Stone Junction (24 page)

Daniel started to ask where ‘there’ was, but Bad Bobby raised a finger and pointed toward the football game. ‘We’re gonna have months to talk on the road. Right now we got twenty-five grand that says there’s no way the Broncos can whup the Raiders by more than four points and that together they don’t score over forty-two. Let’s eat breakfast and watch our money.’

The Raiders won outright in a defensive struggle, and later that afternoon Bad Bobby left town as he ususally did – ahead of where he came in.

El Paso. Houston. Dallas. New Orleans. Nashville. Omaha. Cheyenne. Denver. Reno. San Francisco. Always the best hotels, the finest restaurants, and the fastest action in town. Daniel watched as Bad Bobby played. He loved Bobby’s style, a balance of discipline and impulse, imbued with an aesthetic that fell neatly between plantation manners and swamp-rat savvy. He heard hundreds of Bad Bobby stories from players and spectators alike.

The most frequent story concerned Bobby’s youth. He was already making a good living playing cards from town to town by the time he was sixteen, but he was illiterate. So Bobby took a cut of his winnings and hired tutors to travel with him, paying them wages and expenses in exchange for teaching him reading and writing, and, later on, arithmetic, geography, and history. It took Bobby nine years to read and write at a college level. He attracted tutors who liked the thrill of an occasional wager, whether it might be on the turn of a card or how many road-killed armadillos they’d see between Lubbock and Galveston, and thus Bobby was able to complete his college education at a modest profit.

Daniel learned that Bad Bobby’s nickname had been given him by Barbwire Bill Eaton when he’d beaten Barbwire’s set of aces with a low straight in a Texas Hold-’Em game, causing the usually unflappable Barbwire to bang his head on the table and babble, ‘Goddamn, lots of players beat me, but you beat me like an ugly stepchild. Gettin’ so when I see you come through the door, I say to myself, “Fasten yr asshole, Bill, cause here comes Bad-Beats Bobby.”’ The name was soon shortened to Bad Bobby.

When the game was over and they were back on the road, alternating at the wheel of Bad Bobby’s perfectly restored ’49 Cadillac, Bobby shared his poker wisdom and general card sense with Daniel, explaining rules, odds, strategies, how to properly shuffle and deal cards, and the small niceties of etiquette, like playing quickly and in turn. Daniel learned, if only theoretically, how to play position and manage money, when to raise, call, or fold, how to quickly assess the strengths and weaknesses of other players, the best times to bluff, how to calculate pot odds, how to spot tells, and cheaters, and marks. They reviewed recent hands as Bobby explained why he’d played them that way and what he might have done in different circumstances. He constructed practice hands for Daniel, questioning him on his decisions. He illustrated the lessons with copious stories and lore picked up in forty years on the road and at the tables.

‘I tell ya, Daniel, there’s
no sure thing
. Why, I was in a big-stakes Five-Card Draw game in Waco – we were playing with the joker – and I saw a hand with five aces get beat for everything the guy had.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Daniel said, ‘nothing can beat five aces. What’d the other guy have in
his
hand?’

‘A Smith and Wesson. A thirty-eight, I believe.’

* * *

When they swung through Las Vegas two months later, Daniel was burning to play. He told Bad Bobby he was ready.

‘Told ya, Daniel, you play your own money any time you think you’re ready. You can play
my
money when
I
think you’re ready.’

Daniel said, more challenge than question, ‘You don’t think I’m ready.’

‘Nope. I think you’d get sucked down like a little muskrat swimming in a pool of ’gators. Fact is, you’re still making too many mistakes on the problems I’ve been giving ya.’

With passion, Daniel said, ‘That’s because I’m
sick
of theory. From watching you play it’s pretty clear that every hand is a unique situation, because you’re involved with people,
real
individual players, and one of them is on a hot streak, and one just had a fight with his wife, and one has just finished his sixth whiskey in two hours. I
would
play my own money if I had any left, and I can always get what I need if I have to––’

‘No you can’t,’ Bobby cut him off cold. ‘
No
thieving, not even an ashtray – that’s an iron rule with me. Offends the poker gods.’

