Deal Them Off The Top, Brother, Deal Them Straight Off The Top--With Eric Holden’s “The Cincinnati Kid” In Mind
[Every once in a while a subject comes up, here gambling through the prism of high stakes poker to be the top dog, that someone has written about previously, then gambling through the prism of high stakes pool to be the top dog, and did such a well thought of job at it that good sense requires that person to take a stab at the new subject which in this case is really a variation on the older subject-who and how to get to be number one, numbero uno, in your chosen profession when the guy at the top seems immovable, seems immortal. That was the case when Josh Breslin wrote when he was younger for the East Bay Eye in the late 1960s and which subsequently has been posted in this space with some additional editing about young, handsome and here is the fatal kicker impetuous “Fast Eddie” Felton’s rise in the world of cigarette-strewn and whiskey bottle smoky pool halls until he came up against the king of the hill a guy named Jackie “Tubby” Gleason and got his clock cleaned. Lost his angel girl too to some one-eyed pimp daddy whom she took around the world on the rebound once Fast Eddie had that “loser” tag tattooed on him, on his forehead although anybody even vaguely familiar with that sport didn’t need that identification mark to know he had tapped out, news in such circles moves fast. Yeah impetuous had to go against the tiger before he was ready, before he broke his “impetuous jones” lost everything until he faded and went back to cheap street just another guy hustling nickels and dimes from punk kid amateurs out in some Joe’s Pool Hall in Peoria who didn’t know he touched the big time before he became pimp meat.
So we, the soon to be retired administrator on this site, Pete Markin, and I, Greg Green, now the acting administrator to see how I like it and see if I can help reverse some narrowing of perspective on this site over the past several years when a lot of the action has centered on the turbulent 1960s and not much else, invited Josh to give us what film critic emeritus Sam Lowell loves to call the “skinny” on the biggest poker game, stud poker of course what else, that ever hit the wicked sun- drenched and fucking humid town of New Orleans back in the 1930s, the time of the great hunger among plenty of guys looking to be top dog on the sly. Just to set the stage this is a tale about the rise of another young, handsome and here is without making this thing a cautionary tale the fatal kicker impetuous in the world of stud poker, a guy named Steve McQueen although he went by a million names. I think Josh said at the time of this event Eric Holden, but everybody called him the Cincinnati Kid although as Josh mentioned this kid had never been to that Ohio River city, had never really been north of Memphis and probably couldn’t pinpoint the place if you gave him three chances for a buck.
The rise of the Kid until he hit the buzz saw of ancient Lance Robinson who like Tubby Gleason with Fast Eddie cleaned his clock and sent him back to cheap street to nurse his wounds is what interested Josh. Interested the same way young Eddie Felton interested him when he got the story from Georgie Boy Scott out in some sleazy back-water pool hall when Tubby Gleason finally cashed his check and Josh wanted to what had happened to guys who had taken a run at him when he was in his prime. So when we sent him on the trail after hearing that Lance Robinson had recently gone on to his just rewards as an ancient warrior king of the poker parlors he was almost as eager as when he first sniffed that cigarette-strewn whisky besotted pool hall back in his young reporting days (That changing of names by the way according to Josh pervasive in gambling circles since you never know when you have to skip town owing a million markers to some rough guys and have to head into a dive town where if you used your real name to grab a stake from the hotshot local amateurs they would tar and feather you-they would know how to do that little number no matter how bad they were at your profession.)-Greg Green]
By Joshua Lawrence Breslin
I got this story straight from the “Shooter,” a guy whose real name or at least that is what I always knew him by when I got tipped that he was the guy to get whatever I needed to know about Lance and about his most famous challenger was Carl Malden. I had run into him around Jackson Square in New Orleans. Somebody from the now long faded Lafayette Hotel known more now for fast-hustling hookers paying room rent by the hour (or rather their Johns doing the honors) than poker-faced poker players had tipped me that Shooter might know where world historic defeated pool-player “Fast Eddie” Felton might be nursing his wounds and the Shooter told me that was old hat, Fast Eddie was working the steamboat tourist trade up and down the Mississippi since he got stripped naked by Tubby Gleason and was not story, zero in the pool hall world where it counted down in the human sink along with the whores, pimps and stone ass junkies. I got the Felton story almost despite the Shooter once he knew that I knew he, the Shooter, had taken his liberties like a lot of guys had with this kinky stone ass junkie Angelica who used to be Fast Eddie’s girl until he tanked out while she was riding high with Fast Eddie. I threatened Shooter with the hard ass fact that when I found Fast Eddie which I would do eventually I would lay that very juicy piece of information on him and the guy crumbled like a bent fender in the days when such things happened to fenders almost at the touch. (You already know from Greg Green’s thoughtful introduction that I did get the story, did get some awards for the piece, the coveted Globe for one, and that I did not tell Fast Eddie who had not aged gracefully what with a booze and jone habit stacked together that his angel girlfriend had taken Shooter around the world while Eddie was playing some rich Memphis banker downstairs in his hillside mansion. Fuck it he probably would not have cared one way or the other-yesterday’s news but Shooter was shaky to buy my line.)
