The Digger's Game (11 page)

“But I got to do something,” the Digger said.

“Correct,” Paul said. “I get your solemn word: this is the last time. You’re my brother, but you’re a little old now to need a keeper, and I’ve had my share of the job.
I don’t want it any more. I never had much luck at it anyway.

“I don’t ask for miracles, Jerry,” Paul said. “They’re nice, but they’re hard to come by. You’ll be in another mess next year. You know it and I know it. I don’t want promises of good behavior.”

“Okay,” the Digger said.

“What I want,” Paul said, “what I want is peace and quiet. I want a promise that you’ll go to someone else, the next time you get in the soup. You won’t even
tell
me about it.”

“Okay,” the Digger said.

“I’m not finished,” Paul said. “I’m at the point where a man has to drive a hard bargain. I should’ve done it before, but I didn’t. Now I’ve got to, or you’ll just keep on coming back until you beggar me.

“You started talking about risky things,” Paul said. “I know your history. You went to prison for minding Dinny Hand’s cellar full of stolen jewelry, twenty years ago, and you didn’t learn a solitary thing. You almost went to prison when they found out about those television sets and stereos in the cellar of the Bright Red. It was all I could do to persuade them the help put them in there and you didn’t know about it, and you know I was lying, Jerry, and I knew it too. Your vacation was all that saved you, that time, that and the silence of your friends.

“I know the way your mind works,” Paul said. “I don’t like it, but I know it. When you get the chance, you steal. The trouble is that you’re not a very good thief. You’ve been caught twice. The last time you were next door to a long sentence. You got away that time. You won’t get away again. You see, I know them, too,
from dealing with them in your behalf. They remember a man who got one free. If he slips again, they land on him.”

“Just out of curiosity,” the Digger said, “what do you care, this is the write-off and all? I don’t mean nothing by it, I’m just asking.”

“I’ve been here two years short of the magic number,” Paul said. “Nobody’s ever been pastor of Holy Sepulchre for ten years without making domestic prelate. I’d like to, Jerry, I’d really like to. I’d like for you not to foul it up for me.”

“That’s what I thought,” the Digger said.

“What you think is your business,” Paul said. “Your family deserves something better’n weekends traveling back and forth to Walpole to see Daddy. I deserve something better’n coming downstairs every year to hear about Little Brother’s latest calamity. You tell me you won’t mortgage the house or the saloon to get the money that you lost all by yourself. But there’s no other legal way to get it. So you’re telling me you’ll commit crimes. And I’m telling you, you’ll get caught. Don’t give me that pious stuff about your family. I’ll give you three thousand dollars. For that I get your promises: no more emergency visits,
and no more crimes
. You’ll get caught.”

“You’re buying me off,” the Digger said.

“I’m buying me,” Paul said, “I’m buying
me
off. I told you. I’m making provision for my old age. I’m through bailing you out. Now I’m buying me off. I want those assurances. For three thousand dollars, we’re quits. Take it or leave it.”

“Take it,” the Digger said.

“I’ve got your word,” Paul said.

“You got my word,” the Digger said.

“On both things,” Paul said.

“On both things,” the Digger said.

“I’d better have,” Paul said. “I was really looking forward to that Limited.”

“J
ESUS
Christ
, D
IG
,” the Greek said, “you got way in over your fuckin’
head
. I saw that fuckin’ marker, I almost fuckin’
shit
. The fuck’s the matter with you, you lose your fuckin’
mind
or something? Guys, guys like us, you haven’t got that kind of fuckin’ money. What the fuck happened?”

“You’d make some guy a great fuckin’ wife, you know that, Greek?” the Digger said. “That fuckin’ mouth of yours, come inna my place and start playing it like it was a fuckin’ radio, anybody ask you to do that? Fuck you, Greek.”

“Fuck you, Dig,” the Greek said. They sat at a table at the rear of the Bright Red. They had draught beers in front of them. It was early in the afternoon and the air conditioner made a steady white ripple of interference across the ball game on the television set above the front door. “That’s my fuckin’ eighteen K you’re getting so fuckin’ big about. It was your eighteen, you had eighteen K, I might come around and be nice. But it’s my paper and I know fuckin’ well you haven’t got the dough and that makes you a big fuckin’
problem
. Them I don’t like.”

