The Man With the Golden Arm (2 page)

‘Here. You’ll get a double case of pneumonia sleepin’ in here. Get a room by Kosciusko Hotel.’ N the next time Zero don’t pay you off come tell Frankie Machine. That’s me – the kid with the golden arm.’ He paused to brush back the shaggy mop of dark blond hair under his cap, squinting a bit with the weak right eye. ‘It’s all in the wrist ’n I got the touch – dice, stud or with a cue. I even beat the tubs a little ’cause that’s in the wrist too. Here – pick a card.’ Cold as he was, the punk had had to pick a card.

During the lonely months with Frankie overseas and Schwiefka trying to deal his own game, Sparrow alone, of that whole semicircle of 4-Fs, from Blind Pig to Drunkie John, had remembered that golden arm.

‘I’d be over there with the dealer right now,’ Sparrow had
mourned quietly to himself those months, ‘if I just hadn’t got turned down for admittin’ I steal for a livin’.’

Frankie hadn’t troubled to write anyone until he began coming out of the fog into which an M.G. shell had put him: on his back in an evacuation hospital with a daylong aching from shrapnel buried in his liver for keeps. He’d gotten off a shaky V-mail telling Sophie he was coming home.

Sophie had put the letter on Antek the Owner’s bar mirror, among other wives’ V-mails. The night that Sparrow read it there all the cockiness which association with Frankie had lent him, and Frankie’s absence had taken away, returned. Dealer was coming home.

‘Guys who think they can rough me up, they wake up wit’ the cats lookin’ at ’em,’ he had immediately begun warning everyone. And spat to emphasize just how tough a Division Street punk could get.

He had looked forward to watching Frankie’s bag of corny card tricks once more. All the tricks of which he had never tired; as Frankie’s Sophie had so long ago tired of them all. As Frankie had so long ago tired of showing them to her; yet had never wearied of revealing them, the same ones over and over, for Sparrow’s ever-fresh amazement.

‘That’s one Hebe knows how bad it can get,’ Frankie sometimes explained their friendship obscurely, ‘knows how bad it can get ’n knows how good it can be. Knows the way it used to be ’n how it’s gettin’ now. I’d trust him with my sister all night. Provided, of course, she wasn’t carryin’ more than thirty-five cents.’

Frankie could never acknowledge that he squinted a bit. ‘If anythin’ was wrong with my peepers the army wouldn’t of took me,’ he argued, ‘the hand is quicker than the eye – ’n I got a very naked eye.’ Yet he sometimes failed to see a thing directly beneath that same very naked eye. ‘Where’s
the bag?’ he would ask. ‘Under your nose, Dealer,’ someone would point out. ‘Well, there’s suppose to be six bucks in it,’ he’d explain as if that, somehow, were why he hadn’t seen it right away.

He squinted a bit now, in the cell’s dim light, with the ever-present deck in his hand. ‘I can control twenty-one cards,’ he boasted to Sparrow. ‘If you don’t believe me put your money where your mouth is. I’ll deal six hands ’n call every one in the dark. Name your hand. You want three kings? Okay, here we go, you get what you ask for. But watch out, punk – that hand beside you is flushin’ ’n that bird with nothin’ but an ace showin’ is gonna cop with three concealed bullets.’ And that’s how it would be whether he was showing off in a cell or in the back booth of Antek Witwicki’s Tug & Maul Bar.

‘I give a man a square shake till he tries a fast one or talks back to me,’ he warned the punk. To hear him tell it Frankie Machine was pretty mean. ‘When I go after a wise guy I don’t care
who
he is, how much he’s holdin’ – when you see me start
pitchin
’ ’em in, then you know the wise guy is gettin’ boxed.’ Sparrow nodded. He was the only hustler on Division Street who still believed there was anything tough about Frankie Machine. The times he had seen Frankie back down just didn’t count for Sparrow.

‘What you got to realize in dealin’ stud is that it’s just like drill in the army –’ n the dealer’s the drill sergeant. Everybody got to be in step ’n stay on their toes ’n there can’t be no back talk or you got no harmony left – I’m good with a cue because that’s in the wrist too. Used to get fifteen fish for an exhibition of six-no-count. No, they never put my picture on the wall but I lived off the stick three months all the same when the heat was on ’n that’s a lot of hustlers can say.’

It was more than Frankie could say too. He would have
starved in those three months if it hadn’t been for Sophie’s pay checks. And although Sparrow was seldom allowed to forget, for long, what a mean job that of an army drill sergeant was, Frankie’s report was still hearsay: he’d put in thirty-six months without so much as earning a pfc’s stripe. Somehow the army had never quite realized what a machine he was with a deck.

