Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter Page B

five players in the game, and it was a long time before Billy shot again. But he was not conscious of the wait; he was too busy watching the shooters. When it was his turn, high man had a score of 32, and there were two kenos on the board. He sized up the lay of the balls carefully. Somebody yelled, “Shoot the fuckin shot,” but he paid no attention. This time he had a clear shot, no bank necessary. It was the five-ball, whose holes were in the back row; he could try for a keno and five points, but now he distrusted his stroke for this game, and suspected that if he shot a direct shot he would go off the back again. There was a cluster of balls in the middle of the platform, two of them not in holes but just leaning against other balls. The shot would be to play the five into the pack; but if he did so, his cue ball would also go up onto the ramp, and wipe out his score. Billy’s stroke was good enough for him to be able to hit the five with lower left draw so that the cue ball would end up going back and forth across the table, but to do so he would have to hit the five too hard. There were other balls to shoot at, but none of them in good position. There was only one other alternative; to massé the cue ball so that it curved up behind the five and drove it straight into the pack instead of at an angle; then the cue would spin backward. But this was a circus shot, extremely difficult, and making the shooter look like a show-off and a fool whether he missed or made it.
    But it was the only shot by which he could catch up. So, estimating carefully, stretching his fingers into his high, massé bridge, Billy fired. The cue ball took off in one direction, then curved sharply up behind the five, struck it, and zipped back to the end rail, where it hit two other balls and came to rest. The five rode up the brass, powered by spin the reverse of the cue ball’s, hit the pack, imparted its spin to the other balls and knocked them free; they wobbled, and then settled in other holes. The five itself landed in the two hole, but Billy got the score from four other balls as well: a total of 44 points.
    “Jesus H. Christ,” somebody muttered.
    “What, no kenos?” cried the idiot, “forty-four points for the gennleman, stepped out into the
lead
... “
    Billy felt better.
    An hour or two later, when he looked up toward the door, he saw Denny and Jack Levitt coming in again. But he did not care; he was not even interested. He could make plenty of money right where he was; he was already twenty-odd dollars ahead, and there was nobody in the game who could really beat him. He knew he was having beginner’s luck, too, but he was glad for that; he would take any luck he could get.
    Denny came up to him after a while and said, “Hey, how about loaning me a buck?”
    Automatically, Billy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled dollar and handed it to him. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” he said.
    “Thanks, baby. I’ll pay you back tonight.” He went up to the bar and yelled, “Twenny nickels!” Later, Billy saw him at the pinball machines, standing stiffly and slamming the machine with his palms, cursing and begging. Billy laughed to himself. What a mark! Playin a
machine!
To Billy that was like throwing the money out a window. But he didn’t care; he was getting rich right here.
    Jack Levitt sat on a high stool between the number one billiard table and the keno table, watching Billy. It made a game more interesting if there was somebody in it you were rooting for or against, and Jack wanted to see Billy win. He knew already that Billy was a phenomenon, a natural like Bobby Case. It was a pleasure just to watch him shoot, even in a game like keno, full of slop and bad luck and yelling. Jack wished there was something he could be great at, some skill or talent he could find in himself that would give him something to do. He was a good fighter—no one anywhere near his own size had ever beaten him, in or