Billy Phelan's Greatest Game Page 7

  Billy smiled at this new dish. Then he asked her name and bought her a drink and found she was married but only dabbled in that. Hubby was a gambler, too. Brought her to Saratoga for a week, then left her there to play while he went home to run his chunk of Rochester, what a town. No town like Albany. Rochester is where you might go on the bum, only might, if they kicked you out of Albany. Billy couldn’t imagine life outside Albany. He loved the town. And half-loved you too, Angie, now that you’re here. “Are you a spic?”

  “I’m Irish, baby. Just like you. One of the Gagen girls. My old man’s a Cuban.”

  She was playing kneesies with him by then.

  “You keep that up, you’re liable to get raped.”

  “Room two-forty-six in the Grand Union.” And she proved it with the key. That was the beginning of Billy’s private taxi service between Albany and Saratoga for the rest of the month. Other things began that season in Saratoga: Billy’s reputation as the youngest of the hot numbers at any table, never mind the game. Big winner. I could always get a buck, Billy said. What the hell, I know cards and dice.

  Of course, at the end of the season Billy was broke. Playing both sides of the table.

  Now Mildred Bailey was all through and Clem McCarthy was barking in with the race results on WHN, and can you believe what is happening to Billy? Friar Charles wins, the son of a bitch, five-to-two, the son of a bitch, the son of a bitch! Martin Daugherty, what in Christ’s name are you doing to Billy Phelan?

  Here’s how it looked to this point: Martin bet ten across the board on Charley Horse, who wins it, four-to-one; puts a tenner across also on Friar Charles and now wins that one, too; and has a third tenner going across on Hello Chuckie in the sixth at Pimlico, and Hello Chuckie is two-to-one on the morning line. There is more. Martin also parlayed the three horses for yet another ten.

  Now, Billy knows that Martin is a hell of a sport, always pays, and loses more than he wins, which has always been pleasant for Billy, who takes a good bit of his play. But my Jesus Christ almighty, if he wins the third, plus the three-horse parlay, Billy is in trouble. Billy doesn’t hold every bet he takes. You hold some, lay off some. You hold what you think you can cover, maybe a little more, if you’re brassy like Billy. Billy lays some off with his pal Frankie Buchanan, who has the big book in Albany. But mother pin a rose on Billy. For bravery. For Billy is holding all of Martin’s play. Didn’t lay off a dime. Why? Because suckers and losers bet three-horse parlays. I’ll hold them all day long, was Billy’s philosophy until a few minutes ago when Clem McCarthy came on with the Friar Charles news. And now Billy is sitting at his card table in the front room. (Billy came here to Thanksgiving dinner six years ago and never went back downtown to his furnished room.) His money sits on the floor, next to his bridge chair, in a Dyke cigar box, Dykes being the cigar the McCall machine pushed in all the grocery and candy stores in town.

  Billy himself sits under the big, shitty print of Mo the Kid in the gold frame. Billy’s fingers are working with his number two Mongol pencil on the long yellow pad, and his eyes keep peeking out through the curtains on the front windows in case state cops step on his stoop, in which case Billy would be into the toilet p.g.d.q., those horse bets would be on their way down the city conduits toward the river, and even the most enterprising raider could not then bring them back and pin them on Billy’s chest.

  Stan whatsisname, the WHN disk jockey, was talking about Bob Crosby and Billy felt good hearing that because he knew Crosby, had heard him in Saratoga, danced to his music with Angie, talked music with him when he played The Edgewood over in Rensselaer. “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” Crosby was playing now. The phone rang and Billy turned Crosby down. Frankie Buchanan with the results of the fifth at Arlington Park, Friar Charles official now. Billy then told Frankie about Martin Daugherty’s very weird parlay.

  “You’re the weird one,” said Frankie, who was as weird as they come. One of the best-liked guys in Albany, Frankie, and yet he couldn’t take the public. He’d come out at night for ham and eggs, and you’d have to sit with him in his car behind the Morris diner while he ate off a paper plate. Crazy bastards in this world.

  “You want to give me the third horse or part of that parlay?”

  “No,” said Billy, “I can’t believe the son of a bitch can pick three in a row, and parlay them, too. I never seen it done. I believe in luck but not miracles.”

