The Rogues' Game

by Milton T. Burton

  A week later Col. Homer Garrison sent Bob Crowder and ten other Texas Rangers into town on his own initiative. They arrived just after sunset one hot evening on the Texas & Pacific Thunderbolt, their rifles on their shoulders and their horses in a special car attached to the rear of the train. Within an hour they were patrolling Buckshot Row and Nanny Goat Gully. Their methods were often ruthless, but as Crowder later told the press, they hadn’t been sent to town to organize a debating society. Crime rates fell as the worst of the hoods and thugs who’d seeped into the community fled before they had occasion to clash with Crowder and his men. Still, in the first two weeks they arrested more than sixty individuals who were wanted in Texas and other states for serious felonies, and that number included a handful of murderers. The Rangers’ efforts were hampered by the fact that without a declaration of martial law they had to cooperate with local law enforcement, and local law enforcement meant a sheriff’s department headed by Will Scoggins, a man fully as corrupt as the elements he was paid to control. But I was not without a friend even in that savage land, and that friend was named Ollie Marne.

  * * *

  I played again at the Weilbach that weekend, but the man I’d come to town to see wasn’t there that time either. Near midnight Saturday evening I felt that I had come to know Wilburn Rasco well enough to make a friendly inquiry. “Say, what about this Robillard that people keep telling me about?” I asked.

  He gave me a sharp glance. “Do you know Clifton?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I’ve heard around town that he’s one of the big players in this game.”

  “Aren’t you taking enough off me to satisfy you?”

  “Hah!” I answered with a rueful smile. “I seem to be down about a thousand to you right now. Actually, I’d hoped that Robillard might prove to be easier pickings. I’ve been told that he’s quite a gambler.”

  “He is, and he’s a fair hand at the poker table. But I think his business dealings have kept him busy the last few weeks.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He teamed up with a fellow from Fillmore, and the two of them have been wheeling and dealing in oil leases since this strike began.”

  “Is that so?” I asked. “And just who is this gentleman from Fillmore?”

  “Name’s Simon Van Horn. Ever heard of him?”

  I shook my head and changed the subject. I’d told the truth; I’d never heard of Van Horn, but I planned to find out about him as soon as I could.

  * * *

  Wednesday came and I took Marne to Dallas and gave him a look into a whole new world. After my run-in with Scoggins, I thought it better that we not be seen openly together in town, so we arranged to meet early that morning at a crossroads store on the north side of the county. Marne left his car there and we drove the rest of the way in my Lincoln. A wave of postwar idealism had swept through the country, and Dallas was in the middle of one of its periodic reform binges. The previous year a young combat veteran named Steve Guthrie had been elected sheriff on a platform that pledged to run all the hoods out of town. He was doing a fair job of living up to that promise. The Italian crime syndicates had never really gotten a strong foothold in Texas because the powers that be, who never wanted them here in the first place, allowed the local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers free rein when dealing with out-of-state thugs. Their efforts were matched by the ferocity with which such homegrown mobsters as Herbert Noble and Benny Benion defended their territories. These two men had been at war with each other over the control of organized gambling in Dallas since 1938, but now Guthrie was putting considerable pressure on both operations. Illegal casinos had been raided and closed, and the state’s liquor laws were being rigidly enforced. But Dallas is Dallas, and I gave the reformers about eighteen more months before the citizenry grew weary of this overabundance of virtue and returned things to normal.

  We pulled into town at lunchtime, and soon we were feasting on rare prime beef in the dining room of the Adolphus Hotel. After our meal I took him to the offices of Fletcher & Reese on the twelfth floor of the Magnolia Building. I could tell it was his first visit to a premier big-city law firm. I watched his eyes run over the polished mahogany walls and the rich Oriental carpets, and before long an exquisitely clad secretary ushered us into the office of one of the senior partners, Elwood Fletcher himself. Fletcher had done some work for Bill Donovan during the war, and he and I were well acquainted. A little taller and heavier that Manlow Rhodes, he was cut from the same Calvinist cloth and projected the same air of fastidious competence.

  “Mr. Marne,” he said to Ollie, “as you’ve been told, we will sign a contract to represent you in this matter. And even though this gentleman here is paying our fee, we will be your attorneys of record for this transaction. Would that be acceptable?”

  That’s when Ollie Marne impressed me the second time with his common sense and instinctive good manners. He shook his head. “If it’s all the same to you Mr. Fletcher, I’d just as soon not put you to the trouble of making out no contract. If you say you’re lookin’ out for my interests that’s all I need.”

  “Very good,” Fletcher said, obviously pleased. “The matter is in order. It’s that simple. The title is as sound as any title can be.”

  He went on to explain to Ollie what exactly he would be getting for his “ten dollars and other good and valuable consideration,” as the deed read.

  “What does this ‘ten dollars’ business mean?” he asked.

  “This transaction is being handled as a sale. That way all parties can avoid the problem of a gift tax.”

