The Hustler (3 page)

The bartender tried to look calm. He glanced around him at the crowd. They were all watching him. Then he thought about the drinks he had served Eddie. It must have been at least five. This thought comforted him. He thought, too, about the games he had watched the men play. This reassured him.

And the young man had an honest face. “I’ll get it out of the till,” the bartender said.

In a minute he had it, and there were four hundred dollars in bills out on the table, down at the end where they wouldn’t affect the shot. Eddie went to the powder dispenser again. Then he got down, sighted, took aim awkwardly, and stroked into the cue ball. Now there was only the slightest difference between that stroke and the stroke he had used all evening—a slight, imperceptible regularity, smoothness, to the motion. But only one man present noticed this. That man was Charlie; and when every other set of eyes in the poolroom was focused in silent attention on the cue ball, an amazing thing happened to the set features on his round face. He smiled, gently and quietly—as a father might smile, watching a talented son.

The cue ball came off the rail and hit the fourteen with a little click. The fourteen ball rolled smoothly across the table and fell softly into the corner pocket….

4

When they got in the car Eddie was whistling softly between his teeth. He threw his coat, gaily, in the back seat, slipped behind the wheel, and started fishing the crumpled bills, mostly fives and tens, from his pants pockets. He smoothed them out on his knee, one at a time, counting them aloud as he did so.

Charlie’s face and voice were, as ever, expressionless. “Look,” he said, “it’s two hundred profit and you know it. So let’s drive.”

Eddie gave him an especially broad grin. He enjoyed doing this, knowing that the charm had no measurable effect on Charlie. “So who’s in a hurry,” he said, enjoying the simple pleasure of victory. “This is how I get my kicks. Counting the paper.”

The car was an incredibly dusty Packard sedan of middle age. After tiring of the money Eddie folded the bills neatly, slipped the roll into his pocket, and started the engine. “That poor guy behind the bar,” he said, grinning. “He’s gonna have a time explaining to the boss where that deuce went.”

“He asked for it,” Charlie said.

“Sure. We all ask for it, everybody. We all oughtta be goddamn glad we don’t get it, too.”

“He was greedy,” Charlie said. “I could see when we walked in he was the greedy type.”

They drove along the highway for about an hour, silently except for Eddie’s whistling through his teeth. He played the radio for a while, listened to some very bad music, was admonished to drink Mogen David wine, drive safely over the weekend, drink Royal Crown Cola (best by taste test) and buy bonds. After this last hustle Eddie flipped the radio off and said, “So how’re we doing?”

Charlie fished out his cigarette case and automatically pulled out a cigarette for Eddie before lighting his own. Then he said, “You got about six thousand now.”

Eddie seemed pleased with this, although he, of course, already knew where they stood. “That’s pretty good,” he said, “for a beginner. Four months out of Oakland; six thousand. And,” he laughed, “expenses. Hell,” he lit his cigarette with one hand, the other holding the wheel, “if I hadn’t of been a damn fool and dropped that eight hundred in Hot Springs we’d have seven thousand. I should of let that guy quit, Charlie, like you told me. I can’t give every hot shot I come heads up with two balls in a bank pool game.”

“That’s right.” Charlie lit his own cigarette.

Eddie laughed. “Well, live and learn,” he said. “I’m pretty good, but I ain’t that good.” Abruptly, he rammed the accelerator, cut the wheel and began shooting past a line of cars they had been dawdling behind for maybe ten minutes. Passing the fourth car he spotted a truck approaching and brake-squealed back into line.

“You aren’t that good either,” Charlie said, and Eddie laughed again.

“This car’s all right,” he said, grinning. “It plays a pretty tough game. And you know what, Charlie? After we finish up, after I get, say, fifteen thousand and enough money to fly back home, I’m gonna give you this car.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said, with gravity, “and ten per cent.”

“And ten per cent.” He laughed and cut back out into the passing lane. The old Packard, with surprising determination, shot past the rest of the line of traffic. Back in the driving lane Eddie settled it down to a steady seventy miles an hour.

After a minute Charlie spoke again. “What’s the hurry?”

“I want to get there. To Bennington’s.” He paused. “This is gonna be the part that counts. I been wanting to see Bennington’s place for a long time.”

