Deadman’s Bluff

13

Skip DeMarco stood naked at the bedroom window in his suite, imagining the world he could not see. Although his vision was limited to a few inches in front of his face, DeMarco had a keen sense of light and dark, and imagined the sun climbing over the tall, bluish mountains that ringed Las Vegas, a city his uncle had described to him in great detail. His uncle made the casino-lined streets sound like something out of The Wizard of Oz, but DeMarco didn’t picture them that way. Vegas was a cutthroat town, designed to separate suckers from their money. That was why his uncle liked it here so much.

The room’s air-conditioning rose with the intrusion of natural light. Shutting the blinds, he walked to the closet and went through the slow, painstaking process of picking out today’s outfit, holding each garment in front of his face to determine its color. He decided on a flowing black silk shirt, black linen pants, two gold necklaces, and shades. The tiny inner-canal earpiece he’d worn each day of the tournament lay on his bureau. As he fitted it into his ear, he heard his uncle’s soft tapping on the door.

“Come in, Uncle George.”

His uncle entered, shutting the door behind him.

“You sleep good?” the older man asked.

“Like a rock. How about you?”

“Fine. Show me what you’re wearing.”

DeMarco stood in the center of the bedroom, and let his uncle appraise his selection of clothes. It was a routine they’d followed since he’d gone to live with Scalzo as a little boy.

“You look great, kid,” his uncle said.

“The black isn’t too ominous?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Foreboding. Scary.”

“You look like a man,” his uncle bristled.

DeMarco pointed at the dresser. A radio transmitter lay on it, which was used to test the earpiece and make sure it was functioning properly. “Do the test, Uncle George.”

His uncle picked up the transmitter and flipped the power on. Then he pressed the transmitter’s main button. DeMarco heard a short click in his ear.

“Do it again,” DeMarco said.

His uncle pushed the button twice. DeMarco heard two clicks.

“Perfect,” he said.

“You’re not leaving this out for the maid to see, are you?” his uncle asked.

“It goes in the wall safe,” DeMarco said. “Put it away for me, Uncle George, would you?”

His uncle shuffled across the room and put the transmitter into the wall safe. A diabetic, he suffered from swollen feet. “It’s like walking on marshmallows all the time,” he often said. His uncle carried insulin with him, yet told everyone the insulin was for his nephew, not himself. DeMarco believed that little deception said a lot about his uncle.

“Now, look in my ear,” DeMarco said.

“You clean it real good?” his uncle asked. DeMarco smiled. Another standard line.

“Yes, I cleaned it real good.”

His uncle examined his nephew’s ear. When properly fitted, the earpiece was impossible to see. Earpieces had been used to cheat card games for years, with someone on the outside secretly reading everyone’s hands, and passing the information to the cheater via a radio transmitter. But that scam was easy to detect. If an RF detector was pointed at the table during the transmission, the detector would pick up the radio frequency, and the cheater would be exposed. Nearly every casino and poker room in the world used RF detectors for this purpose.

But the scam his uncle had given DeMarco to cheat the World Poker Showdown was different. For starters, there was no outside person reading the other players’ cards. And, if an RF detector was pointed at the table, the machine would hardly register, and the operator would think it was someone’s cell phone. But the best part was that there was no evidence. The cards were clean, and so was everything else.

There was only one bad part about the scam. DeMarco didn’t know how his opponent’s cards were being read. It was a creepy feeling to hear clicks in his ear, and not know who was sending them, and several times he’d asked his uncle to explain the secret. Each time, his uncle had placed his hand on his nephew’s shoulder and promised to tell him after he won the tournament.

Scalzo watched his nephew finish getting dressed, then looked at his watch. “Let’s go downstairs. They’re going to start playing soon.”

“I need to brush my teeth and comb my hair,” his nephew replied, heading toward the bathroom.

“Your hair looks fine, and no one’s going to smell your breath.”

“Come on, Uncle George. Appearances are important.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? You look fine.”

“It won’t take two minutes. Is that so much to ask?”

The bathroom door closed before Scalzo could reply. His nephew was letting all the attention go to his head. Scalzo had adopted Skipper twenty years ago, expecting the boy to grow up to be like him. Instead, Skipper had turned into a big peacock.

Scalzo went into the next room, slamming the door behind him. He spied Karl Jasper standing in the center of the living room, talking with Guido. It was the second time in two days that Jasper had come to Scalzo’s suite without being asked.

Guido hurried over to his boss.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Scalzo asked under his breath.

“He demanded that I let him in,” Guido said.

“He demanded?”

“Yeah. I figured it was important. You want, I’ll throw him out.”

Guido’s job didn’t involve making decisions. Going to the boss was the only right decision for Guido to make. Reaching down, Scalzo grabbed his bodyguard by the balls, and gave them a healthy squeeze. Guido’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“Don’t ever do something without asking me first,” Scalzo said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Never do something without asking me first,” he said, as if clarification were needed.

“Yes, sir.”

Scalzo released his death grip, and Guido slunk away. Then he walked up to Jasper. Jasper had been watching them, and his face had turned a sickly white.

“What the fuck do you want?” Scalzo said.

“We need to talk,” Jasper said.

“About what?”

“About what happened last night with Valentine.”

Scalzo pointed at the glass slider that led to a narrow balcony with a view of the desert. Only high-roller suites had windows that actually opened in Las Vegas hotels; everyone else was a prisoner of their room.

“Out there,” Scalzo said.

Jasper opened the slider and let Scalzo go first. Showing some respect, Scalzo thought. They both went outside.

“What happened last night?” Jasper asked, closing the slider behind him.

Scalzo grasped the balcony’s metal railing and stared at the mountains. He hated when people questioned him, hated it more when he had to answer. The mountains seemed close, and he tried to guess their distance.

“We had a problem,” he said quietly.

Jasper edged up beside him, bumping shoulders, his voice a whisper. “A problem? You hire two goons to snuff Valentine, and they end up dead in the hotel stairwell. I’d call that a catastrophe.”

Scalzo kept staring ahead. “You want to know what really happened?”

“Of course I want to know. We’re partners, aren’t we?”

“Valentine killed them.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I picked them up, brought them to the hotel, and sent them to Valentine’s room. Twenty minutes later, one of them called my cell, said that Valentine and the cowboy had fought back. I waited by the elevators for them to come down. I heard two shots from the stairwell. I went and opened the door, saw them lying dead on the floor. I heard footsteps and looked up. Valentine was running up the stairs holding a gun.”

Jasper swallowed hard, then opened and shut his eyes several times. When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

“So what do we? We can’t have Valentine screwing things up for us.”

A hundred miles, Scalzo decided. The mountains were one hundred miles away. He turned from the balcony and leaned against the railing, staring through the slider into the living room of the suite. Skipper hadn’t come out yet. Still preening two inches in front of the vanity, he guessed.

“I already made arrangements for Valentine to be taken care of,” Scalzo said.

“That was fast.”

“I have a flag in every state.”

A flag in every state meant Scalzo knew a mob guy in every state who would do him a favor. In this case, the favor came from a mob guy who had connections with the warden of a local prison. This warden had an inmate doing a life stretch, courtesy of Tony Valentine. By noon, that inmate would be on his way to Las Vegas.

“This man won’t screw up,” Scalzo added.

“How can you be sure?”

“He and Valentine have a history.”

Through the slider Scalzo saw Skipper come in. His nephew had switched into a shiny gold shirt and looked like a fag. This bullshit has to stop, he thought.

“I sure hope you’re right,” Jasper said.

Scalzo shifted his gaze, and stared into Jasper’s face. It was a look meant to inspire fear. He saw Jasper’s lower lip tremble, and knew that it had worked.

“Don’t ever question me again,” Scalzo said. “Now, I’m going to tell you something, and I don’t want you to forget it. Are you ready?”

“Sure,” Jasper said.

“If you ever force your way into my suite again, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

Jasper stepped backward and nearly fell over the railing. He quickly righted himself. “I understand,” he said.

Scalzo opened the slider, and went into the suite.

14

Bill Higgins dropped Valentine at Celebrity at a few minutes before nine. As Valentine walked through the front doors, he remembered his breakfast date with Gloria Curtis, and hurried through the lobby toward the restaurant. A concierge dressed like Jungle Jim hurried toward him.

“Mr. Valentine?”

“What’s up?” he said, not slowing down.

“I have a message from Ms. Gloria Curtis.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s a written message.”

The concierge whipped a small white envelope from his outer breast pocket and presented it to him. Valentine dug for his wallet to tip the guy.

“No need, Mr. Valentine. My compliments.”

The concierge walked away. The help got paid garbage in Las Vegas, and he chased the guy down and stuck a twenty in his hand, then walked to the elevators reading Gloria’s note.

He found a house phone, and when an operator came on, asked for Gloria’s room. She picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Tony, is that you?”

“Hello, Miss Curtis,” he said, knowing that hotel operators often listened to calls.

“Where are you?”

“I just walked through the front doors.”

“Zack called me earlier. He said you and Rufus Steele were attacked in your suite last night, and the men who did it were found dead in the stairwell.”

“That’s the Reader’s Digest version,” he said.

“Were you beat up? Did they damage that beautiful face?”

His cheeks burned. Never before had anyone called his face beautiful. “The face is fine. My neck is sore, but it will heal.”

“Please come up to my room,” Gloria said. “I’m in 842.”

Valentine hesitated. The older he’d gotten, the more important mealtime had become, and he’d been looking forward to eating breakfast.

“Do you still want to eat?” he heard himself ask.

“I ordered breakfast through room service. I hope you like your eggs scrambled with cheese in them.”

“That’s exactly how I like them,” he said.

“You’ve got a neck like a bull,” Gloria said, examining the bruises on the back of Valentine’s neck while he sat on the couch in her living room.

“I should. I stand on my head ten minutes every day.”

“How long have you been doing that?”

“About twenty-five years.”

She sat down beside him with a funny look on her face. She wore a powder blue suit, white blouse, and a Hermès scarf wrapped around her neck. She’d told him a few days ago that her network was putting her out to pasture because she was getting older, but to him, she looked just right.

“It’s one of my judo exercises,” he explained. “I took judo up when I started policing casinos. My boss didn’t want us using our guns on the casino floor, so I got involved in the martial arts.”

“Let me guess. Shootings are bad for business.”

“Yes. It seems gamblers see it as a sign of bad luck, and stay away in droves.”

“So you still practice?”

He stretched his neck and nodded. Normally he went to judo class three times a week, and could still throw around guys half his age. Telling her would only sound like bragging, so he kept quiet. Breakfast sat on a trestle tray in an alcove off the living room and smelled delicious. Gloria saw his eyes drift toward the food, and she brought her hand beneath his chin. She raised his face an inch and held his gaze.

“If I were to ask you a question, would you give me an honest answer?”

“I’d try,” he said.

“Come on. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Did you shoot those two men in the stairwell last night? Everyone says you did.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“Please answer me,” she said.

You couldn’t be a television announcer for as long as Gloria and not have great eyes. Hers were a soft aqua that could melt your heart if you looked into them too long.

“No, I didn’t shoot them,” he said.

“Do you know who did?”

“No idea,” he said.

Gloria stared deeply into his eyes. After a few intense moments, her face softened, and he guessed she believed him. She gave him a soft kiss on the lips, then led him to the food.

He pulled a chair out for her, then sat down to break fast. He’d known Gloria four full days, and their relationship seemed to be forging ahead at warp speed. He liked her, she liked him, and they never ran out of things to talk about.

Below a metal tray a Bunsen burner kept the food warm. Everyday scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, hash browns. She loaded up his plate, and as he bit into a strip of bacon, she gave him a look.

“Something wrong?”

“I was wondering about your sports jacket,” she said, serving herself half the amount of food she’d served him. “You’ve worn it every day, yet it always looks fresh. No wrinkles or stains. Do you get it dry-cleaned each night?”

“I have several,” he admitted.

“You alternate them?”

“Yes.”

