Chapter 6 6

Rothko grinned. "I think I'll go to the hare yard and see the girls there, and see if there's anyone out there who still loves me." "I've heard of that place," Luther said, "what's it like?" "You do four things there: get up, go to bed, get out of bed, and go out. It doesn't give you the tenderness and care you need to be truly happy, like I have a lot of tenderness and care." Rothko patted own belly. "On the other hand, we're running around playing poker all over Texas, which doesn't allow us that much time to create lasting relationships, so it's okay for the Rabbit House to be simple."

Winchell shrugged and tucked his head into his jacket: "Then, see you later." "Winchell..." Rothko began to speak, frowning slightly: "Be careful when you go there. In some places, the police have severely suppressed poker, and extortion is also common. Last month In Lubbock, a few guys were playing cards behind Jimmy Raymaster's pool court, and two kids with shotguns messed it up. We're all a little nervous now." "Thanks. I've heard about the Lubbock thing. Apparently one of the players has been blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, bank in the cafe across the street an hour before the racketeering. Stupid."

Winchell got into the 1940 Cadillac he had parked in the hotel parking lot and sat in it for ten minutes, jotting down notes from the previous card game.He already knew the playing styles and trends of Rothko and Luther, and he used a piece of paper to record their affairs. Johnny was from the West Bank and was a new face in the southern poker scene. So Winchell made some extra notes about him in the space in his notebook reserved for pros. For all his skill at poker, Johnny was adept at clouding the judgment of others.When he had a good hand, he would look away slightly from the hand and assume an air of indifference.This trick is very common, but its effect is often magnified in the eyes of poor or average poker players.Once a professional poker player pulls off a few well-placed tricks, the rest of the world is tricked into thinking the player has a bad hand.Winchell wrote "Johnny De Angelo" at the top of a page and began taking notes:

May 30, 1967, 1.77 meters tall, black hair combed back, dark skin, well dressed.Not very good at poker = overestimates his hand, which is really bad, and underestimates how others beat the dog.Good at confusing others when he has a good card: eyes slightly to the right, indifferent, well-disguised = weak means strong.Just like sports gambling.Be more relaxed, be comprehensive. Winchell flipped back several pages in his notebook and jotted down a description of the three auto dealers from Denver.They lost badly, about seven or eight thousand each.He may never meet them again, but one never knows what will happen in the future.Guys like them come running, lose badly, and then come back and lose even more money.He wrote some general notes to them, and left it at that:

Country Club Players.Usually: heavy drinking, wandering attention, poor understanding of cards.The more alcohol one drinks, the looser one becomes.Texas Hold'em, although they called it, they still think this kind of card game is very mysterious.Clearly, they wanted to pretend they were good at poker.The bluffing is obvious, the habit of placing large bets in short hands.Harmon (surname) might try to peek the fold; when he gets caught once and gets a warning, he's done.The other two had good cards when they lost, but Harmon was not like that. He always complained about how he couldn't get a good card, and he almost annoyed Luther twice.One of the other two (named Walker?) likes to "let everyone play honestly" = will call even with a mediocre or rotten hand = hard to fool him with bluffing.

Winchell would then copy his notes onto two sets of 3-by-5 ​​cards, which he kept in his filing box.One set of cards is arranged alphabetically by last name, and another set lists important hands, arranged by date.If he knew ahead of time which players would be there, he would poke through his notes, and like all good journalists, he would have every player in his mind in the short term—who he was, What to do, how to play, when to play, and why to play. Winchell started the Cadillac, drove out of the hotel parking lot, and tipped the waiter an extra ten dollars. In fact, he had already given him ten dollars the night before.He likes the Cadillac being taken care of when he's not around.

Across the street, two men in an old Chevrolet watched as he drove the Cadillac out of the parking lot and onto the street.Winchell memorized the license plate of that car, drew a banker's pistol from his right boot, and put the gun in his lap.But by the time he turned right and turned the Cadillac back toward Big Springs, the Chevrolet remained stationary.It's always good to be cautious.As Rothko said, things are getting tougher. And yet—he ran a finger across a faint scar on his upper lip—it was always tough, and couldn't have been tougher than the Battle of Santa Helena in 1941, which was a Saturday. night, when he ignored one of the basic survival rules Finn had taught him.

After Fein was shot in San Angelo in 1940, Winchell thought more about becoming a Border Patrolman.He had just turned seventeen, and it was time to make his own way.He wasn't interested in college or had the money to go to college, and his mother gave in, almost resignedly. Or, maybe become a cowboy.He's a decent rider and already has some other overland skills, the rest can go where he can get a job.Although the salary is very low, there is no future.Besides, going to the mines was another possibility, but he had heard that the mines would close soon, and that the miners seemed to be coughing all the time.It seems that you are being pushed one way and another, now and then sideways on the path of life, not so much because you choose your own path, but rather because of possibilities. You lead that way.