  “Okay, pal,” said Frankie, “it’s all yours.” And he left Billy wondering if he was really crazy Billy could cut the mustard if the third horse ran out of the money, because the day’s play was good. But if Martin Daugherty wins the parlay, Billy, it’s up in the seven, eight hundreds, even if nobody else wins a nickel. And Billy Boy, you don’t have that kind of cash. So why, oh why, is darlin’ Billy doing it? Well, it’s a gamble, after all. And Billy is certainly a gambler. Nobody will argue that. And Billy is already feeling the pressure rise in his throat, his gut, under his armpits, under his teeth and behind his jockey shorts. Christ, it tickles me somewhere, Billy thinks, and the money doesn’t matter. Pressure. Sweet pressure. Here we go again, folks.

  Crosby was just winding up “Deep Blue Sea.” Billy remembered listening to it with Angie, saw her face. And then it was Morey Amsterdam on the radio. Popped into the studio as usual to ad lib with Stan. I gotta go up to the sixth floor, Amsterdam was saying. They’re gonna lay a rug up there and I wanna see how they do it.

  Telephone. Martin Daugherty.

  “Yeah, Friar Charles wins it, Martin, so you got something good going. Shows seven dollars, four dollars, and three-forty. Tote it up, Martin, you’re the money machine today.”

  Stan was telling a caller, if you don’t like my show, you crumb, don’t listen, but if you want to make more of it than that I’ll meet you at five o’clock out in the alley behind the studio and knock your brains out. And he gave the address. Wireheaded bastard, that Stan. Billy liked his style.

  Then it was quiet with no phones and only Earl (Fatha) Hines—a kid, really, so why do they call him Fatha?—playing something wild, and somebody in the chorus, when he started to move it, really move it, yelling out, “Play it Fatha . . . play it till nineteen ninety-nine.” And Billy smiles, taps his foot, feels the jazz, feels, too, that good old, good old pressure beginning to cut a pulpy wedge out of his fat-assed day.

  Simpson, that bum, rang Billy’s bell, looking for his sawbuck. Billy saw him coming up the walk, fished a tenner out of the cigar box, folded it once and put it in his right hip pocket. Ten down the sewer. But Billy had to pay. Tribute to Pop O’Rourke, Democratic leader of the Ninth Ward, who, six months ago, when Billy announced plans to write horses, approved the venture during Billy’s formal call. The payoff? Give ten a week to Simpson, Pop said. He’s down on his luck. He’ll come by every week for it. Fair enough, Billy said. What else could he say? And he was still paying out the tenner.

  “Hello, Bill, how you doin’?” Simpson said when Billy opened the door just enough to make it clear that it was not a welcoming gesture. The Simp’s sport shirt was at least four days soiled and he needed a shave. Holes in the elbows of his sweater, boozer’s look and the breath’d knock over two mules.

  “Life’s still tough,” Billy said to him.

  “I thought maybe I’d come in and sit a while,” Simpson said as Billy was reaching for the ten in his pocket. And that line stopped Billy’s hand.

  “What?”

  “Keep you company a while. I ain’t doin’ nothin’, just hangin’ around Brady’s. Might as well chew the fat. You know.”

  “No, I don’t know nothing like that,” Billy said. “You ain’t coming in now or ever.” He opened the door all the way, stepped out, grabbed Simpson’s dirty shirt, and lifted him backward down the stairs. “Now get off this stoop and stay off. Next time you put a foot on it I’ll knock your ass the other side of Pearl Street.”

  “Don’t get hot, Bill. I just wanna come in and talk.”

  “I don’t let
bums in my home. Who the hell do you think you’re conning? From now on I don’t even want to see you on this side of the street.”

  “Where’s my ten?”

  “You blew it, bum.”

  And Billy slammed the door and called Pop O’Rourke.

  “And he says he wants to keep me company for the day, chew the fat. Listen, Pop, I respect you, but that bum is looking to see my action. I have a good half hour, he’ll want twenty instead of ten. Don’t send him back, Pop, and I mean that. I don’t like his slimy looks and I never did. I hit him once, I’ll knock him off the stoop altogether. There’s five steps and he’d clear the whole five if I hit him. I’ll break both his arms, Pop. I don’t want the bum ringing my bell.”

