John Berryman

“ The gamblers were urging the dice with the same old calls, and the stick-men were chanting: "Coming out!" "Five's the point!" "And seven! The dice pass!" and all the rest. The ivories had a way to go before they reached us. I gave Pheola a stack of ten-buck chips and let her bet, without making any effort to tip the dice. She still had it. She moved the chips back and forth from "Pass" to "Don't Pass" and won at every roll. I could see Fowler Smythe begin to scowl as she let her winnings ride, building up a real stack. ”

“ Maragon had made his point. I might have reached the thirty-third degree, but I wasn't quite as big a shot as I thought I was. I could feel that rattler on my arm all the way to Lake Tahoe.
Like any gambling house, the Sky Hi Club was a trap. Peno had tried to kid the public with a classy decor. It was a darned good copy of a nineteenth century ranch house. At the gambling tables everything was free—the liquor, the hors d'oeuvres, the entertainment. Everything, that is, but the gambling and the women. The casino was taking its cut. And the women—or should I be so sure? ”

“ When I won it, I pulled my chips off the table, which Sniffles didn't resist. She used the lull to grab a handful of sandwiches from another 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 the three stick-men in the black aprons. That's the instant when every eye is on the dice, trying to read the spots. And that's when the dice jumped straight up off the baize, a good six-inch hop into the air, and came down Snake Eyes, the old signal. ”

“ I reminded her. "TK is just a power, one more ability in life. It doesn't make you God. Once in a while it gives you a little more vigorish than the other guy has, that's all. And sometimes it's not enough."
"But you had enough vigorish to catch them," she pointed out.
"In a way," I said. "I told them TK wasn't enough—that it would take precognition. And I don't have PC. I had to bring a PC with me. You, Pheola. That's why I'm alive. Smythe would have killed me with that dart gun of his. You were my vigorish!" ”

“ I said. "And a prophetess, too, from what I saw at the dice table. You know what a Psi personality is?" I asked her. "Say, what is your name, anyway?"
"Pheola," she said. "Yes, I've heard of them," she said.
"You're one," I told her. "You can heal many people."
She shook her head. "Only could do it because I love you, Billy Joe," she said.
"We'll teach you," I promised her. "Would you like to learn? You've heard of the Lodge, haven't you?" ”

“ Fowler Smythe squeezed his trigger and the tiny dart leaped unseen across the crap layout. My lift had been way off—it should have thrown the stick toward the ceiling, where no one would have been hurt. Instead it merely twitched the crap-stick, and the dart struck Pheola in the left hand. She screeched a little and grabbed at the needle-prick with her fingernails.
You never know how much power there is in Psi until you use it without restraint. I threw the crowd back away from us with a lift that nearly blacked me out, and had Pheola on the wet boards of the floor before she could blink. ”

“ I said. "She's been pinked with nerve poison."
"She's gone, then," he said huskily. "Who done it?"
"Fowler Smythe," I said bitterly. "A snake within the Lodge. You might try to stop him. But your partner, Rose, is the real crook. Get the doc, then tie up Rose."
"She's gone," he insisted. "Nerve poison kills right now."
"He's right, Billy Joe," Pheola said softly. "I'm going numb all over."
"What did I tell you?" Simonetti husked at me. I had enough left to hit him sharply over the temples with a lift. "A doctor. With antidote," I snapped. He trotted away.
"Darlin' Billy!" ”

“ Every time there's a run of luck on a crap table, somebody yells 'TK!' And I suppose there's a number of TK's who aren't in the Lodge, and who figure to make a killing here and a killing there by tipping the dice. But any decent TK, even a Fowler Smythe, can spot them.
"There was TK in this, but not tipping dice. Smythe is a skunk. He's no Twenty-fifth, or he wouldn't have any need to go crooked. He saw a chance to make a killing. He suggested it to Rose, who fell for it and went along. Rose decided to steal Simonetti's half of the business from his partner with Smythe's help. ”

“ Action is about at its peak then, and if the cross-roader had been tipping dice again, as they suspected, they would have had time to notice which table wasn't making its vigorish.
Plain enough where they were having trouble. Fowler Smythe was scowling through his glasses behind a table with Barney, the dealer I'd hit with the Blackout. Their faces were sweating in the dry desert air. The table was being taken.
"Now watch it, Pheola," I said, as we squeezed into the crowd, opposite the dealers. "Almost anything can happen. I want to know the instant you get a feeling. You understand?" ”

“ But what high official can afford to be at odds with us? They know where the Lodge stands. A little while on the visor as the east pinked up got me what I wanted. Because of the three-hour time difference, the Washington brass got me carte blanche before banking hours at the Tahoe bank that supplied the Sky Hi Club with its cash.
Working with the cashier, who hadn't even taken time to shave after getting his orders from the Federal Reserve Bank, I went over their stock of thousand dollar bills, as Pheola had PC'd I would, and marked down the edges of the stacks with grease pencil. ”

“ So much for gamblers.
I kept control of the dice while each new gambler handled them. I was having 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. For all the perception I kept on the ivories, I could sense no other TK force at work, which after all was the whole reason for my gambling.
The interesting note was the way Sniffles handled my chips. Sometimes more sure than others, she occasionally let a winning stack ride. ”

