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."