“Are they all black?”

“All black. My late wife used to call them my uniform, I guess because you can only wear a black sports jacket with a white shirt and dark pants.”

“You been wearing them for a long time?”

He thought about it. “Twenty-eight years.”

Her fork landed on her plate with a jarring clang. “You’ve worn the same make of black jacket for twenty-eight years?”

He suddenly realized the deep hole he’d dug for himself. If he’d learned anything since he’d started dating, it was that women were as interested in a man’s personal habits as they were in his opinions. And he had just told her that he was a neanderthal.

“Maybe I should explain,” he said.

She leaned forward. “Please do.”

“It’s sort of a long story.”

“I like long stories.”

His mouth had become dry, and he sipped ice water.

“In the 1970s, New Jersey was going broke, so the politicians tried to convince the voters to legalize casinos, even though nobody wanted them. Our illustrious governor, a guy named Brendan Byrne, barnstormed the state, and told people that New Jersey’s casinos would be different than Las Vegas, and would feature ‘European-style’ gambling.”

“As in Monte Carlo?”

“Yes, as in Monte Carlo. Byrne made it sound like James Bond was going to be gambling, instead of some poor guy who hauled garbage.”

“How funny.”

“It was. When gambling was legalized, Byrne established a dress code. Men were supposed to wear jackets inside the casinos.”

“Classy. Did it work?”

He smiled, the memory as fresh as the day it had happened. “It was a disaster. The first casino was Resorts International. It opened on Memorial Day weekend, and the line of people was a mile long. When the doors opened, they came in like a stampede. The casino had put five hundred black sports jackets in a cloak room near the entrance, with the idea being that men who didn’t have a jacket would rent one. No one did.

“I was working inside the casino. One day, the floor manager comes up to me, and says, ‘Tony, turn around.’ I did, and I felt him run a tape measure across my back like a tailor in a clothing store. He said, ‘Perfect, you’re a size forty-two,’ and he told me to follow him.

“He led me to the room where the sports jackets were, and pointed at a rack. He said, ‘Tony, these jackets are forty-twos. Take what you want. We’re throwing them out.’ Well, they were all brand new, and my wife and I were barely scraping by, so I loaded up my car, took them home, and stored them in a spare closet. The next day, I loaded up the car again.”

“How many did you take?”

“All of them.”

“How many was that?”

He’d worn through two jackets a year for the past twenty-eight years, and still had a half dozen left.

“Sixty-two,” he said. Then added, “It saved us a lot of money.”

“Did you ever consider retiring the jackets after you left the police force?”

“Yeah, but I decided against it. The jackets were Geoffrey Beene, who’d had a boutique at Resorts. They were the best clothes I’d ever worn.”

“Your uniform,” she said.

“Yeah. My uniform.”

Gloria looked at her watch and stood up. “I need to run. I have an interview with one of the poker players in ten minutes. Stay and finish breakfast, if you like.”

She grabbed her jacket off the couch and hurried to the door. He followed her, not certain what she thought of his story. He hoped it didn’t make him sound too eccentric.

“Will I see you later?” she asked, stopping at the door.

They were the sweetest words she could have said. Valentine started to answer, then remembered what he’d wanted to talk to her about.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

She put her jacket on, and tossed back her hair. “What’s that?”

“There may be another hitman gunning for me.”

“That’s awful, Tony. What are you going to do?”

“I need to change my room, maybe start wearing a disguise when I’m in the hotel. I wanted you to know in case—”

“In case what?”

“In case you didn’t want to be around me.”

“But I enjoy being around you,” she said. “Do you think I invite every guy I meet up to my room for break fast?”

He did not know what to say. She put her arm on his shoulder and rested it there — something a good friend might do. She crinkled her nose. “Thank you for telling me. May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“Move in with me. You can sleep on the couch.”

His napkin escaped his fingers, and fell to the floor. Gloria was the nicest woman he’d met in years, but that didn’t change the fact that he was investigating the tournament, and she was covering the tournament for her network. He never mixed business and pleasure, which was why the words that came out of his mouth surprised him.

“Okay.”

“Just okay?”

“I mean, yeah, that’s great.”

She gave him a kiss, then consulted her watch again.

“Now I’m late. Talk to you later.”

She was out the door before he could say good-bye.

15

Al “Little Hands” Scarpi was pumping iron in the weight room at Ely State Penitentiary when an inmate named Big Juan came in. Six six and about three hundred pounds, Big Juan walked with a strut that came from having his way most of his life. Little Hands was six inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter, but not easily intimidated.

Sweat poured down Little Hands’s face as he curled a pair of fifty-pound dumbbells. The weight room was quiet except for the belching guard reading a comic book in the corner. In exchange for additional time in the weight room, Little Hands waxed the guard’s car every week, using nothing but a can of Turtle Wax and a rag. It was boring work, but got him out of his cell for a few hours. Sometimes, that was all a man needed to keep from going insane.

Big Juan came over to watch. He had a towel slung over his shoulder and a teardrop tattoo beside his left eye — meaning he’d killed someone. Little Hands had killed plenty of people, but had never done anything as stupid as write it in ink on his body. He continued to curl the dumbbells.

“You Little Hands?” Big Juan asked.

Was the guy blind? Al’s hands were the size of a child’s, the fingers thin and delicate, and had caused him undue hardships growing up. Kids in school had made fun of them, and as he’d gotten older, guys in bars had picked fights with him. The hands were his handicap, and why he’d taken up weightlifting.

“What do you think?” he replied.

Big Juan stared at his fingers, then over his shoulder at the guard.

“I need to talk to you,” he said quietly.

“About what?”

“A deal.”

Little Hands had gotten a head of steam going with the dumbbells, and his sweat made a small puddle on the floor. He started every day like this, sweating so hard that he was able to forget he was a prisoner, a man going nowhere for a very long time.

“I’m available next Tuesday morning at nine,” Little Hands said.

Big Juan gave him a dead-eyed stare. Little Hands had tried to develop a sense of humor since coming to the joint. It made the day go quicker.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a joke. You like jokes?”

“Fuck no,” Big Juan said.

Little Hands had run into a bunch of humorless guys in Ely. Nearly all came from the streets and acted like a different species. He kept pumping the dumbbells.

“You want to hear my deal or not?” Big Juan asked.

“Sure.”

Big Juan lowered his voice. “I can get you out of here.”

Little Hands didn’t slow down or pause or do any of the things that inmates did when someone mentioned freedom to them. Lawyers did it all the time, as did wives and loved ones and cops who wanted you to cooperate with them. They talked about freedom like it was something that could be pulled out of a top hat, and handed back to you. Little Hands knew better. The system was the only thing that could give a man his freedom back.

“How much is it going to cost me?”

“That’s the good part,” Juan said. “It won’t cost you nothing.”

Little Hands put the dumbbells on a rack, then walked over to a weight bench. There was a barbell across the bench with three hundred pounds in weights fitted on it. He always ended his sessions doing bench presses with the barbell.

“Keep talking,” he said.

Everything cost something in the joint, especially a favor. Little Hands suspected that Big Juan was playing him for a fool. He didn’t like that.

He asked Big Juan if he lifted. It was a dumb question, but Little Hands liked to play stupid sometimes, just to see where it would get him.

Big Juan said yes, and Little Hands asked him to spot for him.

“Sure,” Big Juan said.

Little Hands lay down on the weight bench. The bench was made of steel, and had uprights to hold the barbell in place. He lifted the barbell off the uprights, and pressed it five times over his head. Finished, he asked Big Juan to help him, and the bigger man lifted the barbell off Little Hand’s chest and fitted it into the uprights.

“Your turn,” Little Hands said, rising from the bench.

Big Juan hesitated. Three hundred pounds was a lot of weight, even for someone who lifted every day. But Big Juan was a macho man. He wasn’t going to take weight off the barbell and humiliate himself in front of Little Hands. He was the bigger man, so he lay on the bench and lifted the barbell off the uprights.

Big Juan pressed the barbell above his chest, and the effort made his face change color. Little Hands stood over him.

“Come on, you can do it. Four more.”

Big Juan blew out his cheeks and strained to press the barbell again. His arms began to tremble, and Little Hands put his hands on the bar to help him.

“Thanks, man,” Big Juan said.

Little Hands continued to hold the bar and let Big Juan catch his breath.

“How are you going to get me out of this fucking place?”

Big Juan looked up at him. “You know the conservation camp?”

Ely Conservation Camp was part of the prison and was run in conjunction with the Nevada Division of Forestry. The warden assigned camp operation support activities to model inmates. Working at the camp was the dream of every Ely inmate.

“What about it?” Little Hands asked.

“You’re being assigned to it.”

“When?”

“Today. This morning.”

Little Hands released his grip on the barbell, and it sunk down to Big Juan’s chest.

“Come on. Do another.”

Big Juan strained with the barbell, barely lifting it a foot above his chest. When he could lift it no farther, panic set into his eyes. Little Hands picked up the barbell and held it a few inches above him.

“Then what happens?”

Big Juan was blowing out his cheeks, regretting every bad thing he’d ever done to his body. In a whisper he said, “You’ll take a truck over to the conservation camp and check in. Another truck will take you out to a forest to do a clean-up job. You’ll walk away from the job into a waiting car.”

“Where am I going?”

“Las Vegas.”

“Who’s behind this? Someone in Las Vegas?”

“Yeah,” Big Juan wheezed.

Little Hands was getting the picture. He’d lived in Las Vegas and knew how that town worked. When one of the casino bosses wanted something done, palms got greased, phone calls got made, and it got done. He made Big Juan do another press. The effort nearly killed him.

“Who does this person in Las Vegas want me to kill?”

Big Juan was opening and shutting his eyes while sucking down air. Each time he inhaled, cherry-sized lumps formed where his jaw met his sideburns.

“Who said this was a hit?” Big Juan asked.

Little Hands leaned down and breathed in Big Juan’s face. “I was a hitman. Ain’t no other reason someone is going to go to the trouble to spring me out of here.”

“Some retired cop,” Big Juan said.

“That’s the hit?”

“Yeah. He’s in Las Vegas.”

Little Hands felt his brow tighten the way it did when his blood pressure rose. A retired cop was responsible for putting him in the slammer.

“What’s his name?”

“Valentine.”

“Tony Valentine?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

Little Hands lowered the barbell and forced Big Juan to do another press. He’d dreamed about snuffing Valentine ever since being locked up. Valentine had sucker-punched him in a Vegas motel while Little Hands was staring at a porno movie playing on the TV. The movie had reminded Little Hands of something he’d seen his mother doing when he was a little kid. It had messed Little Hands up real good.

Big Juan was shaking his head in defeat. He’d had enough. Little Hands lifted the bar off his chest, and Big Juan shut his eyes.

Little Hands crossed the weight room with a towel in his hands. He looked out the barred window that faced the yard. Ely housed over a thousand prisoners along with the state’s Death Row inmates. Security was tight, with armed guards sitting in turrets on the two main buildings, watching the yard twenty-four hours a day. He’d heard lifers talk about “escaping” by running between the two main buildings, and going out in a blaze of gunfire. No one had ever escaped, and he imagined the glory of being the first.

“Get your hands off the bars,” the guard called out.

Little Hands released the bars and turned to face the guard.

“Sorry.”

Comic book in his lap, the guard fingered his double-barreled shotgun. He was a round kid with a moon face and flour-sack arms.

“Get away from the window,” the guard said.

“I was just looking.”

“You heard me, Hercules.”

Little Hands walked back to the weight bench. Big Juan was still panting like he’d just run a four-minute mile. The guard picked up his comic book and emitted a loud belch as he flipped back to his spot.

“I want the job,” Little Hands said.

Big Juan nodded, then tried to get up. He fell back hard on the bench and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, there was a new appreciation in his face.

“Doesn’t all that weight make you hurt?” Big Juan asked.

“Sure,” Little Hands said.

“Why do you do it?”

