After the highly profitable countercoup against X, Brad Burner now dropped in every now and then to say hello, as if I were a human being again. Brokers, whose noses had seemed always to be stuck in their monitors when I passed, now looked up at me and shouted a hello. After our triumph Jeff and I were no longer Mutt and Jeff or Huff and Puff, but now ‘Morgan and Gould.’ What higher praise could there be?
So high had my prestige risen after my great countercoup against X that Mr Battle invited me to the weekly high-stakes poker game he played in with several of his wealthy colleagues, an honour never before bestowed on a mere employee. I’d often played poker with Mr Battle and Honoria and assorted guests at weekends on the Hudson, but this was another level entirely.
The afternoon before the big event I wondered how I might get the dice to improve my poker game. By nature I was a conservative player, betting each hand according to what I thought the odds of its being a winner were. I never bluffed. I could see that letting a die influence my play might introduce an unpredictability into my game that I knew I lacked. So I decided that before each hand I would surreptitiously check a die in my lap and if it showed a ‘six’ I would bluff, no matter how good or bad the cards.
We played in the game room of Mr Battle’s Manhattan apartment. The other players were Mr Battle, Brad Burner, Mr Potter, two Wall Street tycoons in their fifties, and Jeff, who I had insisted be invited too.
Dice or no dice, bluff or no bluff, near the end of the evening I was over eighteen hundred dollars behind. As chance would have it, I’d had mostly strong hands when the die had ordered me to bluff so that the fact that I thought I was bluffing was not apparent to the other players. However, in this seven card stud game, the die had opted that I bluff, and unfortunately the hand I was being dealt was abysmal. Nevertheless, from the first I bet as if my two hole cards were four aces. Mr Battle and I were involved in a betting war, one that I could see was going to be quite costly.
Jeff, who’d folded, was standing behind me, watching intently. A huge pile of chips and money was in the pot in the centre of the table, and what was left seemed mostly to be in front of Mr Battle and Brad Burner. Jeff, the two older tycoons and Mr Potter eyed the huge pot with awe.
Scowling and fingering his chips, Brad finally folded over his four face-up cards. ‘Too rich for my blood,’ he said.
On the table in front of Mr Battle were seven cards, three face-down, and face-up two kings and two queens. My hand showed only a ten and nine of hearts, the two of clubs and the two of diamonds – a junky-looking hand to say the least.
Mr Battle was sweating profusely as he squinted down at my lousy hand, then took a careful peek at his own hole cards. It didn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to know he had a full house.
The dice had me dressed that evening in an unusually flashy silk shirt open down my chest, and I was smoking a cigar, the smoke rising in classic fashion past my face. I felt like Clint Eastwood, but checking the junk I had face-down I knew I was Clint without any guns. Nevertheless I stared coolly at Mr Battle.
He’s bluffing, Bill,’ said Mr Potter. Clobber him.’
‘Really, Mr Potter?’ I said. ‘How about you and I make a little side bet – say twenty thousand dollars?’
Mr Potter looked startled and distinctly uneasy.
‘I, uh, didn’t know you had that much money,’ he said.
‘I will after this hand,’ I said.
Mr Battle was watching me intently through half-closed eyes and still sweating.
‘In the times I’ve played poker with you,’ he finally said, ‘not once have you been fool enough to bluff against what I’m showing.’
‘It’s your bet, big boy,’ I said. ‘How about it, Mr Potter, twenty thousand?’
‘I believe house rules are no side bets.’
‘I’ll be gentle,’ said Mr Battle, his face twitching. ‘I bet five hundred dollars.’
‘Good. I raise five thousand.’
As I began to count out most of the bills and chips in front of me and push them into the pot, the three onlookers burst out into mumbled oaths and gasps. Mr Battle’s hand went to his heart.
Everyone but me leaned forward to stare down again at my four cards showing only junk.
‘Jesus, Larry,’ said Jeff. ‘You can’t have four twos or a straight flush. The odds against it –’
‘Are considerable,’ I said. ‘Come on. Let’s see your money, sir. You can’t lose.’
Mr Battle peered at me shrewdly.
‘You want me to think that your betting is part of your strange behaviour lately, so I’ll think you’re bluffing and call you – and lose five thousand.’
‘Just put your money in, bossman, then we’ll all see.’
Mr Battle’s face twitched one more time and then he smiled with sudden relief.
‘I believe in the unchanging solidity of your soul,’ he announced calmly. ‘I fold.’
As all stared at me, Mr Battle turned over his cards and I began to rake in the huge pot. Then Mr Potter reached forward and frantically began turning over my three hole cards.
He stared at them in disbelief. Jeff stared at them in disbelief. Brad and the two tycoons stared at them in disbelief. Mr Battle stared at them in horror.
‘He’s got nothing,’ murmured Mr Potter.
‘That is absolutely the worst poker hand,’ said Brad in awe, ‘that I have ever seen.’
Mr Battle straightened himself in his chair and looked at me with cold dignity.
‘You’re a sick man, Larry,’ he said. ‘I just hope you don’t invest our money with as little sense.’
‘Only sometimes,’ I said, grinning and raking in the pot. ‘And if I’m sick, I now can afford better therapy.’
As they left the Battle apartment that night about ten, Larry explained to Jeff how he used the dice to improve not only his trading but also his poker playing. Jeff was speechless. Carried away with his success at the poker, Larry wanted to show Jeff in action how the dice worked and, since he happened to have one of his random purchases from three weeks before in his coat pocket, gave the dice three outrageous options and the die chose one: they were to go to the South Bronx and do the deed there. Jeff, who had been somewhat excited when he first learned of the use of dice, was now appalled.
