’t involved in the pot the sucker didn’t care if the dealer took ninety per cent. It wasn’t any skin off his hide then, the sucker figured.
‘I hope I break even tonight,’ was the sucker’s philosophy, ‘I need the money so bad.’
And always the same tune clanging like a driverless trolley down some darkened backstreet, past familiar yet nameless stops, through the besieged city of the dealer’s brain.
‘More, more, I keep cryin’ for more more more-’
A tune he’d heard some afternoon when he and Sophie were first engaged and he’d liked taking her down Division because she dressed so sharp and had that haughty, hard-to-get stride that had had everyone fooled but himself: he’d solved it before she’d had a chance to develop adult defenses.
A stride somewhere between a henwalk shuffle and a Cuban grind, one of the boys had once described it. A walk as provocative as a strip teaser zipping down one black glove on the runway just to give the boys an idea of how much there was to zip before taking it all away again. And those silk-sheathed legs as proud-looking as a fawn’s.
Once, when both were still in their teens, he’d ignored Sophie for a month just to show her he didn’t care one way or another. Until she’d asked him straight out if they were still sleeping together on Saturday nights or not.
He’d fished a nickel out of his pocket and slipped it into her palm. ‘Here’s a nickel, kid. Call me up when you’re eighteen. Right now I got to do some shoppin’ around.’
She’d gone off in such a high-wheeled huff he’d thought that that was surely the end of that. But two days later she’d slipped him a note in front of the corner apteka. ‘I have to talk to you.’
But in her own living room there really hadn’t been anything to talk about after all. She’d come down off that high horse onto her knees. He’d brought her down till she’d never have her full height again. He’d broken her pride for keeps that afternoon.
Now for ten years she had held him in the hope of recovering that lost pride; till it had grown too late to loosen her grip upon him. If she let go of him now she let go of everything.
The old days, the old days, Frankie thought nostalgically. When every other door was a tavern and you had as much on the next guy as he had on you. When the worst thing the neighborhood bucks got pinched for was strongarming and no one fooled with anything deadlier than whisky. When there weren’t any fixers strolling through the Safari with more dough tied up in a single brown drugstore bottle than in a case of the best bonded scotch behind the bar.
And the old days before the old days, when burlesque was still burlesque, Kenny Brenna was the funniest man in town and the streetcar men got salt out of the box down on Augusta Boulevard to melt the ice in the switches. Down on Augusta where they’d played the same games other children played in less crowded neighborhoods – but had played them with little vicious twists unknown to luckier stubs. They’d played Let Her Fly simply by wrapping up garbage from the nearest can and sneaking up on a privately selected opponent with it: one who never knew he was anyone’s opponent at all until the garbage hit him in the teeth. For the game’s single rule had been that the player at bat was anyone with garbage in his hand who had voice enough to call out, ‘Let her fly!’ before pitching
it. The kid who didn’t duck fast enough lost right there.
Rules had been added and the game extended but you still had to be ready to duck every second. ‘Jacks check, the bullets say a buck,’ he intoned unemphatically, hearing his own voice going on and on like a voice belonging to somebody else. ‘King sees, a buck to you Jacks, Jacks bump a buck, Big Ace sees ’n here we go, down ’n dirty, when you get a hunch bet a bunch, nothin’ to it if you know how to do it – turn ’em over when you’re down – man with the hammer bumps a buck, Jacks call – one bucket of paint all red – a winner every hand, hooked it in the dark he says well well, slip me a half ’n make me laugh, thank you, the more you bet the more you get-’
‘More, more, I keep cryin’ for more more more-’
The old days, the old ways, before all the stoplights turned to red and there was still time between deals for a laugh or two over a nickel beer.
