One-Eyed Jacks

by Brad Smith

  “Hey, you wanna play cards, let’s play cards,” he said to Tommy. “I don’t know what the big deal is, I just asked a simple question.”

  “Ask it again,” Tommy said.

  “What?”

  “Ask it again.”

  Tony looked nervously about the table. Now Ollie was smiling and in a minute Herm was joining him. Callahan was looking at his feet and Danny, as usual, didn’t know what was going on. Tony put a finger under his collar and realized too late how he looked.

  “Well?” Ollie said.

  “I don’t think I will,” Tony said quietly.

  “Then let’s play cards.”

  Tommy won the hand on three eights, and his luck began to swing. By dawn he was up over a hundred. He won the last pot when Ollie called the game, then he and Herm, who was up a hundred himself, took Fat Ollie and Danny Bonner to Lem’s for breakfast. Tony Broad and the Callahan kid had left earlier, both whining about their luck.

  In the rest room at Lem’s Tommy counted up and found he’d won a hundred and forty-two. With two nights’ wages coming, and whatever Bones had stashed away, he could scrape enough together for the bet.

  Never bet money on a bobby pin before.

  Never bought a farm before, either. First time for everything.

  Herm lived in the neighbourhood and he walked with Tommy to the Jasper after breakfast. They agreed to meet there Saturday at noon and go down to the track together.

  “This Tony Broad is a class act,” Herm said.

  “I’m used to those guys,” Tommy said. “Been a lot of years since I let a mouth like that bother me.”

  “That shit Callahan is carrying a heater.”

  “I figured.”

  “How’d you figure? He never took his coat off.”

  “That’s why. It was eighty degrees in that room.”

  They were walking up to the Jasper now. The swamper was out front, sweeping the steps, or at least leaning on his broom. It was eight o’clock in the morning.

  “Well, it was a lousy thing to say about your girl,” Herm said.

  “What the hell,” Tommy said. “He just wants something he’s never gonna have.”

  “Well, I’ll see ya, Tommy.”

  “See ya, kid.”

  When Tommy went up to his room, T-Bone was in the bathroom, his face lathered and a straight razor in his hand.

  “Out all night again,” he said.

  “Don’t get started, Bones.”

  T-Bone smiled into the mirror. “Just teasin’, Thomas. I know you been with Lee Charles.”

  “I wasn’t with her this time, Bones.”

  T-Bone pulled the blade from his face. “Then where in hell you been?”

  “Playing poker.”

  “Poker? Lawdy Jesus, what the hell you thinkin’ ’bout now? Out playin’ poker all night like some damn kid. And me sittin’ here worryin’ so that I don’t sleep. I never seen nothin’ like it.”

  Tommy got undressed and got into bed and fell asleep while T-Bone was tearing a strip off his hide. T-Bone was still talking as he put his shoes on and went out the door and down to the gym.

  Mac Brady reached into his pocket for another antacid pill. Every time Mac had bacon and eggs and orange juice for breakfast, he ended up with an acid stomach. This morning he’d had Post Toasties and skim milk for breakfast and he still had trouble with his stomach. He had trouble with his stomach this morning because his fighter was being a pain in the ass.

  “He said he ain’t gonna run,” Bert Tigers said again.

  “I heard you the first time,” Mac said. “Where is he?”

  “Out talking to the guy from the paper.”

  “Which paper?”

  “How the hell do I know?”

  “Well, what’re they talking about?”

  “Tommy Cochrane.”

  Mac went out into the gym to find his fighter.

  “Just write that he’s afraid,” Nicky was telling the reporter. “That’s all. Just say he’s got no guts.”

  The reporter was a new guy, and Mac didn’t know him or what paper he was with. “Hey, can I have a minute with my boy?” Mac asked as he approached.

  The reporter was scribbling away on a pad and he made no move to leave.

  “I wouldn’t be writing that Tommy Cochrane is afraid,” Mac told him.

  “Why not?”

  “Ask your editor.”

  The reporter walked away then. Mac looked at the thick kid in front of him and took another tablet.

  “Bert says you won’t do your roadwork.”

