Deadman’s Bluff

25

Lou Preston had struck gold.

The director of surveillance for Bally’s Atlantic City casino had contacted the island’s eleven other casinos, and persuaded them to search their digital databases for any blackjack players who’d recently beaten them and who’d been wearing New York Yankees baseball caps. The search had turned up forty-eight players, all of whom were between the ages of forty and sixty and of Italian descent. Casinos kept records on players who won a thousand dollars or more, and each of these players fell into that category.

As the casinos e-mailed pictures of the players to Preston, Lou projected them onto the wall of video monitors in Bally’s surveillance control room. Gerry, Eddie Davis, and Joey Marconi stood in front of the wall, drinking coffee the color of transmission fluid while watching a montage of sleaze take shape before them.

“These guys give Italians a bad name,” Marconi said.

Gerry sipped his drink, his eyes floating from face to face. The Mafia’s great strength was also its great weakness. The mob didn’t let in outsiders, and consequently there were no women, Asians, blacks, or Hispanics in their ranks. It was all mean-faced, middle-aged Italians with fifties haircuts who tended to stick out like sore thumbs.

He tossed his coffee cup into the trash. His father was always saying that people got what was coming to them. He’d never believed that, especially when it came to crime, but now had a feeling his father was right. George Scalzo was about to get what was coming to him.

He went to the master console where Preston sat. Lou had gotten the directors of surveillance of the other casinos to send him any notes they had on the men whose faces were on the monitors. Surveillance technicians kept copious notes during their shifts, and wrote down anything that was deemed unusual.

“Anything interesting?” Gerry asked.

“All of these guys refused Player’s Cards when they were offered to them,” Preston said. “That’s not normal.”

It was standard practice for casinos to offer gamblers Player’s Cards. The card entitled the person to receive complimentary meals and show tickets and even rooms if their business was strong enough.

“Guess they didn’t want to hand over their identification,” Gerry said.

“My thoughts exactly,” Preston said. “Forty-eight players, all refusing comps. What do you think the odds of that are?”

“Pretty astronomical,” Gerry said.

Preston picked up the gaffed Yankees cap lying on the console. There was a can of soda beside it, which he also picked up. “It’s one more piece of evidence that these players are part of a massive conspiracy to defraud Atlantic City’s casinos.”

“So let’s find out who they are, and arrest them.”

“I wish it was that easy.”

“What do you mean?”

Preston killed the can and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “The police don’t have a digital database like we do. It would take hundreds of hours for them to figure out who these guys are, maybe more.”

“Won’t they do that?”

Preston rubbed his face tiredly. “They would if they had the manpower. The island’s high crime rate isn’t going down anytime soon. The police won’t pull officers off the street to do photo matches.”

Gerry felt his spirits sink. Ruining Scalzo’s Atlantic City operation was the sweetest payback he could think of. He stared at a montage of faces on the video wall.

“I can find out who they are,” Gerry said.

Preston sat up straight in his chair. “You can?”

“Yeah. Ever heard of a guy named Vinny Fountain?”

“Vinny ‘the Sleazy Weasel’ Fountain? Sure.”

“I know him. Vinny’s rubbed elbows with mob guys his entire life. I’ll get their names from Vinny, and the police can find out where they live. My father told me that once the police know where a cheater lives, he’s history.”

“That’s true,” Preston said. “The cops will stake out the cheater’s house. When the cheater goes to a casino, the cops alert the casino, and the casino follows him around with surveillance cameras. Once he makes his move, they pounce.”

“So we’ll screw Scalzo’s gang that way,” Gerry said.

“Are you sure Vinny will help you?” Preston asked. “Generally speaking, hoods won’t rat out other hoods.”

Gerry and Vinny Fountain had nearly died in a warehouse on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Gerry’s father had rescued them, and Vinny owed Gerry’s father his life. Gerry had no problem calling in that marker.

“He’ll help,” Gerry said.

Harold’s House of Pancakes was an Atlantic City institution. Of the two hundred restaurants that had once flourished on the island’s north end, Harold’s was one of the last standing. It served greasy breakfast food all day, its signature egg dish called “the whore’s special” by locals. Marconi pulled into the parking lot, and grabbed a spot by the front door. Davis, who rode shotgun, turned to look at Gerry in back.

“I don’t like you going in there alone,” Davis said.

“You want to check the place out first?” Gerry asked. “Be my guest.”

Davis climbed out and went inside. The way he was moving, you wouldn’t know he’d gotten his back sliced open while dodging a bullet a few hours ago. It was the one characteristic about cops that Gerry had always admired. Davis reappeared moments later. “Your friend’s in a booth in the back.”

Gerry got out of the car, wondering how Davis had made Vinny. The answer became obvious as he entered the restaurant. The girls were out in force, and Vinny was the only male in the place. Prostitution was a part of Atlantic City’s culture, and had only gotten worse with the casinos. He slid into Vinny’s booth.

“That cop with you?” Vinny asked.

“My bodyguard, courtesy of my father,” Gerry said.

“Your old man still watches out for you, doesn’t he?”

Gerry nodded.

“That’s nice. My old man hardly talks to me any more. You said over the phone you wanted me to look at some photographs.”

Gerry removed an envelope from his jacket pocket, slid it across the table. “Some mobsters are running a blackjack scam in town. They’re working for our friend, George Scalzo. I was hoping you’d look at these photos, and see if you know any of them.”

Vinny took a cigarette out of the ashtray, and blew a monster cloud of smoke in the air. You weren’t supposed to smoke in Harold’s, but people did anyway.

Two hookers at the next table started hacking their lungs out. Vinny ignored them.

“You trying to take Scalzo down?”

“I’m working on it,” Gerry said.

“You going to pay him back for what he did to us in Vegas?”

“Yeah, and for killing Jack Donovan.”

Vinny flashed a crooked smile. He was a skinny guy, with pocked skin and bad teeth. What set him apart was his ability to talk. Opening the envelope up, he said, “Walk up to the cash register, and see if it doesn’t send you down memory lane.”

“What am I looking for?”

Vinny laughed through a mouthful of smoke. “Our first scam together,” he said.

Gerry slid out of the booth and went up to the register. He kept his eyes to the floor, avoiding the working girls’ sideways glances. The first pretty girl he’d ever seen was a hooker trolling the Atlantic City Boardwalk. He’d been eight, and his mother had told him this was not the type of girl he wanted to know.

The cashier was a wizened old man with half-dead eyes. He had a tic in his neck that didn’t quit. It was the only way you could tell he was alive.

“Need something?” the cashier asked.

Gerry spotted the ultraviolet light sitting next to the register and nearly burst into laughter. He’d done a lot of dumb things as a teenager, and selling ultraviolet lights to every store owner on the island had been one of them.

“I need a menu,” Gerry said.

Gerry returned to the booth with a menu and a smile on his face.

“Pretty funny, huh?” Vinny said.

“We should tell the guy,” Gerry said.

“No, we shouldn’t,” Vinny said.

Back during their senior year in high school, Vinny had purchased several boxes of ultraviolet lights from a merchant on Canal Street in New York. Then he and Gerry had pooled their money together, which had amounted to eight hundred bucks, and Vinny had gone to the bank and exchanged it for eight new hundred-dollar bills.

Vinny had painted the hundred-dollar bills with ultraviolet paint, which when dry was invisible to the naked eye. Gerry’s job had been to go to different restaurants on the island, and spend the hundred-dollar bill on a meal. A few hours later, Vinny would come in, posing as a salesman. He’d tell the owner that a lot of counterfeit hundreds were floating around, and that the special light he was selling could detect them. He always offered to give a demonstration.

The owner would take the hundred-dollar bills from his register, and run them beneath the light. The doctored bill would light up like it was radioactive. Vinny would tell the owner that by federal law, he had to confiscate the counterfeit and turn it over to the FBI. He’d pretend to feel bad for the owner’s situation, and offer to sell him the ultraviolet light at cost, which he claimed was fifty bucks. The owner always said yes.

“That was some summer,” Gerry said.

“I bought a car,” Vinny said, pouring through the photographs.

“So did I.”

“Mine was nicer.”

A waitress took Gerry’s order. He asked for the whore’s special. She raised a disapproving eyebrow while tapping her pencil on her pad.

“You some kind of comedian?” she asked.

“He’s a native,” Vinny said.

“One whore’s special it is,” she said.

Vinny continued poring over the photographs. Like Gerry, he’d flunked out of college, but had plenty of street smarts and a good memory. Shaking his head, he slipped the photographs back into the envelope. “Don’t know them. They must be from off island. What’s the deal with the baseball caps?”

Gerry lowered his voice. “There’s a receiver and three LEDs sewn into the rim of the cap. The cards at the table are nail-nicked. A member of the gang reads the nicks, and knows what the dealer is holding. He electronically transmits the information to the guy wearing the cap.”

“Wow,” Vinny said. “You got the cap?”

Gerry hesitated. Vinny was, and always would be, a scammer. He didn’t want to be giving him any ideas, especially when it involved a case he was working on.

“It’s outside in the car,” Gerry said.

“Get it,” Vinny said.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The detectives working the case are in the car.”

“So what? I’m trying to help you bury Scalzo, aren’t I?”

Gerry’s food arrived. Three eggs sunny-side up, a gristly piece of ham, and a mound of hash fries swimming in bubbling grease. The cook hadn’t lost his touch.

“How can you help me bury Scalzo if you can’t identify these guys?” Gerry asked.

Vinny lit a cigarette off the one he was smoking. He blew another cloud at the girls at the next table and got them coughing. “Easy. I’ll find out who made the cap.”

26

It doesn’t get any better than this, Karl Jasper thought.

Jasper stood at the rear of the crowd in Celebrity’s poker room, chewing an unlit cigar. The scene was absolutely beautiful. Skip DeMarco was beating the pants off the competition and the spectators were cheering his every move. The kid was going to be known in every home in America by the tournament’s end. Every home.

Jasper watched the action while trying to calculate how much money DeMarco would make in endorsements. He’d cut his teeth working for a Madison Avenue ad agency, and could not look at success without equating it with a dollar figure.

Only trying to figure out DeMarco’s worth was tricky. The kid was an overnight sensation, and advertisers tended to be wary of those. But DeMarco appealed to that all-important demographic — males eighteen to forty-nine — which meant he could endorse anything from condoms to cars, and be a hit.

Finally Jasper hit on a number. Twenty million in endorsements the first year, not including any deals from Europe, and that was being conservative. He would have to talk to Scalzo about managing the kid.

The crowd had grown quiet, and Jasper stood on his tiptoes to watch. A monster pot was building, with three players in the hunt. Fred Rea, an amateur player from Vero Beach, Florida, “Skins” Turner, a seasoned pro from Houston, and DeMarco.

Rea was the short stack at the table with four million in chips. It sounded like a lot, only his opponents had more. By declaring himself “all in,” Rea was putting his tournament life at stake.

Skins called him, and shoved four million in chips into the pot as well.