  “Take it easy, Billy. He won’t be back. He did wrong. He’s a greedy person. I’ll tell him.”

  “Fine, Pop. Do you want me to send you the tenner?”

  “No, not at the moment. I’ll let you know if there’s any other needy case around.”

  “I’m a needy case, Pop.”

  “But there are rules, Billy.”

  “I play by them.”

  “That’s the good boy. Just don’t get excited. I underwent a heart attack that way, and I can tell you that getting excited is one of the worst, one of the very worst things a man can do to himself. It takes you over when you don’t expect it. Very sudden and we don’t anticipate a thing. It’s a terrible thing to do to yourself, getting too overly worked up, Billy. I wouldn’t do it again for any man.”

  “I’ll catch you later, Pop. Thanks.”

  “Billy, I’m very glad you called me.”

  Billy hung up and scraped the horseshit out of his ear.

  The first of Billy’s family came home at three-forty Daniel Quinn, age ten, resident little kid returning from fourth grade at Public School Twenty across the street, found his uncle on the couch with True Detective open on his chest, the lights out, shades drawn more than usual, the Telegraph, the Armstrong, the New York News and Daily Mirror on the floor beside the card table.

  “That you, kid?”

  “It’s me, Unk. Aren’t you working?”

  “Get lost. I’m half asleep. Catch you later.”

  And the boy went upstairs. But Billy’s eyes were open again, his gaze again on the shirty print of Mo the Kid, more properly titled “The Young Mozart,” hanging in an enormous gold frame above the couch. There sat the precocious composer, exceptionally upright, playing, no doubt, a tune of his own making, on a spinet in a drawing room baroquely furnished with gilded mirrors, heavy drapes, fringed oriental rug. The room was busy with footstools, ornamental screens, and music sheets strewn across the floor. The ladies in long, flowered gowns and chokers, clutching single sheets of music, and an older gentleman in a wig, breeches, and buckled shoes like the composer, all sat listening as the young Mo sent out his life-giving music. The three gave off non-human smiles, looking glazed and droopy, as if they’d all been at the laudanum.

  The print would not have been on the wall, or in the house, if Billy had had his way. It was a gift to his sister, Peg, from their Aunt Mary, a reclusive old dame who lived in the old family home on Colonie Street, raised canaries, and had a secret hoard of twenty-dollar gold pieces she parceled out on birthdays. The picture always reminded Billy of his ill treatment by the people in that house after his father ran away and left him and his sister and their mother; ran away and stayed away eighteen years, and neither Billy, Peg, nor their mother ever heard from him again. In 1934 he came back, not to his own home but to that goddamn house of his sisters and brothers, his visit culminating in inadequately explained rejection and flight, and further silence. And so Billy hated the house for that reason, and also for the uncountable other reasons he had accumulated during his years as a never-quite-welcome nephew (nasty son of nasty Francis). The house was as worthless as the stupid picture in which Kid Mo offered up his stupid, invisible music to a roomful of dope fiends.

  The picture would not leave his mind, even after he’d closed his eyes, and so Billy picked up the magazine and looked again at the about-to-be-raped model, fake-raped, with slip on the rise revealing thigh, garter, seamed stockings. In high heels, with her rouged lips, artful hair, artificial fear on her face, she cowered on the bed away from the hovering shadow of the artificial rapist. The change of vision from Mo to rape worked, and Billy slept the fearful sleep of an anxious loser.

  Peg’s keys, clinking at the keyhole, woke him.

  Plump but fetching, graying but evergreen, Margaret Elizabeth Quinn was returning from her desk in the North End Tool Company, where she was private secretary to the owner.

  “It’s dark in here,” she said. “What happened to the lights?”

  “Nothing,” Billy said as she switched on the bridge lamp.

  “Is Danny home?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “What’s new? You have a decent day?”

  “Great day.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Did Mama call?”

  “No.”

  “The receiver’s off the hook.”

  “I know it.”

  “How could she call if the receiver’s off the hook?”

  “She couldn’t.”

  Peg cradled the receiver and took off her black-and-white checked shorty coat and black pillbox hat.

  “You want pork chops?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Liver? That’s the choice.”

  “Nothing, no.”

  “You’re not eating?”

  “No, the hell with it.”

