The Hustler

by Walter Tevis

  Eddie kept his face from showing anything. “Glad to meet you,” he said.

  “And I you.” He set his camera on the table, and said, “I think I’ve heard about you, Mr. Felson. You play pocket billiards, don’t you?”

  Eddie grinned. “That’s right,” he said. “Here and there. Do you?”

  “A little.” He laughed. “Although I’m afraid I generally lose.”

  “So does Eddie,” Bert said.

  “Oh, I win sometimes,” Eddie said, looking at Findlay. He noticed that the youthful look he had seen in the man’s face was like a mask, or like the face of a middle-aged woman who is wearing too much make-up, as if something were holding the skin taut, preventing it from collapse, or from decay.

  There was something supercilious, smug, in Findlay’s voice, and in his almost blank, pale eyes. “I’ll bet you do, Mr. Felson. I’ll bet you do.”

  Eddie remained grinning. “How much?”

  Findlay’s eyebrows rose in mock astonishment. He turned to Bert. “Bert,” he said, “I believe Mr. Felson is making a… proposition.”

  “That could be,” Bert said.

  Findlay looked back at him and smiled, and for a moment Eddie was amused at the situation—for it was obvious that Findlay knew the purpose of this visit, that Bert and Eddie would not be talking with him if there was not a hustle being planned. Findlay was playing it all out, and it occurred to Eddie that the man was an instinctive phony, a ham. “Well, Mr. Felson,” he was saying, “maybe you would like to come out to my place some evening. We could play a few games of billiards.”

  Eddie did not like the word “billiards” when it was used to mean pool. But he smiled at the other man. “When?” he said.

  Findlay smiled coldly. “You’re very direct, Mr. Felson.”

  “That’s right,” Eddie said, grinning. “When?”

  “Well,” Findlay withdrew a cork-tipped cigarette from a black case and tapped it gently on the back of one hand. “Would you like to come out tonight? Eight o’clock?”

  Eddie turned to Bert. “What do you think?”

  Bert stood up, and then placed his chair back under the edge of the table. “We’ll be there,” he said….

  19

  Findlay’s house on the outside was like an Old Fitzgerald advertisement—the kind of a quasi-mansion that the word “aristocrat” means to some people. You had to drive a long way from the road before you could get to it, a big, dark brick box, with giant white columns in front supporting nothing, and shrubbery all over the place. By the black-top drive was a small, quaint metal statue of a Negro, in jockey uniform, holding out an iron ring toward a pair of white iron benches, fashioned to appear light and lacy and fooling no one, all very suggestive of the Old South, to which Kentucky had never belonged. The quaint metal statue was an ornament.

  Inside, the place was more like an advertisement for Calvert’s Reserve, the kind where a man who is graying at the temples sits in a leather chair and holds a glass of whiskey preparatory to swilling it. Going through toward the back, Eddie could see into a room filled with books and paintings, with several leather armchairs that would easily have made Findlay a man of distinction in any company. He began to wonder how his host would look bending over a pool table. It was an interesting thought.

  The basement was veneered with mahogany on the walls, which struck Eddie as looking terrible, even worse than the shiny knotty pine that was the badge of something or other these days. In the back of the room was an ill-concealed furnace—it looked like a huge mahogany squid with metal arms—and next to this was a bar. In front of the bar sat the pool table, its green hidden by a gray dust cover. Over the table hung a row of shaded lamps, but these were not turned on yet.

  They sat at the bar and Findlay fixed them all Scotches with soda. On Eddie’s end of the bar was a wooden statue, about two feet high, of a man and woman engaged in one of the favorite indoor sports. Eddie looked at this with some interest, wondering briefly if it could really be accomplished that way. He decided that it would be possible, but fatiguing. Over the bar there hung a picture, also obscene, but not as imaginative. This was framed in white and appeared to be Japanese. The Scotch was very good, the best. Which figured.