He grinned to himself.If chance rules everything, be a good servant.Play poker, hell.Stop being that sissy card warlock and start playing the game seriously.At least give it a try. He started hanging around the Sandbit store on Saturday nights, watching the games and studying the games there, where the miners gambled.He didn't learn much.They were careless and slack, they didn't seem to care about winning or losing, and they mostly played draw and five-card stud.Such games were usually played by neighbors, and a dime and a quarter were a lot in those days, when twenty cents could buy a pound of coffee, You can rent a hotel room with a bath in El Paso for $1 or $1.50.Winchell didn't think he was going to make a mistake, and decided to spend two of the five dollars Fein gave him.

By the following Saturday, he was waiting at the poker table for a seat to start, his palms sweating and his legs shaking.At about ten o'clock, there was an empty seat at the table.He sat down with two-dollar change spread out in front of him.That was his first real poker game. The money disappeared without a trace within thirty minutes.He was terrified, as could be seen from his expression and the way he played, he was so nervous that he forgot most of the rules and couldn't concentrate on the game.He pondered, trying to get his money back, bluffing at the wrong time, still holding a pair of threes while the others were calling and raising, and when the man next to him showed On a hand that might have been a straight flush, he drew a straight up to a five.The cards were played stupidly and carelessly.He took out another dollar and lost it within ten minutes.Finn was blinking his eyes somewhere, thinking that he had taught so much in vain.

