Balling the Jack

by Frank Baldwin

  I drop a few strips of bacon into a frying pan. Most times this sends her into the living room, but this morning she holds her ground.

  “Do you know how much fat you are about to ingest?” she asks.

  Here we go.

  “Not today, Molly—I had a rough night.”

  She lowers the book to her nose. “How so?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Grant me the opportunity.”

  I sigh.

  “Okay. I was all set to put the blocks to a girl last night, and it fell through.”

  She looks at me with no sign of comprehension.

  “Put the blocks to a girl, Molly—have sex.”

  Her mouth is a straight line. “1 see. With whom, if I may ask?”

  “Some waitress.”

  “A waitress. Am I correct in presuming you were only casually acquainted with this woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you accompanied her to her apartment with the intention of having sex?”

  “That’s right.”

  She is quiet a full minute, then lowers the book to her lap. “Tell me, Tom, are there any women in this city whom you don’t regard as whores?”

  Christ. And all I wanted was to cook myself a little breakfast.

  “Whores, Molly?”

  “Yes, whores, Tom. Women whose value you see purely in sexual terms.” Once Molly gets going, it doesn’t take her long to hit full throttle. “Men who regard women in this manner, Tom, comp—”

  “Stop,” I say, putting up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Not today. My johnson is still sore at me from last night, and the last thing I need is to sit through your standard recital. I’ve heard it a dozen times already.”

  “Judging from your porcine behavior, it’s made little impression on you.”

  I look down at the frying pan and count to ten in my head, very slowly. When I finish she’s still there.

  “You know, Molly, for all the times I’ve heard your pitch, you’ve never once let me give my side of it. Don’t you think it’d be good to get a guy’s perspective for a change? Even things out a little?”

  She eyes me warily.

  “Do you intend to make a serious argument, Tom, or will you simply try to provoke me?”

  “I’ll just tell it like it is.”

  She folds her arms on her chest.

  “Very well. Proceed.”

  “It’s all pretty simple,” I say quietly. “I’m the first to admit there isn’t a girl I meet I don’t size up for the sack. That’s news? I’m a guy, and us guys start each day with a little something passed along from our ancestors. Something called a set of balls. So long as we have one, a part of us will always be looking to score. That doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a girl’s mind, or her drive, or her personality. Sure we can. But we’re not about to forget what it was that got us looking her way in the first place. Nature, Molly, that’s what it’s called, and if it makes me a pig, well, point me to the trough—it’s feeding time.”

  I take a crisp bite of bacon and duck just as the book comes at my ear. Molly turns on her heel and marches out.

  Twenty minutes later I’m making my bed when she bursts into the room, waving a copy of Playboy I must have left in the can. I’m surprised the smoke alarm doesn’t go off.

  Boy, does she light into me. Now I’m not just a pig, but part of a worldwide conspiracy to boot. A conspiracy to degrade women, of course. To denigrate their ability to think, exclude them from the workforce, and, if they do slip in, to deny them equal pay or a fair shot at promotion. And that’s not all. I’m also part of a … cabal, I think she said. A cabal of low-minded brutes who’ve taken it on themselves to turn the clocks back a hundred years. To roll back every advance women fought so hard for, reinforce the stereotypes blocking them at every turn and, above all, keep all the booty for ourselves and condemn them forever to the status of second-class citizens.

  And here I thought I just liked to look at tits.

  When she’s all done she slams the door on me without waiting for an answer. No chance for me even to give my rebuttal. Not that it would have mattered. All I’m armed with are logic and reason, after all, and when’s the last time they won out?

  I lie back on the bed. Say what you will, what drives us guys crazy is that every fìght with a girl winds up the same way. Past a certain point the best logic in the world gets us nowhere, because past a certain point logic and reason don’t apply. In their mind you’re wrong and that’s that. Case closed. I put my hands behind my head and sigh up at the ceiling. If Kant were here today, he’d back me up on this. I’ll bet the guy never won an argument with his wife.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SHOW TIME.