Little Hands smiled to himself. Big Juan’s muscles would be burning, his body going into shock. He would hurt for days, had maybe even damaged his joints or his heart. He did not understand pain the way Little Hands understood pain. Few people did.

“Because I like it,” Little Hands said.

16

“Have you ever seen one of these before?” Detective Joey Marconi asked.

Gerry Valentine tiredly shook his head. Late morning, and he was sitting in the hospital visitors’ area with Eddie Davis’s partner, having spent several hours going over what had happened outside Bally’s.

Marconi was holding a New York Yankees baseball cap. He’d found the cap on the floor of Bally’s while chasing the other members of Abruzzi’s gang, who’d escaped out the casino’s rear exit. The cap had a miniature receiver and three light-emitting diodes sewn into its rim, and had been used to rip Bally’s off at blackjack.

Gerry had seen some sophisticated cheating equipment since going to work for his father, but the cap was unique. By looking upward into the cap’s rim, a cheater could read signals being sent by another member of the crew. Like looking at a tiny movie screen, Gerry thought.

“Do you know how the cap works?” Marconi asked.

“I think so,” Gerry said.

Marconi was on his sixth cup of coffee, and as animated as a five-year-old with a sugar buzz. He was small and wiry and so Italian he looked Greek. He wore the standard undercover detective’s uniform: blue jeans and a sweatshirt with a pullover hood. Across the front of the sweatshirt were the words I’M BLIND, I’M DEAF, I WANT TO BE A REF!

“You have to do better than that, Gerry,” Marconi said.

“I do?”

“Yes. Your story will determine how this case is handled.”

“Handled by who?”

“The district attorney.”

Gerry took a deep breath. This wasn’t going right. Marconi was treating him like a suspect, instead of someone who’d saved his partner’s life. He put his elbows on his knees, and gave Marconi a hard look.

“Excuse me, but what am I missing here? Abruzzi was going to shoot Eddie. I did the only thing I could.”

“I believe you, but we have to make sure the district attorney believes you.”

“Why wouldn’t he? You have the gun, don’t you?” Marconi lowered his gaze, and stared at the floor. It was the quickest admission of guilt Gerry had ever seen.

“You don’t have the gun?” Gerry asked.

“Couldn’t find it,” Marconi said, eyes still downcast. “I had two uniforms stay and search the area after day break. The gun is gone.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that we don’t have evidence that the guy you killed actually took a shot at Eddie, as you and Eddie claim.”

“What about the car across the street that got winged?” Gerry asked. “That’s evidence, isn’t it?”

“The car is gone, too,” Marconi said, not enjoying the role reversal.

“Gone? How does that work? Mirrors?”

“We’re not sure.”

“Let me guess. One of the uniforms let the owner drive it away.”

Marconi massaged his face with his hands. “Probably.”

Gerry had grown up hearing about bone-headed mistakes made by cops. The average pay for a uniform on the AC police force was twenty-eight grand. As a result, the force didn’t always attract the best and the brightest, and mistakes at crime scenes were common.

“So what you’re saying is, I might be facing a manslaughter rap,” Gerry said.

Marconi looked up. “That’s not going to happen. You have my word.”

“But it could happen.”

“Let’s not go there. We need to concentrate on your story. I want to explain to the DA that this was an organized gang of cheaters. Right now, all I’ve got is this baseball cap. If you can explain how it works, we’re home free.”

“Do you know what a crossroader is?” Gerry asked.

Marconi clutched a cup of machine-made coffee. “That’s a cheater who specializes in ripping off casinos.”

“Correct. The most important weapon in a crossroader’s arsenal is signaling, or what crossroaders call giving the office. Here’s an example.” Gerry spread his fingers out wide. “This is called George, and is usually done on the table, or with the hand held flat against the chest. What do you think it means?”

Marconi shook his head.

“George means everything is okay. If five cheaters are spread out across a casino, they can use George to communicate that the coast is clear. Here’s another example.” Gerry made his hand into a fist. “This is called Tom. It’s also done on the table, or against the chest. Tom means there’s a problem, and everyone needs to clear out.”

“Tom is also a criminal name for the police,” Marconi said.

“Maybe that’s where it came from,” Gerry said. “My father busted a gang using George and Tom to cheat a blackjack game. The dealer was involved, and flashing cards to her accomplices as she dealt. The flashing was invisible to the eye-in-the-sky cameras, but could be spotted by a pit boss standing behind her. Her accomplices used George and Tom to tell her when the pit boss was there, and when he wasn’t. They stole over a half million dollars using just two signals.”

The baseball cap lay on a coffee table. Gerry pointed at the receiver and LEDs stitched into the rim. “The gang inside Bally’s was using electronic signals. We know they had a woman nail-nicking cards at blackjack. Once the cards at a table were marked, two members of the gang used the information to beat the house.”

“How?” Marconi asked.

“You play much blackjack?”

“No.”

“It’s a simple game. The dealer gets two cards, one face up, the other face down. The players also get two cards, and try to get a total closer to twenty-one than the dealer. Because the dealer goes last, the house has an edge of one and a half percent.

“When cheaters nail-nick cards, it allows them to read the dealer’s face-down card, and know the dealer’s total. This gives them a fifteen percent advantage. But, the cheaters must be careful. Staring at the dealer’s hand is a dead giveaway that marked cards are in play.”

“Makes sense,” Marconi said.

“Here’s what the gang in Bally’s was doing. One member sat to the dealer’s right. He read the nicks on the dealer’s face-down card, and sent the information to his partner through a tiny transmitter strapped under his pant leg. His partner played the Iggy, or dumb tourist.

He drank and smoked and horsed around. He also read the signals in his baseball cap, and beat the house silly.”

Marconi thought it over. “Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. What if the district attorney says the LEDs inside the cap are decorative. Plenty of people wear lights and electronic doodads in baseball caps. What do I say then?”

“The cap has a receiver,” Gerry said. “According to the New Jersey device law, no person shall possess any calculator, computer, or any other electronic, electrical, or mechanical device to assist in projecting or altering the game’s outcome.”

A thoughtful look crossed the Marconi’s face.

“That will work,” the detective said.

Gerry took out his cell phone. He needed to call his father, and get him up to speed. He wondered what his father would say upon hearing that Gerry had killed a member of George Scalzo’s crime organization.

A female cop entered the visitors’ area. The bland contours of her uniform could not hide her stunningly attractive figure. She pulled Marconi into a corner, spoke in a hushed voice, then handed him a thick Pendaflex file from under her arm. Marconi opened the file, his dark eyes scanning the page, then glanced nervously at Gerry.

“Thanks, Ellen,” he said.

She left. Marconi came over to where Gerry was sitting, and dropped the folder in Gerry’s lap. Then he sat down across from him.

“We need to talk,” Marconi said.

Gerry put his cell phone back into his pocket. “What’s wrong?”

Marconi pointed at the folder. “That.”

Gerry opened the file, and found himself staring at a Xeroxed memo from the Atlantic City Casino Control Commission. His name was on the center of the page and highlighted in yellow marker. He glanced at the other memos beneath it. His name was highlighted in yellow on them as well.

“What are these?”

“Memos from the Atlantic City Casino Control Com mission on which your name appears,” Marconi said. “Out of curiosity, I had Ellen do a name search through the computer. That’s how many files the CCC has on you. Your name is linked to more gambling scams in Atlantic City than anyone else in the computer. Tell me how I’m going to explain that to the district attorney.”

Gerry dropped the folder on the coffee table. A few hours ago he’d killed a scammer; now Marconi had evidence that said he was also a scammer. It didn’t paint a pretty picture, and he decided to come straight with the detective.

“Does it bother you that I was never arrested?” Gerry asked.

“So you were smart.”

“My name’s on fifty memos. That would make me a genius, don’t you think?”

Marconi leaned back in his chair. “Okay, so what’s your point?”

“Cops think that wherever there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Gerry said. “But there isn’t any fire here. Before I went to work for my father, I was a bookie. I did good business, and I’m not ashamed of it. I also had a reputation as being Tony Valentine’s son. Every scammer in the Northeast knows who my father is. Guys would come to me and ask me my advice.”

“What kind of advice?”

“They would be thinking about scamming a casino in Atlantic City. They would tell me what they were going to do, ask me if I thought my father had ever seen it before. When I was a kid, my father used to show us scams at the dinner table. I was exposed to a lot of amazing stuff when I was growing up. I also understand how my father thinks. I’d look at the scam, and tell them if I thought it would pass muster.”

“You charge for this?”

“No.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“The guys I helped out referred customers to me.”

“That’s sweet. How many guys did you tell not to bother?”

“Nearly all of them,” Gerry said. “Most of the scams were old, stuff my father had seen before. To be honest, I think I saved the taxpayers a lot of money.”

“How so?” Marconi asked.

“I kept those guys out of jail, and saved the taxpayers from having to pay for it.”

Something resembling a smile crossed Marconi’s face. He took the file and slapped it against Gerry’s leg, then rose from his chair. “A regular public servant. I’m going to go have a talk with the DA. Don’t go anywhere.”

Gerry realized he was off the hook. Marconi left, and Gerry took out his cell phone and called his father.

17

“You did what?” Tony Valentine asked, the cell phone pressed to his ear.

“I killed a guy who works for George Scalzo,” his son said. “He was trying to shoot Eddie Davis outside Bally’s. I rammed Eddie’s car into the back of the guy’s car, and sent him through the windshield.”

Valentine closed his eyes. “Jesus, Gerry. You killed a mobster.”

“I know, Pop. Think I should go into witness protection?”

“That’s only for criminals,” Valentine said.

“Bet I could tell the police a couple of things that would make me qualify.”

Valentine found it in him to laugh. He was still in Gloria’s suite, the sunlight splashing through the window. Over the years, he’d become convinced that casino hotels did everything imaginable to drive guests out of their rooms during the day, from having chambermaids come early to clean, to facing the rooms due east so they became flooded with light each morning.

“I do have some good news,” his son said. “I talked to a nurse at the cancer ward where Jack Donovan died. She remembered Jack, and said she’d search her computer to see if anything dangerous was stolen from the hospital.”

“I’m not concerned about Jack right now,” Valentine said, closing the blinds. “I’m concerned about you. Scalzo won’t take this lying down. He already has a contract out on me.”

“He does?”

“Yes. I’m having to watch my back,” Valentine said.

“So, here’s what I want you to do. Catch the next plane home. Better yet, catch the next plane to San Juan, and meet up with Yolanda. Lay low for a while, so I can figure out what to do.”

There was silence on the line. Valentine would have thought the connection had gone dead had he not heard his son cough. He went to the table where the breakfast he’d shared with Gloria still sat. A piece of cold bacon found its way to his mouth.

“I’m going to stay in Atlantic City,” his son said.

Valentine nearly choked. “What are you talking about? You could get whacked.”

“I owe it to Jack Donovan.”

“What about your wife and daughter? What do you owe them?”

“Pop, remember the conversation we had before I left Vegas?”

Valentine thought back to the day before. So much had happened since, it seemed like last month. He picked up another piece of bacon and bit into it.

“I may be your son, but I’m also your partner,” Gerry went on. “When things happen you don’t like, you can’t switch roles, and order me around because I’m your son.”

“I can’t?”

“No. I came to Atlantic City to find out how Jack’s poker scam works. Just because I’ve got some mobster pissed off at me doesn’t mean I should run.”

“But your life’s in danger.”

“It’s part of the business,” Gerry said. “Look, Pop, what if every time your life was in danger, I called you up and told you to run back to Florida, hide in your house, and make Mabel answer the door. Think you’d like that?”

Valentine bristled. “This is different.”

“Why it is different?”

“I’m your father.”

“You’re my sixty-three-year-old father, who probably shouldn’t still be playing cops and robbers,” Gerry said. “But you do, and I keep my mouth shut.”

“You think I’m playing cops and robbers?”

“It’s dangerous work, and you’re not a kid anymore.”

