One-Eyed Jacks

by Brad Smith

“There’s a new singer at the Blue Parrot we’re going to catch,” Herm told him.

  They said goodbye and went into the street. While they waited for a cab, though, Sheila pointed to the Duke Hotel down the street and they walked over and took a room. They fucked the first time on the floor inside the door, with Sheila’s dress hiked up and Herm’s pants around his ankles. She screamed like a banshee when she came and Herm burned both elbows on the cheap carpet. They lay there panting for a while.

  “What do you say,” Herm suggested at length, “we take our shoes off.”

  They stayed in the room a couple of hours. They broke the bed, and the lamp beside the bed, and Sheila bit Herm’s earlobe until it bled. Then they got dressed and wandered into the street. It was past midnight; Sheila leaned back into Herm’s arms beneath the streetlight and announced it was time to go home.

  “I’ll get you a cab,” Herm said.

  “Ain’t you coming?”

  “Think I’ll stay downtown awhile.”

  “Take me home,” she said. “You can stay on the couch, my parents don’t mind. We can stay up awhile. My parents sleep real sound,” she smiled.

  “I’ll get you a cab, baby.”

  “I want to stay with you.”

  He managed to get her into the taxi and paid the driver to take her home. She called him a son of a bitch as she left, but that was okay — Herm wasn’t going to her house or anybody else’s, not at this early hour and him with a new suit and money in his pocket.

  He decided to go back into the Bamboo for a drink. The place was largely empty now — it was a club that thinned out early, which meant that the food was okay but the orchestra was lousy. Tommy Cochrane was at the bar by himself, nursing a short whiskey. Herm walked over and ordered scotch for himself and another Irish for Tommy.

  “How was the singer at the Parrot?”

  “Well,” Herm said. “We got sort of sidetracked.”

  “Waylaid?”

  “The last part anyway.”

  “Beats listening to a nightclub singer,” Tommy said.

  Herm took a drink of straight scotch and made a face. “How long you have to stay here?” he asked. “You want to go over to the Parrot with me?”

  “I have to stick around ‘til closing,” Tommy said. “What’s this singer’s name anyway?”

  “I don’t know. But I hear she’s a real looker.” Herm had another drink and felt it smoother this time, nothing like liquor for fooling a person. He looked over at Tommy a moment. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said cautiously. “But how come a guy like you is doing this kind of work?”

  “Well, I’m broke,” Tommy said.

  Herm nodded. “I’ve played snooker with your friend T-Bone a couple of times. Over at Sully’s.”

  “He told me,” Tommy smiled. “Penny a point.”

  “Penny a point,” Herm agreed. “He told me you guys are trying to raise some dough.”

  Tommy took a slow drink of the Jameson’s and let it rest on his tongue a moment before swallowing. He looked over at the kid beside him — a good-looking kid, dressed to the nines, hair oiled and combed back, silk tie. Kind of a gambler, but polite — not a wise guy like most of the punks you see. What the hell, Tommy thought. So he told Herm Bell about his grandfather’s farm in Marlow and the money he needed to buy it. And he told him how much time he had to raise the dough.

  “That’s why I’m working in a place like this,” he said.

  “Five grand is a lot of jack to raise in three weeks,” Herm said.

  “I figure I can swing it with four.”

  “Well, we both know you’re not going to make it here,” Herm said. “What’ve you got in mind?”

  “I don’t have what you’d call a plan,” Tommy said. “Right now I’m trying to put together four or five hundred for a stake. Then maybe I’ll go gambling. That’s why I was asking about Ollie’s.”

  “You need a bigger game than Ollie’s for what you want. The most you could take out of there is a few hundred. Besides, you got that much confidence in your poker playing?”

  “I’d have to get lucky,” Tommy said. “I know that. I’m not looking for a sure thing, I don’t believe in ’em.”

  “I do,” Herm said.

  “Yeah?”

  Herm smiled. “That dame I was with tonight.”

  Tommy smiled back. “What’re they charging for a room at the Duke these days?”

  Herm signalled to the waiter, and this time Tommy paid for the drinks. The club was empty now except for a couple in a corner booth, the woman bent over a rye and coke and the man asleep with his drunken cheek on the tabletop, his hand on the woman’s thigh.

