Tales From the Darkside Part 31

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 shirt 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 shirt. "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. Sunshine 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.

. . .Native Princess, Tammy Shanter, s...o...b..rd, First Lady, Bold Dancer, and Ryan's Daughter. Now we're . . .

The private joke enjoyed by the grinning man in the white suit grew funnier and more enjoyable.

. . . coming into the halfway mark, and it's Lucy Girl in the lead by two lengths, followed by Tammy Shanter, Native Princess, Bold Dancer, First Lady, s...o...b..rd, and Ryan's Daughter.

Tommy Vale laughed, too, now, a laugh from deep in his throat. The coins c.h.i.n.ked brighter and louder in his wet palms.

. . . and coming into the turn it's Native Princess in front now by a neck. It's Native Princess and Tammy Shanter. It's Native Princess and Tammy Shanter, followed by First Lady, s...o...b..rd, Lucy Girl, Bold Dancer, and Ryan's Daughter in the rear. . .

Horace played taps on the credit-card sized calculator. Though the man in the white suit still did not sweat, his studied insouciance faltered.

But only a few moments later it was Horace's notes that began to falter.

. . . Ryan's Daughter making a bold move on the outside. And coming into the homestretch it's Native Princess and Tammy Shanter. s...o...b..rd anda"Ryan's Daughter! Ryan's Daughter coming on strong! It's Native Princess and Tammy Shanter and Ryan's Daughter! Riding like the devil, it's Native Princess and Ryan's Daughter. It's Native Princess and Ryan's Daughter. Coming down to the wire, it's Native Princess and Ryan's Daughter, neck and neck. It's Ryan's Daughter still pulling!

It's Ryan's Daughter! It's Ryan's Daughter by a nose! At the finish it's Ryan's Daughter, followed by Native Princess, Tammy Shanter, s...o...b..rd . . .

The bloodless smile was back on the pallid face of the man in the gleaming white suit.

"I'll have the twenty grand tomorrow," said Vale, sweating only from the heat.

"What's the line on Detroit tonight?" asked the man in the white suit.

"Not much payoff there. One-to-three."

"I like big payoffs. And little birdies. So put my money on the Orioles. Twenty thousand."

"That's suicide, mister," said Horace.

The man in the white linen suit tipped his Panama Hat to Horace.

"Boss," said Horace in a quick whisper as he turned the calculator over and over in his palm. "That's sixty thou. You ain't got time to lay that off."

Vale stared hard at the man in the white suit.

"I've never refused a bet," Vale said.

The man in the white suit said nothing, but his smile was as broad as it was bloodless when he walked toward the door of Phil's Bar and Grill.

Vale relit his cigar and c.h.i.n.ked the silver coins bright and hard in his damp palm.

That evening the light was murkier in Phil's Bar and Grill. The same drunk nursed his second gla.s.s of beer in six hours, and Phil leaned in a corner, polishing a gla.s.s and listening close to his all-talk station on the Bakelite radio.

At the back the telephone rang, for the thirty-second time in the last six hours, and Horace answered it immediately.

Before Tommy Vale were arranged a hundred sc.r.a.ps of notepaper that made no sense no matter how often they were arranged and rearranged.

Vale reached for Horace's calculator and punched out some numbers with his sausage-like forefinger.

The machine gave no answers, played no tune.

"Hey! How the heck do you use this thing?"

Horace, still on the phone, waved Vale off. Vale shook his head and dispiritedly made an entry in his ledger.

"Put T.J. down for fifty on the Orioles," said Horace, sitting down again. As Vale made out one more slip Horace said diffidently, "You know, boss, someone's pa.s.sing hunches."

"Tell me something I don't know."

Beep Beep Beep Chime.

"Eight o'clock," said Horace. "Wanna watch the game?"

Vale looked up at the round, luminous Ballantine clock on the wall, then down at the flat, rectangular calculator at his elbow.

"No," Vale said. Then he inched the calculator toward Horace with his elbow. "Show me how to use that thing, will you?"

The next morning was different in Phil's Bar and Grill insofar as the light was a little less murky than it had been the night before. Phil brought a bottle of whiskey over to the booth in the back. One slip of paper remained on the table in front of Tommy Vale.

"Hurt pretty bad, huh, Tommy?"

Vale shrugged and waved away the bottle. "Let's just say business has been better, Phil."

"My business has never been better," said the man in the white suit, who stood silhouetted in the swirling light at the front of Phil's Bar and Grill.

Phil returned to the bar. Horace backed off, leaving the place across from Vale empty. As the man sat down Vale took a shoe box from the seat beside him and pushed it across the scarred Formica tabletop.

The man lifted the lid and smiled at the untidy stacks of twenty-dollar bills inside.

Vale crumpled the last sc.r.a.p of paper and tossed it onto the floor. "You always share your hunches with the general public?"

"I like to spread the good word. I like to see people happy. I see happy people, I'm happy."

The man laughed a strange, hoa.r.s.e laugh: like a cat with asthma, or like a strangled man choking for breath.

Vale stared at the man, then blinked. "Horace! Come over here!"

Horace came over from the bar, leaned on the scarred Formica table, and looked hard at the man, who had at last stopped his choking laugh.

"Well," Horace said, "if it ain't a walking public-service message."

"Mr. Sunshine here," said Vale, gesturing toward the man in the white linen suit. "He remind you of someone?"

Horace looked at the man in the white suit even harder than before. "I been thinkin' all along, he looks real familiar, but I can't place the face."

"Horace," said Vale, "try way back. Maybe you remember Bill Lacey?"