Chances Are...
Copyright© 2017 by Stultus
Chapter 1
Just how lucky could a man get?
“Fif’teen two, fif’teen four ... and a point for the ace to make thirty-one ... and, of course, a dealer’s point ... that’s six and game!” Pilsner declared, with an entirely too self-satisfied grin on his homely bespectacled face. This was the third time this evening that he’d beaten me at cribbage – an unfortunately far from unusual occurrence. On a good night, I could maybe beat him one time out of three and most evenings three straight losses in a row would be about the limit my meager pride could take, but it seemed that we still had a bit of time to kill tonight.
Pilsner might be lucky at cards (he always was), but like me, he was unlucky in love ... and everything else that counted for that matter.
“One more, Chancer?” he asked, and I just nodded. Pilsner reset the pegs on the cribbage board and gathered up the cards to reshuffle them while I mournfully reexamined my empty beer cup. It was still empty, more’s the pity.
Beer was cheap enough here at the Arcade, just a dime for a big paper cup that’s almost but not quite a pint, but our pockets were extra lean this evening. Counting our scant change earlier in the evening, we’d decided to ration ourselves to just two beers each for the evening and call it our dinner. The other 35 cents we had left over would be needed, we’d figured, to put a single gallon of gas into the van later tonight. Gas was much cheaper, just under two-bits a gallon across the river tunnel west into Gardenia, but our van, (actually owned by Pilsner’s cheap-ass brother), was already running on fumes as it was. We’d never make it. Besides, we’d burn that up all of that gallon of cheaper gas just driving back across to Empire Island again, so what would be the point of trying.
Our scrounging had been real meager this last week, but without gas in the tank our plan for salvaging tonight would not happen. Scrounging for salvage meant we’d search out all of the factories, rail yards, local construction sites, and building renovation projects for unsecured property of value, anything not nailed down would be considered ours to take. And if something can be pried loose with a crowbar or the chain cut with bolt cutters, then it’s most definitely considered very unsecure, and still ours ... as long as we can fit it into the van before a security guard shows up.
Profit? Not so much ... whatever we scrounge, Pilsner’s older brother Michael will buy for his scrapyard on West 39th Street, for about a dime on each dollar that bastard will then resell it for later.
Cheating his own younger brother? Yeah, he’d do that ... and screw him over twice more on weekends! When his old man died about eight years ago (another mean and tight bastard), Pilsner should have gotten half of the scrap business, but he got cheated out of it when his older brother claimed everything. We were both upstate at the time, doing a short bit of state time for a bungled burglary. Then, we’d barely been back home again for a month when we quickly got pinched again during another fiasco landing an even longer sentence after that for a few more years of hard time. Since then, we’ve never had the dough to find a decent lawyer to fight it out for us and try and make things right.
So we work freelance for the bastard ... whenever nothing else better is available, which is unfortunately pretty much most of the time.
Getting a real job that earns a decent wage just ain’t going to happen for either of us. First of all, we’re Abattoir boys, raised on the mean streets of South Hell, below West 34th Street on the wild Westside. And we’ve both got two strikes now on our criminal record with no desire whatsoever to go down for a third time! So we scrounge and play it safe, which is way more important to us than angling for a fast or big score, especially as part of someone else’s caper. You can fool us once, but we won’t be suckered twice!
When we went on that first trip to the big house we were both young and stupid; a pair of palookas just barely old enough to get real time at a pen, and not just a brief visit to juvie hall anymore. The second time we’d gotten caught we were just the hired chumps for a local up-and-comer named ‘Rags’ Reilly and we got ribbed up, totally screwed when he quietly took the bunk and left us to be caught holding the bag. We could have taken a deal and ratted out the finks who’d made us their patsies (even the dim peepers who pinched us could tell that we were just cheap hired help) but we stayed mum and took the rap.
It’s not wise to rat on anyone here in the Westside, especially South Hell ... or worse, our local streets between West 34th and 14th that we locals all fondly call the Abattoir, named after all of the slaughterhouses that used to be there. It’s pure skid row and the end of the line for most people; the hardest and meanest streets there are on this island, where you can’t sink down any further and all hopes go to die.
Rags got his street name because he was the fanciest dresser in the entire Westside. He was also best pals with Micha since their school days which made me wonder if Pilsner’s brother had planned to set us both up right from the start? Getting his buddy to patsy us up for one of his capers just to conveniently get rid of us for a while!
Unfortunately, Rags lammed off on his own not too long before Pils and I made parole last year. I’d been waiting eagerly to do some jawing with him to find out why he stung us ... and get him to spill if Micha had put him up to it! All the trouble boys and wise men I’ve asked locally since have given us squat because they protect their own around here and don’t take sides in most petty local squabbles. Pils and I are just low level associates of this outfit, at best, which earns us usually squat for respect. No one willing to discuss the matter with us admits to having a definite wire on him or has seen him here in the neighborhood since, nor up in North Hell either. We did hear one vague rumor that he was a capo for one of the Jewish outfits running the garment district now. Another yap put us wise that instead he was a button man (a made-man and proven loyal killer) for one of the Italian rackets in the theater district. Either way, he wasn’t wearing out much shoe leather on these hard, unfriendly streets around here these days.
