Part 31 (1/2)
Tommy Vale was nicknamed ”The Odds.” But all the people who had called him that were dead, or had moved to the West Coast. Now he was just Vale, and no one knew that he had once been big and good and hot enough to merit a nickname. Like Horace, Vale was fifty-seven and balding. He, too, wore a white s.h.i.+rt with an open collar, but Vale had suspenders and a bigger paunch than Horace.
Its fleece was white as snow.
”Cut the concert, will ya?” said Vale, looking up from the newly arranged sc.r.a.ps of penciled notepaper before him. ”Ya givin' me a headache.”
”Yeah, boss.” Horace always deferred to Vale immediately. Afterward he decided whether he should then protest or not.
”Whaddaya practicin' for, Carnegie Hall?”
”I got it for you.”
”Well, that's very sweet of you, Horace. Only I don't trust them things. I been calculatin' thirty-one years with this *n' this.”
Vale tapped the chewed eraser of the stub of the number 1-1/2 against his noggin.
”It's the modern age, boss. You gotta keep up. n.o.body's phoned in a bet for three days.” When he realized that this sounded as if it might have been a reproach, Horace recast the observation in a softer light: ”It's been getting pretty quiet in here lately.”
”I keep up,” said Vale, as if everything were a matter of contest between hexagonal pencil and rectangular calculator. ”I never been cheated and I never been broken. I'm still the best.”
Vale opened his ledger and began to make an entry.
Horace, taking the cue he knew so well that he hardly knew it was a cue, wiped his brow with the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt. ”It's hot,” Horace said.
”I need a soak.” Horace used old slang. He knew the newer terms, but he old slang reminded Horacea”and Vale, he liked to supposea”of a richer, noisier time. ”You want one?”
”Yeah, I want a soak, yeah,” said Vale grumpily. ”And take that thing with you.”
Horace got up slowlya”he's gotten arthritis at that booth at the back of Phil's Bar and Grilla”and headed for the bar.
Vale looked at the phone and resisted the temptation to put in a coin only to rea.s.sure himself the machine didn't need repairing. He opened his ledger again and made up another double entry, three bets that were never made, exactly countered by three equally imaginary payoffs. He shuddered against a sudden draft of clammy air that blew his sc.r.a.ps of papers into his lap, onto the floor, up into the air.
”Hey, Phil,” Vale called, without turning around. ”Cut the fan a bit, w.i.l.l.ya? Ya freezin' me out.”
At the bar, Horace and Phil looked up at the overhead fan. The blades were rusted and still.
”It's off now,” said Horace.
”Didn't even hear the door open,” said Phil, not speaking of the fan, nor of the gust of wind that should have been welcome but wasn't, but rather referring to the figure who stood with one nervous hand tapping the scarred rim of the pool table.
The man was young and thin. He wore the sort of gleaming white linen suit that shows off tans and even sunburns to such splendid advantage in Florida and California. But this was Brooklyn, and the man had no tan or burn. He skin bore a dingy, blotched pallor. He wore a white Panama hat with an attempt at jaunty insouciance that didn't come off.
The man pa.s.sed the drunk sleeping at the bar.
He walked by Phil and Horace.
He went to the back of the room and seated himself in the booth across from Tommy Vale.
Vale squinted at him, as if wondering if he knew him or hand known him.
As if wondering why the man didn't sweat. As if he were trying to figure out why the man smiled the way he smiled.
”Somebody ticklin' you leg or what?” Vale asked, and made a show of leaning down to peer under the table.
The man smiled a moment more, opened his mouth to speak, and then didn't speak. he reached into the breast pocket of his white linen jacket fora”for something that wasn't there. He frowned. He patted both jacket pockets at once, nervously. He pulled a sc.r.a.p of notepaper from his left-hand jacket pocket and peered at it.
”Five hundred on Ryan's Daughter to win. In the first at Belmont.”
Vale raised an eyebrow for the benefit of Horace, who brought his soak.
”Try again, kid. She's forty-to-one, long. Don't want you to get hurt.”
The man took his right hand from his jacket pocket and dropped five silver dollars on the table in front of him. He pushed them across the table to Vale.
”Don't worry, it's a nickel,” he said, employing the old slang for five hundred dollars. ”They're uncirculated.”
Beep beep beep.
Chime.
”Hey,” snapped Vale, glowering at Horace. ”Stop playin' with that thing when I'm doin' business.”
”I didn't. It's the clock.” He held up the calculator. ”It does that every hour.”
Vale pushed the five uncirculated silver dollars back across the scarred Formica.
”Too high for you, Tommy? Tommy Vale.”
”Too high? That phrase aint't in my dictionary. Try too late. Post time at Belmont's two.”
He nodded toward the clock on the wall. Two minutes past two. The man in the white linen suit turned slowly in the booth to look at the time.
His smile went away again.
”Philly!” Vale called. ”Turn on the race. Let's see what Mr. Suns.h.i.+ne missed.”
. . . and the horses are approaching the starting gate for the first race after a slight delay here on a sweltering Sat.u.r.day at Belmont Park . .
The man in the white suit relaxed and pushed the coins back across the table to Vale.
Phil turned the volume higher on the Bakelite radio.
They're off! And it's s...o...b..rd on the inside, leading Lucy Girl by a length, followed by Tammy Shanter, Native Princess, First Lady, Bold Dancer, with Ryan's Daughter bringing up the rear. . .
Vale raked the coins off the edge of the table and into the palm of his hand. They c.h.i.n.ked bright and silver there.
Bold Dancer's making an early move, moving on the outside. Now it's Lucy Girl. Now it's Lucy Girl and . . .
Vale relit his cigar, without any idea of how long he had chewed it unlit. He stared at the man in the white suit.