  “Bert’s got a big fucking mouth, that’s what Bert’s got.”

  “He’s got a job,” Mac said. “What’s this about the roadwork?”

  Nicky Wilson put on a schoolgirl pout. “I’m sick of running, it ain’t doing me any good anyway. I’m ready to fight. And I don’t mean some dumb Polack. I want Tommy Cochrane.”

  What you really want is Lee Charles, Mac thought to himself, that’s what this is about. He sighed and moved over to sit on a bench along the wall. He indicated that Nicky should join him there, and the kid did, trying to hold his rebellious pose the best he could. It worked better standing up.

  “I’ll tell you what, Nicky,” Mac said. “You don’t want to run, you don’t have to. Why don’t you get showered and changed? Then we’ll go down to my office.”

  Mac Brady didn’t have an office. But he had a hotel room that he called an office, when he wasn’t calling it whatever else he wanted it to be.

  “Well... sure,” Nicky said slowly.

  “I’ll show you a piece of paper I’ve got,” Mac said then. “It’s got a bunch of fancy words and legal mumbo jumbo on it, and at the bottom it’s got your signature. You know what that paper means?”

  Nicky was staring off across the gym.

  “It means,” Mac told him, “that you are going to fight when I tell you to, and it means you are going to fight who I tell you to — but more than anything it means if you start acting like a jackass and telling me you don’t want to train — then you’re not going to fight at all. You can go sit in the corner with your head up your ass or you can go back to Manitoba and throw grain bags for the rest of your life. You think you’ll get rich that way, you think you’ll get your name in the newspaper by bucking barley, you goddamn ignorant punk?”

  Nicky’s eyes were blinking, his lip turned. For a minute Mac thought the sorry son of a bitch would cry.

  “Is that what you think?” Mac asked again.

  “No.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  Nicky’s voice was quiet. “I’m gonna go running.”

  Mac looked at him for a minute more, just stared at the big kid without an ounce of sympathy. There were people who said that Mac Brady didn’t do much to earn his money. Well, those people didn’t know. How would they like to babysit a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound baby with the brains of a medicine ball?

  “All right,” Mac said.

  Nicky got to his feet. He had to save face. “But I want Tommy Cochrane,” he said. “The son of a bitch has been laughing at me.”

  “Well, gee whiz, I had no idea,” Mac said. “Listen, you’ll get Tommy Cochrane, but you leave it up to me. You hear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go run your five and get back here to spar.”

  When the kid was gone Mac pulled the racing form from his pocket and went over his day’s picks. As he was finishing up T-Bone Pike came into the gym. He was singing —

  I been workin’ on the railroad

  All I do all day,

  I been working on the railroad,

  Don’t care what you say —

  Mac waved him over. “Nicky’s out on the road,” he said. “Have a seat a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long you been coming down to spar, T-Bone?”

  “‘Bout two weeks now, Mr. Brady.”

  “Well, you’ve done a good job for me.”

  “
Why, thank you, sir.”

  Mac reached into his jacket for his wallet. “And I know you’ve been taking some hits, and you haven’t complained one bit. I’m going to give you a twenty-dollar bonus, T-Bone.”

  T-Bone took the twenty and put it in his pocket. “Thank you, sir.

  Mac looked down at the form in his hand. “Which horse do you like in the tenth, T-Bone?”

  “Oh, I don’t know nothing ’bout horses, Mr. Brady. ’Cepting that they like to kick a body if they get a chance.”

  Mac laughed. “They sure as hell do, in more ways than one.” He set the form aside. “How’s Tommy doing, T-Bone?”

  “Just fine. He got a job down at the Bamboo Club, greeting people and like that. And Lee Charles is back in town, look maybe like they sparkin’ again.”

  Mac looked at the fighter and smiled. T-Bone Pike had a habit of telling Mac things that Mac already knew. And not much else.

  “How’s Tommy coming with the money for the farm?”

  “Couldn’t say, sir.”

  “I can’t see him putting together too much cash the way he’s going at it. Tell me, how much more do you figure he needs?”

  “Couldn’t say that either, sir.”