  “Does Mac Brady know you’re looking for money?” Herm asked.

  “There isn’t a stray dog takes a crap in this city that Mac Brady doesn’t know about it,” Tommy said. Then he nodded. “I tried to collect some old debts. Mac knows. Why?”

  “He’s been talking a fight between you and Nicky Wilson.”

  “Well, talkin’s what Mac does best.”

  “I’m guessing the money’s there for you,” Herm said. “So you must have your reasons for deciding against it. I’m not going to ask what they are.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Herm drank his scotch and made to leave; he could still catch the last set at the Blue Parrot if he hurried. He asked again if Tommy wanted to go along, but Tommy said no, he was heading home.

  Herm slid down from the stool. “You ever play the horses, Tommy?”

  “Sure. It’s been a while though.”

  “I been hittin’ them pretty good lately,” Herm said and he wasn’t boasting. “I don’t know what it’s worth, but I got friends at the track — my old man worked the ponies for thirty years. Sometimes I hear when a horse is ready to go. Once in a blue moon — you know? I was thinking — if I hear about something going off, say, eight to one, ten to one — and you had four or five hundred to bet, you might get lucky.”

  Tommy was listening with interest.

  “I’m not talking about a fix,” Herm said. “It’s just sometimes they’ll hold a horse back a few races, to get the odds where they want ’em. Then they’ll let him run, and if he wins, it’s square. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t. But it’s a better chance than cards, and maybe you’d get your whole roll in one shot. But it’s no sure thing, mind you.”

  “I don’t believe in sure things — remember?” Tommy said.

  “I remember.”

  Tommy was thinking it over. “And you’d take a cut, is that it?”

  Herm looked him straight in the eye for maybe ten full seconds.

  “No, that’s not it,” he said. “I like your friend and I thought maybe I could do you a favour, that’s all.”

  Tommy looked down at his drink. Herm turned to leave.

  “Wait a minute,” Tommy said and Herm stopped. “You’ll have to excuse my big mouth. I been hanging around with creeps so long I’m starting to think like ’em.”

  Herm just shrugged it off.

  “I guess you’re one of the few people in this town who didn’t lose money on me in the Rinaldi fight,” Tommy said then.

  “Shit,” Herm said. “If everybody in this town lost what they say they lost on that fight, the bookies would be living like Howard Hughes.”

  Tommy smiled.

  “But I had you for two hundred,” Herm added.

  “And you’re not sore?”

  “What right have I got to be sore?” Herm asked. “I listened to the fight on the radio. You went eight tough rounds with that fuckin’ gorilla and in the end you got beat. Who the hell am I to be sore about that? I figure you fought your fight and that’s it.”

  Tommy narrowed his eyes and looked at the sharp-dressed kid a moment. “All right,” he said at last.

  “I’d like to see you get your farm,” Herm said then. “Think about the horse angle. Sure, it’s a long shot. They say long shots are for suckers, but every time one comes
in, somebody’s got his two dollars on it.”

  “That’s true.”

  “What the hell, life’s a long shot,” Herm said. “That’s what makes it fun.”

  Tommy laughed and drank off his whiskey. “I haven’t been thinking that way lately,” he said. “I guess I forgot about the fun part.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Herm said. “Don’t ever do that.”

  THIRTEEN

  Lee grudgingly decided that it was time to make the trip to Rosedale and visit her mother, at least to announce that she was back in the country and still drawing breath. Friday she went down to Simpsons to pick up a gift of some sort but she couldn’t find anything she even suspected the old girl would like. What do you give somebody who has everything she wants and doesn’t like any of it?

  When she ran into Patty Simmons leaving the store, she abandoned the idea of the visit and she and Patty went for lunch at the Hungarian Cafe. They took a table by the windows in front and sat down. A waiter wearing a bad toupee and a pencil mustache brought menus and then scurried off to the kitchen.

  “Hope he doesn’t drop that rug in the soup,” Lee said, watching him.

  “So what’s new?” Patty asked. “Hey, Bobby and I have been meaning to get down to the Parrot, but he’s working a lot and everything. How’s it going?”

