Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [21]
“Jesus H. Christ,” somebody muttered.
“What, no kenos?” cried the idiot, “forty-four points for the gennleman, stepped out into the lead... “
Billy felt better.
An hour or two later, when he looked up toward the door, he saw Denny and Jack Levitt coming in again. But he did not care; he was not even interested. He could make plenty of money right where he was; he was already twenty-odd dollars ahead, and there was nobody in the game who could really beat him. He knew he was having beginner’s luck, too, but he was glad for that; he would take any luck he could get.
Denny came up to him after a while and said, “Hey, how about loaning me a buck?”
Automatically, Billy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled dollar and handed it to him. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” he said.
“Thanks, baby. I’ll pay you back tonight.” He went up to the bar and yelled, “Twenny nickels!” Later, Billy saw him at the pinball machines, standing stiffly and slamming the machine with his palms, cursing and begging. Billy laughed to himself. What a mark! Playin a machine! To Billy that was like throwing the money out a window. But he didn’t care; he was getting rich right here.
Jack Levitt sat on a high stool between the number one billiard table and the keno table, watching Billy. It made a game more interesting if there was somebody in it you were rooting for or against, and Jack wanted to see Billy win. He knew already that Billy was a phenomenon, a natural like Bobby Case. It was a pleasure just to watch him shoot, even in a game like keno, full of slop and bad luck and yelling. Jack wished there was something he could be great at, some skill or talent he could find in himself that would give him something to do. He was a good fighter—no one anywhere near his own size had ever beaten him, in or out of the orphanage—but that was different, because every man ought to be able to defend himself, with his fists or a knife or a gun or whatever came to hand. That was basic. No, he wished he had some talent, like Billy’s for pool, that would make him as busy with himself as Billy seemed to be. And anyway, a talent like Billy’s was worth money; that was the end result of talent—you made money against the less talented. So there he was again, back to the old need: money.
Last night had been a failure. Fun, yes; but they had searched the house from top to bottom and found no ready cash at all. Of course, there were a lot of things they could have stolen and tried to sell: clothes, radios, phonographs, several cases of liquor (none bearing the Oregon State Liquor Tax stamps, Denny had noted with admiration), and more canned and dried foods than Jack had ever seen outside the orphanage, as if the Weinfelds expected another war and wanted to be prepared. But Jack and Denny had ditched the Cadillac and had no intention of going near it. They had even wiped their fingerprints off it, feeling both sheepish and hip. They couldn’t walk through residential streets carrying goods, even before dawn. So they had gotten drunker, played the radio, fooled around, cooked some food in the kitchen, and then slept. They had played rock-scissors-paper for the right to sleep in the big bed on the main floor and Denny won, but unfortunately fell asleep with one of Weinfeld’s big Cuban cigars in his hand and burned the gold satin coverlet pretty badly before the smell woke him up. There were three bedrooms upstairs, two obviously girls’ rooms, and Jack had slept in the boy’s room, so drunk he didn’t even bother to take his shoes off.
But no money! A day and a night had passed, another day was passing, and nothing had changed. He did not even have enough to buy some lunch. Of course he would not starve in the poolhall; he could always bum twenty cents for a hot dog; but that wasn’t any good. All his stuff locked up in his hotel room, the clothes he was wearing getting rancid (it had been a delight showering