  Mac smiled again and looked at his Timex. “You better go change.” He watched the coloured man stand up. “You know something, T-Bone — you’re a hell of a friend to have.”

  “Same as ever’body else, I reckon.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Mac said.

  When T-Bone came out of the dressing room, Nicky Wilson was already in the ring, dancing in his corner, showing off to the slugs at ringside. T-Bone took one look at the crazy eyes and he knew it was going to be bad.

  “Get your black ass in here,” the kid called to him. “Life ain’t all watermelon and fried chicken.”

  T-bone went easily through the ropes and had a look around. The usual bunch was standing along the apron. Tony Broad was there too, along with a bad-looking kid in a hood suit.

  “Come on, Rastus.”

  “I’m T-Bone.”

  “Where’s your pal, T-Bone — trying on dresses?”

  T-Bone didn’t say anything else, just stood and waited for Bert Tigers to call time.

  “You know your friend’s a chickenshit?” Nicky asked.

  “Time!”

  T-Bone took a couple steps, then moved to his right as the kid charged him. The kid was all mouth today, talking on Tommy Cochrane, then T-Bone’s mother, and anything else that popped into his addled brain. T-Bone kept going to his right, away from the kid’s big punch, and he stuck his left in the kid’s face every time the kid came close.

  The strategy worked okay for two rounds, but in the third T-Bone’s legs began to go, and the kid caught up, trapped T-Bone in a corner and hammered away at his ribs with both hands.

  “I hear your mother fucks pigs, Rastus,” the kid said, and T-Bone reached inside with an uppercut that snapped the kid’s head like a whiplash.

  The kid threw a deliberate hook to T-Bone’s balls and T-Bone, in pain, pushed Wilson away and spoke in the ring for the first time in two weeks.

  “You nothin’ but a pussy, Wilson.”

  The kid went over the edge; he pulled T-Bone into the centre of the ring and knocked him to the deck with a wild right hand. A split second later T-Bone felt the kid’s shoe crash into his nose.

  Bert Tigers jumped into the ring when he saw the kick. Even the punks at ringside couldn’t believe what they’d seen.

  “Are you crazy?!” Bert screamed at his fighter. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Nicky was staring at T-Bone, still on the canvas. Bert was on his tiptoes in front of Wilson and he was wailing on his fighter.

  T-Bone’s nose was bleeding as he got up and went through the ropes and down to the dressing room. The place was pretty quiet when he walked by, but there was snickering as he passed and he saw Tony Broad with a grin on his face. It’d been a long time — so long that T-Bone thought that maybe he’d never have to feel this way again. But it was the same now as when he was a kid — he wanted to sit right down and cry, but he knew he couldn’t.

  He wouldn’t show it to them.

  In the ring Bert Tigers was still bawling out Nicky Wilson.

  “You better get your ass in there and apologize,” he ordered.

  Nicky looked at Bert a moment and he smiled. “No.”

  “You have to,” Bert told him. “Goddamn it — you know what you did?”

  “Leave it the way it is,” Nicky said. Smirking yet, he climbed out of the ring.

  EIGHTEEN

  Tony Broad ran into Mac Brady outside the steambaths on King Street. So Tony invited himself along for a steam and a massage, figuring that Mac would pick up the tab.

  It was early in the day, and they were alone in the sauna, two fat men in towels and sweat, neither of them too free and easy with the truth where the other was concerned.

  “Looks like you’re fighting the Polack,” Tony started.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “What’re you saying? It’s too late to pull a switch now.”

  Mac just smiled and felt his pores leak.

  “You saying that maybe the Polack gets an injury?” Tony asked. “Like a hernia from lifting his wallet?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Tony pushed the sweat away from his eyes with his fingertips. He didn’t care much for steambaths and never had. It was his understanding though that it was the kind of place that men of class and stature patronized.

  “But you still don’t have Tommy Cochrane,” he said then.

  Big Mac shrugged and threw more water on the rocks.

  “Tommy Cochrane needs money and he needs it now. He’s not going to get it shaking hands at the Bamboo, he’s not going to make it playing cards, and he won’t get it from Lee Charles — my information indicates that the lovely Miss Charles is broke — so Tommy’s in a bind and he knows it.”

