Balling the Jack

by Frank Baldwin

  “And the good news?”

  “The good news is that state schools are still turning out young women who know how to fuck. I’m telling you, Tom, this girl must have gone on a scholarship. Sorry to blow you off, but you’ll be glad to know it was worth it.”

  I’m tempted to take advantage of Dave’s spirits and spill the beans, but I hold off. Instead I lead up to it.

  “Dave, I got a problem I need your help with.”

  “Lay it out.”

  “I’m in a little deep on something, and I’m not sure how to get out. This isn’t the place to talk about it, though. Any chance you could come over tonight? It won’t take long.”

  “You bet. I’ll bring some beer. Would you call it a twelve-pack problem or a case?”

  “If I didn’t live in a walk-up, Dave, I’d say it’s more like a kegger.”

  “Now you got me interested. Don’t sweat it. I’ll be there at nine.” Dave motions to the ladies’ room. “You see the one coming out? See the new coat of lipstick? She’s seen someone in here she likes. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume it s me.”

  I shake my head.

  “Dave, you just shared the most sacred act two people can share. Surely you won’t cheapen that union by starting in on someone else this morning?”

  He smiles and tosses back his beer. “You can’t get caught up in nostalgia, Tom. Another day, another dolly.”

  After lunch I leave Dave to make his move and head home for a nap. Most Saturdays I’m just getting up about now. I put the Yanks on the tube and drift off.

  TEN P.M. AND I’M still waiting for Dave. I’d kill for a drink but the place is dry. I put Making Movies on the stereo and sit in the open window with a soda, one leg out on the fìre escape. I love looking out at the city to music. I love the smell of the air, and the sounds of Saturday night. I lived in the suburbs once. Five families on the whole block and you never saw any of them. Here I can look across the way and see into a dozen lives. Tonight I watch the mamacitas lean out their windows in shirtsleeves, shouting to each other or to their kids in the street below. I watch the old guy drop onto the sofa with a beer and play with the ears of his dog, and the girl two floors up come to the window in her nightshirt and pull the shade.

  I’ll bet two thousand people live on this block. There’s always a little of everything in the air. Sadness and laughter and sex. Looking out on it makes me feel a part of things. Tonight, watching the kids play soccer in the street, “Skateaway” coming through the speakers, I feel strangely confident, as if all the answers I need are out there, and it’s just up to me to find them. I glance at the clock. Dave’s more than an hour late, but I’m not worried. I know Dave. He’ll show.

  CHAPTER TEN

  DAVE CAVANAUGH is the friend I’d cal from jail. Chances are, though, one of his schemes would have landed me there.

  Dave’s never been a big fan of doing things by the book. Where’s the thrill in that? No, the fun in life, to him, is seeing what you can get away with. This leads him into some fine scrapes, but it also makes him the guy to turn to when you’re up a tree.

  He was my roommate freshman year and I’d never met anyone like him. Back on the base, you solved a problem by hitting the other guy harder than he hit you. Dave, though, could figure the angle on anything. The sorority party is invite only? He knew a way in the side door. The big concert is a sellout? He could come up with two on the floor. Out of beer and the stores are closed? Here comes Dave, wheeling a keg.

  Dave was born for college. All that free time and no parents around to crumb the deal. Christ, what a spread, too. Bars to close, frats to pick from, a whole new set of fellas for poker and road trips. Pony races a mile up the road and a golf course, can you believe it, right on the grounds. Dave never considered a day official until he’d put in his nine holes. The topper, of course, was the girls. Eight hundred fifty of them, between seventeen and twenty-one, and each handed a primer on birth control, pictures and all, along with her room key, at Orientation.

  The only hitch to the whole setup was the damn classes. Dave had nothing against them as a concept, but where was a guy supposed to find the time?

  His solution was to compress each semester into three weeks. That way, he could factor classes right out of the equation in the early going. Through Thanksgiving he lived at the pub, the racetrack, and the frats, training his efforts on the one subject he never tired of: getting his end in.

