by Darryl Brock
Ducking under his gorilla reach, I sidestepped and slapped the side of his head. Which, predictably, pissed him off. What was I supposed to do? Knock my prospective employer silly? Let him beat me to a pulp? He wheeled with a growl and came again, brawny arms spread wide. Getting caught up in those would be a disaster. Grateful for the work I’d put in with Tim, I poised on the balls of my feet and concentrated on basics. I had a good twenty years on Morrissey and I needed to use them. Dancing away, I reached out with an open-handed jab and slapped him again. Face contorting, he kept coming. I feinted, slapped, confused him with jabs, kept footwork and breathing balanced, stayed just out of his reach. The point, I figured, wasn’t to inflict damage, but to show I could handle myself.
Then I got careless or he got lucky.
He rushed again but veered at the same instant I danced aside. As I delivered an open-handed punch—no use breaking a knuckle on that hard skull—he nailed me with a right that spun me halfway around, then buckled my knees with a rabbit punch thrown full force. Jesus, I thought numbly, he’s out to kill me.
“Yeah!” yelled the staff man.
What saved me was that by then Old Smoke wasn’t moving very fast either, his wind coming in labored gasps. As he reached for me I began to backpedal, then caught him off-guard by suddenly launching myself forward and throwing my first real punch, a left hook that went deep into his gut. He deflated like the P.T. Barnum and sank heavily to the floor.
“Christ’s privy!” said the staffer in alarmed tones, bending over him. “He’s got a bad spleen.”
Then why did we do this?
“I’m satisfied,” Morrissey groaned, and rose ponderously to one knee. “You’re employed.”
He reached out his hand for help. The instant I took it, his fingers closed like a trap. Yanking me downward, he butted me in the face with his forehead. It felt like being hit with an anvil. I fell atop him, blood already streaming into my eyes. Desperate, I rolled away before he could do more, but he wasn’t trying, and allowed me to get up. With the realization of how I’d been tricked came a surge of anger. I stepped forward with a vague notion of payback, but the other two grabbed me.
“Hold on, Roosevelt,” said Baker. “You got the job.”
“Fuck the job,” I said, “if it means I—”
“I know you!” Morrissey bellowed. “It just came to me! You’re that ballist what knocked out Bull Craver’s lamps.” His eyes narrowed. “Fowler. The one Red Jim’s dying to get hold of.”
Baker eyed me with new interest as he handed me a handkerchief to soak up blood. “Not Roosevelt?”
I stood there panting, unable to think of anything to say.
“If I was your age, I’d break you.” Morrissey almost crooned the words; his cheeks were red where I’d slapped him, his eyes slitted onyx.
I believed him.
“You’ll do,” he said, “but there’s few who’ll stand and fight Queensbury like you. We’ll teach you some tricks. Right, Grogan?”
Studying me, the staffer nodded.
When we’d pulled our shirts on again, Morrissey put his arm around me as if we were bosom pals. “Go fetch Red Jim,” he said to Grogan.
Wait! I wanted to shout it. No doubt Morrissey felt me react beneath the heavy pressure of his arm. My brain was working at top speed. I’d wanted to get more of the lay of things here before encountering McDermott. But maybe, on reflection, this was a better way for it to happen.
Morrissey released me and I put on my coat, aware of the Derringer’s weight. Several tense minutes passed and then McDermott strode into the room.
“You wanted—” he began, then stopped dead as he saw me; his eyes darted rapidly to either side as if seeking escape routes, then to Morrissey.
“Hello, Red Jim.” I tried to sound at ease, hands in my coat pockets. “I’ve come for the money you and Devlin stole.”
His face turned ashen and his pale blue eyes flicked again to the others. Nobody moved or spoke. It was our show.
“You fork-tongued lying bastard.” He began slowly and gathered momentum as he went. “The brazen nerve of you, showing up after killing an Irish hero who—”
“Cut the shit,” I interrupted. “I didn’t kill anybody. And I didn’t sell shares of property rightfully belonging to Irish settlers.” I kept my voice level. “You did those things.”
