The Digger's Game

by George V. Higgins

  “I think,” the Digger said, “I think, I’m different, not like the old coot. I had about sixty of the house money. I had eight-eighty. Beautiful, I think, old bastard’s using up all the bad luck. I’m gonna sit there and make hay. He sits there, calm as hell, nerves like he’s got he oughta be robbing banks, all I gotta do is bet steady and fast and I make a bundle.

  “See what I mean?” the Digger said. “Stupid. No more fives. Twenties. Some good cards, some bad cards, I win some and I lose some, they deal them fuckin’ cards like they’re coming out of a pistol, bang, bang, bang. Pretty soon I haven’t got no money left.

  “I was surprised,” the Digger said. “I had eight-eighty when I start playing twenties. I wasn’t playing that long. I win a few. Can’t be. But there it is, they got the whole eight-eighty back and I, I’m out of money.

  “Now,” the Digger said, “I’m not like the old bastard. I haven’t got no credit card. But, the tour there, special arrangement and all? I can sign a marker. You know about that, right? You being the guy that winds up with the markers.”

  “Sure,” the Greek said. “But the idea is, we’re after the guys, got businesses and all, afford it. Not guys like you.

  “Yeah,” the Digger said. “A phone call would’ve gone good, Greek. I didn’t know that. Where I find Richie, kick the living fuckin’ shit out of him a few times?”

  “I knew he called you,” the Greek said, “I would’ve called you.”

  “Tell you what,” the Digger said, “call him now.”

  “Uh uh,” the Greek said, “you owe the fuckin’ money, Dig. Too late now. You signed the paper, you owe the dough. No other way.”

  “I did,” the Digger said. “That night I sign five of what you got.”

  “That’s when you should’ve quit,” the Greek said.

  “Yeah,” the Digger said, “I should’ve quit when I get onna plane, me giving the Greek all that, plus the eight-twenty I give them that they give me. My wife, well, it, I lost almost six K and it’s still early when I get up, and you got no idea, the shit I took, my wife, I told her, I’m spending a grand, go to Vegas. Boy, I got up from that table, almost six grand down, it’s like they had one of them hook-ups, I could hear her and she don’t even know it yet. She still don’t know it.

  “I went to bed that way,” the Digger said. “All that stuff they give you, all the broads in Vegas? Well, I don’t screw around much. But I had it in mind, you know, things go all right, maybe I try a little strange tail. Well, that night I’m not interested in no broads. I couldn’t’ve got it up on a bet. I was fuckin’ sick, is what I was.

  “The next day I get up. I feel awful. The kid, his girl didn’t get her period, two weeks late? I’m the same way. I’m not doin’ that again, no sir. No more fuckin’ cards. Breakfast and then I’m gonna have lunch and then I’m gonna have dinner, but no more cards for the Digger. This is the first day I’m there, I’m already onna ropes. I’m gonna be a good boy. And think about how I come up with five for being stupid.

  “Now that place,” the Digger said, “they got that place laid out pretty good. The pictures they give you, you got swimming, you got the golf, the horseback riding, you can shoot pool and tennis, they got tennis, you want to sit around the pool they got broads with big tits to look at. Great. Except, it’s over a hundred, we’re there, all three days. I never rode a fuckin’ horse in my life, and I don’t want to. And besides, they got, they don’t want you riding no horses, they got them casinos open day and night. You go down for fuckin’ breakfast, people gambling. Gambling’s what they got for you to do. That’s all they got for you to do. Unless maybe you wanna go the library, down the airport, watch the planes er something.

  “I’m not gambling,” the Digger said. “I sit around the pool, I see a lot of dumpy old fat kikes with baggy tits, they got white and blue hair and their skin, you could make shoes out of it. All these guys look like King Farouk flappin’ around in them rubber things they wear on the feet, and they’re all smoking cigars. Now and then you see something go by, little short of seventy, the old bastards look at her and you know, hundred-dollar whore, made out of sheet metal, you fucked her and you’d cut it off on a rough edge.

  “I took about all of that I could,” the Digger said. “Then I go to the movies. I fly all the way across the country and I go the movies. I gotta stay out of trouble.”

  “How’s the movie?” the Greek said.