  Findlay had been keeping up a light patter of conversation, most of it aimless. He became quiet now, absorbed for the moment in his drink, and Eddie began to open his leather case. He took the cue out and screwed it together, checking it for tightness. Then he felt of the tip, which seemed to be a little too hard and slick, the leather battered down by innumerable tappings. He looked at Findlay. “You got any sandpaper? Or a file?”

  Findlay smiled, almost eager to be of assistance. “Certainly. Which?”

  “A file.”

  Obligingly, the other man went to a cabinet that was built into the wall, opened it, and withdrew a jointed cue of his own and a file, which he handed to Eddie.

  Eddie took it and began carefully tapping the side of it against the tip of his cue, roughing it up a little to restore its springiness and to permit it to take chalk better. He glanced at his host, busily checking his own cue for tightness and straightness, sighting down it carefully. It seemed amusing, the two of them. Like a couple of gentlemen politely preparing their weapons for a duel. Which, in a sense, was what was happening.

  When Findlay had finished performing his rites, Eddie said, “Let’s play,” and he stood up.

  “By all means.”

  The minute they threw one corner of the dust cover back Eddie saw something that shook him. There were no pockets. It was a billiard table. He looked immediately at Bert. Bert had seen it too; he was pursing his lips.

  Eddie looked at Findlay. “I thought you played pool.”

  Findlay raised his eyebrows with amusement. “I do. But not here, I’m afraid.”

  Eddie did not answer that but went on with him, folding up the cover and then putting it away on a shelf that had been built in for it, on the near wall. He weighed what was happening rapidly. He knew how to play billiards; and the game overlapped with pool anyway: both of them required a good stroke more than anything else, and a knowledge of what a ball would do. But the differences were great: the balls were slightly bigger and heavier; playing safe had an entirely different strategy to it; and most important, it was mainly a cue ball game—you did not concern yourself very much with where the ball you shot at went but with precisely what your cue ball did afterward. It was not easy for a pool player to get used to. And it was a tight game, a chesslike game, depending on brains and nerve and on knowing the tricks.

  He looked at Findlay again. “What kind of billiards do you play?”

  “Oh—three cushion?”

  That sounded better. In three cushion there were some things that Eddie knew. And, in any event, it was not a runaway game; he could not get beaten without knowing what was happening to him. Unless Findlay was very damn good.

  He looked at Bert. Bert was shaking his head “No.”

  Eddie grinned at him slightly and shrugged his shoulders.

  Then he looked at Findlay and said, “And what do you figure is a good price for a game of three-cushion billiards? Say, twenty-five points?”

  Findlay smiled, running his hand gently through his hair, which was thin. “A hundred dollars?”

  Eddie looked at Bert. “How does that sound?”

  Bert’s face was tight. “Not very good. I don’t think you ought to play.”

  “Why not?”

  “What kind of billiard player are you? You probably never shot a game in your life.”

  “Oh, now,” Findlay said, “I’m sure Mr. Felson knows what he’s doing, Bert. And certainly you can afford a hundred dollars to find out?”

  “Sure he can,” Eddie said. He began setting the white balls up for the lag and placing the red ball on the spot at the other end of the table. When he was through he looked over at Bert.

  Bert’s face showed nothing. Eddie chalked his cue tip.

  “Well,�
�� he said to Findlay, “let’s play.”

  They lagged for the break and Eddie lost, by a large margin. The balls seemed big and heavy, and he realized that they were made of ivory—bigger than the composition balls he was used to, and trickier to handle. They might be a problem at first; it would take a while to get used to them.

  And the table—the table was too big. He had heard, somewhere, that they had used tables as long as sixteen feet, back when the game first was invented, in Europe. This one was a five by ten, but looking down it, it seemed to be at least sixteen feet. And the rails were strange, tight; and the cloth seemed different, a finer weave. He did not like it. When he shot into the white ball it felt big and heavy and seemed to resist the pushing of his cue, as though the bottom of the ball were sticking to the cloth.