DeMarco immediately called Rea and Skins. The kid had a special savoir faire that Jasper loved. The five community cards had already been dealt and were lying face up on the table. Each player was allowed to use his two cards plus the community cards to make the best possible hand.

Rea turned over his two cards. He had two pair, fours and sevens.

DeMarco turned over his cards. He also had two pair, kings and sevens. He’d beaten Rea, and the crowd broke into wild applause. Jasper clapped along with them.

When the applause died, Skins Turner cleared his throat. “Afraid I’ve got you beat, son.” Skins turned over his cards. He had three kings, or what gamblers called “a set.” He raked in the pot while laughing under his breath.

The crowd let out a collective groan, and so did Jasper. Even though he didn’t know how Scalzo’s scam worked, he knew that DeMarco couldn’t lose. Yet somehow, DeMarco had lost. Jasper stared at the electronic leader board hanging over the feature table. DeMarco was now in third place.

Jasper’s cell phone was vibrating in his pocket. He pulled the phone out, and stared at the face. Mark Perrier, the hotel’s general manager, had sent him a text message: COME TO MY OFFICE! Jasper punched in Perrier’s number, heard Perrier pick up on the first ring.

“What’s going on?” Jasper asked.

“I’m going to close down your fucking tournament,” Perrier informed him.

“I’ll be right up,” Jasper said.

Perrier’s office was on the hotel’s top floor, not big, but with a breathtaking view. Jasper took the private elevator up while staring at the bad carpeting job. The hotel was a big white elephant, and once the newness wore off, its bad location was going to catch up with it. Perrier knew this, so he’d agreed to host the World Poker Showdown.

Perrier was standing by the window when Jasper walked in.

“Have a chair,” the general manager said.

Perrier was a drop of water in an Armani suit, and not the kind of guy Jasper took orders from. He joined him by the window.

“Great view. What’s the problem?”

Perrier’s eyes bore into Jasper’s face with an animallike intensity. “Were you aware that I sicced the police on Valentine?”

“No, but it was a good idea,” Jasper said.

“Do you know why I did that?”

“You wanted him out of the way?”

“I wanted to buy time,” Perrier said.

“To do what?”

“Sit down, and I’ll show you,” Perrier said.

The sitting area in Perrier’s office was dwarfed by his desk, and Jasper wedged himself into the stiff-backed chair that sat in front of it. Perrier went to the DVD player that was part of an entertainment unit, and fiddled with the remote. A flat-screen plasma-TV flickered to life.

“Nice picture,” Jasper said. “That high definition?”

Perrier remained standing, his arms crossed in front of his chest. “When you came to me with this tournament, I knew it wasn’t clean, and that I’d probably have to cover your tracks. That’s why I’ve put up with that mobster Scalzo in my hotel, and why I didn’t say anything when I heard you were using dealers with criminal records. I kept my mouth shut, and cleaned up your mess as best I could. But we’ve got a new mess, a real big one, Karl, and I’m not going to clean it up for you.”

“What are you talking about?” Jasper asked.

Perrier jerked his thumb at the TV screen. “Take a look.”

Jasper squinted at the flickering images on the screen. The picture was grainy black-and-white, and taken from above. “What am I looking at?”

“A surveillance tape.”

Jasper took out his glasses, fitted them on, and squinted at the screen. The tape showed two men standing at the bottom of a stairwell, one black, the other white, the camera’s angle revealing the worried looks on their faces. Jasper stared at the bottom right-hand corner of the tape. It contained the date and time the tape had been recorded, which was at a few minutes past midnight. He felt himself growing restless. “Come on, Mark, what am I looking at?”

Perrier continued looking at the screen. “Here we go.”

On the tape, the door to the stairwell burst open, and a silver-haired man rushed in wielding a handgun. He shot each man in the forehead, then ran out of the picture. It was over in a matter of seconds.

Jasper heard himself exhale. On the tape, the two guys lay dead, blood pooling around their heads. He knew who they were. Hitmen, hired to kill Valentine. Scalzo had said that Valentine had shot them in the stairwell, only now Jasper knew otherwise. It was Scalzo who’d shot them. Jasper rose from his chair.

“Give me a drink,” he said.

Perrier poured Jasper a Scotch on the rocks at the bar. The drink was strong and made Jasper’s mouth burn. They stood by the window, staring into the distance.

“The police asked me about the surveillance camera in the stairwell,” Perrier said, sipping water. “I lied, and told them it didn’t exist.”

“Good move,” Jasper said.

“Maybe. I could tell them I was wrong, and turn the tape over to them. Or, I could destroy the tape. What I do depends on you.”

Jasper stared at Perrier’s reflection in the glass. “How so?”

“The tournament is a winner, and everyone wants it to continue. But there’s a hitch. We have a mobster running around killing people in the hotel. I want you to make the mobster go away.”

“I can’t do that,” Jasper said.

“No?”

“He’s my partner. He put up the cash.”

“Make him go away, anyway.”

“How? You saw what kind of person he is.”

“That’s your problem. All I’m doing is giving you an out,” Perrier said. “If I turn over the tape to the police, you and Scalzo will go to jail, and the World Poker Showdown will go up in flames. Your career and everything you’ve worked for will be ruined. You don’t want that, do you?”

Jasper took a gulp of his drink. His stomach was empty and the booze went down hard. It made him nauseous, and he felt cold beads of sweat march down his neck. He’d always wondered what his day of reckoning would feel like, and now he knew.

“No,” Jasper heard himself say.

“The tournament is a huge success. Get rid of the mobster.”

Jasper nodded stiffly. The tournament was making money, so he was being given another chance. It was better than the alternative, he supposed.

“Okay,” Jasper said.

27

Leaving police headquarters, Bill Higgins drove Valentine back to Celebrity. The freeway was jammed with traffic, and Valentine sat in the passenger seat with his window cracked, staring at a cloudless sky and leaden sun.

“There’s one part of this case that I can’t figure out,” Valentine said.

“What’s that?” Bill asked.

“Why haven’t you run George Scalzo out of Las Vegas? Nevada has spent twenty-five years cleaning up its image of being controlled by the mob, yet this guy runs around town like he’s Teflon-coated. I don’t get it.”

Eyes glued to the car in front of him, Bill emitted an exasperated breath. “I’ve tried to run him out.”

“Did someone stop you?”

Bill nodded his head almost imperceptibly.

“Mind telling me who?”

“Call them the powers that be,” Bill said.

Valentine knew that the rules were different in Vegas. There were only a handful of ways to make money in the desert, and right and wrong sometimes got a little fuzzy.

“But the guy’s a crook,” Valentine argued.

“Scalzo is a reputed crook,” Bill said. Traffic was moving, and he inched the car ahead. “The fact is, he’s never spent a day in jail, never been convicted of a crime, has paid his income taxes every year, and enjoys all the freedoms and protections of every other law-abiding citizen. He’s just as entitled to come here as you are.”

“But he’s helping his nephew scam the tournament,” Valentine said.

“Trust me, Tony, I’ve told everyone who’ll listen that I think Scalzo and Skip DeMarco are up to no good.”

“And?”

“Everyone asks me what the scam is. I say I don’t know, and they change the subject.”

“But you and I both know that they’re cheating. Together, we’ve got over fifty years’ experience catching cheaters. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Traffic again halted and Bill slammed on his brakes. Moments later, a motorcyclist driving on the white line in the highway sped past, mocking them. Bill watched the motorcyclist with a disgusted look on his face, then faced his friend.

“When it comes to Scalzo and DeMarco, it doesn’t mean shit,” Bill said.

“How’s your blood pressure?” Bill asked as they climbed the stairs to Celebrity’s surveillance control room on the third floor.

“A little high,” Valentine admitted.

“So’s mine. My doctor wants me to monitor my blood pressure regularly. I bought one of those machines from CVS. You should think about doing the same thing.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. It’s a silent killer.”

They had reached the third floor and Valentine was puffing. He walked two miles a day, and kept in good shape. Maybe he was stressed out. Perhaps it had some thing to do with George Scalzo and his nephew robbing the joint blind. Or perhaps it was that this was his fifth day in Vegas, and the town had become transparent. They marched down the hallway to the steel door at the end where the surveillance control room was housed. A security camera was perched above the door, and Bill knocked loudly, then peered up into its lenses.

“So what are we doing here, anyway?” his friend asked.

“I had an epiphany during the drive over,” Valentine said. “Somebody I spoke with the other day lied to me, and I want to talk to him with you present.”

Bill’s face hardened. “Someone working in Celebrity’s surveillance department?”

“Yes.”

“Am I going to have to arrest him?”

“You might.”

The door opened and a lanky shift supervisor greeted them.

“We need to talk to one of your people,” Bill said.

The shift supervisor blinked. “Is there something wrong?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

“Who do you want to talk to?” the shift supervisor asked.

Bill looked at Valentine.

“Sammy Mann,” Valentine said.

The shift supervisor led them through the surveillance control room to the offices that lined the back wall. He knocked on a door, then cracked it open. “You’ve got visitors,” he announced.

The shift supervisor left, and Bill and Valentine entered. The office was hardly big enough for them to squeeze in, and Valentine sucked in his breath as he shut the door. Sammy Mann sat behind the desk, staring at computer screen containing a live feed from a surveillance camera on the casino floor. Seeing them, he smiled. Sammy was a man of sartorial splendor, and wore a silk sports jackets with mother-of-pearl buttons, a baby blue shirt with French cuffs, and a gold tie with a perfect Windsor knot. He was the classiest cheater Valentine had ever known. Now retired, he hired himself out to Las Vegas casinos as a consultant.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Sammy said pleasantly. “Welcome to my humble abode. Make yourselves at home.”

“I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Valentine said.

The smile left Sammy’s face. “You’re here on business?”

“That’s right,” Bill said.

“What’s wrong?” Sammy asked.

Valentine dug out of his pocket the Silly Putty and paper clip that Rufus had found in Celebrity’s poker room, and placed them on the desk. He deliberately shoved the paper clip into the putty, and saw Sammy wince.

“We’ve got a mucker cheating the World Poker Showdown, and I think you might know who it is,” Valentine said.

Smart crooks never lied; they just kept their mouths shut. Sammy’s lips closed and he continued to stare at the bug. Sammy’s speciality had been switching decks of cards at casino blackjack tables. Because of him and his well-trained gangs, every casino in the world now chained their dealing shoes to their tables.

“Start talking,” Bill said.

Sammy wore a perpetual tan, and it was unsettling to see the color drain from his cheeks. “Are you going to arrest me?” he asked.

“I might if you don’t give us some straight answers,” Bill said.

“On what grounds?”

“Collusion,” Bill said.

“With who?”

“You know every mucker in the country,” Valentine jumped in. “Hell, you trained most of them. The question is, did you see one working the tournament?”

Sammy reached into the pocket of his sports jacket and removed a medicine bottle. He spilled a few dozen tiny pills onto the table, then stuck one on the tip of his tongue. He washed it down with a glass of water sitting on the desk.

