That didn't seem too unfair. And in another minute or two he had figured out that you could make other bets, one through twelve, for example, or thirteen to twenty-four, or odd or even, or red or black, that gave you a greater chance of winning, but paid lower odds.

Since 0 and 00 were neither odd or even, and were green, rather than black or red, the house, Matt decided, got its five percent no matter how the suckers bet.

And he also decided that since he had already made the mental decision to throw twenty dollars away, so that he could say he had gambled in Las Vegas, there was no reason to change simply because the slot machine had paid off.

He would now be able to say, he thought, as he put five of the slot machine slugs on EVEN that he had lost his shirt at roulette. That sounded better than having lost his shirt at the slot machines.

Six came up.

The croupier looked at him.

"Pennies or nickels?"

What the h.e.l.l does that mean?

"Nickels," Matt said.

The croupier took his slot machine slugs and laid two chips in their place.

Obviously, a "nickel" means that chip is the equivalent of five slot machine slugs.

Matt let his two-nickel bet ride. Twenty-six came up. The croupier added two chips to the two on the board. Matt decided it was time to quit, since he was ahead. He picked up the four chips, and felt rather wise when the ball fell into a slot marked with a seven.

He waited until the wheel had been spun again, odd again, and then placed another five slot machine slugs on the green felt, this time on One to Twelve.

Nine came up. The croupier took the slot machine slugs and replaced them with three nickel chips.

"Sir, would you like me to exchange your coins for you?"

Obviously, it was for some reason impolite to play roulette with slot machine slugs.

"Please," Matt said, and pushed the waxed paper bucket to the croupier.

"All nickels?"

"Nickels and dimes," Matt said.

Two small stacks of chips were pushed across the table to him.

Matt yawned, and then again.

Jesus, what's the matter with me? I was just going to get something to eat and then c.r.a.p out. How long have I been doing this?

His watch said that it was quarter to six.

Time to quit.

He watched the ball circle the wheel and then bounce around the slots before finally dropping in one.

Obviously, it is time to quit. I have been betting on 00 every fourth or fifth bet since I have been here, and that's the first time I ever won.

As the croupier counted out chips to place beside the chip he had laid on 00, Matt said, "Quit when you're ahead, I always say."

"You want to cash in, sir?"

"Please," Matt said, and pushed the stacks of chips, nickels, dimes, and quarters in front of him to the croupier.

He wondered where the cashier kept the real money to cash him out. There was no money, no cash box, in sight.

The croupier put all the chips in neat little stacks, and then said "Cash out." A man in a suit who had been hovering around in the background came up behind the croupier, looked, nodded, wrote something on a clipboard, and then smiled at Matt.

The croupier pushed a stack of chips, including some oblong ones Matt hadn't noticed before, across the felt to him.

"What do I do with these?" he wondered aloud.

"Take them to the cashier, sir," the croupier said.

Matt reclaimed his waxed paper bucket, and as he dumped the chips into it, he recalled that the polite thing to do was tip the croupier. He pushed one of the oblong chips across the table to the croupier.

"Thank you very much, sir," the croupier said. It was the first time, Matt noticed, that he had sounded at all friendly.

He walked to the cashier's cage and pushed the waxed paper bucket through what looked like a bank teller's window to a gray-haired, middle-aged woman.

She put all the chips in neat little stacks and then counted to herself, moving her lips. She looked at him.

"Would you like me to draw a check, sir?"

What the h.e.l.l would I do with a check? I couldn't cash a check out here.

"I'd rather have the cash, if that would be all right."

The gray-haired woman took a stack of bills from a drawer and started counting them out. Matt was surprised to see that the bills were hundred-dollar bills, and then astonished to see how many of them she was counting out into thousand-dollar stacks. When she was finished there were four one-thousand-dollar stacks, one stack with six hundred-dollar bills in it, and a sixth stack with eighty-five dollars in it, four twenties and a five.

"Four thousand six hundred eighty-five," the gray-haired woman said.

"Thank you very much."

"Thank you you, sir."

I don't believe this.

Matt divided the money into two wads, put one in each pocket, and walked out of the casino.

The first thing Matt Payne experienced when he woke up was annoyance. He had fallen asleep with his clothes on. And then he remembered the money and sat up abruptly. It was still there on the bed. No longer in the one thick wad into which he had counted it, three or four times, but there.

He counted it again. $4,685.

Jesus H. Christ!

He put the stack of bills in the drawer of the bedside table, then undressed and took a shower. He wrapped himself in a terry-cloth robe, went back into the bedroom, sat on the enormous bed, took the money from the bedside table, and counted it again.

Then he laid on the bed with his hands laced behind his head and thought about it.

The first thing he thought was that he was a natural-born gambler, that his quick mind gave him an edge over people who lost at roulette. He knew when to bet and when not to bet.

That's so much bulls.h.i.t! You were just incredibly lucky, that's all. Dumb beginner's luck. Period. If you go back down there and try to do that again, you will lose very dime of that, plus the two fifties mad money.

The thing to do is put that money someplace safe and forget about it.

He figured that he might as well round it off, to forty-five hundred, keeping one hundred eight-five to play with, and then he changed that to rounding it off to four thousand even, which left him six hundred eight-five to play with, which meant lose.

