Vigorish by John Berryman (fox in socks read aloud .txt) 📗

my lifts," I protested. "You called 'TK' on the table."

Smythe shrugged and took off his glasses. "I thought I felt you tipping when you first came to the layout," he said, waving them around. I nodded confirmation. "But it was smooth work, and I could hardly be sure. Most of these maverick TK's strong-arm the dice, and they skid across the layout with their spots up. You're way ahead of that—you don't touch them till the final few tumbles. And then, you were losing, and I couldn't see that the table was being hit."

"I thought it was the smart move." I explained. "I was still controlling the dice, and if there'd been a cross-roader working, I should have felt him skidding them."

Smythe nodded. "Of course," he added. "I could feel you more clearly after you got the dice, and later, while that scarecrow with you was handling your chips. You were building a stack. So I fingered you."

"Careful," I said sourly. "You're talking about the woman I love."

There was a strained moment of silence, and then they all laughed. She'd been a sight, all right.

Simonetti came back alive with that one. His husky voice cut in on the laughter. "Where does that bag fit?" he demanded.

"No idea," I said truthfully. "A random factor. I don't think she fits."

"Something has to fit!" he yelled in his oversized whisper. "How about the way our losses follow Curley Smythe around from table to table?"

This was something. "The table you watch is the one that gets hit?" I asked Smythe.

He blushed, clear to the top of his bald head. "A subtle, nasty operator," he said gruffly. "And he's had the gall to stick it in me pretty badly, Wally. What Sime says is true."

Well, this we wouldn't stand for. I didn't give a care if every gambling house in Nevada went broke. 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."

"Maybe," I agreed. "But no TK can do it if Smythe can't. Have you tried a PC?"

Simonetti grabbed a piece of the heavens in rage. "No!" he yelled in his loud whisper. "None of your crystal-ball witches in here!"

I knew how he felt. PC's give me the colly-wobbles, too.

"What's the matter with precognition?" I asked him. "If this crook has got you stuck, Rose is right. Only Psi force will get you out of this jam. If you know in advance where this operator is going to hit you, you can nail him. There's a dozen techniques."

Peno Rose looked at me from under lowered brows. "Are you a PC, Lefty?" he asked me.

"No," I said shortly. 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. Like Sniffles, I thought suddenly.

"Well," Rose said, turning back to his partner. "Let Sime and me talk it over. Maybe we should get a PC."

"Nuts," Simonetti told him.

"I'll think it over, too," I said. "See you tomorrow." I turned to go. Simonetti and Smythe followed me out, each for his own reasons, I guess, leaving Rose behind in the cube of glass on the roof, looking like he was going to turn belly-up and take a bite out of the PBX on his desk.

I wasn't exactly shadowed, but I knew somebody had his eye on me as I wandered about the crowded casino, looking for Sniffles. As far as I could make out, she had vamoosed without trying to hustle another sucker. Her percentage of my winnings had certainly been a disappointment to her.

At last I went down the ersatz wooden steps into the neon-gashed night and started across the nearly deserted main drag toward the motel where I had registered. A powerful turbine howled as a car pulled away from the curb, perhaps a hundred yards up the way. His lights came on and snapped up to bright. I had a perfect flash of PC—I do have moments of it, no matter what the Lodge thinks. The car was going to take a dive into the fountain pool in front of my motel. But it sure didn't act like it. I froze in the middle of the road, hearing rubber scream as the driver floored the throttle and hurled the automobile right at me. He might as well have been on tracks. There was no place to go—I was in the middle of a six-lane boulevard, and could never make either curb before he ran me down.

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.

Be glad, Wally Bupp, I had time to tell myself. Be glad for a mechanical mind. Where do you lift four thousand pounds of car aimed right at you? Well, there is a small valve, can't weigh half an ounce, lightly spring-loaded, that is in the power-steering mechanism. I seared a lift at it. You know what happened.

The feedback of the power-steering wrenched the wheel from the driver's hand—it was ten times as strong as he was, dragging its power as it did from a four-hundred horsepower shaft turning 30,000 rpm. The car careened and skidded across the curb. It took out a small marble rail around the fountain pool and dived in, still screaming rubber. The fountain went over with a crash and then the racket dwindled off in the shriek of twisted buckets. The turbine had gotten what for in the collision.

I didn't hang around to see what had happened to the driver. He was just some heavy who had the job of rubbing me out. But I did seek another haven. If they knew me that well, I'd never be safe where I had stashed my suitcase.

There was a 'copter squatting at the Sky Hi's ramp. I jumped for it and had him drop me toward the outskirts of the town of Lake Tahoe, and then walked a few blocks, mostly in circles to see if I were being followed, before darting into a fairly seedy motel a couple blocks off the main drag.