“For my heart,” he said, taking a deep breath.

They waited him out. Las Vegas’s casinos liked to boast that they didn’t use ex-cheaters in surveillance, but it wasn’t true. Nearly every casino used them, and for good reason. There was no other way to learn how grifters worked.

“To answer your question,” Sammy finally said, “no, I have not seen anyone I know from the past scamming the poker tournament.”

Valentine slammed his hand on the desk, making Sammy jump.

“That wasn’t the question.”

“It wasn’t?” Sammy asked meekly.

“No. I asked you if you’d spotted any muckers you know, not if you saw them switching cards. My guess is, if you recognized someone, you wouldn’t watch them, just so you couldn’t be pinned down later.”

Sammy was breathing hard. Not reporting a scam was a felony, punishable by up to three years in state prison. Sammy had visited the crossbar motel before, and knew how harsh prison life was for cheaters.

“If you’re asking me if I spotted anyone in the tournament who I know from the past, the answer is yes,” Sammy said. “There are many guys playing here who cheated at one time or another. But that doesn’t mean they’re cheating here.”

“Did you watch them to make sure they weren’t cheating?” Valentine asked.

A sweat moustache appeared above Sammy’s upper lip.

“No,” he said.

“You’re in serious trouble,” Bill informed him.

The best thing a cop could do to a crook was make him sweat. Leaving Sammy in the office, they went into the surveillance control room to have a little chat.

“What a crummy prick,” Bill said. “He’s sitting there collecting a paycheck to catch cheaters, yet isn’t reporting cheaters he knows are playing in the tournament. When I’m finished with him, he won’t be able to get another job in town.”

“Actually, I was hoping you’d let him skate,” Valentine said.

Bill’s mouth opened a few centimeters. “You were?”

“Yes. I want him working for us.”

“You sound like you’ve got a soft spot for the guy.”

Bill wasn’t far off the mark. Sammy had class. Like Rufus, he could charm the pants off a person while stealing their money. “I wanted to scare him, and we have,” Valentine said. “If you give Sammy another chance, I feel certain he’ll lead us to the mucker. When he does, you can call the governor, and tell him you want to raid the tournament. That way, we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

“We will?”

“Yes. I watched DeMarco play earlier, and I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the dealer at his table is involved in the scam.”

“Which dealer are you talking about?”

“Heavyset guy with a walrus moustache. He’s doing something fishy when he deals. His movements are too slow.”

“Is he reading the cards and somehow signaling DeMarco?”

The air-conditioning never stopped blowing in a surveillance control room, and Valentine shivered and said, “No. The dealer hardly looked at the deck when he dealt. But I’m certain he’s involved.”

“So the mucker is an excuse to raid the game,” Bill said.

Valentine nodded. He had been studying DeMarco’s scam for a week, and was no closer to the solution than the day he’d started. The proverbial sand was slipping from the hourglass. If he didn’t solve this puzzle soon, DeMarco would be crowned the champion, and he and Bill would look like chumps.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Bill said.

28

Mabel was on the computer when she heard the front door slam. Not long ago a man had entered the house under false pretenses, and held her hostage. She’d learned a valuable lesson from the experience, and reaching across the desk, she grabbed a copy of Crime and Punishment nestled between a pair of bookends, and removed a loaded Sig Sauer that Tony kept in the hollowed-out interior. She rose from her chair.

“I’m armed,” she called out.

“Don’t shoot,” a familiar woman’s voice called back.

“Yolanda, is that you?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get here so fast?”

“I flew Southwest.”

Mabel returned the gun to its hiding place and went to the foyer. Tony and his late wife had bought the house to retire to, and it was a charming relic that represented the way Florida houses used to be made, with hardwood floors, crown molding, and jalousie windows. Yolanda stood by the front door, the baby cradled in her arms.

“I’ve missed you,” Mabel said, hugging her.

“I missed you, too,” Yolanda said. “The baby’s diaper needs changing. Talk to me in the kitchen.”

The kitchen was in the back of the house, and faced a postage-stamp-size backyard. Yolanda put the baby on the kitchen table and said, “So tell me why Tony and Gerry are in trouble.”

“Right before we spoke, I got a phone call from Special Agent Romero of the FBI,” Mabel explained. “He told me that Tony and Gerry have gotten on the wrong side of a notorious mobster, and are in danger.”

“So they could end up dead, like in my dream,” Yolanda said.

“Yes.”

Yolanda tickled the baby’s stomach and made her giggle. The baby was named Lois, and resembled Tony’s late wife, whom she’d been named after. As a result, Yolanda had Tony and Gerry wrapped around her little finger, yet rarely took advantage of it. Lifting the baby to her shoulder, she said, “I suppose I should call them, and ask them to come home, but somehow I have a feeling that they’d both tell me they’re okay, and not to worry. Am I right?”

Mabel sunk down into a chair. Yolanda was right. Tony and Gerry weren’t going to be forced out of a case by anyone.

“Besides, think of the long-term consequences if I ask them to come home,” Yolanda said, patting the baby’s behind.

“What long-term consequences?”

“I’d be drawing a line in the sand,” Yolanda said, “and telling Tony and Gerry that I’m not willing to let them work under certain situations. If I did that, they might as well close Grift Sense, and go into some other line of work.”

Mabel swallowed hard. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “I see your point.”

“Good. I suggest we take another tack.”

“Which is?”

“Maybe we can help them solve this case, ” Yolanda said.

“How are we going to do that? We don’t know anything about it.”

Yolanda handed her the baby, then dug a piece of folded paper from her pocket. Yolanda was big on writing things down, and unfolded a page filled with notes.

“Oh yes, we do,” the younger woman said.

They went into Tony’s office with Mabel still holding the baby. She’d raised two children of her own, and looked back fondly at the experience, even though she hardly heard from either of them now. One day, they’d have children of their own, and start calling her more regularly. It was how it had worked with her mother.

“I spoke with Gerry last night,” Yolanda said, laying her notes on the desk. “He told me the key to solving this scam was at the Atlantic City Medical Center. His friend Jack Donovan stole something from there that’s being used to invisibly mark cards, and Gerry is trying to find out what it is. Well, I think we can help him.”

“How?” Mabel asked.

“The first thing Gerry has to realize is that things get stolen from hospitals, and never get reported to the police.”

“Why’s that?”

“Hospitals are no different than anywhere else,” Yolanda said. “Stuff disappears, including narcotics and prescription drugs, and the police never hear about it. People internally know about it, but that’s where it stops.”

The baby was starting to squirm. Mabel put her on the floor, and watched her crawl away.

“Bad for business?” Mabel asked.

“Worse than bad,” Yolanda said. “If the state medical board hears that a hospital is losing drugs to thieves, they might pull the hospital’s license. As a result, thefts routinely get hushed up. Gerry can’t rely on anyone working at the Atlantic City Medical Center to be truthful in regards to what Jack Donovan might have stolen from them.”

“So the hospital is a dead end,” Mabel said.

“Not necessarily. Oh, better grab the baby.”

Lois had crawled across the floor and was drooling on the newest addition to Tony’s collection of cheating equipment. It was a crooked roulette wheel, courtesy of the famed London Club, that’d hired Tony to determine why they were losing on the wheel. Using a computer software program, Tony had analyzed a week’s worth of winning numbers, and determined that half were coming up too often. He’d gotten the casino to take the wheel apart, and remove all the screws holding the metal separators between the winning numbers, called frets. It was discovered that the threads of these screws were thinner than normal, and offered less resistance when hit by the spinning ball. The casino had arrested the roulette repairman, who’d immediately confessed to the ingenious crime.

Mabel scooped the baby up. “Why not necessarily?”

“If the hospital is confronted by the police about a theft, they’ll help in the investigation, for the same reasons I just explained. The hard part is getting enough evidence for the police to feel comfortable doing that.” Yolanda glanced at her notes on the desk. “Right now, we know the following: Jack Donovan stole something from the hospital, which he hid inside a metal strongbox under his bed. The strongbox was missing after Jack was murdered, leaving everyone to assume that the murderer stole it. Now, here’s the interesting part. Gerry saw the murderer coming down a stairwell in the hospital, right?”

“Correct,” Mabel said.

“But the murderer wasn’t carrying a strongbox, a duffel bag, or anything at all,” Yolanda said. “Gerry said his hands were empty.”

“Maybe the murderer took the secret out of the strongbox, and put it in his pocket.”

“I don’t think so. We know the secret is dangerous, which is why it was kept inside the strongbox in a duffel bag. I have another theory as to what happened to Jack’s secret.”

Mabel rocked the baby against her chest. She sensed that Yolanda had found something that everyone else had missed. Something hiding in plain sight, to use one of Tony’s favorite expressions.

“Tell me,” she said.

“I think George Scalzo stole it,” Yolanda said.

Mabel blinked. She knew a lot about Scalzo, courtesy of Special Agent Romero. Scalzo had murdered Skip DeMarco’s mother, a prostitute, in order to get custody of DeMarco when he was a little boy. Scalzo would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.

“If that’s true, then Scalzo was in the hospital during the murder,” Mabel said.

“I think so,” Yolanda said.

“You don’t think he would have sent one of his men?”

“Scalzo wants his nephew to win the World Poker Showdown,” Yolanda said. “Do you think he would have trusted one of his men to steal the scam from Jack’s room?”

Mabel considered it, then shook her head. “No, he would have done it himself.”

“So my theory makes sense,” Yolanda said.

“It makes perfect sense,” Mabel said. “If we can put Scalzo in that hospital, he’s an accomplice to Jack Donovan’s murder.”

“Most hospitals require visitors to sign in at a reception area,” Yolanda said. “There might be a record of Scalzo being there.”

Mabel handed Yolanda the baby. Yolanda didn’t know enough about crooks to know that most of them never used their real names. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t prove her theory. Special Agent Romero had said that the FBI was watching Scalzo twenty-four hours a day. The FBI would know if Scalzo was at the hospital that night.

Romero’s number was written on a slip of paper on the desk. Mabel punched the number into the phone, then looked appreciatively at Yolanda.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” Mabel said.

29

“What fucking happened?” Scalzo whispered.

“I don’t know,” DeMarco whispered back.

“You don’t know?”

“No, Uncle George. I don’t know what happened.”

“I’ll tell you what happened,” his uncle whispered, his breath hot on his nephew’s neck. “A guy named Skins Turner just beat you out of a monster pot, and took a third of your chips away from you. You’re no longer in first place.”

“I know, Uncle George.”

“So tell me how Skins did it,” his uncle said.

“I told you, I don’t know,” DeMarco replied.

DeMarco and his uncle and Guido were standing on the far end of the poker room, next to the wall and away from the other players and mob of spectators. The tournament took a fifteen-minute bathroom break every two hours, and the players ran like lemmings to the johns. DeMarco had instead gone over to be with his uncle, whose voice hinted that he was on the verge of losing control.