His son had a point. If last night was any indication, his ability to defend himself had diminished. He needed to be more realistic about what he could and couldn’t do.

“Do you worry about me?” Valentine asked.

“All the time.”

“Why haven’t you said anything?”

“I saw where it got Mom,” his son said.

When it came to catching crooks, Valentine had never let anything stop him. He couldn’t scold Gerry for wanting the same thing.

“So you’re staying in Atlantic City to figure out Jack’s secret,” he heard himself say.

“That’s right.”

“What about protection?”

“Eddie Davis and Joey Marconi said they’d help me out.”

“That’s only two guys.”

“I’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Valentine started to argue, then thought better of it. Gerry had to make his own decisions, and he could only pray that none of them would get his son killed. He heard a knock on the door. “I’ve got company. I’ll talk to you later.”

“You’re cool with my decision?”

“Yes. Just promise you’ll watch your back.”

“Love you, too, Pop,” his son said.

Valentine stuck the last strip of bacon into his mouth as he went to the door. He still ate bacon and eggs and lots of other food that wasn’t considered healthy, having decided that he’d rather exercise every day than not eat those foods. It was called living, and he was going to do it until the day he died.

He stuck his eye to the peephole. Rufus stood in the hallway dressed in a purple velour running suit and black high-top sneakers. He ushered the old cowboy in.

“How did you know where to find me?” Valentine asked.

“I had you paged in the casino and the restaurants,” Rufus said. “Then I checked with the valet, and they said your car was still here. Since you and Ms. Curtis have been getting along so famously, I figured I’d find you here.”

Valentine’s cheeks burned. Hearing Rufus had found him so easily was unsettling.

“It’s not what you think,” he said.

Rufus flashed his best aw-shucks smile. His teeth, stained the color of mahogany from years of chewing tobacco, looked like pieces of antique furniture.

“Maybe not, but I bet it will be soon,” Rufus said.

Valentine’s cheeks burned some more. “So what can I do for you?”

“The Greek is taking me up on my Ping-Pong bet,” Rufus said. “He paid the hotel to put a Ping-Pong table in the poker room, then talked some sucker into playing me during the break. They’re waiting downstairs. I was hoping you’d act as my second.”

“Sure,” Valentine said.

Rufus removed a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, banged one out, and tossed it into the air. The cigarette did a complete revolution, then landed on his outstretched tongue. He fired it up with a lighter.

“Who’s the sucker?” Valentine asked.

“Some Japanese guy named Takarama.”

Valentine had wanted to warn Rufus about Takarama the night before, but in all the excitement it had slipped his mind. “I hate to tell you this, but Takarama was the world table tennis champion a few years ago.”

Rufus took off his Stetson and scratched his skull. “Is he still in the tournament? The deal was, I’d only play someone still in the tournament.”

“Afraid so. Takarama’s a helluva poker player, too.”

Rufus smoothed the remains of his hair, covered it with his hat. “Let me ask you something, Tony. Would you bet against me? Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“I’d have to say yes,” Valentine said.

“What kind of odds would you give me against Takarama?”

Valentine thought it over. He’d seen Takarama walking around the poker room the day before. The guy looked to be in tremendous shape.

“Twenty to one.”

“Think I can get that downstairs with any of the hairy legs?”

Hairy legs were the money men who backed poker players, and often could be spotted in the audience during tournaments, gnashing their teeth like berserk fathers at a Little League game. Takarama could always fall down and break his ankle, and he said, “Maybe ten to one.”

Rufus exhaled two purple plumes of smoke through his nostrils. It made him look like a fire-breathing dragon, and his eyes sparkled mischievously.

“Good,” Rufus said. “Let’s go downstairs and reel in some suckers.”

18

Suckers made the gambling world go round.

They came from all walks of life. Some were smart, while others had not graduated high school. Some were wealthy, some poor. What they shared in common was a complete misunderstanding of the law of averages, and an unflappable belief in the laws of chance. Chance, suckers believed, was the god of gambling, and if they were in the right place at the right time, Chance would smile down on them, and they’d win.

Suckers made up 99 percent of the people who gambled. Each year, they invested billions of dollars in the lottery and at casinos, and had nothing to show for it. They also kept dog and horse tracks alive, and paid for thousands of bookies to run their businesses. They were the bottom line of every gambling operation’s financial success.

And suckers were dependable. Even though they rarely won, they never stopped gambling, spurned on by the manufactured thrill that came from placing a wager. When they did win, they poured their winnings back into the game, convinced they’d finally hit a lucky streak, only to see their money and their dreams vanish like a puff of smoke.

Valentine followed Rufus into Celebrity’s poker room to find the suckers crowded around the Ping-Pong table, eagerly awaiting the match. Nearly a hundred strong, they wore the disheveled look of men who weren’t sleeping regularly. Rufus doffed his Stetson and gave them a big Texas wave.

“Good morning! How’s everyone doing this fine morning?”

“Is it morning?” someone yelled back.

“Last time I checked,” Rufus said. “Ready to see me play Ping-Pong?”

Several in the crowd guffawed. Rufus pulled off his running jacket to reveal his trademark Skivvies T-shirt. He began doing windmills while hacking violently.

“You okay?” Valentine asked.

“Never better.” Rufus pounded his chest. “My lungs could use some help, though.”

“Want me to get you something?”

“Shot of whiskey would hit the spot.”

“That’s going to help your lungs?”

“Who said it was going to help my lungs? I just like whiskey.”

They were talking loud enough for the suckers to overhear. A handful had their wallets out, and were debating whether to get in on the action.

“Make that a double,” Rufus said.

Valentine lowered his voice. “You want me to make that apple juice instead?”

“Apple juice is for old folks,” Rufus said.

“A double it is.”

Valentine crossed the poker room in search of alcohol. There was a cash bar beside the registration table, and he caught the eye of the female bartender. She was young enough to be his granddaughter, and shot him a disapproving look when he ordered Rufus’s drink.

“It’s a little early in the morning, don’t you think?” she asked.

“And a Coke for me,” he added.

She handed him the drinks with a grin on her face.

“You’re not in the tournament, are you?” she asked.

“No. How could you tell?”

“You look normal,” she said.

He crossed the room with the drinks. A mob was gathered around Rufus, who continued to flail his arms like Indian clubs while giving his snake oil salesman spiel.

“Come on, boys, I’m about to play some Japanese world champion at Ping-Pong for a half million bucks, winner take all. If that ain’t a safe bet, I don’t know what is. Place your wagers now, or forever hold your peace.”

“What kind of odds you offering?” one of the suckers asked.

“Ten to one,” Rufus said.

“I’ll bet you even money,” the sucker said.

Rufus shot the sucker a murderous look. “You want even money, son? I’ve got one foot in the grave, and my opponent’s a former champ. Ten to one, take it or leave it.”

“Which foot?” the sucker asked.

“The one I’m not standing on,” Rufus said.

The sucker took his money out. “You’re on.”

The doors to the poker room banged open, and the Greek and Takarama came in. A shade over six feet, Takarama wore black gym shorts and a matching polo shirt. He did not have an ounce of fat on his perfectly proportioned body. His shoulder-length hair was tied in a ponytail, giving his face a hawkish quality. His eyes scanned the room in search of his prey.

“Sure you want to go through with this?” Valentine asked.

“That pipsqueak can’t lick me,” Rufus said loudly.

The Greek sauntered over. He hadn’t changed his clothes since the night before and looked like a bum’s unmade bed. He fancied himself a professional gambler, but with every loss to Rufus, his true colors were increasingly clear. He was a sucker. What still made him special was his huge bankroll.

“Thanks for dressing up,” Rufus said.

The Greek scowled. Curly black hair popped out of every part of his head. “You ready to play Takarama?” he asked.

“Of course,” Rufus said. “The question is, is he ready to play me?”

“He sure is. A half million dollars to the first player to reach twenty-one?”

“Correct,” Rufus said. “The only stipulation is, I supply the paddles. Your man gets to choose his weapon, and if he wants to switch at any time in the match, he can.”

“Agreed,” the Greek said.

Rufus and the Greek shook hands. Then Rufus turned to Valentine.

“Tony, I need to you to do me a little favor,” Rufus said. “Go to the casino’s main restaurant, ask for Chef Robert, and get the bag he’s holding for me.”

Valentine was nobody’s caddy, but was willing to make an exception for Rufus.

“Sure,” he said.

To reach the restaurant, Valentine had to walk through the casino. It was packed, the noise deafening. One of the great urban myths was that casinos pumped oxygen onto the floor to make people gamble. The truth was, they kept the air-conditioning down and made their cocktail waitresses wear tiny outfits, which accomplished the same thing.

The restaurant was called Auditions, and he walked past the empty hostess stand and looked around. It was decorated like a Hollywood sound stage, with fake movie sets and glossies of stars hanging on the walls. The kitchen was in back, and he cautiously pushed open a swinging door. A man wearing a chef’s hat stood at an island.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Chef Robert,” Valentine said.

“I’m Chef Robert. Are you with the health department?”

Once a cop, always a cop. “Rufus Steele sent me.”

“Oh yes.”

From beneath the island Chef Robert produced a canvas bag with Celebrity’s logo splashed across the front. Valentine took the bag from his hands, and nearly dropped it on the floor.

“What’s in it, bricks?”

“Cooking utensils, per Mr. Steele’s request,” Chef Robert said.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Mr. Steele has already compensated me.”

Valentine tipped him anyway, then walked out of the kitchen, the bag pulling at his arm like a little kid. His curiosity was killing him, and he opened the bag and looked inside. It contained two cast-iron skillets. He thought Chef Robert had made a mistake. Then it dawned on him what Rufus was up to.

Pulling out his cell phone, he called Gloria Curtis.

“This is bullshit,” the Greek said. “You can’t play Ping-Pong with those!”

“Who says I can’t?” Rufus replied, holding a cast-iron skillet in both hands. “I said I’d supply the paddles. Well, these are the paddles.”

“I won’t stand for this,” the Greek replied.

“Are you welching on our bet?”

“You’re damn right I am,” the Greek said.

In a huff, the Greek started to walk out. Valentine was standing next to the Ping-Pong table, and as the Greek neared the doors, saw Gloria and Zack come in. She cornered the Greek, sticking a mike in his face. Zack started to film them.

“I hear you and Rufus Steele have an interesting wager going,” she said.

The Greek raised his arms as if to strangle an imaginary victim. He quickly lowered them. “The bet’s off,” he said.

“Oh no,” she said. “It sounded like it would make a wonderful piece.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” The Greek raised his voice. “The bet’s off.”

Gloria stepped back, unsure of what was happening. Takarama, who’d been leaning against the wall with a stoic look on his face, tapped the Greek on the shoulder.

“What?” the Greek said.

“You are dishonoring me,” Takarama said.

“But he’s trying to trick us,” the Greek said.

“A man’s word is his bond.”

“But—”

“No exceptions,” Takarama declared. He crossed the room to where Rufus was standing. “May I see one?”

Rufus handed him a skillet. Takarama pulled a Ping-Pong ball out of the pocket of his shorts, and bounced it on the flat side. The ball went up and down with the precision of a metronome. Takarama’s eyes glanced into the Greek’s unshaven face.

“I can beat him,” he said.

The Greek’s expression changed.

“Are you sure?”

Takarama nodded solemnly, the ball still going up and down.

“But you’ve never played with a skillet,” the Greek said.

“It does not matter,” Takarama said.

“Rufus has,” the Greek said.

“He is not Takarama,” the former world champion said.

19

Valentine’s son knew a lot about sports. When it came to exceptionally gifted athletes, Gerry had a theory that he claimed most bookies shared: Great athletes were not normal. They were freaks.

His son’s definition of a freak didn’t match Webster’s. According to Gerry, freaks could run faster, jump higher, and recuperate more quickly than the rest of us. They’d also been blessed with quick reflexes. Put simply, their bodies were more physically gifted, a fact that became apparent simply by looking at them.

