Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

“Hey, I thought your boss closed those all up!”

“He did. All of the ones inside the city. This one is over the line.”

From the way the place was running, I knew that the fix was in, but good. Thus the peephole setup to get to the upstairs games was just so much thrill for the suckers, plus insurance against somebody knocking the place off with profit in mind.

It was a penny-ante outfit, with a dapper male cashier dispensing chips at the one, five, ten and fifty levels. There weren’t many fifties in play. I tried to stake Janet, but she shook her head, took a twenty out of her purse and bought twenty one-dollar chips. I did the same.

They were getting a college crowd at the place, plus the old-lady business, plus the beer-salesmen set. There was a bar in the corner.

Roulette, birdcage and the crap tables were getting a decent play. Janet stared around like a school kid in the principal’s office. The sign near the birdcage said that they would take a maximum fifty-dollar bet with a limit of six doubles. Thus the most that could be placed on a number on one turn of the cage was thirty-two hundred. Not good and not bad. The limit on doubles made the house percentage high enough to keep it honest.

I don’t know why I felt so proud to be with Janet Calder. She made all the other women up there look like harpies. She was like a fresh breeze blowing through the stale smoke.

She settled for the crap table. When I saw that the table posted no limit, I knew that the house had it gimmicked. With the education Chowder gave me, it didn’t take long to figure it out. They were set up to handle a routine switch of the dice, and they were playing on an oilcloth surface. That spelled trippers. It is the simplest dice fix.

The dice can be square and true and properly weighted, but on the side opposite the one they don’t want to come up, they have some sticky stuff, not noticeable to the touch. The dice will always roll, tumble and slide to a stop. They don’t slide on that sticky stuff. It will trip the dice over.

We found a place at the table wide enough for the two of us, and the pressure of her shoulder against my arm was very sweet indeed.

A florid yokel across the way was betting heavy, the sweat standing on his upper lip.

I told Janet to follow my lead and I started betting the other way, with the dice. The switch was pulled so smoothly that I didn’t see it. Sure enough, the red-faced citizen threw two aces, deuce-ace the second time, then tossed a six followed by a seven, while both Janet and I let our bets ride to a happy little total, which we dragged in.

Janet’s face was flushed with excitement. She didn’t understand what was going on, but she liked winning. I knew that if I was running the game, I’d feed her dice that build up a few naturals, so when they came to her, I told her to try five dollars. I was beginning to get on to the switch. Seven came out and I told her to let it ride. Seven again, the same way, and there was twenty in front of her. Suckers along the table piled on, hoping she was having a run, and I made a quick estimate, decided the stick man would let her get one more natural. Eleven came out and he paid off nearly all the way around. A lot of them were letting it ride, so I reached out and hauled in all but one chip for her.

“Whyn’t ya let the li’l lady play her own game, doc?” the stick man said.

I didn’t bother to answer him. He’d already pulled the switch. The dice came to a four, and then a seven. I passed them along. We’d each picked up fifteen bucks on the florid man’s bad luck, and thirty-four more on Janet’s passes. Total of ninety-eight.

It looked like the sort of bust-out house that would hate to have you walk out with even that much. I didn’t want a fuss, so I decided to drop my share and get out. A floor man had his eye on us and I guessed that the stick man had tipped him that I might be a little too wise for their good.

I wanted to drop the few bucks at the same table, but then Janet saw a poker game getting underway over in an alcove.

“There’s my game,” she said. “Come on!”

I didn’t like it. At first I was going to sit it out, but then I began to wonder just how far they’d go.

There were eight of us. The house dealt and took a cut of each pot. I took a long look at the other six players. They really had that game stacked. Two of them were house men, though trying not to look that way. The dealer had a mechanic’s grip on the deck.

It was five-card stud. No ante, of course. Five-buck bet, and after that it was pot limit. No limit on raises.

To warm the game up, the cards were dealt honestly the first few hands. The house boys were getting the feel of the six suckers. I folded my hand the first few rounds, and watched Janet handle her cards. She seemed to know what she was doing. When she had a ten of hearts in the hole, a nine of hearts up, she stayed once, and folded when her third card turned out to be the trey of spades.

Then the house began to go to work. A skinny citizen across the way, who kept biting his lip, got an ace up. He peeked at his hole card and bet five. A house man bumped him, and when it came around, Skinny advertised his aces back to back by bumping again.

It cost Skinny a hundred bucks to look at his last card. The house man came through, of course, with three sevens, whereas Skinny didn’t improve on his original pair of aces.

The next few hands were dull, and then I felt the kill coming. After the opening bet, Janet and me and the two house men were left. I had eights backed. She was on my left with a queen showing. The house man was on my right with a jack showing. The other house man had a ten showing.

I guessed that everybody had them back to back. Janet, with queens back to back, was looking down everybody’s throat. And, with my eights, I had to follow. The man with the jack showing bumped, and Janet bumped back, catching me in the middle.

The next card, the third card, didn’t help anybody but me. It gave me three eights. To make it look good, I bet fifty. Everybody stayed. The fourth card didn’t help me a bit, but it gave Janet three queens, gave the guy on my right his third jack and the other house man his third ten. At that point the two house men started bumping each other, with both Janet and me caught in the squeeze. Janet took the last of her money out of her purse, and I slipped her two hundred over her protest, telling her that she could pay it back out of the pot — if she won.

There was well over a thousand bucks in the pot by the time the flurry stopped. Janet’s hands were shaking. I was cold inside, figuring an angle.

It all depended on the first card dealt. That went to the house man with the three tens. If he collected the fourth, we were licked. He got a four. The next card came to Janet. An ace. No improvement.

My timing had to be just right. I waited until the card was free of the pack, the card that I suspected would give me the fourth eight. As soon as it was free, I slapped my cards over and said, “Folding!”

I kept my eye on that card that was free of the pack. I wanted to laugh at the expression on the face of the dealer. It was a stupid thing for me to do, as I could have called Sid in the morning and gotten my losses back. But I had to show off for Janet.

The dealer couldn’t stick the card back in the pack. It was frozen in the air for a moment and he said, “You can’t fold while the cards are coming.”

Without taking my eye off the card he held, I said, “I can fold anytime, brother.”

He had to give it to the other house man. My fourth eight. And the unused card on the top of the deck, I felt certain, was the fourth jack that the house man didn’t get.

Janet took another hundred, pushed it out into the pot and whispered to me, “Stupid! You threw in the winning hand!”