Vigorish, Page 3

wassure he was on a rampage. Four passes and he thought he had the dicelicked. "Ride with me!" he yelled at Sniffles, who plainly had themanagement of my chips.

  "No moah," she said. "You'll lose."

  Of course he did. I TK'd the one-two up. "Little Joe from Kokomo," oneof the stick-men called. They raked losing bets and paid winners withthe speed of prestidigitators. "Roller keeps the dice," the stick-mantold my neighbor.

  The gambler cursed and threw the dice to the roller on his left. He spatblame at Sniffles for not riding with him. He was one big clot ofcrushed misery. After all, hadn't he _wanted_ to lose? They all do. Icouldn't get very upset over his curses. So far he had lost one buck,net. And he'd had some action. So much for gamblers.

  I kept control of the dice while each new gambler handled them. I washaving a good night. Of course, by that time I had handled the dice,which always improves my TK grip. Every point I had TK'd came up. Forall the perception I kept on the ivories, I could sense no other TKforce at work, which after all was the whole reason for my gambling.

  The interesting note was the way Sniffles handled my chips. Sometimesmore sure than others, she occasionally let a winning stack ride. Onother rolls, she keened and chanted oddly to herself, eyes closed, andpinched down most of the stock. But she was never on the wrong side ofthe "Pass" line. I kept track, not wanting my stack to build up past thethousand with which I had started. Most of all, I watched the skinny galdope the dice, sniffle and wipe the end of her nose. She was one homelysharecropper, that was a fact, but she had a nice feel for Lady Luck. Orfor what I planned next.

  * * * * *

  Wanting to come out with an even thousand, I adjusted the size of herlast bet. When I won it, I pulled my chips off the table, which Snifflesdidn't resist. She used the lull to grab a handful of sandwiches fromanother waiter's tray. A gambler at the far end of the table came out,calling loudly to the dice. The cubes made the length of the table,bounced off the rail and came to a stop dead center, between me and thethree stick-men in the black aprons. That's the instant when every eyeis on the dice, trying to read the spots. And that's when the dicejumped straight up off the baize, a good six-inch hop into the air, andcame down Snake Eyes, the old signal. Wow! I'd had it!

  "TK!" somebody yelled. He might as well have screamed, "Fire!" the waythat mob of gamblers scuttled away from the table.

  "No dice," one of the dealers said automatically. He raked the hoppingcubes sadly to him with his hoe-shaped dice-stick.

  I made a break for it with the rest of the crowd, trying to keep my eyeon Sniffles. But she had the sure-loser's touch of slipping away fromany authority. She vanished into the milling mob. My last glimpse hadbeen of a skinny arm reaching up to pluck some more free _horsd'oeuvres_ from a tray as she fled.

  I should have saved myself the trouble. They had a bouncer on each of myelbows before I had moved five feet. They carried more than dragged meinto a private dining room behind the bar. It went along with the ersatzrustic _decor_ of the rest of the Sky Hi Club. There was sawdust on thegenuine wood floor, big brass spittoons and a life-sized oil-color of areclining nude, done with meaty attention to detail, behind a smallmahogany topped bar. Stacks of clean glasses vied for space with labeledbottles on the back-bar.

  One of the stick-men followed us into the room, taking his apron off ashe closed the door behind him, shutting out the roaring clatter of thecasino. "Cross-roader!" he hissed at me. I should have known what wascoming, but I missed it. He slapped me hard across the face, saving hisknuckles, but not doing my jaw a whole lot of good. I would have fallenclean over, but the bouncers were still tight on my elbows.

  "Wait!" I tried to say, but he cuffed me with the other hand, harder, ifthat were possible. This is the moment when you have to stop and think.A Blackout is quite effective--it's hard to hit what you can't see. Andthere's something mighty unnerving about being stricken suddenly blind.

  Oh, face it, I suppose the real reason I felt for the arteries supplyingblood to his retinas was that so few TK's can do it. I clamped downtight, and his lights went out. He cried out in fright, and both handscame groping up in front of him, his fingers trembling.

  "I'm blind!" he said, not able to believe it. He began to lose hisbalance.

