One-Eyed Jacks Read online

  Most nights now you could find Tony Broad at the Blue Parrot. He liked to show up halfway through Lee’s first set, with his partner Billy Callahan in tow, and he would walk through the spotlight from the stage so anybody who gave a shit would know he’d arrived. Not that many did. Tony had given Callahan a dark blue suit that he himself didn’t wear anymore. If the kid wanted to keep company with Tony Broad he had to have some style.

  Tony always arrived with his hair slicked perfectly, his thick mustache trimmed, and a razor crease in his trousers. There were holes in his socks, sure, but his shoes were shined and his nails were clean. He made a habit of over-tipping the waiters and Lucky Ned the bartender, ingratiating them to himself, trying to make his presence welcome and enviable. In a club where he knew he wouldn’t be back, Tony never tipped at all, sometimes even ran out on the tab. Tony Broad extended himself only when and where he thought it might do him some good.

  Every night he and Callahan stood side by side at the bar and drank bourbon on the rocks and watched Lee Charles. And Tony talked to Nicky Wilson the nights that Nicky Wilson was there. Which was damn near every night. And he bought Nicky Wilson drinks and he told Nicky Wilson what a great goddamn world-beater of a fighter he was.

  And one night Nicky Wilson introduced him to Lee Charles, as Tony Broad had known he would all along. After that, Lee Charles talked to Tony Broad, although not as much as she talked to Nicky Wilson. That cut no ice with Tony — to him, Lee was playing games with the kid, staying near enough to fan the flame but not so close that she would get burned. The kid was a moron, a walking hard-on, and she was either fucking him around just for the hell of it or keeping things warm while she decided what she wanted. Tony Broad didn’t give a shit either way — he knew what he wanted. For him it was just cat and mouse from here on in.

  Earlier this night he’d met Billy Callahan at Pete’s Grill over on Jarvis for spaghetti and meatballs. Callahan was all excited about something when they met out front and with his mouth full of meatballs, he told Tony about a botched robbery he’d witnessed that morning over on the Danforth.

  “These guys broke out of the Don, I hear,” he said. “So the cops are looking for them to start with. But they’re sitting at the counter and all of a sudden, Jesus, they both pull guns and holler at the morning cook to empty the cash. I’m sitting there three stools away and I’m shitting my pants. So the cook’s cleaning out the till, and all of a sudden this cop walks in off his beat for a cup of joe. You won’t believe what happened next.”

  “What happened next?” Tony was stuffing a meatball into his face.

  “The cop hollers and the guy standing closest to me spins around and shoots his partner right in the fuckin’ head by accident. Trying to shoot the cop, see.”

  “No shit?”

  “I’m tellin’ you, by this time I’m layin’ on the floor. So the cop pulls his rod and hits the other guy in the shoulder and the guy falls down right beside me. So I reached over and popped him one in the mouth.”

  “You did?”

  “I figured there might be a reward, you never know.”

  “But there wasn’t.”

  “No, but I got something just as good. I can’t show you in here.”

  It was all-you-can-eat night at Pete’s, and they finished two heaping plates each before leaving. On the way to the Parrot Callahan took Tony Broad into an alley and pulled a heavy Colt revolver from inside his jacket.

  “The other guy’s gun,” he said. “I guess nobody knew if there was one gun or two. I mean, there’s brains and blood and shit all over the place. I kicked it under the counter and grabbed it later. It’s a .44. I had to clean some brains off it,” he added proudly.

  Tony Broad took the gun and broke the cylinder to check the load. “Not a bad piece,” he said. “You got lucky, kid. You hang on to this thing, it might come in handy some day. You know what they say — God made men and Sam Colt made ’em equal.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Seen it in a movie.” Tony handed the gun back.

  “I gotta go to the movies more, y’know.”

  “You can learn a lot of things,” Tony Broad agreed.

  Now they were standing at the bar in the Parrot, drinking Kentucky bourbon while Lee Charles onstage sang “It Had to Be You.” Half the men in the bar sat and imagined that she was singing the song to them. The other half— the practical types — didn’t dare to dream so big, and maybe it was their loss that they didn’t. The lady herself could tell them — dreams will never hurt you; just so long as you didn’t push ’em too hard or fall too far when they didn’t come true. Even Billy Callahan knew that.

