"They think they are."
"What makes you think they'll use a trick deck?"
"They confiscate them all the time," chuckled Thaddeus. "They're cops."
"You think I'm just going to walk into a police station, sit down at a table, and scare up a friendly little game?" asked the Rigger.
"I set it up last night," said Thaddeus.
"With cops?" repeated the Rigger unbelievingly.
"With cops."
"If I win, they'll shut us down and arrest half the girls."
"No they won't," said Thaddeus. "First of all, they're already in the bag on the meat show. And second, I don't want their money."
"Let me get this straight: you're staking me to eight hundred dollars, and you don't want their money. Have I got that right so far?"
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
"Their markers," said Thaddeus. "You play them for cash, they'll quit when they run out. Play them for their markers, and they just might drop a bundle. Lose a few hundred at the start, though, just to give them a little confidence."
"I still don't understand. Cops don't have that much money, so what good are their markers?"
"Oh, I'll think of some way to redeem them," said Thaddeus, and suddenly I knew what he planned to do. He turned to me. "You stick with him, Tojo, and keep an eye on my money. I want it all back—minus a hundred for the Rigger's time, that is."
I followed Diggs to the Hothouse—the heated tent that's open from noon to midnight for the crew to take their breaks—and watched him spend the next three hours preparing for the game at an empty table. First he went through some exercises to warm up his fingers. Then he broke out three new decks, placed them in front of him, and began shuffling them. He kept at it for about five minutes, then started turning each deck over one card at a time: somehow or other, he had put every suit in numerical order in all three decks. "Nothing to it," he laughed, when he saw the expression on my face.
"They're marked," I said, though I didn't really believe it.
He shook his head, and started shuffling one of the decks again. "Tell me what hand you want."
"Anything at all?" I asked.
"You name it."
"Four aces."
He shuffled another twenty seconds, then dealt us each five cards face down. I picked my hand up and looked at it: there were four aces, plus a queen of spades. I turned them face up with an exclamation of astonishment.
"Pretty good hand," commented the Rigger. "Want to put a little money on it?"
"No. I don't bet."
"Pity," he said, and turned his own hand over. It was a straight flush in clubs, from the seven to the jack. He laughed heartily, then decided my education had been sadly lacking and showed me the riffle stack, and how to deal seconds and middles. I tried to do it the way he did, but I'm not very coordinated, and it didn't work very well. Then he explained how arm pressure holdouts worked, and the principles of false carding, and finally he took a double-edged blade out of his wallet and demonstrated the fine arts of line work, edge work, and belly stripping.
"It's fascinating," I said when he was through. "But don't you ever play fair?"
"Bite your tongue, boy," he said with arched eyebrows. "If old Phineas T. could hear that, he'd start spinning nonstop in his grave."
"But putting you in a game against a normal man is like taking candy from a baby."
"Tojo," he said, "if God didn't want them fleeced, He wouldn't have made them sheep. You don't object to rigging the games on the Midway, do you?"
"But that's just for quarters," I said. "You're going to be playing for big money tonight."
"You mean it's okay to cheat them for pennies, but not for dollars?"
It occurred to me that that was exactly what I meant, so I stopped and thought about it for a while. There was a time when I thought any cheating was immoral; now I was hard pressed to find a philosophic justification not to cheat for high stakes as well as low. I guess that's what being around Thaddeus does to a person.
We left the carnival at twilight and arrived at the police station just after dark. They were waiting for us, and they had a table and some chairs set up in an empty cell.
Diggs played them as skillfully as Isaac Stern plays a violin. He won the first hand, then lost six straight and started complaining about his luck. He broke even for the next hour, while one cop started losing to the other two, then struck like a cobra and wiped the low man out.
He never suggested markers, but simply let the cop watch for a bit while he lost three more hands, then offered to loan him some money. He started drinking and slurring his words, loosening them up and lowering their guards, then managed to pull a full house against a straight and two flushes.
That wiped two of them out, and again he offered to loan them some of his winnings. He counted out the money so drunkenly they must have thought he was finally ripe for the picking—and sure enough, they each won a moderate pot before he came up with four nines in a stud game to beat four threes and a full house.
It went on like that for another hour, and then he passed out cold. The game was obviously over, and I totaled up their IOUs: it came to just under sixteen thousand dollars.
Suddenly they realized the full extent of their losses, and I told them not to worry, that I was sure something could be worked out. They went for it like fish for a baited hook, and I told them to meet Thaddeus in his trailer in an hour. Then I had them help me carry the Rigger out to the car.
Fortunately none of them thought to ask how I was going to drive him home, since I needed a specially made seat and controls—and a minute after they left us Diggs sat up, chuckling softly and stone cold sober, and moved into the driver's seat.
"Don't you feel sorry for them?" I asked as we sped back to the carnival.
"A tiger doesn't live long if he starts feeling sorry for his prey, boy," he said, still smiling. "Besides," he added, "do you think they'd have felt sorry for me if I was as drunk as they thought I was and they had cleaned me out?"
"Two wrongs don't make a right," I said.
"True," he agreed. "That's why it's so important to become a skillful wrong-doer—so nobody can wrong you back."
"Do you ever lose?"
"Just against that big lion tamer."
"Why him?"
"He's a patient man," said Diggs. "It takes a lot of patience to work with those killer cats, and it carries over into his other habits. He's used to working with dangerous animals—and that's exactly what I am with a deck of cards, boy: a dangerous animal. He watches me, he studies me, he never makes a move until he's ready."
"But you're more skilled than he is."
"Sometimes that's not enough. Those cats are stronger than he is, but he wins, doesn't he?"
"I've never seen you play Thaddeus," I said. "Could you beat him?"
"Thaddeus would never play me," said the Rigger. "In case it's slipped your notice, Thaddeus doesn't indulge in anything that he can't win." He paused. "Might do him a world of good to get taken to the cleaners at something one of these days. Take a little of the edge off him." He paused again, then shook his head. "Not very damned likely, though, is it?"
I thought of the scene to come, and agreed that it wasn't likely at all.