All The Way To Easy Street

From The Pen Of  Frank Jackman

As he sat alone in his tee-shirt in his crummy one room overlooking the inner airshaft of the run down, seen better days, rooming house complex that he lived in on Beacon Hill in Boston Billy Riley had to laugh. Not the belly laugh that comes from something genuinely funny though. No, his laugh was a hearse horse snicker laugh about the condition that he had just then found himself, found himself in on the way to easy street. Or as he endlessly told whoever would listen found himself in “all the way to easy street.” See Billy was a gambler, well, not really a gambler in the Las Vegas sense (he knew nothing of cards and their attractions to those types and certainly was not some arm-weary slot machine player, oh no) or in the high- roller rack track among the swells sense but still a gambler.

Billy being a democratic sort spent his time in the bleachers among the real touts, the open collar working stiffs, the drifters, grifters and midnight sifters, those smoking endless cigarettes and cigars, swilling their beers on the concrete floor and complaining, endlessly complaining, about the price of that commodity. (And damning the concessionaire for charging so much because it cut into their betting kitties.) Or on sunny days along the rails, mingling with those pale faces almost afraid to face the sun looking to see if some luck would come their way by being closer to the turf, closer to smell and sweat of the horses, closer in order to look into the eyes of those damn jockeys who couldn’t ride if their lives depended on it. Those along the rails were a motley crew but mainly were brethren who had been on cheap street so long a big win would hardly faze them and their line of patter. But Billy considered himself a cut above that milieu, although he was at pains to savor their track talk like some latter day Damon Runyon. Still he considered himself different. See they didn’t, didn’t have like Billy, a system, because Billy was a guy who had a system, a fool-proof system that was going to get him to that El Dorado easy street.

As he sat there he thought any day, day the percentages would turn and he would flee, flee like a bat out of hell, this lousy sagging bed, broken-nob bureau, Salvation Army reject table and wobbly chair room with that window looking across the air shaft to other one room windows filled with guys, mainly guys, as far as he could tell since he had arrived in this exact spot a few weeks back when his luck had turned sour and his system had run into a momentary glitch, who had landed here under their own easy street  addictive powers.

See Billy Riley thought because he had grown up rough and tough with as his grandmother would say “not a pot to piss in” down in the Adamsville housing projects filled in its way with the rejects and losers of society that that same society owned him a living, owed him easy street. Sure he had worked, worked hard, worked like a bastard, when he worked, as a house painter until his knees gave out, as a gravestone setter (actually an interesting job, and quiet, very quiet), as dishwasher when things were tough between jobs, stuff like that, edge of society work. But he had dreamed, dream big as a kid that he was going to wipe the dust of all that poverty and toil that his father faced, faced and just took it, and live like a real person, maybe a king even. And at some point he tired of the painter, gravestone setter, dishwasher world, and decided that he needed to make his own breaks a little, use his smarts to get out from under, and if necessary use other people’s smarts or money, or both to do so.     

Billy had tried this and that before, had sold some drugs for a while but that was a hassle, the cops were pressing down, and the street stuff was getting dangerous. Moreover gone were the heydays of that late 1960s when everything was kind of loose before the cartels started to tighten their grip on the market and made everybody jump to their tune, or else. That “or else” being found face down in some ditch or floating off some river, also face down un-mourned and unknown like his old companion, Sammy Snyder, who ran afoul of the Mexican cartel. He thereafter had connected with a gang of small time hoods, aging corner boys really, guys still living at home where mother darned their socks and had dinner ready on demand, who were into midnight heists, then fencing the stuff on the cheap.  After a while he figured that was dead-end and high risk for a guy who thought society owed him a living. Jail was not what he had in mind on that score. Then one day one of those corner boys asked him if he wanted to go to the racetrack, the one over in Revere, Suffolk Downs. He said sure why not. And from there he was off to the races, figuratively and literally.        

