Excerpt from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"That's four loaded pistols," I said.

"There's a risk, I know. But I'm a gambler. I have been all my life. You have to be if you deal in antiques and restore houses and go into debt for all of it as I have. But when I gamble I know how to improve the odds. Come, I'll show you."

Williams led me over to a small backgammon table. He removed the backgammon board and replaced it with an-other plain board lined with green felt.

"I believe in mind control," he said. "I think you can influ-ence events by mental concentration. I've invented a game called Psycho Dice. It's very simple. You take four dice and call out four numbers between one and six--for example, a four, a three, and two sixes. Then you throw the dice, and if any of your numbers come up, you leave those dice stand-ing on the board. You continue to roll the remaining dice until all the dice are sitting on the board, showing your set of numbers. You're eliminated if you roll three times in suc-cession without getting any of the numbers you need. The object is to get all four numbers in the fewest rolls."

Williams was sure he could improve the odds by sheer concentration. "Dice have six sides," he said, "so you have a one-in-six chance of getting your number when you throw them. If you do any better than that, you beat the law of av-erages. Concentration definitely helps. That's been proved. Back in the nineteen-thirties, Duke University did a study with a machine that could throw dice. First they had it throw dice when nobody was in the building, and the num-bers came up strictly according to the law of averages. Then they put a man in the next room and had him concentrate on various numbers to see if that would beat the odds. It did. Then they put him in the same room, still concentrat-ing, and the machine beat the odds again, by an even wider margin. When the man rolled the dice himself, using a cup, he did better still. When he finally rolled the dice with his bare hand, he did best of all."

From the few rounds we played, I could not say whether Psycho Dice really worked. Williams had no doubt that it did. He saw proof of it at every turn. When I needed a five and rolled a two, he proclaimed, "Aha! You know what's on the other side of a two, don't you? Five!"

I could not let this pass. "If we'd been betting, I would have lost anyway, wouldn't I?"

"Yes, but look how close you came. You see, the same concentration that makes Psycho Dice work can make most things in life work. I've never been sick a day in my life ex-cept for a common cold once in a while. I just can't be both-ered. I don't have the time. Being sick is a luxury. I concentrate on being well. Danny didn't do more than let off steam tonight, because I cooled him down. I was concentrating on that."

I was tempted not to let that remark pass, either. But it was late. I rose to leave. "Isn't it possible that other people will turn their mental energy on you?" I asked.

"They try to all the time," Williams said with a wry smile. "I'm told a lot of people pray fervently night after night that I'll invite them to my Christmas parties."

"I can understand that," I said. "From what I've heard, it's the best party in Savannah."

"I'll invite you to the next one, and you can judge for yourself." Williams fixed me with an impenetrable look. "You know I have two Christmas parties, not just one. Both are black-tie. The first party is the famous one. It's the one that gets written up in the newspapers, the one the high and mighty of Savannah come to. The second party is the next night. It's the one the papers never write about. It's . . . for gentlemen only. Which party would you like to be invited to?"

"The one," I said, "least likely to involve gunfire."

Excerpted from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. Copyright© 1994 by John Berendt. Excerpted by permission of Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.