Mike still hadn't peeked at his hole card.
He got the spade five on the next trip around. Duff reached for a cigarette. He now had three eights and a little boy showing. He pretended not to notice Mike's possible.
'Time to separate the men from the boys,' Duff said. He gave the pot a sixty dollar tilt. I knew him. He played a hand for just what it was worth. He either had another eight or another jack in the cellar. Gabby and Smitty went home in a hurry.
Mike gave me a wink. 'I think we should give old Bill a run for his money, Thax.'
I didn't say anything because I wasn't supposed to. The thing that bugged me was the sonofabitch still hadn't looked at his hole card. He's stacked it, I thought. He must have.
I think maybe the same thought crossed Duff's mind when Mike started counting out his stack of tens and twenties and said, 'I believe we agreed on table-stakes, gentlemen?'
I looked at his up cards again. Two three five six of spades. Was the goddam spade four in the cellar or wasn't it?
'See the sixty, Billy baby,' Mike said, 'and bump a bill.'
Duff wet his lips, studying Mike's cards.
A full, I thought. All Bill has is eights over jacks, or he wouldn't stall.
Duff decided to bull his way through. He threw in five twenties and followed that with two twenties and a ten and said, 'Bump again.' Mike chuckled and started to count his bills.
'Now,' he said, 'the game grows interesting.' He paused and grinned back at me. 'The plot thickens, eh Thax?'
Duff was about as taut as a fiddle string.
'C'mon, goddammit. What are you gonna do? See or fold?'
Mike looked at him in mock surprise.
'See or fold? That only separates the pansies from the men. I thought this was poker? Let's see here-'
He lifted one corner of his hole card with his thumb-nail. I couldn't see it. Then he went back to counting his bills, first wetting his slim thumb on his pink tongue, and then shuffling out one bill after another.
'I have ten-twenty-forty-sixty-eighty-ninety, one yard. And twenty-forty-sixty-seventy-eighty, two bills!' He grinned at Duff.
'I've got some odd fives here, Bill babe,' he said. 'But I think the bet's steep enough for you as is:,
Duff evidently thought so too. You could damn near see him sweat blood. His eyes bored auger holes into Mike's four show cards. I knew what he was thinking. We were all thinking it. No man would be kooky enough to try a wild bluff three times in the same game.
'I haven't got that much,' Duff said in a small, tense voice.
'How much have you got?'
'Well-' Duff thumbed through his bills hurriedly. 'About a bill-somewhere around there.'
'Shove it in, old dear,' Mike said.
'What about the rest of it? Pull it down a bill. I can't meet two.'
Mike picked up his coffee cup and leaned back in his chair.
'I'm not an unreasonable man, McDuff. Tomorrow's payday. I'll trust you for the odd yard.'
Duff didn't like it at all, none of it. I couldn't blame him. He picked up his hole card and looked at it close to his vest. Then he showed it to Jerry with a mute look and Jerry raised his brows in a Christ-only-knows expression. Duff looked at Gabby and Smitty. They were staring at him like a couple of expectant hanging judges.
Bill Duff was beat. He folded up is hand. 'Take it,' he said.
Mike tipped back his head and let out a laugh. It was a high trill of pure delight. Then he got up and picked up his winnings and stuffed them any old way in his pockets, like the Scarecrow of Oz, and handed me his hole card.
'Give it to Bill at Christmas, Thax,' he said. 'I've got a late date on.'
He walked away and I looked at the card while all the other guys in that room looked at me. I could damn near feel Duff's eyes smoldering in my face.
'Well?' he demanded.
I didn't say anything. It was better than the punch in the mouth I figured I owed him to just quietly hand him the card. It was very red and it had two faces. It didn't go with a low spade straight flush at all.
I drew Jerry out into the hall. He was still all ga-ga over that last hand.
'Have you ever seen anything like it?' he wanted to know. 'I tell you that Ransome is wild! That was the bluff of the century.'
Maybe. But I'd known Bill Duff a long time. He was the kind of cheap flashboy who begged for a cleaning. Anyhow, I had something else on my mind.
'Listen, Jerry. How are you in the Jimmy Valentine scene? Can you bust a box, if you have to?'
He drew back from me as if appalled by the question.
'Mister Thaxton! Are you suggesting that I, Gerald Malone, would stoop to cracking a safe?'
'Yeah, yeah,' I said impatiently. 'But can you?'
'No,' he admitted and he looked disgruntled about it. 'I don't have the touch, dammit. But Eddy does, if it's a simple box. What I mean, he doesn't go in for the soup and detonator bit. What's the pitch?'
'There's nothing in it for him,' I said. 'I'm looking for information, not for loot. So I don't think what we take will be missed. Nobody should call copper because of it.'
'That's good. Because Eddy isn't looking for law problems.'
'What would he want for the job? I could spring with my paycheck that's due tomorrow.'
'Aw for crysake, Thax, you're talking to Jerry. Eddy works for me.'
I put my hand on his shoulder.
'Well, amigo, one thing's for sure. I'm at least going to get you some new nylons for your girl.'
14
This Eddy reminded me of the mousy little beak-nosed character who used to play in all the gangster movies twenty-five years back. Nervous, stuttery, with the predatory look of a voracious moray eel.
'What-what kind of a box is it?' he wanted to know.
The three of us were standing in the inky shadows of the alleyway between the storehouse and the bunkhouse. Lloyd Franks' office was right above us. Eddy's busy little birdeyes batted here, there, anywhere except on the face of the person he was talking to. He made me jumpy.
'I don't know, for godsake,' I said. 'I'm no box man.'
'Yeah, but is it a wall-a wall job or an upright, or-or a combo or what? Know what I mean? What-what is it?'
'It's not in a wall and it's a combination box,' I told him.
'Well, all-all right, then.' He rubbed the fingertips of his right hand against his pantsleg. 'I-I just want to know, see? What kind-what kind it is, see?'
'C'mon,' Jerry said. 'Let's get going before one of the security guards comes staggering by.'
Truth to tell, I had my sincere doubts about this Eddy. He was so goddam nervous and jittery. But I dropped all doubt as soon as he took on the first locked door with his little pick-tool. He had that thing open quicker than I could have turned the knob.
We went up the stains with a fountainpen-sized flash to guide us. Eddy kept mumbling to himself and rubbing his fingertips on his pants, while Jerry complacently hummed an old song about that masturbating, fornicating sonofabitch Colombo.
The thing I liked about Jerry is that he never once asked me why I wanted to break into Franks' office and crack his safe. It gave me a good feeling. A man who will trust you on face value is a rare find in today's society.
The door to Franks' office gave Eddy about as much trouble as I would expect to find in opening a cracker