‘He ain’t even got his first papers ’n he got a City Hall job,’ somebody complained of somebody else and the night was long, so long, and all night long the derisive little diamonds mocked the fat and happy-looking hearts. And the sour spades, that had seen too much of everything and had been disappointed in it all for so long, stood aside with cynical indifference while the murderous black clubs ambushed the hopeful four flushes and the foolishly faithful four-card straights; while the little old gray deuces died, heartbroken, by the way. Till the green silk bag was filled and emptied, half secretly, half guiltily, as a thousand green silk bags had been filled and emptied secretly before. And were always brought back for more more-
‘I keep cryin’ for more more
Give me more more more-’
As this night followed a thousand nights and these men followed a thousand hopers who had sat here before them to go down to their graves holding a four-card straight in one hand and would never be remembered at all. Their mouths were stuffed with race-track dust; and no one to remember at all.
Their sons had taken their places, passing the time, while waiting for death to deal one from the bottom, by drawing to aces and eights. Their hell was a full house that never won and their last hope of heaven a royal flush.
‘He got a loaf of bread under his arm ’n he’s cryin’,’ somebody said of somebody else. While the biggest sucker of them all sat in the dealer’s slot till morning, getting relieved fifteen minutes every two hours, and thought and thought and thought. For every time he was relieved his newly recovered confidence slipped an inch. And the old regret, like the old wound fever, struggled in him to kindle fresh flames of guilt. Guilt that burned like so many small strange flowers putting out petals of fire in place of leaves. ‘I told her in the hospital I was gonna make it all up to her. I’m makin’ it up to her awright. Just one flight down. Through a different door.’
‘What’s it mean when a dealer’s hand gets shaky?’ Louie asked Schwiefka without looking at any dealer at all.
‘That’s the first sign of insanity,’ Schwiefka decided.
‘Hell, it’s the last sign,’ Frankie threw them both, out of sheer irritability. ‘I blew my stack a long time ago settin’ right here watchin’ tinhorn West Side gamblers tryin’ to make a pair of bullets out of one little acey.’
‘Don’t give me that old kapustka,’ Louie ordered him. ‘You ain’t the guy to be rememberin’ anythin’.’
‘Okay,’ Frankie conceded with his hand around the deck, ‘maybe it’s time we both started forgettin’, Louie.’
Louie nodded and held his peace. ‘The price just went up on you, Dealer,’ he told himself confidently. ‘That stuff is gonna be awful hard to get around the middle of next week.’
‘Deal, deal,’ Schwiefka demanded uneasily, sensing something old, unspoken and violent in the air, and the players all began wheedling the dealer at once. ‘Give us somethin’ to remember you by, Dealer – we’re gettin’ quartered to death here.’
‘Toward morning the farmer gets lucky,’ Frankie assured every farmer present. And the cards went around and around.
Thus in the narrowing hours of night the play became faster and steeper and an air of despair, like a sickroom odor where one lies who never can be well again, moved across the light green baize, touched each player ever so lightly and settled down in a tiny whiff of cigar smoke about the dealer’s hands.
Now dealer and players alike united in an unspoken conspiracy to stave off morning forever. Each bet as if the loss of a hand meant death in prison or disease and when it was lost hurried the dealer on. ‘Cards, cards.’ For the cards kept the everlasting darkness off, the cards lent everlasting hope. The cards meant any man in the world might win back his long-lost life, gone somewhere far away.
‘Don’t take it hard, your life don’t go with it,’ was the philosophy of the suckers’ hour.
But each knew in his heart, when he said that, that he lied: each knew that his life was reshuffled here with every hand.
Till the last fat red ten had been dealt, the final black jack had fallen, the case deuce hadn’t helped after all and the queen of spades had been hooked, by somebody, just one hand too late.
‘If it hadn’t been for me – if it hadn’t been for me-’
And the last discouraged sucker had thrown in his cards to the biggest sucker of them all.
‘What’s right is right,’ Frankie decided as the last hand was dealt around, ‘you can’t go smashin’ up a woman ’n then make a fool of her on top of it with another woman. A guy got to draw the line somewheres on how bad he can treat somebody who can’t help herself no more just account of him.’
