I have to say this for Reggie Blunt, it was exactly the right psychology to use. I needed to know if I was good enough to tackle experienced players. I had two hundred bucks in my wallet to say I was. Some of it was the money for my mother’s nose operation. ‘Give me a couple of minutes,’ I said.
‘Do hurry, dear boy,’ Reggie said.
Juicy Fruit returned from the powder room. ‘What’s wrong? You look mad, Jack. Something happen while I was gone?’
‘Nah, just Reggie.’
‘Jack, be careful tonight, won’t you? Reggie Blunt isn’t what he seems to be. If it gets rough, cut your losses.’
I laughed. ‘You know me, always careful.’ There wasn’t time to ask her what she meant. I’d long suspected there was more to Reggie than he admitted. He and Madam Rose, for example. She kept cropping up in his conversation. The raffle. One or two other things he’d said, though all of it seemingly pretty harmless. No time for that now, though; I had to get going. ‘You were very good tonight, Miss Prairie Gold. I can’t see Cam not coming to the party. Hey, six bucks a night, that’s not to be sneezed at.’ I kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘If I win tonight I’ll buy you the best dinner in town. No, better still, a new dress to wear when you get your raise.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘We’re packing them in, Miss Gold. There was barely enough elbow room to lift a drink in the cocktail lounge tonight. I’m told fine dining’s takings are up as well. See you tomorrow evening. Got to go. Reggie’s waiting!’
The poker game took place down the wrong end of River Street, as it was called, although there wasn’t really a right end, it was a matter of sleazy and sleazier. The name of the joint was, predictably enough, Girls Etcetera, the second half of the name indicating that it was a place where just about anything goes. The general racket, not to mention the bad music blaring out onto the street, should have been enough to warn me to keep away.
Reggie led me through a throng of late-night drinkers to a small back room where the poker game was to take place. There was nothing in it apart from a table and six chairs, and a side table that held two bottles of Canadian rye and six glasses. The wooden floor hadn’t been waxed in twenty years, and a small high window was open in one of the yellowing mottled walls.
We were the first to arrive, and I asked Reggie if he could arrange for a jug of water. ‘Could be a problem, old man. Service isn’t great around here.’
‘You mean everyone drinks their whisky neat?’
He seemed to realise that it was more than a question about drinks and that we were alone in the small back room and that I might walk out there and then. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he mumbled, leaving me alone. I selected the chair farthest from the window, realising it was the only way cigar and cigarette smoke could drift upwards away from me. Fuggy, smoke-filled rooms are one of the more unpleasant aspects of poker games.
Reggie returned five minutes later clutching a chipped white enamel jug. He was followed by four men, one of them a big, burly, dark-haired man I knew was Grover Smith, a long-haul engine driver on the Canadian Pacific and therefore one of the local aristocrats. I’d met him on a previous late-night game and knew he was a very competent poker player. ‘Hi there, Grover, where’s Fred tonight?’ I asked. Fred O’Reilly was Grover’s chief fireman, a bit over five feet tall and almost as wide with not an ounce of fat on him. His neck, what there was of it, was thicker than my thigh, his legs were tree stumps and his arms carried more muscle than my calves. Stoking the coal-fired steam engines, shovelling several tons of coal on what was one of the more difficult routes in North America, required men such as Fred. Both were prairie legends, tough, hard men who were seldom apart. Apparently they’d been an inseparable team since they joined the CPR on the same day twenty years previously. I immediately felt better. They were tough, but straight.
Grover grinned. ‘Delayed. Be along later.’ He poured himself a whisky and sat down before the others. ‘Know any of these guys, young Jack?’ he asked.
‘Nah, Reggie’s friends.’
‘Yeah, Grover and me saw them at the cat house.’ There was nothing in his voice that offered an opinion.
The other three guys, whisky glasses in hand, seated themselves. In a poker game, players come and go, so that introductions are not obligatory, and yet I was surprised when Reggie made no move to introduce me. This was meant to be a friendly game. Oh well, I knew Grover was straight and wouldn’t put up with any crap; pity Fred wasn’t around, though.
