JOSH

 

With my head still in a jam from the confrontation with the green-eyed chick, I walked up to the entrance of Harry’s Pool Rooms and winked at the two doormen as I slid past with Charlie. They were both the size of cars, but they knew me and knew that I was allowed to bring anyone with me. The bosses had told them that we were money and that we were to be let in no matter what.

We walked through the pool rooms to a guy at the back, who counted our money, searched both of us for weapons, and then led us down a passageway of empty beer crates and other shit you’d expect to see behind a bar, until we reached a large red metal door with a spy hole. The big guy banged hard on it with his meaty fist and we immediately heard the scraping sound of the spy hole being slid open on the other side. Someone then scrutinized us from within the room for a moment.

A second later an electronic lock buzzed and the door opened. The big guy ushered us through and we walked into a room about forty square feet, no more than a cupboard. The only feature was a round table draped with green cloth that stood in the center. Sitting at its edges were four other players, all of whom were here the last time, and all of whom gave me little sneering smiles as their reptilian eyes met me on my way in. I simply flashed them my white teeth and gave them each a nod and a wink. As for Charlie, he was doing good, but when the gorilla by the door slammed it shut, he jumped a little and the guys around the table snickered to themselves.

The only other people in the room apart from the players were the gorilla watching the door, standing by it with a blank look on his face, and Dolly, the one-eyed dealer. I sat down between Ron and Cope. Those were the only names I knew them by. Ron was a great pile of fat, stacked up to about six feet, his pig-body oozing out of his clothing. His gray-skinned, hanging face was not long for this world, and he would cough every time he took a drag on a smoke, which he burned one after another.

Cope was the opposite and reminded me of a skeleton someone had hung their yellow raincoat over. He was only just over five feet tall and had the eyes of a snake, dead and fixed.

Charlie was seated on the other side of the table, his face a little perturbed. On one side of him was Gob, and on the other, Frazer. Gob—like his name would suggest—was a talker. In fact, he wouldn’t shut the fuck up at the best of times. Most of the stories I came away from these card games with came straight from his mouth. His only other real feature was that he was very tall, almost seven feet, and very slim. He reminded me of a tapeworm, especially by the way he managed to bend his long frame into the small chair and get his knees neatly under the table.

The other guy, Frazer, was Mr. Big of the table and appeared to hold the most respect. His thinning gray hair was slicked back and below his nose stood a thin white moustache. His red face never changed its countenance from one of scorn and the veins on his temples appeared to always stand out. His eyes were permanently wide and staring.

Those four sacks of shit around that table were like four leeches waiting for our blood.

The dealer, Dolly, was an old dame, at least sixty, with a red leather patch hanging over her missing eye. She was even smaller than Cope and all her features appeared shrunken, from her little hands to her screwed-up, wrinkled face. Out of everyone in that room, I liked Dolly the most. Probably because she was a woman and had a motherly quality that all woman have by that age, whether they want it or not. She had a head of blonde, permed hair like bleached wire-wool and her sharp little face, done up to the nines with makeup, reminded me of a small dog—snappy little mouth of razor teeth. This suited her, because she didn’t stand for any fucking around and could bite if she needed to.

“Okay, fellas,” Dolly said once we were all settled, someone coming in from outside and bringing us drinks, “the first thing to say is that this is my table and I won’t stand for any fucking around. I may have one eye, but I can tell you that it’s better than all twelve of the eyes I see gawping at me round this table. You fuck about here, then you’re fucking about with me. And only my old man gets to fuck about with me. So are we all in agreement?”

A murmur of agreement rumbled around the table, but I took the opportunity to say, “Dolly, I think I speak for all of us when I say that not one of us would ever want to fuck around with you!”

This led to a few grunts of laughter to erupt. But when Dolly darted her eye at everyone, they stopped.

She looked at me dead straight and said, “Just play the fucking game.”

I grinned at her, held my glass of whiskey up and stated, “I’ll drink to that.”

And so the game began.

Just like we’d gone through, Charlie started off slowly, playing the game, winning here and there, folding when necessary. The cards were dealt quickly and at the beginning I began to feel like I was lost in a storm of poker, the pot changing hands over and over. It was always like this—the first hour would be frantic with cards being tossed all over the place as though everyone had been waiting all month for this and now it was the great release of their lives, even of Dolly’s.

After an hour, it calmed down and the cards weren’t so swift. I’d warned Charlie of this and told him to enjoy the first hour, try not to lose too much money and merely watch the cards. “Get the bastards relaxed before we blow them away,” was what I’d told him. So we let the first hour go, not a lot of talk around the table, before settling in for the second.

Up until then, I’d actually done okay, as had Charlie, but we were still way behind Frazer and Cope. This was good though. I wanted them to think that they were going to clean us out. I wanted that so much. I wanted to lift them so high that when they lost all their money they would come crashing down from the top of a mountain. My thirst for revenge, which had quieted down a little after meeting the green-eyed girl in the street, had been fired up once more by being in that room with those men. I hated every one of them for the money I’d lost these past months. And as the night crept toward the dawn, I could smell their blood in my nostrils.

It was in the second hour that Charlie Hodge began to go to town. Everyone had relaxed, including Charlie, and the game began to ebb and flow as the cigar smoke hung like pale cotton above the table, Dolly’s creased little hands rapidly working the cards. The table drifted into silence once more as the pot began to find its way into Charlie’s hands and the leeches began to become restless. Even Frazer with his dead look appeared to become a little perplexed, and I heard him mutter swear words under his breath as Charlie won game after game, losing once or twice in between to put them off his scent.