He’ll turn up eventually ... and then we’ll give him the third degree until we get answers.
Tonight, we’re here because we heard on the street a vague rumor that maybe something’s happening, at least for some of the bigger mugs working our local outfit, so perhaps just maybe a small crumb or two from it might land our way. That’s why we’re here at the Arcade just inside the southern border of South Hell proper, sitting and waiting ... just hoping we might get a little lucky – for once.
I’ve been familiar with the Arcade for the most of my life and I still think it’s one of the more handsome buildings in SoHell. It’s also something of a local landmark, marking the division between South Hell and the lower Abattoir neighborhoods. It was neutral territory for all the independent street gangs of the Westside, back in the day, before the current Irish organization solidified its hold during Prohibition. You can’t miss it, it’s a three-story red brick building with bright neon window lights right at the northeast corner of West 34th and 10th Avenue. It’s still a pretty swell sort of joint inside too. Back in the 1920’s, after the First War when my father moved to Empire Island, it was a run-down second-hand furniture store with tenements on the top two floors. Then the ground floor was converted into a sweets shop with a long walnut bar counter with a soda fountain.
When we were teens, the place was turned into a bar and game room, complete with pinball and other game machines and pool tables. That’s when it got the fancy flashing neon ‘Arcade’ sign outside too. Instead of neighborhood families and kids, spending their scarce coins on a weekend evening sweet treat, now the joint is full of booze hounds, muscle-boy brunos and gunsels, hatchet men and their molls. Or locals paying off or wanting favors, or just there to show respect ... to see and be seen on a Saturday night.
The long walnut bar counter is still there, but behind the counter it’s beer that’s poured there now, and stronger stuff too, if you’ve got the taste and cabbage to pay for it. The wood and the long brass foot-rails could do with a bit of a polishing up but really not that much over the years has changed in here.
Upstairs, everything has been remodeled and is new. The whole second floor is now an after-hours nightclub and casino, but you’re a sucker if you think that you’ll beat the house’s odds up there! Empire Island and greater Megatropolis have no shortage of those folks, though, and it can get pretty busy here on most weekend nights. It’s a popular local place to take the fancy lady for a bit of sport, if one has the dough to burn. It’s also a swell place to meet the local chippies, in their best (and tightest) dresses, who are always looking to spot a charming young mug or promising gunsel on his way up. Those gals on the prowl never look even once at either Pilsner or me, though.
Above the club, the whole third floor is the private digs and office of our local big boss, Connor O’Neil, crime boss of the Lower Westside. From here, he calls all the shots for SoHell and the Abattoir. You don’t ask to see him ... if he wants you, he’ll send for you. That’s usually bad news. His father was the infamous ‘Smiley’ O’Neil, ‘the banty rooster from hell’, who was a legendary street fighter, known for his skills with a lead pipe or a gun in territorial disputes with rivals ... namely anyone in the entire Westside that didn’t kneel to him. By the end of Prohibition, he was boss of bosses of the entire Mid-Westside and his former Irish street gang ruled all organized crime in his territory ... and a seat of honor at the table when all of Empire Island’s top bosses met, and on equal terms with the other kingpin’s from the other surrounding boroughs of Megatropolis. Or so they say.
Not a bad inheritance! These once nearly entirely Irish slums and ramshackle tenements are now much more diversely mixed, mostly with Italians now, but also Poles (like Pilsner’s family) and other European refugee families from the last war without a dime in their pockets. The younger and bolder greaser street gangs are starting to give the older Irish leadership a bit of trouble and they want their own territories. Especially the Italians ... who want to formally put our outfit under the heel of one of the five local Mafia families.
Some chinwaggers say sooner rather than later, there will be a new war for control of the Westside. Others think that it will all work itself out peacefully. Me? If I had to lay down a wager, I’d guess that the younger Italian street gangs are likely to want to fight it out. This new generation from the streets, like Pilsner and myself, were all too young to have been mass drafted as army fodder for the Pacific War. Unlike most of the older vets here in O’Neil’s organization, most of those younger kids just don’t likely know what being in a ‘war’ really means ... and these older killers are going to likely teach the young angry snots a hard lesson or two before their will be some lasting peace around here again!
Connor is supposedly not quite the crazed killer and sociopath that his father was ... and today he doesn’t command all the local streets and gangland associates that his old man once did. His old man also didn’t have to deal with the growing territorial menaces from ‘costumed super-villains’ (or heroines) either! Some things before the last war were just simpler, it seems to me.
Anyway, I know the Arcade well, every damn inch of it. It was my father’s business, that original depression era candy store, and I was born right upstairs on the second floor, where we lived ... until dad made a foolish gamble and lost, well ... everything. My life was never the same again afterwards.
So here we are, killing time by playing cards. We usually come here on Saturday evenings, mostly just to be ‘seen’, to show token respect to the big boss in charge of the entire Westside, and be there in the extremely unlikely event the great man or one of his lieutenants deigns to bestow any largess upon some of his lowest-rung minions and subjects. The beer is cheap here too and it’s not a bad place for us to while away a few hours while playing cribbage. If we’ve got a pair of dimes to spare for the beers, then we’ll kill time playing cards here.