  Ollie Marne understood avoiding both problems and taxes. He quickly skimmed over the mineral deed, then reached for his wallet. “Then I guess I owe this guy ten bucks, don’t I?” he asked with a grin.

  I signed the instrument as agent for Deltex Petroleum and took Ollie’s ten with a wink. When we left the attorney’s office I drove one street over and a few blocks down and pulled up in front of Neiman Marcus. “Come on,” I said to Ollie.

  “What are we doing here?” he asked as I steered him through the front door.

  “Your wife didn’t get to come today, so you’re going to buy her something nice,” I told him.

  Loyal this man might be, but smart he was not. “Hey, that’s a good idea,” he replied and headed toward the women’s hats.

  I grabbed him by the arm and pushed him into the lingerie department. “Buy her something really fine,” I said. “If you’re short on cash, I’ll lend you whatever you need.”

  I figured that he must have had trouble stopping once he got started, because he reappeared thirty minutes later laden with boxes. We stopped at a bookstore a few doors down and I bought his little girl a dozen Nancy Drew books. “You’re sure she’s never read any Nancy Drew?” I asked.

  “Hey, I know what my kid reads!”

  We whisked along in silence until we were several miles out of Dallas. Then Marne said, “Listen, I really feel bad about that run-in you had with the sheriff. I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with it.”

  “I know you didn’t, Ollie. Forget about it.”

  We fell back into silence. A few miles down the road he pulled his wallet from his pocket and extracted a photograph. “My wife, Dixie,” he said, handing me the photo.

  Much to my surprise she was a fine-looking auburn-haired woman dressed in a halter top and a pair of white shorts. She had a sweet face, long dancer’s legs and a full figure. I gave the photo a careful examination and then handed it back. “Ollie, my good man … you did well for yourself,” I said.

  “I bet you never expected to see a lug like me with a woman like her, did you?”

  “No, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t.”

  “I’m going to tell you something that don’t nobody in town but me and Dixie and Will Scoggins know. Dixie was a hooker when I first met her.”

  I shrugged. “We’ve all got skeletons in our closets, Ollie.”

  “She was twenty
-two years old and working in that house down at La Grange. She wanted to get out of that kind of life real bad, and I was crazy about her. She didn’t love me at the time and I knew it, but I think she does now. Our little girl was born three years later, and nobody could have been a better momma to a kid than Dixie has been to her. She’s a fool about that child, and I guess I am too. Dixie’s a good woman, but the fact remains that she was a whore, and Will Scoggins won’t never let me forget it.”

  “It sounds to me like she just had a wild youth,” I said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “It happens to a lot of girls. Scoggins is the real whore. He’s dropped his pants time and again to hold on to his office, and you and I both know it.”

  “Thanks for saying that,” he replied. “I guess you’re a pretty good guy after all.”

  “Yes, I am,” I replied. “But I’m no saint, and I’m buying insurance with you today. You need to remember that.”

  He nodded, his head bobbing up and down like a fishing cork. “I know, and when the time comes I plan to do my best to come through for you.”

  I reached over and clasped him on the shoulder. “Ollie, the other day Manlow Rhodes said something nice about you. He told me that you are as decent a man as circumstances in town will let you be.”

  “Really?” he asked in a surprised voice.

  “Yes, and coming from him it’s quite a compliment.”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re the good guys this time around. Maybe not always, but this time we are. I promise you that.”

  “Oh no,” he said. “The good guys are just clowns and I want to go out a winner.” I glanced over and there was a look of mild sadness in his hard little eyes. “I may not be very smart,” he said, “but I’ve seen enough to know that.”

  FIFTEEN

  That Friday when Della paid her staff we suddenly found ourselves in a position familiar to many Texas oil people: we were rich and broke at the same time. The abstract company had brought in over a quarter of a million dollars since we’d acquired it, and except for a small fund set aside to cover overhead we’d used every dime of the money to buy leases. It hadn’t occurred to us to pay ourselves any kind of salary, and now both our personal checking account and the pantry at home were empty and the electric bill was overdue. I gave Della $200 out of the now-replenished poker account so she could eat while I played, and she dropped me off in front of the Weilbach at a few minutes before six that evening.

  The complexion of the game upstairs was changing. Pots were getting bigger and more money was flowing across the table each weekend. A couple of the regular players had found that it was becoming too rich for their blood and dropped out, only to be replaced by oilmen who had come to town with the boom. The tension was also greater, and the talk around the table was becoming more barbed, a violation of another of the game’s unspoken conventions. While card-playing buddies may needle one another in a friendly fashion at their regular Friday night game, this type of behavior has always been frowned upon at serious poker matches. The excuse is that poker is a gentleman’s pastime, and that gentlemen don’t act in such a fashion. The truth is that dedicated players really don’t like to say any more than they have to for fear of revealing patterns about their play.

