Sideshow: Tales of the Galactic Midway, Vol. 1 Read online

  I didn't think I was acting like Thaddeus, but I didn't reply.

  “You let us know what's going on with that freak show,” said Queenie, getting up and helping Alma to her feet. “You keep us informed of the situation, okay?”

  I nodded.

  Alma walked a few yards away with Queenie and then turned back to me, her eyes filling with tears. “Why do we stay here, Tojo?” she asked plaintively. “Why do we let him do these things to us?”

  “I don't know,” I said.

  It was a lie. All you had to do was look around to know why: at the Dancer, who was born a century too late; at Monk, who loved his animals more than he loved women; at the Rigger, who couldn't play an honest game of anything if his life depended on it; at the girls, who pretended that they were dancers and entertainers; at Stogie, who still thought he was in vaudeville; at me; at Queenie; at any of us.

  We are all freaks. Like deserters hiding out in the middle of a battlefield, we seek the anonymity of the spotlight. The world turns a cold shoulder toward us, and we huddle together for warmth.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  It was noon when Thaddeus stuck his head out the trailer window and hollered for me. The sun had come out, and while the air was still crisp, it was a lot warmer than when I had spoken with Alma and Queenie a few hours earlier.

  “Coming!” I muttered, getting up from the picnic table and shuffling over to the trailer. I slipped once as I was clambering up the four steps—I usually do—and skinned the heel of my left hand.

  Thaddeus was sitting on the side of his bed, totally naked, holding his head in his hands and trying to keep the light out of his eyes. There was a young girl I didn't recognize, sound asleep and equally naked, lying next to him.

  “Coffee!” he rasped.

  I went off to the kitchen and put the pot on, then returned to him. Thaddeus sat motionless for another minute, then slowly began getting into his shorts.

  “She's awfully young,” I said.

  He looked over at the girl. “She wants to work in the meat show,” he said with a laugh. “She'll never know how lucky she is that I don't hire everyone I sleep with. Hell, if she's as much as seventeen, I'm Whistler's Mother. You'd think her parents would keep closer tabs on her.” He paused, then sighed.

  “Slip twenty bucks into her purse and get her out of here.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that she might consider that degrading?” I said.

  “You really think so?” He looked surprised.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How else do you thank a kid her age? Buy her a doll?” He looked at her again, then shrugged and flashed me a sardonic smile. “I defer to your vast experience with women. Keep the money and get rid of her.”

  “In a few minutes,” I said. “I saw Alma outside.”

  “So what?” he said ominously.

  “Well, I just think you should wait until she's out of sight before—”

  “Since when is what goes on between Alma and me any of your business?” he said hotly. “She never minded when people saw her leaving here. She knows I don't sleep alone.”

  “But this girl is a local. She's not one of us.”

  “That's Alma's hangup, not mine.”

  “But you don't have to flaunt—”

  “I seem to recall asking for coffee,” he said. “I don't remember requesting a sermon.”

  I sighed, returned to the kitchen, and spent a couple of minutes washing some dirty dishes I found in the sink. When the coffee was ready I poured him a big cup—black, no sugar—and took it over to him. He was totally dressed, and he grabbed the coffee from me, took a long swallow, and handed back the empty cup. “More,” he said.

  I filled it up again, and when I got back he was standing next to the bed, looking at the girl. He reached down and poked her gently on the shoulder.

  “Come on, babe—up and at ‘em.”

  She yawned, stretched once or twice, and then sat up, rubbing her eyes.

  Then she saw me, and she shrieked and pulled the covers up over her small breasts.

  “What the hell is that?” she yelled.

  “My business manager,” said Thaddeus, taking the cup from me and draining it again. “He'll walk you home.”

  “Like hell he will!” she said, shrinking back against the wall of the trailer.

  “You!” she snapped at me. “Yes, you! Turn your back until I get dressed, and don't you dare come near me!”

  I shrugged and walked back into the kitchen.

  “But we're partners, honey,” I heard Thaddeus saying to her. “We share everything, if you get my meaning.”

  “If that little monster so much as lays a finger on me, I'll have my father and brothers down here so fast it'll make your head spin!”

  I heard a bunch of rustling noises, and then the door slammed and Thaddeus told me I could come back into the bedroom.

  “How many times have I asked you not to embarrass me like that?” I said.

  “It's the quickest way I know to get rid of them,” he replied with a little smile. “Besides, who knows—maybe one of these days one of ‘em will go for the idea.” He looked out the window and blinked. “Nice day. What time is it?”

  “Almost twelve-thirty,” I said.

  “Did we make any money last night?”

  “Not much, according to Diggs.”