“Look at that,” the Digger said, “a hundred and sixty-five thousand a year and the bastard can’t get the fuckin’ ball outa the fuckin’ infield, for Christ sake.”

“I assume you’re not down on them,” the Greek said.

“Line’s wrong,” the Digger said. “No way them bastards get five more’n Cleveland, McDowell there. I laid off.”

“Still at it,” the Greek said. “I’m beginning to see it, now, how it happened. You just haven’t got no fuckin’
sense
, is all.”

The Digger thought for a moment. “That’s about right,” he said, “I think that’s about right. I start off, blackjack, twenty-one, they call it. I had eight hundred and twenty bucks and three days and I’m there the first night, I just couldn’t wait.”

“The fuck you doing playing blackjack?” the Greek said. “My little kid knows enough, don’t play blackjack.”

“Look,” the Digger said, “my little kid too. My holy brother. Everybody knows that, got any fuckin’ brains at all. But see, I see this old bastard, brown sportcoat. He’s betting thousand-dollar bills. I never saw more’n two of them in my whole fuckin’ life, and one of them was queer, a guy, stupid shit, wants to sell me a hundred of them. This guy, he’s got the genuine and he’s peeling them off like they’re onna outside of something he’s gonna eat, all right? So, I got to be all right, I see that. I pay a grand, the trip, the eight-twenty’s somebody else’s, I’m peeling fives, it’s gonna last me a long time, I lose every goddamned hand. Which, of course, I’m not gonna do, I’m too fuckin’ smart for that.

“I win some,” the Digger said. “I lose some. The old coot drops twenty of them things that I see. Don’t mean nothing to me. I’m thinking: you grab that son of a bitch in the alley, before he starts, you wouldn’t have to work again for the rest of your fuckin’ life. So, he’s got this credit card. You been to Vegas, Greek?”

“Nah,” the Greek said. “I went to fuckin’ Havana before that fuckin’ Commie took over, I lost my fuckin’ shirt. Nothing like what you did. About five hundred. I
said, ‘I’m not doing that again.’ Got hell from my wife, too. I don’t go for that shit, making other guys rich with my money.”

“Your wife,” the Digger said. “My fuckin’ wife, she knew about this she would fuckin’
kill
me. Anyway, the old bastard’s got a credit card. Shows it, he can cash checks. He writes out the check and this sleepy-looking cocksucker okays it. The old bastard gets his own thousands back, he starts in again. Only now, of course, he’s out the check. Now right fuckin’
there
, Greek, is when I should’ve quit, right onna fuckin’
spot
. But I don’t.

“I think,” the Digger said, “I think, I’m different, not like the old coot. I had about sixty of the house money. I had eight-eighty. Beautiful, I think, old bastard’s using up all the bad luck. I’m gonna sit there and make hay. He sits there, calm as hell, nerves like he’s got he oughta be robbing banks, all I gotta do is bet steady and fast and I make a bundle.

“See what I mean?” the Digger said. “Stupid. No more fives. Twenties. Some good cards, some bad cards, I win some and I lose some, they deal them fuckin’ cards like they’re coming out of a pistol, bang, bang, bang. Pretty soon I haven’t got no money left.

“I was surprised,” the Digger said. “I had eight-eighty when I start playing twenties. I wasn’t playing that long. I win a few. Can’t be. But there it is, they got the whole eight-eighty back and I, I’m out of money.

“Now,” the Digger said, “I’m not like the old bastard. I haven’t got no credit card. But, the tour there, special arrangement and all? I can sign a marker. You know about that, right? You being the guy that winds up with the markers.”

“Sure,” the Greek said. “But the idea is, we’re after the guys, got businesses and all, afford it. Not guys like you.

“Yeah,” the Digger said. “A phone call would’ve gone good, Greek. I didn’t know that. Where I find Richie, kick the living fuckin’ shit out of him a few times?”

“I knew he called you,” the Greek said, “I would’ve called you.”

“Tell you what,” the Digger said, “call him now.”

“Uh uh,” the Greek said, “you owe the fuckin’ money, Dig. Too late now. You signed the paper, you owe the dough. No other way.”

