'look Up And He's Got Your Money'

"Well, say, I'm sorry."

"No, hey, Mr. Baxter, don't apologize." The intruder was smiling. "I'm just proud to have played you. You're the best."

Baxter relaxed. He extended his hand. "Well, all right," he said.

When the man left, Baxter's thin lips disappeared in the stretch of his smile. "Don't that beat all?" he said. "I don't remember that guy, but he sure is the kind of loser I like."

Later, going into the arena in Beaumont with the Mayweather entourage, Baxter said he had been able to get down only $20,000 on the Lockridge fight, and all of it before he left Vegas. The entourage brimmed with confidence. Mayweather, Billy said, "is already the best, and he's going to get better. He'll beat everybody. He'll be the lightweight champion, then the junior welterweight champ. When we fight [WBC junior lightweight champion] Hector Camacho , I'm gonna bet so much money I can retire on it. My last project in life."

In the first round of the fight, Lockridge looped a classic how-to overhand right past a drooping left lead and detached Mayweather from his faculties. The knockout came so fast it stunned the entire Mayweather group. It was as if Lockridge had hit them all one huge punch. "This isn't exactly what I had in mind," said Baxter. But in Mayweather's locker room he was pep-talking and consoling. "Back to the drawing board," he told Mayweather, who was still pie-eyed. "Don't worry," he said, "we'll get a rematch." He told Mayweather's disconsolate mother, "I hate to tell you how many times I got knocked down in life." She nodded and closed her eyes reverently.

A visitor commiserated with Baxter over his double loss—the fight and the $20,000.

"Hey, listen, it's O.K.," Baxter said. "If we'd been in Vegas, I'da lost $200,000."

Billy Baxter is sitting at the control center of his betting operations. Dressed in a navy blue and red warmup suit, blue and white running shoes, the bottoms of which are fully treaded, he's slouched on a green corduroy couch in front of a massive oak coffee table in the den of his villa, making notes on a piece of hotel stationery. On the coffee table a silk floral arrangement competes for space with a scattering of papers and a beige telephone with three lights that blink urgently as Billy conducts business.

Today Baxter is betting college basketball, but he isn't crazy about it. "First of all, I don't like to watch it," he says. "Too much running up and down the floor. Too many teams, too many leagues. How much can a man know about the Yankee Conference ? The history of basketball tells you you oughta be a little scared of it, too, but that really doesn't bother me. It's something to bet on."