“ So am I." From five feet apart we exchanged the grip, the tactile password impossible for the Psiless to duplicate—just a light tug at each other's ear lobes, but perfect identification as TK's. "I'm Fowler Smythe," he said. "Twenty-fifth degree," he added, flexing his TK muscles. "What is it, buster? You on Crap Patrol?"
I paused before I answered. Twenty-fifth degree? Since when could a gambling casino afford a full-time Twenty-fifth? TK's in the upper degrees come high. I had already figured my fee at a hundred thousand a day, if I straightened out the casino's losses to the cross-roader. ”

“ The Lodge had proved that several times, in spite of my strong feelings that I had flashes of precognition. Why should I resent not having PC? How many Psi personalities have more than one power? Not many. And as for precognition, as Simonetti said, more than their fair share is possessed by wild-looking women. ”

“ There aren't so many Thirty-thirds hanging around. "And you are young, smug and snotty enough to play the part," he concluded without heat. "Still, that's all it might be, just play-acting, with Barney going through the motions of being blind. You could be outside the Lodge, sonny. Any cross-roader who can tip dice the way you were working them can twitch an ear. Let's see some credentials."
He scuffed through the sawdust to the bar and took a stack of silver dollars from his apron. ”

“ He snapped the hole in his face shut.
"My partner," he said, waving his hand at the dark-skinned gent standing over against one of the fumed oak desks. "Sime, meet Lefty Bupp, the hottest TK artist with dice in the whole damned country!"
Simonetti leaned against the desk. He drew a zipper open in his fancy blouse, dragged out the Bull Durham and started to roll his own. They watch too much TV. It makes terrible hams of them all. He spat on the floor.
"A living doll," I said. I took a better look at this honey. Face it, he was an oily snake, cleaned up as much as possible, but not enough. ”

“ This again was not in the pattern. Most hustlers can't keep their eyes off your chips.
She puppy-dogged behind me to the crap table I had decided needed my attention. It was crowded, but there's always room for one more sucker. And still one more, for the sniffly girl with the hair-colored hair pressed in against my useless right arm when I elbowed my way in between the gamblers, directly across from the dealers.
"Billy Joe!" she said, just loud enough to hear over the chanting of the dealers and the excited chatter of the dice players. Billy Joe! What a corn-ball routine! ”

“ This is when it pays to be a perceptive. I've talked to many TK's about how they visualize their lifts. We all conceive of it differently. With me a real strain is like shining a bright beam of light on the spot you're lifting. ”

“ One of the other stick-men eased himself in, holding the door only wide enough to squeeze past the jamb. Don't give the suckers a peek at the seamy side. They might 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 glasses in heavy brown frames. "What's that?" he asked mildly, poking a finger at the dealer kneeling in the sawdust on the floor. My Blackout victim was reaching out, trying to find something he could use to raise himself to his feet. ”

“ It was long, thin, and not a little red.
"Billy Joe!" she said, and sniffled loudly. "My darlin' Billy!"
How near-sighted can you get? I don't think there's such a thing as a case of mistaken identity around a guy like me. I didn't know her darlin' Billy from Adam's ox. But I'd have bet a pretty we didn't look alike.
"You're wasting it," I told her, looking out over the crap tables. "It's new, and different. But I'm not anybody's darling." A jerk of my head told her to move on.
But she sniffled and stayed put. I gave up and started through the press of gamblers toward the Cashier's cage. ”

“ I said to the snake. It didn't. Instead the door to my office opened, letting in a little more of the unmistakable smell of the hospital, as well as old Maragon, Grand Master of the Lodge. He was complaining and shaking a finger at me as he came toward my desk. He didn't jump more than a foot when he got a look at my arm. ”

“ That left me thirteen chips. Half absent-mindedly, I put three of them on the "Pass" side of the line and tipped the dice to twelve. Mostly I was looking at this scarecrow beside me.
"Box cars!" one of the dealers called. "My future home." But he wasn't as quick as Sniffles. She had called the turn before the galloping dominoes had bounced from the backrail.
The box cars cost me the dice. The next gambler blew on them, cursed, and rolled. I didn't bet, and spent the next couple rolls looking at her.
The girl was a mess. Some women have no style because they don't even know what it means. ”

“ But Smythe was in the Lodge. And it finally made sense that the Lodge had sent me to bail him out. I gave old Maragon my mental apology. The Grand Master wouldn't stand still for anybody's making a fool out of the Lodge. Still: "Nobody that good is out of captivity," I snapped. "I don't believe it. It's not TK that's robbing you."
"Oh, ridiculous," Rose said, showing his teeth. "Gambling is our business, Lefty. Don't you think we could spot any of the ordinary kinds of cross-roading? This is TK, and it has real voltage. We can't spot it. We've got to have Psi power do it for us." ”

“ I told her. "I'm not your darlin' Billy."
The dice were to my right—I'd get them after a couple more losers rolled. My unwanted hustler stood on that side of me, too. They never have any money of their own. I wasn't about to give her any of mine.
I wanted to lose some dough in a hurry. I started playing field numbers, and TK'd the dice away from the field every time a gambler came out. Of course, I could have let the table's six per cent vigorish take it away from me, but that would have taken longer. ”

“ Courturiers have taught them all to be lean and hungry-looking. This chicken was underfed in a way that wasn't stylish. They call it malnutrition. Her strapless gown didn't fit her, nor anybody within twenty pounds of her weight. She was all shoulder blades and collarbones. I suppose that a decent walk would have given her some charm—most of these hustlers have a regular Swiss Movement. ”

“ If the take falls below that, the suspicion is that the table is being taken to the cleaners by a crooked gambler, or "cross-roader." The table I had picked was the only one in the Sky Hi Club's casino with more than one stick-man working it. ”