“How much have we got now?” Buddwing asked.
Grace, counting bills feverishly, looked up and said, “Just a second.”
“Come on, let’s roll them dice, honey,” Iris said.
“We’ve got two hundred and sixty-five thousand,” Grace said, a shocked tone in her voice.
“Yeah, and it’s all my money,” the man in the tropical suit said.
“Bet it all on the next roll,” Buddwing said.
“Hey, go slow, man,” Hank warned. “We lose it, and we’re out of the game.”
“If we win it, we’re out of the game, too. Even money on that would give us five hundred and thirty thousand.”
“Still...”
“Put it on the line, Grace,” Buddwing said.
She hesitated a moment, and then looked at Hank. Hank shrugged.
“Yes or no?” Grace asked him.
“Go,” Hank said, and Grace put two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars on the blanket.
“Who’ll fade it?” she asked.
“That’s a lot of action, lady,” the man in the tropical suit said.
“We thought this was a real game,” Hank answered.
“Yeah, it’s a real game, all right. You come in with a single bill, and you’re busting up the joint.”
“That’s gambling,” Hank said. “If you want to play jacks, maybe we can go to the Y and round up some little girls.”
The man in the tropical suit closed his eyes gently and pulled a grimace, and then opened his eyes slowly and stared directly at Hank and said, “I know guys on the bottom of the river.”
“So do I,” Hank said. “You fading or not?”
“I’ll take a hundred grand of it,” he answered.
Across the blanket, the man with the cigar said, “I’ll take another hundred.”
“There’s sixty-five open,” Hank said.
A small blond man who had been betting quietly up to now, but whom Hank had recognized as one of the bigger gamblers, took three twenty-thousand dollar packets of bills from the inside pocket of his jacket, and threw them on the blanket. He pulled a roll from his side pocket, removed the rubber band from it, and peeled off five one-thousand-dollar bills, which he put onto the blanket with the rest of the money.
“I think that covers it,” he said softly. “You want to roll now?”
“If you don’t mind,” the man in the tropical suit said, “I’d like to see those dice before you roll.”
“What is this, a Warner Brothers movie?” Hank asked.
“I don’t know what kind of a movie it is,” the man in the tropical suit said. “I only know you won more than two-and-a-half grand from me on the last roll, and I’ve got another hundred thousand riding on this one. Now, maybe that kind of loot don’t give me the right to examine those dice where you come from, but where I come from, three hundred and fifty-five grand buys a lot of seats at the RKO Palace.”
“Show him the dice,” Hank said.
Buddwing handed the dice over. “Don’t cool ’em off,” he said.
“I just want to make sure they ain’t too hot,” the man answered. He held the dice close to his face, one in each hand, and tried to wobble one against the other, and then studied them for cut edges or shaved sides, and then turned each die to each of its sides, matching the number against the same number on the other die. The dice were flush-spotted, which meant they would have been extremely difficult to load, and very easy to detect if they had been loaded, but he examined them minutely nonetheless. Still unsatisfied, the man in the tropical suit passed the dice to the man with the cigar and said, “What do you think?”
“Now, let’s not handle those dice too much, huh?” Hank said.
“If you don’t mind, Mac,” the man with the cigar said, “I got a stake in this, too.”
He took the dice and, with his hands in full view of all of the players, went through the same scrutinizing examination the man in the tropical suit had just conducted.
“What do you think, Harry?” he asked.
“I think five hundred and thirty grand on that blanket calls for a fresh pair of dice,” the man in the tropical suit said.
“Why? There something wrong with those?” Hank asked.
“He made three passes in a row,” the man with the cigar answered.
“If these dice are straight,” Hank said, “there’s no rule I know of that says he can’t make a hundred passes in a row.”
“It’s the shooter’s option to change the dice, isn’t it?” Grace asked.
“Not if they’re crooked,” the man with the cigar answered.
“The dice were in the game when we got here,” Hank said. “If they’re crooked, they were crooked for everybody.”
The Irishman standing next to Iris said, “Give him the dice, and let him shoot.”
The young man who needed a shave, and who had bet ten dollars on Buddwing’s eleven on the last roll, and who now had a hundred and eighty dollars, looked directly at the man with the cigar and said, “Give him the dice.”
The thin man with the rimless spectacles looked at the wall and said to no one in particular, “The dice are straight. Let him shoot.”
“There’re your three good men and true,” Grace said, and she smiled at Buddwing.
“Well, how about it?” Buddwing asked. “Are we shooting craps here or what?”
“What do you think, Harry?” the man with the cigar asked.
The man in the tropical suit answered, “I don’t know, Alfie. What do you think?”
The quiet blond man, who had sixty-five thousand dollars riding against Buddwing, very calmly said, “Give him the goddamn dice. This ain’t no nursery school.”
“The same dice, please,” Hank said, and watched as Alfie handed them back to Buddwing.
“Is it okay to roll?” Buddwing asked.
“Roll,” the blond man said.
“Roll,” Harry said.
“Roll,” Alfie said.
“Make it a good one, honey,” Iris said.
“Now, easy, man,” Hank said.
“Go, baby,” Grace said, and Buddwing shook the dice in his fist and bounced them off the wall. They rolled back and came to a stop.
“Ten,” Harry said.
“Your point is ten, mister,” Alfie said.
“Easy,” Grace said.
Buddwing picked up the dice. All around the blanket, the bettors were laying right bets, wrong bets, proposition bets, flat bets, come bets, point bets, one-roll-action bets, hard-way bets, none of which concerned Buddwing. All of his money was on the blanket already, two hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. All he had to do to double it was roll a ten before he rolled a seven. He shook the dice and threw them.
“Eight,” Harry said. “Your point is still ten. Two to one, no ten,” he said and held out a fistful of bills.
“I’ll take fifty of that,” Iris said, and handed him her money. “Now, go, man,” she said to Buddwing. “Make them mothers behave.”
“Come on, baby, we want a ten!” Buddwing said, and threw the dice.
“Four, the easy way!” Alfie said. “You’re off this hard-way bet, mister,” he said to the Irishman.
“I know it. Ten dollars on the five.”
“Three to two, here’s fifteen,” Alfie said. “Roll ’em, mister.”
Buddwing threw the dice again.
“Nine,” the blond man said. “Who’ll take the odds on the six and eight, six grand on each, six to five?”
“It’s a bet,” the redhead across the blanket said.
“Ten grand, Red.”
“Here you go.”
“Roll.”
“Talk to them, baby. Talk to them,” Grace said.
“Come on, Mac, do it.”