The story Shooter really wanted to tell was about a guy named Eric Holden, something like that who was the cat’s meow at poker, five card stud poker in case anybody was asking, the only kind, serious kind to get a man’s blood up and who knew Fast Eddie in passing since they both had hung out at Sam Levine’s pool hall over on the low rent end of Bourbon Street where the amateurs, the rising stars with no dough backing them up hung looking for attention and the guys on the run who kept a low profile in the smoking background. I don’t think from what I learned later that Eddie and Eric knew each all that well since they were running different sides of the street once this Eric figured he would end up in some back alley face down if he played any serious money pools but had this almost mathematically precise mind for stud poker (and nerves of steel a not unimportant attribute if you are going up against the king of the hill). The Shooter told a story about how Fast Eddie always the hustler told Eric that he would spot him three balls if he would “shoot pools” his favorite expression for a hundred bucks. Eric told him to fuck off that “it was not his game.” Yeah both young, from hunger, handsome, ladies handsome but both young men maybe a little bit too blue-eyed pretty boy for the serious aficionados of pool or poker and fatally flawed with those impetuous natures like they were gods, gods pure and simple.
This Malden who got that Shooter moniker for always playing it straight, always telling the story true or as true as any guy who is around any gambling circles will tell the tale. This is the story of the rise and fall of his protégé, Eric, I will tell about how Eric got his moniker in a minute and then if you have been around gambling circles you might recognize the name before he dropped down among the peons, con men and cutthroat artists back in the old days. Back in the hard-bitten wide open days after World War II where there was loose money around and plenty of hungry guys ready to scoop it up around drifter towns like New Orleans and a million other port cities. His protégé being none other than real name, fuck that Eric Holden con, Steve McQueen who always except when he was laying low in some dive town trying to work up a stake to get back in the action carried the moniker Cincinnati Kid. The Kid a real comer until one Lance Robinson took him gently to the cleaners and pushed him back to cheap street and the low rent dive town hustle. Happens every time to those impetuous fools.
Before I retell the Shooter’s tale I had better give you his bone fides. Shooter like a lot of guys before World War II was pretty footloose, was from what later guys up my way in Olde Sacco in Maine would call “from hunger,” I know they were, I, was. Very early on he would hustle his friends for dimes and quarters playing card tricks to while away the time until he got his first stake. Maybe a hundred bucks which was real money then among the squares although before he hit bottom he was using hundred dollar bills as straws for his cocaine habit lines. He moved pretty quickly up the stud poker food chain, got a reputation as a tough guy to beat which is an excellent advertisement in that profession since it will draw all kind of guys to “prove” you are a one-shot wonder, just lucky with the rubes. Probably helped that build-up with about twenty shots of straight whisky. His aim all that time was to build a reputation in order to get a shot at the reigning king of the hill, guess who even back then, Lance Robinson. Well the long and short of it was that when that big match occurred in Memphis old King Lance kicked out the jams on the Shooter in less that twenty-four hours, something of a record in high stakes poker at the time among the top contenders.