  The kid Nicky Wilson was at the bar, had been there when they’d arrived. And he was in his usual spot, drinking a beer and watching Lee Charles’ every move. She never looked at him when she sang, and the kid, in his blazing ego, took that to be a good sign too.

  When the kid’s beer was nearly empty, Tony Broad stood him another. Lucky Ned delivered the lager and then Tony moved in, smoothing his mustache with his fingertips.

  “How’s the Nick?” he wanted to know. “How’s the training going?”

  Nicky took his eyes from the stage and grinned. “You ever see dynamite, pal?” He held up his huge right fist. “That there’s dynamite, pal. Knocked this nigger out cold today, laid him out like ten miles of bad highway.”

  “Nice to see a nigger who’s good for something,” Tony said. “You fight the Polack when — three weeks?”

  Nicky shrugged and got cute. “Maybe the Polack,” he said. “Maybe Tommy Cochrane if we can get the yellow bastard in the ring.”

  “Aren’t you signed with the Polack?”

  The kid laughed. “Yeah, we’re signed with the Polack, so long as he doesn’t get an injury or something.”

  “I get ya,” Tony said and he laughed along with Nicky Wilson, a couple of half-wits being cute. There was one more to be heard from though. Billy Callahan leaned over to look at the kid.

  “The way I see it,” he said, “you could take Cochrane out in five rounds. Piece of cake.”

  “And what the fuck do you know?” the kid asked. “Five rounds — Cochrane couldn’t last a round with me. He’s an old man and he’s scared shitless to boot. You punks off the street think you know about fighting, you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.”

  Tony Broad saw Callahan’s face go bad, saw the embarrassment there, watched it as it turned to rage. And right away Tony thought about the .44 in Callahan’s coat and about how quick the gun could end Nicky Wilson’s career and anything else he was.

  Maybe somebody else would’ve stepped in as peacemaker, but not Tony Broad. He looked out for himself and nobody else, and the truth of the matter was that he couldn’t give one lousy shit if Billy Callahan shot Nicky Wilson dead right then and there. He was a little worried about the crossfire though and he backed away a step.

  But Billy Callahan wasn’t ready to go that far — not yet anyway. All his young life he wanted to be accepted, and it was going to be a little while longer before he realized that what he wanted wasn’t going to show. For now, he put on a hang-dog look and ate his words.

  “I know you’d take him in one,” he said to the kid. “I don’t know what I was thinking about.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Nicky said and he looked away.

  Tony figured things were cool enough for him to move back into the group. The band quit as he did, and Lee Charles came down off the stage to join them for a drink. She moved in between the Wilson kid and Tony Broad. That left Callahan on the outside. He stood in his ill-fitting suit and watched Lee with the same eyes that had stared longingly all those years ago at the three-speed J.C. Higgins bicycle in the front window of Fletcher’s Hardware. And young Billy had schemed and pleaded and begged but he never got to touch that bike. Not once.

  What he couldn’t know was that Lee wasn’t as distant as all that. If he wanted to talk to her, all he had to do was walk over
and say hello. Lee had no pretensions about what she was — she was a saloon singer, at least for the time being, and talking to people came with the job. Besides, she liked people. People were great, as long as you didn’t get to know them too well.

  Of course Billy Callahan couldn’t have known that — nothing had ever come that simply to him and nothing ever would.

  Lee got a gin and tonic from Lucky Ned, and Nicky Wilson busted his ass to pay for the drink before Tony Broad could beat him to it. Tony could buy the kid beer all night long, but when it came to Lee Charles, Nicky paid the shot.

  “You sure get out a lot for somebody who’s supposed to be in training,” Lee said when she had her drink.

  “I’m a fighter, not a monk,” Nicky told her. “Besides — fighting’s not my only talent.”

  “So I keep hearing,” Lee said.

  “Speaking of talent,” Tony Broad spoke up. “Your voice is sounding sweet as brown sugar, Lee. Why haven’t you ever recorded anything?”

