Chapter 22 [M]
"You got any twos?"
"This ain't Go Fish."
"Haven't seen one the whole game..."
"You had one last hand."
"Quit your whining and ante up."
Four men sat around a table, one of them being John. The others were Harry Pierpont, Red Hamilton, Charles Makley and Homer Van Meter. The two absent men, Walter Dietrich and Russell Clark, made up the rest of the Dillinger Gang though they had yet to arrive at the apartments in Indiana. The present men engaged in an ordinary card game, one of the usual activities spent during their time off the job. They were a motley and strange crew and brought together by less than acceptable circumstances, but they were John's friends; the best he ever imagined having.
He considered the men his prison buddies. They met and managed a friendship and established a gang behind bars. He was closer and more friendly with certain men, but when it came down to a heist they were a faithful and skilled team and all held their own strengths and responsibilities. John, and the rest of the guys, would agree that "Handsome" Harry Pierpont was the leader of the gang but due to John's popularity the group was named after himself. There was a certain hierarchy that occurred between them but it was unspoken. It was only natural, though sometimes frustratingly accepted, that certain men had more influential opinions among the gang.
Charles shuffled and dealt another round of cards. He took a gulp of his whiskey before anything else, several of the others dragging on cigarettes. John often refrained from such habits, hardly ever touching smokes and drinking only in moderation. Red picked up his cards and held them within his grasp as best he could- his right hand was missing several fingers by being accidentally or purposefully shot off, or God knew what else.
"Blue," he said, dropping a chip into the pot for the first bet.
"Screw you!" Charles spat, tossing his cards away in a dramatic gesture of folding.
"He's bluffing," Harry was unconvinced. John called the bet and played out the hand. Charles had the right instinct to drop his hand, Red being the big winner. They went on shuffling, dealing and playing over and over until Charles became inexcusably restless.
"Say, uh, when we gonna get down to business here? There ain't nothin' for me in this damn place...country, back roads, that's all there is! I almost gone through most my share from Chicago..."
"What?" John looked over with a frown. "What in the hell did you spend it on?"
"Self-control. That's what you need."
"Mind your own business, Homer," Charles replied, agitated.
"Who's got the Kings?" Homer asked into the air.
"When the girls get here we'll start getting serious," Harry said. Among the two men yet to arrive were his and Red's girlfriend. Until they were there, as much as they hated to say it, things weren't complete.
"The girls..." he grunted. "What do they have to do with anything?"
"Red, are you holding a King?" Homer still nagged while the others ignored him.
It was Harry who, after a moment, showed a sneaky and mischievous look on his face. "Speaking of girls... I hear John's got himself a new one. A teenager, no less!"
There were a few snickers as John looked up from his cards, intimidating in his lack of expression. He had told Red only vaguely what had been distracting him lately, and it was clear word had gotten out. It always did, faster even if the women were around. It seemed impossible for one to keep a secret anymore without being threatened.
"He serious, John? How'd you manage that?" Charles questioned with a harsh laugh. He made no move to reply and didn't appear to be thinking up an answer. He wasn't at all interested in trying to explain his feelings and actions to those guys; he was having a hard enough time dealing with it himself.
"What'd you do, pick her up at a playground?" said Homer. He laughed more at his own joke than the others and though John was beginning to fume he knew Homer hadn't really meant it. He just said things to fit in; he was still an insecure schoolboy at heart. Sometimes he was so sensitive, to the men it was a wonder why he didn't have a girl. Woman were supposed to like that kind of thing.
"Don't talk about what you don't know, Homer," John replied in monotone. He was refusing to let the guys get to him. They were only teasing, and knew nothing, and he didn't care to involve them anyway. What happened between he and his girl was between them; only them.
"It's alright," Harry waved away the remarks, still smirking wickedly. "John's not serious about her," he said before puffing on his cigarette and coughing lightly. "Who could be serious about a kid?"
"She's not a kid!" John finally responded and with intense emotion. Jokes and remarks and idiotic statements that came from no where but the accusers dumb mouth was an offense to Billie and himself. He took everything seriously.
"John, how many Kings you got?" Homer still managed to ask between laughter at his outburst.
"Knock it off with that!"
"Touchy, touchy."
"Say, uh, Johnnie," Charles spoke. "This girl, she don't know who you are, right? You're not gonna let her blow our cover...kids can be smart, sometimes."
"She could be a tattle-tale," one of them snickered.
"Ah, she doesn't know. She probably doesn't even know her numbers."
It was when Homer made another smart-ass comment about a playpen when John had had enough. Angrily he slapped his cards down on the table and wrenched away from his seat, the legs sliding with a screeching sound on the floor. He stormed to the counter and threw his jacket over his arm, leaving the apartment and slamming the door behind him. The table had momentarily been silenced and stilled. After his dramatic departure, and when it was clear that he was no longer coming back for the cards or anything of the sort, Homer leaned over and picked up his cards. He threw them down again with disgust after seeing that he'd held three Kings.
"Asshole!"