I still wasn’t quite sure whether to be amused by his shenanigans or disgusted. I finally decided it was none of my business.
“You do what you want,” I said. “I’ll stick to the old-fashioned way of paying for merchandise.”
It was twenty after eight when we arrived at the Elks. The door to the bar was closed and locked, as the bar always shut down while lodge was in session. There was no one in the lobby.
“You particularly interested in attending the meeting?” Tom asked.
“I thought that’s what we came for.”
“We came for the stag afterward. I happen to know nothing very interesting is coming up tonight. It’s just routine business. Let’s have a game of pool in the basement.”
I really wanted to attend the meeting, but I didn’t particularly care to go in late alone. Despite last week’s instructions during initiation on various ritualistic procedures, I wasn’t quite sure how to request admission from the tyler, or just what I was supposed to do and say after I was let in. I did vaguely recall that the procedure wasn’t very elaborate, but I would be up there going through it all alone in front of the assembled brotherhood. Without Tom’s moral support. I didn’t have much stomach for it. I gave in and followed Tom to the basement poolroom.
We decided to play eight-ball. Tom won the cushion shot and racked the balls. As we both chalked our cues, Tom said, “Why don’t you play poker tonight instead of getting in the crap game, Sid?”
“Why?”
“I told you I don’t take friends. And you’re a friend.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “You mean the game’s crooked?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that I can’t be beat. Examine these.”
He dipped a hand into his side pants pocket and tossed a pair of red, transparent dice on the pool table. They came up six-four.
I knew enough about dice to catch crooked ones on close examination. I matched them and the markings were all right. Then I squared them against each other on all six planes. They weren’t shaved. Wetting my thumb and index finger, I suspended one die between them by two corners, holding it loosely enough to turn easily. If it had been unevenly weighted, one corner would always have ended down when the die was spun. It passed the test, and so did the second die.
“They looked square to me,” I said.
“They are. Toss them back.”
I rolled them toward him, he scooped them up and immediately tossed again. This time they came up five-one.
“Examine them again,” Tom said.
I went through the same tests. This time, on the wet-finger test, one die failed to pass.
I bounced it on the green felt and it came up five. I bounced it twice more and the same number showed.
“This one’s loaded always to come up five,” I said. “What’d you do? Switch dice?”
Grinning, he showed me a third die, palmed.
“What advantage does that give you?” I asked. “So everybody always throws a five on one die.”
“Not everybody,” he said. “Only me, whenever I come out. On my second roll it goes back in my palm and we play with straight dice. So it can never get away from me and work its way around the table, you see.”
I said puzzledly, “I still don’t get it.”
“You would if you thought about it. If I’m always sure of a five on one die on my first roll what points are possible on both dice?”
After thinking a moment, I said, “You can come up with a six, seven, eight, nine, ten or eleven.”
“Exactly. I can’t ever throw craps. Once out of every three times I get the next best thing: a six or an eight. Once out of six times I have to shoot for a nine, and once out of six times I’m stuck with a ten. It throws the odds around eight-to-five with me. If you want the exact odds, they’re eight-to-five-point-one, seven, seven. Anyway, they’re enough so that over the long haul I can’t possibly lose on my own rolls.”
I said slowly, “You pull this against brother Elks?”
“Brother Elks, fiddle flap,” he said. “They’re just guys. Some are my friends and some are just barroom acquaintances. To my friends I pass the word to stay off me. The others don’t count.”
My brows went up. “You mean some of the other Elks know about this loaded die?”
He shook his head. “The other guys I don’t want to take, I just warn that I feel hot and to stay off me. You’re the only one who knows the real lowdown. That’s because you’re a particularly good friend.”
I wasn’t sure whether to feel flattered or uncomfortable. I didn’t like the idea of standing by while fellow members, whom only a week ago I had pledged to regard as brothers, were taken in a crooked crap game. Yet how could I violate a confidence told me because of friendship? Particularly since if I said anything, my avowed good friend would undoubtedly be kicked out of the lodge.
There couldn’t be many stags during the year, I told myself. The best thing to do was just forget it.
“Do you cheat at pool too?” I asked.
Pocketing the dice, he grinned at me and addressed the cue ball. “I don’t have to. We won’t make a bet, because I’m going to skin your pants off and I don’t make suckers out of my friends.” Whereupon he proceeded to wallop me in two straight games.
Near the end of the second game we heard the members trooping downstairs and knew the meeting was over. When we finished the game, we racked our cues and went up to join the party.
I decided to take Tom’s advice and stay out of the crap game. There were three poker games, ranging from twenty-five-cent limit to five-dollar limit. I got in the two-bit game.
The crap game was held on blanket-covered table shoved against the wall, immediately behind where I was seated. I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on there, as you can’t afford to play poker with a wandering mind, but occasionally when I was out of a hand I glanced over my shoulder.
On one such occasion I turned my attention to the crap game just in time to hear Tom Slider say, “You covered with a buck too much, Joe. Here.”
The trust-building technique again. I thought ruefully, as I saw Tom separate a bill from his sizeable wad and toss it to another player. Who was going to suspect him of cheating, when he returned an extra dollar mistakenly given him?
At a quarter past eleven I was three dollars ahead when a hand fell on my shoulder from behind. Glancing around, I found Tom standing behind me.
“I cleaned the game and everybody quit,” he said. “Think you could snare a ride home if I took off?”
Andy Carter, across the table, said, “I’ll be here until closing. Ill run you home, Sid.”
“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead, Tom. See you for dinner next Wednesday.”
At midnight I was two dollars out. By then I had drunk a little too much beer and was beginning to tire of the game. When I was dealt a pair of jacks in five-card draw. I didn’t even bother to open. Passing, I tossed in my cards, lit a cigarette, leaned back in my chair and waited for the next hand.
Idly I wondered why Tom Slider had singled me out to demonstrate his dice cheating system. His excuse that I was a particularly good friend didn’t quite hold up. While we had been pretty thick in high school, we had barely been in contact since. Actually I qualified more as what Tom classed as an “acquaintance” than as a friend.
Then a peculiar thought drifted into my mind. Remembering what Tom had said about the old con trick of “building confidence in small ways”. I wondered if he had stressed our friendship for the purpose of throwing me off guard. Had his repeated insistence that he never cheated friends been merely groundwork to allay any suspicions I might have, so that eventually he could move in for the kill?