“But Skins had three of a kind,” his uncle said, his voice rising. “You bet into a better hand, and lost. Why the fuck did you do that, Skipper? Tell me why you did that.”

DeMarco leaned against the wall, which was icy cool against his skin. Everything he touched inside the casino was cold and unfriendly, and he found himself wanting to return to Newark and the safety of his house. “It just happened.”

“But you knew Skins was holding a pair of kings before the flop,” his uncle shot back. “You knew what his cards were. You’re not supposed to lose monster pots, Skipper. You could get knocked out of the tournament.”

“I know, Uncle George.”

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not good enough, Skipper.”

“It’s not?”

“No. You gotta do better.”

DeMarco could hear the implied threat in his uncle’s voice, and wondered if his uncle thought he’d lost the hand on purpose, and was trying to sabotage his own chances of winning the tournament. That was the strange thing about his uncle George; his uncle loved him, but sometimes didn’t trust him.

DeMarco realized his chest was heaving. He took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. The truth was, Skins hadn’t started the hand with two kings. According to the clicks DeMarco had heard in his earpiece, Skins’s cards were a king and a three. Somehow, they became a pair of kings, and DeMarco had lost the biggest pot of the tournament. Either the receiver in his earpiece had malfunctioned, or Skins was cheating.

His uncle stood a few feet away, speaking in hushed tones to Guido. DeMarco wanted to ask his uncle what he was supposed to do. Should he ask the tournament director to stop play, so they could fix his earpiece? Or should he tell the tournament director that Skins was cheating because DeMarco had known Skins’s cards, and they weren’t a pair of kings? Those were his only two options, and either one would get him tossed from the tournament, and probably arrested.

DeMarco found the strength to laugh. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

“What’s so funny?” his uncle asked, drawing close.

“This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Uncle George,” DeMarco said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a joke, Uncle George. Lighten up.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” his uncle snapped.

DeMarco pushed himself away from the wall. He could vividly remember the day his uncle had come to him with his scheme about scamming the World Poker Showdown. Winning would be child’s play, his uncle had said, and would make DeMarco the most famous poker player in the world. Only it wasn’t turning out that way, and DeMarco sensed they were about to get beaten at their own game.

“Where you going?” his uncle asked.

“To take a leak,” DeMarco said.

“Have Guido walk with you.”

“Whatever you want, Uncle George.”

DeMarco felt his uncle’s hand on his wrist.

“You sure you’re okay, Skipper?” his uncle asked.

“I’m great, Uncle George. Just great.”

For as long as he could remember, DeMarco had hated to lose. It didn’t matter what the game was, or the stakes: if he didn’t end up on the winning end, he lost his temper, and sulked for days. He had to win, just as some guys had to be the best at a particular sport. As he’d gotten older, he’d wondered if it had something to do with being blind, as if winning put him on a level playing field with everyone else.

Only today had been different. He’d lost a monster pot, and it hadn’t fazed him. The surprise of losing had been upsetting, but the actual loss hadn’t affected him the way it normally did. He couldn’t put his finger on why, and as he and Guido walked to the lavatory, he thought about the snapshot he’d been given. He’d studied it between hands, and decided the little boy in the photograph was indeed him, the woman holding his hand, his mother. Everything else was a mystery, and he hoped the woman who’d given him the photograph hadn’t been driven away by his obnoxious behavior.

Guido stopped. “We’re here. Want me to go inside with you?”

“No, Guido. Go watch my uncle. He’s acting strange.”

“I can’t just leave you here,” the bodyguard said.

“It’s okay. I’ll get one of the players to walk me back.”

“You sure, Skipper?”

There was real concern in Guido’s voice. As nannies went, Guido had always been there for him. “Yeah, Guido. I’m sure. Thanks. I’ll see you in a few.”

The bodyguard walked away, and DeMarco went into the lavatory. When he emerged a minute later, he smelled lilac-scented perfume, and offered a smile when he felt a woman’s hand on his arm. “I need to talk to you,” a familiar voice said.

“Sure,” DeMarco said.

The woman led him to a corner table and they both sat down. She positioned her chair so their knees were touching. “Did you look at the photograph I gave you?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s of me and my mother, isn’t it?” DeMarco said.

She placed her hand on his wrist, her grip strong and firm. “That’s right.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Your mother gave it to me.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m your mother’s younger sister, your aunt.”

And where have you been for the past twenty years? he nearly asked.

“What’s your name?” he asked instead.

“Marie DeMarco.”

It felt like a scene out of a daytime soap opera, and DeMarco guessed he’d be dealing with plenty of people like her, now that he was famous. Out of curiosity, he leaned forward and brought his eyes a few inches from the woman’s face. The resemblance to his late mother was slight. He leaned back.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

“I wanted to see you,” she said. “Your father also wanted to come. He lives in Philadelphia, not far from where I live.”

“My father?”

“That’s right.”

DeMarco removed her hand from his wrist. His father had abandoned him and his mother a long time ago. His uncle had told him so, and he’d accepted the explanation, simply because he’d never heard from his father. “I don’t know what your angle is, but I’m not giving you any money. You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here, and pulling this shit.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath, then her dress going swoosh! as she rose from her chair. “I don’t want your money, Skipper. I came here to check up on you. I saw a piece on television that said you’d cheated the tournament, and was afraid you might be in trouble. So I came to make sure you were okay.”

The first day of the tournament, his uncle had arranged for a bunch of players to fold to him, giving DeMarco a huge stack of chips to play with. It was a ploy used by many top-flight players to ensure they survived the early rounds of tournaments, only DeMarco had the bad fortune to knock out Rufus Steele, who’d gone on national television and told the world what he’d done.

“Your father was going to come with me, but he’s in court, trying a case,” she went on. “He’s a criminal defense attorney.”

“Where’s he been all my life?”

“He didn’t know that you existed until I contacted him a few years ago. Once he found out he had a son, he tried to contact you, just like I tried. Only your uncle stopped us. Your uncle’s bodyguard threatened to kill us if we didn’t stay away.”

“That’s bullshit. My uncle wouldn’t do that.”

She abruptly sat back down. This time when she took his wrist, her fingernails dug into his flesh, and when she spoke, her voice was as sharp as a knife.

“Do you really want to know the truth?” she asked.

“Of course I want to know.”

“Are you sure, Skipper?”

DeMarco took a deep breath. He’d caught his uncle in enough lies over the years to realize that there was a lot about his past he didn’t know. Was this woman finally going to reveal it to him?

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s like this. Your mother got hooked on drugs when she was a teenager, and became a prostitute to support her habit. We tried to help her clean herself up. Myself, her mother, her friends, we all tried. She went into rehab, and for a while she was clean. That was when your mother met your father, who was in law school. She hid her past from him, and they fell in love. Then she got pregnant, and ran away.

“She had you without any of us knowing. Then went back to drugs and the street. We didn’t hear from her for several years. I finally tracked her down and persuaded her to come home. She lived with me for a while, and so did you. She wanted to contact your father, but never did. I think she was afraid of telling him the truth about herself.

“Your mother couldn’t stay off the drugs. One day I came home and she was gone. She called a month later from Atlantic City, said she was living there. The next call came from the police, saying she was dead. You were put into a foster home. I tried to get you back, but George Scalzo paid off a judge and adopted you.”

DeMarco shut his eyes. He tried to speak and heard his voice crack. He forced out the words anyway. “My mother was a hooker?”

The woman put her fingers to DeMarco’s lips, and gently closed them. “Your mother was a beautiful woman who loved you more than anything in the whole world. Never forget that, Skipper.”

The air trapped in DeMarco’s lungs had escaped, and he felt empty and hollow and lost. He heard her rise from her chair, and rose as well.

“I need to fly home to Philadelphia this afternoon,” she said. “I have a husband and family waiting for me.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I wanted you to know that you have a family besides your uncle,” she said. “Your father and I care about you. We both wanted you to know that. That’s why I came.”

He heard her open her purse, then felt a stiff piece of cardboard being put into his hand. He lifted it to his face and stared. It was a business card for Christopher Charles Russo, an attorney in Philadelphia. He felt her lips brush against his cheek.

“Good-bye, Skipper,” she said.

30

“You’ve never gambled, have you?” Bill Higgins asked.

“Never,” Valentine replied.

“Ever tempted?”

“No. I got the cure.”

“What happened?”

They were sitting in Celebrity’s sports bar, waiting for their hamburgers. Bill had given Sammy Mann another chance, and they’d left him in the control room to come downstairs for lunch. All around them sat guys who’d been knocked out of the tournament and relegated to watching the action on the giant-screen TV behind the bar. DeMarco had lost a twelve-million-dollar pot, and the room was buzzing.

“Two things,” Valentine said. “The first was because my old man was a gambler, and I saw what it did to my mother. The second happened when I was eighteen. I lent three hundred bucks to a friend of mine who thought he was a gambler. That cured me.”

“Did your friend blow the money?”

“Yeah.”

Lunch came, and they dug in. Once upon a time, food in Las Vegas was a real bargain. Then the corporations had taken over. Now, a burger cost ten bucks, and the french fries could be counted on the fingers of two hands.

“What happened?” Bill asked.

“It was the summer of my eighteenth birthday,” Valentine said, “and I was caddying at the Atlantic City Country Club. The pay was fifty bucks a week, and I’d saved three hundred bucks and was planning to buy a used car. There was another caddy named Kenny Keane. Kenny was a degenerate gambler and would bet on anything. One day, he begged me to lend him three hundred dollars, said he needed to see a doctor. I was pretty naive, so I lent it to him.

“Kenny immediately marched into the clubhouse and challenged the club champ to a match. Kenny was an eight-handicap, and the champ was a scratch golfer. They went out and started playing. Luckily, the champ played tight when there was money on the line, and on the last hole, Kenny sank a miracle thirty-foot putt, and won by a stroke. As we were walking back to the clubhouse, Kenny said, ‘I told you I could beat that guy!’

“I told Kenny I wanted my money. I was dreaming about owning that car. Kenny said sure, and we went to take a shower. When I got out, I found Kenny in a poker game in the locker room. I looked at his hand. He had absolutely nothing. A stone cold bluff. I begged him for my money. He said, ‘I can beat these guys.’ And he did. They folded, and Kenny won two grand.

“We went into the clubhouse, and Kenny headed for the casino in the back room. Gambling was illegal in Atlantic City then, but that didn’t stop anyone. I told Kenny to give me my money or I’d never speak to him again. He said, ‘Can’t you see I’m on a roll? I’m going to make us famous tonight.’

“I watched Kenny play blackjack and double our money. Then he played craps, and doubled it again. The guy was absolutely on fire. Then he went to the roulette table, and put everything on the black. The ball rolled and I remember saying a prayer when it dropped. It landed on the red.

“Kenny didn’t stop yelling for ten minutes. I remember wanting to cry, only there were too many people around. As we were leaving, another caddy came up and asked Kenny how much money he’d lost. Kenny said, ‘Just three hundred bucks that I borrowed from this dope.’”