Charlie seemed to think about this for a minute. Then he said, “Look, Eddie. Remember I asked you to stay out of Chicago? Altogether.”

Eddie tried to keep the annoyance from showing. He let the words sit a moment, then he said, “Why?”

Charlie’s voice was flat as ever. “You might get beat.”

Eddie kept his eyes on the road. “So maybe I shouldn’t gamble in the first place, I might get beat. Maybe I should be a salesman. Drugs, maybe.”

Charlie flipped his cigarette butt out of the window. “Maybe you are.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re the kind of pool hustler sells a bill of goods. The kind of high-class con man every mark gets friendly with. First time you ever walked into my place back home you weren’t sixteen years old and you were selling a bill of goods.”

Eddie grinned. “So I know how to set up a good game for myself, so what? Is that bad?”

“Look, Eddie, you want to play one of the big boys at Bennington’s? You want to leave off this penny-ante hustling and try and clean up in one big lick?”

“Who else is gonna let me win ten thousand in one night?”

“Look, Eddie.” Charlie turned to him, his face still impassive. “You’re not gonna charm those Chicago boys into a thing. Like in Hot Springs, only worse. You’re gonna be playing people who know what’s happening on a pool table.”

“In Hot Springs I made a bad bet. I learned something. I won’t make any bad bets in Chicago.”

“I heard people say that when you walk in Bennington’s you’re making a bad bet.”

Eddie, abruptly, laughed. “Charlie,” he said, “if you wasn’t my best friend, I’d make you get out and walk.”

They drove silently for a while. It was getting late in the afternoon, the air was beginning to cool off now and there was more shade. They were passing clumps of buildings, getting into country that was more thickly settled. Traffic in the other direction was becoming thicker too, the beginnings of the weekend exodus from the city. Billboards hustling beer and gasoline became frequent.

Finally Charlie spoke. Eddie had been waiting for it, wondering exactly what it was that he had on his mind. “Eddie,” he said, “you don’t have to go to Bennington’s at all. Why risk what we got? You can scuffle around in the little rooms and pick up at least a thousand, no chance of losing. Then we drive back home by a different way and you fill out your fifteen grand the same way you picked up what we already got.”

Eddie let it all sink in. Then he said, almost pleadingly, “Charlie, you’re trying to undermine my confidence. You know I got to play at Bennington’s. You know I been a scuffler all my life, a small man out West. You know when I beat Johnny Varges—that’s
Johnny Varges
, Charlie, the man who
invented
one-pocket pool—he said I was the best he ever seen. And back home there were people who said I was the best in the country. The best in the country, Charlie.”

“That’s right,” Charlie said, “and you let a nowhere bank hustler named Woody Fleming hit you for eight hundred dollars in Hot Springs.”

“Charlie,” Eddie said, “I
gave
him two balls out of eight. For Christ’s sake, that’s the first money I dropped since we left Oakland, California.”

“Okay. I take it back. I wanted to remind you that, sometimes, people lose.”

Eddie’s voice was still pained. “Look, Charlie. Did you ever see a better pool player than me? Did you ever see, in twenty years running a poolroom, anybody ever who I couldn’t beat, heads up, any day of the week, any game of pool he could name?”

“Okay. Okay.” A trace of irritation insinuated itself into Charlie’s voice. “Nobody can beat you.”

They passed through a suburb, then another. Eddie kept smoking continually, and he was beginning to feel intensely a thing that he had felt many times before, but never before quite so strongly: a kind of electric self-awareness, a fine, alert tension. And a sense of anxiety, too, and of expectation. He felt good. Nervous; his stomach tight; but good.

5

Eddie sat on the edge of the bed, dressed only in his expensive shorts, in which he had slept. His bed was beside the window of the room and he was looking out, into the afternoon sunshine and into a tangle of the flat sides of buildings. Behind him, Charlie was still sleeping, his face, even in sleep, comic and impassive.

Eddie lit a cigarette, in a more leisurely way than he usually lit them. He felt good. He had just awakened from a long, mildly alcoholic sleep; but his mind had been instantly clear, the meaning of the time and the place understood.

He looked around the hotel room. It was very clean, modern-looking, with blond furniture and pastel walls; and this pleased him. He began whistling through his teeth.