That experience left the Shooter very shaken, left him always working the percentages thereafter, win a little, lose a little, and keep your hand in until you find a guy who could beat this Lance. Now when the Shooter is telling me this story he is already an old man, is reliving some younger dreams about bringing the Kid along. After his defeat at the hands of Lance the Shooter also began to toy with other gambling ventures which makes senses since win a little, lose a little makes for very tight budgets and screams from irate landlords and bill collectors. He took up horses, pool, and cock fights which is how his honey to be introduced in a minute got her sexual juices up watching those cocks go at it, strange bitch it seemed to me but the Shooter remained true blue to her even when she blew town on him the last time with a half a hundred thou. (On that barbarian cock fight stuff remember this is Louisiana, Cajun country where such “traditions” were still honored even though the sport was illegal in the state.)
Shooter would drift through the towns all up and down the Mississippi trying as he said “to do the best he could.” It was in Shreveport where he ran into the Kid the first time who was working in a pool hall. Shreveport is also where he met his first wife, this Maggie Ann, the cock fight frill, who was working in Madame LaRue’s whorehouse when he picked her out of the line-up and she took him around the world. This Maggie Ann is important to the story later when the big match comes around but every time the Shooter mentioned her name to me he added “that whore” so he was still hot under the collar about her whorish strutting ways even when they were married, maybe especially when they were married and he was out of town a lot trying hustle dough to keep her in clover. No dice in the end although not for the Shooter’s not trying since she led him a merry chase and that ain’t no lie.
So the Shooter once the Kid hits New Orleans teams up with him, teaches him a few things and starts working to get him a bankroll in order to face down this Lance. Things were moving along well until the Kid ran into some country girl, Laura, whom the Kid always called Tuesday since that was the day that they met and he had had big night cleaning up five Gs off the big boys at the Lafayette Hotel weekly game, with blonde hair and doe-like eyes all blue and he fell, fell hard for her (this despite grabbing Maggie Ann’s free ass for getting his ashes hauled every time Shooter was out of town-and a couple of times when he was in town and Maggie Ann was testing her coquettish whorish ways to see if he would belt her one). Although Shooter didn’t know about the stuff between Maggie Ann and the Kid until she was ready to leave town and wanted to rub it in, rub salt in Shooter’s loveless wounds and told him every detail about every guy she had done, and a couple of girls too, told him she had blown all his friends for good measure, he knew that having a girl hanging over the Kid as he was trying to go for the brass ring was the kiss of death, would be an albatross around his neck. He wouldn’t listen, told Shooter he could beat Lance, beat the old man like a gong without working up a sweat. Almost broke the whole thing off when just before the big Lafayette Hotel game he snuck down to Cajun country to see this Tuesday and have some sex with her which would, no doubt in the Shooter’s mind, make him too loose, too unfocused on his mission.
So the big day comes and everybody who is anybody around Louisiana gambling circles showed up for the Kid-Lance show-down. The Shooter could tell after about fifteen seconds that the Kid had had his way with this Tuesday and that his energies would be sapped. Jesus. Now the way these games, this high stakes stud poker works is a lot different from some back room at Mick’s gin mill where Mick has paid off the coppers for the amateurs to play for a few bucks and he gets a cut off the top for his services. They have certain protocol or they did until guys like Reno Red build a casino on up in the mountains just short of California and Bugsy Segal built Xanadu out in the Los Vegas deserts. A big game would take place in an up-scale hotel where the manager paid off the coppers to keep away and the gamblers would rent out a suite of rooms to do their business in.
High stakes stud poker was, is, played to the death, played until somebody cries “uncle” and can’t or won’t raise anymore dough to stay in the game. So the whole process can take hours, days and a suite with bedrooms and the like is a bare minimum requirement. Besides a high stakes game will draw many interested spectators to see if the champ will be dethroned but more likely to bet on the oncome, bet big. (One of the fastest pieces of action on the sidelines which would put those who bet today on each play in a football or basketball game to shame is to bet on every turn of the card for say $100 a shot-the money changes hands very quickly and somebody can get very rich very fast-or tap out the same way.
In the old days the once elegant now faded Lafayette Hotel down near the breakwaters of the Mississippi River was the stop for high rollers coming to play in New Orleans. Every half decent stud poker player dreamed of showing his (or occasionally her) stuff in those large well-provisioned rooms against all-comers. Up and coming guys would say “I’m heading to the Lafayette” even when they were stumbling around to get stakes to play in Riley’s Pub back room dollar limit games. That included the Kid when he was coming up, when the Shooter was bringing him along and wanted to entice him with that glitter. So the big game was played up in Suite 606, a suite specifically reserved for poker players who chipped into pay the freight, to pay the room rate.