Bill’s cell phone was lying on the bar, and began to crawl between their plates. It was on vibrate mode, and Bill picked it up and stared at its face.

“I need to take this,” he said.

Bill retreated to a less noisy area of the bar, and Valentine continued eating while watching the TV behind the bar. The players had taken a break, and the network was showing a replay of the monster pot DeMarco had lost. Valentine hadn’t paid much attention to it the first time — everyone lost when they gambled — but watching it a second time, he felt the hairs on his neck stand up. The player who’d beaten DeMarco was a scruffy Houston gambler named Skins Turner, a lanky guy with a hooked nose, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a vagrant wisp of hair on his head. But his arresting feature was his hands. They were large and delicate, with long tapering fingers and manicured fingernails. They could have belonged to a surgeon, or a concert pianist, but in the world of gambling, they belonged to another animal. They were a mucker’s hands.

The camera shifted to DeMarco, who’d lost a third of his chips to Skins. DeMarco was shaking his head, and Valentine sensed that the kid knew he’d been cheated.

Bill was still on the other side of the bar, talking on his cell phone. Valentine borrowed a pen from the bartender and scribbled on a cocktail napkin that he was going upstairs to the surveillance control room. He tucked the note beneath Bill’s plate then threw down money for their meals and left the bar.

Entering Celebrity’s surveillance control room, Valentine went to the office where Sammy Mann was holed up. To his surprise, the old hustler had cleared out. He found a technician and asked him where Sammy had gone.

“He went home ten minutes ago,” the tech said.

Valentine talked the tech into pulling up the tape of the twelve-million-dollar pot, then he pulled up a chair to watch the action. The tech had a boyish face and didn’t look old enough to be driving a car. Sensing that something was brewing, the tech put down the Slurpie he was drinking, and stared intently at the video monitor.

They watched the dealer shuffle the cards then sail them around the table, with each player getting two. In Texas Hold ‘Em, the player’s starting cards were critical, with the best hand being two aces, followed by two kings. As Skins got his two cards, his hands covered their backs, and he lifted up their corners to peek at their values.

“See that?” Valentine asked.

“No,” the tech said. “What happened?”

“Play it again, and I’ll explain.”

The tech rewound the tape. He hit play, and they watched the dealer sail the cards around the table.

“Freeze it,” Valentine said.

The tech froze the tape, and Valentine pointed at Skins. “See his hands? He’s got a king palmed in his right hand. It was stuck in a bug beneath the table.”

The tech brought his face so close to the picture that his breath fogged the screen.

“Well, I’ll be. But where did he get the king from?”

“He mucked it out earlier,” Valentine said. “Hustlers call it doing ‘the chop.’ When he tossed his cards to the dealer, he only tossed one.”

“The dealer didn’t notice?”

Valentine shook his head. The technique of stealing a single card during play had been developed by blackjack cheaters, and it flew by most dealers. Stealing a card was even easier in poker, since no one paid attention to a player when he dropped out of a hand. Valentine made the tech restart the tape.

“Now watch the switch,” he said.

The tape continued, and they watched Skins cover his cards with his hands. The tech slapped his knees. “Holy cow. He peeked at his cards without letting the hidden camera in the table see them,” the tech said. “That’s on purpose, isn’t it?”

Valentine nodded. The kid caught on fast.

“Okay,” the tech said. “Now he’s doing the switch, even though I can’t see the move.”

“Cameras can’t see through hands,” Valentine said.

“No, but I can tell when someone’s got a card palmed, and this guy does.” The tech pointed at Skins’s right hand, which rested on the table edge. “He’s got the card he just switched hidden in his palm, doesn’t he?”

“Correct.”

“What will he do? Destroy it later on?”

“No,” Valentine said. “He’ll add it to his cards, and toss it into the muck. That way the deck won’t be short. Hustlers call it ‘cleaning up.’”

On the monitor, they saw Skins drop his guilty hand into his lap and stick the switched card into the bug. If a problem arose during the game, Skins would simply toss the card beneath the table.

“So let’s arrest this guy,” the tech said. “We’ve got enough evidence.”

It was the sanest thing Valentine had heard anyone say since he’d started investigating the tournament. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. Bill Higgins was standing behind him with a grim look on his face. Valentine got up, and they went to a corner where no one could hear them.

“I just got some bad news from the FBI’s Las Vegas office,” Bill said. “Guess who escaped from Ely prison this morning.”

“Someone I know?”

“Al ‘Little Hands’ Scarpi. The FBI thinks Scalzo was behind it.”

Valentine clenched his teeth. Every holiday, postcards from Ely State Penitentiary appeared in his mailbox, the name U.R. Dead scribbled in the return address box. Of all the twisted souls he’d put away, Al Scarpi was the one he still had nightmares about.

“Look, Tony, I won’t be mad if you say you want to leave town,” Bill said. “This is getting awfully hairy.”

Valentine shook his head. He would leave Las Vegas after he busted Scalzo. It was that simple.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

31

“I’ve never ridden in a helicopter before,” Little Hands shouted, gazing down at the flat, unforgiving landscape of northern Nevada. The pilot, an athletic blonde wearing aviator shades with mirrored lenses, flashed a toothy grin. He’d picked Little Hands up on a dusty field outside the Ely Conservation Camp ninety minutes ago, tossed a bag lunch into Little Hands’s lap, then pointed his chopper toward Las Vegas.

“Where do you pee in this thing, anyway?” Little Hands asked.

The pilot continued grinning. It was a long trip, over 250 miles, and Little Hands had wished like hell he’d taken a leak before departing.

“You got a radio to listen to?” Little Hands asked.

The pilot continued to grin. Then Little Hands got the picture. The pilot couldn’t hear him over the roar of the helicopter’s blades. Little Hands felt like a fool and folded his hands in his lap. In prison, he’d gone to the library every day and tried to educate himself. If he’d learned anything from the books he’d read, it was that the best thing a dumb person could do was keep their mouth shut and say nothing at all.

Rows of identical tract houses littered the landscape, the roofs dotted with satellite-TV dishes. Past them, a giant steel structure shaped like a needle pierced the sky. Little Hands realized it was the Stratosphere, the tallest casino in Las Vegas.

The pilot tapped him on the arm, then pointed at a sprawling industrial park down below. Behind the park was a concrete helipad with a car parked beside it. Little Hands sucked in his breath as the helicopter descended.

Once the helicopter’s blades stopped whirring, Little Hands climbed out and stretched his legs. It was hard to believe that less than five hours ago he’d been pumping iron in the prison weight room. The pilot pulled a duffle bag out of the helicopter, and dropped it on the ground.

“This is yours, buddy,” he said.

Little Hands unzipped the duffle bag and pulled out its contents. New clothes to replace his prison work out fit, a set of car keys for the vehicle parked beside the helipad, and an envelope stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. The envelope also contained a typed sheet with the hotel and room number where Tony Valentine was staying. Taking the money out, he quickly counted it.

One thousand bucks.

He ran over to the helicopter. The pilot had restarted the engine and was about to take off. Little Hands tapped on the pilot’s window, and he pulled it back.

“Where’s the rest of my money? I get five grand for a job.”

“You’ll get the rest when the job is done,” the pilot said.

“Fuck that shit. I want it now.”

“Do the job, then call the number on the back of the instructions. They’ll meet you, and give you the rest.”

“I want it now.”

“I don’t have it,” the pilot said.

“You’re saying they didn’t pay you, either?” Little Hands shouted.

“What they paid me is none of your business. You should be happy you’re out of jail,” the pilot said.

Little Hands stuck his hand through the open window and got his fingers around the pilot’s throat. Before he could squeeze the life out of him, the pilot drew a gun from the console between the seats and stuck it in Little Hands’s face.

“Want to die, asshole?”

Little Hands let go of the pilot and withdrew his arm.

“You’re a dumb son-of-a-bitch, you know that?” the pilot said. “Now, stand back.”

Little Hands retreated a few steps. The helicopter rose uncertainly, like a bird testing its wings. When it was at face height, Little Hands leaped forward and wrapped his arms around the landing gear, called skids. He twisted and pulled the skids as the helicopter continued to rise. He wasn’t going to let the pilot call him dumb.

When the helicopter was higher than a house, Little Hands let go, and fell back to earth. He landed on the grass and rolled onto his back. He waited for the pain in his legs to subside while staring into the sky. The helicopter was spinning crazily, the skids twisting. The pilot wouldn’t be able to land without crashing.

Little Hands saw the pilot shaking his fist and cursing him. He laughed.

He drove into Las Vegas thinking about the money. A thousand stinking bucks. He’d never taken a job with out getting paid up front. Either his employer didn’t know the rules, or wanted to keep him on a short leash. It’s like I’m still a prisoner, he thought.

He came into town on the north side, where the Riviera, Frontier, and Sahara were still struggling to survive, and parked beneath the Frontier’s mammoth marquee, its giant letters proclaiming BIKINI BULL RIDE, COLD BEER, DIRTY GIRLS.

Across the street from the Frontier was the Peppermill restaurant and lounge. The local cops didn’t like the prices, and as a result criminals often used the cocktail lounge for meetings. He needed time and a place to think, and decided it was as good a spot as any.

The lounge was behind the restaurant, a mirrored room with a sunken fire pit and plenty of intimate seating. The place was dead, and he took a seat at the bar and ordered a draft from the cute bartender, who seemed happy for the company. She set a tall one in front of him. “You look familiar,” she said.

It was his first beer since going to the joint. He savored it, saying nothing.

“Now I remember,” the bartender said. “You came in here awhile back, and stuck your hand in the fire pit.”

The fire pit was the lounge’s gimmick, the bright orange flames erupting from a bubbling pool of green water. Little Hands had stuck his hand into the flames on a dare and burned himself real good. “That was a long time ago,” he said.

She smiled like he’d made a joke, then tapped the screen of the video poker machine in front of him. Every seat at the bar had a video poker machine. It was how the lounge made money.

“Make sure you play Joker’s Wild,” she said.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“It’s paying off real good.”

He drank some more beer. She played this game with every customer who came in. She sold them on the idea of winning, even though no one ever did. He needed to figure out how he was going to kill Valentine, and fished a twenty out of his pocket.

“Thanks,” he said.

The beer went straight to his head, and he could hardly sit upright in his chair. This was how guys who broke out of jail got caught, he thought. The bartender came back. “How you doing?” she asked.

He looked at the video poker screen. “Shitty.”

She watched him play a hand. On the screen five cards appeared. He had a pair of jacks. He discarded the other three cards by pressing on them with his finger. The machine dealt him three more cards. They didn’t help his hand, and he won a dollar. She reached over the bar and touched his wrist.

“Can I give you some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Play the maximum amount of coins each time. That way, if you get a good hand, you’ll win big.”