But as we entered the third hour, Charlie began to become overconfident, exhilarated by his own skill, and really took it to the gamblers. Within quick succession, he managed to knock both Gob and Ron out of the game, his pot now containing the majority of their forties. I kept looking over at him whenever I could, making faces to say that he really needed to slow down. But I couldn’t make myself too plain, for risk of exposure, and the kid just rocketed ahead.

It was then, when it was only myself, Charlie and Frazer remaining, that the old man could no longer hold in something that had been bugging him for some time.

“You twos are fucking cheats,” Frazer suddenly declared in a sinister tone that sent a shiver through me.

“What’re you saying, Frazer?” Dolly asked him.

The dead eyed goon looked her straight in the face and declared, “You really can’t see shit with that good eye can you, Doll?”

“Now don’t get smart with me, you bum,” she put back.

This whole time, I watched everyone around the table and saw their faces shrink into scowls, and I saw that they too had smelled a rat but hadn’t known exactly why or where the scent was coming from. Even the gorilla at the door was suddenly more animated at the word ‘cheats,’ and his bitter face turned toward the table.

“This little prick here is counting cards,” Frazer said to Dolly, pointing at Charlie beside him. “I weren’t sure a while ago, but I am now. I seen some sneaks in my time, and if this little fuck here,” he nodded to Charlie, “isn’t a cheat, then I ain’t Johnny fucking Frazer.”

Dolly turned her scorpion’s eye onto Charlie and he looked glumly at her, all the color washed from his face.

“Is this true?” she asked bluntly.

“No…not at all,” Charlie stammered.

I wasn’t sure if Johnny fucking Frazer actually knew that Charlie was cheating or whether he was clutching at straws in order not to lose all his money. Whatever it was, we were fucked.

“I think what we have here,” I began, “is an angry…”

“Shut your fucking mouth, rich boy,” Frazer interrupted, turning his evil glare upon me before turning it back to Dolly. “He’s a fucking cheat,” Frazer put to her once more.

“Let the kid speak,” Dolly insisted and she turned her attention back to Charlie.

But the kid wasn’t used to this type of situation, and instead of talking his way out of it, or even attempting to, Charlie began automatically getting up from his chair as if he meant to leave.

“Sit down!” Frazer boomed as he struck out a bulky arm and heaved Charlie back to his seat.

This was all they needed. I knew that. Charlie’s movements and guilty look were enough for them; they had their way of taking all our money and not having to give us a single cent. We were really fucked.

While the others argued, I scanned the table for a weapon and picked up an empty beer bottle without being seen. I then began sliding back in my chair, away from the disorder happening in front of me.

“Now I’m gonna ask you one more time,” Dolly was saying to Charlie as the others surrounded him. “Have you been cheating at my table?”

“I…I’ve been,” the kid could hardly talk. “I haven’t…Josh!?”

He looked over in my direction, but I wasn’t sitting opposite anymore, I was standing at the back wall. The others turned their glares to me as Charlie looked over, and I flew into action. I smashed the end of the bottle against the wall and lunged at Ron, who was closest. I came behind him, grabbed him around his fat chest and pushed the sharp end of the glass into his neck, so that he could feel its jagged edge against his jugular.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” I screamed at the others, “and let my friend go.”

“You ain’t got the balls,” Cope sneered.

I pressed the bottle into Ron’s fat jowls, making the pig squeal.

A small trail of blood ran down his neck and he screamed, “Back off! Another centimeter and he’s through my fucking neck.”

“Stop whining, you fat bastard,” Frazer growled, his heavy hand glued to Charlie’s shoulder as his psycho eyes bored into me.

I began moving Ron and myself toward the door, my eyes fixed on the others as I shuffled past, their own eyes fixed to me in scolding glares.

“I fucking mean it,” I said in an undertone when I’d maneuvered us to the door, my eyes flashing between the crowd around Charlie and the gorilla who’d backed into the corner. “Let my friend go.”

“Your friend ain’t going nowhere,” Frazer stated. “If you go, you go alone.”

Having backed up all the way to the door, I looked at Charlie’s face. There was absolutely no color in it and he looked like he was in the middle of a severe fever. His lips had turned blue and his sunken eyes gazed forlornly at me, horror flashing in them.

“Open the fucking door,” I shouted at the gorilla, “or I’ll cut this fat fuck’s head off.”

The gorilla looked at Dolly and she simply nodded at him, so he pushed the button for the door. The second I heard the lock click, I backed through it and out into the corridor, the squealing pig still in my grasp.

“Let him go,” I commanded once more.

But they didn’t even speak and simply smirked at me. I realized that this was the end of the line. I glanced at Charlie and the kid looked ready to pass out, his head visibly wobbling from the attack of trembling that rippled through his body.

Feeling lost, I did something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I took the bottle away from the fat man’s neck, pushed him into the room with a shove to the back, turned and fled.

With everything I had, I ran through the pool room and out the front door, catching the guys there by surprise as I sprinted past. I ran and I ran and I ran, my shoes clicking on the concrete streets, and even when I reached the bar where the others were waiting, I kept going, just running and running into the night, my mind racing harder than my shoes.