Then he went to the bathroom and took a hot shower, washed his hair, scrubbed his fingernails with a pink nylon brush that he carried in his shaving kit, shaved, sat on the edge of the bathtub and began shining his shoes.

Charlie padded into the bathroom, wearing pajamas, and seated himself on the commode. He blinked at Eddie a minute, and at length spoke. “For Chrissake who—who else in God’s green world in the morning would sit on the bathtub, naked as sin and with his ribs showing, and polish his goddamn shoes?” Then he fell into a classic pose of contemplation, elbows on knees.

Eddie finished with the shoebrush. “Me. And it’s afternoon. Two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Okay, so it’s afternoon and that makes it just fine to parade your anatomy and shine your shoes in the bathtub. Okay. Now get out. I want privacy.”

Eddie picked up his shoes and walked out of the bathroom, intentionally not closing the door. Charlie said nothing, but managed to reach a fat foot out far enough from his throne to slam it shut.

Eddie put on a pair of clean shorts and sat back down on the bed. Then he called out, as casually and as jokingly as he could, “How much money am I gonna win today, Charlie?”

He hadn’t expected an answer; but he waited for one. Then he said, louder, “Who’s gonna beat me?”

This, too, got no answer. Not from the sitting Buddha. But he felt high, and he felt like talking, like needling Charlie. He knew he had talked it up much too much already; but he wanted to talk it up more, wanted Charlie to try to puncture his ego for him more, wanted to laugh at Charlie and to know, too, that everything that Charlie said about him was right.

“What do you think Bennington’s boys are gonna do when they see me?” He leaned back on the bed, grinning; but his grin was a little tense, strained.

Charlie opened the door, waddled in, and began searching through his suitcase. “I already told you what I think about Bennington’s,” he said.

“Sure. But what about Bennington’s boys? George the Fairy? Fats? They couldn’t of helped but hear of me. And somebody’ll finger me if they don’t know me when they see me. What’s gonna happen?”

Charlie found his toothbrush in the bag and held it up, pulling the lint out of it. “Look,” he said, “you know as much about that as I do. And you know more about hustling than I ever did.”

“Sure, but…”

“Look, Eddie.” Charlie stood up, holding the toothbrush. The combination of pajamas and toothbrush made him look ridiculous, like a fat child in an advertisement. “This is all your idea. I said I’d take you around on the road, because I been on the road myself. And I taught you all I knew about scuffling in the little rooms—and it didn’t take me a week to do that. But I didn’t say I could steer you in this town. I heard of Minnesota Fats for fifteen years. I heard him called the best straight-pool player in the country for fifteen years, but I wouldn’t know him on the street if I saw him. And I don’t know how good he is—all I know is his reputation. For Chrissake,” he began heading back for the bathroom, “I don’t know yet how good
you
are.”

Eddie watched him walk toward the bathroom and open the door. Then he said, softly, “Well, I don’t either, Charlie.”

6

They had to take an elevator to the eighth floor, an elevator that jerked and had brass doors and held five people. It did not seem at all right to go to a poolroom on an elevator; and he had never figured Bennington’s that way. Nobody had ever told him about the elevator. When they stepped off it there was a very high, wide doorway facing them. Over this was written, in small, feeble neon letters,
BENNINGTON’S BILLIARD HALL
. He looked at Charlie and then they walked in.

Eddie had with him a small, cylindrical leather case. This was as big around as his forearm and about two and a half feet long. In it was an extremely well-made, inlaid, ivory-pointed, French-leather-tipped, delicately balanced pool cue. This was actually in two parts; they could be joined for use by screwing together a two-piece, machined brass joint, fastened to the maple end of each section.

The place was big, bigger, even than he had imagined. It was familiar, because the smell and the feel of a poolroom are the same everywhere; but it was also very much different. Victorian, with heavy, leather-cushioned chairs, big elaborate brass chandeliers, three high windows with heavy curtains, a sense of spaciousness, of elegance.

It was practically empty. No one plays pool late in the afternoon; few people come in at that time except to drink at the bar, make bets on the races or play the pinball machines; and Bennington’s had facilities for none of these. This, too, was unique; its business was pool, nothing else.