  Three in the morning and the apartment is still. I dress quietly, rap the bureau twice for luck and slip out of my room. As I step through the pad I spot a lump on the couch. The lump is Mike, and I tap him awake.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “What? Oh … we had an argument.”

  “An argument?”

  “Movie rentals.” He rubs his eyes. “She trusted me to pick them out tonight. Both had to be foreign, of course. I rented one French one, but then I went for Bruce Lee—Enter the Dragon.”

  “Great flick.”

  “Yeah, well, I thought we might like a change of pace. If I see one more French talkie I’ll go nuts. So anyway”—he pats the pillow—“here I am.”

  “Hell, it’s your bed, Mike. If she doesn’t like it, let her sleep out here.”

  “I know, I know. But you know how she gets. Where are you headed?”

  “Out.”

  He looks wistful. “To one of those bottle clubs with the fellas, huh? Toss back a few brews?”

  “Yeah. Hey, tell you what. If we can get Molly out of here for a few hours in the morning, how about we watch some Bruce Lee?”

  “Yeah, maybe. If I can’t sleep, though, I might put it on tonight without the sound.”

  Out in the hall I shake my head. The day I get kicked out of my bed … forget it. I won’t even start. I have bigger things on my mind tonight.

  I head out the door and over to Third Avenue. A light rain is falling and feels good on my face. In my wallet, taped to my chest, is more money than I’ve seen in my life. What a country we live in when a guy can walk into his bank with a plastic card and walk out with ten thousand dollars. Twenty-one percent annual interest, maybe, but what the hell.

  I have Dave to thank for the dough. He’s been Joe Montana on this one. His brother rushed the card through the pipeline and it came into my hands this morning. What a concept, credit. Good thing I never knew about it in college.

  Dave came up aces on more than just the card. He has a little scheme that could net another five grand. Check this out. He and his dad play a father/son golf tournament in Oyster Bay each year. His dad takes it all real serious. Side bets with his cronies, bragging rights around the club, that kind of stuff. Last year the two of them won the thing.

  This year’s tournament is this weekend, and Dave says if they defend their title the old man will be a soft touch. Will be in just the mood to help his kid out with five grand. What will Dave tell him he needs it for? How about a little lady he knocked up at school, who’s making noises about going the distance if Dave can’t come up with the bucks to change her mind. Even I flinched at that one, but Dave said not to sweat it, that he’s the only Cavanaugh boy who hasn’t gone that route for real.

  “I’ll sit through a hell of a lecture,” he said, “but if the trophy’s on the mantel, he’ll cut the check.” Between Dave and the cards, I could have a good chunk of what I need by tomorrow. Provided my luck holds out.

  Now it’s time to do my part. The counting has all come back to me pretty good. I won’t know for sure until the cards fly at me with money behind them, but I feel ready. This afternoon I squeezed in one last practice session on a blanket in Central Park. I knocked off at 5 P.M., figuring I was
as good as I’m going to get, and walked out of the park and over to the Museum of Natural History.

  I love it in there at dusk. I went to the room with the big blue whale and stood for a while in the dark quiet, the peace of the place clearing my head. I went over it all in my mind. I thought of Duggan, and of darts, but mostly I thought about tonight, because if tonight goes bad, everything else is fucked. When I felt a good stillness come over me I went home. I took a long run up the East River, a hot shower, hit the sack for a few hours, and here I am.

  I haven’t told anyone about my session tonight—not even Dave. No sense jinxing the operation. I’ll tell him the good news tomorrow.

  Except for a few cabs rolling by, the avenue is quiet. Turning onto Twenty-ninth, I pass a deli and a few brownstones and come up on the plain door that hides the club. It hits me that I don’t know the password, but a couple is just heading in and I ride in on them. The suit at the inner door waves us all through.