He’d been betting a quarter a hand, thinking it would let him play longer, which would increase his chances of winning. Only, she was saying that it was a bad strategy, and would deny him the chance to really win. He pushed the button on the screen that said PLAY MAXIMUM AMOUNT.

“There you go,” she said.

Five new cards appeared on the screen. The ace of hearts, king of hearts, three of clubs, nine of hearts, and ten of hearts. He started to discard all the cards but the ace and saw her eyebrows go up.

“Discard the three and nine,” she said. “That way, you might make a royal flush.”

A royal flush was the best hand of all. According to the payout chart on the screen, he’d get two grand for a royal flush.

“Nobody gets those,” he said.

“That’s because they don’t try,” she said.

The day had been filled with surprises. He discarded the three and the nine. Two new cards appeared on the screen, a queen of hearts and a joker. She let out a war whoop. “You won! You won!”

He stared at the screen. “No, I didn’t. That ain’t a royal flush.”

“Yes, it is. Jokers are wild. That’s why they call it Joker’s Wild.”

He realized the screen was flashing. It didn’t feel real, and he touched the PAYOUT button with his finger. A slip of paper spit out of the machine saying he’d won $2,000.

He handed it to her, and she went into the restaurant to get the money from the manager.

He sucked down the beer left in his glass. Living in Vegas, he’d heard countless stories about people winning big in casinos, and how it had changed their lives. He’d always assumed the stories were bullshit.

The bartender returned holding a thick stack of bills. She counted the money onto the bar then pushed it toward him. Lifting her eyes, she looked into his face expectantly.

He hesitated picking up the stack, wondering how many customers heard her spiel each day. Fifty? A hundred? Giving suckers hope was how she made her living. He knew that, yet it didn’t change how she’d made him feel.

He put three hundred on the bar and walked out.

32

Valentine was ready to make a bust.

He’d shown Bill Higgins the surveillance tape of Skins Turner mucking a card. Bill had seen his share of muckers, and he whistled through his teeth when Skins did his switch in plain view of everyone else at the table.

“Guy’s got balls,” Bill said.

“He’s also got tremendous misdirection,” Valentine said.

“How so?”

“Everyone’s watching DeMarco.”

Taking out his cell phone, Bill had put into motion the necessary steps to go into Celebrity’s casino, and arrest Skins Turner. For starters, he alerted the casino’s head of security and explained exactly what Skins was doing. Then he gave a detailed description of what Skins looked like and where he was sitting in the game. More than one cheater had gotten away when a security guard had, in his haste to make a bust, nabbed the wrong person.

Then Bill called the Metro Las Vegas Police Department and went through the same drill with a sheriff. Skins would eventually end up in the Metro LVPD clink, and Bill didn’t want some judge letting him out on a hundred-dollar bail because the arresting officer hadn’t understood the seriousness of the charge.

The next thing Bill did was invite the other techs in the room to look at the tape of Skins and confirm that cheating was taking place. Juries in Nevada hated the casinos and would not convict a cheater without clear and compelling videotape evidence. A cop’s word simply wasn’t good enough.

Once the techs had agreed Skins was cheating, Bill did a background check on Skins. Nothing could be more helpful to prosecuting Skins than him having a prior conviction for cheating. Bill got Skins’s name and address from the hotel’s reservation department, and then called it in to the police, and his own people. If Skins had ever been arrested, either Metro or the Gaming Control Board would have a record of it.

Ten minutes later, both Metro and the GCB called Bill back.

“Damn,” Bill said, hanging up the phone.

“He’s clean?”

“Got a couple of speeding tickets down in Houston, but that’s it. Where the hell is Sammy Mann, anyway? Maybe he knows this guy from the past.”

“Sammy flew the coop,” Valentine said. “He ran right after we grilled him.”

Bill clenched his jaw. “That lousy prick. I gave him a second chance, and this is how he repays us.” He asked the tech to replay the tape of Skins, and they both watched it again. Bill cursed under his breath. “This isn’t good enough to convict.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.” Bill pointed at Skins’s right hand. It hung over the edge of the table and beneath his other arm, hiding the palmed card from his opponents but not entirely from the camera’s eye. A tiny sliver of card showed between Skins’s third and fourth fingers. Cheaters called this “leaking.”

“Our illustrious mayor, who used to be a high-priced defense attorney, was able to get specific laws put on the books in regards to how close a mucker’s hands had to be to the table for a crime to have actually been committed,” Bill said. “Skins’s hands aren’t close enough.”

“But we saw him switch cards,” Valentine protested.

“We saw him cover the cards with his hands,” Bill corrected him. “We didn’t see the actual switch. The only evidence we have of foul play is him leaking the card, and since his hand is off the table, that isn’t technically cheating. I know it sounds stupid, Tony, but it’s the law.”

Valentine felt himself getting angry, and took a walk around the room. Old-time gamblers had a special name for conversations like this. They called them “Who shot John?” They were so ridiculous, there was absolutely nothing to compare them to.

When he came back, Bill was still standing there.

“So what do we do?” Valentine asked.

“We wait, and get another tape of Skins cheating,” Bill replied.

“You’re going to let Skins play some more?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“But that’s crazy. It’s an elimination tournament. Every time Skins cheats, some poor guy is getting knocked out.”

“I want the evidence to stand up in court,” Bill said. “Look, you want to bust DeMarco at the same time, right? Grab the dealer and the equipment and figure out once and for all what the kid’s doing. Well, if we arrest Skins, and it doesn’t hold up, then neither will a case against DeMarco if we find evidence of him cheating. His attorney will be able to say we seized his client under false pretenses.”

“Hey,” the tech who’d originally replayed the tape for Valentine called out. “They’re back playing poker.”

Valentine and Bill went over to the tech’s monitor and stared at the screen.

Within ten minutes of play resuming, Skins chopped a card from his hand, stuck it beneath the table, and on the next hand, mucked the card in, and won the pot. DeMarco had folded and sat at the other end of the table, wearing a disgusted look on his face. He knows something’s wrong, Valentine thought.

The tech replayed Skins doing the switch on a monitor. Bill cursed.

“Let me guess,” Valentine said. “The video isn’t good enough.”

“You don’t see the switch actually taking place,” Bill said. “It won’t fly in court.”

Valentine felt like kicking something. Nothing made him angrier than a cheater ripping off innocent people. He supposed it had something to do with the crime itself. The cheater wasn’t just stealing money. He was betraying a trust as well.

The tech spoke up. “Maybe I can help.”

“How?” Bill asked.

“There’s another surveillance camera on the table. The angle’s from the side.”

“Let’s see it,” Bill said.

The tech played the tape from the second surveillance camera. On this tape, the palmed card in Skins’s hand was visible while it rested on the table. Bill slapped the tech on the back.

“Let me know if you ever want to come work for the GCB,” Bill said.

“Thanks, Mr. Higgins.”

“Is that enough to nail him?” Valentine asked.

“Yes,” Bill said. “Now, how do I handle this, so we can expose DeMarco?”

Valentine pointed at the dealer on the monitor. “The dealer needs to be grabbed, plus whatever he brought to the table with him. Either he’s wearing transmitting equipment, or it’s hidden somewhere nearby.”

“How’s he sending the signals?”

“It happens when he deals the cards,” Valentine said.

“How’s DeMarco reading the signals?”

“Either he’s wearing an inner-canal earpiece, or a thumper strapped to his leg, or they’re coming through a cell phone on vibrate mode in his pocket.”

“You figured this all out just now?”

Valentine nodded, annoyed he hadn’t seen it sooner. The only way to effectively transmit information to a blind person was through sound. That was the secret to DeMarco’s scam. Now, Valentine just had to find out how the cards were being read, and the case could be put to bed.

Bill put his hand appreciatively on Valentine’s shoulder. “Good going,” his friend said.

Picking up the phone on the tech’s desk, Bill called downstairs to Celebrity’s head of security and informed him that they were coming downstairs to “freeze” the table where Skins and DeMarco were playing. The GCB’s greatest power was its ability to enter any casino, stop a game, and cart away the equipment for examination in their labs. Bill hung up the phone and looked at his watch. “Head of security needs five minutes to get his troops together.”

“You need to tell him to be prepared to grab Scalzo and his bodyguard as well,” Valentine said. “They might get violent when we expose what’s going on.”

“Good idea.” Bill reached for the phone when it began to ring. The tech answered it, then turned as white as a sheet. He meekly handed the receiver to Bill.

“It’s for you, Mr. Higgins. It’s the governor.”

Bill brought the receiver to his mouth. He identified himself, then listened to what the governor had to say. After a few moments, the puzzled look on Bill’s face turned to anger. He said good-bye and dropped the receiver loudly into its cradle on the desk.

“What’s wrong?” Valentine asked.

“The governor has ordered me not to disrupt the tournament.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t want the bust being filmed and shown on national television.”

“How the hell did he know?”

“Someone on the floor called him. He told me to arrest Skins after play ended for the day.”

Valentine stared at the live feed from the tournament on the tech’s monitor. The action at the feature table was heavy, with Skins involved in another monster pot. He felt something inside of him snap and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Bill called out.

“To put a stop to this,” Valentine said.

33

Valentine took the stairs two at a time down to Celebrity’s main floor. He was mad as hell, and his feet had a real bounce in them. Entering the poker room, he headed straight for the feature table.

He was going to take Skins out of the picture. Letting Skins continue to scam the tournament reminded him of drug stings he’d heard about that let dealers continue to sell narcotics while the cops built up evidence. The purpose was to get the guy at the top, but in Valentine’s view, that was wrong. Cops were supposed to protect the innocent, which meant stopping the crime the moment you saw it happening.

The feature table was aglow in the TV cameras’ bright lights. Eight players were at the table. Skins, DeMarco, and six other guys who were probably decent players but didn’t have a chance with two cheaters working them over.

Valentine came up behind Skins. There were two ways to deal with a cheater. You could arrest him, or scare him. Scaring a cheater had its benefits. The cheater never came back, and he’d tell his friends about the experience. The casino would get a reputation, which wasn’t a bad thing.

A security guard materialized in front of him. Blond, late twenties, and built like a small gorilla. “Please keep away from the table while play is going on,” the guard said.

“Isn’t this the no limit, sixty-and-over tournament?”

A smile appeared on the guard’s face. “No, sir. You must be lost.”

Valentine crossed the room to the cash bar. Taking out his wallet, he tossed a handful of cash in front of the bartender then picked up a tray sitting on the bar and balanced it on his upturned palm. “Six beers,” he said.

“Where are you taking my tray?” the bartender asked.

“I’m playing a joke on my friends. I’ll bring it back. Scout’s honor.”

The bartender pulled six beers from a cooler and put them on the tray. Valentine raised the tray to his face and approached the feature table with no one paying attention to him. A player at the table raised his arm and caught Valentine’s eye.

“Over here,” the player said.

Valentine served the guy a beer. The guy pulled a monster wad out of his pocket and dropped a twenty on the tray. “Keep the change.”