My room was on the third floor of the flea-bag. Part of the place was only two stories high. The door at the end of my corridor opened out onto the roof. When I had calmed down, I stepped through the door into the cool of the desert night.

The gravel on the built-up roof crunched in the darkness under my feet as I walked cautiously to the parapet and looked over its edge to the hunk of desert that stretched away toward Reno, out behind the motel. The third story, behind me, cut off the neon glare from the Strip and left the place in inky darkness. There was silence and invisibility out behind the motel.

Feeling a little creaky about falling a couple stories to the ground, I lay down on my back on the narrow parapet, with my hands behind my head to soften the concrete a little, and looked straight up into the night sky. A dawdling August Perseid scratched a thin mark of light across the blackness. I heard a coyote howl. This was desert. This was peace. The dice and chuck-a-luck seemed ten thousand miles away.

I heard a sound. Gravel crunched dimly under another foot. Somebody had stepped invisibly onto the roof. It scared the daylights out of me, more so because I was flat on my back. Cautiously I turned my head toward the door I had come through. I could see the fuzzy redness of a cigarette in the dark. It brightened as the smoker took a drag. Then I heard the sniffle, and knew who it was.

She stood there, apparently leaning against the wall behind her, silently, invisible but for the glow of her cigarette, and not moving her feet. "Hello," I said at last.

"Wasn't sure you wanted to talk," she said out of the dark. It shook me up. She certainly couldn't see me.

"How'd you know I was here?" I asked her.

"I don't know how. But I knew you would be." That wasn't what I had asked, exactly. She sniffled, and I could almost see the back of her hand swipe at the bead of moisture that kept forming at the tip of her skinny nose. Made me think. Psi powers crop up more often than they should in folks who are marked with a debility. It's the old compensation story. Look at my weak right arm. What she had said about expecting to find me on the roof sounded like precognition. And she sniffled and sniffled. Maybe it was one more of those tied-in hysterical Psi weaknesses.

"What are you doing out here?" I asked her.

"Resting," she said wearily. "I just hit town today."

"And tired already?"

"I was broke," she said. "Worked in a hotel laundry till dinner time to get eatin' money. Hot work. But I swiped a nice dress to wear when I went looking for you, Billy Joe."

"Yeah," I said, hiding my snicker over the dress. "Say, I wanted to thank you for handling my chips. I'd have lost my shirt if I hadn't let you show me how. I wanted to slip you a cut, but you bugged out of there."

"I figured you should handle our money, Billy Joe," she said. "Anyway, can't take money for my gift."

She had me shaking with excitement. "You have a gift?" I said, trying to keep my voice calm.

"Just some nights. Since I broke my vow, I've lost most of my prophecy. My real gift is healing. Lost all of that," she concluded, not bitterly. "God is punishing me."

Gravel crunched as she came slowly across the roof toward me. The fag end of her cigarette made a spinning arc in the night as she snapped it over the side of the roof. Now there was no way to see her at all. Perception is nice in the dark. I tracked her automatically.

"What was the vow you broke?" I said.

She sighed, near me. "I divorced my husband, my own darlin' Billy," she said. "There's no divorce in Heaven."

"Tough," I said. I thought I was her darlin' Billy. Talk about Double-think! "Will you miss never having a man again? I mean, once you've been a wife—" I added, letting it drift off.

"God has been good to me," she said out of the dark. "He let me see my own future, that he would give me a husband again."

That was a curve. "Isn't that an even worse breaking of vows?" I said. "I mean, if in God's sight you're still married to Billy Joe?"

"Would be," she conceded from the black, now right next to me. "But He told me that the man I should seek would be Billy Joe—hit's a miracle worked for me." Her voice lowered. "A miracle that come to pass tonight, my darlin' Billy." A shiver ran its fingers up my spine. She meant every word of it. I was her darlin' Billy.

I wasn't in any mood to get married, and least of all to a seeress. Precognition is the least understood of the Psi powers, and the most erratic. But of all people, I could least afford to sneer at the power of Psi.

For the first time, I guess, I realized the awful helplessness that comes over the Psiless when a TK invokes his telekinetic power. I wanted no part of the future this corn-fed oracle had conjured up. But it might be the only future I'd ever have.

I tried to recall her looks. Thinking about them, they really added up to no more than hysterical sniffles, not enough to eat, and the pathetic evidence that there hadn't been any money for orthodonture. Fatten her up, straighten her teeth and—Talk about religious rationalization!

I snapped out of it. Maybe she could call the turn of dice. But I'd be damned if she could call the turn of people.