See that first day, that first spring day, he had scored big, had been hot all day and wound up several hundred dollars ahead. Nice, he thought, nice and easy, and with no hassles, no income tax to pay either if you knew how to hide the dough. And that day, or really that night, he started plotting his future his race track tout future. What drove him, what he noticed, was that he had won when he played the number one horse in the race. So he devised a system. He would play off and on the number one horse in every race. Otherwise he would sit the race out. The next day he “played” his system. Although he didn’t win as much he still came out a couple of hundred dollars ahead, and had guys buying him a couple of beers when he spotted them a winner just for kicks. Just a bad day he thought, and a lot of the number one horses were dogs anyway. He had his system though and the key was to stick with it. The reason people couldn’t beat the horses he thought was they didn’t have a system, maybe just played a horse because it looked nice coming out of the paddock, or maybe had nice colors, or liked the jockey, or the name of the horse, anything, anyway. No wonder the suckers lost.                 

For a while his system worked pretty well, maybe for about a week, ten days, he was ahead a few thousand dollars. And didn’t have to work at all, just enjoy the sun, the crowds, and the sport of kings. Yes, just sit in the sun, sit on the bleachers, maybe go out on the rail and mingle, and figure his figures. Nice stuff.  He even bought his girlfriend, Joyce, a nice ring worth a few hundred bucks and she responded with some very nice under the sheets stuff, some stuff she hadn’t done for him before even when he asked. That fact drove him even harder in his figures once he knew what was what with her. Then the other shoe fell, fell a little, then fell a lot as his system started to unravel and he started losing money, first the track’s then his.

What happened was that he started pressing a little too much on that number one horse, placing bets on some dogs figuring that the one was due. He spent many nights, many Joyce-less  endlessly refining the system, seeing where he could make a big score, make a big score all the way to easy street. Nothing worked. He had gone dry, gone dry and pressed his luck too hard. The details of what brought him to that crummy room need not detain us long, actually on second thought let’s run through a couple of points. Naturally he started making bigger bets, figuring that a big bet win would get him well, would put him back on pace. Number Ones seemed to be in the doldrums at least when he placed a bet though. He quickly ran through his “winnings,” then started to dig into his own savings, blew those to kingdom come in a few weeks and then started begging, borrowing and stealing (literally in all three cases). First from Joyce (although he never, never asked her to hock that nice ring) until she finally gave him the air, the big brush-off and went looking for some other fool who was looking for easy street, or had already found it. Then borrowed from every friend whom he had ever lent a quarter giving a truly worthy hard-luck story that would bring tears to anyone’s eyes. Then he borrowed, soberly borrowed, from the hard boys, the high interest boys (whom he was trying to avoid in his lonely crummy room). Nothing.

Hell he even joined the stoopers and benders at the track trying to get well. You don’t know the stoopers? You know the guys, maybe women too, but mostly guys, every broker at every track in the world who lived not to place a bet, for they have long ago run out of money for more than some show bet on the favorite, but who scavenged for dropped tickets after each race hoping, hoping against hope, that someone had for about one of seven million reasons thought they had lost and just threw the damn tickets on the ground or in a trash barrel. Enough “scores” have been made this way that a human horde has learned to live for just that day. Yes, times were tough, desperately tough. No more romance of the turf with the weird assortment of losers, has-beens, never-wases, that he previously chatted with. He wore sunglasses to avoid some of those guys with their foolish ideas.

Billy though could not give up that dream that easy street dream. He knew that if he just stayed at it long enough the percentages would come back to him. And maybe Joyce would too, and he would buy her diamonds with his winnings, just for laughs, and not hearse horse snicker laughs either. So as he began to dress himself, put on his slightly frayed shirt, his threadbare pants and his round heel shoes for the day he thought this might be the day the day his luck changed, the day he went all the way to easy street. With that thought in mind like a lemming to the sea he went to Snookie’s newsstand over on Tremont Street to get a copy of the Daily Racing Form.