"Come again next time, kid." When Winchell withdrew from the table, a miner said so. Another miner grinned and said, "Thank you for the drink, young Mr. Dia. Thank you very much for your kindness." His father watched the game and followed him outside. "You gotta calm down, Winchell. Those boys might be a little tougher than you think. They drink all day and do nothing, but some of them have played cards a lot too. Ignore their chatter and play cards." That's it. Tomorrow we'll go to your flat rock and practice again. Consider tonight an expensive educational investment." Things got a little better the next Saturday.When Winchell left the table with a quarter and a quarter, his father patted him on the shoulder and said, "Anytime you can leave a game with a little more than you bet, Then it makes for a good evening of entertainment." The following Friday, Winchell set off alone, and began to turn over and over everything he knew about poker in his head, practicing over and over again, until he was very proficient, so proficient that regardless of nervousness or Otherwise, I can play a game of cards calmly and smoothly.The next night he won four dimes. That's how things went.Lose a dollar, win two dollars back, throw down fifty cents, win back sixty cents.Somewhere, though—here Winchell reveals the core essence that will lead him to the life path ahead of him—his poker moves to a higher level.He was no longer nervous, and began to concentrate on the game of cards. He had been playing Saturday night poker with the miners for six weeks, and he won four dollars one night in poker.The next week he won three dollars, and the following week he walked away with seven dollars in his pocket.At that point, the miners stopped laughing at him and made sure there weren't any open slots in their game. His mother wasn't fooled by Sam's words, and on those Saturday nights Sam would always say, "I think Winchell and I can go to the Sandbite store and see what's interesting there." thing." She looked up at the thin-faced, long-limbed boy, with his brown hair brushed back and smooth, and she said, "You tall men always think you're smart and cunning. Know what's going on at Sandbit's and what you and Fern were up to on a Saturday afternoon. Eileen at the store told me all about it. But your father assured me it was all harmless of." Nancy said gravely, "Have you ever wondered where he's been hanging out some Saturday nights over the years? Sam always had this romantic idea of ​​a gambling life. That's the job of a fool, That's all I have to say, Winchell, except that I still think you should go to Creel Segno, go there and enroll at a teacher's school, and be a teacher, in a steady, respectable way of earning a living. I give up all but that. You are all the same—you men—wild and stubborn, hopeless, beyond even your God-given common sense. No." She wiped her hands on her apron and looked out the window: "Sam's been gone for three days and I'm starting to worry about him. He says there's a lot of smuggling going on around Burchia. He's going with some mounted police on Monday." over there." She knew something was amiss when a Border Patrol truck pulled up to their residence the next day.Sam was lying on a bed in the truck, under a blanket.Three weeks later, Nancy moved back to her hometown near Odessa, and Winchell became a cowboy on the R9, sixteen kilometers from where he grew up. The cowboys he worked with didn't like the way he played poker. "Winchell, you haven't cheated on us, have you?" Winchell replied: "If I tried to cheat on you, you would never know that I was cheating, and of course I didn't." "Well, no offense to you, but playing poker with you is like pouring water down a gopher hole. Three hours of poker for a week's wages is gone, not to mention you won his violin from Ake and six free lessons. These entertainments are too much luxury for us, so we ask you to leave our game." In the evening, in the shabby work shed, Winchell practiced playing tricks and shuffling the cards, playing the tricks that Fein taught him one by one, so as to keep himself alert and vigilant.There was talk of a serious game at Santa Helena on Saturday night.He worked just north of Tlinguya, and it took a lot of horseback riding to get to Santa Helena, about twenty-four kilometers away.But one Saturday afternoon, after finishing his work, he got on his horse and set off. On this cross-country trip, he crossed the east side of Comanche Springs, forded Tlinguya Bay, and circled the southern slopes of Rattlesnake Mountain.As he climbed a hill near the Rio Grande, winds and dust blew from the west and raged across the desert, and he could see a round of succumbing to the Mule Ears on the lower left. sunset. He crossed the river just after six o'clock, and it was getting dark quickly.Letting his prize-winning horse carry him across the Rio Grande didn't seem like a good idea, so he reined in the horse and paid a Mexican nickel to boat him across the river.Winchell, who spoke fairly good frontier Spanish, asked the Mexican what kind of town Santa Helena was. "It's a nice village." The Mexican replied while rocking the boat, and shouted to a foreigner who was wading across the river on a donkey to the north: "Good evening, sir." The donkey's saddle dangled. "See those cliffs that branch off there?" the boatman said, pointing to a place. Well, can't get over the rapids up the canyon. Sometimes there's big, fast rapids in the canyon. If I had a better boat, I could make a lot of money getting Americans like you over the canyon. " Winchell looked down at the splash around the ferry and believed the boatman's assessment of the boat. A dead forty-pound catfish floated by on its belly.The boatman said whatever it was that washed down the Tlinguya Bay from the mercury mines, it killed all the fish that hung around the mouth of the bay. Winchell came to the town on foot and began to observe the town carefully.He already knew that the main poker games were held in a small tavern on the left side of the street, and he was told to listen to the music and walk all the way to the destination, away from the ladies and ladies.One wrong step toward a woman in the village or something like that, and it meant a knife in your stomach.He passed a few women as he walked down the street, and he just had a Stetson on the side, a kind of wide-brimmed tall felt hat worn by cowboys in the American West.Said, "Good evening," and did nothing else.Sometimes the ladies greeted the skinny young cowboy in the same way, sometimes they just smiled, sometimes they didn't respond. His poker consciousness slipped away from him for a moment as he watched the ladies and gals.They're cute, slim, blooming like flowers, and seem ready to dance, or do anything else a man would do with a woman.His concept of the latter has always been vague, but he has a general feeling.He had been thinking about women lately, after he had listened to the conversations of his workmates in the shed, the cowboys describing their adventures in the cabins of Ogiego and San Vicente with eloquent detail. He brought eighteen dollars for bets and five dollars for travel.That's more money than he could have imagined a few months ago, thanks to the miners at the Sandbit store, and the good-natured cowboys at R9.Winchell now plays poker with confidence, developing what Fein calls a "never screw up" style.He became a highly focused, aggressive and bloodthirsty poker player. The eyes of the predator and the prey are different. This eye refers to the general