About Harry Towns

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  The boy tried several of the balls for size, and after a while declared that there was no ball just right for him in the entire alley and that he probably wouldn't be able to do any great bowling. Towns did not know how to keep score and neither did the boy, so he asked the proprietor to help them out; but even after the old man explained it with great care he still didn't know how to keep score. It was one of those things he knew he would never learn as long as he lived. So he kept a sort of rough score. Towns went over a hundred, by rough count, in the first game, topping the boy, who was amazed and said, “You never told me you were a great bowler. Incredible. And you probably haven't bowled in years either. If you kept it up, you could win thousands of prizes.” Towns didn't want to win any prizes. All he wanted to do was get back to the casino and take a try at the tables. He planned to take it easy and let the boy beat him in the second game, but when they got into it, he abandoned his plan and tried as hard as he could and wound up beating the kid again. He always did that with the boy, even in checkers. He just wasn't easygoing enough to let the boy win a few. He told himself it was all right, because when the boy really beat him legitimately, it would mean something. But that was bullshit. It would be better to take it easy once in a while. Of course, it was no picnic finding just the right level— when you had a son. Towns had a feeling he was working too hard at it.

  “I'll never be able to beat you as long as I live,” said the boy. “Yes, you will,” said Towns. “One day you'll go past me and you'll stay ahead forever. All I ask, is that when I become a bent-over old man you won't come along and kick me in the head.” He meant it as a joke, but the boy didn't see it that way and said, “Are you kidding, Dad? When I'm older I'll give you every cent I have.”

  “Just be a good kid,” said Towns, “and that's all I'll ever ask.”

  After the third game, the boy seemed to be settling in for an all-night session. Towns took him by the shoulders and said, “Son, I really would like to do some gambling.” The boy took it very well, saying, “Why didn't you say so, Dad? I thought you loved it here.”

  “I did,” said Towns, “but I think I've had my fill.”

  They returned to the hotel and when the boy was undressed, he said, “What do I do if someone smashes down the door and gets me?”

  “Someone won't,” said Towns.

  “What if you lose?” asked the boy, with real terror in his eyes. It was as though his father was going off to war.

  “Then I lose.” said Towns. “Meanwhile I've had a lot of fun.”

  He closed the door and even though he knew it was a sure sign he was going to lose he actually found himself trotting down the hall to the casino. He looked for the slow dealer named Bunny and when he found him, he sat down at the table, got some chips, and, with all the exhilaration of a new thief with his hands on some jewelry, began to gamble. Bunny gave him plenty of time to think and he began to win and at the same time to dispense advice to a fellow next to him who wasn't doing that well.

  “Blackjack is the only game where you've got a break. The casino gets its edge from people who really don't know the game, women, for example, who just throw their money away and will split pictures every time they get them.”

  “Fine,” said the man next to him.

  Towns played for about three hours, winning four hundred dollars and then stopping, with the idea that he would return on the following night, his last one, and try to bump his winnings into some significant money. He had pulled that off once, in Europe, probably the only time he could think of when he had had no pressing need for the money. He won at roulette, not knowing much about the game, and with no particular system. He won thousands of dollars, a lifetime of luck seemingly crowded into those few weeks of playing in French casinos. He bought a German car-boat with the money, one you could drive up to the edge of the water and then drive in and have it become a boat so that you were driving through the water. And then he sold it. There just weren't enough places where you could drive off a highway and into the water. You had to be living in Canada somewhere, not around New York City.

  Before Towns left the table, he told the man next to him that the trick in gambling is to get some of the casino's money and play on that. The man seemed relieved to see him go. Towns cashed in his winnings and when he got back to the hotel he woke the boy at four in the morning. It was one of those things he knew was wrong to do, but he couldn't resist it.

  “How'd you do?” asked the boy.

  “Won four hundred,” said Towns. “And fifty of it is yours, for coins.”

  “That's not fair,” said the boy. “It's your winnings.”

