Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [24]
But he was not crazy; he was the coolest head Jack had ever met. When he was not gambling in the cardroom of the Rialto, or out in front hustling a little pool, he could usually be found in his hotel room across the street, in bed, awake. Sometimes he would spend weeks in the Veteran’s Hospital across the river in Vancouver, having his throat worked on. With his finger over the hole in his throat he spoke in a hoarse whisper, but without it a faint whistling sound obscured everything he said. When he was playing poker he would often keep a lit cigarette in his mouth and blow the smoke out through the hole. “Keeps the enemy off balance,” he said.
“What’s the action, Levitt?” he asked Jack. He treated most of the people around the poolhalls with a silent contempt, but he was friendly to Jack, acting as if they had known each other all their lives, almost as if they shared a past, a secret, something only they could understand. Jack didn’t know what it was all about, but he didn’t care. He liked Kol Mano, and liked the feeling of being in his confidence.
“There’s your pigeon,” Denny said, pointing, “but he knows you guys cut him up yesterday.”
Bobby Case said, “I don’t have to cut him up. I can beat him.” Bobby was fourteen and looked twelve because of his smooth girlish skin and his slenderness; but there was already a hardness around his mouth and suspicion in his eyes. He looked sullen and passionate, and he hated people making any reference to his age, as if it was something to be ashamed of. He slouched over to Billy, his straight blond hair hanging down almost over his eyes, and said, “You want to play some pool?”
Billy looked at him narrowly. “Heads up?”
“What else? What do you want to play?”
“Wait a sec,” Billy said. He made his shot, and then ignored Bobby Case until the game was over; paid his losses and then moved away with Case.
One of the keno players complained, “He’s takin all the money out of the game!”
“What you want him to do,” Mano said hoarsely, “give it the fuck back?” He winked at Jack, and Jack grinned.
Denny, Jack, and Kol Mano followed the other two over to a pool table, and John the houseman joined them. Already Jack could sense an electricity in the place: this was to be a game to watch—the competition between local genius and newcomer. The fact that both “geniuses” were so very young made no difference to the atmosphere. Jack wished desperately that he had something in him that could make a place go electric.
John the houseman waited, his hands on the balls in the rack, for them to decide what kind of game they would play.
“What’s your best game?” Case asked Billy.
“I’ll play anything,” Billy said.
“You play one-pocket?”
“Is that your game?”
Case looked almost angry. “Yeah, that’s my game. You want to play?”
Billy said slyly, “What’ll you spot me?”
Case walked away in disgust, and then walked back. “Even up,” he snapped.
“Okay,” Billy said. “But if you is too good, I’se gwine to de rack.”
Denny whispered to Jack and Mano, “Shit, Bobby ought to give him eight to five, no? This is no game!”
But he stopped whispering when Billy said, “What you want to play for, twenty dollars?”
“One-pocket,” John said disgustedly, and he racked the balls, filled out a time card, and stuck it in the glass light shade.
Case, now really angry, stared at Billy. “Twenty is fine.”
“Goddam,” Denny said. “What’s everybody so