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.)