‘I think I’m ready,’ Daniel said firmly.

Bad Bobby scratched his nose. ‘All right,’ he said without conviction, ‘I’ll front you five grand. But the deal is, if you lose so much as a nickel, you don’t play again for a month and you don’t badger me about being ready.’

‘You’re on,’ Daniel grinned.

‘We’ll get us some dinner and head downtown to the Antlers. They’ve got a hundred-dollar-limit Five-Stud game that’s about your speed.’ Bad Bobby gave him a laconic smile. ‘It’s a real character builder.’

Daniel bought in for a thousand dollars and built some character immediately, his three sevens crunched by three jacks – set over set, one of the toughest beats in the game. He called for another thousand.

It took him an hour to lose the second grand. In a pot with six players, Daniel raised himself all-in on the fourth card, which had given him a second pair to go with his aces, only to get beat on the last card by both a low flush and a straight.

Bad Bobby chuckled behind him. ‘Now Daniel, remember what Ol’ Jake Santee used to say: “Don’t hurt to get it all in. What hurts is getting it broke off.”’

Daniel took out the rest of his bankroll and called for three thousand dollars in black chips. Five hours later, having discovered a tell on a player named Frog Jorgenson and having caught some good cards, Daniel had twelve thousand dollars in front of him. When the player to his right busted out, Daniel was surprised to see Bad Bobby slide into the vacant seat and call for twenty thousand dollars in chips.

Daniel played cautiously whenever Bad Bobby was in the pot. Bobby played his usual game, steady with erratic eruptions, though he juiced the action by betting the limit from first round to last. An hour before dawn, Daniel had about seventeen thousand dollars and Bad Bobby had doubled his stack. As word spread that Bobby was in town, players dropped by the Antlers to check out the action. When the sun came up, there were four times as many railbirds as there were players.

Bad Bobby stretched lazily as the deck was shuffled. ‘Gentlemen, I’m only good for a few more hours. Any objection to putting some guts in this game and raising the limit to a thousand?’

Everyone except Daniel immediately agreed.

‘Thousand it is, then,’ a player named Mad Moses announced.

‘Just a minute,’ Bad Bobby said mildly. He turned to Daniel. ‘How about you, Daniel?’

‘Hell,’ Mad Moses said, ‘he’s winners. If he don’t want to jack it up he can cash ’em out – there’s a whole herd of high rollers drooling to git in the game.’

‘No,’ Bobby said flatly, ‘that ain’t how it’s done. He’s been in the game over twelve hours, and if he says no, that’s all it takes as far as I’m concerned.’

‘A thousand limit is fine with me,’ Daniel murmured. Twenty minutes later he wished Mott Stocker had been there to cut out his tongue.

Daniel started with the seven of hearts in the hole and the eight of hearts up. Bad Bobby was high with the king of hearts showing and when the low man brought it in for the minimum hundred, Bobby raised a thousand. Daniel and three other players called. Daniel caught the eight of diamonds for a pair on the board, Mad Moses caught an ace to go with his offsuit jack, the two others didn’t visibly improve, and Bad Bobby caught the ten of hearts. When the bet reached him, Daniel raised a grand. Moses and Bobby were the only callers. Daniel caught the seven of clubs to pair his hole card, Moses was dealt the six of hearts, and Bad Bobby the trey of hearts, giving him, at best, a pair of kings or a flush draw. Bad Bobby, now low, surprised Daniel by betting the limit. Daniel raised the same. Mad Moses, after long deliberation, folded. Bad Bobby reraised a thousand dollars. Daniel hit it again. So did Bad Bobby. ‘I’m not stopping,’ Daniel said, pushing his call and another grand raise into the pot. ‘You’ve got to catch me and I love the odds on that.’

‘Well,’ Bobby said, ‘count your stack down and we’ll get it all in right now,’ cause I intend to keep raising you back.’ When he’d counted down what remained of his seventeen thousand and shoved it in the pot, Bad Bobby matched it. Counting Mad Moses’ money and the initial bets, there was over forty thousand dollars in the pot.