Takarama was the perfect example of a freak. He had muscular calves, tree-trunk thighs, a girlish waist, and shoulders befitting a running back. There did not appear to be an ounce of wasted tissue on his body, and probably never had been. Walking over to the Ping-Pong table with the skillet in hand, he took several practice serves.

“Are you sure you can beat him?” the Greek asked, standing beside him.

“Yes,” Takarama said confidently.

The Greek was sweating, the bright light of Zack’s camera centered squarely on his face. Embarrassed by his decision to renege, the suckers had moved away from him. The Greek looked lost. In the poker world, your reputation was all you had.

The Greek turned to Rufus. “You’re on,” he said.

Gloria Curtis produced a shiny coin from her purse, tossed it into the air.

“Call it,” she said to Rufus.

“Heads,” Rufus said.

The coin landed on the floor. It was heads.

“Yee-haw,” the old cowboy said.

Rufus and Takarama took their positions at opposite ends of the Ping-Pong table. As Rufus bent his knees and prepared to serve, Takarama went into a crouch and held the skillet in front of his body defensively. His eyes narrowed, seeing only the table.

Rufus held his skillet a foot from his head, the ball resting on the palm of his other hand. “Good luck, son,” he said.

“I do not need luck,” Takarama replied.

Rufus tossed the ball into the air and banged it with the skillet. It wasn’t the kind of stroke that Valentine had thought would produce a deadly spin, but that was exactly what happened. The ball hopped over the net, then leaped a few feet into the air, hitting Takarama’s skillet and flying behind him.

“My point,” Rufus declared. “One-zip.”

Rufus served four more unreturnable serves. With each lost point, Takarama shifted his grip on his skillet, and tried another method of stroking. Each change produced the same result. A wayward shot and a lost point.

“Five-zip,” Rufus said, tossing him the ball.

Takarama went to the sideline and wiped his hands with a towel. When he returned to the table, Rufus was sipping whiskey.

“Not funny,” Takarama said.

“You ought to try some.” Rufus grinned.

Takarama prepared to serve. He tossed the ball into the air, and hit it with his skillet. As he did, the index finger on his serving hand struck the table edge. He yelped and dropped his skillet.

“Hope you didn’t break it,” Rufus said.

“Time out,” the Greek called.

Takarama clutched his damaged finger and left the room to walk off the pain. When he returned, he’d regained his composure, and banged the table with the palm of his good hand.

“I get you now,” he said.

It took Takarama a few points to figure out how to serve. When he finally did get the ball over the table, Rufus batted it back for a winner. Rufus had an unusual technique, and relied solely on his wrist to stroke the ball, his arm hardly coming into play.

Takarama copied the motion, and on Rufus’s next service game, managed to win two points. The score was now thirteen to two, but a significant shift had occurred. Like all great athletes, Takarama had adjusted his game, and was forcing Rufus to work to win a point, making the old cowboy lunge from side to side. The toll on Rufus was immediate. His chest sagged, a hound-dog look appeared on his face, and after every point he stopped to catch his breath.

On his next serve, Rufus lost five points in a row, making the score thirteen to seven. The whiskey had risen to his face and sprouted a thousand red blossoms. He looked like a dying man. Taking his Stetson off, he tossed it to the floor.

It was Takarama’s turn to serve. Rufus made a motion to throw him the ball, only to drop it on the floor instead. There was a loud crunching sound.

“Shit! I stepped on it,” Rufus said.

The Greek pulled a Ping-Pong ball from his pocket, and tossed it to Takarama.

“Here you go. Whip his ass.”

Takarama won the next five points. He was effortlessly moving the ball around the table, making Rufus swing at air. What had started as a one-sided contest was still one, only the person getting the beating had changed. With the score thirteen to twelve, both sides decided to take a break.

“I’m open to suggestions,” Rufus said, sucking on a bottle of water.

Valentine did not know what to say. Rufus had met his match, and everyone in the room knew it. Gloria stepped forward with an encouraging look on her face.

“I have an idea,” she offered.

Rufus brightened. “Yes, Ms. Curtis.”

“Moon-ball him.”

“You want me to moon him?” Rufus said.

“No, I mean throw up some moon balls,” she said.

“What are those?”

“Lobs, like they do in tennis. It’s a great way to throw off your opponent’s rhythm. I saw Tracy Austin lob Martina Navratilova in the final of the U.S. Open Tennis Championship. Martina won the first set and was rolling. Then Austin started throwing up moon balls. It threw Martina off, and she lost the match.”

Rufus tossed away his empty water bottle. Then he retrieved his skillet from the floor, and pointed the flat side straight at the ceiling, visualizing the shot.

“I don’t know,” he said skeptically.

“What do you have to lose?” she asked.

It was Rufus’s turn to serve. He sent the ball over the net, and Takarama shot it back. Rufus lunged to his right, and hit the ball straight into the air like he was sending up a missile. The ball went so high it nearly touched a chandelier, then fell back to earth and landed on Takarama’s side of the table. It bounced so high that Takarama had to tap it back, giving Rufus a perfect kill shot.

Only Rufus didn’t kill it. Instead, he lofted the ball into the air, then paused to watch its flight. He appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

“Take that,” the old cowboy said.

Takarama made a face that was part anger, part disgust. He had a lot of pride, and Valentine was not surprised when he took a step back from the table and changed his grip on the skillet. As the ball bounced on his side, he leaped into the air.

“Aieeee!” he screamed.

Takarama hit the ball on the rise, and sent it screaming past Rufus at a hundred miles an hour. His swing, loaded with top spin, finished with his arm coming up by the right side of his forehead. With a normal Ping-Pong paddle it wouldn’t have been a problem. With a skillet, it caused him to smack himself in the face.

The sound of the impact was awful. Takarama dropped the skillet on the floor, then brought his hands to his eyes, and staggered around the room muttering in Japanese. The Greek rushed to his aid.

“You okay?”

Takarama said something that sounded like a curse.

“Time out!” the Greek announced.

“For how long?” Rufus asked.

“How the hell should I know?” the Greek said.

Takarama walked in a serpentine pattern around the room, and Valentine guessed he’d given himself a concussion. Reaching the doors, Takarama pushed them open and staggered into the lobby. The Greek hurried after, followed by Rufus, Valentine, Gloria, and Zack, with the suckers bringing up the rear.

Takarama walked on rubber legs across the lobby and into the busy casino. He approached a roulette table surrounded by people. He pushed his way through to the table, and plucked the little white ball as it spun around the wheel.

“My serve,” he said.

Then he fell face-first to the floor, taking a tray of colored chips with him. The crowd parted, and the croupier came around the table, looking down at Takarama in disgust.

The Greek stood several feet away, crying his eyes out. Rufus threw his arms triumphantly into the air.

“I win,” Rufus said.

20

Mabel Struck was examining a Gucci handbag that had cost a casino in Reno a hundred thousand bucks, when the phone on Tony’s desk lit up.

“Darn it,” she said under her breath.

She’d come to work early that morning, wanting to play with the handbag that UPS had delivered the night before. The handbag was a gift from the Reno district attorney for Tony’s testimony at trial. Mabel had several friends who liked to boast about how much they spent on handbags, and she couldn’t wait to tell them that she had a Gucci bag that could actually make money. She snatched up the phone.

“Grift Sense,” she answered cheerfully.

“Ms. Struck?” a man’s voice asked.

“That’s me.”

“This is Special Agent Romero with the FBI.”

“Good morning, Special Agent Romero. How are you today?”

“I’m fine. I wanted to thank you for your help the other day. The man we arrested was running crooked gambling parlors in twenty different locations. He’s going to jail for a long time.”

By looking at some photographs that Romero had sent, Mabel had determined that a craps game in the basement of a man’s house was crooked, the table positioned against a wall with a large magnet hidden inside, the dice loaded with mercury. The information had allowed Romero to catch an elusive suspect, and had made Mabel a new friend.

“That’s wonderful news,” Mabel said.

“Something urgent has come up, and I wanted to get ahold of you. I need to tell you something which is extremely confidential.”

Mabel leaned into the desk. Although she’d never met Romero, she’d formed a mental picture of him. Early fifties, with jet black hair, boyish features, and an engaging smile. “Is there something the matter?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, there is... I’m terribly sorry. Someone just walked into my office, and I need to speak with him. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

“Of course.”

Romero put her on hold. Mabel took the handbag off the desk, and peered inside. It contained a video camera with a high-powered lens. The bag had a small hole in the fabric, and she thought back to what Tony had told her about the case.

Once, every casino in the world had let people playing blackjack cut the cards, the practice considered a common courtesy. Then, for security reasons, the practice had been discarded. Except at the Gold Rush casino in Reno, where old habits died hard. It was here that the crossroaders had struck.

The gang’s members were a family, consisting of a husband, wife, and son. The scam happened during the cut. The husband would riffle up the center of the deck, and let four cards drop. He would then cut the cards. This placed the four cards he’d dropped on top of the deck. To anyone watching, his actions looked normal.

Using the camera inside the bag, his wife, who stood behind him, secretly filmed the four cards during the cut. The information was sent to her son, who sat outside the casino in a van and watched on a computer screen. The son then sent a text message to his father on a cell phone, and told him the cards’ values. Since the father was playing heads-up with the dealer, he knew his first hand and the dealer’s, and bet accordingly.

Romero returned to the line. “Sorry about that.”

“So, how can I help you this morning?” Mabel asked.

“Well, I’m about to help you. The other day when we spoke, I passed along some confidential information about a mob boss named George Scalzo, who is presently under FBI surveillance.”

“I remember,” Mabel said.

“The agent handling the Scalzo case called me a short while ago, and informed me that George Scalzo put out a contract on your boss’s life last night. The attempt failed. So, he’s gone and put another contract on your boss.”

“What a horrible man. Are you going to arrest him?”

“I wish we had the evidence to,” Romero said. “Scalzo owns a contracting business, and uses a special code when he wants to talk to his underlings. The code uses building materials as passwords for criminal activity he wants done. When he orders a specific material, it means he wants a certain job done. In this case it was concrete, which means he wants a person killed.”

“How clever.”

“I figured you would know the best way to contact your boss, and give him a heads-up.”

The receiver grew warm in Mabel’s hand. Tony was always saying that the deeper he got into a case, the more dangerous it became. It sounded like it was time for him to come home.

“I’ll call him once I hang up the phone,” she said.

“I’m afraid there’s more bad news,” Romero said. “The agent who’s handling the Scalzo case also in formed me that Tony’s son, Gerry, was responsible for the death of an associate of Scalzo’s in Atlantic City.”

“Gerry killed someone?”

“Yes. Gerry was protecting an undercover policeman, and won’t face criminal charges. But that doesn’t change the situation.”

“Which is what?”

“That your boss and his son have gotten themselves into a blood feud with one of the most ruthless men in the United States. Your boss has a reputation for being a resourceful individual, and I’m sure his son is as well. But I’m afraid this is a fight that is stacked against them.”

“Why do you say that?” Mabel asked.

“Scalzo has connections all over the country, especially in Las Vegas, where he is now. And he has a small army on his payroll in New Jersey. If Scalzo is gunning for someone, he’ll usually get them.”

Mabel sighed. If she’d learned anything working for Tony, it was that her boss didn’t know the meaning of the word quit, and neither did Gerry. They were stubborn males, and not inclined to run away from a fight. “Thank you, Special Agent Romero. I appreciate the call. I’ll make sure Tony and Gerry are warned.”

“You’re welcome. May I ask a favor?”

“Certainly.”

“Please keep this conversation between you and your boss.”

“It will go no further.”

“Good-bye, Ms. Struck.”

Mabel nestled the receiver into its cradle. Pushing her chair back from the desk, she steepled her hands, and rested her chin on her fingertips. It was her thinking pose, and she sat silently, contemplating what to do.

When the phone rang fifteen minutes later, she was still absorbed in thought. She glanced at the Caller ID on the phone and saw that it was Gerry’s wife, Yolanda, calling on her cell phone. Yolanda had gone to Puerto Rico to visit her family a week ago, and Mabel had missed her company. She picked up the phone.