In friendly games, you usually shared the news of the day, or a joke or two before you got started. But in a serious game you didn’t come to make friends. Once people started to lose money, things could get a bit edgy, especially if the players had been drinking, and the manner in which this lot had made directly for the whisky table was a little disconcerting. I told myself if they’d been ‘in the saddle’ for the earlier part of the evening they probably needed a drink, but two of the three strangers had knocked back half a tumbler of neat whisky standing at the side table then immediately refilled. Curiously, Reggie Blunt abstained. Still, as Juicy Fruit had suggested, I could always leave if the game got out of hand.
One of them, in sports jacket and open-necked shirt, hadn’t touched his whisky and placed it on the table to my left. Without bothering to introduce himself he sat down beside me and was immediately all over me like a bad rash, asking me questions, commenting on the fact that I played piano, saying he’d heard I was a bit of a local poker star (all of which must have come from Reggie) so that I was so busy answering or brushing off his compliments that it took ages until there was a gap in the conversation so I could say, ‘You obviously know who I am, but you haven’t introduced yourself.’
‘Jim . . . Jim Negas.’
I extended my hand, ‘Jack Spayd.’
He made no move to take it. ‘Nah, poker game, better leave it at that.’
But this didn’t stop him asking me questions. He knew nothing about jazz and was being far too curious. In fact, he was insulting my intelligence, thinking me just a kid. But when you’re brought up to be polite and respect guys older than you it’s difficult to be rude. Even with Reggie I’d felt a bit guilty making that crack about pigs.
The guy sitting directly opposite me was a big lummox in farmer’s overalls and a red tartan shirt. He had a strange unblinking stare, snake’s eyes, which he directed at me as if he were trying to establish his dominance over a younger player. Apart from his fixed stare there was something else disconcerting about him: his nails were clean and his fingertips weren’t split and stained with ingrained dirt. As a Cabbagetown kid, I knew about labourers’ hands.
Negas, the big mouth next to me, was proving a nuisance. Being a polite kid was one thing, but poker has certain unspoken but universal rules, and unless it’s a social game among friends, you keep the chat to a minimum. I realised he was trying to disrupt my concentration. No chance; I’d been trained by Miss Bates to concentrate; he could jabber on all night and it wouldn’t make any difference. I’d simply ignore him.
The guy sitting next to the so-called farmer was perhaps in his mid-forties, brown hair parted in the centre and slicked down against his skull, the hair oil turning his hair a shade darker. He was in a grey suit typical of a commercial type, necktie, white shirt, a small dark cigarillo stuck unmoving in the corner of his mouth. He hadn’t said a word since entering the room.
All of them smoked, so that soon the fug was rising towards the high window. I had picked my seat well and most of the smoke drifted away from me.
It was five-card draw poker, with a fifty dollar buy-in, and no limit on raises, so I needed my wits about me. The first three hands didn’t even render me a pair to start with, so I was watching rather than playing, picking up body movements, anything I could see, which wasn’t much. It was still too early.
Grover won a small pot, so did Cigarillo and Negas on my left, who made a big fuss over winning a few bucks, again addressing most of his enthusiasm at me. (‘See how it’s done, kid? Whacko!’)
The next hand I was given a pair of kings, a reasonable start.
The first bet was from Jabber on my left. ‘Check,’ he called, meaning he wanted to see if any of us would bet before he came in.
The starter, the farmer type who I’d decided to dub ‘Mr Manicure’, bet two dollars and Cigarillo raised it to four. Grover put in his two bucks to make it six. This meant it would cost me eight bucks to stay in the hand and draw three more cards in an attempt to improve it. I added my chips to the pot in the centre, but apart from the eight dollars I didn’t raise it further. My hand simply wasn’t strong enough, although it could still, with the right three cards, lead to a good one.
Jabber decided to come in and added ten dollars and took three cards, probably like me trying to improve a pair.
Mr Manicure, the starter, discarded two cards and Reggie dealt him a further two, dealing each of us in turn the number of cards we’d discarded.
Doing a quick calculation (not necessarily correct), this possibly meant that before they got their new cards, Mr Manicure had three of a kind; Cigarillo two of a kind; Jabber, like me, two of a kind; Grover maybe two pair and looking for a straight or a flush.