  Zip Zimmerman was there that Friday, losing as always, and Wilbur Rasco was present and playing his usual cool, deadly game. One of the newcomers to the table was Simon Van Horn, the man Rasco had identified as Clifton Robillard’s partner in the oil business. He was a tall, slim man in his early fifties, and in the past week I’d learned from my contacts that he was probably the wealthiest of all the new arrivals in town, a man with a national reputation who had served on President Roosevelt’s Petroleum Allocation Board back during the war. At the poker table he was a competent player whose game was weakened by his habit of putting his ego on the table along with his money, a quirk that was to prove very profitable to me in the weeks to come.

  The other oilman present that evening was Howard Northcutt, an enormous, shambling hulk of a man who was given to backslapping and loud laughter. He was also one of the boldest and most aggressive poker players I’d ever seen. Then there was Clifton Robillard. A man of medium height, he had a trim, compact body, long arms, and long tapering fingers. His face was long too, with a finely sculptured nose over a neatly trimmed silver mustache and a wide, full mouth. Something of a dandy, he always dressed carefully in sparkling white dress shirts and custom-tailored suits of the most recent style and fashionable cut. That evening it was an elegant slate gray with a fine gold pinstripe.

  I knew that he’d inherited some money from his father, who’d been a land speculator and cattle trader back in the nineteenth century. Right before the First World War the family had founded the Mercantile State Bank, which was Manlow Rhodes’s only competitor in town. Robillard himself had prospered through some unspecified involvement with the local munitions factory during the first war, but he’d lost heavily in the Crash of 1929, and for a time it looked as though he would go under. He made a comeback in the late ’30s, and since then his fortune had multiplied several-fold. He was politically connected as well. During the second war he’d served in the state senate, where he was noted for his loyal support of Governor Coke Stevenson’s conservative policies. Over the years he’d earned such a reputation for ruthlessness in business that his name was even feared in some quarters. Now in his midsixties and basking in his own mystique, he was rich, licentious, and doomed. He was the reason I had come to town.

  * * *

  “Oh yes,” Robillard said ten minutes later as we were taking our places at the table. “I’ve heard about you. I thought somebody said that you went to Yale University.”

  “Harvard,” I replied.

  “Harvard, no less.” He gave me a firm handshake and an affable pat on the back, but his eyes were cold and unfriendly and his voice was a soft, throaty purr that reminded me of a diesel truck idling; it gave the hint of power rarely used but always there in reserve.

  The game heated up quickly that evening. I’d only been at the table about an hour when Zip Zimmerman’s oddball luck hit and he took a pot with more than $4,000 in it, several hundred of it mine. About nine o’clock I won a $2,700 pot, then just before midnight I went head-to-head against Clifton Robillard for the first time in a hand of five-card stud. On the first deal I had a king showing against his eight. I bet a $100 and he called it and dropped a $500 bill on the table. I matched him and everybody but Zimmerman folded. On the next round I drew an ace and Robillard paired his eights. The ace did me no good at all, but I had a second king in the hole to go with the one showing. Zimmerman wisely dropped out when the trey he drew didn’t improve the nothing he already had.

  I have one fixed policy. I never look twice at a hole card no matter what. If you can’t look at your card one time and remember it for the few minutes it takes to play a hand of poker, then you have no business at the table. Still, many people, and even some fairly good gamblers, will take a second and sometimes a third look. Often a player will remember the denomination of the card, but not the suit and will have to look again if, for example, he winds up with three diamonds showing and only remembers that the hole card was red.

  On the next card I drew a third king while Robillard drew a jack and immediately took another quick peek at his hole card. I knew at that point I was about to get some indication of how good a gambler he was. Twice before he had looked quickly at his hole card in the same quick, furtive fashion, and both times it was when he had paired. I knew it because I’d paid to find out, staying in with losing hands just to see his hole card. His peeking could be a tell, which is any physical mannerism or habit that, when repeated in the same circumstances, gives away a person’s game. And if his peeking was a tell, it was a blatant and obvious one and it meant that he was a mediocre gambler. If not, he’d been intentionally running a false tell on me earlier, and now I had no idea what his hole card was. If the latter was t
rue, it meant that he was a more sophisticated player, and I wanted to know which.

  “Pair of kings bets,” the dealer called.

  I checked to him just as I would if I was a timid player who held a pair of kings and nothing else, and was concerned that the jack had given him two pair. He bet $200 with $2,300 on the table, bringing the pot up to a total of $2,500. It was a bet designed to keep me in the game.

  “Raise,” I said. I threw the $200 onto the table, then followed it with three $500 bills. “Fifteen hundred to you, Mr. Robillard.”

  He appeared surprised, but it could easily have been false surprise. “Well, well,” he murmured. “The college boy thinks he has a good hand, it seems.”

  I had decided earlier that I would be the very soul of courtesy in dealing with him regardless of how snide he became. “Yes sir, that’s what I think,” I replied. “And it will cost you fifteen hundred dollars to see it.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve got that third king,” he said with a smile. “A man with that third king in the hole would have looked at it at least once, just to make sure it hadn’t changed spots since the first time he saw it.”