Jack of Diamonds

by Bryce Courtenay

  Arriving at a resort casino like the Firebird was all about anticipation, hope and feeding your addiction. We were more than happy to ‘comp’ big spenders – or, in casino terms – big losers, who came back at least once or twice a year with a wad of cash for a week of the high life. We’d supply his suite, meals and drinks free, the exception being at the GAWP Bar. While prostitution was illegal in Las Vegas, we’d also supply a special ‘friend’, should he need one, although this was never talked about and handled exclusively by Lenny. All it took was a nod and a wink, and the client would most fortuitously bump into his stated preference – blonde, redhead or brunette – who would ensure that his every desire was met. If you were a big enough high roller, they would even send the company Convair to pick you up and fly you home.

  Around 2 a.m. when I knocked off, I’d walk through the regular casino, through Lenny and Johnny Diamond’s territory, and smell the tension in the air. It’s the combined smell of stale sweat, adrenaline and naked fear, and it’s unmistakeable. At that hour of the morning, only the hard-core gamblers are left. It’s quiet, but not because there are no people around. It’s because everyone is concentrating on the game; all their attention is focused on the squares and rectangles of green baize, or the spinning of a roulette wheel, where their future will be decided.

  I knew better than to find a poker game in town after completing my gig. It’s never a good idea to sit in on a game that’s been going twelve hours or more. I’d be in bed by 4 a.m. and up around 10 or 11 a.m. to do my chores and go for a walk, usually on the Westside, where I’d often meet some of the Sunday Resurrection Brothers and have a light brunch, and then it would be back to the casino for my regular afternoon practice.

  I regarded practice as essential, for while it is easy enough as a piano player to fall into a routine you can perform in your sleep, I took my music seriously. Jazz is no different from classical music and I never forgot Art Tatum’s advice: ‘It jes a matter of practice, practice and more practice. Now, you remember that good, son!’

  I reserved my poker playing for the Sunday-night games and an occasional one-off with a bunch of guys I knew. In these games, you could lose your shirt, but you could also have a reasonably big win. It was gambling, but the game was what counted and the skill you displayed; greed was never the sole driving force. There were no bad players in these games, and every one of us would have good days and indifferent ones; nobody got their pockets turned entirely inside out. Even though you might go home shirtless once in a while, it was of your own choosing; there was never any pressure to stay, you were always free to pull out if you chose to do so.

  Life was good. With the action moving over to The Strip, my apartment was walking distance from the casino and had doubled in value. I had installed two of those new window unit air-conditioners, one in my bedroom and one in the lounge, so I could sleep comfortably on even the hottest summer nights and through the scorching mornings. My bank balance was respectable, despite my taking the inevitable hit every once in a while. Nothing in life is more certain than that there will be someone who is better in some way or more skilful than you. This is not only true in poker but in music and everything else. But I’d always managed to stay more or less ahead of the game, even though, occasionally, I’d come perilously close to being cleaned out entirely.

  Playing poker, like music, was a part of me; I wasn’t Jack Spayd without it. Winning was important simply because I needed money to keep on playing, but I had no illusions whatsoever about gambling. I was perfectly aware it was never going to make my fortune. I needed it in my life to be . . . well, to keep on being me. Losing made me fear that something had gone missing in my personality, that a chunk of my awareness had disappeared and might not be present when next I sat down to play.

  There seemed to me nothing more pathetic than a busted gambler, a player watching a game from the sidelines, yearning written all over his face. I could never work out why guys who’d blown every dime would hang around a game. When I was short of money and waiting to build up my bank, I’d lay low. My pride – or was it fear? – simply wouldn’t allow me to look like the pathetic loser I invariably felt myself to be after a big bust.

  Sure I sulked, but I did it at home, and often went to work the next evening having spent a miserable day castigating myself. I had one other rule: I never borrowed a cent to play when I was broke or entered a game if another player offered to back me in for a percentage. I wasn’t going to become a poker hack or a hired gun.

