"You're wasting it," I told her, looking out over the crap tables. "It's new, and different. But I'm not anybody's darling." A jerk of my head told her to move on.
But she sniffled and stayed put. I gave up and started through the press of gamblers toward the Cashier's cage.
"Billy Joe!" this hustler moaned behind me, clawing at my jacket. "I knew I'd find you here. And I came sich a fer piece, Billy Joe! Don't make me go off again, darlin' Billy!"
While I prefer to gamble for cash, I had reason while on a job for sticking to a known amount of chips. She stood there while I got a thousand dollars worth of ten-buck markers, looking at me with some kind of plea in her eyes. This again was not in the pattern. Most hustlers can't keep their eyes off your chips.
She puppy-dogged behind me to the crap table I had decided needed my attention. It was crowded, but there's always room for one more sucker. And still one more, for the sniffly girl with the hair-colored hair pressed in against my useless right arm when I elbowed my way in between the gamblers, directly across from the dealers.
"Billy Joe!" she said, just loud enough to hear over the chanting of the dealers and the excited chatter of the dice players. Billy Joe! What a corn-ball routine!
I took stock before beginning to lose my stack of chips. There were more than twenty gamblers of both sexes pressed up against the green baize of the crap layout. Three stick-men in black aprons that marked them for dealers were working on the other side or the table. We had at least one dealer too many for the crowd. That screamed out loud the table was having trouble. Big gambling layouts know within minutes if a table is not making its vigorish. A Nevada crap layout, with moderately heavy play, should make six per cent of the amount gambled on every roll. That's its vigorish—its percentage. If the take falls below that, the suspicion is that the table is being taken to the cleaners by a crooked gambler, or "cross-roader." The table I had picked was the only one in the Sky Hi Club's casino with more than one stick-man working it.