He took out his toilet kit, and with some effort managed to cram forty hundred-dollar bills into the chrome soap dish.

He looked at his watch. It was quarter after three. That was Philadelphia time. It was only a little after midnight here, but it explained why he was hungry again.

With his luck, the restaurants would be closed at this hour. He would be denied another meal.

That's not true. With my my luck, the restaurant will not only be open, but the headwaiter will show me to my table with a flourish of trumpets. luck, the restaurant will not only be open, but the headwaiter will show me to my table with a flourish of trumpets.

The headwaiter made him wait for a table, as the restaurant was even more crowded at midnight, Las Vegas time, than it had been when he'd had lunch, or breakfast, or whatever meal that had been. He had a martini, a shrimp c.o.c.ktail, and another filet mignon, and then went back to the casino.

He went to the same roulette table and gave the croupier one hundred eight-five dollars, specifying nickels, and promptly lost it all.

He moved away from the table and decided he would see if he could figure out how one bet at a c.r.a.ps table, as he had figured out how one bet at roulette.

There was a man at the head of the table rolling dice. He looked like a gambler, Matt decided. He had gold rings on both hands, and a long-collared shirt unb.u.t.toned nearly to his navel, so as to display his hairy chest and a large gold medallion. And he had, one on each side of him, a pair of what Matt decided must be Las Vegas hookers of fame and legend.

Matt moved to what he hoped was an un.o.btrusive distance from the gambler and tried to figure out what was going on. Ten minutes later, the only thing he was fairly sure of was that the gambler was a fellow Philadelphian. The accent was unmistakable.

"Sir, if you are not going to wager, would you mind stepping aside and making room for someone who would like to play?"

"Sorry," Matt said, and pulled his wad of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and laid one somewhere, anywhere, on the felt of the c.r.a.ps table. The gambler threw the dice. The hooker on his left said "ooooh" and the one on his right kissed him and gave him a little hug.

The croupier picked up Matt's one-hundred-dollar bill . . .

I lost. Why did I bet a hundred?

... and held a handful of chips over it.

"Quarters all right, sir?"

I won. I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned. What did I bet on?

"Quarters are fine, thank you."

He picked up the stack of quarters, there were twelve of them, and walked away from the table.

If you have no idea what you're betting on, you have no business betting.

"Stick around," the gambler said. "I'm on a roll."

The temptation was nearly irresistible. The hooker on the left was smiling at him with invitation in her eyes. He had never been with a hooker.

Was this the time and place?

Get thee behind me, Satan! Back to the roulette table.

The Lindens was a forty-five-minute drive from the Flamingo. Matt was sorry that he had let himself be ushered into the back seat of the limousine. He certainly could have seen more of Las Vegas and the desert upfront than he could see from the back seat, through the deeply tinted windows.

But he had been more than a little groggy when he left the Flamingo. He had lost the seven hundred dollars he had walked away from the c.r.a.ps table with, gone to bed, woken up, and-absolute insanity-decided he could take a chance with another five hundred, and then had compounded that insanity by taking a thousand dollars, not five hundred, from the soap dish and going back to the casino with it.

When he'd finally left the table, at quarter past six, Las Vegas time, he had worked the thousand up to thirty-seven hundred. Since that obviously wouldn't fit into the soap dish, and he didn't want to have that much money in his pockets, or put it in the suitcase, he told the man in the cashier's cage to give him a check for his winnings.

By the time they had made out the check, and he'd taken another quick shower, they had called from the desk and told him his limousine was waiting for him.

There was nothing he could see for miles around The Lindens, which turned out to be a rambling, vaguely Spanish-looking collection of connected buildings built on a barren mountainside. There was a private road, a mile and a half long, from a secondary highway.

There was no fence around the place. Probably, he decided, because you would have to be out of your mind to try to walk away from The Lindens. There was nothing but desert.

In front of the main building, in an improbably lush patch of gra.s.s, were six trees. Lindens, he decided, as in Unter den Linden.

A hefty, middle-aged man in a blazer with retired cop written all over him saw him get out of the limousine and unlocked a double door as Matt walked up to it.

"Mr. Payne?"

"Right?"

"Dr. Newberry is expecting you, sir. Will you follow me, please?"

He locked the door again before he headed inside the building.

Dr. Newberry was a woman in a white coat who looked very much like the cashier in the Flamingo.

"You look very much like your sister," Dr. Newberry greeted him cordially. Matt did not think he should inform her that that must be a genetic anomaly, because he and Amy shared no genes. He nodded politely.

"It was very good of you to come out to be with Penelope on her trip home."

"Not at all."

"We believe, as I'm sure Dr. Payne has told you, that we've done all we can for Penelope here. We've talked her through her problems, and of course, we believe that her physical addiction is under control."

"Yes, ma'am."

"We've tried to convince her that the best thing she can do is put what happened behind her, that she's not the only young woman who has had difficulty like this in her life, and that she will not be the only one to overcome it."

"Yes, ma'am."

"What I'm trying to get across is that I hope you can behave in a natural manner toward Penelope. While neither you nor she can deny that she has had problems, or has spent this time with us, the less you dwell upon it, the better. Do you understand?"