  Poker is notorious for breeding bad blood. Looking back, those were the two rules I believe separated me from the poker degenerates, the hopeless addicts, even though I was pretty sure I had a gambling problem. Las Vegas was full of addicts, and I vowed I’d never do business with a loan shark, or enter a pawnbroker’s premises to hock something for a stake.

  Las Vegas was pawnbroker heaven, the cheapest place in America to buy a classy Swiss watch, a Rolex Oyster or whatever you desired. The pawnbrokers relied for their business on gamblers who just knew, as if they’d had a visitation from the Virgin Mary herself, that their luck was about to turn. Cash in that watch or the gold signet ring, get a few bucks and get back to the tables. Who knows, maybe sometimes it worked, but I never personally saw a Las Vegas pawnbroker short of abundant stock in his bulging shatterproof steel-grid encased window.

  Underpinning my poker playing was the knowledge that I had a safe job that paid well above the average. I must have been fairly good at it because in the years I worked the GAWP Bar, no casino piano bar in Las Vegas was said to compare with it. The drinks were the most expensive in town and it was claimed ours was the only casino cocktail bar that showed a handsome profit at the end of each year. Moreover, I would receive an offer almost every month, together with a generous bonus, to leave Lenny and Bridgett, and work for the now rapidly growing competition run by one or other Mob.

  Some of our staff were from time to time lured away with better offers – our people were generally regarded as a cut above the rest – but I couldn’t imagine leaving Bridgett, although she continued to show me nothing more than friendship. The Strip was growing up fast and there were now frequent shortages of trained casino staff. Las Vegas was no longer a hick town in the desert.

  Other casinos often tried to poach Sue, the long-legged, chestnut-haired, delightful young waitress who’d originally worked the Longhorn Room at the El Marinero. Eventually, the Flamingo offered her almost double her salary to work as the senior drinks waitress on their main gaming floor. When I expressed to Bridgett my regret over her departure she replied, ‘Jack, she’s really bright. She wants to go to college. I hate letting her go, but the Flamingo’s offer is too good to pass up.’ Then she’d added thoughtfully, ‘Besides, all things considered, it will be good for her to get away from here.’ She didn’t elaborate and I knew better than to question her further – Bridgett usually had her reasons. She was always scrupulously fair, and genuinely cared about the futures and welfare of her staff.

  Money had never been my main object and, as long as I had a stake for my Sunday poker game, I was happy enough. With my vocation and my crazy working hours, I had little chance of a permanent relationship succeeding, although if Bridgett had given me the least sign, I’d have done anything to make it work.

  She’d once had an occasion to visit my apartment when I’d been in Las Vegas only a short time. I forget why but, sadly, it wasn’t for amorous reasons. She took one look, clearly appalled at the décor (mostly secondhand junk) and said, ‘Jack, how could you possibly entertain a young lady in this ghastly mess?’ She insisted on Anna-Lucia Hermes redecorating it for me, which she did without charging her usual extravagant fee. Even the furnishings and materials were purchased through the casino, at vastly reduced cost.

  I must say, she did a splendid job and the following Sunday I’d invited Bridgett over to have dinner as a thank-you, offering to pay Hector, the meat chef, to cook for us. I admit I had every ulterior motive you can imag
ine, and when Bridgett agreed to come, my heart leapt, but then she added, ‘I can only come if Lenny accompanies me, Jack. You know the no-fraternising rule. I’d love to come on my own but there are simply too many eyes and ears.’ The three of us consequently enjoyed a lovely evening together as friends but any hopes I might have secretly harboured for a romantic association with Mrs Fuller were quelled, at least for the moment.

  Despite my unrequited feelings for Bridgett Fuller, I had my life pretty well worked out. I couldn’t envisage anything serious coming along to disturb my happy little routine. Even Sammy stayed away, busy terrorising bad debtors. Tony Accardo had appointed a dry-as-dust accountant to supervise the casino accounts and the skim, and to replace Sammy as courier. Mr Sanders, a mouse-like man who always wore a shabby lightweight beige suit, white shirt and greasy black clip-on tie, was so ordinary he could go completely unnoticed, even when he was the only other person in a room.

