while. Take a pot or two and then feed a couple back to the other players. The next step was to start losing slightly, then more heavily. After they’d gotten five or six grand deep, the others would get in a good mood and grow even sloppier, and then my uncles would come in with the serious rips and finish the fat cats off fast.
“I’ll be there in five minutes. But tell me something else first.”
“What is it?”
“How deep is Gilmore into Danny’s pocket?”
I could almost hear Wes’s stomach rumbling, the acid splashing around. “You don’t need to know things like that, Terry.”
“I really do, Wes. Has he ever pulled a trigger for you?”
“What?” Wes’s voice tightened, and he put some frost into it. “Terry, I don’t understand what’s been going on with you, but this isn’t the kind of thing we should be talking about.”
“Is that a yes, then?”
“Doesn’t the guy eat at your house and drink beer with your father? I thought you knew him.”
“I thought I did too, but I’m not so sure anymore.”
“There’s a lot of that going around. Hurry the fuck up and get here, would you?”
It took me ten minutes. A sign on the front door said PRIVATE PARTY TONIGHT. That had always been Big Dan’s euphemism for a major game. It just proved that Danny was still walking in his father’s shadow, afraid to strike off on his own.
I walked in anyway. I started over to Danny’s table, and one of his soldiers stepped up and blocked me. Danny watched it happen but kept me waiting. Wes saw it too and knew he had to let the boss throw his weight around a little. A few minutes went by. I tried hard to be patient.
Danny had a new suit on, one that looked a couple of sizes larger and fit him more comfortably. His paunch was well hidden. He’d used some kind of thickening gel to give his hair more texture. He still couldn’t keep from thumbing back his widow’s peak.
Mal had one of his stogies lit. He smoked it without ever pulling it from his mouth. Just sucked air through his teeth and then blew smoke out one side of his mouth. In front of him was either a Bloody Mary or a glass of tomato juice, garnished with a stick of celery.
Grey had stopped off at home at some point and now wore a charcoal suit and a power tie. If possible, he looked even sharper than he had last night. He wore his best jewelry. Rolex watch, diamond pinkie ring, a gold bracelet. He said it all served as distraction and decoy. The more flash you wore, the more chance that someone was looking at the shine and not at your four-card pull. It went counter to everything my father had taught me. You wore nothing on your hands so that no one looked at your hands. Both methods seemed to work pretty well.
The fat cats appeared to be having fun. I recognized two of them as mob guys who used to hang around with Big Dan. Both from Chicago, in town for a few days doing business. I suspected Mal was right again. The Chi syndicate was here pulling the Thompson crew apart and stealing their business.
Danny’s boys hung close but not too close. The mook in front of me had on an enthusiastic expression like he was daem'cring me to try to run around him. I thought about picking up a chair and cracking him across the face, but I thought that probably wasn’t the best way to proceed. I was there to keep things from getting out of hand, not to start a riot on my own. I waited.
Finally Danny glanced up from his cards and waved me over with two fingers. The soldier moved aside and a path was cleared to the table.
“What, no dog this time?” Danny asked. “Figured you had him trained to read cards and bark out the suits.
His boys laughed because they had to. The Chi guys went along with it and smiled even though they had no clue.
My uncles knew exactly why I was there. Mal seemed a little disturbed but Grey was curious, his eyes a bit hot, wondering how this would all play out. He grinned at me and gave me a nearly invisible head wag. He wasn’t telling me not to join in. He was saying,
There was an empty chair on Danny’s right. I swung it around and squeezed in on his left.
“So deal me in,” I said.
“You need ten g’s to join us.”
Like his father, Danny didn’t bother speaking in code the way some of the other outfit guys did. They would’ve said
“My uncles will spot me,” I said.
“Sure,” Grey said. He gave me the wag again. His eyes were even brighter. He was enjoying himself. He paid ten grand, collected the chips, and set them in front of me. They didn’t amount to nearly as much as I would’ve thought.
Danny’s dealer did have a three-card bottom drag, just like Mal had said. The guy kept folding the aces back into the deck to feed Danny. It didn’t mean anything to Mal or Grey. I saw Mal cut the deck once and knew he’d snapped a face card out and palmed it. I had to fight to stay in the game, though. I sat next to Danny so that I could pull his discards and load myself up. I had wide pockets and kept them stuffed with at least one card each. Danny had a penchant for going for flushes. It was dumb, but it made it easy for me to cheat on his behalf. Once I knew what he was after, I could aim a suit in his direction.
Grey and Mal both had the minutest of tells. No one else would be able to pick up on them, but I could see exactly when my uncles were about to squeeze a pot or feed each other cards. Their cross chatter distracted the others, but I tuned it out. I managed to upset their juke and steal some cards they needed along the way. I fed the pot when they wanted to go light and I threw in my cards when I shouldn’t have.
I was down a couple of grand, which wasn’t so bad considering how little I cared about my own hands. I wasn’t nearly the card manipulator my uncles were. Not even as good a player as a couple of the fat cats. But I was lucky during the game. I managed to swing some tight inside straights and pulled a full house twice on the last card.
Danny had been worried that with three Rands in the game he and his friends would be cut to ribbons. Instead, he was up, with the Chi guys down. I think it made him feel secure, like he was getting back at them a litmysctle, showing them that, like his father before him, he could be in charge and take their money whenever he wanted.
Every now and then the conversation would get risque and someone would tell a dirty joke and Grey and Mal would feed into it like it was the funniest thing ever. Mal’s heavy laughter resounded across the Fifth and made heads turn. The girls kept coming around with drinks and taking food orders. I knew they were shills who would be glancing at our cards and giving Danny the information with coy body language. Wes kept mostly clear of the scene, popping over only every once in a while to make sure nobody was getting too badly bent out of shape. He was a good man to have around. I wondered how many times he’d kept Danny from going to war.
My nerves were tight. I tried not to make eye contact with my uncles. Grey still seemed to be having a good time, talking women, talking about the best places in Chi to eat, to score, to shack up. Mal didn’t talk much when he wasn’t chattering with Grey. He looked too intimidating. No one ever wanted to start a conversation with him.
It was never foremost about the money for them, just the skill of working the cards. They had as good a time fighting me for control of each hand as they would have had scooping in the pot.
About three hours in, the effort started to put a real strain on me. It was exceedingly difficult trying to keep everything as even as possible, to shield Danny from my uncles’ maneuvers. I wasn’t going to be able to hack it for much longer. Grey knew it. He nodded to me, a sign of respect.
I’d done my part. Danny still kept giving Mal the stink eye from time to time. Maybe he was showing off. It made sense. If he wanted to look hard in front of the Chi syndicate, he would’ve picked the biggest, meanest- looking guy in the room. Every so often he’d try to embarrass us the same way the guard at the prison had, by saying our entire names. “Malamute, you want another celery stick or are you going to step up to carrots now? Greyhound, I like your aftershave, reminds me of a good time I spent in a Parisian whorehouse when I was seventeen.” The Chi boys were used to fucked-up names and didn’t cut a grin. Their current boss was Nicky D’Amico, who’d been nicknamed “No Nose” because he suffered from asthma.