  Then as now, Dave sure had a way with the girls. Call it charm or luck or whatever you like, but three weeks into freshman year, while the rest of us still pored through the face book, trying to gauge from their smiles which ones might give it a go, Dave was serving it to the senior who tutored him in French. And nights he wasn’t in her room he was kicking me out of ours for some fling after a frat party, all the while, of course, insisting that Julie, from back home, was the only girl he was serious about. Julie was a freshman at Amherst, though, and he could only see her once a month. “I love her and all,” he’d say, “but I’m no monk.” To Dave, getting a little on the side wasn’t cheating. It was a matter of survival.

  Weekends when Julie came to visit the fun really started. The whole gang became lookouts, fanning out at frat parties like the Secret Service. If we spotted one of his squeezes in the area we’d give the signal and he’d hustle Julie out of there.

  At a state school Dave might have pulled off this arrangement all four years. Ham Tech was just too small, though. You couldn’t string too many girls along without one of them getting wind of it. The campus girls all found out about Julie and in the end she found out about them, too, and called things off, leaving Dave high and dry for a time, mumbling about the unfairness of it all. “Fidelity, fidelity,” he’d gripe, crossing a few more names out of his book. “That’s all anyone wants to talk about.”

  You’d think Dave would have run out of girls pretty quick in a school our size. That was the kicker, though. Even the ones who caught him dead to rights couldn’t stay mad at him, and a few he actually charmed back into the sack. It was the damnedest thing. I’d see him at a dorm party with a girl who dumped him months before, and he’s saying, “Tracy, you were right to send me packing. What I did was inexcusable. Lied to you, ran around. You dumped me and I deserved it. That you’re even talking to me now is a miracle …” and so on, and she’s watching him with a wary smile, knowing just what he’s up to, but twenty minutes later she’s still there, and Dave’s saying, “I won’t insult you by saying I’ve cut all that stuff out, but I think a guy knows when he’s changed, and you still do have the best, and I mean the best eyes since Mom, and if you want to pop up to my room—it’s just up the stairs here—I can make us drinks and put on that album you liked and we can dance one last dance, for old times’ sake, just to show we came through everything as friends. Or I could walk you home—it’s up to you.” Damned if she didn’t go upstairs, and damned if she came out before the morning.

  As you can imagine, though, all those hours chasing the finer things in life left Dave pretty hard up academically by the time the end of each term rolled around. Boy, could he ever fall behind. I might owe fìve hundred pages of Poli Sci myself, and start to feel low about it, but then Dave would walk into the room, sigh, say, “I guess it’s about that time, Tom,” and head off to the bookstore, three months late, to pick up his texts.

  Anyone else would have thrown in the towel, but Dave was always at his best when he had to scramble.

  He was the king of the late rally, and it was a treat to watch him operate. From Thanksgiving till the end of the term he lived on coffee and uppers, and he pulled out all the stops. Paid nerds from each class ten bucks an hour to tutor him. Combed frat files for exams and papers from the year before. Played audio Cliffs Notes over and over on the stereo, switching to headphones when he began to nod off, convinced of the subliminal payoff.

  Then there was his specialty—pleading extensions. Or Cavanaughs, as we renamed them in his honor. No one c
ould plead them quite like Dave. One term he lined up five in five days, two from the same prof. Dave came from a big Catholic family, and toward the finish of each semester they’d start dropping right and left, each good for an extra couple of days on a paper or test. By junior year it got so complicated that he needed a chart to keep track of which relation had died for which prof. His grandfather had it the roughest, kicking off so many times in Dave’s four years that when he showed for graduation the whole frat lined up to shake his hand.

  Dave wasn’t above a little brownnosing, either. Most guys duck the prof when they’re bottoming out in class. Not him. One of his theories was that he could let a lot of schoolwork slide if he kept in good with his teachers. He might not have made a lecture in a month, but he’d always stop and chat if he saw a teacher on the path. Knew the books they were working on, their hobbies, their favorite vacation spots. He’d even drop by their offices just to say hi. All to get that break somewhere down the line—the hint about the quiz, the extension on the paper, the benefit of the doubt on the grade.

