‘Sure. Someday maybe I’ll be a fighter, too,’ S-J said. He hooked a left and then a right at the air over McQuown’s makeshift table. Pow, pow!’
‘Pow-pow indeed,’ said McQuown. ‘And how’s your eyes, Master Sullivan?’
‘Pretty good.’
‘Then get them ready, because the race is on! Yes it is! Your eyes against my hands! Up and down, all around, where’d she go, I don’t know.’ The cards, which had moved much faster this time, slowed to a stop.
Sully started to point, then drew his hand back, frowning. Now there were two cards with little folds in the corner. Sully looked up at McQuown, whose arms were folded across his dingy undershirt. McQuown was smiling. ‘Take your time, son,’ he said. ‘The morning was whizbang, but it’s been a slow afternoon.’
Men who think hats with feathers in the brims are sophisticated, Bobby remembered Ted saying. The sort of men who’d shoot craps in an alley and pass around a bottle of liquor in a paper bag during the game. McQuown had a funny plastic flower in his hat instead of a feather, and there was no bottle in evidence . . . but there was one in his pocket. A little one.
Bobby was sure of it. And toward the end of the day, as business wound down and totally sharp hand-eye coordination became less of a priority to him, McQuown would take more and more frequent nips from it.
Sully pointed to the card on the far right. No, S-J, Bobby thought, and when McQuown turned that card up, it was the king of spades. McQuown turned up the card on the far left and showed the jack of clubs. The queen was back in the middle. ‘Sorry, son, a little slow that time, it ain’t no crime. Want to try again now that you’re warmed up?’
‘Gee, I . . . that was the last of my dough.’ Sully-John looked crestfallen.
Just as well for you, kid,’ Rionda said. ‘He’d take you for everything you own and leave you standing here in your shortie-shorts.’ The girls giggled wildly at this; S-J blushed. Rionda took no notice of either. ‘I worked at Revere Beach for quite awhile when I lived in Mass,’
she said. ‘Let me show you kids how this works. Want to go for a buck, pal? Or is that too sweet for you?’
‘In your presence everything would be sweet,’ McQuown said sentimentally, and snatched her dollar the moment it was out of her purse. He held it up to the light, examined it with a cold eye, then set it down to the left of the cards. ‘Looks like a good ‘un,’ he said. ‘Let’s play, darling. What’s your name?’
Pudd’ntane,’ Rionda said. ‘Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.’
‘Ree, don’t you think — ‘ Anita Gerber began.
‘I told you, I’m wise to the gaff,’ Rionda said. ‘Run em, my pal.’
‘Without delay,’ McQuown agreed, and his hands blurred the three red-backed cards into motion (up and down, all around, to and fro, watch them go), finally settling them in a line of three again. And this time, Bobby observed with amazement, all three cards had those slightly bent corners.
Rionda’s little smile had gone. She looked from the short row of cards to McQuown, then down at the cards again, and then at her dollar bill, lying off to one side and fluttering slightly in the little seabreeze that had come up. Finally she looked back at McQuown. ‘You suckered me, pally,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you?’
‘No,’ McQuown said. ‘I raced you. Now . . . what do you say?’
‘I think I say that was a real good dollar that didn’t make no trouble and I’m sorry to see it go,’ Rionda replied, and pointed to the middle card.
McQuown turned it over, revealed the king, and made Rionda’s dollar disappear into his pocket. This time the queen was on the far left. McQuown, a dollar and a quarter richer, smiled at the folks from Harwich. The plastic flower tucked into the brim of his hat nodded to and fro in the salt-smelling air. ‘Who’s next?’ he asked. ‘Who wants to race his eye against my hand?’