He found Nick in a lull, polishing glass behind the mahogany. Nick examined him sleepily and made a swipe at the bar with his towel.
“What’s on your mind, Frankie?”
“Double shot of rye,” Frankie said.
His lips and gums were still a little raw, so he took it easy with the rye, tossing it in short swallows on the back of his tongue.
“Where’s Joe Tonty anchored this week?” he asked.
“What the hell do you care, Frankie? You can’t afford to operate in that class.”
“You never know. You never know until you try.”
Frankie finished his rye and spun the glass off his fingertips across the bar. It hit the trough on the inside edge and hopped up into the air. Nick had to grab it in a hurry to keep it from going off onto the floor. He glared at Frankie and doused the glass in the antiseptic solution under the bar.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Frankie? You lost your marbles?”
“Okay, okay,” Frankie said. “I ask for information and you give me lip. You going to tell me where Tonty’s anchored, or aren’t you?”
Nick shrugged. “All right, sucker. It’s your lettuce. Over on Third Street. Upstairs over the old Bonfile garage.”
Frankie dropped a skin on the bar and went out. Between Third and Fourth, he navigated a narrow, cluttered alley to the rear of the Bonfile garage and climbed a flight of iron, exterior stairs to a plank door that was locked. He pounded on the door with the meaty heel of his fist and got the response of a crack with an eye and a voice behind it.
The voice said, “Hello, Frankie. What the hell you doing here?”
“This where Tonty’s anchored?”
“That’s right.”
“Then what the hell you think I’m doing here? You want me to spell it out for you?”
The crack widened to reveal a flat face split in a grin between thick ears. “My, my. Were riding high tonight, ain’t we?”
“You want my money or not?”
The crack spread still wider, and the grinning gorilla shuffled back out of it. “Sure, Frankie, sure. Every little bit helps.”
Frankie went in past the gorilla and down the long cement-floored room to the craps table. It was still early, and the big stuff wasn’t moving yet. Just right for forty bucks. Or thirty-nine, deducting a double shot.
Frankie got his belly against the edge of the table and laid a fast side bet that the point would come.
It came.
He laid three more in a hurry, betting the accumulation and mixing them pro and con without thinking much about it.
The points came or not, just as Frankie bet them.
When the dice came around to him, he was fat, and he laid the bundle. He tossed a seven, made his point twice, and tossed another seven, letting the bundle grow. Then, playing a hunch without benefit of thought, he drew most of the bundle off the table.
He crapped out and passed the dice.
Across the table, Joe Tonty’s face was a slab of gray rock.
His eyes flicked over Frankie, and his shoulders twitched in a shrug.
“Your luck’s running, Frankie. You better ride it.”
“Sure,” Frankie said. “I’ll ride.”
It kept running for two hours, and Frankie rode it all the way. When he finally had a sudden flat feeling, a kind of interior collapse, he pulled out. Not that he felt his luck had quit running for keeps. Just resting. Just taking a breather. He descended the iron steps into the alley and crossed over to Market for a nightcap at Nick’s. A little later, in the living room of the apartment, he counted eight grand. It was hard to believe, little Frankie with eight big grand all at once and all his own. Not even any withholding tax.
He was shaken again by the silent delirium that was becoming an integral element of his chronic mood, and he went over to the closet and opened the door, looking up at the old man in his urn.
“Thanks, Pop,” he said. “Thanks.”
CHAPTER 5.
He slept soundly and got up about noon. After a hearty lunch he went out to the track with the eight grand in his pocket. He was in time for the second race, and he checked the entries. But he didn’t feel anything, so he let it go.
Checking the entries in the third, he still didn’t get any nudge. Something seemed to be getting in the way, coming between him and his luck. Maybe, he realized suddenly, it was the warm pressure of a long flank against his.
He turned, looking into brown eyes that were as warm as the touch of flank. Under the eyes there was a flash of white in a margin of red, and above them, a heavy sheen of pale yellow with streaks of off-white running through it. At first Frankie thought she’d just been sloppy with a dye job, but then he saw that the two-toned effect was natural.
“Crowded, isn’t it?” she said.
Frankie grinned. “I like crowds.”
He was trying to think of what the hair reminded him of when he got the nudge. His eyes popped down to the program in his hands and back up to the dame. Inside, he’d gone breathless and tense, the way a guy does when he’s on the verge of something big.
“What’s your name, baby?”
The red-and-white smile flashed again. “Call me Taffy. Because of my hair, you see.”
He saw, all right. He saw a hell of a lot more than she thought he did. He saw number four in the third, and the name was Taffy Candy. One would bring ten if Taffy won, and even Frankie, who was no mental giant, could add another cipher to eight thousand and read the result.
Don’t give