  Tony leaned away from the steam coming off the rocks. His eyes were filling and he was having trouble breathing. Beside him on the bench, Mac was pink and restful as a baby in a bassinet.

  But Tony’s ears were working just fine.

  “You say Lee Charles ain’t too flush?”

  “That’s the story. She’s pulling down a hundred a week at the Parrot. She’d have to sing a lot of songs to cure what ails Tommy Cochrane.”

  “What kind of dough is Cochrane looking for anyway?”

  “A few grand would be my guess. And there’s only one man in town who can make him a deal for that kind of cash and right now that man is sitting with his pores open and a hard-on and he’s getting ready to go down the hall to get the once-over by that German girl in the massage parlour.”

  “You can get a little extra here?” Tony asked.

  “You got money, you can get anything you want. You ought to know that.” Mac stood up. “Cost you twenty for a little mouth.”

  “Damn, all I got is small change,” Tony said. “Left my billfold in my other jacket.”

  “You’ll have to stay here and jack off,” Mac told him. “Next time bring your money.” And he went smiling out the door.

  Tony was out of there right behind him; he grabbed a quick shower and went down the backstairs to the alley, leaving Mac to spring for the sauna. As for the blow job, that could wait. Tony had other things on his mind.

  He found Billy Callahan pitching nickels in an alley behind Sully’s pool hall. Dumb shit — tossing coins with a mob of fifteen-year-olds, on a good day you might come ahead a couple bucks.

  The minute Callahan saw Tony, he quit acting and talking like a teenager, picked up his change and gave the kids the bum’s rush.

  “We might not be out of the running with Lee Charles after all,” Tony told him as they walked down the street.

  They went into a diner off Dundas and ordered coffee. Billy Callahan had a big raisin bun to go with his brew.

  “We got to raise some money
,” Tony said.

  “I thought you had money.”

  “Not enough, I don’t.”

  Callahan ate one of the raisins off the top of the bun. “How much do we need?”

  “I don’t know. Two, three grand anyway. I got a little stashed away, but we got expenses — film, money for the lady. An actor.”

  “I bet I could be an actor,” Callahan told him.

  “Yeah, you’d like that,” Tony said. “We need a pro. Bobby Dean, if I can find him. Works cheap and he’s hung like a mule.” Tony spooned more sugar into his coffee. “Your job is gonna be getting the money to pull this thing off. You’re the financial backer.”

  “Financial backer.” It was Billy’s second title in less than two weeks and it made his head swim. “How am I gonna do that — raise the money?”

  “With that friend you’ve been carrying around,” Tony told him. “Unless you’re afraid to use it.”

  “If I was afraid to use it, I wouldn’t be carrying it.”

  Tony nodded and put his fat nose in his coffee cup a moment. “You know,” he said surfacing, “this is a wide-open town compared to places south of the border. You don’t got half the cops here as they do down there. This town’s easy pickings — clubs and clip joints. Pick the right one and you could be in and out in two minutes with enough jack to bankroll the whole deal.”

  “Sure,” Callahan said. “I know that.”

  Tony smiled big. “Then what’re we waiting for?”

  “I’m trying to figure just what the hell I get out of this,” Callahan said. “Seems like I’m taking all the risks.”

  Tony put his chubby hands on the table and leaned forward in sombre conspiracy. “This ain’t gonna be some run of the mill flick, kid. Not with Lee Charles, it ain’t. We’re taking this baby to Hollywood. And you know what’s in Hollywood, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Everything you ever dreamed about, that’s what.”

  “Yeah,” Callahan smiled and took a big bite out of his bun. “But what about Lee Charles?”

  “What about her?”

  “Do I get to fuck her?”

  Tony grinned crookedly and leaned back in his chair. “In these movies, kid, everybody gets to fuck the broad. All we do — we hold back the money ’til the shooting’s finished. Then we tell her she’s got to jump you and me, it’s part of the movie. If she wants her money, she’s got no choice. And by that time, she’s already been fucked every way but up, so what’s a couple more?”