Лоуренс Блок - Catch and Release

“Priest, Priest, Priest,” said the soldier, checking his own cards. “Have you got your damned flush already? If you had two pair, well, I just caught one of your nines. But if I’m chasing a straight that’s doomed to lose to the flush you’ve already got...” The words trailed off, and the soldier sighed and called. So did the doctor, and the policeman looked at his kings and picked up four chips, as if to raise back, then tossed in two of them and returned the others to his stack.

On the next round, three of the players showed visible improvement. The policeman, who’d had a three with his kings, caught a second three for two pair. The priest added the deuce of hearts and showed a four flush on board. The soldier’s straight got longer with the addition of the eight of diamonds. The doctor, who’d had a four with his pair of fives, acquired a ten.

The policeman bet, the priest raised, the soldier grumbled and called. The doctor called without grumbling. The policeman raised back, and everyone called.

“Nice little pot,” the doctor said, and gave everyone a down card.

The betting limits were a dollar until a pair showed, then two dollars until the last card, at which time you could bet five dollars. The policeman did just that, tossing a red chip into the pot. The priest picked up a red chip to call, thought about it, picked up a second red chip, and raised five dollars. The soldier said something about throwing good money after bad.

“There’s no such thing,” the doctor said.

“As good money?”

“As bad money.”

“It turns bad,” said the soldier, “as soon as I throw it in. I was straight in five and got to watch everybody outdraw me. Now I’ve got a choice of losing to Policeman’s full house or Priest’s heart flush, depending on which one’s telling the truth. Unless you’re both full of crap.”

“Always a possibility,” the doctor allowed.

“The hell with it,” the soldier said, and tossed in a red chip and five white chips. “I call,” he said, “with no expectation of profit.” The doctor was wearing green scrubs, with a stethoscope peeping out of his pocket. He looked at his cards, looked at everyone else’s cards, and called. The policeman raised. The priest looked troubled, but took the third and final raise all the same, and everybody called.

“Full,” the policeman said, and turned over a third three. “Threes full of kings,” he said, but the priest was shaking his head, even as he turned over his hole cards, two queens and a nine. “Queens full,” said the priest.

“Oh, hell,” said the soldier. “A full house masquerading as a flush. Not that I have a right to complain — the flush would have beaten me just as handily. Got it on the last card, didn’t you, Priest? All that raising, and you went in with two pair and a four flush.”

“I had great expectations,” the priest admitted.

“The Lord will provide and all that,” said the soldier, turning over his up cards. The priest, beaming, reached for the chips.

The doctor cleared his throat, turned over his hole cards. Two of them were fives, matching the pair of fives he’d had on board.

“Four fives,” the policeman said reverently. “Beats your boat, Priest.”

“So it does,” said the priest. “So it does.”

“Had them in the first four cards,” the doctor said.

“You never bet them.”

“I never had to,” said the doctor. “You fellows were doing such a nice job of it, I saw no reason to interfere.”

And he reached out both hands to gather in the chips.

“Greed,” said the priest.

The policeman was shuffling the cards, the doctor stacking his chips, the soldier looking off into the middle distance, as if remembering a battle in a long-forgotten war. The priest’s utterance stopped them all.

“I beg your pardon,” said the doctor. “Just what have I done that’s so greedy? Play the hand so as to maximize my gains? That, it seems to me, is how one is intended to play the game.”

“If you’re not trying to win,” said the soldier, “you shouldn’t be sitting at the table.”

“Maybe Priest feels you were gloating,” the policeman suggested. “Salivating over your well-gotten gains.”

“Was I doing that?” The doctor shrugged. “I wasn’t aware of it. Still, why play if you’re not going to relish your triumph?”

The priest, who’d been shaking his head, now held up his hands as if to ward off everyone’s remarks. “I uttered a single word,” he protested, “and intended no judgment, believe me. Perhaps it was the play of the hand that prompted my train of thought, perhaps it was a reflection on the entire ethos of poker that put it in motion. But, when I spoke the word, I was thinking neither of your own conduct, Doctor, nor of our game itself. No, I was contemplating the sin of greed, of avarice.”

“Greed is a sin, eh?”

“One of the seven deadly sins.”

“And yet,” said the soldier, “there was a character in a film who argued famously that greed is good. And isn’t the profit motive at the root of much of human progress?”

“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” the policeman said, “but it’s the desire for what one can in fact grasp that makes one reach out in the first place. And isn’t it natural to want to improve one’s circumstances?”

“All the sins are natural,” said the priest. “All originate as essential impulses and become sins when they overstretch their bounds. Without sexual desire the human race would die out. Without appetite we’d starve. Without ambition we’d graze like cattle. But when desire becomes lust, or appetite turns to gluttony, or ambition to greed—”

“We sin,” the doctor said.

The priest nodded. The policeman gave the cards another shuffle. “You know,” he said, “that reminds me of a story.”

“Tell it,” the others urged, and the policeman put down the deck of cards and sat back in his chair.

Many years ago (said the policeman) there were two brothers, whom I’ll call George and Alan Walker. They came from a family that had had some money and respectability at one time, and their paternal grandfather was a physician, but he was also a drunk, and eventually patients stopped going to him, and he wound up with an office on Railroad Avenue, where he wrote prescriptions for dope addicts. Somewhere along the way his wife ran off, and he started popping pills, and the time came when they didn’t combine too well with what he was drinking, and he died.

He had three sons and a daughter, and all but the youngest son drifted away. The one who stayed — call him Jack — married a girl whose family had also come down in the world, and they had two boys, George and Alan.

Jack drank, like his father, but he didn’t have a medical degree, and thus he couldn’t make a living handing out pills. He wasn’t trained for anything, and didn’t have any ambition, so he picked up day work when it came his way, and sometimes it was honest and sometimes it wasn’t. He got arrested a fair number of times, and he went away and did short time on three or four occasions. When he was home he slapped his wife around some, and was generally free with his hands around the house, but no more than you’d expect from a man like that living a life like that.

Now everybody can point to individuals who grew up in homes like the Walkers’ who turned out just fine. Won scholarships, put themselves through college, worked hard, applied themselves, and wound up pillars of the community. No reason it can’t happen, and often enough it does, but sometimes it doesn’t, and it certainly didn’t for George and Alan Walker. They were discipline problems in school and dropped out early, and at first they stole hubcaps off cars, and then they stole cars.