room and drill ‘em and put the cellophane in. The way it works is, when the cellophane gas is heated by your hand, it turns solid. That loads ‘em so when you roll the dice, they come up on whatever number they’re weighted to make.”
“Why do you need cellophane gas?” she asked. “Why not just use regular weights?”
“Because, once you start to hit these casinos, they get very nervous and, besides checking the dice, they send over a pit boss who’s gonna stand at the table, watching the action. If you’re winning too much, he’ll also float the dice.” Seeing her confused look, he explained: “That means he’ll drop ‘em in a glass of water. If they roll over, he knows they’re weighted on one side and you’re busted. Thing about cellophane gas is, it heats fast, but it also cools very fast. By the time he gets it into the water, it’s already back to being a gas and therefore equally distributed, so the dice don’t roll.”
“Pretty clever.”
“In order to get Tommy’s attention, we’re gonna have t’hit his casino for a pile of dough. Between the table and the ‘fill cage,’ I’d like to get as close to two million as I can. To do that, we’re gonna have to be at that table for a while. They won’t shut us down if they can’t catch us cheating. These dice should have ‘em stumped.”
“Okay, so what’s the deal with the wheelchair?”
“I’ll show you.” Beano got up and went out of the motor home. Victoria and John followed, watching as he climbed up the back ladder and untied the tarp on the roof. Then he handed down a Quickie Grand Prix Victory folding wheelchair with no seat. Victoria watched as Beano dug around on the roof for a minute. He climbed down with what looked like a portable toilet with a plastic catch basin attached.
“That’s a Porta-Toilet seat,” she said, grinning foolishly, still feeling giddy from the champagne.
Beano opened the chair, John handed him a rag, and Beano wiped the dust off. He then attached the Porta-Toilet to the seat on the wheelchair and looked up at her. “This is gonna be Fit-Throwing Duffy’s work station. He’s gonna be a gimp at the table. I wheel him in, park him, and create the distractions. Once he pulls the dice off the crap table, he drops ‘em between his legs into the Porta-Toilet. At the same time, he makes a palm switch putting counterfeit dice in the game. Since we’re going to be losing big at this point, the Stick-man on the table won’t bother to check the dice. They never worry about dice being used by a loser. It won’t be until the new Shift Manager comes on and they do a dice count that they’ll find our dice, but since they’re not loaded, they’ll probably just fill out an incident report and do nothing. Neither the Pit Boss or the Shift Manager watching through the Eye-in-the-Sky camera will spot Duffy’s switch. He can palm stuff like a close-hand magician. In an hour he’ll get us twelve pairs of their trademark dice to drill.” Beano turned the wheelchair upside down and showed her a specially designed cartridge clip under each arm where the drilled dice could be snap-loaded. “The doctored dice fit in here. If Duffy wants a seven, he pulls the ace from this side, the six from the other, and holds ‘em for a minute, doing some player hooey to stall long enough for the gas to warm up and turn solid. At the same time, he ditches the table dice into the Porta-Toilet. He blows on the loadies, starts sayin’ stuff like ‘Come on, come on seven. Baby needs a new pair a’shoes,’ some bullshit like that. Once the cellophane is solid, he rolls the number and wins”.
“You guys have this down to a science.”
“It’s not a science,” Beano grinned, “it’s an art.”
As they were talking, a brand-new red Corvette with the top down pulled through the arch at Shady Rest and parked next to the motor home. Behind the wheel was one of the most extraordinary creatures that Victoria Hart had ever seen. She had long, luxuriant jet-black hair and ivory-white skin. Her green eyes sparkled when she got out of the car. She was not saving anything. Her luscious frame was poured into skin-tight, ripped jeans. She was wearing a tank-top, her chest jutted, and when she moved it didn’t look to Victoria like a