Дэвид Гейтс - Set 'em Up, Joe

Edward Kinsella III

If you can’t identify the sucker in a card game inside the first hour, the sucker’s probably you.

Arnold Rothstein, famously, was killed for welshing on a gambling debt. He was even more famous for his part in fixing the 1919 World Series, which is neither here nor there, but it’s fair to say that Rothstein, more than any other, was the man responsible for the business model the Syndicate followed. The three men who took over his rackets were Benny Siegel, Charlie Luciano, and Frank Costello, and twenty years after Rothstein’s murder, only Costello was still in power. Benny was dead, a victim of his own success, Las Vegas the twinkle in his eye, and when a.30 caliber round exited his head, an eyeball was later found on the carpet. Lucky Luciano had been deported — betrayed by Dewey, the Italians were wont to think — and although his influence was felt, first from Cuba, then from Sicily, Luciano was no longer a player. Costello, who got his start as a rum runner, financed by Rothstein, was now the most formidable mob boss in New York. Even after the Five Families gang war and the Kefauver hearings, Costello was capo di tutti capi .

Before the Italians, the Irish had run the city, but strong as we were still on the West Side, we labored in their shadow. Old Tim Hannah, the boss as was, had made accommodation, and Young Tim, who’d taken his father’s place, understood necessity.

Not that it didn’t chafe.

What has all this to do with the matter at hand? Well, it began with a card game, and a man who reneged on his debts. The rest is Fate.

I thought it no more than coincidence, but it was an unhappy mischance that the game was in a suite at the Park Central, Seventh and West 56th, the very hotel where Rothstein had been shot in 1928. I’d been summoned by a man named Dunnigan. He’d arranged what was known as a four-wall. Dunnigan provided the room and the amenities, the players ponied up for a buy-in of a thousand each. Professional dealers, in rotation, new decks with every dealer or on demand. The house took a small percentage of every pot. There was an open bar, girls on call. You could probably find the same thing in any town in America from Galesburg, Illinois, to El Paso. The difference here was the stakes.

Poker is a game for five or six. Five of the men at the table were from out of town. The sixth man was Jimmy O’Donnell, known as Thin Jim. And he was winning.

No, it’s not a setup, Dunnigan explained to me, off to the side. They asked to play Jimmy.

Because of his reputation, I suggested.

“They think they can beat him,” Dunnigan said.

“And they’re not,” I said.

It was four in the morning, and the game had been going eight hours. It could go eight more, or eighteen, or eighty, as long as the money held out.

“One from St. Louis, one from Chicago, one from Baton Rouge,” he said. “Some kind of lumber king from Bangor, Maine.”

“Which of them is your problem?” I asked.

He tugged his ear, without pointing. “Guy sitting in first position, left of the dealer. Elyria, Ohio.”

“Where the hell is Elyria, Ohio?”

“Who knows? I went through Cleveland on the train, once.”

“Why’s he a problem?”

“He’s losing,” Dunnigan said.

“He could lose in Ohio,” I said.

“He’s not a good loser,” Dunnigan said.

“Is he being cheated?”

“I don’t trust him to pay his losses.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Dunnigan looked at me. “I needed you here to stop trouble, not to keep me honest before God,” he said.

“Give me five thousand dollars,” I said.

There was a long pause before his jaw dropped. “What?”

“Are you running an honest game?” I asked. “I’m buying in. But not with my own money.”

“Why don’t you use Tim Hannah’s money, you barstid?”

“This isn’t Tim Hannah’s game,” I said.

“I asked you for protection ,” he said.

“And now you’re paying for it,” I said.

“I’m not paying for your entertainment,” Dunnigan said.

“No, you’re paying for an education,” I told him.

Table stakes. Ten-dollar ante, fifty to open. There was a button that went around the table to indicate Dealer’s Choice. They stuck pretty much to five card draw and seven stud, playing it high-low when Elyria’s turn came around. He seemed to think it gave him better odds, although he was fifteen thousand in the hole. Thin Jim O’Donnell was taking half the pots.

It’s a not uncommon phenomenon. Some big noise from Winnetka regularly beats his poker buddies back home, and when he goes on a business trip, he decides to try his skills against a professional. Problem being, O’Donnell was exactly that. He didn’t play cards for recreation, he made his living at it, like another man might sell dry goods.

Baton Rouge took a bathroom break, and then decided he was going back to his room. He arranged with Dunnigan for a girl to meet him there.

Which left an open seat, and I was invited into the game.

Thin Jim O’Donnell knew who exactly I was, but he didn’t let on, out of policy, or to protect his winnings.

We played half a dozen hands. I folded three, called twice, against better cards, and stayed in to win one. None of the pots went over a thousand, so my net loss was about five hundred of Dunnigan’s money. I was trying to get a feel for the table, and the other men in the game.

There’s a gambling maxim, attributed to Arnold Rothstein, that if you can’t identify the sucker in a card game inside the first hour, then the sucker’s probably you. In this case, it was Elyria. Baton Rouge had been more or less even when he left the table, and Bangor was keeping his head above water, but aside from Thin Jim, Chicago and St. Louis were the big winners.

Elyria’s problem was that he chased with weak hands, in hopes they’d get better. It’s not an unworkable strategy, but you have to read your opponents, and their cards, and know their own betting strategies. His was transparent. He’d bet out high and then check, or bet out higher after the next turn of the cards. Every once in a while, it worked, when he’d fill a stronger hand, but you can’t win over the long run winning only one hand in a dozen, and he was a plunger. I took him for two hands running myself. He must have been used to buying the pot, back at the Elks or the K of C.

The other pattern didn’t jump right out at me, not until we’d played a good three hours. O’Donnell, well versed in confidence tricks and skin games, would have caught on early, but he didn’t call attention to it because it actually increased his percentage. I was a little slower on the uptake. St. Louis and Chicago were in cahoots.

It worked like this. In the first round of betting, both men would bet out strong, if they held cards. Then the one with the better hand after the draw or showing on the board would check-raise, and the other one would fold, so they weren’t going heads-up, or simply fattening the pot. It was subtle, and it only happened every four or five hands, when they both had cards worth betting. And it didn’t mean the one who stayed would necessarily win, either, but it cut their losses, taken jointly, and increased their odds of winning. Together, they made up a third of the table. Out of ten hands, if O’Donnell took four or five, St. Louis and Chicago took three or four.

I wondered which of them had brought Elyria into the game.

At seven thirty the next morning, we took a break. Dunnigan had called down to room service for breakfast, and it was welcome.