  “Shitty,” the Digger said. “One of them James Bond things. They show half of it, I don’t care about the rest. You can’t believe it. It’s all shit. But I stay. I don’t stay, I can go down the street and watch them press pants or something. It’s not as bad as the fuckin’ pool and at least I’m not losing no money. Of course I’m not making no money, and making money, that is what I’m thinking about. Every single goddamned minute. That and how if I don’t think of something, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life, probably, being married to a sawmill.

  “I go back the hotel,” the Digger said. “I still haven’t got anything in mind. I meet Mikey-mike, couple the other guys, we have dinner. Food isn’t bad, that I give them. Okay, and we see a show, and a couple after-dinners, and we pay and I get the change in quarters. They’re all going back and forth, one of them gets a hundred off the slots, grabbed it right after this jerk in a raincoat that dumped about five hundred into it, next guy plays roulette, buck a turn, drops two-fifty the night before, still in pretty good shape and all, six hundred buckos left and he likes golf, he’s out all day and he feels pretty good. Tonight he gets it back. And Mikey-mike, shacked up all day, hundred and a half, one of the guys says to him, ‘Lot of bread.’ Mikey-mike says, ‘No, not for what they do to you for that. It’s dirt fuckin’ cheap.’

  “So I’m all,” the Digger said, “I feel bad, you know? Everybody’s having a good time, got sense enough, pace themselves, I hadda spend the day inna movies because I’m a big asshole. So I think, Shit, I can’t spend two more days like this, I’ll be an old man, the time I go home. I’ll play the slots. Man’s got to do something.

  “Eight fuckin’ quarters,” the Digger said, “two fuckin’ dollars. You lose six, two bucks more, don’t scare you much. I play nice and slow. Make them last. Them things’re rigged there. Every so often you win a little something, keep you interested. Pretty soon, though, no more quarters. There’s this woman there, got to be four hundred years old. Plays three machines all at once. I watch her. She talks, you know? Can’t hear what she says, just talks all the time. I was lower’n I’ve ever been in my life. I get change a five. The Digger, I got nickels. I’m playin’ fuckin’ nickels.

  “I lose and I lose,” the Digger said. “The old lady leaves, probably going some place, have a nice quiet heart attack or something. I jackpot nickels. Beautiful. Why the fuck don’t I jackpot quarters? Never mind, God don’t hate me after all. I got, I got probably two hundred and fifty nickels. In paper cups. I take them over the change booth. ‘Gimme quarters.’

  “Two paper cups full of quarters,” the Digger said. “I take one the old lady’s machines. Might as well get it over with. Eight quarters. Ten quarters. Twenty quarters, it keeps on eating them. I haul the lever. Jackpot, quarters. Fifty bucks.

  “I go the change booth again,” the Digger said. “Half dollars. I’m halfway down the first roll. I jackpot the halfs and now I got, it’s one of them machines, you can play three lines at once, I got three jackpots.

  “Now,” the Digger said, “anybody beats the machine, there’s this red light, flashes, they make some noise about it. Gets the other dumb fucks hungrier. You hit one on the fifties on all three lines, they put you inna Hall of Fame. Take a Polaroid of me, two girls in cowboy suits. One of them says to me, couldn’t hear it unless you happened to be standing next to her, ‘You wanna get the best French inna desert?’ I’m too smart for that. ‘The money,’ I say, ‘gimme the money.’ Twenty-five hundred in silver dollars.”

  “So you go back to the blackjack table,” the Gree
k said.

  “Not on your fuckin’ life,” the Digger said. “I said, ‘Folding money. Gimme paper. I can’t carry this stuff around.’ Well, they got a lot of trouble finding that. I say, ‘Look, no shit, all right? I’m not putting it in the dollar slots, I gotta get a truck, take it home. Gimme hundreds. I’ll take fifties, hundreds is what I want.’ They piss and moan a lot, but they do it.

  “I go back to the room,” the Digger said. “I went to bed. I felt a hell of a lot better’n I felt when I got up from it inna morning, I can tell you that. I’m not even, but at least I got something to work with. Tomorrow I’m gonna get up and think some more, maybe I end up getting my ass outa the gears.

  “I get up the next day,” the Digger said. “I feel pretty good. I go out the pool and have breakfast, a little vodka and orange juice, I read the paper. All the time, I’m thinking. How do I get out of this? How’d I get into it? Doing something they know better’n I know. Playing cards. I didn’t play cards, fifteen years. I was always getting my brains beat out, playing cards. I don’t know cards, cards’re not my game. I know sports. I make a buck, it’s because I know sports, I’m betting against somebody else, maybe knows sports, don’t know sports so good. Okay, sports action. Sports action is what I need.

