Colin Dexter - Morse’s Greatest Mystery and other stories

It was the speed with which hand followed hand that surprised all the on-lookers, since our challenger (“Call me Bart”) was clearly no stranger to the Lukesberry rules and five or six hands were through every minute. Slap! A dollar bill in the kitty. Slap! A dollar bill on top. Flick, flick; flick, flick; buy; stick; bust. Dollar, dollar; flick, flick; quicker, ever quicker. Soon I’m standing behind Barty and I can see his cards. He picks up a ten, and a four; and without mulling it over for a micro-second he says, “Stick.” Then Lukey turns over a seven, and an eight — and then he flicks over another card for himself: a Jack. Over the top! And Barty pockets yet another kitty; and it’s back to that dollar-dollar, flick-flicking again. And when Bart wins again, Luke asks him nicely if he’d like to deal. But Bart declines the kind offer. “No,” he says. “I’m on a nice li’l winnin’ streak here, pal, so just you keep on dealing them pretty li’l beauties same as before — that’s all I ask.”

So Lukey goes on doing just that; and by all that’s supersonic what a sharp our Lukey is! I reckon you’d need more than a slow-motion replay to appreciate that prestissimo prestidigitation of his. You could watch those fingers with the eagle eye of old Cortes — and yet whether he was flicking the cards from the top or the middle or the bottom, I swear no one could ever tell. In spite of all this, though, Barty-boy is still advancing his winnings. Now he picks up a seven, and a four; and he decides to buy another card for ten dollars. So Lukey covers the ten dollars from his own fat roll, deals Barty a nine — and things are looking mighty good. Then Luke turns over his own pair (why he bothers, I can’t really say, for he knows them all along): a six, and a nine, they are — and things look pretty bad. He turns over another card from the deck — an eight. And once more he’s out of his dug-out and over the top.

“My luck’ll change soon,” says Luke.

“Not with me, it won’t,” says Bart, picking up the twenty-two dollars from the kitty.

“You quitting, you mean?”

“I’m quitting,” says Bart.

“You’ve played before, I reckon.”

“Yep.”

“You always quit when you’re winning?”

“Yep.”

Luke says nothing for a few seconds. He just picks up the deck and looks at it sourly, as if something somewhere in the universe has gone mildly askew. Then he calls on the power of the poets and he quotes the only lines he’s ever learned:

“Barty,” he says, “ ‘If you can make one heap of all your winnings? And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss...’

Remember that? What about it? You’ve taken seventy-odd dollars off o’ me, and I’m just suggestin’ that if you put ’em in the middle — and if I cover ’em... What do you say? One hand, that’s all.”

The audience was about thirty strong now, and as many were urging Barty on as were urging him off . And they were all pretty committed, too — one way or the other. One of them in particular...

I’d seen him earlier at the bar, and a quaint little fellow he was, too. By the look of him he was in his mid- or late-seventies, no more than four-ten, four-eleven, in his built-up shoes. His face was deeply tanned and just as deeply lined, and he wore a blazer gaudily striped in red and royal blue. Underneath the blazer pocket, tastelessly yet lovingly picked out in purple cotton, was the legend: Virgil K. Perkins Jnr. Which made you wonder whether Virgil K. Perkins Snr. was still somewhere in circulation — although a further glance at his senile son seemed to settle that particular question in the negative. Well, it’s this old-timer who tries pretty hard to get Barty to pocket his dollars and call it a night. And for a little while it seemed that Barty was going to listen. But no. He’s tempted — and he falls.

“Okey doke,” says Barty. “One more hand it is.”

It was Luke now who seemed to look mildly uneasy as he covered the seventy-odd dollars and squared up the deck. From other parts of the room the crowd was rolling up in force again: forty, fifty of them now, watching in silence as Luke dealt the cards. Barty let his pair of cards lie on the table a few seconds and his hands seemed half full of the shakes as he picked them up. A ten; and a six. Sixteen. And for the first time that evening he hesitated, as he fell to figuring out the odds. Then he said, “Stick,” but it took him twice to say it because the first “stick” got sort of stuck in his larynx. So it was Lukey’s turn now, and he slowly turned over a six — and then a nine. Fifteen. And Luke frowned a long time at his fifteen and his right hand toyed with the next card on the top of the deck, quarter turning it, half turning it, almost turning it — and then putting it back.

“Fifteen,” he said.

“Sixteen,” says Barty, and his voice was vibrant as he grabbed the pile of notes in the middle.

Then he was gone.

The on-lookers were beginning to drift away as Luke sat still in his seat, the cards still shuttling endlessly from one large palm to the other. It was the old boy who spoke to him first.

“You deserve a drink, sir!” he says. “Virgil K. Perkins Junior’s the name, and this is my li’l wife, Minny.”

“We’re from Omaha,” says Minny dutifully.

And so Virgil gets Luke a rye whisky, and they start talking.

“You a card player yourself, Mr. Perkins?”

“Me? No, sir,” says Virgil. “Me and the li’l wife here” (Minny was four or five inches the taller) “were just startin’ on a vaycaytion together, sir. We’re from Omaha, just like she says.”

But the provenance of these proud citizens seemed of no great importance to Luke. “A few quick hands, Mr. Perkins?”

“No,” says Virgil, with a quiet smile.

“Look, Mr. Perkins! I don’t care — I just don’t care — whether it’s winnin’ or losin’, and that’s the truth. Now if we just—”

“No!” says Virgil.

“You musta heard of beginner’s luck?”

“No!” says Virgil.

“You’re from Omaha, then?” says Luke, turning all pleasant-like to Minny...

I left them there, walked over to the bar, and bought an orange juice from Lucy, who sometimes comes through to serve about ten o’clock. She’s wearing a lowly cut blouse, and a highly cute hairstyle. But she says nothing to me; just winks — unsmilingly.

Sure enough, when I returned to the table, there was Virgil K. Perkins “just tryin’ a few hands,” as he put it; and I don’t really need to drag you through all the details, do I? It’s all going to end up exactly as you expect... but perhaps I’d better put it down, if only for the record; and I’ll make it all as brief as I can.

From the start it followed the usual pattern: a dollar up; a dollar down. Nice and easy, take it gently; and soon the little fellow was beaming broadly, and picking up his cards with accelerating eagerness. But, of course, the balance was slowly swinging against him: twenty dollars down; thirty; forty...

“Lucky little run for me,” says Luke with a disarming smile, as if for two dimes he’d shovel all his winnings across the table and ease that ever-tightening look round Virgil’s mouth. It was all getting just a little obvious, too, and surely someone soon would notice those nimble fingers that forever flicked those eights and nines when only fours and fives could save old Virgil’s day. And someone did.

“Why don’t you let the old fella deal once in a while?” asks one.

“Yeah, why not?” asks another.

“You wanna deal, pop?” concedes Luke.

But Virgil shakes his white head. “I’ve had enough,” he says. “I shouldn’t really—”