was taking its cut. And the women—or should I be so sure?

You paid for your drinks if you stood up to the long mahogany bar. I turned my back to the rattle of cocktail shakers and chink of glasses, one heel hooked over the replica brass rail, and took a long careful look at the crap tables. There was a job for me at one of them. I began to shut out the distractions of sight and sound. I wanted nothing to dull my PSI powers.

A blond bombshell slithered down the bar and ground herself against my leg. "Wanna buy me a drink, honey?" she gasped. I smuggled a lift and slipped all four of her garters off the tops of her hose. A funny, stricken look replaced the erotic face she had made at me. She headed for dry dock.

B-girls usually work in pairs, so I looked down toward the other end of the polished mahogany. Sure enough, there was the brunette, frowning as she tried to figure why the blond bomber had high-tailed it out of there. I shook my head at her and she let it lie.

That should have cut out the last distraction. But no, I could see one more bimbo working her way through the laughing, drink-flushed crowd toward me. She had hair-colored hair, which was sort of out of character for a barroom hustler. I put plenty of TK on the heel of her right slipper, and she stepped right out of it. It might as well have been nailed to the floor. Nothing was going to discourage this one, I saw. I let her pick it off the floor, squeeze it back on her skinny foot, and come toward me.

This new babe leaned over toward me and stuck her nose up against mine. 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.

"Billy Joe!" this hustler moaned behind me, clawing at my jacket. "I knew I'd find you here. And I came sich a fer piece, Billy Joe! Don't make me go off again, darlin' Billy!"

While I prefer to gamble for cash, I had reason while on a job for sticking to a known amount of chips. She stood there while I got a thousand dollars worth of ten-buck markers, looking at me with some kind of plea in her eyes. 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!

I took stock before beginning to lose my stack of chips. There were more than twenty gamblers of both sexes pressed up against the green baize of the crap layout. Three stick-men in black aprons that marked them for dealers were working on the other side or the table. We had at least one dealer too many for the crowd. That screamed out loud the table was having trouble. Big gambling layouts know within minutes if a table is not making its vigorish. A Nevada crap layout, with moderately heavy play, should make six per cent of the amount gambled on every roll. That's its vigorish—its percentage. 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.

The girl sniffled, and her long skinny arm reached around behind me to snag a couple sandwiches the size of postage stamps from a waiter's tray. She wolfed them down, wiping at the end of her long nose with a wadded-up hunk of cambric. She'd done it before, and plenty, for her nose was red and sore. She made cow-eyes at me.

"Don't say it," 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.

Even with losing on every roll, the dice got around to me before I had lost the nine hundred I had set out to drop. I put four chips on the "Don't Pass" side of the line, shook left-handed because of my weak right arm, and got ready to come out. Sniffles seized me. "Don't Billy Joe!" she said suddenly. "You'll lose!" She pushed my chips across the line to the "Pass" side. That burned me up.

"Get your hands off my chips," I said, annoyed by bad gambling manners. Her face was all resignation and sadness. Well, not quite all. A lot of it was thin, red nose and buck teeth.

"You'll lose, darlin' Billy," she said.

"Pull those chips back!" I said. Her eyebrows shrugged, but she did as I told her. I came out, and tipped the dice to eleven. I kept the dice, but lost my chips, which is what I wanted. Throwing six more down on the "Don't Pass" side, I rattled the ivories in my left hand. Tears began to roll down her unhealthy cheeks.

"Lose!" she cried nasally, and sniffled. "Billy Joe! Listen to me, darlin' Billy! You'll lose!" Her eyes rolled up toward the top of her head as I ignored her and came out. Sniffles gasped, "Hit's a seven!"

Well, that's the number I'd tipped them to, but she called it before the dice stopped rolling. 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. 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. But this thing had a gait that tied in with the slack way her skirt hung across her pelvic bones and hollered "White Trash!" at you.

I wasn't much flattered that she had tried to pick me up. People have a pretty accurate way of measuring their social station. And she thought she was what I'd go for. Well, I guess I don't look like so much, either. I'd missed my share of meals when they might have put some height on me. My long, freckled face ends in a chin as sharp and pointed as her nose. And there's always something about a cripple, even if my powerless right arm doesn't exactly show.

My days on the Crap Patrol came back to me. That's where the Lodge had found me, down on