(There were those who still thought he was called Machine because his name was Majcinek. But the real sports, the all-night boys, had called him Automatic Majcinek for years; till Louie Fomorowski had shortened that handle for him. Now, whether in the dealer’s slot, at the polls or on a police blotter, he was simply Frankie Machine.)

The bottom card squeaked as he dealt to Sparrow on the gray cell floor, and it irritated him that he couldn’t get a second off the bottom without hitting the card above. Though he never had sufficient nerve to deal from the bottom while in the dealer’s slot he liked to feel he had the knack as a symbol of his skill.

For he had the touch, and a golden arm. ‘Hold me up, Arm,’ he would plead, trying for a fifth pass with the first four still riding, kiss his rosary once for help with the faders sweating it out and
zing
– there it was, Little Joe or Phoebe, Big Dick or Eighter from Decatur, double trey the hard way and dice be nice – when you get a hunch bet a bunch – bet a dollar and then holler – make me five to keep me alive – it don’t mean a thing if it don’t cross that string – tell ’em where you got it and how easy it was.

When it grew too dark to read the spots on the cards Frankie pulled a tattered and wadded scratch sheet off his hip. ‘Took me ten years to learn this little honey – watch the lunch hooks now.’ Sparrow watched the long, sure fingers begin to weave swiftly and delicately. ‘Fifty operations in less than a minute,’ Frankie boasted – and there it was, a
regular Sinatra jazzbow with collar attached out of nothing but yesterday’s scratch sheet. ‘If it was just silk you could put it on now,’ Sparrow saw with awe. ‘Why couldn’t you just turn ’em out all day, Dealer? Everybody in the patch’d buy one – there’s a fortune in it.’

‘I ain’t no businessman,’ Frankie explained, ‘I’m a hustler – now give me five odd numbers between one ’n ten that add up to thirty-two.’

Sparrow pretended to figure very hard, tracing meaningless numerals with his forefinger in the cell’s grayish dust until it was time for Frankie to show him how. Somehow Sparrow never seemed certain which were the odd and which the even numbers. ‘Mat’matics is on my offbalanced side,’ he allowed, ‘I make them dirty offslips.’

Yet he was as accurate as an adding machine in anticipating combinations in any alley crap game; he distinguished clearly between odd and even then – sometimes before they turned up. ‘Playin’ the field is one thing, solvin’ riddles is another,’ it seemed to Sparrow, and saw nothing unusual in the distinction. ‘It’s what they couldn’t figure in the draft, neither,’ he recalled. ‘I was either too smart or too goofy but they couldn’t tell which. It was why I had to get rejected for moral warpitude.’

Frankie was making a vertical row of three ones and a parallel row of two ones. Adding the first row, he got a total of three and, adding the second, a total of two: by the proximity of the two totals he had a total of thirty-two.

‘There’s somethin’ wrong
somewheres
, Frankie,’ Sparrow complained, sounding distressed. ‘You got my big eyes rollin’ ’n the lights goin’ on in my head – but if I just knew some good old long division I could put the finger on what’s wrong.’

‘Nothin’ wrong at all, Sparrow. Strictly on the legit – just the new way of doin’ things we have these days. Like
the new way of makin’ ten extra bucks for you out of every hundred you got in the bank. This I wouldn’t show to nobody only you. Only me ’n the bankers know this one ’n they’re sweatin’ it out that the people’ll find out ’n have ’em all broke in a week. Swear you won’t tell?’

‘Saint take me away if I tell.’

‘No good. Swear a Hebe one.’

‘I don’t
know
no Hebe one, Dealer.’

No oath was necessary. He would have died before betraying the smallest of Frankie’s professional secrets. ‘Of course,’ Frankie warned him now, ‘in order to get away with this one you got to give up your interest – you willin’ to give up your interest?’

The question worried Sparrow. ‘Is it a Hebe bank ’r a Polak one, Frankie?’

‘What’s the diff?’

‘If it’s a Hebe one maybe I got a uncle workin’ there, he’ll just sneak me a fistful when the president ain’t peekin’.’

‘You got no uncle in this one,’ Frankie decided firmly. ‘In fact you got no uncle nowheres. You ain’t even got a mother.’

‘Maybe I got somebody in the old country, Frankie.’ Hopefully.

‘There ain’t none left in the old country so quit stallin’ – you gonna take a chance or not? You can’t make this tenner ’n keep your interest too.’

‘Okay, Frankie. I’ll chance it.’