“Hello, Yolanda. How is sunny Puerto Rico?”

“I left three hours ago,” Yolanda replied. “I’m at the Miami airport, waiting for a connection to come home.”

“Is everything all right?”

“No. I mean yes. Oh, I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I had this horrible dream last night,” Yolanda said.

“I wouldn’t have given it any weight, only my mother had the exact same dream. So, I decided to come home.”

Yolanda’s eighty-year-old mother was psychic, and had premonitions when bad things were about to happen. Mabel said, “Tell me what happened in your dream.”

“I was in a cemetery. It was freezing cold and pitch dark. I was looking at a tombstone with Gerry’s name on it and I was sobbing. I laid flowers on Gerry’s grave, then put flowers on a grave with a tombstone that had Tony’s name on it.”

“You saw both their names?”

“Yes,” Yolanda said quietly.

“And your mother had this same dream?”

“Yes,” Yolanda said. “She saw tombstones with Gerry’s and Tony’s names as well. Now, will you please tell me something?”

“Of course, my dear.”

“Are Gerry and Tony all right? Please be truthful with me.”

Mabel hesitated. Then her eyes fell on the frame hanging over Tony’s desk. It contained five playing cards — two black aces, two black eights, and the five of diamonds. Wild Bill Hickock had been holding aces and eights the night he’d been shot in a poker game, murdered by a gang of cheaters who were afraid of being run out of town. They were known as a Deadman’s Hand, and had been bought by Tony as a reminder that no job was worth getting killed over.

“I’m afraid they’re up to their eyeballs in trouble,” she blurted out.

“So my dream was a premonition,” Yolanda said.

“I hope not,” Mabel said.

There was a loud noise in the background, and Yolanda said, “They’re boarding my plane. I need to run. I’ll be home soon.”

The phone went dead in Mabel’s hand. Identical dreams couldn’t be a coincidence. Tony and Gerry were going to get hurt if they didn’t do something. She stared at the Deadman’s Hand, then shut her eyes and prayed, not wanting Wild Bill’s fate to be Gerry’s and Tony’s as well.

21

“I owe you a big steak,” Eddie Davis said.

“I might just take you up on that,” Gerry replied.

Davis was signing paperwork so he could be released from the emergency room of Atlantic City Medical Center. The ER was relatively quiet, the groaning drunks and shooting victims and other casualties of the night having been treated and moved out. A bearded doctor stood beside Davis, holding a medicine bottle filled with white pills. He shoved them into Davis’s hand.

“This is penicillin. Follow the instructions on the bottle,” the doctor said. “The wound on your back could become infected. You need to watch it.”

“I will,” Davis said, pocketing the bottle.

The doctor handed Davis another sheet of paper to sign. It was printed in bold lettering, and stated that Davis had been given instructions from a doctor and fully understood them. Gerry guessed this freed the hospital from liability in case Davis got sick, and decided to sue. Davis scribbled his name across the bottom.

Outside in the parking lot they found Marconi sitting in a Chevy Impala, fighting to stay awake. Gerry guessed Marconi would rather be home sleeping than sitting there, only there was an unwritten code that said if your partner got hurt, you hung with him. His father had done it many times. Marconi climbed out of the car and whacked Eddie on the arm.

“Hey brother, glad to see you’re still in one piece. I spoke with the district attorney about Abruzzi getting killed outside Bally’s. Everything’s cool.”

“Did you nail the guy’s partners?” Davis asked.

“They escaped. I managed to grab a good piece of evidence, though.” Opening the back door of the car, Marconi took the gaffed Yankees cap off the passenger seat and handed it to Davis. “Take a look at this.”

Davis examined the cap, trying to hide his disappointment that Marconi hadn’t nailed Abruzzi’s partners. As he handed the cap back, Gerry stuck his hand out.

“Can I look at it again?”

Marconi handed him the cap. The cap had been bothering Gerry, only he hadn’t known why. Turning the cap over, Gerry ran his finger over the LEDs and receiver sewn into the rim. Most cheating equipment was crudely made, with the main emphasis on getting the money. The niceties were almost always ignored. But this cap was different. It was new and looked liked a tailor had stitched it. The transmitter and LEDs were unusually thin, and he suspected they’d cost a lot of money.

Then it occurred to him what was wrong.

Cheating equipment was expensive. Several underground companies sold devices to rip off games, and the equipment often cost several thousand dollars. The markup was incredible, the reasoning being that a cheater would make the money back in one night. Gerry tried to imagine how much the baseball cap would cost from one of these companies. They charged through the nose for anything electronic, and he guessed the cap would cost ten grand. He handed the cap back to Marconi.

“Can I ask you a couple of questions?” Gerry asked.

“Go ahead.”

“The gang you were chasing inside Bally’s, how many members were there?”

Marconi stuck the cap on his head. It was several sizes too large, and made him look like a little kid. He counted on the fingers of one hand. “One woman was nicking the cards. A second guy was reading the nicks and transmitting the information. And there was the guy wearing the cap and doing the betting. Three members.”

“Don’t forget Abruzzi,” Davis said.

“Correction. Four members.”

“Okay,” Gerry said. “Four members, but only one is actually stealing.”

“That’s right.”

“How much was the gang winning?”

“Around fifteen hundred a night,” Marconi said.

Gerry stared at the cap on Marconi’s head. Now he knew what was bothering him.

“That’s not enough money,” Gerry said.

Marconi shot him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”

“Look at the overhead the gang has,” Gerry explained. “Four members, plus the cost of the cap and a police scanner. Oh, and there’s George Scalzo’s take to consider, since he’s bankrolling this operation. Fifteen hundred a night hardly covers the cost of doing business.”

“You’ve lost me,” Marconi said. “If fifteen hundred isn’t enough money, then why were they cheating Bally’s? For laughs?”

Gerry asked to see the cap again, and turned it over. The expert tailoring job was the clue. A pro had stitched this cap, and if his hunch was correct, many more just like it.

“If my hunch is right, there are more members of this gang cheating Bally’s, not just the ones you were after,” Gerry said.

Marconi and Davis snapped to attention.

“Can you prove that?” Davis asked him.

“I sure can,” Gerry said.

Marconi drove them to Bally’s with the gaffed baseball cap on his head. During the drive, he broke the news to Davis that his prized Mustang had been totaled from Gerry ramming it into Abruzzi’s car. Davis stared out the window and sulked.

“You’ll find another one,” Marconi said.

“Like hell I will,” Davis replied.

Bally’s entrance was jammed with tour buses. Marconi maneuvered around them and parked by the valet stand. As they got out, he said, “Boat people.”

Boat people was casino slang for senior citizens. Like every other casino in Atlantic City, Bally’s relied on seniors to make its nut. They were easy customers, staying long enough to squander their social security checks in slot and video poker machines. Inside they found a sea of white hair and polyester. They walked to the cashier’s cage where Marconi cornered the casino’s floor manager, a red-faced man wearing a purple sports jacket. Marconi explained why they were there.

“You want to do what?” the floor manager said.

“Go up to your surveillance control room and take a look at some tapes,” Marconi said.

“Gaining entrance to that room takes a fricking act of Congress,” the floor manager said. “I need to tell the people upstairs what this is about.”

Marconi took off the cap, and showed the floor manager the rim. “This cap was used to scam your blackjack tables. We want to watch the tapes of the guy who was wearing it. Think you can arrange that?”

The floor manager muttered something unpleasant and left. Casino people were fiercely territorial, and tended to bang heads with cops as a matter of principle. They went into a coffee shop to wait.

“Do senior citizens rip off casinos?” Marconi asked a few minutes later.

Gerry had ordered coffee and was gulping it down to stay awake. “Seniors can be as bad as anyone else. My father nailed a gang who were stealing six figures a year.”

“What were they doing, putting slugs in slot machines?” Marconi asked.

Gerry shook his head.

“Fudging their Keno cards?” Davis asked.

Gerry shook his head again. “It was a bus scam. The tour operator was in cahoots with them.”

Cops liked to think they knew everything when it came to crime. Davis and Marconi traded looks, then stared Gerry down.

“What the hell’s a bus scam?” Davis asked.

Gerry put down his coffee. “The casino was paying a tour operator ten dollars a head to bus seniors in twice a week. The seniors had a larcenous streak, and told the tour operator they’d inflate the count if he’d split the money with them.”

“They stole six figures doing this?” Marconi asked incredulously.

“Yeah. The tour operator was bringing in ten buses, twice a week. The count on each bus was being inflated by ten heads. That’s two grand a week.”

Marconi and Davis dealt with bad people every day, but this seemed to bother them. If Gerry had learned anything working for his father, it was that gambling made people do things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do. He finished his drink.

“How did your father nail them?” Davis asked.

“My father was working the casino on another case,” Gerry said. “He happened to walk outside, and saw the tour operator throwing unopened box lunches into a Dumpster. He mentioned it to management, and was told the casino gave each senior a boxed lunch as part of the deal. My father went outside, and counted all the boxes in the Dumpster. That’s when he figured out what they were doing.”

“Did the seniors go to jail?” Davis asked.

“No one went to jail,” Gerry said. “The tour operator gave his share back, and did community service. The seniors had spent theirs, so they worked it off at the casino.”

“That your father’s idea?” Davis asked.

Gerry nodded. His father believed in giving first-time offenders a pass, provided they were truly repentant. Everyone involved in this case had been. The floor manager appeared at the entrance to the restaurant, and motioned to them impatiently. They settled the bill, then came out to where the floor manager waited.

“You’ve got clearance,” the floor manager said.

Bally’s surveillance control room was the heart and soul of its security operation. Housed on the third floor, it was a windowless, claustrophobic room filled with the finest snooping equipment money could buy. The room was kept at a chilly sixty degrees, and each technician wore several layers of clothing. The floor manager led them past a wall of video monitors to a master console in the rear of the room, where a short, bespectacled man wearing a gray turtleneck sat with his fingers clutched around a joystick.

“They’re all yours,” the floor manager said.

The floor manager left, and Marconi introduced himself, Davis, and Gerry. The man at the console removed his glasses and quizzed Gerry with a glance.

“You Tony Valentine’s son?”

“Sure am,” Gerry said.

“Your father taught me the ropes,” the man said. “We used to say your father could see a gnat’s ass and hear a mouse piss. How’s he doing?”

“Great,” Gerry said.

“Glad to hear it. My name’s Lou Preston. I hear you want to watch some tapes.”

Gerry explained the blackjack scam with the baseball cap to Lou Preston. When he was finished, Preston’s head was bobbing up and down.

“So you think there might have been more cheaters wearing these caps,” Preston said. “Can you give me an approximate time when this took place?”

“Around four o’clock this morning,” Marconi said.

“What exactly did the caps look like?” Preston asked.

Marconi took the cap off his head and gave it to Preston. Preston placed the cap beneath the reading light on his console, and spent a few moments examining it.

“Let’s see if we can find this cap in our digital library,” he said.

Preston began to type on the keyboard on his console. Like most large casinos, Bally’s used digital video recorders to continuously tape the action on the floor. It was a far cry from the old days, when the tapes in VCRs had to be switched every hour. Within seconds, four tapes appeared on a matrix on Preston’s computer screen. Each tape showed a different man in the casino wearing a baseball cap while playing blackjack.

“These four gentlemen were playing blackjack in our casino at four o’clock this morning,” Preston said. “Is one of them your guy?”

Marconi pointed at the guy in the right-hand corner of the matrix. “That’s him.”

Preston dragged the cursor over the picture and clicked on it. The picture enlarged to show a guy in his early fifties wearing a Yankees cap and smoking a cigar. He wore his shirt open, and hanging around his neck were several thick gold chains.

Preston did some more magic with his cursor, and the baseball cap became the only thing on the screen. He struck the ENTER key, then leaned back in his chair.