  “They also got sports action up the ass in Vegas,” the Digger said. “I have another vodka and orange juice. Already I feel better, I didn’t do anything yet. This one feels right. The fat ladies, I don’t even see them any more. What I need is the newspaper, sports page.

  “That particular day,” the Digger said, “Oakland at Boston. Oakland, Vida Blue. Sox’ve got Siebert listed. You do any bookin’, Greek?”

  “Bookin’s for jerks,” the Greek said. “No.”

  “Lotta rich jerks around, then,” the Digger said.

  “Because there’s a lot of guys like me around, collect their stuff,” the Greek said. “Look closer the books, next time you see a rich one, is my advice. There’s a few. Not many.”

  “Well, I go down there,” the Digger said, “Santa Anita Turf Club. No change inna pitchers. They got Oakland, six and a quarter.

  “Now that don’t sound bad, you just come up and look at it,” the Digger said. “Blue’s hotter’n hell. But Blue’s pitching in the Fenway. I remember a southie, pitched there once or twice, done all right, but that’s Mel Parnell and he don’t play for Oakland. He’s a little retired, the way I hear it. Also, anything hot as Blue’s due to lose. And anyway, say what you want about Siebert, he’s smart and he can throw that thing, and by now he’s been around the Fenway long enough, he don’t throw up when he comes out and looks at the Wall. I think, Digger, you got something here, isn’t anybody else knows about it. So, they don’t take no credit, the books, I put the twenny-five down on the Sox. Guy hears me, kind of laughs and says, ‘You guys from Boston, you’re too loyal.’ I think, nobody gets six offa Siebert inna Fenway, but I don’t say anything.

  “They’re four, no, three, they’re three hours behind us,” the Digger said. “Games, the game’s at night. Quarter of seven out there, starts seven-thirty here, over by quarter of ten. All I got to do is find something to do till supper. I’ll play golf.

  “My brother plays golf,” the Digger said. “It starts snowing here, the first thing he thinks of, he’s gonna go down to Florida, play golf. Watches golf on the television. In February he’s down the Cape, playing golf. Comes down, goes down to Scituate there every summer, that golf thing they got down to where Curley used to live. Me, I can’t get interested in golf. Golf sucks.”

  “It’s too fuckin’ slow,” the Greek said. “It don’t go fast enough. You can get more exercise eatin’ a fuckin’ sandwich, for Christ sake. You walk around and walk around and you wait for about two hundred other guys to walk around in front of you. Golf don’t make no sense.”

  “Right,” the Digger said, “so, it’s just what I need. I ask the hotel, can I rent clubs. I get out onna course. I played thirty-six holes. It’s over a hundred. I’m all alone. I hate what I’m doing and I’m lousy at it and there’s all these fat bastards zooming around inna carts and having a hell of a time, and I walk and I sweat and I walk and I sweat some more. I played nine. I had three beers. Nine more, I had a sandwich and a couple more beers. Then I play eighteen more. Front nine, four beers. I don’t sweat at all, now. I don’t piss. I’m drying up. Back nine, I had three more.

  “Now,” the Digger said, “I’m half drunk, full of beer. I go back the hotel, my head’s all full of air or something. All that sun, too. So I stop in the bar, do something sensible: I have a few beers. I got to do something, I’m waiting for the fuckin’ game, I’m too fuckin’ nervous to eat. I don’t want to take a shower, it’s too much goddamned trouble, go up the room and go through it even if I do smell like a wet horse. Hell, I lose and I stink like shit anyway. I win, I’m a rose. Blow the shower. Have another beer. Six-thirty, I stroll around to the book, nice and casual. They go extra innings, I’m gonna have a baby or something. Results up: it’s a final, I win. I am fuckin’ goddamned even.”

  “Good old Sonny Siebert,” the Greek said.

  “I would’ve bought him a drink,” the Digger said. “He’d’ve been there, I would’ve bought him a drink. So I take the dough, I go back the hotel, king of the fuckin’ world, all right? Take a shower, have dinner, all that kind of stuff, and I’m gonna fuckin’ enjoy it, you know? I see Mikey-mike and we go and we have dinner, and I really, I hadda great meal, ‘So,’ he says to me, ‘what about tonight? You wanna get laid?’ I say, ‘Nope, not me. I’m gonna be a good boy.’ Well, all right, Mikey-mike’s gotta leave, he’s got this appointment to get blown and that, and I say, ‘Go ahead. I’ll sit here a while and then I go watch the show.’ See, by then I’m getting over all that beer I drink.