  The rain has kept some people away, but otherwise Gino’s looks about the same as last week. The outer room is half full, and again heavy on the dolls. Soft-haired blondes and redheads, standing alone or with their fellows. Eyes front, Tom. Tonight is strictly business. I order a seltzer and head for the back room. Crossing into it, I can see the magic table in the corner, manned by the same young dealer as before. Standing back of him again is Gino, filling out another big suit, and taking in the whole room from behind his shades.

  You have to hand it to the guy—this setup of his is a real gem. So simple it’s a wonder no one else thought of it.

  Here’s my take on Gino. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s a small-timer who’s plugged into the Atlantic City crowd through some cousin or other. All those family reunions have taught him what a killing the casinos make, and how much of it comes from blackjack, and after twenty years of hearing about it, one day it hits him—why not stick a table in his own place? He gets hold of an old one, and a few props, tells a cousin to quit that high school bullshit and start shuffling, and he’s good to go.

  Gino probably figured he could take in a few hundred a night. After the first few nights, counting out a couple grand each time, he starts to realize what a goldmine he has here.

  He doesn’t even have to cheat. Hell, why bother? Cheating isn’t easy. You have to figure out how to do it, for one, and if Gino had any kind of chimney on him, the family would have him below Canal Street, working the heroin angle, not up here in the twenties, running a clip joint he has to pack up and move every few weeks. No, better to keep it simple. Gino doesn’t worry about using a lot of decks, or even a cut card. He just opens the table every night, posts the standard rules, and lets the house edge take care of him.

  He’s not dealing with real gamblers, after all. The typical guy he gets in here is an easy mark, stumbling onto the game at three in the morning with a lot of liquor in him, fancying himself a shark because he once took twenty bucks off the dorm adviser. Gino’s setup is perfect for milking the likes of him. All he has to do is let the odds work their magic. They always will.

  Blackjack is a good game but not a friendly one. Play well or you will lose. Maybe not the first time, or the second, but soon, and consistently. That you can count on. The crazy thing, though, is that everyone thinks they’re an expert. Maybe because the rules are so simple, or because we all learn to play the game as kids.

  Knowing the rules and knowing the right way to play aren’t the same thing, though. Most people know just enough to get them in trouble. Believe me, I saw a lot of “experts” in my summer in Atlantic City, and the way most of them played it would have been quicker and a lot less painful if they’d just been mugged on their way into the casino. They knew the rules of the game but not the strategy. And they got creamed.

  A few words on the strategy. In blackjack, both the house and the player have certain advantages. The big advantage for the house is that the player can bust first. This advantage is so big it keeps casinos in business around the world. The edge for the player is free will. He can take a hit whenever he wants, or stand, or double down, or split his cards. The dealer has no free will. He hits 16 or lower and stands on 17 or higher. Thus a player can stick on a weak hand and win, while the dealer never can.

  A good player takes the advantage away from the house in two ways. First, he masters the basic strategy. This means he knows what move to make in every situation, no matter what cards he has and what the dealer has showing. Nobody should play blackjack for real money unless they’ve learned the basic strategy, and this is relatively easy to do.

  Back in the seventies, when computers came on the scene, some card sharks hooked up with a couple of math dweebs and cracked the game of blackjack. They fed all the possible card combinations into the computer, played out every conceivable hand millions of times, and figured out once and for all the best move a player can make in every circumstance. The result was a few simple charts, and learning the basic strategy is just a matter of memorizing those charts.

  Once you learn it, you have about an even shot of beating the house. The way to really swing the odds away from the casino and over to your side is to count cards. Counting cards means keeping track of the cards that have been played, and, more important, the ones remaining in the deck. The premise behind it is simple. There are times when the deck favors the dealer, and times when it favors the player. By keeping track of the cards remaining, you know when these times are and can bet accordingly. When the deck favors you, you bet a lot of money. When it favors the dealer, you bet a little. A guy playing basic strategy and not counting and a guy counting cards might win the same number of hands, but the card counter comes out way ahead because he has more money on the hands he wins and less on the hands he loses.

