He pointed to a bulky piece of metal clamped over one of the sprockets and screwed into place. “See the roller on hat first wheel?”
I nodded.
“Well, that’s a roller. That’s on one of the oranges. Now, you see there’s three oranges on the first wheel, four on the second, and six on the third. That makes a man feel good. You see, the machine stops just that way. One — two — three. Now suppose he gets an orange on the first, and an orange on the second. He’s got time to do a little thinking before be third wheel clicks, and if it’s an orange, he thinks he made it come just by thinking about it. That’s why there’s so many oranges on the third wheel. Six out of twenty. Get me? There’s twenty figures on each wheel. Well, with six oranges on the third wheel, there’s about one chance jut of three that it’ll stop on an orange after you’ve got the;first two oranges. That’s the trick. Getting the first two oranges.
“Now that’s where the roller comes in. Ain’t you never played a slot machine and seen a pay-off figure sorta hesitate in front of the window, and then shoot on by, and the wheel lock with a hell of a heavy click on the next figure? Well, buddy, when that happens, you’ve been rollered off. Take this machine, for instance. There’s three oranges on the first wheel. That means you got about one chance in seven of gettin’ your first orange. All right, we put a roller on this orange slot, and that means there’s only two oranges left. Get me? Two oranges out of twenty. That means you only stand one chance in ten of getting your first orange. You might not think there was much difference between one chance in seven and one chance in ten, but when you’re givin’ a machine steady play, it sure shows up in the old bread basket.”
I looked the machine over. “How do they tamper with them?”
“They carry a little drill, and they drill a hole right through here. See? Now you notice these rivets here? Well, they plug up that little hole with a fake rivet head. Then if a man looks at the machine, he don’t see nothing wrong. Get me? A man don’t never bother to count the rivets in a machine. Just one extra rivet don’t show up at all.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“Then after they get the machine bored and riveted, they’ll come back. Usually, they have a gang of three or four. There’s usually a hell of a good-looking jane in the gang. They pretend to be liquored up, and they’re having a great time. They get all excited and crowd around the machine. And one of the good-looking janes will slip that false rivet out. They got a piece of stiff wire that they stick in that hole, and it’s got a little twister on the end, and they turn it. Now, if they’ve drilled that hole in the right place, when they turn that wire, it pushes this metal finger back, and they can keep on playing the machine without putting no coin in. If the machine ain’t got a cheese knife — or if the cheese knife has been disconnected.”
“What’s a cheese knife?” I asked.
“Well, that’s something that rolls over the nickel. It won’t release unless it first slides over the round part of a nickel. But they’re pretty delicate, and they’re always jamming, so lots of places take ’em off. Then lots of times they get stuck and won’t work at all.”