  “I made a couple singles, a few years back,” Lee said. “They each sold ten million copies.”

  The kid was impressed. “You’re kidding,” he said.

  “You’re goddamn right I’m kidding.”

  Nicky didn’t like to be jerked around, especially in front of Tony Broad and the punk Callahan. He straightened up from the bar and put his wall eyes on Tony Broad.

  “Records are nothing anyway,” he said. “Lee’s been in the movies, out in Hollywood, California.”

  “That right?” Tony asked.

  Lee laughed. “One of these nights I’ll bring my Academy Awards in, line ’em up on the bar.”

  Nicky moved a little closer. “You know — Tony’s in the movie business too.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Lee said.

  Nicky, in the centre of things again, was smiling. “Tell her about the movies you make, Tony,” he said.

  And Tony Broad smiled right back at him. That’s it, kid, do my work for me. Fucking pea-brain.

  “What kind of movies you making, Tony?” Lee asked.

  “Oh, you know — love stories.”

  Nicky laughed and leaned closer. Lee could feel the length of his thigh along her leg. She waited a moment then shifted away.

  “I get the feeling these aren’t Doris Day movies,” she said to Tony Broad.

  “These are films for the mature audience,” Tony said. “But if Doris is interested...” He gave her what he considered to be a charming smile.

  “When are you gonna get me some of these movies?” Nicky demanded. “I like to watch them. What about you, Lee — you like to watch those kind of movies?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?” The kid was actually leering now, leaning over her.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “When I was a kid, I always wanted to drink beer. Once I started though, I never had the urge to sit around watching other people do it.”

  Tony Broad laughed out loud. In a second Callahan joined him, but he didn’t know why.

  “You got a mean lip, lady,” Nicky told her. “Someday somebody’s gonna take that out of you.”

  “There’s been a few that tried.”

  “Well, somebody’s gonna do it,” the kid said. “And you know what? When it happens, you’re gonna love it — you’re just gonna lay back and love it, ’cause it’s what you’ve been looking for.”

  Lee stepped back. “My, aren’t we full of it tonight?”

  The kid touched her again. “You know what I’m full of,” he said. “That’s why you’re standing here. You know exactly what it is I’m full of.”

  Lee smiled sweetly. “Shit?” she said.

  She left her drink on the bar and went backstage. Broad and Callahan and the kid watched her walk, each resenting the fact that the others had eyes.

  “You having a little trouble getting to first base with that girl, kid?” Tony said. “Hell, you even up to bat yet?”

  Nicky was pissed off. “What the fuck business is it of yours?” He looked like he would take a swing at Tony Broad.

  “Hey, hey,” Tony said, backing off.

  “Maybe I should remind you who I am, asshole.”

  “I know who you are, kid,” Tony said quickly. “You’re going to be the heavyweight champion of the world and that’s a fact. I think we should drink to that right now. Lucky Ned!” he called to the bartender.

  Nicky Wilson smiled. “Sure, I’ll drink to that.”

  Tony Broad brought out his billfold and thought to himself — Jesus, it was like petting a stray dog, pleasing this kid. What an idiot, what a goddamned, self-centred, shit for brains idiot. And he smiled at Nicky Wilson.

  “Listen, kid,” he said when they’d drunk. “I got a couple of movies and a projector in my room. You can have ’em for tomorrow night if you want. You got some friends who want to watch?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “I’ll drop ’em at the gym tomorrow.”

  “All right,” the kid said. “You gonna watch ’em with us?”

  “No,” Tony Broad told the kid. “I got business tomorrow night.”

  Herm Bell finally kept his date with Sheila Mosconi. His luck had been holding all week and he’d flogged it all over town, knowing that sooner or later the lady would leave. That morning though, over breakfast at Lem’s, he realized he’d turned down a sure piece of ass three nights running and he was suddenly concerned that he was losing his sex drive. He didn’t want to become one of these guys who prefer filling an inside straight to good old-fashioned fucking. He’d phoned Sheila right away and, getting a hard-on just talking on the phone, he’d walked back to his breakfast knowing he was okay.

