Balling the Jack

by Frank Baldwin

  Jimmy looks straight ahead a long time. Out of the corner of my eye I can see him working the inside of his lip with his teeth. When he talks he still isn’t looking at me.

  “It is me bringing home the bacon, isn’t it?”

  “Last I looked.”

  “And it’s not like I’d be pissing it away, right? I’d just be taking a little chance with it.”

  “And not much of a chance, either. The horse is gold, Jimmy.”

  Thirty seconds of silence. He takes another sip.

  “You believe in reincarnation, Tommy?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. So I guess any chances I’m going to take have to be this time around.”

  He looks hard at me a second, then throws back the rest of his pint and brings his glass down softly on the wooden bar.

  “What the hell, Tommy,” he says quietly. “Seven grand it is.”

  I let out a breath. “You won’t regret this, Jimmy.”

  He wipes his forehead with his hand. “I’m already starting to.”

  I wave down the bartender and he brings fresh pints. Jimmy reaches for his and shakes his head.

  “Tommy, I can’t decide if you’re good or bad for me.” He lifts his glass and smiles weakly. “I guess I’ll find out Friday night. Okay, what do we toast?”

  I lift mine. “What else? A toast to Spirit, Jimmy.”

  “To Spirit.”

  The first rush I felt when he caved in dies down and I take a big swig to kill the lump forming in my throat. I really do hate to lie, though I must admit I’m getting pretty good at it. Oh well. Maybe it’s not lying so much as talking around the subject. So long as it comes out right in the end, where’s the harm? Sometimes, the way the game is rigged these days, you just have to go out on the ledge a little. Hell, in a week’s time we’ll be at Adam’s Curse, celebrating.

  An hour and a few pints later we’re in our cups and I feel better about the whole business. If you’d told me last week that I could raise forty grand in eight days, I’d have asked what you were smoking. Here it’s the Monday before the match, though, and the kitty is full.

  We’re about set to leave when a couple of Jimmy’s trader pals spot us from down the bar. Before I can beat it they move in.

  “Sit, sit,” says one, waving us back down and handing us each a pint. “A friend of Jimmy’s … you know the rest. Firm’s paying for it anyway.” He jerks a thumb at his buddy. “After what we took in today,” he says, “we oughtta have the run of the place.”

  I sit back down. I’ll have to drink the one at least. I don’t know what it is about these guys but I’ve never been able to stomach them. Four years of their kind at school should have been enough. Out here in the workforce they’re even worse. The soft handshake, the tight smile. Power ties, handkerchiefs, and talk your ear off about the firm. I’ve met this pair before but I can never remember their names. Both are blond, with paunches and lots of cream in their hair. You know what they look like. The one starts in.

  “Would have cost me two mil today if I didn’t have call waiting. I’d say it’s worth three bucks a month. So what do you do? Law firm, huh? Great.” He runs a hand through his thick hair. “Me, it’s a wonder I got any of this left. It’s like being a gambler, is what it is, except it’s five days a week, and you bet millions instead of chump change.” He tosses his keys in the air and catches them as he talks. “Actually, if you think about it, it’s more like being at the front. Dodging mines and missiles, and squeezing off rounds when you can. Combat pay, that’s what we should get. Damn!” He shakes his head. “It’s not for everyone, that’s for sure.”

  I speed up on my beer. You want real excitement, guy, try betting your own money. He asks where I went to school, just as he did the last time we met, and when I tell him his eyes light up. “Yeah? I had a date with a Ham Tech girl last week. Looked to be about your year.” Jimmy tries to cut him off but he’s too late. “Lisa Klein.” He leans in, hand to the side of his mouth. “Best piece I’ve had all year. Didn’t think she’d ever stop coming.”

  I have enough sense to hit him with my left. Good thing because I get too much knuckle into it. I go for the chin but come up into his nose, though the way the blood comes out you’d think I hit an artery. All down the front of him and onto the bar, too. He’s on his back on the floor, holding his face, saying “My nose! My nose!” His friend gives me a shocked glare but no trouble.

