Sleight Return

Dai Vernon didn’t invent sleight of hand, but for a century he was the best card handler in the world. He knew almost everything about card handling, and he learned from a bible of card hustling, The Expert at the Card Table. The Expert at the Card Table was a grifter’s guide. Vernon mastered the tricks to use as sleight, not to win money. He had it down and became the card guru of the US. Then he heard a rumor of a man in the Midwest who could deal a card from the center of the deck. Dealing the second card was a common grift, as was bottom dealing. Dealing from the center was a new paradigm; it meant that a dealer could give any card to any player he designated at any time.

Karl Johnson’s The Magician and the Cardsharp tells of Vernon’s quest to find the gambler who invented the move. He finds a derelict Mexican in a prison who tells him of a man in Wichita who can do the move. Vernon moves about Kansas City’s underworld trying to locate the sharp, but no luck. He grinds a living cutting silhouettes in departments stores and fairgrounds, making weekend trips along the Mississippi to find the man.

Pleasant Hill, MO was a grifter’s paradise in the depression. A train depot, it served bums and swells in a town that looks like a set from “Miller’s Crossing.” Midnight Underwood was the boss with a predilection for black chicks (hence Midnight), and no one in Jim Crow central raised a peep about his habits; the town was too much fun.

Midnight’s ace was Allen Kennedy, who ran a poker game behind a dentist’s office on First Street. Kennedy invented the center shuffle, and used it and other techniques to ensure a steady profit for himself and Midnight. When Vernon finally locates Kennedy he sits him down and shows him the center move, and it’s beautiful, especially when you don’t even know it is coming.

The Magician and the Cardsharp was a magazine piece, and the addition of more info on MO and KS and the era are nice touches to Vernon’s quest.