‘It’s just this simple, buddy-o.’ He began tearing tiny squares off the hand-fabricated jazzbow, each square representing ten dollars, until he was ready to make a hypothetical deposit of ten squares – thus with an account of one hundred dollars he pretended to withdraw that amount, then replaced it beginning with the last square he had withdrawn, in the old burlesque routine, so that by the time he had replaced the
hundred he still retained one square in his hand. ‘And there’s your daily-double money ’n you still got your hundred in the bank,’ he announced triumphantly. ‘You can do it all day, they can’t stop you as long as the sign outside says the bank is open for business. It’s on the legit so they got to let you – that’s the new way of doin’ things we got these days.’

Sparrow removed his glasses, blew on them, put them back on and goggled dizzily, first at Frankie and then down at the make-believe money. It was hard to tell, when the punk goggled like that, whether he really didn’t understand or was just putting on the goof act to please Frankie. ‘Somethin’ wrong again,’ he complained, seemingly unable to put a finger on the trouble at all. Before he had time to gather his shocked wits Frankie had another sure-fire miracle working for him.

‘Here’s how you always pick up a couple bucks in a bowlin’ alley, Solly. You’re bowlin’ ’n you get a perfect split railroad – the seven ’n the ten pins. A guy offers you twenty to one you can’t pick it up. “I never seen it done my whole life,” he’ll tell you, “Wilman couldn’t pick it up.” He’ll even show you a record book where it says it ain’t been done in years. You tell him, “Put up ’r shut up.” So he puts up a double saw ’n you just stroll down the alley ’n pick ’em up with the lunch hooks. That’s all. Strictly on the legit.’

‘Is that in a Hebe bowlin’ alley ’r a Polak one?’

‘I done it on a guy on Milwaukee so I guess it’s a Polak one.’

Sparrow could see through that one right there. ‘That’s out. I’d get my little head cracked for sure. Then I’d be offbalanced on
bot
’ sides.’

‘That’d even you up then. You’d be just right.’ For no seeming reason Sparrow suddenly pointed an accusing finger at Frankie. ‘Who’s the ugliest man in this
jail?’ he demanded to know and answered himself just as suddenly. ‘Me.’

Then sat down to brood upon that reply as though it had been offered by another. ‘What do I care how I look anyhow?’ he assuaged the insult he had so abruptly dealt himself. ‘What counts is I know how to get along with people.’

‘If you could get along with
anybody
you wouldn’t be in trouble up to your ears all the time,’ Frankie reminded him gently. ‘You wouldn’t be one conviction away from Mr Schnackenberg’s habitual act.’

‘I’m
t’ree
convictions away from Mr Schnackenberg,’ the punk assured Frankie, ‘so long as I don’t catch no two alike.’ Then confessed his offbalanced state with a certain plaintive moodiness: ‘I can get in more trouble in two days of not tryin’ than most people can get into in a lifetime of tryin’ real hard – why is that, Frankie?’

‘I don’t know,’ Frankie sympathized, ‘it’s just that some cats swing like that, I guess.’

Whatever Frankie meant by that, Sparrow skipped it to supply his own explanation. ‘It’s ’cause I really
like
trouble, Frankie, that’s my trouble. If it wasn’t for trouble I’d be dead of the dirty monotony around this crummy neighborhood. When you’re as ugly as I am you got to keep things movin’ so’s people don’t get the time to make fun of you. That’s how you keep from feelin’ bad.’

Yet he poked more fun at his own peaked and eager image, the double-lensed glasses and the pipestem neck, the anxious, chinless face, than did all others together. He was too quick to take the sting out of others’ jibes by putting them on his own tongue first – his anticipation of insult was usually unfounded, the others had not been thinking of Sparrow’s ugliness at all. Others were long used to him, he alone could not get used to himself. All he could do was to smile his shrewd, demented little grin
and just be glad he was Solly Saltskin instead of Blind Pig or Drunkie John.

Sitting tailor-fashion on the cement floor, he blinked up at the white-washed walls as they were lit by the first half glow of the nightlights along the tier; blew the jailhouse dust off his glasses and brought his cap around till the peak was low over his eyes to express his feeling that he wouldn’t be going anywhere before morning.

‘I’ll bet you don’t have a cap on.’ Frankie was off again on his endless challenging of the punk; Sparrow fumbled a moment to be certain that he had, yet declined the challenge. ‘I’ll bet you don’t have shoes on, I’ll bet you aren’t smoking a cigarette. I’ll bet I can get on a streetcar without a transfer, say nothin’ to the conductor, pay him nothin’ ’n walk right on in. I can’t tell you the answer to all those, I don’t want to expose myself.’