  Tally up the suit, the shoes, the nose, I figure the punch was worth a couple grand, easy. “You better pick a few winners tomorrow,” I say, stepping over him. I shrug at Jimmy on the way out, and he shrugs back over the guy’s shoulder as he helps him sit up.

  On the street I look at my hand. The knuckle is swelling up but isn’t broken. I grab a beer from a deli and walk home with it. I haven’t hit a guy in quite a while. Not that I have any regrets. I feel bad for Jimmy, is all, and there’s just enough Catholic left in me to spoil the best moments.

  What is it about those guys? Even before he mentioned Lisa I could feel it rising in me. It’s not the dough they’re born to, or the babes. Well, sure it is. But it’s more than that.

  Guys like that, there’s nothing to them. Take away the suit and the haircut and you’re looking at air. Those two in there couldn’t run a mile in ten minutes, or give you thirty pushups, or name one batting champ in the last ten. Twenty bucks says the one I laid out was in the front row last week at Kenny G.

  I’ve met them three or four times now and it’s always the same. They know squat about anything but making dough. They might say the Knicks look good this year, sure, but ask them the starting fìve and you got ’em. They know Patrick, oh and that Starks fellow, but who can keep the rest of them straight? Come game night, though, who’s sitting courtside, with girls right off a calendar, while I can’t get a ticket? Biff and Todd in there. Courtside seats and they can’t tell you what a pick and roll is. Five rows back of home plate at Shea and they don’t show up until the third inning. Drives me nuts.

  They get the tickets and the dolls and nobody ever holds them to account. Well, let’s see him explain that nose this weekend. He can tell her he got slugged by a stock option.

  I guess what really burns me about those guys is that they are the standard. They’re what we’ve come to, at the end of the twentieth century. They have the bucks and can dress on the left side and spot the salad fork so they pass as men. Christ. If those clowns are men, if they’re what the ladies are looking for, who they want steering the ship, then I’m in trouble, because they’re the last men I’ll ever be. And with them at the helm, it’s not hard to see where we’re all headed. Straight to a world without chests, if you ask me. A clean, quiet place where we all tip our hats to the neighbors, and put our bottles on the curb, and nobody’s any better than anyone else. Makes you want to give up on the whole mess.

  But what do I know? I can’t figure the rules anymore. What is it makes a man these days, anyway? It used to be simple. You went into the service at eighteen and you came out a man. End of story. Christ knows I’ve heard that refrain enough times at home. That’s the route Dad went, and Grandpa before him, and on back as far as we know.

  Not that I think that’s the answer anymore, either. Even though Dad’s a lifer I always knew I wouldn’t join up. I knew it as a kid, the first time I saw the fresh recruits marched all around the base. Told when to eat, when to sleep, when to go to the can. No, thanks. These days, the only guys I see going that route are the bottom of the pile, where the choice is the service or the clink. You know the ones I mean, the guys in high school who couldn’t quite pull that D in shop, who drop out one day and you see them on the street three months later, trying to outrun the cops to the recruiting booth.

  You should have seen Dad, though, the day I told him I wasn’t joining up. I waited till senior year, and when he said, “What the hell else you gonna do?” I handed him my college acceptance. He tore it in two and handed it back. That’s Dad for you. A tough g
uy, just like his father before him. Grandpa was a Navy man who spent his whole life in the yards and who, no bull, once went thirty-two years between sick days. Dad opted for the Army, but he’s cut from the same cloth.

  Maybe that’s why I want to beat Duggan so bad. Sometimes I think he and my old man would hit it off pretty well. Duggan is a tough guy, too. I don’t even need to hear his story—I can guess. Came across the foam with nothing, like all the others. Ten years of schooling, probably, tops, but he looks at us with our college degrees and he’s not impressed. The kind of guy who takes what he wants when he wants it and never says sorry to anyone. I’ll bet he can’t wait to get a crack at me.

  There’s an old Southern expression that says you aren’t a man until your father tells you you are. Not much chance Dad will be sending that letter anytime soon. Still, I get the feeling that if I can pull all this off—beat Duggan on his own terms, with everything riding on it—well maybe, for a little while anyway, I’ll stop waiting for it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I DON’T KNOW what got into me.