  Having won the lag, Findlay took the opening shot. His thin mouth frowning in elegant concentration, he stood, hands on hips, and sighted at the ball very carefully before he bent down to shoot. He made his bridge elaborately, letting the little finger on his left hand flutter several times before settling it down on the green. His preparatory strokes seemed to attempt gracefulness, but were merely wild swoopings for he held his cue too high at the butt and too far back, and the movement of his arm was irregular, jerky. But when he finally shot the cue ball, it hit the red ball, banked off the three proper rails, and hit the other white ball neatly. One point.

  “Well,” he said, smiling at Eddie, “that always feels pleasant, doesn’t it?”

  Eddie did not answer.

  And Findlay made the next one, an easy three-rail air shot—the kind where the cue ball is sent for the three required bounces off the cushions before hitting the other two balls. He shot the same way, with the fluttering little finger, the swooping stroke, the phony frown of concentration. It was disgusting to watch his mannerisms. But he made two billiards.

  When Eddie shot, he tried to play calmly, dispassionately, and he succeeded in making a good, smooth stroke and giving the cue ball a clean hit and roll. But he missed.

  Findlay made another on his next turn, and then played him safe, by leaving Eddie’s white ball at one end of the table and the other two balls at the other end. This, immediately, was a new problem; Eddie did not know exactly how to play safe from that position, and, irritated, he shot a wild shot which missed by several feet. The cue ball came thunking out of one of the corners and dropped dead in position for a simple three-rail cross shot for Findlay.

  They continued playing and after a while Eddie began to make an occasional billiard. But he could not seem to get hold of the balls properly, could not get the feel of the table and of the game; and Findlay beat him. Twenty-five to eleven. When the game was over Bert handed Findlay a hundred-dollar bill, wordlessly.

  “Thank you, Bert,” he said, and then smiled at Eddie, the same supercilious, irritating smile. “Play another?”

  He tried to concentrate on the simple shots during the next game, avoiding the tricky English—the kinds of spin that added extra variables to the way the ball would roll and bounce—and trying to cinch whatever shots he found. He lost, but he scored fifteen before Findlay beat him. He was not saying anything, was trying to keep himself from becoming angry with the silly, foppish way that Findlay played, trying to concentrate on winning—just winning. And every shot he played he could feel Bert’s eyes, spectacled and quietly disapproving, watching him, his stroke, and the way that the balls rolled. But he did not look at Bert any more; he watched what he was doing.

  And in the fourth game he finally began to get the sense of the balls and the table—the old, fine sense that always came to him, sooner or later, and let him know that it was going to be time for him to start to win. He began to loosen up, to put a little more wrist action into his stroke—although it hurt his wrist to do this—and he won the game, by a close score.

  He won the next one, and then Findlay stepped behind the mahogany bar and fixed them drinks, strong drinks, and Eddie began to feel better, looser. It was time to bear down now, time to begin thinking of profits. And the game of billiards seemed to open up for him; the balls began to respond to his touch; and he began to enjoy the game, watching the balls fly around the table, enjoying the pretty little click at the end of each successful shot.

  He won four out of the next six games and they were even again. He looked at his watch. A quarter to ten. The evening was just beginning; and, at last, he was feeling good, back in his element again. Now Findlay’s exaggerated style of playing seemed only amusing, an opportunity for easy contempt.

  After Eddie had won the game that put them even in money, Findlay went behind the bar to mix the drinks, and Eddie walked over to Bert and said, quietly, “When do I raise the bet?”

  Bert considered this for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Findlay was clicking ice behind the bar.

  “I think I’ve got him,” Eddie said.

  “You’re not supposed to be thinking.”

  “All right, boss.” He grinned at Bert, amused. “I know I’ve got him, then. I’ll beat him from here.”

  Bert looked at him carefully. “I’ll let you know,” he said.

  But after the next game, which Eddie won, it was Findlay, surprisingly, who brought it up. He held his lighter out for Eddie’s cigarette, and then, after clicking it dramatically shut, said, “Like to raise the stakes, Mr. Felson?”

  Eddie looked at him for a moment, and then turned to Bert, “Okay?”