  Sammy took his job as debt collector seriously, and was developing a reputation around town as a bad man to cross. The word was he took a bit too much pleasure in hurting people when they fell behind in their payments. He was one of the resident Mobsters the visiting hoods took pride in getting to know because he was regarded as something of a legend. If they wanted a little action, they knew to look him up. Sammy was said to love this bad-guy reputation and to cultivate it at every opportunity. He knew where to find all the bad broads, the unofficial crap games, and he’d developed a little specialty he referred to as ‘nigger baiting’: capturing a black man and subjecting him to threats, kicks and punches until the poor bastard, convinced he was going to die, pleaded for mercy. To the visiting Mobsters, it was a good way to let off a little steam if you’d had a bad day at the tables. In a big city, Sammy would have been a bit player, but here in Las Vegas he was an official debt collector; in other words, a gangster. He now drove the first pink Cadillac convertible in Las Vegas; a chromed, white-upholstered monster, seemingly half a city block long. Inevitably, his two cohorts sat in the back, eyes glued to the rear windows of the obscenely ostentatious machine. Incidentally, perhaps because of Sammy’s choice of transport, Lenny now drove a somewhat conservative black 1948 Lincoln Club Coupe.

  Luckily, Sammy wasn’t my problem. He wasn’t allowed into the resort side of the Firebird and I hadn’t needed Bridgett’s advice to stay clear. Apart from a nod or a wave when I saw him in the street, I kept my distance. I guess it was another example of selective perception, because the stories about Sammy were not only frightening but often sickening: Sammy flying off the handle and stabbing a guy at a downtown bar for trying to pick up Sammy’s girl; Sammy and his ever-present goons beating up a debtor in the car park at the brand-new Thunderbird. Later there were stories about Sammy and his offsiders being behind the disappearance of a dealer sacked for cheating at the Desert Inn. Stories concerning black guys I heard from the kitchen staff and The Resurrection Brothers – they never made it onto the radar of the whites. But Sammy, as far as I could tell, didn’t seem to care and none of these episodes seemed to cause any police interest. He probably knew where to leave a wad of used notes when it was needed. I doubt if there was even a slim file on Sammy in official police records. Moreover, the godfather lost no time in pointing out that Sammy’s debt-collection business was thriving and that Lenny’s refusal to use him as a debt collector for the Firebird was an act of disloyalty to the Family. He insisted that Sammy was the only man on the spot he could absolutely trust to keep an eye on the ‘greedy bitch’, whereas Lenny feared that one day Sammy would create a situation that not even the godfather would be able to fix with the authorities.

  The general feeling was that the police wanted a quiet life. As long as the Mob kept things under control and stayed invisible to the public, the police weren’t going to rock the boat. If respectable civilians or tourists didn’t get caught up in any violence, they were happy; niggers and Mexicans didn’t count. I heard rumours that the wives of judges and senior police officers had points in certain casinos, and that detectives and lower-ranking police had pockets sewn into their uniform pants that reached down to their ankles. Rocking the boat wasn’t the Las Vegas way.

  With the Firebird such a success, I guess we all relaxed, but then something happened that brought Sammy sharply and disastrously back into my life.

  It all began not at the Firebird but at the Flamingo, when the boss of the casino retired and a new man, Louis Springer, was appointed by New York as their representative cleanskin, to run the gaming section. The Flamingo was having trouble with bad debts – mainly from mid-level regulars – but every casino experienced such problems from time to time. These gamblers were addicts who made up the bulk of the poker, black jack and roulette players and, with a few exceptions, they could usually be relied on to pay, given sufficient time. They needed their gambling fix, and the Las Vegas casinos depended on them for the bread and butter of the business; along with the slot machines, of course.

  However, Louis Springer was a new broom and unwilling to listen to the conventional wisdom about these addicts. He concluded they were being allowed too much time to get their affairs straightened out. No doubt he’d heard stories of Sammy and his methods of debt collecting and, without consulting New York, appointed Sammy as the new Flamingo debt collector.