  “I want to do it for you,” said Towns. “You were my partner.”

  “What if you'd lost?”

  “That's different,” said Towns.

  “Ill take it,” said the boy, “but I don't think it's right. I didn't do anything.”

  “You're my son,” said Towns.

  They slept late their last full day in Las Vegas and when they awakened in the early afternoon, Towns felt compelled to tell the boy a little about what had happened between the boy's father and mother. “Sometimes people get married young and maybe they shouldn't have and then all of a sudden they're not getting along at all.” Of course that wasn't telling him much. He wanted to tell the boy about the Bryn Mawr girl, but if he knew anything he knew that was the wrong thing to do although he was certain the boy would like her. If not on the first meeting, then on the second for sure.

  “I'd want to stay with you,” said the boy.

  “No, you wouldn't,” said Towns, but he was pleased the boy had said that. How could he not be?

  Towns discovered a gym in the hotel, and after lunch they went into it for a workout. When the boy had stripped down and gone into the workout room, the owner said, “That's terrific the way the kid comes in here. When he grows up he'll have a helluva build on him because he's starting now.” Because of the crab situation, Towns was careful to keep himself wrapped in a towel. The gym had some unfamiliar apparatus and he was scared out of his wits that the boy would get tangled up in it and kill himself, or at best hurt his trick knees. All he wanted was for them to work out and get the hell out of there, safe and sound. He hardly did any exercise and spent most of his time warning the boy about the apparatus. A massive black fighter skipped rope in the middle of the floor; Towns recognizing him immediately as a main-eventer who had suffered an important reversal in recent months. Towns moved protectively toward his son, and when the fighter left, he told the child he had been working out right next to a famous fighter. “Why didn't you say so?” said the boy. “I would have asked him what happened in that last fight.” Everyone in the gym got a kick out of that, and the owner said, “That's all you would have needed.” Towns went in to take a shower, and after a moment, heard a loud noise and then some unnatural stillness. Without looking, he knew what had happened. He walked into the gym and saw his son's body stretched out with a heavy weight over his face. The owner and the masseur were kneeling beside him, the owner saying, “See what happens,” and the masseur adding, “Don't move him, you never move them.” Towns took his time walking over to the boy, aware that it would look good if he came off as a calm, clear-thinking father. He picked the plate off the boy's face, expecting to see only half a head under there. The boy's eyes were closed and his right cheekbone had an unnatural color, but there was no blood. The boy opened his eyes and asked, “Am I all right? I can't tell. I think I was unconscious for a while, my first time.” Towns said he had probably overloaded one side of a barbell with the result that the heavy side tipped over on his head. “It happens to every fellow in a gym,” said Towns, “except that the weight doesn't always hit them the way it did you. It'll probably never happen to you again.” The boy was delighted that he had been unconscious. “In all my years that never happened to me,” he told the owner. The owner said the boy had just been shaken up and that he would be fine, but Towns wasn't so sure and figured the owner was
making light of it to fend off a possible lawsuit. He asked for the name of a doctor and when the owner gave him one he called the fellow who said, “Listen, I'm eating dinner thirty miles away.” Towns said it was an emergency and the doctor asked, “Were any bones driven into the skull?” When Towns told him he couldn't tell, the doctor said he would meet them in the hotel room. Towns carried the boy up to the room, feeling terrible about what had happened; here he'd watched his son like a hawk and then just two seconds after he'd turned away the boy wound up with weights on his head. Why was he taking his boy to gyms and casinos? Didn't other fathers take their sons camping and duck-hunting? Next thing you knew they'd be passing hookers back and forth. Wait till a judge got wind of the way Towns was bringing up the kid. They'd let him see his son once a year, if he was lucky. “I'm dizzy,” said the boy, as Towns put him on the bed, “but I think I'll be all right, except that maybe I won't be.” When the doctor arrived, he looked at the boy and said, “The bone hasn't been driven into the skull. Hell be okay, except for the banged-up place.” It was a terrible thing to think, but Towns felt guilty about the injury not being a little more serious—to justify taking the doctor away from his dinner on a thirty-mile trip. “I'm positive I'm going into a coma,” said the boy. The doctor laughed and when Towns tried to pay him, he put up the palm of his hand in a negative gesture and said, “That's all right, I've got a boy.” When the doctor left, the boy said, “I'm sorry to be spoiling your good time,” to which Towns replied, “Are you kidding? I'm just thrilled you're all right.” Towns packed his face down with ice and sat with the boy while he dozed on and off. If the bone had indeed been tucked back in the boy's skull it would have entailed staying in Las Vegas for days, maybe weeks, or possibly some special kind of plane to get him back East; he was relieved they weren't going to get into that. The boy was good-looking, but in a curious, unconventional way; Towns decided the banged-up cheekbone wasn't going to hold him back much. It would be just another curious feature adding to his curious good looks. The boy said he was a little dizzy and had no appetite so Towns simply sat with him until long after the dinner hour. They were leaving the next morning and Towns wondered if he could get in one last session at the tables and try to boost his winnings to an important level, like that time in France. Only this go-round, he wouldn't buy a German car-boat. He would salt it away, about half for his son. Towns would hand it over to him when he was twenty-one and say, “Here you are, kid, five grand—do anything you like with it.” And that would include gambling and hookers, if the boy wanted to go that way. The important thing was not to put any strings on it. When it was close to midnight, he suggested to the kid that he might like to take one last shot at the tables. Appearing to be startled, the boy said, “You would do that? Don't do it, Dad. I was unconscious for a while, the first time in my life.” Towns said okay, okay, he wouldn't leave him, and the boy dozed off again. When he awakened, a fraction after midnight, Towns brought it up again. “And don't forget, you're my partner,” he said. “If I win, I'll give you a lot of it for coins.”

