Two in the Field (35 page)

“Don’t fret over the weapons rule,” Grogan advised. “We all carry some sort of belly gun—that’s why Red Jim had one—but for God’s sake, don’t shoot on the premises again!” He presented me with a pair of steel knuckles and demonstrated tactics far beyond the imaginative scope of intercollegiate boxing—all the while urging restraint. “Mostly we gentle the customers,” he said. “Old Smoke wants his past behind him so he can hobnob with the silk stockings. Above all, he wants what’s best for business.”

The job didn’t demand too much beyond showing up. Six nights a week I reported as the heavy-hitters began to drift in, generally between eight and nine. At midnight I snacked in the restaurant. Between three and five a.m., depending on business, I helped close up. My time was split between the downstairs public and second-floor private rooms. On the public level there was the occasional messy drunk to remove or dispute to quash before it escalated. For this my physical presence was usually enough. I was rarely tested.

And Grogan never strayed too far from me.

A more genteel atmosphere prevailed on the second floor, where the high-rollers drank far less and bet a great deal more while studying faro layouts with a disciplined observation worthy of scientists. It was here that an out-of-town Vanderbilt relative might find himself in over his depth, and the situation would call for diplomacy and “special handling.”

It didn’t take Morrissey long to decide to let me handle those situations rather than Grogan or others of his unschooled toughs. Generally it involved guiding a party up to a third-floor “holding”
room, pouring coffee in him till he was sensible, then informing him that his debts would be excused but his credit at the Club House had expired. At times I served as an emissary to the man’s socialite relatives. Having been a crime reporter, accustomed to interviewing victims’ families, I could muster the requisite tact for dealing with embarrassed gentry. Morrissey soon doubled my weekly salary from twenty to forty dollars. Nice to feel appreciated—but at that rate it would take the rest of my life to make up the O’Neill colony’s loss.

Could I return to Cait, I wondered, without recovering the stolen funds?

Maybe so, but I didn’t like that scenario.

Anxious to find ways to get at Red Jim McDermott, I spent as much time as I could with Baker, who tutored me in Club House operations and entertained me with droll commentary on Saratoga’s inhabitants. He seemed to enjoy the company of somebody other than Morrissey’s thick-brained hirelings. From him I got a comprehensive education in gambling and came to see that everything could be—and usually was—rigged. The dice, for example, contained metal flakes on one side; craps and chuck-a-luck operators could control results on high-stake throws by means of foot pedals that activated electromagnets beneath the felt of the tables.

Faro, the most popular pastime, represented my most advanced course of study, although the way it worked seemed simple. The dealer shuffled the deck and put it into a spring-loaded box. In front of him was the “layout,” a suit of thirteen cards painted on a large square of enameled cloth. On his right an assistant collected and paid debts. Another assistant on his left operated the “case-keeper,” an abacus-like affair that tracked all cards played; from it players could instantly see what cards remained to be dealt. They bet by placing chips on the “layout,”
then the dealer pulled cards from the box. The first card from each deck was a “soda” and didn’t count. After that, cards were drawn in pairs, each pair constituting a “turn.” The first card of each turn was a “loser” and counted for the bank—so that if you put chips on the jack, say, and the first card up was a jack, you lost your money; but if the second card was a jack, you collected.

Faro also allowed “coppering” bets, that is, putting a copper token atop a stack of chips to wager that card would lose. A turn producing two cards of the same denomination—two jacks, say—was a “split” and the house took half of all bets on that card.

After twenty-four turns, only three cards remained in the dealer’s box: a loser, a winner, and the last card or “hock.” Players could bet on the order of those last cards, and the bank paid four-to-one odds for guessing correctly.

On the face of it, except for “splits” it was an even game, gambler against the house, each winning approximately half the time. And splits brought the house only about three percent of all wagers, a modest cut.

If the game were played fairly, that is.

Faro cheaters were legion, according to Baker, and various types of rigged dealing boxes were manufactured and sold openly. Yet he claimed that the Club House’s boxes—at least his own—were square. Which left the question of how he managed to pull so many splits from his dealing box, and why the house won an inordinate number of times during his shift. By then I knew that an expert dealer could arrange such things. Since Baker was the best in the nation, I studied him intently, trying to see how it was done.

I realized I would never know when he displayed the equipment closet. Playing cards in this era didn’t have plasticized surfaces but were simply uncoated card stock boxed with spacers to press them flat. Because they quickly wore and crimped,
devices existed to shave decks’ edges and corners so they could be reused. Baker demonstrated how, if only certain cards were shaved, he could identify them as he shuffled. I tried it and felt no difference.

“Ignorant fingers,” he remarked.

He showed me a rigged deck with a symbol for each card hidden in the pattern on the back. Another where a needle had been driven into certain cards to raise tiny bumps. While dealing, Baker could identify them from the positioning of the bumps. My ignorant fingers scarcely felt them.

He showed me how to roughen cards on a strip of emery paper glued to one’s belt. How to make two or more stick together and look like one. How to mark aces with the diamond on his ring. By then I no longer cared
how
he did it. I knew that Baker could arrange splits, deal a losing card when heavy money had it to win, and stack the last three playable cards to the house’s advantage whenever he chose.

When I foolishly told him I considered myself decent at blackjack (here called twenty-one on the first floor,
vingt-et-un
on the second), Baker sat me down and, in a single tour through the deck, dealt himself exactly 21 points
ten straight times
after telling me he’d do it and letting me cut whenever I wanted. The man was a cardplaying genius and a repository of gambling lore.

“Did you know I was in the famous poker game where Eat-Em-Up Jack got his name?” he said proudly. “Damndest thing I ever saw. I was the only one who
did
see it, in fact, till the story leaked. Then everybody claimed to be in on it.”

