Balling the Jack

Harper

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the USA by Simon & Schuster 1997

Published in paperback by HarperCollinsPublishers in 1997

Copyright © Frank Baldwin 1997

Frank Baldwin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006499770

Ebook Edition © MAY 2016 ISBN: 9780008191474

Version: 2016-05-09

FOR LORA

I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

—Ernest Nomingway, The Sun Also Rises

Balling the Jack (slang)–To risk everything on one attempt or effort.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

LET ME tell you about the bets.

I work as a paralegal in a Wall Street firm. Every Friday morning they pay me $447 and every Friday night I bet four hundred of it on a ball game. If I lose, I go the next week on the rims. But if I win—and I win a lot—I take on the town.

Here’s the system: All week I mull over the matchups, and by Friday one or two start feeling like winners. Friday after work I buy a Foster’s Oil Can at the deli across the street and start the long walk up the East Side to Adam’s Curse, my home bar, where my bookie Toadie waits on his stool. I go over the games, weigh the angles. Nothing too scientific in my method. I’m partial to hot pitchers, even on the road, and I steer clear of the big favorites. Pick them and you have to give away two or three runs to Toadie, runs that always seem to come back in the late innings and bite you in the ass.

Just last month I had the Braves giving three against San Diego. They coasted into the ninth up 8–2. I had the money counted already and was spending it in my head on the blonde at the jukebox. Had the restaurant picked out, the wine, was holding the cab door for her, telling the driver my address, thinking I’d give my roommates a little treat, maybe even put them in the mood.

Then, bam! The rookie that Cox trotted out to pitch the ninth walked the bases loaded, Joyner unloaded them with a shot into the upper deck, and just like that the bet, the date, a week of fun down the toilet, and Toadie clapping me on the back, saying, “Tough one, kid.” That’s one of two phrases he knows. When I win he says, “You were born lucky, kid.”

Tonight I’m going with the Phillies on the road over the Cards. Schilling starts for the Phils and he’s on a big-time roll. It’s an even game, too, so I don’t have to spot Toadie any runs. Just the usual four bills once I’m in the door. Most bookies don’t need the cash up front, but Toadie works the low end of the betting public, and he won’t issue a stub without the dough in his pocket. He’s not much to look at, Toadie. The same combat pants every day, a sweatshirt over his gut, and a brown rug on his bowling-ball head. Coke-bottle glasses that make his eyes bug and lips stretching out of his face like—you guessed it—a toad. A money belt around his waist for the stash.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in Adam’s Curse when he wasn’t drinking bourbon and taking bets. He’s worked some deal with the owner, Stella, who’s in tight with the cops. He can afford to slip her ten percent or so, I’m sure, because Toadie takes down the regulars pretty good. In a year of betting, though, he hasn’t made anything off me.

Tonight he’s in his usual spot and grunts in greeting as I walk in.