“Did you, Jim?” said Morrissey, again in that odd crooning tone. “Did you take the money of our Irish brothers?”
“No, sir, that I never did.” McDermott looked about to cross his heart.
If it was an act, the two rogues were pretty convincing.
“He stole money that should be helping poor Irish families,” I pressed. “And maybe used the Club House to launder that money.”
I couldn’t tell if the charge struck a nerve or even if Morrissey understood “launder.” He studied us as if at ringside, analyzing a pair of pugilists. Grogan alertly awaited orders. Baker looked on placidly; we might have been playing faro at his table.
“Cat got your tongue, dickhead?” I said to McDermott.
He must have decided that it would cost him too much face to back down. His hand suddenly jerked to his waistcoat and produced a stiletto-type stabbing knife, the blade gleaming in the glow of the gas globes. My stomach shrank to the size of a nut. I hate knives.
“So much for no weapons, huh?” I said to Morrissey.
Silence.
McDermott inched forward awkwardly, blade held high. His old killing companion, LeCaron, would have come up underneath, gone for the guts. “Take it back, you shit-mouth liar.”
Red Jim was used to having others do his dirty work, and I suspected he’d still rather try to bluster his way out than mix with me. I stood silently until he maneuvered to about six feet away.
“Go ahead,” I said in my best Clint Eastwood imitation, hands in coat pockets, the right one poking conspicuously toward him. “Make my afternoon.”
The pale eyes fixed on my pocket. Was I bluffing? His face registered his dilemma: risk humiliation or risk death?
A long moment passed.
“If you ain’t gonna use your damn pigsticker, Jim, drop it!” Morrissey said disgustedly.
Mumbling something about facing guns, McDermott finally tossed his knife on the carpet.
“And you, Fowler, let’s see what you’re so proud of.”
Slowly I withdrew my right hand. It was empty and the pocket lay flat.
Baker and Grogan grinned; Morrissey roared his approval. McDermott’s face purpled and he reached behind his back. “It’s guns, then, you sonofabitch?” This time he produced a sawed-off revolver, ugly and black, and his finger tightened on the trigger.
“Hey!” Morrissey yelled.
As I twisted sideways I fired the Derringer in my left pocket, where I’d had it all along. A muzzle flash and a sharp pop! erupted there, and then I was tumbling on the carpet, hoping the others would grab McDermott before he drilled me.
It turned out far better.
When no shot came, I stopped rolling and looked up. Hopping spasmodically, McDermott clutched his hand to his chest, blood seeping from his fingers.
Where was the gun?
The others, even Morrissey, stared at me with what looked like varying degrees of awe. I thought I’d fired in the general direction of McDermott’s legs. Either my aim had been so bad or the Derringer so unreliable that by purest luck the bullet had struck McDermott’s shooting hand. I tamped out smoldering threads on my coat as if I did this routinely.
Grogan picked up the pistol. “Didn’t get nicked.” He smirked. “Didn’t get fired, neither.”
“I wasn’t aiming for the gun,” I said breezily, feeling almost drunk with relief.
Morrissey gave me a look. Maybe I was overplaying things.
“Holy God,” McDermott moaned. “The bastard shot me.”
“As if you weren’t gonna do the like to him,” Morrissey said acidly. “I’m thinkin’ you got your due for bringing weapons in.”<
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“I was bluffing,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna shoot.”
Morrissey rolled his eyes.
Grogan bound his hand with a handkerchief. Luckily for McDermott, the bullet had passed through the webbing between thumb and forefinger. Had it hit bone, his hand would be useless for a long time.
“I’m thinking how sweet it’ll be,” Morrissey said, “to have the both of you here.”
“What?” McDermott howled. “Keep that fooker on the premises instead of draggin’ him to a gallows?”
“You can keep a good eye on each other,” Morrissey said levelly. “That way, maybe I’ll learn more about dead Fenians and stolen money.” He eyed us balefully. “But if you fight in here again, I’ll kill the one who’s left. Understand?”
We understood.
“If there’s a bullet in the wall,” Morrissey told me, “the repair comes out of your pay.”
“When do I start?”