  One time during finals week Tank and I hit the links for a quick round. Who do we see on the first tee but Dave and the Ancient Civ prof, old man Bosworth. Dave’s carrying a D in the course, the final is in forty-eight hours, and he’s read fifty of a thousand assigned pages. No matter. He puts in nine holes with him and sure enough, maybe with a chuckle after his first birdie in years, or after dropping one a foot from the flag, Bosworth says something like, “Well, I can’t be telling you what’s on the final, of course, but if I were a student, Mr. Cavanaugh, I would know the Socrates chapter inside out.” Bingo.

  And when each term was over, when report cards came out and we all met at the pub with long faces to take a body count, Dave would drop his Bs on the table and spring for the first round. Never failed.

  HE COMES THROUGH the door tonight with a case of beer on his shoulder and drops it on the kitchen table.

  “Sorry I’m late, Tom. Saturday night, you know.”

  “No sweat.”

  I pour beer into frosted mugs and we move to the living room. Dave drops into a chair.

  “Tom, I’ve been trying to puzzle this one out all day and there’s only one thing I can think of.”

  “Nobody’s pregnant.”

  “Then I’m stumped.”

  I sit on the arm of the couch and give Dave the lowdown. From the top, starting with Duggan’s challenge, the doubling of the bet, through to the wipeout at the bank today. When I finish he lets out a low whistle.

  “Not bad, Tom.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Nothing we can’t handle, though. How much do you have in the bank?”

  “Twelve bucks.”

  “Hmmm. First off, I don’t have a lot more. Dad’s laying out for the apartment through B-school, but he’s pulled in the reins on the allowance. It barely keeps me in beer.”

  “Forget it, Dave. I don’t want you mixing up your own money in this. I think we should shoot for outside revenue. But one thing—we gotta play this match.”

  He looks offended. “Of course. Hell, we can beat these guys.”

  It’s good to have Dave aboard.

  “Have you told anyone but me?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Good. You’re not thinking of telling the team about the bet, are you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Definitely not. Even if you fronted all the money, they’d be too spooked to play at those stakes.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Any chance Duggan will tell his troops?”

  “None. He’s too cheap.”

  “Okay. What kind of credit do you have, Tom?”

  “Zip.”

  “Well, that’s step one. My brother works for MasterCard. Has some say over the applications. I’ll give him a call in the morning, get him to get you a card. He can rush it along, maybe get it to you in a few days. And one with a good limit.”

  “How good?”

  “Maybe ten grand.”

  “That would be a hell of a start.”

  “Something else, Tom. We have to assume going in that we’ll win the match, so we only need the money for a short time, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. A few things are starting to bubble up here.” He taps his head. “Give me the weekend to sort it out. You work your end, see what you can dream up.”

  We settle back with our beers. By three o’clock we’ve almost killed the case and both of us are good and buzzed. Dave looks at me with a smile.

  “There’s still a little night left, Tom. I know a place up the block—Gino’s. Let’s go celebrate the ass-kicking we’re going to give Duggan.”

  “Gotta pass tonight. I’m broke.”

  “I’ll spot you.”

  I don’t need a lot of convincing. As we step into the hallway, I hear Kretzky’s door open to the end of the chain. I try to make it around the corner but he sees me. He shakes his gray head.

  “Good night, sir,” I mumble as we hit the stairs.

  THE WAY THESE after-hour joints work is one of life’s great mysteries. From the street many of them are just a door. You buzz on the intercom, give the password and they ring you in. Their location can change from month to month, even week to week, and how word of them gets round and people learn the passwords is beyond me. I leave it all up to Dave. On any given night, no matter where we are, he seems to know one around the corner. At the door to Gino’s he rings the buzzer.

  “Password?” comes a voice.

  “The end of history,” Dave says.

  They ring us in.