“What happened?” I asked

“We were playing draw and ol’ Jack drew three cards and like to piss his drawers when he saw he’d pulled in three aces. Trouble was, he’d mistakenly only turned in two from his hand. So there he sat, hiding a six-card hand, a queer expression on his
face. Now, I was just a kid and wasn’t about to raise a fuss. Just as I folded my play, sandwiches and beer came. Jack’s hands never went below the table, but when we started up again, he only had five cards and took one helluva pot.”

“He ate the extra card?”

Baker laughed. “Slipped it straight into his sandwich.”

Frustrated that so far I hadn’t found ways to advance my own mission, I said glumly that such antics never seemed to transpire at the Club House.

“Nope,” he agreed. “Old Smoke runs this place like a bank, which it closely resembles.”

My ears pricked up. “How so?”

“Well, first, the scale. Last year we netted a quarter-million. Our cash transactions and loans at interest leave a good number of banks in the shade. Then too, Smoke likes things quiet here, like in a bank. One night Diamond Jim Fisk wanted to bring in musicians. He was dropping a fortune at the tables, but Morrissey turned him down.”

“Fisk wiped me out on Black Friday,” I said sourly.

“Cornering gold?” Baker clucked at the audacity of it. “Well, he paid for it. One of his partners stole his mistress here in Saratoga. When poor Jim squawked he got shot dead.” He gave me a probing look. “Speaking of mistresses, look out for yourself. Some skillful women operate here—and they know we get paid top money.”

Which I knew was true in Baker’s case. Grogan claimed that the star dealer made forty-five hundred dollars a month, plus fifteen percent of house winnings during his shifts.

“Old Smoke’s not above using a working lady to see what he can dig out about you.”

I nodded soberly.

“Another thing,” Baker added. “Sooner or later he’s gonna
ask you to sit in on one of his private games. There’s something I can tell you about his style.”

“What’s that?”

“He’ll only bluff once in a given hand. If you call him, fine. But if you raise, he won’t climb with you. It’s something about losing face. He’s willing to take a calculated risk but not look bad by going all the way.”

I said it was surprising from somebody like Morrissey.

“Maybe not,” said Baker. “He wants people to see him as a sharp, crafty player, but not reckless. All in keeping with his banker’s style.” He leveled a forefinger at me. “Anyhow, keep your wits about you. Smoke will test your mettle one way or another.”

Whether testing or not, every few nights Morrissey summoned me upstairs to his office, generally toward the end of my shift. Leaning back in his monogrammed chair, a log blazing in the fireplace no matter how mild the night, he grilled me on details of the care and handling of his richest patrons. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the old Commodore’s second son, was a particular high-maintenance concern. Besides finding tactful ways to keep his gambling losses within acceptable limits, I had to be prepared in case he threw an epileptic fit, something young Corney was prone to. Morrissey employed a physician, but he wasn’t always on hand. In his absence it was up to me to prevent a disaster.

Morrissey made me nervous by posing numerous questions about my past. I fabricated a ball-playing career in San Francisco that was fading into journalism by the time I’d subbed for the Red Stockings. I hinted at darker activities in which I’d picked up my fighting skills. I sensed that he didn’t buy all of it, but apparently he didn’t know the West Coast well enough to probe my story deeply.

One night he mentioned rumors that three exalted war heroes, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, were planning to visit the Club House together. Trying to picture the dour president at a roulette wheel, I said casually that I’d once met Grant.

Morrissey didn’t appreciate being one-upped. “Where?” he demanded.

“In the White House,” I said, “with the ball club.”

“Well, I did too,” he snapped.

Sure, I thought, but you were in Congress. I’d heard that in Morrissey’s solitary House speech, he’d challenged any ten Representatives to fight him. But that was a while back. Now the one-time street fighter yearned for Establishment acceptance. He loved to describe all the palm-greasing and back-scratching he engaged in, and how his web of connections and favors extended throughout the state.

“Why does he pick on me for those late-night sessions?” I complained to Baker.

“Simple,” he replied. “You’re the only one who ever sent him to the floor in one of those try-outs in his office. Some others gave him a tussle, but they couldn’t do what you did. And you a college man, too. He’s fascinated by all that—and now he’s studying you for weaknesses.”

Wonderful, I thought.

“There could be another reason,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“He seems to have no real friends.”

“That’s how he’s survived.” Baker snorted. “I wouldn’t put any stock in his lookin’ to
you
for it.”

“A smile wouldn’t be amiss when treating with the ladies,” Morrissey said one night. “That mug of yours is enough to pitch them into sinking swoons.”

I thought that was pretty funny, coming from the owner of one of the most menacing faces in the whole country.

“People are taking an interest in you, Fowler,” he rasped. “I’ve told ’em about your base-balling days. Those Red Stockings captured people’s fancy. I’m thinking of making something of your tussle with Will Craver.”

“What do you mean?” I said uneasily.

“Why, stage a second match! It’d bring in every betting man around. We’d use the grandstand by the lake, make thousands on the tickets, thousands more holding stakes.”

I should have anticipated it. Trying to market me was exactly the sort of thing that would occur to Morrissey. “I’m too old for that stuff,” I told him.

“You weren’t too old against me,” he retorted, “and there’d be time for a bit of training. Bully Will plays for Philadelphia now, but I could get him here in short order. We’d puff you as the ‘diamond pugilists.’ ” He gave me a sharp look. “Not afeard, are you?”

“I beat him before,” I said, mindful that I’d been a wreck for a week afterward.

“Oh, but there was … confusion on that ballfield. This’d be just the two of you, face to face.” Morrissey smiled, rarely a pleasant thing to see. “Maybe Will’s learned a trick or two.”