“Tomorrow.” The dark eyes probed me. “The track season’s almost on us.”
“This is a godawful mistake—” McDermott began.
“Shut up,” Morrissey barked, and turned back to me. “Mr. Grogan and Mr. Baker will coach you, Fowler. And sometimes”—the crooning tone again—“perhaps even Mr. McDermott.”
TWENTY
“Don’t fret over the weapons rule,” Grogan advised. “We all carry some sort of belly gun—that’s why Red Jim had one—but for God’s sake, don’t shoot on the premises again!” He presented me with a pair of steel knuckles and demonstrated tactics far beyond the imaginative scope of intercollegiate boxing—all the while urging restraint. “Mostly we gentle the customers,” he said. “Old Smoke wants his past behind him so he can hobnob with the silk stockings. Above all, he wants what’s best for business.”
The job didn’t demand too much beyond showing up. Six nights a week I reported as the heavy-hitters began to drift in, generally between eight and nine. At midnight I snacked in the restaurant. Between three and five a.m., depending on business, I helped close up. My time was split between the downstairs public and second-floor private rooms. On the public level there was the occasional messy drunk to remove or dispute to quash before it escalated. For this my physical presence was usually enough. I was rarely tested.
And Grogan never strayed too far from me.
A more genteel atmosphere prevailed on the second floor, where the high-rollers drank far less and bet a great deal more while studying faro layouts with a disciplined observation worthy of scientists. It was here that an out-of-town Vanderbilt relative might find himself in over his depth, and the situation would call for diplomacy and “special handling.”
It didn’t take Morrissey long to decide to let me handle those situations rather than Grogan or others of his unschooled toughs. Generally it involved guiding a party up to a third-floor “holding” room, pouring coffee in him till he was sensible, then informing him that his debts would be excused but his credit at the Club House had expired. At times I served as an emissary to the man’s socialite relatives. Having been a crime reporter, accustomed to interviewing victims’ families, I could muster the requisite tact for dealing with embarrassed gentry. Morrissey soon doubled my weekly salary from twenty to forty dollars. Nice to feel appreciated—but at that rate it would take the rest of my life to make up the O’Neill colony’s loss.
Could I return to Cait, I wondered, without recovering the stolen funds?
Maybe so, but I didn’t like that scenario.
Anxious to find ways to get at Red Jim McDermott, I spent as much time as I could with Baker, who tutored me in Club House operations and entertained me with droll commentary on Saratoga’s inhabitants. He seemed to enjoy the company of somebody other than Morrissey’s thick-brained hirelings. From him I got a comprehensive education in gambling and came to see that everything could be—and usually was—rigged. The dice, for example, contained metal flakes on one side; craps and chuck-a-luck operators could control results on high-stake throws by means of foot pedals that activated electromagnets beneath the felt of the tables.
Faro, the most popular pastime, represented my most advanced course of study, although the way it worked seemed simple. The dealer shuffled the deck and put it into a spring-loaded box. In front of him was the “layout,” a suit of thirteen cards painted on a large square of enameled cloth. On his right an assistant collected and paid debts. Another assistant on his left operated the “case-keeper,” an abacus-like affair that tracked all cards played; from it players could instantly see what cards remained to be dealt. They bet by placing chips on the “layout,” then the dealer pulled cards from the box. The first card from each deck was a “soda” and didn’t count. After that, cards were drawn in pairs, each pair constituting a “turn.” The first card of each turn was a “loser” and counted for the bank—so that if you put chips on the jack, say, and the first card up was a jack, you lost your money; but if the second card was a jack, you collected.
Faro also allowed “coppering” bets, that is, putting a copper token atop a stack of chips to wager that card would lose. A turn producing two cards of the same denomination—two jacks, say—was a “split” and the house took half of all bets on that card.
After twenty-four turns, only three cards remained in the dealer’s box: a loser, a winner, and the last card or “hock.” Players could bet on the order of those last cards, and the bank paid four-to-one odds for guessing correctly.
On the face of it, except for “splits” it was an even game, gambler against the house, each winning approximately half the time. And splits brought the house only about three percent of all wagers, a modest cut.