Walking home with Sparrow where the long arc-lamp shadows slanted across the snow-wet walk, as on any lost corner at 4 A.M., they heard a switch engine’s burdened coughing.
‘Trying to get up steam,’ Sparrow whispered as confidentially as if he had just had it straight from the engineer.
But to Frankie Machine it sounded more like a man trying to cough with a thirty-five-pound monkey on his back. One breath to the second, no more and no less, as the hairy little paws tightened about his shoulders to get set for just one more ride. Under the shoulders, deep in the stomach’s pit, some tiny muscle like a small cold claw probed upward toward his heart, didn’t quite reach it and contracted again, leaving the heart fluttering with anxiety for the whole stomach to turn over: he retched, wanted to vomit and had nothing to vomit at all. That small cold claw would reach again, in its own good time, as mechanically as he himself could shuffle a cold deck at will. It would reach. It would get there and he’d fight it down.
It was just so damned hard to fight alone, that was all, with so little to fight for. A half pint of good whisky would keep it down until he could get to sleep; but only for an hour. Then he’d waken and no whisky would do him good in that hour. He’d need Molly-O to hold him then. It would be Molly-O or a quarter-grain fix, he’d never make it alone.
Every time he got sick lately it seemed the damned punk was on his heels, staring at him through those foggy glasses, trying to pretend he didn’t know a junkie when he saw one. Why didn’t the little chiseler speak out?
At the corner of Damen and Division he turned abruptly on Sparrow. ‘Which way you goin’?’ Just like that.
‘Why – home, Frankie. Same as you.’
‘You tellin’ me where I’m suppose to go now?’
Sparrow saw Frankie’s face then, peaked with suffering in the arc lamp’s feeble glow, and wanted to help and didn’t know how and didn’t want to understand.
‘I got business.’ Frankie let him have the edge of the knife turning in his breast. ‘Case out.’
Twice now within the week Frankie had turned on him like this, he was beginning almost to expect these sudden changes, meaningless and swift. With no further word the punk turned, feeling there was no place for him in any joint on Division Street, nor in the whole wide world, without Frankie Machine.
Shuffling down the shadowed street, Sparrow hoped a squadrol would pick him up just so that he could feel, fo
r ten minutes, that he was going somewhere. He wanted to feel walls and safety about him, needed to be inside something. Frankie had been his wall and the wall was gone, leaving him as defenseless as he had been in the years before he’d hooked up with the dealer. When he reached Paulina he realized Frankie must be kidding, wanting to teach him a lesson for something, making him walk just to see how far he’d go before looking back – Frankie would be standing there waving to him to come back and get shoved around, pretending he was mad about something – Sparrow turned with swift hope.
But no one waved in the arc lamp’s feeble glow for any punk’s returning.
No one stood waiting under any arc lamp for any lost sparrow at all.
Something tugged just hard enough at her foot to waken her; the army blanket had fallen across her toes. Yet she sensed a secret message in being awakened so: someone was trying to tell her she must not sleep tonight.
Down both sides of Division Street the occasional arc lamps burned and it was late, so late, there should be a light step on the long dark stair and someone to cry out that the night was too long.
And come up to wheel her a little while.
Whatever time it was, he was long past due. Unless there were two kinds of time in the world these days: Gamblers’ Time and Cripples’ Time and cripples must now set their watches by gamblers.
All her life, it seemed in this winter hour, he’d been standing her up somewhere. This time would count against him like the others, not one time would be forgotten. He’d go to purgatory with what he had done to her on his soul and she’d sit there then just as she sat here now. He wouldn’t be getting rid of her in the hereafter, if there were any sort of justice at all, any easier than he could get rid of her on West Division. And wondered cloudily how she’d get the chair into purgatory. It would be shipped right along with her best clothes, she supposed, and the Special Dispensation showing she really didn’t belong in purgatory herself, she was just there to make sure that that Frankie Majcinek paid off.
The Man with the Golden Arm Page 16