Everyone arranged their cards and the serious betting began. The three strangers, Jabber, Mr Manicure and Cigarillo, all raised each other’s bets so I had to put in an extra ten just to stay in the game. My cards had fallen the way I needed, with another king and two aces – a full hand – and the two aces meant no one could have a better full hand than the one I held. It was good but not unbeatable if someone had four of a kind.
I matched the bet. This implied I had something and probably wasn’t bluffing but wasn’t overconfident either.
Grover threw in his hand; he obviously hadn’t received the cards he needed and there was no point trying to bluff with four of us still in the game. Jabber matched the previous bets and raised it another ten, all the while jabbering in my ear. Mr Manicure only matched Jabber’s bet, saying ‘See ya’. But then Cigarillo raised it another twenty dollars. This meant thirty dollars if I wanted to stay in and at least forty dollars to bet again. I took a hundred from my wallet and bought chips. ‘Your thirty and another thirty,’ I said quietly. Grover gave a soft whistle and at long last Jabber shut up and to my surprise folded. The remaining two players matched my bet and paid to see my hand.
I wasn’t surprised when both folded their hands without showing them. These guys were giving nothing away. For a moment I toyed with the idea of turning to Jabber and saying, ‘See how it’s done, kid? Whacko!’ But, of course, I didn’t. Poker, well played, means you button your lip and show nothing when you fold. My full house had won, though frankly I would have been unlucky to lose; four of a kind doesn’t happen along too often and straight flushes are even rarer. At least thus far the Spayd luck was holding.
The stakes were not higher than some of the games I’d played in over the past few months, but the early aggressive start indicated that these guys were serious players. The game was hotting up. This was no friendly game arranged by Reggie Blunt. One wrong move could quite easily cost a hundred bucks. I was already up nearly two hundred but knew it could disappear in a single hand if these guys continued the way they’d started. I didn’t have to be Albert Einstein to know that Jabber, Cigarillo and Mr Manicure were playing to a plan and that Grover and I were on our own.
The way it went was that if the two of us were still in the game, or if Grover was in on his own, putting in chips to draw the extra cards we needed to attempt to play a winning hand, then they played normally, dropping out or bidding up. But if Grover was out and I was left to play against the three strangers, then they went to town, raising aggressively and forcing me to match or better their bets if I wanted to stay in the game.
The very beauty of the game of poker is that it is one man against another, individuals daring their particular genius against each other. But when there is collusion, say two or more opponents working together against you, then they can just keep on raising the ante until you drop out and lose the money you’ve put on the table. Unless you have a good stake to start with, possibly more than their combined stake, you lose all your money and walk home with the linings of your pockets on the outside of your trousers.
If I’d been sensible when I began to suspect what was happening I would have told myself I’d had enough. But it was early, I was ahead, and it’s a kind of unspoken rule that you don’t leave a game early when you’re ahead. It’s . . . well, it’s not done if you want to be invited back.
Not that I wanted any more of these guys now or in the future. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Reggie Blunt was stitching me up, but why? One of his favourite sayings was, ‘Revenge is a dish best eaten cold,’ but as far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything to upset him. He’d even thanked me for taking his job. But he hadn’t left Moose Jaw to catch up with his possibly mythical grandchildren in Winnipeg. Nevertheless, he’d organised the raffle night. Admittedly he could be a crushing bore, but I’d never been anything but polite, sitting through endless sessions over his ‘whisky with a splash’ and enduring a thousand bad puns. On one occasion Juicy Fruit had remarked casually, ‘Our Reggie isn’t all he seems.’ It was a throwaway line, delivered with a laugh, as if she didn’t want or need to explain further. Then again, her warning tonight had seemed a lot more serious. As the game continued I was beginning to realise that Reggie’s favourite saying about revenge had been intended for me all along. He was going to clean me out. My heart skipped a beat when I remembered that I’d once told him about my mom’s nose money. Holy smoke, I was in deep shit.
Cut and run while you can, Jack Spayd. Get the hell outa here, son.