  A long set of stairs leads to another door guarded by a big guy in a suit. He gives us the once-over, then waves us in.

  Gino’s is a lot classier than our usual late-night haunts. The people at the clubs we tend to wind up in are the ones caught short by last call, drunk but not ready to pack it in. Here it’s the tonier set, the ones who ate dinner at midnight and are making their first stop on the early-morning circuit. That explains the ten-buck cover and five-dollar Buds. At these prices we can’t afford to stay long.

  The place has the look of an old speakeasy. We stand in the main room, which features a pool table, cheap art on the walls, and one-man bars in the corners. A quick scan and it’s clear the payoff for the high prices comes in the babes. The room is loaded with them.

  “There’s some talent here, huh?” Dave says. “Here’s a ten, in case you need to buy a lady a drink. I’m off to find Cinderella.”

  I buy a drink and take another look around. There’s nothing like a roomful of beautiful girls late at night, when you have a head full of beer. None gives me an opening, so I wander the room, passing close behind a couple for a whiff of their hair. Walking to the next room I pass Dave, who’s explaining to a pert blonde that he needs just a dozen more hours of flight time before his license comes through.

  The second room is smaller but less crowded than the first. Tom Waits sings from the stereo, and the music and the jazz lighting and the smoke make me feel I’ve stepped into a dime novel from the fifties. Without much dinner in me I’m really feeling the beers, riding a peaceful, late-night buzz, content to look at the necks of the girls and laze in the swirl of the music. The Duggan bet drifts right out of the room. With Dave on board I feel much better about it, and I’ve always had a talent for letting problems out of my mind when they get too much for me. Being loaded helps.

  Through my reverie I notice a small crowd in the far corner. They all seem to be gathered around something, but I can’t see past them to see what it is. I float over, doing a half-turn to the music, dipping my shoulder, mumbling along, “The bartenders all know my name. And they catch me when I’m pulling up lame.” I get a little closer, and when a break in the crowd gives me a view I almost drop my beer. I edge forward. Could it be a joke? I look down at the floor, up at the ceiling, and back in front of me. It’s no joke. I’d know it anywhere. The green felt, the betting circles, t
he dealer pulling from a card shoe. Smack in front of me, in this little rum joint below Third Avenue, is a blackjack table. Regulation, with real-life players.

  The sight of it burns off my buzz and I approach warily, like a hunter at a picnic who stumbles on a bear den and wants to make damn sure it’s what he thinks it is before going home to fetch his rifle.

  I slip into the crowd of watchers. Seated at the table, gambling, are three guys. They play with chips and it’s clear from their reactions that there’s real money behind them. The rules seem to be standard Atlantic City, plenty fair. All the players’ cards face up. Dealer hits 16 or less, stands on 17. One card when you split aces, double down on anything, insurance pays two to one. What really gets me, though, are the cards. Only two decks in the shoe, and no cut card. They deal all the way through to the finish.

  Behind the table, just back of the young dealer, a big guy in a suit stands with folded arms. Gino himself, I presume, from his bearing and the way he eyes the whole room. It’s not hard to guess who he’s hooked in with, either. Come to think of it, all the workers in this place—the bartenders, the bouncer, the dealer—have that Chicago look to them.

  My mouth goes dry when I get excited. Right now it’s a piece of leather. I sip my beer and watch the action. The players aren’t any good and they’re not winning either. They keep buying more chips.

  I watch a little longer, then slip away. I have enough on me for a final beer, and as I down it my mind is working. Come back with a real stake this time, Tom. Bet in units of twenty-five. A quick hitter—get in, get out. I take a last look at the table. Gino is scanning the place now, and before he can get around to me I duck back into the front room. I find Dave in the corner with his arm around the blonde.

  “Tom, meet Grace. Grace, my friend Tom.”

  “Hi, Tom. Are you a pilot too?”

  “No. Bullfighter.”

  She tilts her head. “In the city?”

  “Over in Jersey.”

  She nods happily. “I didn’t think they had any bulls here.”