Nice Fillies Finish Last

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Tim Rourke sneaked another look at his hole cards. Satisfied, he took a long pull at his warm highball.

“I think I’m going to raise that five dollars.”

It was two-thirty A.M. on a pleasant January night, in Rourke’s Miami apartment. The ice cubes had given out around midnight, but his guests weren’t letting that interfere with their drinking. Judge Benson, on Rourke’s left, always much too optimistic at this time of night, contributed five chips, on the theory that a miracle could happen on the final card. Ad Kimball, a sports writer on the Miami News, folded. So did the next man, a canny cabdriver named Schwartz. Michael Shayne, the big redheaded private detective, counted out ten blues and said calmly, “See that and raise you five.”

Rourke squinted down at his friend’s open cards. He couldn’t see much there except a pair of threes. The lanky reporter was well aware that, after the amount of whiskey he had packed away, he was in no condition to weigh the odds. That didn’t mean he was going to let himself be panicked by a small pair.

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