The Diceman

'There are already four other witnesses who claim that they saw you leave with Osterflood, Rhinehart" said the

detective.

'Ahh, four! That shows initiative, Gina. It would be a shame to waste those witnesses.'

Dr. Rhinehart retrieved his die from the desk and dropped it onto the couch beside his thigh.

'I left with Osterflood, Inspector.'

'Where did you go?'

'Where did we go, Gina?'

`You took a tax-'

`Shuttup! Get her out of here.'

Gina was removed from the room by the detective.

`We got in a taxi, I believe. I got off at the Lexington Avenue subway stop at 125th Street. I needed to relieve myself.

Osterflood went on. He was quite drunk and I felt slightly guilty about leaving him with a suspiciously cheerful cabby,

but I was drunk too. I found a urinal near-'

'Why did you lie to us the first time?'

`Who says I lied to you the first time?'

`You've just changed your story.'

'Details.'

'Gina's witnesses exposed your lie.'

`Come now, Inspector, you know full well that her four witnesses are even less reliable than the dice, and that's going

some.'

`Shuttup!'

'And besides, the Die told me to change the story.'

The inspector was glaring at Dr. Rhinehart.

`You'd better consult your dice again,' he said. 'No cabby in the city remembers picking up two big white men in

Harlem that evening, or for that matter any evening in the last five years. You, as a doctor, would have recognized the symptoms of strychnine poisoning as different from simple drunke

Inspector Putt and Dr. Rhinehart stared at each other.

`Wow!' Dr. Rhinehart said after awhile. He leaned forward on the couch, wide-eyed, attentive, interested, and asked intently: `Who killed him?'

Chapter Ninety

Dear Doc, The Die told me to write you. Can't think of much to say. Die bless you, Fred Weedmuller, Porksnout, Texas. Chapter Ninety-one A week after my interview with him, Inspector Putt a

(undisclosed) indicated conclusively that Osterflood must have committed suicide probably. Privately, he informed friends and informers that it was clear he couldn't possibly get a conviction against either Gina or me. Gina wouldn't have murdered Osterflood so premeditatedly in her own apartment with another white man present, and strychnine, he noted, is not the usual mode of murder of `abused Harlem whores' Moreover, her four witnesses, while obviously they were lying, nevertheless would raise a shadow of doubt in the minds of a few radlib jurors.

Dr. Rhinehart would be impossible to convict because no jury, radlib or one hundred and ten percent American, could be expected to understand Rhinehart's motivation. The inspector admitted he himself wasn't certain he understood it. 'He did it because the dice told him to,' the D.A. would proclaim and the defense attorneys would lead the general laughter which would follow. The world was changing too rapidly for the typical juror, no matter, how American, to keep up. Moreover, even inspector Putt was begi

Nevertheless, Inspector Putt had called me for one last confrontation and had concluded a long lecture with the ringing words 'Someday Rhinehart, the law is going to catch up with you. Someday the furies are going to come home to roost. Someday the sins you are committing in the name of your dice games are going to be taken out of the bank. Someday, you will learn, crime, even in the United States; does not pay.'

'I'm sure you're right,' I said, shaking his hand as I left. 'But is there any hurry ?'

So my dicelife went on. I gave the Die one chance in six that I do everything in my power to bring Osterflood back to life again, but the option lost out to another one-in-six shot: that I spend three days in mourning for Frank, and that I compose a few prayers and parables for the occasion.

On January 1, 1971, I. had my third a

(This last option fascinated me since I always find long-range options something of a drag: they tend to make me too patterned, even if it is the pattern of the Die.) But the Die, testing me, tumbled down a 'four' : that 'I work during the year on various writing projects.'

Two subsequent dice decisions soon determined that I was to complete sometime during the year 'an autobiography of exactly 200,000 words' (so I've had this stupid thing barging in on my days most of the year) and that I worked on other Die-selected work when appropriate (namely when the Die and I felt like it).

Of course writing is hardly a full-time job and I continued randomly seeing my friends, working sporadically with Dice Centers and dicegroups, occasionally lecturing, whimsically playing, occasional new roles, occasionally practicing my dice exercises, and generally leading a very enjoyable, repetitious, consistently inconsistent random sporadic unpredictable dicelife.

Then, naturally, Chance intervened.

Chapter Ninety-two

RELIGION FOR OUR TIME presents [The camera pans from one figure to the next of the five people seated on the slightly raised stage in front of the fifty or so people in the audience.] Father John Wolfe, assistant professor of theology at Fordham University; Rabbi Eli Fishman', chairman of the Ecumenical Center for a More United Society; Dr. Eliot Dart, professor of psychology at Princeton University and noted atheist; and Dr. Lucius M. Rhinehart, psychiatrist and controversial founder of the Religion of the Die.