  “Oh, that’s a beautiful mood.”

  “I’m beautiful out of business is what I am.”

  Peg sat on the edge of the rocker, formidable lady in her yellow, flowered print, full knees up, glasses on, lipstick fresh, fingernails long and crimson, solitaire from husband George small but respectably gleaming under the bridge light, hair marcelled in soft finger wave. Billy’s beautiful sister.

  “What’s this you’re saying?”

  And he told her the Martin story: that, believe it or not, his three horses all came home. Some joke, eh kid? Sextuple your money, folks. Place your bets with Brazen Billy Boy, who lives the way we all love to live—way, way, way up there beyond our means.

  Peg stood up, saying nothing. She pushed open the swinging door to be greeted by a near-frenzied collie, all but perishing from his inability to disgorge affection. From the refrigerator she took out the pork chops and put them into two large frying pans over a low flame on the gas stove. Then she went back to Billy, who was pouring a shot of Wilson’s into a soiled coffee cup with a dry, brown ring at the bottom. The phone rang and Peg answered, then handed the instrument to Billy, who closed his eyes to drive out all phone calls.

  “Yeah,” he said into the mouthpiece. And then, “No, I’m closed down. No. NO, GODDAMN IT, NO! I mean I’m CLOSED. Out of business and you owe me fifty-four bucks and I need it tonight so goddamn get it up. I’ll be down.” And he slammed the receiver onto the hook.

  “Wasn’t that Tod?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t have to eat his head off because you lost some money.”

  “Lost some money? I’m dumped, broke. I can’t work. Do you get that picture?”

  “You’ve been broke before? You’re broke most of the time.”

  “Ah, shut up, this is bad news.”

  “What possessed you to hold a three-horse parlay? I wouldn’t even make that mistake.”

  “I make a lot of mistakes you wouldn’t make.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, with your bankroll.”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  Billy gulped the Wilson’s and the phone rang. Martin Daugherty Peg handed him the phone.

  “Yes, Martin, you’re a lucky son of a bitch. Nobody in their right mind bets three-horse parlays. I know it, Martin. Yeah, sure I’ll be downtown tonight. I’ll have some of it for you. No, I haven’t g
ot it right this minute. Collections are slow, nobody paying this month. But you’ll get paid, Martin. Billy Phelan pays his debts. Yeah, Martin, I held it all myself. Thanks, I’m glad you feel bad. I wish I could get mad at you, you son of a bitch. Knock your teeth out and make you spend your winnings on the dentist. What do I make it? What do you make it? Right. That’s exactly right, Martin—seven eighty-eight eighty-five. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. See you tonight around Becker’s, or maybe the poker game in Nick’s cellar. Yeah, you son of a bitch, you sleep with the angels. What hotel they staying at?”

  The kitchen gave off the rich odor of seared pork. Peg came out of it in her apron, carrying a long fork. At the foot of the stairs she called, “Danny,” and from a far height in the attic came a “Yeah?” and then she said “Supper,” and the door slammed and the steps of Daniel Quinn could be heard, descending from his aerie.

  “How much cash do you actually have?” Peg asked.

  “About a hundred and seventy,” Billy said. “Can you spare anything?”

  Peg almost smiled. She sniffed and shook her head. “I’ll see.”

  “George is doing all right, isn’t he?” George wrote numbers.

  “He’s doing swell. He lost three dollars yesterday on the day.”

  “Yeah. We all got a problem.”

  “All of us,” Peg said. “George wants to talk to you about a new book. Somebody named Muller.”

  “I’m here if he wants me.”

  “What about this money you owe? How will you raise it?”

  “I can always raise a buck.”

  “Can you raise six hundred?”

  “What does that mean, can I? I’ve got to. What do you do when you lose? You pay.”

  “The Spider never loses,” Danny Quinn said as he hit the last step down.

  Billy drew the bath water, hot as he could stand for his hemorrhoid, back again. Got to get some exercise, Billy. Three baths a day in the hottest, the doc said, the sweat already forming on Billy’s face, as he drew the hottest of hot baths. Has that guy Billy got any money? Has he! He’s got piles! And he’s in hot water, too, I’ll say. Might be all washed up. He really took a bath, all right. But you never can tell about a fellow like Billy, because he runs hot and cold.