  Lenny was horrified and called Springer at the Flamingo, pointing out that the Firebird wouldn’t dream of using Sammy in this capacity. He tried to talk some sense into the ‘Loose Spring’, as Louis Springer would eventually be dubbed, but was told to butt out. Lenny then called Chicago and was told personally by the godfather to pull his head in; that Sammy was none of the Firebird’s business and if the kikes wanted to hire him, it was an excellent example of cooperation between the Mobs and no different from sharing a few points in each other’s casinos to prevent a breakdown in relationships. He’d concluded by saying, ‘Now, you listen to me and listen good, ya hear? Las Vegas neutral – it’s “golden egg” territory. We all gotta show respect, no trouble between us, not even wid the fuckin’ kikes!’

  Six months went by. Once or twice, I glimpsed him out driving in his pink Caddy. He’d grown enormously fat and, because of his short legs, he couldn’t push the front seat too far back, so that the steering wheel was partly embedded in his great belly. It seemed a minor miracle that he was still able to manoeuvre the huge automobile. Several stories were beginning to circulate about Sammy, but Lenny said that they were the usual crap and that Louis Springer was singing Sammy’s praises as a debt collector. He had earned his nickname ‘Loose Spring’ from the Flamingo staff for his inconsistent decisions and irascible nature, and other casino owners soon adopted the epithet.

  Then, one evening, I was heading in to work as usual through the rear entrance of the Firebird, which brought me into a corridor leading to the kitchen. To my consternation, I saw Sammy and his two goons kicking a black guy who was curled up in a ball on the tiles, trying to protect his head. ‘Hey, what the fuck . . .’ I ran up to them and shoved the nearest goon hard. He tripped over the victim, and collided with his partner so that both of them sprawled a couple of feet from the sobbing black guy. Sammy was left standing over him.

  As the two goons untangled themselves, Sammy aimed another vicious kick at the black guy’s kidneys, grunting as the toe of his two-tone shoe sank into soft flesh, then stepped back and looked at me. It was eerie. His eyes were glazed, as if he were in a trance or something, and he was breathing hard through his mouth, mucus showing in both nostrils. He was like a man with a bad head cold who has just run a hundred yards and is trying to catch his breath. It was clear he hadn’t recognised me.

  ‘Sammy, stop it, will ya! Leave him alone!’ I bent over to help the black guy to his feet, and was shocked to recognise that the bloody, broken face looking up at me belonged to Hector, the meat chef from the porterhouse steak incident, whom I now counted as a good friend.

  Sammy shook his head and his eyes seemed to come back into focus. For a m
oment, he seemed surprised to see me; then he gave a grunt of recognition. ‘Fuck off outa here, Jack. This ain’t none of your business!’

  ‘Hey, Sammy, take it easy, man. This is Hector from the kitchen, the meat chef.’

  Something flared in his eyes and he shouted, ‘This fucking nigger, he gimme a raw steak on purpose! Motherfucker don’t learn the lesson I give him when he done the same. Man, that’s years ago!’ He kneaded his knuckles. ‘But I ain’t forgot! Sammy Schischka don’t forget stuff.’

  The two goons were now back on their feet and moving towards me. ‘Call your dogs off, Sammy, or I’ll call the police. You have no right to be here in this hotel.’

  ‘Who says? The Firebird belong to us, to the Chicago organisation.’

  I ignored this comment and stood over Hector, to protect him. ‘I’m not going to let you kick a friend of mine to death, so back off, all of you.’

  To my surprise, Sammy grinned. ‘Yeah, I heard about yer nigger lovin’. Fuckin’ aroun’ wid nigger women. A nigger woman fuck is worse than goin’ wid a whore.’ The mucus from his battered nose was now collecting on his top lip. He sniffed, then demanded, ‘Get the fuck outa here, Jack. I ain’t finished with this son of a bitch!’

  The coloured kitchen staff, attracted by the noise, had begun to spill out of the door at the far end of the corridor and stood watching silently, afraid to interfere. Mr Joel, the second chef, pushed his way to the front.