  The guy from Immigration called this morning to hand us the case. Not only is Rosa illegal, but it turns out her cousin is too. Works construction off the books for Prego’s brother in Queens. Our man has pay stubs, pictures, everything we need. He’ll sit on the info, he said, unless he hears different from us.

  “What do you think, Reasons? Ought to let you guys put the squeeze on him, huh?”

  I thanked him, said we should be in the clear now. Then I walked into Carter’s office and told him Prego had come up clean.

  “Goddammit!”

  Carter slammed his fist on the desk.

  The funny thing is, when I walked in here I didn’t mean to lie to him. At the last second I saw the little statue he keeps of the scales of justice. You know the one, where she’s blind and just weighs the evidence. I saw that and I thought of Prego and it just came out.

  “I don’t believe it!” Carter says, squeezing his temples with his hand. “I’ve seen a hundred guys like Prego, and there’s always someone hanging around who’s not legit. Just my luck to draw the one family who plays it straight.”

  This is it—my last chance to come clean. If I don’t, and the firm ever finds out, that’s the end of me. Their biggest case in years, and one of their own is shooting bullets through the heart of it. Christ, what about Prego, though? The guy did nothing wrong, and if it’s left up to the system he’ll never even get to tell his side of it. I’m the last guy left who can give him that chance.

  “You sure he looked everywhere, Reasons?”

  Out the window, past Carter’s head I can see the water, and far out on it I can just make out the green hand of the Statue of Liberty. Holding her torch. Fuck it. If it costs me, it costs me.

  “He covered every angle, sir. Prego’s clean.”

  Carter swivels his chair and stares out at the river himself. “Okay, Reasons. Then we go to Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan B, sir?”

  “You’ll like it.”

  He turns back around and taps his fingers on the desk. “Reasons, I think it’s about time we brought you into the circle. We have to sooner or later.”

  I’m all for later, much later, but he launches in.

  “Plan B, Reasons, is the Board of Health springs a surprise visit on our Mr. Prego. The inspector pokes around in the cellar awhile, then comes up saying he saw a rat down there you could put a saddle on. That’s just how he writes it up, too. Calls the boys over and they lock Prego’s doors on him. Put a sign up in the window, ‘Closed by Order of the Board of Health.’

  “The closure is just ‘temporary,’ of course, until he can pass inspection. But our friend the inspector, he’s a busy guy. This town has a lot of restaurants, after all, and keeping them safe for Joe Public is a big task. So even though Prego calls and calls, his second inspection keeps getting put off.

  “Meantime, we’re firing motions at him one after the other. His lawyers have to respond, of course, and with his business down he’s not generating any revenue to pay them.

  “And when, finally, the inspector does get back there, damned if he doesn’t see that rat again. Or maybe the motor on the ice unit isn’t up to code, or they find a couple bugs on a bag of rice. Whatever it is, the place is never quite up to snuff. So the sign stays in the window. Until Prego is ready to settle, of course.” Carter shoots me a smug smile. “It all comes together pretty nicely, don’t you think?”

  “I guess it does, sir.”

  He dismisses me and I head back to my desk. So much for any regrets. I should have known, though, that Carter would have a backup scheme, and that it would take more than my little fib to get Prego his day in court. I chase down citations for an hour but can’t keep my head in the job, so I walk out on the landing to get some air. Up here on the thirty-third floor you get quite a view. Far down below I can see the New York Post Building standing low and gray by the water. I stare at her a good two minutes before the neon masthead sparks something in me. Well, well. Take heart, Giuseppe, I say to myself as I turn away. We’re not done yet.

  Back at my desk the phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  “Tom, she threw me out.”

  “What?”

  “Molly, Tom. She threw me out.”

  “What do you mean, she threw you out?”

  “She met someone else. Some guy named Ben who works at the health club. So she threw me out.”

  Molly with a health-club stud?

  “Mike, it’s your place. The lease is in your name. Hell, she’s not even working now. You’re picking up her share of the rent, too.”