feeling of the cascading law of the food chain. Winchell's eyes are no longer those of the prey.When he was full of confidence in himself, he also put Finn's warning behind him. He felt that Finn's claims about those cheating at cards must be exaggerated. Things weren't going well in Santa Helena.Seven of them, including him, were playing straight jackpot poker.Winchell thought he was playing well, but he kept losing money on big bets.Two people seem to have won most of the money.One of them was earth-colored, narrow and pitted as if washed with disinfectant, and his hands were quick.The other was a big, bearded, gruff man in a brown flannel shirt and a faded gray fedora.The place is lit by kerosene lamps, and in another room three meters away, a man on a phonograph is playing the same polka over and over again, and the sound makes the scene even more confusing, human nature The inclination, the night, and the pain of those who go or pass, make people more and more intoxicated. After losing nine dollars, Winchell began to suspect that there was not only bad luck at the poker table, but also something else operating in the dark.He began to go through all the ways of identification in his head, the tricks that Finn had put in him but he hadn't thought of for a long time. Then he saw it.One shuffles the cards from above with the right hand, flexing the fingers of the other hand as they shuffle, wrapping around the deck.But when the earth-colored man draws cards from the bottom, the fingers of his left hand sometimes droop in an almost imperceptible motion.This is a near first-class bottom dealer gesture. Winchell played a few more hands cautiously and continued to observe.The lean man had been peeking at the discarded cards and picking the cards he wanted out of them, placing the chosen cards at the bottom of the deck before shuffling them.The bottom card either went to himself or to the bearded man.By then, Winchell had lost ten dollars and was furious.Maybe they see it. "Okay, cowboy, you didn't get what you wanted tonight, did you?" said the skinny man with the bottom shuffle. "I think there's a reason it happened," Winchell replied. "What could that be, cowboy?" The earth-colored man gave a smug smile. There was silence at the poker table.Four Mexicans were playing cards, plus three foreigners.The Mexicans exchanged glances and began to roll back the chips. Winchell pointed at the dealer and began to speak, but he didn't get a chance to get the words out, and instead fell back on his chair and without a sound, the bearded man punched him hard with the back of his hand.Winchell was strong and muscular thanks to his cowboy work, but he didn't yet possess the strength of a man.He struggled to get up, but the big man rained punches and kicks on every inch of his body. He awoke hours later to find himself lying in the dust behind the tavern.The village lights were out, and he was covered in bruises; at least two ribs were split or broken, and he probably had a bit of a concussion.His face was covered with dried blood, and there was a deep gash on his lip.He guessed the cut was from the turquoise ring on the big man's right hand. At sunrise, he finally persisted and came to the river, propping up his left half of the body, still dizzy.Of course, his pockets were empty, but the boatman still crossed the river. "It's a nice village, sir, but it's a bit out of line on a Saturday night. I've seen it before. You can pay me next time." The boatman pointed to a little boy sitting in the bow: "This is my grandson, named Pablo. He will be tall and strong in the future, and work hard on this land like his father." Twenty-one years after Santa Helena, this time in Del Rio, at a salon called Border Dogs, they locked their doors in the middle of the night and engaged in vigorous sports.Rothko winked at Winchell across the table.The cards got weird and the game smelled a little off.Winchell understood Rothko's questioning eyes, and he shrugged his shoulders in an undetectable movement, expressing the meaning: "Wait a few more hands and see what happens." He had been watching the man sitting next to Rothko for some time.Every time he looked at the man, some old call in his memory kept pushing him, reminding him.During one intermission, the man bragged about how he caught a cheat in Los Angeles years ago.Said the guy was a real son of a bitch with a palm mine hidden in his boot.Winchell was reclining in a chair with his thumbs hanging from his straps, but when he heard mentions of Ray Palm, the boy, and a shooting in Los Angeles, he sprang to his feet, focused .That's how Finn died. Winchell conceded early in the next few hands, giving him a chance to study the storyteller carefully, as he shuffled the cards.He studied the man's pale, feeble complexion... and... the almost imperceptible drooping of the fingers of his left hand as he shuffled the cards.Here it is: Santa Helena.Time and the added weight had masked the man's face, but now Winchell recognized him.Even the words he said that night came back: "Well, Cowboy, you didn't get what you wanted tonight, did you?" When Rothko looked over again, Winchell nodded. Rothko picked up his two hundred and eighty pounds, passed the people sitting next to him, and threw them all on the shuffler.Winchell stood up immediately to cover, his eyes darting over each of the remaining players, knowing that the bottom dealer couldn't possibly be alone.A switchblade was drawn from a pocket, and Winchell drew a Colt from his boot at the same time.The knife fell to the ground, and the hand holding the knife was sent flying to the ceiling, and Rothko was beating the cheat. "Enough, Rothko. Take our money and get out of this damn place," Winchell growled. Winchell, furious at the fraud and doubly over Fern's death, jerked the sleazy bottom shuffle up onto a chair and pointed the Colt gun just above his nose. Even though Finn wasn't perfect, it really made him feel sad and angry that he died at the hands of this shameless man who sat in front of him and was beaten to blood. "You played tricks on me once in Santa Helena, when I was a young cowboy trying to play fair, and you were mean and you ain't any better now. By the way, The man you killed in Los Angeles was a friend of mine." Winchell's eyes slowly scanned the other players, then looked down at the dealer, and said to him again: "In the future, you have to pay attention to me, because if I see you in Texas or Play cards anywhere else, and I'll shoot you up the ass." Now, all these years later, on Memorial Day in 1967, he was starting from Abilly, heading west toward Big Spring.He was in his forties, and everything was going well, with $100,000 in deposits in various banks in Texas, and $10,000 hidden in the door panel of his Cadillac, not to mention Mention the bets he stuffed in his pockets and the money he won last night.Not bad for those days, poker players caught up with the good times, and their glory days were coming, when they would be running all day around a ring of southern cities—including Oklahoma, Running around Arkansas, Texas, looking for games there—good games, places to pay good money, and build a solid reputation as a capable poker player. After that bad night in Santa Helena, that kind of life had already begun.He stayed at R9 for a few more months, made a small bet, and pulled it out again.He traveled a million miles, perhaps millions, first on a coach and then on a Pullman train, when the train service became less and less accessible , he got into his car again.