  “Well, Ed Sullivan hasn’t called,” Lee said, “but we’re having fun. The band is great — if it wasn’t for those guys, I wouldn’t be there. Doc’s in his second childhood, Bugs is smoking tea like there’s no tomorrow. Good times.”

  “What about Dunston?”

  “Mel is in seventh heaven, we’re packing the joint every night. The old bastard doesn’t know Hoagy Carmichael from a hoagy sandwich, but he likes what he sees in the cash drawer. And he misses you terribly, Patty. I think you gave him his first hard-on in ten years.”

  “He’s lucky I didn’t turn out his lights, the pervert.”

  Lee shook her head in profound and feigned disapproval. “That’s my boss you’re talking about, honey,” she said. “So what’s new with you, anyway?”

  “Still trying to make a baby,” Patty said. “The old man is so serious. He bought a book on reproduction, believe it or not. So that’s what we’re doing in the bedroom now — trying to reproduce. Kinda takes the romance out of it, you know what I mean? I remember when it was just fucking and we did it on the kitchen table if we wanted.”

  “Do we have to talk about sex?” Lee asked. “I been abstaining.”

  Patty arched her eyebrows. “I see. How long’s this been going on?

  “Couple centuries, I think.”

  “What’s the matter — no men in California?”

  “I met some great pretenders.”

  “And no relief in sight?”

  The waiter returned then and took their lunch orders. Lee stared at his greasy hairpiece while he wrote on his pad. For some reason she had a sick desire to touch the thing. She ordered a chicken sandwich and Patty had the goulash. When the waiter left Lee tried to get off the subject.

  “I like your hair that way,” she said.

  “Oh, do you?” Patty asked. “Since when did you give a damn about anybody’s hair or shoes or anything else? Look at you, girl — walking around in those pants and Tommy Cochrane’s old jacket. Yeah, I recognize it. Shit, if you don’t want that body, give it to science. No, give it to me.”

  “You can have it. I ain’t using it.”

  “But you’re thinking about it,” Patty laughed. “Don’t give me the con — who is he?”

  Lee made a face. “There’s this kid, a boxer, been hanging around the Parrot. And he is on my trail, I mean he’s sniffing like a bloodhound.” She laughed at herself. “Another fighter — can you believe it?”

  “With you I believe anything, Lee,” Patty said. “So you like this guy?”

  “Good question — I don’t know the answer. He’s got weird eyes and he’s so full of himself he’s about ready to pop open. He’s kinda strange, to tell you the truth.”

  “But — ?”

  The waiter brought iced tea and Lee poured and took a drink.

  “He’s sexy, for some reason,” she said then. “I mean, I think he’s kind of a jerk at heart, but there’s something there. Anyway, I guess I’m going out with him tonight after work.”

  “You guess?”

  Lee shrugged. “Probably just gonna get myself in shit. But what am I supposed to do — dry up?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  Lee pushed the bitter tea away. “Goddamn it, I wish Tommy was around.”

  “Well, Tommy ain’t around,” Patty said. “And you are. So you better get on with it.”

  “Thank you, Dear Abby.”

  “You’re welcome. Here’s the food.”

  Patty tucked into her goulash like a starving woman. Lee just nibbled at her sandwich, watching for strands of toupee in the chicken. After a minute she set it aside and told Patty about the last she had seen of Tommy Cochrane.

  “Gus Washbone was trying to talk Tommy into going to England to fight this guy Smythe. Turned out the limey wasn’t much of a fighter, but he could punch, and people over there were talking him up to be the guy to beat Marciano.”

  “Who?” Patty asked, goulash on her chin.

  Lee handed her a napkin. “Just listen. So Gus figures Tommy to get a name if he beats this Smythe. Except Tommy doesn’t want to go to England because, believe it or not — Thomas Andrew Cochrane is afraid to fly. But he and I were going through some rough times about then — he was away a lot, fighting in the States, and there was this singer, Johnny Dillon, who was after my ass —”

  “I remember Johnny Dillon,” Patty said. She was eating Lee’s sandwich now.