Like I said these events would draw a crowd from all over, all over the East sometimes all the way up to Boston. I mentioned the side bettors but as well in most games others beside in this case the young Kid and the old Lance opted for a seat in the game to see if that day maybe their luck would change and they could by default become king of the hill. Such dreams keep certain men (and occasionally women) afloat in a tough and grimy world. This day would find a few guys who had been “gutted” somehow that inelegant word used to describe cutting up fish or livestock was the term of art for those thrown on the scrapheap by either the Kid or Lance.
There was Pig, a low rent guy who made his money from chiseling cheapjack guys in those back alley games enough to grab a stake and take his chances. Pig that day very early on sweating like a pig would fall early since he always worried about whether his stake would last long enough. Lance made toast of him. There was Doc who kept his numbers book, his lined drawn tables which showed him the percentages with each upturned card. He faded without a whimper once his figures went south on him as they naturally would when one is betting on whether a guy is bluffing or really has that down card to complete some combination that looked promising. Gone.
Then there was “Yella,” a name from a term familiar in race-conscious New Orleans which meant that somewhere along the way he had white blood in him which made him acceptable in white society somewhat, that somewhat being good enough to get “gutted” by both the Kid and Lance at the poker table in his time. Although Doc and Pig were pretty non-descript second-rate actors in this game Yella had an interesting past having gone to New York City when he was younger and set the town on fire at the Cotton Club when he had his own jazz band back in the 1920s Age of Jazz that the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald endlessly wrote about and coined the term. A New Orleans guy like Louie Armstrong was just too black for the white upper-crust crowd which frequented that uptown Harlem establishment but Yella fit right in. Then the Great Depression set in and jazz and jazz bands took a back seat. When he saw the writing on the wall the resourceful Yella won a handful of dough in a game at the Plaza Hotel against a bunch of Mayfair swells and returned to New Orleans and first pimped on Bourbon Street and the teamed with Madame LaRue to set up a high end bordello complete with girls for every kind of taste from a trip around the world to a quick blow-job when the latter was kind of an exotic treat unlike later when high school girls were doing it as a rite of passage in some places to keep some car freak lover at bay down in some Squaw Rock lovers’ lane. (As it turned out although nobody talked about it Yella had pimped for Maggie Ann when she first hit town from Podunk down in the bayou and he would later get Tuesday as a favor to the Kid going down that road although not before as he said “sampling the wares” in both cases.) Despite that interesting background when the deal went down Yella tapped out early. Gone too.
Taking up the last seat, usually six was the maximum number at the table at any one time, was the Shooter who was in for a while as a player until things settled out and he just dealt them out, dealt them from the top. We know Shooter’s story or enough to get us by once we know that he had been “gutted” by the old man and once we know his trials and tribulations trying to keep Maggie Ann in style and away from every stray dog of a man who caught her eye. Tough work which made dealing high stakes poker games to get some dough like child’s play. Shooter would fold after the first day and so deep into the second day it was Lance against the Kid, one on one.
Of course these high stakes games, actually even those back room ones, had a certain rhythm, a certain protocol. One was since the games were long, could be days long, any player could call himself out for a while and not lose his play at the table. Another was that if a player tapped out he or she had half an hour to raise additional cash. For known players, markers, IOUs, were acceptable and many times the only way to keep players going until they had to lay low and pay some dough toward the markers was to take markers or they would be shut out of games. Players, if they agreed, could deal themselves if there was no back-up dealer available that any players trusted enough. The dealer could also call himself out and that is why in most games a back-up dealer was hanging around.
