Billy Phelan's Greatest Game by William Kennedy

sixth floor, Amsterdam was saying. They’re gonna lay a rug up there and I wanna see how they do it.
    Telephone. Martin Daugherty.
    “Yeah, Friar Charles wins it, Martin, so you got something good going. Shows seven dollars, four dollars, and three-forty. Tote it up, Martin, you’re the money machine
today.”
    Stan was telling a caller, if you don’t like my show, you crumb, don’t listen, but if you want to make more of it than that I’ll meet you at five o’clock out in the alley
behind the studio and knock your brains out. And he gave the address. Wireheaded bastard, that Stan. Billy liked his style.
    Then it was quiet with no phones and only Earl (Fatha) Hines—a kid, really, so why do they call him Fatha?—playing something wild, and somebody in the chorus, when he started to move
it, really move it, yelling out, “Play it Fatha . . . play it till nineteen ninety-nine.” And Billy smiles, taps his foot, feels the jazz, feels, too, that good old, good old pressure
beginning to cut a pulpy wedge out of his fat-assed day.
    Simpson, that bum, rang Billy’s bell, looking for his sawbuck. Billy saw him coming up the walk, fished a tenner out of the cigar box, folded it once and put it in his
right hip pocket. Ten down the sewer. But Billy had to pay. Tribute to Pop O’Rourke, Democratic leader of the Ninth Ward, who, six months ago, when Billy announced plans to write horses,
approved the venture during Billy’s formal call. The payoff? Give ten a week to Simpson, Pop said. He’s down on his luck. He’ll come by every week for it. Fair enough, Billy said.
What else could he say? And he was still paying out the tenner.
    “Hello, Bill, how you doin’?” Simpson said when Billy opened the door just enough to make it clear that it was not a welcoming gesture. The Simp’s sport shirt was at
least four days soiled and he needed a shave. Holes in the elbows of his sweater, boozer’s look and the breath’d knock over two mules.
    “Life’s still tough,” Billy said to him.
    “I thought maybe I’d come in and sit a while,” Simpson said as Billy was reaching for the ten in his pocket. And that line stopped Billy’s hand.
    “What?”
    “Keep you company a while. I ain’t doin’ nothin’, just hangin’ around Brady’s. Might as well chew the fat. You know.”
    “No, I don’t know nothing like that,” Billy said. “You ain’t coming in now or ever.” He opened the door all the way, stepped out, grabbed Simpson’s
dirty shirt, and lifted him backward down the stairs. “Now get off this stoop and stay off. Next time you put a foot on it I’ll knock your ass the other side of Pearl Street.”
    “Don’t get hot, Bill. I just wanna come in and talk.”
    “I don’t let bums in my home. Who the hell do you think you’re conning? From now on I don’t even want to see you on this side of the street.”
    “Where’s my ten?”
    “You blew it, bum.”
    And Billy slammed the door and called Pop O’Rourke.
    “And he says he wants to keep me company for the day, chew the fat. Listen, Pop, I respect you, but that bum is looking to see my action. I have a good half hour, he’ll want twenty
instead of ten. Don’t send him back, Pop, and I mean that. I don’t like his slimy looks and I never did. I hit him once, I’ll knock him off the stoop altogether. There’s
five steps and he’d clear the whole five if I hit him. I’ll break both his arms, Pop. I don’t want the bum ringing my bell.”
    “Take it easy, Billy. He won’t be back. He did wrong. He’s a greedy person. I’ll tell him.”
    “Fine, Pop. Do you want me to send you the tenner?”
    “No, not at the moment. I’ll let you know if there’s any other needy case around.”
    “I’m a needy case, Pop.”
    “But there are rules, Billy.”
    “I play by them.”
    “That’s the good boy. Just don’t get excited. I underwent a heart attack that way, and I can tell you that getting excited is one of the worst, one of the