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"A nickname, for Christ’s sake And don’t tell me you didn’t know the word"

"I knew it," I said "I’ve come across it in print, but I’m not sure I ever heard anyone say it before I certainly never heard anyone say it in Poogan’s"

"It’s a perfectly fine word And it’s not exactly the sah His nicknaested

"--and his sobriquet was the Lone Eagle George Herman Ruth, nickname was Babe, sobriquet was the Sultan of Swat Al Capone--"

"I get the idea"

"I just wanted to keep on saying it, Matthew Sobriquet I know it fro, and I don’t think I ever heard it before, and I know for certain I never said it before I wonder if I’ person to ask"

"I’ll look it up," he said, and he picked up his glass and put it doithout drinking "High-Low Jack," he said "Wasn’t that his fucking sobriquet? Isn’t that what they called hi Stillman said

"They didn’t call him that in the rooms?"

"They just called him Jack, which is what he called himself Oh, and Jailhouse Jack or Jack the Jailbird, but not to his face"

One result of anonymity is that we mostly know each other by our first nauish one Jack froot Tall Jim and Jim the Runner and arot a nicknaht be Matt the Cop? Gumshoe Matt? I’m the only Matt at St Paul’s, so they probably haven’t needed to come up with a na added "Jack’s prison experience figured in a lot of his shares How he got what he deserved, and how he’d never have wound up in prison if he hadn’t been drinking So if you were looking for soh-Low Jack What does it even mean?"

"I don’t know I heard the phrase from a cop at the Sixth when I was on the job "

"From--?"

"A source," I said, and wondered if Danny Boy was a nickna else, and for all I knew you’d find Danny Boy Bell right there on his birth certificate

"And this source knew Jack?"

"Never met him, and didn’t know very much about him"

"But he knehat people called him, or used to call him, which is more than I knew It wasn’t in his Fourth Step, and I think I’d remember the phrase if I’d ever heard it before"

"Was he a gambler? A cardplayer?"

"Jack? I don’t think so He did o, butabout how he couldn’t ever seeet his bet down, because he’d hang around at the bar and have onesaved him money"

"So it wasn’t all bad"

They did have a pay phone in Poogan’s Pub, and I knoas in working order because I’d seen people talking on it while I sat watching Danny Boy drink enough Stolichnaya vodka to restore the Soviet economy It was free when I was ready to leave, but instead I walked to the corner The first phone I tried was out of order, but there was a working one across the street, and the first call I made was to my sponsor

"No, it’s not too late," he assured me "I hear the squeal of brakes, not the cries of the inebriated, some from the street"

"You’re the one who should have been a detective What do the words High-Low Jack ame," he said, "the name of which is Spit in the Ocean, if I reet how you play it, but there are four things you get points for--high, low, jack, and the gah, Low, Jack, and the Game’ That help?"

"I don’t know"

"I can’t see hoould," he said "High-Low Jack High-low in poker is what you call it when the best and worst hands split the pot I don’t kno Jack enters into the equation"

"Jacks or better," I suggested

"Which brings to ame, a form of draw poker You need a pair of jacks to open--"

"Right"

"--but if nobody has jacks or better, then the hand turns into lowball, and the low hand takes the pot That would be five-four-three-deuce-ace, or six-four-three-deuce-ace, or even seven-five-four-three-deuce, depending on the house rules"