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. No amount of dude ranch duds, gold spurs or Indian jewelry could hide his stiletto mentality. He was just a Tenderloin hoodlum with some of the scum scraped off. Well, I should know. So was I.

Simonetti finished licking the seam of his roach. He came forward as he lit it and blew too much smoke in my face. "What you doing here?" he said in a husky voice. "I told Rose no dice. We need another TK like we need a hole in the head."

"You think I want to be in this trap?" I snapped at him. "Say the word, Tex, and I'm gone."

"You're fired," he said huskily. "Scram!"

I started for the door, glad to be rid of the lot of them. Peno Rose beat me to it. He showed me several rows of teeth, the way sharks will. "Half of this joint is mine," he snarled, holding a hand lightly against my chest. He knew me better than to push. "My half is hiring you."

The whiff of garlic over my shoulder told me that Simonetti had followed me, too. He didn't have any reservations about grabbing me and twisting me around and giving me a real face-full.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll get out of here."

"Freak?" I said, laying it on his mitral valve. After his heart had missed about eight beats, he started to sink, and I quit the lift. "Be polite, Simonetti," I said to the panic in his yellowish face. "Next time I'll pinch down tight. The coroner will call it heart failure. Tough."

He wanted his stiletto. He needed it. He was sorry he had ever quit carrying it. A couple seconds of reflection told him I was too tough for him. He went for his partner, his face darkening with rage now that his heart could get some blood to it. He had his hands out, for Rose's throat, I guess. For my dough it took guts to put fingers that close to all those teeth. But he never got a chance to try it. An ashtray, one of those things with a shot-loaded cloth bag under it, flew off a desk, smacked him in the back of the head, and dropped to the floor with a thump.

It wasn't a hard blow, but an upsetting one. Fowler Smythe grinned at him from where he was sitting in one of the leather divans. "Sit down and shut up, Sime," he suggested coolly.

Simonetti sagged with defeat. "Look, Rose," he gasped. "I want out. Bad enough that our losses can't be stopped by this creep Smythe. Now you drag in another TK. Buy me out!"

"What's a business worth that's losing its shirt?" Rose sneered. "We were in clover, you fool, till this cross-roader got to us. This is our only chance to get even."

That finished Simonetti. He went back to his desk and slumped against it, scowling at the points of his handtooled boots.

Rose looked over at me. "Let's make sense," he said quietly. "We watched you on the TV monitor from the time you came in."

"Sure," I said.

"What about it?" he demanded.

I shrugged. "I had my way with the dice, Peno. I dropped nine yards as fast as I could, then won it back. The spots came up for me every single roll but two, when I had my eye on something else."

He snickered. "We saw her," he said.

"How about it, Fowler?" I asked my Lodge Brother. "Was a worker tipping the dice tonight?"

"I never felt it," he said. "But the table had dropped nearly forty grand during the shift, which was about over when you started to play. He's too good for me, Wally."

"But you felt 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