“Simple. You drop the coin. That pulls back this little finger. You press the lever. That gives the power that starts ’em going. Here’s a little time clock — right down here. That spins around, and when it comes to the first notch, that stops the first wheel. Then a bit later, the second stops, and then the third. Now, a slot machine has five clicks. The first three are the wheels. The fourth is the lock off, and the fifth is when the pay-off snaps. If you don’t get those five clicks, your machine’s gone flooey. Get me?”
I looked at the three dials with the strings of different figures.
“Those pictures don’t mean nothing,” Louie said. “The whole thing comes from these notches in the back. You can see where this shovel slides into the slot in the first one, then the second, and then the third. It’s the notches that count, and the notches are in the back.”
“And how about this tube?”
“That tube is always filled with coins. After it gets filled, the overflow goes into the jackpot and down into the box in the machine. You’ve got two jackpots. After the first pays off, the second comes into the pay-off position and the coins begin feeding into the first one again.”
“Then once the wheels have started spinning, the clock in back determines the time when they’re going to stop?”
“That’s right. It’s a question of timing. That’s what it is in everything: golf, baseball, tennis, fighting — anything.”
I studied the mechanism of the machine.
Louie said, “Timing! That’s the way I won the championship bout in the Navy.”
He danced out into the middle of the cement floor, ducked his head down, raised his left shoulder, and started making jabs at an imaginary opponent, ducking and weaving around, dancing lightly on the balls of his feet, the leather soles of his shoes making a peculiar shuffling sound as they slid over the cement. I let him go because I wanted to study the machine.