Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [136]
It was no fun at all. He began drinking at a place on Mason, a block off Market, and after eight straight shots his gut felt tight but the rest of him was still empty. The customers were all strangers and the whole place seemed cheap and dull. He left, and on impulse went around the corner to the poolhall, up the dark double flight of stairs, past the empty wine bottles, the urine- and vomit-stained walls, through the glass doors, and into the huge mellow old room. Right at the door was the long row of billiard tables, all but one in use, old men in dark pants and white shirts leaning into the flood of light over the emerald green baize. He walked past them and the big English snooker tables to the long counter, ordered a bottle of beer, and sat watching a pair of young punks playing six-ball. Other punks lolled in the theater seats behind the tables, and Jack saw among them one or two old men, asleep in out of the cold. Poolhalls never changed. The punks never changed, either. The same knowing, wolfish smiles, the same sharp haircuts, the same wise talk.
In fact, the only difference Jack could see between this place and the Rialto in Portland was that this place stayed open 24 hours a day, and along the dim walls large old paintings hung, illuminated by special lights. The paintings seemed strange but not out of place. There was one, very badly done, of some old men playing billiards, but none of the others was appropriate to a poolhall except perhaps the reclining nude, in the pose of Goya’s naked Alba. The two on the other side of the room fitted the place only in the sense that they were of an era past; one of a group of harem women, the other of a pride of lions on a sandy rise in the greenish North African twilight—a strange picture anywhere, but here a kind of silent, moody comment on the roomful of small-timers. Jack sat and stared at the lions for a long time.
“Levitt? Jack Levitt?”
He turned around. The man speaking to him had thin blond hair, and cold gray eyes, and appeared to be in his middle thirties. Jack did not recognize him. “No,” he said.
The man smiled. “Sure you are. You haven’t changed much. Kol Mano. Portland. About a hundred years ago.”
Mano, the gambler. Jack recognized him now. They shook hands and Mano sat down next to him. “What’s been happening?” Jack said.
Mano shrugged. “I hear you were in Q. How long you been on the street?”
“Three years. Where’d you hear about me?”
“Around. You remember Denny Mellon? You used to run with him in Portland. He’s around, too. I saw him a month ago in Emeryville.”
“You sure got a good memory.”
“I got to. That’s my business.” He explained to Jack that he was still a gambler, and they ordered bottles of beer. Jack was not particularly glad to see Mano, but it was better than nothing.
“I got off parole today,” Jack said.
“Hey, we got to celebrate.”
“Yeah. Well. How’s old Portland?”
“Terrible. I haven’t been back in a long time. They closed the Rialto, tore down Ben Fenne’s building, shut up the card-rooms for poker action, everything. They got a lady mayor up there a few years ago came in and really cleaned house. Man, what a gas. She calls in all the cops and tells them, `Boys, I know what’s shaking; I know the location of every gambling club, brothel, after-hours joint in town. Tomorrow I want them closed and the operators on their way out of town. Get it? ’.” Mano laughed. “So the cops, they go to the Scotchman—you remember him?—and tell him, `Jesus, this broad is serious!’ and he thinks about it for a minute and then says, `Okay, that’s all she wrote.’ Closed up shop and moved back to Aberdeen. So the whole town is tighter than a tick. The only action is a couple of poker and pan games in Vancouver, and they cut the pots so bad there’s no point. And, of course,