  Bert’s voice was noncommittal. “Do you think you’ll beat him?”

  “Of course,” Findlay said, smiling. “Of course he thinks he can beat me, Bert. He wouldn’t be playing me if he didn’t. Right, Felson?”

  “It figures,” Eddie said, smiling back at him.

  “I didn’t ask him can he beat you,” Bert said. “I already know he can beat you. What I asked him was will he. With Eddie that’s two different things.”

  Eddie looked at Bert for a moment, silently. Then he said, his voice level, “I’ll beat him.”

  Bert pursed his lips, unimpressed. “We’ll see.” And then, to Findlay, “How much?”

  “Oh…” Findlay scratched his chin, delicately. “What about five hundred?”

  Instantly, Eddie felt a small tightening in his stomach, not unpleasant. They would be getting down to business now.

  “All right,” Bert said.

  Eddie, looking at Findlay’s hands, noticed that the nails seemed to be polished. Even after playing pool they were impeccably clean, perfectly trimmed, and slightly glossy.

  Findlay beat him. The score was close, and Findlay did not seem to shoot any better, nor Eddie any worse; but Findlay made more billiards than he did. It cost Bert five hundred dollars, and Bert paid it silently.

  Eddie lost the next game the same way. Findlay’s playing was still as affected, as silly looking, as ever; but he won.

  And it was during that game that a very revealing shot came up, one that changed for him the whole aspect of the game. It was Findlay’s shot, and the balls were spread in a very tricky position. There was what appeared to be a simple, easy set-up; but actually the balls were arranged so that a last-minute kiss—a collision between the two wrong balls—would have been inevitable. A poor player would not have seen this, a player as poor as Findlay seemed to be.

  But Findlay did not shoot the shot in the obvious, predictable way. He put a great deal of reverse English on the cue ball, skidded it into the side rail, across the table twice, and into the middle of the third ball. The shot did not look like very much; but Eddie immediately recognized it for what it was, and the recognition was a pronounced shock. It had been a professional shot, the shot of a man who knew the game of billiards very well.

  “Well,” Eddie said quietly, “maybe I ought to sign you up.”

  Findlay laughed softly, but did not say anything.

  Eddie began watching him closely, and began to notice some things about his stroke. It seemed jerky and awkward, but on the
shots that counted there was a slight smoothness that was not there on the others.

  It was hard to take, hard for Eddie to swallow: he was being hustled.

  After the game Findlay offered to fix them another drink; but Eddie said, “I think I’ll sit this one out.” He walked over to the bar beside Findlay, though, and leaned on it casually and watched while he fixed his drink. Something was going on in his mind, obscurely. Then, when Findlay was stirring the drink, he looked at him closely, looking at his eyes, and said, “You play a lot of billiards, Mr. Findlay?”

  And when Findlay said, “Oh… every now and then,” in his supercilious voice, Eddie saw in his face what he had been hoping he would see. He saw self-consciousness and deceit. And over it all the general sense of weakness, of decay.

  But he did not beat Findlay the next game. He started with confidence of his superiority, with calm confidence; but he lost. And the next one. This made him two thousand dollars—of Bert’s money—behind.

  He had not spoken to Bert for several games. After losing the last one, he watched Findlay go behind the bar again and then he turned to Bert and said, “I’ll get him this time.”

  Bert looked at him coldly. “How are the hands?”

  He had not been thinking about them, and he became abruptly aware that they were hurting him severely.

  “Not too good,” he said to Bert.

  Bert kept looking at him; and then he laughed, softly. But he did not say anything.

  And Eddie felt himself suddenly reddening. “Now wait a minute….”

  “Shut up,” Bert said. “We’re leaving.”

  For a moment Eddie’s head spun. Then he said, “All right. All right,” and turned back towards the table, beginning to unscrew the cue, to separate the two pieces.

  And then he stopped. This was not right.

  He turned to Bert, and looked at him. “No,” he said. “We’re not leaving. You’ve got me figured wrong this time. I can beat him.”

  Bert did not say anything.