  “Figures. Speaking of our friend the Rigger, why don't you run off and find him and bring him back here?” said Thaddeus. “I've got a little job for him.”

  “Does it have something to do with the sideshow?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Nosy little dwarf, aren't you?” he grinned. “Yes, as a matter of fact, it does.”

  “Surely you don't think you're going to be able to get Mr. Romany or Mr. Ahasuerus in a card game with Diggs?”

  “No,” replied Thaddeus. “Romany didn't look like the gambling type to me.”

  “Then what?”

  “Why don't you just keep reading your poetry books and let me do the thinking around here?”

  He walked into the bathroom and started shaving, so I headed off in search of Digger the Rigger. He was an easy man to pick out in a crowd: closecropped snow-white hair, neatly manicured goatee, dapper dresser, fingers covered with diamonds, shoes usually shining brighter than the sun. And since the Midway was never crowded at noontime on a weekday, I hunted him up inside of five minutes.

  He was standing in front of the specialty tent, trying to make a bet with a couple of early-bird customers about whether Billybuck Dancer could shoot the head off the king of spades at fifty feet. (I knew that he could: I had to hold it between my teeth the time I worked with him, much to Thaddeus’ amusement.) The Rigger was really upset with me when I broke into his pitch and the marks wandered away. He probably couldn't have gotten them to put up more than a dollar apiece, but the amount was never as important to him as the game. Anyway, he bitched at me all the way back to the trailer.

  “You want to see me?” he said as Thaddeus greeted us.

  “How's your poker?” asked Thaddeus. He had made the trailer a little neater than usual, which wasn't saying much, and had pulled a trio of bargain-basement chairs around the aging coffee table where he made out the paychecks (on those weeks he could meet the payroll).

  “You had the dwarf drag me all the way over here just to ask a stupid question like that?” snorted the Rigger.

  “If I'm going to stake you,” said Thaddeus, “I think the least you can do is answer my question.”

  “Let me get this straight,” said the Rigger slowly. “You're staking me?”

  Thaddeus smiled. “That's right.”

  “My poker's the same as it always is.”

  “You'd be playing with someone else's cards,” said Thaddeus.

  “What do I care?”

  “They're probably marked.”

  “There ain't a marked deck in the world that I can't read as w
ell as the owner can,” said the Rigger with just a trace of pride.

  “You're sure?” said Thaddeus. “Eight hundred dollars is everything I've got in the world, as of this minute. I don't want to turn it over to you if you've got any doubts.”

  “No sweat,” said the Rigger, but he looked a little more serious now, a little more tense—or perhaps he was just a little more eager. “Are these people I'm playing with any good?”

  “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.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter 4


  The morning was cold and windy, with just a trace of snow in the air.

  Most of the leaves had blown down from the trees during the night, and were swirling across the ground, forming red-gold patterns in the early-morning sun.

  Thaddeus had met with the three cops in private the night before. As soon as they left his trailer, he sent out the order to break down the booths and the girlie show and pack them onto our trucks. I thought maybe he'd gone too far with the cops and that they had run him out of town, but then he made a couple of phone calls and sold all the rides, even the Ferris wheel, where they stood. Then I knew he'd gotten what he wanted; otherwise, he'd never have left the rides behind. Getting rid of them made us a lot more mobile—and I had a feeling that whatever deal Thaddeus had struck, mobility was going to be an important part of our immediate future.

  We left at daybreak and drove about ten miles out of town. I had no doubt that we were going to a prearranged meeting point, since Thaddeus kept referring to a map he had scribbled on the back of a paper towel. Finally we turned off the road near an abandoned New England farmhouse and pulled up to an unpainted barn. Thaddeus got out, told Jupiter to bring his animal trailer—a converted Greyhound bus, with twenty-four built-in cages—up alongside of us, and then told the Rigger to circle around and lead all the other vehicles to a rendezvous point about five miles up the road.

  Then he climbed back into the trailer and waited, while I kept looking out toward the road and Monk tended to his four animals. Five minutes passed, then ten, and no one showed up.

  “You're sure they're coming?” I said at last.

  He nodded. “They're coming, all right. They may be having a little trouble with Romany and Ahasuerus, but they'll be here.” He looked down at his wristwatch, sighed, and leaned back.

  Another twenty minutes passed, and then suddenly two police vans turned off the road and pulled up next to us. The three cops who had been in the card game got out, and Thaddeus walked over to greet them. “Everything under control?” he asked pleasantly, buttoning his leather overcoat and turning up the collar. “Yes, sir, Mr. Flint,” said one of the cops. I think his name was Joe; at least, that's what I'm going to call him.