  The real blackjack ace combines the basic strategy and card-counting. He bets high when the count is favorable, and he considers the count when deciding whether to hit or stick. That’s the way I’ll be playing tonight.

  Legitimate casinos do a lot of things to frustrate card counters. They deal eight decks at a time, and deal them fast. They use a cut card, to keep you from winning big near the end of the shoe. They crowd a lot of players into a few tables, to stop you from going one on one against the dealer, and hire pit bosses to watch all the action.

  Gino’s has none of these safeguards. They deal only two decks, and they deal them all the way through. A pro might play his whole life in casinos and never find these conditions. Gino can get away with it because of the players he gets. Like I said, the house edge will take care of his usual fare. But his setup is vulnerable to a card counter.

  I’m banking on a couple of things tonight. One is that Gino and his dealer can’t spot a counter. Odds are they can’t. A good one can sit right in front of a seasoned pit boss in Vegas and not arouse suspicion, and Gino is no pit boss. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s never heard of card-counting. One look at the dealer tells me he’s no pro, either. He can’t shuffle worth a damn, and every time he flips a card it takes him a few seconds to do the math.

  I’m banking on luck most of all, though. The best counter in the world can’t win if the cards don’t let him, and even with two decks dealt all the way through, and the table to myself, in one night of gambling there are no guarantees. So luck, be a lady tonight.

  I come up on the table with a grin, pulling out my wallet and slurring my words.

  “I’ll be damned—blackjack. Whatsa fella gotta do to get in?”

  Gino looks me over without looking at me, and from nowhere comes a waitress who wants to freshen my drink. Bingo. I down my seltzer in a gulp and say, “Sure, another vodka—no rocks this time.” An old gambler’s trick. If they peg me for a drunk, they’ll want all the action I can give them.

  “Chips you buy from me,” says the dealer. “We have ’em in five, ten, and twenty-five. What’ll it be?”

  “I’ll take a thousand. And don’t bother with the small stuff—I’ll take it all in twenty-fives.”

  T
he dealer stops. “Boss?” he says, glancing over his shoulder.

  Gino checks me out through his shades. The waitress returns with my vodka and I take a deep drink. I turn up my hands.

  “Hey, I don’t have all night. If you guys can’t handle me, just say so.”

  Gino is silent another five seconds, then gives the nod.

  “What are you waiting for, Vito? Deal the man in.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I TAKE the corner seat at the felt table as Vito hands me my chips. Beside me is a guy who looks to be just the kind of gambler Gino likes—a dumb kid with too much booze in him. Even bad players make the right move most of the time, out of common sense, but this guy manages to do the wrong thing every hand. He lasts ten minutes. After he slinks off, two other guys try his seat, but a few big early bets on my part scare them away, and soon I have the table to myself.

  Just as I hoped. The ideal play for any counter is to go solo against the dealer. You don’t want anyone else around to dilute your luck. Nothing’s worse than waiting through a long stretch with the deck about even, seeing the count come over to your side, putting a big bet on the table and then watching the clown next to you, here once a year for the plumber’s convention, pull the blackjack.

  I settle in. As word of the money I’m laying down gets round the room, a small crowd starts to gather back of my chair.

  I don’t impress anyone in the early going. Man, am I cold. Betting in units of twenty-five, as high as a hundred a hand when the count calls for it, I hold even for a shoe or so and then hit the skids. Everything seems to be working backward. I win when my small bets are out there, but any time I put down real money I get slammed. Vito has plain forgotten how to bust, and for every blackjack he spots me he pulls three of his own. After an hour and a half I’m out three grand.

  Christ. A nice little hole I’ve worked myself into. I try not to panic. I’ve seen losing spells before. If I can just ride this one out I can still turn things around. Time could be a problem, though. It’s four-thirty already, and I can’t very well stage a comeback if they lock the doors on me. I ask Vito how late he’ll keep dealing.