  “Well,” the Digger said, “they got this goddamned fairy, comes out and what’s he gonna do? He’s gonna sing. Not to me, he isn’t gonna sing. I call the waiter over. ‘I thought I was gonna see a show,’ I say. ‘What’s this faggot doing? I thought there’s naked women or something.’ He says, ‘Inna lounge. Revue’s inna lounge, weeknights.’

  “I go in the bar,” the Digger said. “I get a Wild Turkey and I sit down. Then I get another Wild Turkey. Then the show starts. Waiter steered me right: naked women. I start to think: Maybe Mikey-mike’s right, I do wanna get laid after all. Then the top girl comes out. That’s when I decide, I do wanna get laid. That broad, who was that broad with the big tits, got killed in the car accident?”

  “I dunno,” the Greek said.

  “Mansfield,” the Digger said.

  “Jayne Mansfield,” the Greek said.

  “Yeah,” the Digger said, “her. Remember the tits she had on her?”

  “They were big,” the Greek said. “I remember that.”

  “This girl had bigger tits’n Jayne Mansfield,” the Digger said. “I couldn’t fuckin’ believe, I never saw anything like that in my life. There’s this guy sitting next to me, I’m at the bar? I said to him, ‘Look, I know I’m seeing that. I haven’t gone nuts or anything. But that, that’s two guys in a girl suit or something. There’s nothing like that in the world.’

  “ ‘That’s Supertits,’ he says. ‘She’s full of silicone. Had one of them Japanese jobs. Fifty inches.’ I say, ‘Them things oughta go twenny pounds apiece. That broad, she shouldn’t be able to walk around.’

  “ ‘They’re just like rocks, too,’ he says,” the Digger said. “ ‘You ask nice, you can get some of that. I don’t recommend it, but you can. Three hundred an hour, isn’t worth it. It’s like fuckin’ onna goddamned ramp anyway, and she thinks, she lets you pull ’em, she earned her money. You can pull those, you can stretch bricks. I was you, I wouldn’t do it. You want to get laid, go get a good ho and get laid. They’ll give you a ride for the dough. Less dough, too.’

  “I say, ‘No, thanks,’ ” the Digger said. “ ‘Way things’ve been going for me, I’d probably get cancer.’ So he says, ‘You been playing again
st the house. Everybody gets cleaned out, doing that. What you need is a nice friendly game.’

  “Oh, he’s got a great line of shit,” the Digger said, “this and that, we get a group of guys together, he’s up from LA with a group of guys from the barbershop, he runs a barbershop in LA, comes up to Vegas because you meet a sophisticated kind of guy there, knows what he wants.”

  “You fuckin’ dummy,” the Greek said. “You oughta go to the Home, you shithead.”

  “I didn’t go for it, Greek,” the Digger said. “You can call me all the names you want, you got all the paper there, I still, I ain’t lost my fuckin’ marbles, you know. I know when I’m gettin’ hustled, I don’t walk out in front of trucks, somebody asks me to. I said, ‘No.’ So he says, well, he says, what am I gonna do? I’m going to bed. ‘Good Christ, man,’ he says, ‘it’s ten thirty. You come to Las Vegas, go to bed at ten thirty?’ So I say, I told him, thirty-six holes of golf, all the excitement, I’m not as young as I used to be. Yup, I’m going to bed. So there I am. Quarter of eleven, I’m inna rack. Haven’t been to bed so early since I was ten. I was fuckin’ exhausted.”

  The Digger sighed. “One o’clock inna morning. Right on the dot. I’m awake. I’m burning up. Big white blisters on my arms. I got a couple on my neck. My face is on fire. Scalp’s on fire. Now I know why them guys’re running around onna course in the carts under the awnings. I got a charley horse in my leg. Goes on and off. This tremendous pain in the left arm. I don’t know what it’s from. My stomach feels fuckin’ awful. My head’s still all full of air, only now I got this headache, I hadda headache like I never seen before. I stink. I stink so bad I can’t stand the smell. Then all of a sudden, the pain in the arm, it’s the heart attack. I did too much in one day. I’m havin’ a fuckin’ heart attack and I’m gonna die. Oh, Jesus.