“In sixty seconds we’ll know if your hunch is correct,” he told Gerry.

The hard drive on Preston’s console made a whirring sound. Marconi and Davis looked confused, and Gerry guessed they weren’t up to speed on the latest technology being employed by casinos to track cheaters. Pointing at the baseball cap, he said, “Lou just burned an image of this cap into his computer. He’s asked the computer to take a look at all recent tapes, and see how many similar caps turn up. Within a minute we’ll know how many there were.”

“I thought that took hours,” Davis said.

“Used to take hours,” Preston corrected him. “We now use Kalatel DVRs to record digitally. It’s light years faster than before. We can search the tapes for anything we want.”

“Beats using a catwalk, huh?” Gerry said.

“Personally, I liked the catwalks,” Preston said.

“Gave me plenty of exercise. They did have their drawbacks, though. One time, I was on the catwalk with a camera with a zoom lens, trying to photograph a cheater switching dice. There was a two-way mirror in the ceiling, and as I tried to photograph the switch, the cheater stared straight up at me. I must have leaned on the mirror, because dust was falling down on his head. Needless to say, he ran like hell.”

The hard drive had stopped whirring, and Preston hit ENTER again.

“Bingo,” he said. “Four matches.”

They huddled behind his chair, and Preston pulled up each match the computer had made. Four men, all Italian, with ages ranging from late forties to late fifties, wearing jewelry around their necks or hands, and wearing Yankees baseball caps.

“Looks like a casting call for The Sopranos,” Marconi said.

Gerry felt a hand on his shoulder, and glanced at Davis.

“Good job,” Davis said.

Preston e-mailed copies of each man’s image to the Atlantic City Police Department to be checked against its database of known criminals. Then he escorted his guests through the surveillance control room to the door. As Marconi and Davis walked into the hall, Preston turned to Gerry.

“One thing’s bothering me,” Preston said. “Why me?”

Gerry didn’t understand the question.

“Let me rephrase that. Why my casino?” Preston said. “There are a dozen casinos on the island; why did these guys pick mine? It’s a question I always ask myself when we get ripped off. Is there a flaw in our system, or did a security person on the floor get paid to look the other way? Or is there another reason?”

“Such as?”

“Maybe your hunch is correct,” Preston said. “Maybe the scam is bigger than everyone thought. Makes sense, don’t you think?”

Gerry realized he was nodding. Talking to Lou Preston was like talking to his old man. Lou knew how cheaters thought, and had grift sense. “You think this gang might be hitting all the casinos on the island?” Gerry asked.

“I don’t see why not.”

“How can we check?”

“Easy,” Preston said. “Atlantic City’s casinos are connected through a system called SIN. Stands for Secure Internal Network. We use it primarily to alert each other about teams of card counters. I’ll use SIN to alert them about the Yankees caps, and ask the casinos to run the same check that I ran. Who knows? We might hit gold.”

Lou was smiling, and Gerry realized why. Lou knew the outcome of what that check would be. They were going to find mobsters with Yankees caps in other casinos.

“Just one second,” Gerry said.

Going into the hall, Gerry went to where Davis and Marconi waited by the elevators. They looked ready to call it a day, and Gerry put a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Sorry, guys, but we’re not done yet,” he said.

22

Within sixty seconds of Takarama being dragged out of Celebrity’s casino, the mess around the roulette table was cleaned up and the croupier was back spinning the little white ball while happily exhorting the crowd to “Place your bets! Place your bets!”

Flush with cash, Rufus Steele threw a fan of hundred-dollar bills on the layout. He had collected his winnings from the Greek and the other suckers who’d bet against him, and his pockets were overflowing with money. “Five thousand on the black,” he said.

The ball rolled around the wheel and dropped on a black number. A number of bystanders broke into wild applause and Rufus bowed to them.

“Is he always so lucky?” Gloria Curtis asked.

Valentine stood off to the side with Gloria and Zack.

He wanted to tell her that up until a few days ago, Rufus had been flat broke, but he bit his tongue. He had never liked hustlers, yet hanging around Rufus, his sense of fair play had become curiously elastic.

“He’s got the magic touch,” he said.

Rufus joined them and smiled at Gloria. “I owe you, Ms. Curtis,” he said.

“You do?” she asked.

“Moon balls.”

“How about an interview?” she asked.

“You know me,” Rufus said. “I love to talk.”

They walked out of the casino and across the lobby to the entrance of Celebrity’s poker room. A leader board had been erected by the front doors. Skip DeMarco was still in a commanding position, with everyone else far behind. Rufus read the board, then made a disparaging noise that originated deep in his throat.

Gloria’s cameraman did a sound check, then held his hand up in the air.

“Five... four... three... two... one. We’re rolling.”

“This is Gloria Curtis, coming to you from the World Poker Showdown in Las Vegas,” Gloria said into her mike. “Standing beside me is legendary gambler Rufus Steele, who just beat a former world champion Ping-Pong champion in a winner-take-all match for half a million dollars. Rufus, you’ve beaten a race horse in the hundred-yard dash, and now you’ve beaten a world champion athlete. What’s next?”

“Once this tournament is over, Skip DeMarco and I are going to sit down and play poker for two million dollars, winner-take-all,” Rufus said.

“DeMarco is the tournament’s chip leader, and considers himself the best poker player in the world,” Gloria said. “How do you rate your chances against him?”

“Being the chip leader doesn’t mean much,” Rufus said. “Neither does playing in a tournament. People who play in tournaments for a living are what gamblers call fun players. When they’re not playing, they’re singing in the church choir or playing volleyball at the YMCA.”

“Are you saying that DeMarco is not the best player in the world?”

A smile spread across Rufus’s leathery face. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but every time that boy gets on television and says he’s the best, a few dozen guys around the country jump out of their chairs and run to the toilet before they ruin the rug.”

“How would you rate him?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“But he’s the tournament chip leader. Surely that means something.”

Rufus’s smile spread. “Afraid not.”

“Could you explain?”

“A tournament is several days long, and luck plays a big part in determining the winner. When DeMarco and I play, luck won’t have anything to do with the out come.”

“If DeMarco does win the tournament, will that change your opinion of him?”

The friendly expression vanished from Rufus’s face and he scowled at the camera. “Giving DeMarco a trophy and calling him the best player in the world is like putting whip cream on a hot dog. No, it wouldn’t change my opinion of him one bit.”

Beating Takarama at Ping-Pong had gotten Rufus’s competitive juices flowing, and once again he denounced DeMarco, as though the sheer volume of his angry words would expose the younger man as a fraud. It gave Valentine an idea, and he slipped inside the poker room.

The World Poker Showdown had started with over five thousand players, and probably just as many dreams. Less than a hundred remained, and they sat at a dozen felt tables in the room’s center, bathed in bright TV lights and surrounded by fans. At the feature table was DeMarco with seven other players.

Standing on his tiptoes, Valentine watched DeMarco play. He was a handsome kid, and seemed to be enjoying himself. Tournament poker was different from your friendly neighborhood game because of the elimination process. If you played a couple of bad hands in tournament poker, you were gone. As a result, most people played tight, and bet only when they had good cards.

But DeMarco didn’t play this way. Because of his blindness, he held his two cards up to his face, then placed them on the table, and did not look at them again. Instead, he focused his attention on his opponents’ bets and calls. When the bet came to him, he inevitably made the right decision, and either threw away a losing hand — which he flashed to the table — or stayed in with winning cards. The crowd was in his corner, and each decision was met with thunderous applause.

Backing away from the table, Valentine shook his head. The whole thing smelled like three-day-old fish. DeMarco wasn’t playing cards — he was acting like someone playing cards. Had he any common sense, he would have purposely lost a hand, just to keep things looking normal. Only he liked to showboat.

Valentine’s eyes scanned the room. DeMarco didn’t go anywhere without his handlers, and George Scalzo and his bodyguard stood by the bar, watching their boy. Nevada did not let mobsters into its casinos, and Valentine still did not understand how Scalzo had managed to be at the tournament and not get arrested. A cocktail waitress walked by, and he touched her arm.

“I need a favor,” Valentine said.

“I’m busy,” she said curtly.

He dug out his wallet and stuffed a twenty into the tip glass on her tray.

“Name it,” she said.

He borrowed her pen and a frilly cocktail napkin. On the napkin he wrote:

He handed it back to her. “See the guy that looks like Don Corleone?” He pointed across the room at Scalzo. “I want you to give him this.”

The waitress walked away with a bemused look on her face that made him think of his son’s crack about him playing cops and robbers. She delivered the note. Scalzo read it, then crumbled the napkin into a ball. He motioned to his bodyguard, and they marched out of the poker room.

It was the opportunity Valentine had been waiting for. He edged up to the feature table, and pushed his way through the crowd until he was in front. A new hand was about to begin, and he stared intently at the table. The tournament had gotten nailed several days ago for employing dealers with criminal records, and he watched the dealer at the table shuffle the cards. The shuffle looked fair, as did the cut that followed it, but something about the dealer’s body language wasn’t right. The dealer, who had a walrus moustache and a square jaw, looked apprehensive. It could have been the presence of the TV cameras, but Valentine’s gut told him otherwise.

Each player got two face-down cards, and the dealer sailed them around the table in a slow, deliberate manner. It was slower than any deal Valentine had ever seen, and he found himself staring at the dealer’s hands. The dealer’s right hand, his dealing hand, was completely stiff. That wasn’t normal.

Finished, the dealer placed the deck on the table. Dealers who used sleight-of-hand to cheat were always conscious of their manipulations. No matter how good they were, they knew that a trained observer could nail them. As a result, there was always a moment of truth after the cheating was done.

The dealer looked up. There was hesitation in his eyes. He glanced into the crowd of spectators and saw Valentine. He swallowed hard.

Gotcha, Valentine thought.

Valentine had always liked movies when the cavalry showed up to save the day, and felt an adrenaline rush seeing Pete Longo and three uniformed cops come barging into the poker room. They were moving fast, the uniforms having unsnapped the harness on their revolvers. He wondered if they were going to nail DeMarco, or the dealer, or both of them. It was about time.

The crowd was slow to get out of their way, and Longo flashed his silver detective’s badge to hurry them along. Valentine stared at the dealer, and saw a look of panic distorting his face.

Longo came up to the tournament director, and the two men had a talk. Part of the director’s job was to act as an MC, and announce when players had won hands. To do this, he used a hand-held microphone, which he now raised to his face. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to have a five-minute recess. Dealers, please stop your games and reshuffle. Thank you.”

Longo and the three uniforms had broken away from the tournament director, and were coming around the table. The dealer had pushed his chair back and placed both his hands palms down on the felt, a sure sign that he’d been arrested before. Longo walked past the dealer and directly toward Valentine while barking an order to the uniforms. Reaching into his jacket, Longo removed a pair of handcuffs from the clip on his belt.

“Tony, you’re under arrest,” Longo said.

“For what?” Valentine said incredulously.

“Two counts of second-degree murder.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Valentine said.

“Like hell I am. Lift your arms into the air.”

The crowd was giving the police plenty of room now, and Valentine felt their hostile stares. He’d arrested hundreds of people in his life, and had always wondered what it felt like. Now, he was going to find out.

He lifted his arms into the air, and a uniform frisked him. Then his wrists were handcuffed behind his back. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but that didn’t matter; he felt like he’d done something wrong, and his face was burning.

As Longo led him out of the poker room and into the lobby, Gloria and Rufus stood off to the side, watching with horrified faces. Valentine wanted to tell them that he was innocent, but instead stared down at the ugly carpet as he walked past.

23

Skip DeMarco sat frozen in his chair. There were cops in the room — he could feel the tension in the air — but he couldn’t hear what was being said. Had they figured out the scam, and were they about to arrest him? He tried to act nonchalant, and shuffled a stack of chips with one hand. What was his uncle’s expression? Never run if you’re not being chased. The chips fell out of his hand and spilled across the table. He felt himself shudder uncontrollably.