In this meet they back up was none other than Missouri Moll who just then had tapped out having had a bad run at blackjack. She like Yella was interesting being one of the few high stakes female players. They say Moll had gotten her start in the famous Mrs. McCabe’s whorehouse up in the Klondike, up in gold country before that panned out where the girls in that girl-starved country charged (or rather Mrs. McCabe charged) five hundred dollars cash or gold for their “favors,” a quaint term of the times before World War II. This Mrs. McCabe (she was not married but having the Mrs. kept the men away from her door-mostly) is reputed to be the “inventor” of “going under the table,” of giving guys playing cards blowjobs, head, whatever you call oral sex in your neighborhood without having to leave the table to keep up their spirits so to speak (she did not do missionary sex just the blow-jobs although more than one guy would be willing to give her a fistful of gold when she was younger for the pleasure).
Whatever the truth of Mrs. McCabe’s invention Moll learned that little trick as she rose in the ranks of high stakes poker players. Any time she tapped out and needed to raise cash fast she would go to work (not always “under the table” giving new meaning to that expression but in an adjacent bedroom) and within a half hour would have five hundred or a thousand just like that. (Many guys would hope for her to tap out including Lance when he was younger just to keep their “spirits” up.). Now older and maybe wiser she was just backing up the action although she still had enough looks for the older guys to maybe take a run at her if she needed some dough.
Not all the action as I pointed out was around the table. Money is a magnet for the pure bettor and the interested parties with cash to wager on any outcomes. A couple of guys, Mack from Detroit (don’t ask for any other part of his moniker you might wind up floating down the Mississippi) and Ruby Red, can be seen here betting on every flip of the card, on every hand just like today’s sports junkies which as I mentioned before is a tough dollar, is very wearying. The guy though that is important to this part of the story is a guy named Varner, Jody Varner, who father Will left him 28,000 acres of the best bottom land in Mississippi and a company town to feed what he wanted to feed off of. This Jody Varner though was not present by happenstance but because he desperately wants to see Lance fall down. All I have to say is that he had been gutted by Lance and you by now know what the deal is. This Jody seems ready to go through Will’s lifetime of struggle fortune in as short a time as he could between his mulatto mistress and his sporting habits. (As an equal opportunity sexual partner he had his way with the very white Maggie Ann on more than one occasion and would later after the Kid’s fall have his way with that Tuesday when the Kid needed a stake and needed it quickly).
Jody wants Lance beaten so badly that he did not want to leave anything to chance. He has conned the Shooter who after-all only had his reputation for fair-dealing on the line to send a few off-hand high cards the Kid’s way. The Shooter balked but being vain about Maggie Ann and her tramp-like ways which were not generally known he succumbed when Jody told him he was going to send her back to some backwater whorehouse going down on Cajun boys if he did not do as told.
In the end it didn’t do Shooter any good since the Kid spotted what he was doing from the first hand he tried to do it. In the end it didn’t matter for Shooter either since that Maggie Ann ran off with some travelling salesman who promised her the world. More importantly in the end it didn’t matter as well since ancient Lance played the Kid like a fiddle. See the Kid never having played the old man and had only stories about how he gutted one guy or another the Kid had no clue, no clue at all about how Lance played out the play. About how without saying a word he would stand up and seem in pain over a back spasm. How he would after a couple of hours call for a rest while the Kid was hot and in the meantime went crazy waiting for Lance to return. Worse of all he was clueless when he mistook a few false hands that Lance let him win and left him suspecting Lance of senility. That was the real action leading up to the “kill”-that last hand when everything matter and the Kid was like putty in Lance’s hands.
Even though the Kid gave Lance the battle of his life he forgot the first rule of high stakes stud poker when two or more savvy guys are playing. If a guy keeps calling and raising, calling and raising at thousand dollar increments then you best fold and wait for a change of luck because as sure as shooting a guy like Lance has the goods. When he throws a check for five thou and takes your marker it is way too late-you are a goner. The Kid found out $5000 in the hole hard way when Lance turned over a Jack to complete a flush. Yeah, back to cheap street until Lance retired or kicked the bucket. It would never happen. Maybe he should have checked out where Fast Eddie Felton was hanging and take him up on that three ball handicap for a hundred bucks because he was finished as a big daddy stud poker player now that everybody knew he could be rattled. The only thing for certain after the Kid fell down was that sweet girlfriend Tuesday was going to wear out a few beds and maybe her knees getting that dough for the Kid when Lance called in that marker. (Jody even before she and the Kid left the room gave her his calling card and said he expected to see her soon-the bastard.)