  “But she said I can’t come back.”

  I pull the phone from my ear and stare at it a few seconds.

  “Tom, what can I do?”

  “I’d tell you, Mike, but you wouldn’t do it.”

  “I will, I promise. What do I do?”

  “Okay, listen. March straight home, drag Molly into the street by her hair and throw her stuff out after her. When she stops rolling, tell her if she comes back she better have a rent check in one hand, dinner in the other, and she better be wearing something nice. Then spit and slam the door.”

  Silence on the line for three seconds.

  “Come on, Tom. Be serious. Tom?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You know violence doesn’t solve anything. Maybe if I just give her some space she’ll calm down.”

  I bow my head. “Maybe. Mike, I gotta go. You do what you want, and let me know how it turns out.”

  A minute later I’m still shaking my head at the receiver. Why am I even surprised, though? It was bound to happen. The only shock, really, is that it took this long.

  A guy like Mike, he twists himself into a pretzel to be just what his girl wants, but once he gets there, there isn’t anything left of him. Molly has her little fellow, who talks like she does and thinks like she does and signs up for every cause she tells him to. She pats him on the head now and then and tells all her friends what a winner she has. She thinks she’s happy, and for a few months I suppose she is. But in the end she cuts him loose. Why? Because she doesn’t respect him anymore, and when the lights go out no girl wants to be fucked by a guy she doesn’t respect. So what else can she do but dump him for someone with a little something to him? Ben, from the health club.

  Right now, Mike’s learning the hard way that what girls say they want is not really what they want. I’ve heard it over and over. They tell you they’re looking for a guy who is sensitive, caring, who can understand their feelings. I know a dozen guys like that and not one of them gets laid. If you ask me, I think most girls are looking for the same thing us guys are. A little fun out of life, some adventure. A good time in the sack. If you agree on the big picture besides, it’s a bonus.

  If Mike just pays attention here and takes all this to heart, it could be the best thing for him. He has to wise up sooner or later, and if losing Molly is all the lesso
n costs him, I call that a bargain and a half. Somehow I doubt he’ll see it that way, though. Mike always had a lot of marshmallow in him, even before she got ahold of him.

  I CUT OUT OF THE OFFICE a few ticks early and hurry over to the Supreme Court Building. I’m at the work entrance at five sharp. If I know my clerks, I won’t have long to wait. Sure enough, at 5:01 my old friend from the filing room comes out the door. Christ, he’s even bigger than I thought. Must be six feet eight, at least, and almost half that across. Just the guy I need watching my back Friday night. I wave him down.

  “Do you know who I am?” I ask.

  He squints at me, then shrugs. “I don’t look at faces, kid. I stamp and file.”

  “I’m Tom Reasons. I work for Farrell Hawthorne.”

  “Too late. Court closes at five.”

  “I’m not here on business. Not court business, anyway. I wondered if you’d be interested in making some extra bucks?”

  “Back off, kid. You think they let us freelance for law firms?”

  “It’s not for the firm. You’d be working for me, personally.”

  He looks me over. “Doing what?”

  I explain.

  “Why me?”

  “You’re the biggest guy I know.”

  “How much?”

  “Five hundred bucks.”

  “When?”

  “Friday night.”

  “Friday night I got opera tickets, kid. Prokofiev—my favorite by a long shot.” He takes a step away, then stops and sighs. “I have seen it four times, though. For five hundred bucks I suppose I could skip it this once. Tell me again what I gotta do.”

  I spell it out, we shake on it, and he lumbers off to his bus.

  BACK AT THE PAD Tuesday night I meet Ben for the first time. I can see right away he does more than pass out towels and guard the sauna. He has the huge arms and slim waist of a gymnast, and a shock of blond hair. When I walk in, he and Molly are on the couch. They have an old Giants play-off tape in the VCR, and Ben’s taking her through the game of football step by step. Just now he’s going over the difference between a 4–3 defensive set and a 3–4, and Molly’s soaking it up as if she were born on the fifty-yard line. She tells me they’ve been at it all day.