‘It’s up to the cards now,’ Bobby said. ‘Let’s take a look and see if I can snap your two pair.’

The dealer turned up the jack of hearts for Daniel. Bad Bobby caught the queen of hearts. He had the ace of hearts in the hole. Heart flush.

‘Take the pot,’ Daniel said, trying to control the shocked disappointment in his voice. He smiled ruefully at Bad Bobby, who was stacking the chips. ‘You deserve it, Bobby, catching that queen with so many hearts out, raising all the way – that’s luck.’

‘No, Daniel, that’s knowing
when
.’

‘You want more chips, Daniel?’ the floor man said at his shoulder.

Daniel started to rise from his chair. ‘I guess not.’

‘If no one objects,’ Bad Bobby said, ‘you can play ten grand off my roll.’

There were no objections.

Bad Bobby cashed out at noon, thirty-thousand dollars winners. Four hours later, his eyes stinging from smoke and exhaustion, Daniel cashed out twenty-one thousand five hundred, fifteen thousand of which he returned to Bad Bobby, who was still awake when Daniel got back to the hotel.

‘You come out, huh?’

‘I won sixty-five hundred.’

‘Good, but don’t forget you can lose.’

‘I would have if you hadn’t staked me that extra ten grand. Thanks for the confidence.’

‘Well shit, I wouldn’t have much of an opinion of myself as a teacher if I didn’t think you could hold your own in a little pissant game like that. Besides, you caught Froggy’s tell about ten minutes after I did. You might be relying a shade heavy on odds, but I suppose that’s my fault. Just remember that if you’re playing Russian Roulette, one chamber loaded out of six, about seventeen percent of the time you’re going to be dead. Technically, you know, you lost our side bet when I broke you, because if I hadn’t extended more credit, you’d be washing windows with your tongue. Now you have enough money of your own to do as you please. If you run short, you can play my money any time.’

But Daniel, with his sixty-five hundred dollars profit, played his own, and he played it well. At the end of a year he had almost two hundred twenty thousand dollars, eighty thousand from a single pot in a Seven-Stud game in Albuquerque, beating Dumpling Smith’s four nines with a low straight flush in diamonds. Between games, as they traveled the circuit (what Bad Bobby called hard-assing the highway), Bad Bobby critiqued Daniel’s play. Aside from the lack of polish and occasional lapse in judgement, he saw only one major flaw. It wasn’t so much a repeated mistake as it was a general disposition – Daniel liked to gamble. He was seduced by the needle-thrill of action, the excitement and hope and abandon.

Bad Bobby told Daniel that a friend, a famous stock-car driver, had told him what he considered the greatest danger of racing: ‘“When you’re driving hard out on the edge, and the love of speed comes over you so true and deep and real, you don’t
want
to slow down. You know you ought to. But you’re locked into something so awesome and consuming you can’t back off. It’s always the same – the faster you go the less you care about being able to stop. Ever.”

‘And that’s bad shit, Daniel. Don’t step in it.’

But to sustain the high, thin edge of concentration gambling required was costly in itself. Along with the constant travel, there were days without sleep, an almost constant isolation from the natural world, adrenalin solos dancing on the blade. Against the discontinuities of the gambling life, Daniel developed portable routines. He read the paper with breakfast to remind himself daily there was a world beyond the cardtable. He took a long bath before every game. He wore, interchangeably, ten identical white shirts. The routines gave him a sense of stability, of a quotidian infrastructure that could survive the winds of chance. Occasionally he wanted a woman, and most often she was a five-hundred-dollar call girl. Daniel liked call girls. They were adventurous, usually independent, often beautiful, took pride in their erotic charms and understanding, and there were no complications.

Daniel agreed with Bobby’s claim that the simple life was essential if you hoped to sustain the ferocious concentration cardplaying demanded. Bad Bobby practiced extreme simplicity. Besides the restored ’49 Caddy, his worldly possessions were his father’s straight razor and an old Ruger .38 that ‘Jack-’Em-Up’ Jackson had given him to discourage cheaters and highwaymen. Bad Bobby slept and bathed in hotels, ate in restaurants, and bought new clothes when he was tired of the ones he was wearing. He also bought books – he was studying history – but when he finished one he either passed it along to Daniel, if he was interested, or left it for the room’s next occupant and the vagaries of chance.