  “Okay,” said the boy, “but you've got to use some of my money.” He sat up a little, reached into his wallet, and took out twenty-five dollars of the fifty his father had given him. Towns took it, putting it in a separate pocket so as to make sure not to gamble it at any cost. They had to get up at six in the morning to make their plane and Towns promised to be back by two at the latest. He gave the boy a fresh icepack and went off to look for Bunny. He had always said that he could either take gambling or leave it, but now, for the first time in his life, he wasn't so confident about it. When he was in the area of a casino, there was no stopping him. He made sure to be in the area of one some four or five times a year. To a certain extent, when he was alone, he did get some pure pleasure out of gambling. He could sit down at a blackjack table at eight in the evening, get up at four in the morning, and not know what had happened to the time. Sipping brandies and pulling on a delicious cigar or two. Sometimes, when he was ahead, he would slip in a quick hooker and then saunter back to the tables. They had a new kind of semihooker in Vegas, dazed girls from Northern California who would straggle through Vegas on weekends to pick up some cash and then push on. Some were startling in their beauty and almost all were junkies. They were both better and worse than your normal Vegas hooks. They didn't hold you up on the price. It depended on whether you liked dazed and beautiful Northern California junkies or your died-in-the-wool Vegas showgirl types. This was at a time of his life when Harry Towns didn't think much about hookers. He just more or less took them on. That would change later. Of course, none of this applied if you had a son along. Ideally, it was not a good idea to have anyone along when you were gambling. Even a supportive girlfriend. It was a private thing to do and you had to concentrate. Besides, you had all the company you needed, right there at the table. And don't forget the dealer. And the cards.