Valentine stuffed the money into his pocket, then circled the table so he was behind the dealer. He spied a silver cigarette lighter to the dealer’s right. The lighter had Celebrity’s logo stamped on its side. Several dealers in the tournament had the same lighter, and he’d assumed they were a promotional gimmick. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He kept moving and came around to where Skins was sitting. He served Skins a beer, and Skins shot him a puzzled look.

“Compliments of the lady at the bar,” Valentine said.

“Thanks,” Skins said.

He sensed motion in the crowd and looked up. The guard he’d spoken with was standing nearby with four other guards. A posse. If he did something stupid, they’d pummel him. At the same time, he couldn’t let this nonsense with Skins continue.

Then he had an idea.

He placed his thumb below Skin’s shoulder and drew an imaginary line down the cheater’s back. It was called the brush off, and used by casinos to tell undesirables to hit the road. Skins sat up in his chair like he’d been shocked with a live wire.

“You’ve been made,” Valentine said under his breath.

“Excuse me?” Skins said.

Skins was an old-timer, with tobacco-stained teeth and a crooked nose, and he was not willing to give up a big score so easily.

“They have it on tape,” Valentine said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The surveillance camera caught you mucking. You need to practice some more. The card palmed in your hand leaked.”

Skins swallowed hard. Play had resumed, and Valentine walked away from the table and into the waiting arms of the casino’s security guards.

The guards took the tray away from Valentine and hustled him into the lobby. They were big and mean and didn’t mind shoving him around. He tried to tell them he was doing a job for the Gaming Control Board, but they wouldn’t listen. One of the guards started to read him the riot act when Valentine heard a familiar voice.

“Tony? What’s going on?”

It was Gloria Curtis coming out of the hotel restaurant. She was trailed by Zack, his camera slung over his shoulder. Valentine caught her eye and silently mouthed the word Help! She instantly understood and stepped up to the guards.

“Excuse me, but what’s going on here?” she demanded.

“Ma’am, please stand back,” a guard said.

“I will do no such thing,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I’m Gloria Curtis with WSPN news, and this gentleman is Tony Valentine, president of Grift Sense, a consulting firm hired by the Nevada Gaming Control Board to investigate a cheating scandal at the World Poker Showdown. Who are you?”

“I work for casino security,” the guard said.

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

The guard didn’t answer. Gloria snapped her fingers, and Zack handed her a mike, then started to film. She shoved the mike in the guard’s face. “I’m sure our viewing audience would be interested in hearing why Celebrity, which is hosting the tournament, would choose to pull an investigator off the floor. Care to respond?”

The guard released his grip on Valentine’s sleeve.

Then he whipped a cell phone from his pocket and made a call. He explained the situation to whoever was in charge. Satisfied, he folded his phone.

“Our mistake,” the guard said. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Valentine.”

Without another word, the guard and his posse marched back inside the poker room.

“What in God’s name was that all about?” Gloria asked.

The lobby was crowded with people, and Valentine pulled Gloria over to a large birdcage filled with exotic parrots, the birds flapping their wings and eyeing them suspiciously. “Bill Higgins and I caught a player named Skins Turner on videotape switching cards,” he explained. “Bill was going to arrest him but got ordered by the governor to wait until play had stopped for the day.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “The governor’s afraid of the bad publicity.”

“That’s all he seems to be afraid of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Skins was cheating, just like DeMarco’s cheating. But the governor is more interested in protecting the town’s interests than he is in protecting the integrity of his games.”

“Are you in trouble?”

There was always follow-up when a customer got escorted out of a casino, and it was usually negative.

“Probably,” he said.

“That’s terrible, Tony. Has that ever happened to you on a job before?”

Valentine shook his head. He’d been in the consulting racket for two years and never been treated like this before. It was a real low point. Gloria took his hand and gave it a squeeze. She was the one good thing that had come out of this job, and he supposed he could live with whatever happened.

Zack appeared. He’d slipped into the poker room and announced that Skins had lost over five million in chips to DeMarco on a bluff. On the very next hand, Skins had gone “all in,” shoved his remaining chips into the pot, and lost. He was now out of the tournament.

“Thanks for the update,” Gloria said.

They watched Zack walk away. Gloria squeezed his hand again. “See?” she asked.

“See what?” Valentine said.

“Every once in a while, the good guys do win.”

Valentine wasn’t so sure. Skins’s loss had put DeMarco back in the leader’s spot. DeMarco was going to win the tournament and the damage would be done. He felt his cell phone vibrate and pulled it from his pocket. It was Bill.

“How much trouble am I in?” Valentine asked his friend.

It was rare for Bill to be at a loss for words. His friend coughed into the phone.

“I just got off the phone with the governor,” Bill said.

“He heard about what you just pulled with Skins Turner.”

“Was he angry?”

“Just a little. You’ve been barred from the tournament.”

34

“This had better be good,” Detective Joey Marconi said, driving south on Atlantic Avenue.

“Yeah,” Detective Eddie Davis said, sitting beside his partner. “You keep us waiting in the parking lot for an hour, this had better be real good.”

Gerry Valentine sat in the backseat of Marconi’s car. He’d started reminiscing with Vinny Fountain inside Harold’s House of Pancakes and not only forgotten the time, but also the two detectives outside, neither of whom had slept in the past two days.

Marconi followed Vinny Fountain’s car on Atlantic Avenue. Vinny drove a souped-up Pontiac Firebird with racing stripes down both sides. Vinny had told Gerry that he could find out who’d made the gaffed Yankees cap found in Bally’s casino. Gerry had told Davis and Marconi, and the detectives had agreed to follow Vinny, but not without letting him know how pissed off they were.

“You have a good breakfast?” Davis asked.

“Just some coffee,” Gerry lied.

“How did you get that jelly stain on your chin?” Marconi wanted to know.

Gerry appraised his reflection in the window. The stain was on the point of his chin. Busted, he thought.

“It’s a birthmark,” Gerry said.

“You’re something else,” Marconi told him.

They drove to Margate City on the southernmost tip of the island. At Huntington Avenue, Vinny hung a left. Marconi followed him, and when Vinny parked on the street, Marconi pulled his vehicle directly behind him. It was a residential neighborhood of two-story shingled houses and small, well-kept yards. Across the street, a dog strained against its chain, barking at them.

“Any idea where we are?” Davis asked.

“This is where Vinny’s father lives,” Gerry said, checking the numbers on the doors. He’d known Vinny since junior high school and had come over here many times. The house looked smaller than he remembered, but so did most things on the island.

“Would you gentlemen mind staying here?” Gerry asked.

Davis and Marconi turned around and shot him wicked stares.

“Better not keep us waiting,” Marconi said, his lips hardly moving.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Gerry said.

Vinny’s father, Angelo Fountain, was a professional tailor and ran his business out of the living room of his house, his customers getting fitted in front of a display case filled with black-and-white wedding pictures of Angelo and his late wife, Marie. In the case was also a sign: CHEAP CLOTHES ARE MADE, GARMENTS ARE BUILT.

The TV set was on when they came in, Jerry Springer reading off a card. Angelo was a small, delicate man, and balanced himself on the edge of the couch, a yellow tape measure hanging around his neck. He looked up in surprise.

“Get the hell out of my house,” he said.

Vinny stood in the foyer, unbuttoning his jacket. Gerry hung behind him.

“Didn’t you hear what I just told you?” his father asked.

“I’ve got a visitor with me,” his son said.

“Like that makes a difference? Who did you bring this time, John Gotti?”

“He’s dead, Pop.”

“Then I’m sure it’s someone just like him,” his father retorted. “Every time I turn around, the police are wanting to talk to me about you, or something you’ve done. My son, the professional crook.”

Gerry glanced at Vinny’s profile, wondering what effect this old man’s words were having on him. If the verbal assault bothered Vinny, he didn’t show it. Tugging his jacket off, Vinny tossed it on a chair and entered the living room.

“I brought an old friend with me,” Vinny said. “You remember Gerry Valentine, don’t you, Pop?”

Angelo Fountain had come to the United States on a boat from Italy, and had brought with him manners and class. He killed the TV with a remote, stood up, and graciously stuck out his hand. “Of course I remember. Tony Valentine’s boy.”

Gerry shook his hand. “It’s good to see you, sir.”

“And you as well. Are you still running an illegal bookmaking operation?” Angelo Fountain asked.

There was an edge to his voice that made Gerry hesitate. He took out a business card, and handed it to the older man. “I gave up the rackets, Mr. Fountain. I’m working with my father now.”

Angelo Fountain removed his bifocals to study the card. In his late seventies, he wore a navy blue suit overlaid with a faint windowpane check. His spread-collar shirt was light blue, his necktie a soft red, as was his matching pocket foulard. He’d always dressed like a head of state, even though he rarely left the neighborhood.

“I thought your father retired,” Angelo said.

“He did,” Gerry said. “My mom passed away, and he went back to work as a consultant.”

“How long you work for him?”

“It’s going on six months.”

The older man’s face softened. “You like it?”

That was a loaded question if Gerry had ever heard one. His father could be a bear, and sometimes drove Gerry nuts. But it was an honest business, and he could tuck his daughter in at night knowing he wasn’t doing things she might someday be ashamed of.

“Love it,” Gerry said.

Angelo Fountain brewed a fresh pot of coffee and served his guests. Gerry had the foresight to ask him to make two extra cups, and took them outside to the two detectives parked by the curb.

“Service’s improving,” Marconi said.

Gerry grabbed the Yankees cap off the backseat. He hadn’t wanted to bring the cap into the house and just stick it under Mr. Fountain’s nose. Going back inside, he found Vinny and his father practically at blows.

“You’re a bum,” his father said.

“Says who?” Vinny replied.

“Every single person on this island.”

“I’ve never been convicted of a single crime,” his son protested.

“You and O.J. Simpson,” his father said.

Gerry made Vinny squinch over and sat down between father and son on the couch. They stopped arguing, with Angelo glaring at his son.

“Mr. Fountain, I need your help,” Gerry said, handing him the cap. “This baseball cap turned up during a case. Vinny thinks you might be able to tell me who stitched it.”

Angelo Fountain examined the receiver and LEDs sewn into the cap’s rim. His hands were small and fine-boned, the skin almost translucent. A minute passed. He was taking too long, and Gerry guessed it was someone he knew and didn’t want to snitch on. The locals were famous for closing ranks when it came to protecting one another.

“I wouldn’t have come here, and put this imposition on you, if there wasn’t a good reason,” Gerry said.

Angelo Fountain looked into his visitor’s face. “And what might that be?”

“The man who had this cap made has a contract on my father’s life.”

“Ahh,” Angelo Fountain said.

Another minute went by. The older man put his hand on Gerry’s knee, gave it a friendly squeeze. “I like your father. He’s a good man. I’ll help you out.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fountain.”

“A tailor on the island made this baseball cap. I recognize the stitching,” Angelo Fountain said. “This tailor was in prison, made friends with some bad people. When he got out of prison, he started taking jobs from these people.”