If the game were played fairly, that is.
Faro cheaters were legion, according to Baker, and various types of rigged dealing boxes were manufactured and sold openly. Yet he claimed that the Club House’s boxes—at least his own—were square. Which left the question of how he managed to pull so many splits from his dealing box, and why the house won an inordinate number of times during his shift. By then I knew that an expert dealer could arrange such things. Since Baker was the best in the nation, I studied him intently, trying to see how it was done.
I realized I would never know when he displayed the equipment closet. Playing cards in this era didn’t have plasticized surfaces but were simply uncoated card stock boxed with spacers to press them flat. Because they quickly wore and crimped, devices existed to shave decks’ edges and corners so they could be reused. Baker demonstrated how, if only certain cards were shaved, he could identify them as he shuffled. I tried it and felt no difference.
“Ignorant fingers,” he remarked.
He showed me a rigged deck with a symbol for each card hidden in the pattern on the back. Another where a needle had been driven into certain cards to raise tiny bumps. While dealing, Baker could identify them from the positioning of the bumps. My ignorant fingers scarcely felt them.
He showed me how to roughen cards on a strip of emery paper glued to one’s belt. How to make two or more stick together and look like one. How to mark aces with the diamond on his ring. By then I no longer cared how he did it. I knew that Baker could arrange splits, deal a losing card when heavy money had it to win, and stack the last three playable cards to the house’s advantage whenever he chose.
When I foolishly told him I considered myself decent at blackjack (here called twenty-one on the first floor, vingt-et-un on the second), Baker sat me down and, in a single tour through the deck, dealt himself exactly 21 points ten straight times after telling me he’d do it and letting me cut whenever I wanted. The man was a cardplaying genius and a repository of gambling lore.
“Did you know I was in the famous poker game where Eat-Em-Up Jack got his name?” he said proudly. “Damndest thing I ever saw. I was the only one who did see it, in fact, till the story leaked. Then everybody claimed to be in on it.”
“What happened?” I asked
“We were playing draw and ol’ Jack drew thr
ee cards and like to piss his drawers when he saw he’d pulled in three aces. Trouble was, he’d mistakenly only turned in two from his hand. So there he sat, hiding a six-card hand, a queer expression on his face. Now, I was just a kid and wasn’t about to raise a fuss. Just as I folded my play, sandwiches and beer came. Jack’s hands never went below the table, but when we started up again, he only had five cards and took one helluva pot.”
“He ate the extra card?”
Baker laughed. “Slipped it straight into his sandwich.”
Frustrated that so far I hadn’t found ways to advance my own mission, I said glumly that such antics never seemed to transpire at the Club House.
“Nope,” he agreed. “Old Smoke runs this place like a bank, which it closely resembles.”
My ears pricked up. “How so?”
“Well, first, the scale. Last year we netted a quarter-million. Our cash transactions and loans at interest leave a good number of banks in the shade. Then too, Smoke likes things quiet here, like in a bank. One night Diamond Jim Fisk wanted to bring in musicians. He was dropping a fortune at the tables, but Morrissey turned him down.”
“Fisk wiped me out on Black Friday,” I said sourly.
“Cornering gold?” Baker clucked at the audacity of it. “Well, he paid for it. One of his partners stole his mistress here in Saratoga. When poor Jim squawked he got shot dead.” He gave me a probing look. “Speaking of mistresses, look out for yourself. Some skillful women operate here—and they know we get paid top money.”
Which I knew was true in Baker’s case. Grogan claimed that the star dealer made forty-five hundred dollars a month, plus fifteen percent of house winnings during his shifts.
“Old Smoke’s not above using a working lady to see what he can dig out about you.”
I nodded soberly.
“Another thing,” Baker added. “Sooner or later he’s gonna ask you to sit in on one of his private games. There’s something I can tell you about his style.”
“What’s that?”
“He’ll only bluff once in a given hand. If you call him, fine. But if you raise, he won’t climb with you. It’s something about losing face. He’s willing to take a calculated risk but not look bad by going all the way.”