Nevertheless, Larry dragged Jeff off with him to Harlem, the dice apparently feeling that Jeff should learn to confront his fears head on in order to bury them. Jeff definitely preferred burying them. He didn’t know exactly what Larry was up to – Larry having mumbled his options and the results – but saw very little profit potential in 137th Street in the Bronx. Little did he know.
The cabbie that drove them there that late evening, a middle-aged man named Spinio with a thick Brooklyn accent (a native American cabdriver!), was equally sceptical.
‘You sure this where you want to be, buddy?’ he asked when Larry tentatively said that this looked as if it might be a nice place to stop. Even in the darkness only sporadically broken by an occasional surviving streetlight, it looked a little like Berlin in about 1945 except that the survivors, unlike those back then, didn’t seem to have much to do.
‘We’re looking for new experience,’ Larry replied as he handed the driver the fare and pushed open his door.
The driver looked nervously at a cluster of young Hispanics loitering under a streetlight.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Probably your last.’
When Jeff had also reluctantly slid over and out of the cab, the cabbie burned rubber in pulling away and zooming off, his ‘Off Duty’ sign suddenly blazing forth like a Hatteras lighthouse.
Larry and Jeff were both wearing very expensive and nicely tailored overcoats. As they began walking slowly along the sidewalk, Jeff squirming up close to Larry’s shoulder like a bear cub sticking close to mom, they passed two shabbily-dressed black men barely visible in the dim light leaning up against an abandoned building. A third man was lying against the building, seemingly dead or sleeping. The two standing men blinked at Larry and Jeff unbelievingly.
‘Why couldn’t the dice have sent us someplace safe?’ asked Jeff. ‘Like Belfast or Baghdad.’
‘These guys have never been given a chance,’ said Larry, strolling down the dark street as if it were Regent Street in London. They’re victims of our unjust society.’
‘I know,’ said Jeff, ‘but as an active member of the oppressing class I’d rather be someplace else.’
Three tough-looking black men in their twenties came swaggering along the sidewalk towards Larry and Jeff, eyeing them speculatively. Larry strolled leisurely onwards, even smiling at them as they neared, with Jeff huddled at his elbow, glancing nervously back over his shoulder. He was hoping to see several squad cars of police or perhaps a marine helicopter with two dozen green berets, but saw only indifferent loiterers.
The three big men stopped directly in front of Larry and Jeff, who were forced to halt, and grinned at them.
‘Hey, man, what’s happening’?’ asked the smallest of the three. One of them seemed highly agitated, bouncing from one foot to the other and rolling his head as if trying to get it to fit right on his shoulders. The other two looked more menacing, their hands stuffed in their somewhat threadbare coat pockets.
‘Looking for some action?’ asked the biggest of the men, still grinning.
‘We’re fine,’ Jeff squeaked. ‘Just getting some fresh air.’
‘Yeah …’ said the second man.
‘I watch “The Bill Cosby Show”,’ Jeff said reassuringly.
Larry looked at the three men and slowly shook his
‘I’m afraid this is your unlucky night,’ he announced.
‘Yeah?’ drawled the big man, his grin fading and his face taking on an alert menace. ‘How’s that?’
Larry drew from his elegant coat pocket his small .32 automatic.
‘I’m afraid this is a stick-up.’
‘Shit, man,’ said the hyper black man, bouncing on his toes and clearly needing a fix. ‘We don’t wanna buy no gun.’
But the eyes of the two men who were in fairly good touch with reality widened in disbelief as they looked from the two elegantly-dressed businessmen to Larry’s gun and back again.
‘Fuck, man, you got to be kidding,’ said the big man.
‘Jesus, Larry, what are you doing!?’ Jeff squeaked, pulling at his elbow like a child who has desperately to go to the bathroom.
Larry took a threatening step closer to the men, moving his gun slowly back and forth from the one to the other.
‘I gave a hundred dollars to the NAACP in eighty-seven,’ Jeff said to them, hoping to dissociate himself from Larry’s madness.
‘My boss ordered it,’ Larry said quietly. ‘Your wallets, please.’
As the hyper black man continued to bounce on his toes and roll his head, happily indifferent to the trials and tribulations of his friends, the other two, in shock, slowly began groping for their wallets, managing reluctantly to pull them out.
‘You a cop?’ asked the smaller of the two as Larry took his wallet. ‘You must be a cop. Hey, man, we didn’t steal this money.’
‘Yeah, man,’ said the second. ‘Our ladies gave it to us – pocket money, man, you got no right.’
Larry removed the numerous bills from the two wallets and handed them back.
‘What about your friend?’ he asked politely, gesturing with his automatic at the dancing junkie.
‘Shit, man, you lucky to find a nickle on Willy,’ the big man said. ‘Money go through him into shit so fast you don’t see it, man.’
‘Well, thanks, I’m really sorry about this, but take this as a warning,’ said Larry, slowly backing away, Jeff now hidden behind him and backing in tandem. ‘The streets of New York are not safe.’
Larry gestured with his gun for the black men to be off in the other direction and then turned and led Jeff away.
Although it took two additional appearances of Larry’s little .32 to ensure their safe escape with their illicit earnings back to the slightly safer streets of the West Side of Manhattan, they made it back.
Jeff found that confronting his fears head on was, as he had suspected all along, even less fun than living with them slightly buried. Larry could only think of the two black men he had robbed: what was the world coming to when rich white honkies began coming to Harlem and robbing decent black men at gunpoint? The extent of God’s injustice must seem infinite.