The Vintage Reader

The what was what-what?

Here's the first paragraph of Brain Guy, the Benjamin Appel book I won on eBay a few months back. The slang is so thick I can hardly get through it, but here's my interlinear translation. This seems like the kind of thing William Denton would be good for, but unfortunately, there's one word he doesn't list. See if you can figure out what it is.

"Who could he shake down for some dough?"
Whom could he persuade to loan him a dollar or two?
"In the Italian table d'hote he cracked the last walnuts with a spiteful feeling that the meal had cleaned him out, but who gave a damn?"
At the Italian restaurant, with its limited but inexpensive prix fixe meals, he tossed the last of his change down [that's a guess] with a spiteful feeling that the meal had cost him all the money he had with him, but who cared?
"Eighty-five cents plus fifteen cent tip."
The meal cost eighty-five cents, plus a gratuity of fifteen cents, or just under fifteen percent.
"That skunked a buck."
That was a whole dollar.
"Hell, he needed money."
He was badly in need of money.
"It'd been a jinx all day."
His luck had not been good all day.
"None of his horses'd come in."
He had not won any bets at the racetrack.
"The numbers'd been n.g."
The numbers had been n.g.
"And payday was a mile off."
And payday was not forthcoming.

...if you guessed that n.g. was the word Denton didn't cover, you'd be right. And you'll be hitting your head with your palm in a minute, like I just did when I looked it up in the Dictionary of American Slang and found out that it means "No good, worthless; untrustworty, unethical, contemptible. From the initials for 'no good.'"