  That afternoon he bought a new brown suit, with a striped shirt and tabbed collar, a silk tie, and new brown bucks. He got his hair cut at a new place on Parliament, and the barber cut it okay but fucked it up when he combed it and it took Herm fifteen minutes back home to get it right. His mother came in as he was walking out, paper bag full of groceries in her arms, cigarette hanging from her mouth. She looked tired. Shirley Bell had embraced the working life these thirty years and she was at a constant loss to understand her son’s reluctance to do the same.

  “Well, Mr. Big Shot with the new clothes,” she said when she saw him. “Did one of your horses come in for once? Or are you robbing banks these days, Mr. Moneybags?”

  Herm took the bag from her and set it on the counter. Then he grabbed his mother and planted a huge kiss on her cheek. “I did it, Ma. I robbed an armoured truck today. Shot the guard and half a dozen coppers. You gotta hide me, Ma, the cops are coming.”

  “You stop that nonsense, mister,” she scolded, pulling away from him. “You’re not too old for the flyswatter, you know.”

  “I’ll buy you a gold flyswatter, Ma. I’m rolling in it.”

  She shook her head and began to put the groceries away. “I suppose you won’t be here for supper? I suppose you got big plans again tonight.”

  Herm bounced around her, jabbing like a featherweight. “Got a date, Ma. Got a date with an angel.”

  “Who is this angel?”

  “You don’t know her, Ma. Sheila Mosconi, she’s from the east end.”

  Shirley Bell began to cut up a chicken on the counter top. “You can’t take out a neighbourhood girl? What about Eddie Jones’ daughter, Linda. She always liked you, Herm.”

  “Ma, she’s got a mustache like Ernie Kovacs.”

  “They can fix that these days.”

  Herm threw another jab. His mother held the knife out in defence. “Get away, mister.”

  Herm kissed her cheek again. “I gotta go, Ma. By the way, I think I saw a big rat in your bedroom. You better do something about it.” And he was gone.

  Shirley Bell put down the knife and went into her room. The box on the bed was from Eaton’s. Inside was a silk scarf. Navy blue, her colour.

  “Mr. Moneybags,” she said.

  Herm took a cab to pick up his date. She was a crazy girl,
was Sheila Mosconi, with a bit of a reputation and a healthy appetite for any number of things. She’d been half in love with Herm Bell off and on for maybe five years. Sometimes Herm was in love with her too, but it usually only lasted a couple hours.

  Tonight he’d brought along a mickey of lemon gin, a proper drink for a lady, and they tipped it back crossing the viaduct heading back into town. In a minute she had his cock out in the back seat of the cab, squeezing it in her hand and running her red fingernail across the tip.

  “Easy now,” Herm laughed as he watched the cabbie in the mirror. “I thought we were going to eat first.”

  And she dropped her head and put her lips on his cock, running her tongue wildly over the head just long enough to drive him crazy, and then she straightened up and sat primly, hands in her lap, on her side of the cab.

  “I’ll be a good girl,” she promised.

  Herm caught his breath and zipped his pants. “If I thought that was true, I’d have left you at home,” he said.

  They went to the Bamboo Club for dinner. Herm was surprised to see Tommy Cochrane greeting people at the door, wearing a sorry-looking suit and looking about as comfortable as a priest in a whorehouse. Herm didn’t think Tommy would remember him.

  “Sure, Lem’s diner,” Tommy said. “You were with Ollie.”

  “We were a little tight,” Herm admitted. “Up all night playing cards.”

  “Ollie got a regular game?”

  “Wednesdays,” Herm said. “You want to sit in this week?”

  “Maybe not this week,” Tommy told him. “I’ll have to see how things go.”

  “I’m hungry,” Sheila said.

  “She’s hungry,” Herm said to Tommy and they moved off to their table.

  Herm had a sirloin and Sheila some sort of chicken dish that didn’t look to Herm like anything that ever walked around in a barnyard. They had a bottle of wine, some French stuff that even the waiter couldn’t pronounce, and by dessert Sheila had her shoe off and her nyloned toe in Herm’s crotch. Herm paid the bill and they walked out of the club, stopping a second in the doorway to speak to Tommy Cochrane.

  “Heading out?”