After fifteen months of steady playing, Daniel became restless and vaguely depressed. They were halfway into their Lo-Ball swing through northern California, and the familiar land forms reminded him of the clear balance of ranch life. Gambling also had its balance, but it was forever shifting, erratically brilliant. He was bored with the game. He’d learned what he could, and it left him strangely dissatisfied. He told Bobby he wanted to move on.

Bad Bobby wouldn’t let him. ‘I’ve spent over eighteen months working with you, and I’m not done because you’re not ready.’

‘I appreciate that,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ve learned a lot. But I’m beginning to burn out.’

‘Daniel, that’s just when you learn things you’d never know otherwise. It’s that long, precise discipline that holds it together when it wants to fly apart. That’s when you develop some bottom to yourself, but you’ve got to be tough. You’ve got to patiently practice what you don’t enjoy if you want to make yourself a whole player. Like a wide receiver who’s the best there is going long, but who stays after practice every day and works on those three-yard outs that he has trouble with. That’s why they invented dues, Daniel – to pay ’em.’

Daniel sighed. ‘I appreciate what you’re saying, but I can quit any time I want. Don’t make me do it.’

‘Actually,’ Bad Bobby grinned, ‘you can’t quit whenever you want, ’cause I got it on your honor that you have to beat me in a gambling game to call your own shots.’

‘Fine,’ Daniel shrugged. ‘Tomorrow. Five-Card Stud.’

‘You chose your strongest game, even if your timing is off. I just got a call from Stan Wurlitzer down in Gardena. Seems both Guido Caramba and Rupert the Limey are in town, and there’s heavy sentiment developing for a hundred-thousand-dollar freeze-out game if Stan can put it together. I’m supposed to let him know by tonight.’

‘How’s it set up?’

‘Everybody buys a hundred thousand, and you play till somebody has it all. You lose your buy-in, you’re eliminated; no second buys.’

‘The game?’

‘Lo-Ball Draw, exactly like we’ve been playing the last coupla weeks. I personally think Lo-Ball will eventually be your best game, because a big edge in that game is hitting it on the come and playing power position.’ Course, this will be no limit, and you don’t want to be raising too much to draw cards.’

‘Are you suggesting I could play in a game like that?’

‘That’s up to you. I’m sure going to, so I don’t really want to waste my energy whipping on you tomorrow. But here’s a proposition: If you win the freeze-out, you’re free to go. If you don’t, you’ll still have enough money left to take a shot at me later.’

‘Knowing your propositions, I assume the other players will be good.’

‘You got that right.’

‘So, if I’m the winner, I not only get to leave, but I take eight hundred thousand dollars with me.’

‘It’d be nice to tip Stan ten grand or so for holding the stakes and letting us use his facilities – unless, of course, you
don’t mind
being known as a no-class tight-ass.’ Daniel started to defend his tipping – generous by most standards, though hardly equal to Bobby’s extravagance – but Bobby rolled right over him. ‘’Course, you’re long odds to win. You’ve got to beat seven other players, and they include Guido, Rupert, and me. My advice is to start early and bring extra grub.’

Daniel had known Bad Bobby long enough to sense a proposition. ‘What are you laying now?’

‘Even money you don’t make the final four. Your eight to my one that you’re exactly the third player eliminated. And twenty to one you don’t win it.’

‘You’re hurting my confidence.’

‘Can’t help it. Real is real, and I call ’em like I see ’em. And what I see is that you’re a damn good player, but not good enough yet.’

They were sitting in Daniel’s room at the Eureka Inn. Daniel pointed at the phone on the desk. ‘Call this Stan guy and reserve two seats. And I’ll take a grand on the first two propositions, and five on the twenty to one that I win it all. So then you’d be out two hundred thousand plus change, and I’d be on my own.’

Bad Bobby gave a number to the operator. He grinned at Daniel. ‘You’ll love Guido. He’s a character-builder all by himself.’