  “Yeah, well — Tommy gets the bright idea that I want to go out with Dillon. And he thinks that maybe Dillon can help my career and that he’s holding me back by hanging around. So one day he announces he’s going to England to fight and he says that maybe we should just cool it for a while and kinda go our separate ways. He’s telling me this in the gym, for Christ’s sakes, while he’s hitting the heavy bag, and he’s not even looking at me, it’s like he’s firing his goddamn manager or something. So I got pissed off and said fine and walked on out of there and that was it. He was pounding that bag like it was his worst enemy when I left and that’s the last I saw him. Six years ago. And I was too young and stupid to know what was going on.”

  “So he did it?” Patty asked. “He flew to England?”

  “Naw, he took a boat,” Lee said. “Knocked the limey cold in forty-eight seconds. Three weeks to get there, three weeks to get home, and he spends less than a minute in the ring. Dumb mick.”

  “But he did it for you,” Patty said. “God, that’s kind of romantic, you know.”

  “Yeah, the dumb son of a bitch did it for me and all I ever wanted was to be with him. Everything was going along fine, and the one time he decides to get analytical about us, he fucks everything up.”

  “What about Johnny Dillon, did you ever go out with him?”

  “Yeah, but it was long time after,” Lee said. “He turned out to be a crying drunk, a real mama’s boy. One night with him was lots for me. He was probably a lousy fuck anyway.”

  “He was.”

  Lee laughed out loud. “Why, you little tramp.”

  There was no hot water today, but T-Bone went into the shower anyway, soaping himself down and rinsing off quick as he could before the cold spray tightened his muscles. He’d just had another bad day in the ring with Nicky Wilson, had been down on the canvas three times and had his upper lip split. Something was eating at Wilson and he was getting meaner every day. Today he’d been taunting T-Bone like usual, but he’d been calling T-Bone’s friend Thomas Cochrane down too, calling Thomas a coward and an old woman. And yesterday Wilson had actually knocked T-Bone cold for a few seconds with an overhand right thrown after Bert Tigers had called time and T-Bone had dropped his gloves.

  The kid was twent
y years younger than T-Bone and the difference was beginning to tell. But T-Bone needed money for the farm and he would keep on with the sparring as long as Mac Brady wanted him. T-Bone had never quit anything in his life and he wouldn’t start now, especially not at the hands of this punk Nicky Wilson. So he took the abuse and he never told Thomas about the kid’s mean mouth and he never told about the knockout either.

  T-Bone Pike believed in justice in this world and he believed that someday somebody would make Nicky Wilson believe in it too.

  When he came out of the shower Mac Brady was there with his fifteen dollars. There was another man with Mac, a short, thick guy with a black mustache. He was carrying one of those movie projectors and a couple of tin cans about the size of an apple pie. The chubby guy was smiling at Mac Brady like he was selling something.

  “Told the kid I’d drop these off,” he was saying. “I figured it might help you out — keep the kid at home for a couple nights anyway.”

  “Well I’ve about given up on keeping that kid home at night,” Mac said. “He figures the world’s his goddamn oyster and he’s out every night proving it. Good thing is, the knucklehead is young and strong as a Clydesdale so he can get away with it for a while. One of these days, though, I’m going to lay the law down.”

  T-Bone was putting his clothes on, holding his teeth against the split in his lip to stop the bleeding there. All he wanted was to get back to the hotel and lie down for a time. For the first time in his life T-Bone Pike felt old.

  “The kid’s been making the Blue Parrot his home,” the short man was saying now. “He’s got his eyes full of Lee Charles.”

  “What?” T-Bone said.

  Tony Broad turned to look at him. “You say something, coon?”

  “No, sir,” T-Bone said. “I just thinking ‘bout something out loud, I guess.”

  Tony Broad looked at Mac. “I think your coon’s been taking too many punches to the head,” he smiled.

  “T-Bone is a good man,” Mac said. “He’s the only fighter in the place who’ll go more than a round with the Nick. He’s been doing a good job for me.”

  “Sure,” Tony Broad said. He gave Mac a smile that suggested that he was familiar with the foolish ways of the Negro. Mac was having none of it though — Mac Brady was a lot of things, but a bigot wasn’t one of them. When he got up in the morning he figured there were only so many people in the world to take advantage of, and if you began to discriminate against one group or another, you were cutting your own percentage.