  As on all other nights when he was to win, Harry Towns started off dropping some. But then he made it back and when he went ahead, he began slowly to convert his five-dollar chips into twenty-fives until he was playing exclusively with the expensive chips. Half the fun of the twenty-fives was the extra attention you got from the other players; often you got a little crowd around you. By one in the morning, Harry Towns had a good stack of the high-priced chips; he counted them on the sly, considering it bush league to do it openly, and saw that he was ahead eleven hundred dollars. Anything over a thousand started to be “significant money” to Towns, who began to think of going ahead as much as five or even ten thousand. A comedian started to tell jokes to the crowd in a lounge behind Towns's table; he was sure this would throw him off, but it was one of those nights and he kept winning all the same. And he wasn't that good a player. For example, he never went out of his way to wait for the “anchor” seat where you could survey the board and have a somewhat better chance of predicting the next card to come up. He always took insurance which, statistically, was a bad bet. He just liked the idea of being insured. And he was too interested in the other players. If he saw a man with terrific hands, he would say, “I'll bet you work with your hands,” and find out that the fellow was a champion three-wall handball player. So he would know that, but his attention would have been diverted for a split second, and that tended to widen the casino's edge.

  He heard his name paged over the loudspeaker. He thought of leaving his chips where they were and telling the dealer to hold his place—in the style of the real gamblers—but when it came down to it he didn't trust the people at the table not to snatch some; so he gathered them up in his pockets and went to take the call. It was the boy on the hotel phone saying his father had promised to come back to the room at two. “I did, but it's only one-thirty,” said Towns.

  “No it isn't,” said the boy, starting to cry. “It's later than that. It's almost morning. Look what you're doing to me.” Towns said it really wasn't two yet, and could he please hold out until it was. “I know what I promised and I'm sticking to it. I'm winning a lot now.” When he got back to the table, someone had taken his seat and he had to sit a few spots over on the end. Bunny smiled at him, as though he knew all about the boy with icepacks in the room. Towns bet heavily and indeed shocked himself by winning a few hundred more; but then, like a veteran fighter coming on in the late rounds, the dealer, with slow, kind, almost remorseful fingers, began inevitably to grind Towns down and take it all back. He took Towns's first-night winnings, the money he was ahead for the night, and five hundred more that he needed badly. When Towns's last chip had been cleared, the dealer said, “One of those nights. I thought you had me there for a while.”

  “I didn't,” said Towns. “The thing with me is that I need a lot of time. When I rush I get killed.”

  When he got back to the room, the boy was cranky and irritable and said his head was killing him. Towns easily matched him in irritability. “I was winning a bundle until you called me,” he said. He tossed the boy his twenty-five dollars and said, “Anyw
ay, here's your money. I didn't lose that.”

  “Yes, you did,” said the boy. “And I don't want it.” The boy started to cry and said, “I was dying in here and you were out there.” Towns said he was sorry and that he would stay with him now. When the boy had cried himself to sleep, Towns smoked a cigarette in the dark, feeling very dramatic about it, and then went into the bathroom to see if his hair had grown back. There was a little shadow around his groin, but he could see that it was going to be a long haul. He checked to make sure the boy was sleeping and then went into the bathroom again where he made a long-distance call to the Bryn Mawr girl, paying no attention to what time of day or night it was in New York. She was drowsily awake and he told her about losing the money and what had happened to the boy. “And I've got body lice,” he said. The girl laughed hysterically and when she had recovered for a moment she said, “You've got crabs. That's the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.” He knew it was going to be all right with her and that made him feel better; but when he came out of the bathroom and looked at the sleeping boy, he felt like a thief for having made a call to the girl when the kid was probably hoping and praying he would get back together with his mother. Towns couldn't sleep at all and decided the trip had been a bust. The dam, the bowling alley, dropping five hundred, and now bringing the kid back with a broken face.

  The boy evidently didn't see it that way. He was cheerful when he awakened and said, “Do we have to go back today? I think I love Las Vegas more than anyplace in the world.” That helped Towns out a little, but not much. “How come you loved it?” he asked. “We hardly did anything. And look what happened to your face.”

  “I can't explain it,” said the boy, hugging his father. “I just loved it. And I wish we didn't have to go home.”