“I did,” the Digger said. “That night I sign five of what you got.”

“That’s when you should’ve quit,” the Greek said.

“Yeah,” the Digger said, “I should’ve quit when I get onna plane, me giving the Greek all that, plus the eight-twenty I give them that they give me. My wife, well, it, I lost almost six K and it’s still early when I get up, and you got no idea, the shit I took, my wife, I told her, I’m spending a grand, go to Vegas. Boy, I got up from that table, almost six grand down, it’s like they had one of them hook-ups, I could hear her and she don’t even know it yet. She still don’t know it.

“I went to bed that way,” the Digger said. “All that stuff they give you, all the broads in Vegas? Well, I don’t screw around much. But I had it in mind, you know, things go all right, maybe I try a little strange tail. Well, that night I’m not interested in no broads. I couldn’t’ve got it up on a bet. I was fuckin’
sick
, is what I was.

“The next day I get up. I feel awful. The kid, his girl didn’t get her period, two weeks late? I’m the same
way. I’m not doin’
that
again, no sir. No more fuckin’ cards. Breakfast and then I’m gonna have lunch and then I’m gonna have dinner, but no more cards for the Digger. This is the first day I’m there, I’m already onna ropes. I’m gonna be a good boy. And think about how I come up with five for being stupid.

“Now that place,” the Digger said, “they got that place laid out pretty good. The pictures they give you, you got swimming, you got the golf, the horseback riding, you can shoot pool and tennis, they got tennis, you want to sit around the pool they got broads with big tits to look at. Great. Except, it’s over a hundred, we’re there, all three days. I never rode a fuckin’ horse in my
life
, and I don’t want to. And besides, they got, they don’t want you riding no horses, they got them casinos open day and night. You go down for fuckin’ breakfast, people gambling. Gambling’s what they got for you to do. That’s all they got for you to do. Unless maybe you wanna go the library, down the airport, watch the planes er something.

“I’m not gambling,” the Digger said. “I sit around the pool, I see a lot of dumpy old fat kikes with baggy tits, they got white and blue hair and their skin, you could make shoes out of it. All these guys look like King Farouk flappin’ around in them rubber things they wear on the feet, and they’re all smoking cigars. Now and then you see something go by, little short of seventy, the old bastards look at her and you know, hundred-dollar whore, made out of sheet metal, you fucked her and you’d cut it off on a rough edge.

“I took about all of that I could,” the Digger said. “Then I go to the movies. I fly all the way across the
country and I go the
movies
. I gotta stay out of trouble.”

“How’s the movie?” the Greek said.

“Shitty,” the Digger said. “One of them James Bond things. They show half of it, I don’t care about the rest. You can’t believe it. It’s all shit. But I stay. I don’t stay, I can go down the street and watch them press pants or something. It’s not as bad as the fuckin’ pool and at least I’m not losing no money. Of course I’m not making no money, and making money, that is what I’m thinking about. Every single goddamned minute. That and how if I don’t think of something, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life, probably, being married to a sawmill.

“I go back the hotel,” the Digger said. “I still haven’t got anything in mind. I meet Mikey-mike, couple the other guys, we have dinner. Food isn’t bad, that I give them. Okay, and we see a show, and a couple after-dinners, and we pay and I get the change in quarters. They’re all going back and forth, one of them gets a hundred off the slots, grabbed it right after this jerk in a raincoat that dumped about five hundred into it, next guy plays roulette, buck a turn, drops two-fifty the night before, still in pretty good shape and all, six hundred buckos left and he likes golf, he’s out all day and he feels pretty good. Tonight he gets it back. And Mikey-mike, shacked up all day, hundred and a half, one of the guys says to him, ‘Lot of bread.’ Mikey-mike says, ‘No, not for what they do to you for that. It’s dirt fuckin’ cheap.’

“So I’m all,” the Digger said, “I feel bad, you know? Everybody’s having a good time, got sense enough,
pace themselves, I hadda spend the day inna movies because I’m a big asshole. So I think, Shit, I can’t spend two more days like this, I’ll be an old man, the time I go home. I’ll play the slots. Man’s got to do something.