  I felt one of the bouncers go for his sap. "Try it, you gorilla," I toldhim, wrenching around, now that I was free on his side. "Try it and I'llrip the retinas off your eyeballs the way you'd skin a peach!" Herecoiled as though I were a Puff Adder. The other bouncer let go of me,too. I skidded in the slippery sawdust, scared half to death, but got myback against a wall just as the stick-man who had slugged me lost hisorientation completely and fell to his knees in the sawdust. It would besome minutes before his vision started dribbling back.

  * * * * *

  The click of the door latch broke the silence. One of the otherstick-men eased himself in, holding the door only wide enough to squeezepast the jamb. Don't give the suckers a peek at the seamy side. Theymight just take their money to the next clip joint down the street.

  He didn't look like the others, somehow. He was older, for one thing.Perhaps it was his nearly bald scalp, perhaps the thick, bookish glassesin heavy brown frames. "What's that?" he asked mildly, poking a fingerat the dealer kneeling in the sawdust on the floor. My Blackout victimwas reaching out, trying to find something he could use to raise himselfto his feet. His face was frozen in a fierce, unseeing stare as hementally screamed at his eyes to see, see, see!

  "Blackout!" one of the bouncers told the second stick-man in a muffledvoice.

  Sharp eyes fired a quick, surprised look at me. "Well," said the balddealer. "Good evening, Brother." I had a surge of relief. The strong-armstuff was over. This was the casino's TK.

  "What kept you, Brother?" I said, sounding a little sore. "Thesecharacters were going to kick my teeth out."

  His grin had a taste of viciousness. "I did give them a little time," heagreed. "How was I to know?" He looked calmly at them over the tops ofhis glasses. "You can go now," he said, like a schoolmarm dismissingclass.

  The gorillas helped the blindly staring dealer to his feet, brushing atthe sawdust that clung to his clothing, and had him presentable by thetime they led him through the door. They seemed glad to get away.

  "The Blackout," the TK said musingly to me. "You hear about it, and thePsiless cringe when they think it might happen to them. But you don'tsee it every day. You're in the Lodge, of course?" he added.

  "Of course," I said coldly.

  "Please," he said, waving a hand at me. "Don't take it so big. So am I."From five feet apart we exchanged the grip, the tactile passwordimpossible for the Psiless to duplicate--just a light tug at eachother's ear lobes, but perfect identification as TK's. "I'm FowlerSmythe," he said. "Twenty-fifth degree," he added, flexing his TKmuscles. "What is it, buster? You on Crap Patrol?"

  I paused before I answered. Twenty-fifth degree? Since when could agambling casino afford a full-time Twenty-fifth? TK's in the upperdegrees come high. I had already figured my fee at a hundred thousand aday, if I straightened out the casino's losses to the cross-roader.

  "Wally Bupp," I said at last, deciding there was no point to trying somecover identity. My gimpy right wing was a dead giveaway. "Thirty-_third_degree," I added.

  He had a crooked grin, out of place beneath his scholarly glasses. "I'veheard of Wally Bupp," he admitted. Well, he should have. There aren't somany Thirty-thirds hanging around. "And you are young, smug and snottyenough to play the part," he concluded without heat. "Still, that's allit might be, just play-acting, with Barney going through the motions ofbeing blind. You could be outside the Lodge, sonny. Any cross-roader whocan tip dice the way you were working them can twitch an ear. Let's seesome credentials."

  He scuffed through the sawdust to the bar and took a stack of silverdollars from his apron. He held them, dealerwise, in the palm of hishand, with his fingertips down, so that they were a column surrounded bya fence o
f fingers.

  "How many?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "The whole stack, Smythe," I told him. His eyebrows wenthalfway up his tall, tall forehead. But he put them all down on the bartop, about twenty-five silver dollars. "Show me," I said.

  He ran his fingertips down the side of the stack of silver. Anothertactile. Well, he certainly wasn't much of a perceptive, or he wouldhave been able to handle the Blackout himself. He closed his eyes forthe hard lift. Some do that. The coins came up off the mahogany an inchor so, and made a solid smack when the lift broke and he dropped