“Here you go,” the dealer said, pushing the chips back.

“What’s going on?”

“The cops just arrested some guy in the crowd,” the dealer said.

The dealer’s voice was strained, like he was afraid of something. Although his uncle had not explained how the scam worked, DeMarco knew someone in the room was reading his opponents’ cards and signaling them to him. He’d ruled out the dealer, simply because the dealer had a job to do. But now he sensed the dealer was involved. DeMarco felt a hand on his shoulder, and nearly jumped out of his chair.

“Sorry to startle you,” the tournament director said. “We’re taking a break. You’re free to get up.”

DeMarco rose from the table. He waited for Guido and his uncle to appear. When they didn’t, he grew nervous. Where had they gone? And why hadn’t they told him they were leaving? The guy sitting next to him announced he was going to the bathroom. His name was Bruce Ballas, and when he wasn’t playing cards, he was strumming a guitar in a band. DeMarco asked if he could walk with him.

“Sure,” Ballas said.

They walked together to the lavatory. The joke of the tournament was that the men’s lavatory had a dozen stalls, the women’s only three. Ballas led DeMarco to an empty stall at the end of the row, and he locked himself in.

Sitting, he buried his face in his hands. When his uncle had come to him with a way to scam the World Poker Showdown, he hadn’t hesitated to say yes. The scam would let him cheat the people who’d cheated him, and claim what was rightfully his. But he’d never considered that he might get caught. How stupid was that?

His chest was heaving up and down. He took several deep breaths, and told himself to calm down.

Ballas was waiting when DeMarco came out a minute later. “There’s a woman wants to talk to you,” Ballas said. “Said she was a big fan, wanted to say hi.”

“Nice looking?” DeMarco asked.

“A major league speed bump,” Ballas said.

DeMarco had promised his uncle not to talk to strangers. Only he’d heard the other players talking about the women they’d seen hanging around the tournament. Women beautiful beyond compare. He’d gone to bed thinking about them every night.

“Lead the way,” he said.

Ballas led him to a table in the corner of the room. DeMarco heard the woman rise from a chair, felt her hand clasp his. Her perfume was strong and lilac scented. He envisioned a long-legged, dark-haired beauty, and waited to hear what she had to say.

“Hello, Skipper,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

He felt something catch in his throat. Her voice was vaguely familiar, but he could not place from where. “I don’t know if I remember you or not,” he said.

“You were little. It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Twenty years. You were a child.”

“You worked for my uncle as a nanny, right?”

“No, I was before your uncle,” she said.

The tournament director’s voice came over the public address system. Play would resume in one minute, and players needed to return to their seats. Ballas touched DeMarco’s sleeve, said he was going back to the game.

“I’ll get back on my own,” DeMarco said.

“You sure?” Ballas asked.

DeMarco said yes. Ballas walked away, and DeMarco asked, “What do you mean, before my uncle?”

“You had a life before you went to live with George Scalzo,” she said. “I was a part of it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I used to make you raisin cookies and sing you songs. On your birthday, I bought you a Roy Rogers costume, and you went to your party as a cowboy.”

DeMarco heard a series of rapid clicks in his earpiece. Play had resumed, the dealer sailing the cards around the table. The clicks were in Morse code, the dots and dashes telling him what cards his opponents held. He listened intently. His opponents had ace — king, a pair of deuces, 2–9, a pair of fours, 7–8 of clubs, and a k–9, also known as a Canine. He didn’t like missing the hand, but wanted to hear the woman out.

“You didn’t work for my uncle?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then who are you?”

The woman grabbed his wrist and tried to stuff something into his hand. It was stiff, and felt like a photograph. When he wouldn’t take it, she shoved it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

“What did you just give me?” he asked.

“A gift. I saw you on the television, and flew here from Philadelphia to see you.”

“Please let go of my wrist,” he said.

She released him and he stepped back. He wanted to tell this woman to stuff her head in a toilet. The only person in his life before Uncle George was his mother, and she was lying dead in a cemetery in New Jersey. Uncle George had taken him to her grave.

“I tried to contact you many times,” she said, “but your uncle wouldn’t let me near you. I even once tried to visit you at school. Do you remember that?”

“No,” he said.

“You were in the third grade. I came to the school, and the teacher pulled you from the class.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. I need to go.”

“Your uncle sent his bodyguard to my house in Philadelphia,” she said. “He threatened me. Said he’d hurt my family if I tried to contact you. So I stayed away.”

“Good,” he said.

“You don’t care?” she said.

“Not in the least.”

She stifled a tiny sob. He’d wounded her, and heard her hurry away. So this is what it feels like to be a celebrity, he thought.

DeMarco let the noise of the poker room guide him back to the table. Before he reached his chair, his uncle was by his side, holding his arm and breathing on his neck. “Skipper, where the hell you been?” his uncle asked.

“Some woman grabbed me, started chewing my ear off,” DeMarco said.

“I don’t want you talking to strangers,” his uncle said.

“So tell the strangers that.”

DeMarco returned to his seat. The hand was still going on, with two players playing for a huge pot. It pissed him off to know he’d missed out, and in anger removed the photograph the woman had given him from his pocket, ready to tear it up. Ballas, who’d dropped out of the hand, spoke up.

“Man, you haven’t changed a bit.”

“What do you mean?” DeMarco said.

“The photograph.”

“What about it?”

“You haven’t changed since you were a kid. It looks just like you.”

DeMarco stiffened, then raised the photograph to his face, and stared at the little boy dressed in shorts and bright red suspenders staring back at him.

24

“So what?” Valentine asked.

“What do you mean, ‘so what?’” Longo said.

“A chambermaid found my bloody shirt in the trash in my bathroom. So what?”

They sat in Longo’s cluttered office at Metro Las Vegas Police Department headquarters, a few blocks from Glitter Gulch. The door was open, and in the other detectives’ offices they could hear suspects lying their fool heads off. Their conversation felt normal, only Valentine was handcuffed to the arm of a chair. Lying on the messy desk was a tagged evidence bag containing his bloody shirt.

“It’s a solid piece of evidence—” Longo said.

“That I had a bloody nose.”

“—to you murdering those two guys.”

“You’re making a big leap, Pete.”

“I’m too old for that,” Longo said.

“What are you, fifty? That’s not old.”

Longo pushed himself back from his desk. He’d dropped a lot of weight in the past six months, and his face looked like a refugee’s. “Tell me what happened again.”

“Two guys barged into our room and attacked us,” Valentine said. “My nose got busted during the scuffle, and I bled all over myself.”

“Are you saying our forensics team won’t find any of those guys’ blood on this shirt?”

“I kneed one of them in the face. He may have bled on me. That’s not evidence to hold me for suspicion of murder, and you know it.”

“No one’s arguing that an altercation occurred in your suite,” Longo said. “But the fact is, you and Rufus Steele are still walking around, and those two guys are growing cold in the morgue. I have to treat this as evidence.”

“How long will it take your forensic people to examine the shirt?

“A day or two.”

Valentine tried to raise his hand to his face, and heard the handcuff’s chain rattle. The tournament would be over by then. Had someone set him up, just to take him out of the picture? There was a cold cup of coffee on the desk. He raised it to his lips with his free hand and took a slurp. Longo glanced up from his paperwork.

“Someone from the hotel called you and told you about the shirt, didn’t they?” Valentine asked.

“That’s right,” Longo said.

“They also told you I was in Celebrity’s poker room.”

“Right again.”

The cup was empty, and Valentine stared at grains. Before he’d taken the job, the hotel’s general manager, a stuffed suit named Mark Perrier, had threatened him with a lawsuit if Celebrity’s reputation was smeared by Jack Donovan’s murder investigation.

“Was it Mark Perrier, the general manager?”

Longo put his pencil down, trying not to act surprised. “Who told you that?”

“Believe it or not, I figured it out by myself,” Valentine said.

“You have a history with this guy?”

“He threatened me a week ago. Didn’t want me investigating his tournament. This was before Bill Higgins hired me.”

Longo gave him a thoughtful look. “You’re saying Perrier set you up.”

“I’m investigating a cheating scandal inside his hotel. Of course he set me up. Last night, I had you paraffin me for gunshot residue. I may have changed my shirt, but I hadn’t showered. Do you think I would have told you to give me the test if I’d shot those guys?”

Most cops didn’t like the kind of backward logic he was throwing at Longo. It made them go outside their comfort zones. Longo looked at the bagged shirt.

“I need to wait for the blood test,” he said.

“You mean you’re going to hold me,” Valentine said, exasperated.

“Afraid so.”

A woman’s voice came out of the black squawk box on the desk. Longo pressed a button on the box. “Hey Lydia, what’s up?”

“Bill Higgins, director of the Nevada Gaming—”

“I know who Higgins is,” he snapped. “Is he on the line? Tell him I’m busy and will call him back.”

“He’s standing next to my desk,” she said.

Longo clenched his teeth. “Send him in,” he said, and took his finger off the button.

Like most people who worked in law enforcement, Bill had a tough side. When he got angry, he tended to throw his considerable weight around. He was doing that now, and Longo was shrinking in his chair.

“How dare you arrest Tony without first calling me,” Bill said, leaning on Longo’s desk like he was going to do a push-up. “I got authorization from the goddamn governor to keep Tony on this job. You’re screwing with my investigation. If you don’t let Tony go right now, I’ll burn your ass so badly you won’t be able to sit down.”

The lowlifes and miscreants in the other detectives’ offices had stopped talking, the only sound coming from the overhead air-conditioning. Longo pointed at the bagged shirt lying on the desk. “What about this?”

“So what?” Bill said, mimicking Valentine perfectly.

“It’s evidence,” Longo protested.

“It corroborates Tony’s story, but it doesn’t corrobo rate your story,” Bill said. “Why don’t you ask the hotel to show you the surveillance tapes from the stairwell, if you want to know who shot those two scumbags? There’s your evidence, Pete.”

“I already asked the hotel,” Longo said.

“And?”

“They said there isn’t a surveillance camera in the stairwell,” Longo said. “It’s optional under state law to have cameras in stairwells, and they didn’t do it.”

“Who told you that?” Bill asked.

Longo swallowed a rising lump in his throat. “Mark Perrier.”

“Perrier fed you that line of bullshit?”

“How do you know it’s bullshit?” Longo asked.

“Because any door leading off the main lobby of a casino, or its hotel, must have a working surveillance camera according to Nevada state law,” Bill said. “The stairwell where those two scumbags got plugged was right off the lobby. Celebrity couldn’t have gotten a license to operate its casino if there wasn’t a camera in there.”

“But why would Perrier lie?” Longo asked.

Bill finally did his push-up. He worked out religiously, and looked like he could do a hundred of them. “I don’t know, Pete, why don’t you ask him?”

Rubbing his wrist, Valentine walked out of Longo’s office and followed Bill past a warren of detective’s offices to the main reception area. In one office, a black pimp was getting processed by the detective who’d arrested him. The pimp wore flashy clothes and enough gold jewelry to open a pawn shop. Seeing Bill, he threw up his arms.

“I need you, man,” the pimp said.

Bill stopped in the open doorway. “What did you say to me?”

“I said I need you. You know, your services.”

Both of the pimp’s wrists were cuffed to his chair, a sure sign he was a threat. On the desk were his personal belongings, which included an enormous wad of cash and a handful of hundred-dollar black casino chips.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bill asked.

The pimp glanced sideways at the detective who’d busted him, then looked at Bill. “I heard you chewing out that mother down the hall. You sound like you know your stuff. What’s your going rate?”

“You think I’m a lawyer?”

The pimp acted startled. “You’re not?”

Bill marched into the office. Grabbing the chips off the desk, he began peeling back the paper logo on each one. Valentine guessed Bill was looking for the microchip that casinos were required to put in chips over twenty dollars in value. The pimp’s chips didn’t have the microchips, and Bill shoved them into the arresting detective’s face.

“These are counterfeits,” Bill said. “Nail this ass-hole.”