“What kind of jobs?” Gerry asked.

“Tailoring jobs. To help them steal from the casinos.”

“Steal how?”

“I’ll show you.” Angelo Fountain went to the other side of the living room, pulled open a drawer on a cabinet, and returned holding a paper bag that he dropped on Gerry’s lap. “This tailor gets a lot of work from these people. Sometimes, he asks me to help out. I always say no, but he still comes by.”

Gerry removed the bag’s contents. There were several cloth bags made of dark material, and a metal contraption tied up with wire that looked like a kid’s toy. Gerry untied the wire, and realized he was holding a Kepplinger holdout, a device used by card cheaters to invisibly switch cards during a game. The Kepplinger was worn beneath a sports jacket, and secretly delivered cards into a cheater’s hand through his sleeve, the mechanism powered by a wire stretched between the cheater’s knees. In order for the Kepplinger to work properly, it had to be fitted to the jacket, and Gerry remembered his father saying that only a handful of people in the country knew how to do this.

Gerry examined the cloth bags. They were subs, a device used by crooked employees to steal chips. The mouth of each sub had a flexible steel blade sewn into it, with an elastic strap attached to both ends. The sub was worn in the pants, between the underwear and belt line. The crooked employee would palm a chip off the table, and by sucking in his gut, drop the chip into the mouth of the sub. The move took a second, and was invisible if done properly.

Gerry put the Kepplinger and the subs back into the paper bag. Angelo Fountain had just told him some thing important. This tailor had so much work, he couldn’t handle it all. A one-man factory.

“The police would like to talk to this tailor,” Gerry said.

“They going to send him back to prison?” Angelo Fountain asked.

Gerry shook his head. “Making cheating equipment isn’t against the law. They just want to ask him who ordered the baseball cap.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, Mr. Fountain. They just want the name.”

Angelo Fountain got a pad of paper and a pencil from the kitchen. He wrote the tailor’s name and address on the pad, his handwriting painstakingly slow. Then he tore off the slip and gave it to Gerry. They shook hands in the foyer.

“Tell your father I said hello,” Angelo Fountain said.

Gerry and Vinny stood on the front porch buttoning their jackets, the wind blowing hard and cold off the nearby ocean. Davis and Marconi were at the curb, the car’s windows steamed up. Gerry guessed they would drive straight to the tailor’s address, and pressure him. That would put them one step closer to stopping George Scalzo’s operation in Atlantic City, and putting a bunch of hoodlums in prison.

“You need to take your father away for a while,” Gerry said.

“Why?”

“Just to be safe.”

Vinny looked back at the house and shuddered from something besides the cold. “My father and I don’t happen to get along, in case you didn’t notice.”

“He still talks to you, doesn’t he?”

“Meaning what? You and your father didn’t talk?”

“Not for a long time,” Gerry admitted.

Vinny lit up a cigarette, blew a cloud that hung over their heads. “So what changed?”

That was a good question. Up until six months ago, his relationship with his father had been no better than Vinny’s and his father’s. But it had done a one-eighty since he’d gone to work with his father. Now they talked in civil tones and ate meals together and even shared a few laughs. It wasn’t perfect, but if he’d learned anything in his thirty-six years on this earth, few things in life ever were.

“Me,” Gerry said. “I changed.”

35

Valentine folded his cell phone and dropped it in his pocket. He’d been barred from the tournament. It didn’t seem possible, and he tried to guess how many millions of dollars he’d saved Nevada’s casinos since be coming a consultant. Fifty million, and that was a low estimate. And this was how they repaid him. The leper treatment.

“The news wasn’t good, was it?” Gloria asked.

“You’re a mind reader,” he said.

They were still standing beside the cage of noisy parrots in the lobby. Gloria put her hand on his wrist. She was a toucher, something he’d always found attractive in a woman. The lobby noise made it hard to talk, but she tried anyway.

“I hope it wasn’t about your son,” she said.

“No, Gerry’s fine. At least the last time I checked.”

“He’s sort of unpredictable, isn’t he?”

“That’s a nice way to put it.”

“Was it about the job?”

“Yes. The governor has barred me from stepping foot inside Celebrity’s poker room while the tournament is taking place. I’ve also been nicely told to leave town.”

“That’s wrong. I hope you aren’t going to comply.”

There was something in Gloria’s voice that hadn’t been there a few days ago, and he guessed the feeling-out process was over. “I really don’t have much choice.”

“But you haven’t nailed DeMarco.”

“I’m not sure they want me to,” he said.

“You need to stall them.”

“I do?”

“Yes. So you can have more time to solve the case.”

He didn’t have to talk to Gloria very long to be reminded that she was in the entertainment business and liked happy endings. “That’s not a bad idea. How would you suggest I stall them?”

She bit her lower lip, thinking, then snapped her fingers. “Got it. You’re here on a job for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, right?”

“Correct.”

“Make them pay you before you leave. Cash.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, and he could see Bill agreeing to it, knowing exactly what he was up to. He pulled out his cell phone. Moments later, he had Bill on the line and he made his request. His friend chuckled softly into the phone.

“I’ll come by in the morning with your money,” Bill said.

“Not too early,” Valentine said. “You know how I like my beauty rest.”

“Look, Tony, there’s only so far I can push this,” Bill said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at noon with your cash. I’d suggest you leave town after that.”

Valentine glanced at his watch. It was easy to lose track of time in Las Vegas, and he was surprised to see it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Bill was giving him another twenty hours to crack the case.

“Noon is beautiful,” Valentine said.

He tucked his cell phone into his pocket then took out his wallet and removed the valet stub for his rental car. Gloria shot him a concerned look. “You off again?”

“Yes. You’re coming, too.”

Coins of crimson appeared on each of her cheeks. “I am?”

“I need you to help me crack this case.”

“You do?”

“Yes. There’s something wrong with this picture, and I can’t seem to figure out what it is. My old sergeant used to make his detectives share cases, in the hopes that another pair of eyes might see something that the first detective missed.”

“I’m game. Where are we going?”

“To see an old crook,” Valentine said.

Ten minutes later, they were in Valentine’s rental cruising down the strip. Vegas looked different during the day, like a whore without her makeup. Hindsight being 20/20, he now knew that he should have chased Sammy Mann down the moment he’d heard Sammy had run out on them. Sammy was scared, and not because he hadn’t reported the other cheaters he knew to be playing in the tournament. Sammy knew they were close to solving the case, and hadn’t wanted to be around when it happened.

Las Vegas was the fastest-growing city in the country, and pricey condo buildings were starting to sprout up on the strip. Sammy lived on the tenth floor of a building called the Veneto in a nice corner apartment. Valentine had visited him back when Sammy was fighting cancer, and he’d been impressed by the expensive furnishings. Most crooks died penniless. Sammy had saved up for a rainy day.

“Who are we here to see?” Gloria asked as they parked in the condo’s lot. “Or is that a surprise?”

“Sorry,” Valentine said. “His name is Sammy Mann. He’s a retired cheater.”

“How do you know he’s home?”

Valentine glanced up at the towering glass structure. He didn’t know for sure. Sammy might have left town, but that seemed unlikely. Most older people felt safest in their homes. They entered the building’s lobby, and Valentine found Sammy’s name on the intercom address book and pushed the button for Sammy’s apartment. Sammy answered with a hoarse “Yes?”

“It’s Tony Valentine. I’m here with a friend. Let us up.”

“I’m sick,” the old cheater replied.

“You’re going to be a lot sicker if you don’t talk to me,” Valentine said.

The front door buzzed open.

Gloria laughed. “You’re something else,” she said.

Sammy answered the door in a threadbare bathrobe and leather slippers. No greetings were exchanged; he simply opened the door, and they followed him into a living room with a leather couch that faced a picture window looking down on the strip. He motioned and they sat. From a pitcher he poured three glasses of ice water and set them on a coffee table. Then he sat in a chair and showed them his profile.

“Let me guess,” Valentine said. “You have a sore throat.”

“Very sore,” Sammy said.

“Probably prevents you from talking.”

Sammy nodded solemnly. Valentine glanced around the room, seeing a lot of upgrades since his last visit, but nothing that would tell you what Sammy did for a living. You had to know him to know what he was.

“You want to hear a funny story?” Valentine asked.

“I love a good laugh,” Sammy said.

“You don’t sound like you have a sore throat.”

Sammy coughed into his hand.

“That’s better. Okay, here it is. I’m a rookie cop in Atlantic City, and as green as they come. One day, I’m walking my beat with my partner, and he tells me that the crooks in Atlantic City are more violent than the crooks in New York. He tells me that in New York, if one crook is trying to steal a truck of furs, and another crook steals the truck first, the first crook won’t take it personally. Not so in Atlantic City. If a crook catches another crook trying to steal the truck away from him, he’ll kill him.

“That didn’t make any sense to me. Why would the crooks in Atlantic City, which has twenty thousand residents, be more violent than crooks in New York, which has six million residents? I was obviously missing something, and finally my partner explained it to me. There were less things to steal in Atlantic City. A lot less. In New York, a crook could go steal something else. But in Atlantic City, big scores were few and far between. That was the piece I was missing.

“So here’s the thing, Sammy. I’m missing something that’s right in front of my face, and it’s bothering the hell out of me. I have to know, you know?”

Sammy lifted his arms off the armrests of his chair. Let them hang in the air for a few seconds, then shrugged and dropped them. “You know the answer,” he said.

“I do?”

Sammy nodded. “You just told it to me. Atlantic City is different than New York. Well, Las Vegas is different, too.”

Gloria slipped off the couch and came up beside Sammy’s chair. She knelt down and put her hand onto Sammy’s arm, all the while looking into the old cheater’s eyes, which were dark and unflinching. “How is it different?” she asked.

Sammy laughed under his breath and looked at Valentine. “How long you been a team?”

“You’re our first victim,” Valentine said.

“You’d never know it,” the old cheater said.

Rising, Sammy went to an entertainment center on the opposite side of the room, pulled open a drawer, and rummaged through a collection of videotapes, taking out two. He powered up the TV, then popped a tape into the VCR. Returning to his chair, he picked up a glass of water and took a sip.

“Just watch,” he said.

The tape was of a heavyweight boxing match, the grainy color showing its age. George Foreman fighting a game German kid named Axel Schultz. Valentine followed boxing and had a vague memory of the fight. Mid-nineties, Las Vegas, with Foreman getting slapped around for twelve unspectacular rounds, yet somehow winning the decision. Schultz had gone back to Germany, never to be heard from again.

Sammy shut the tape off after the decision was read, and Foreman announced the winner. Poor George hadn’t looked like the winner, his face more damaged than Freddy Kruger’s in the Halloween movies. Sammy stuck the second tape into the VCR, fast-forwarded it to a spot near the end, then returned to his chair. The tape was of a college football game and looked more recent.

“I recognize this tape,” Gloria said, still kneeling beside Sammy’s chair. “This is a game between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Las Vegas Rebels played here in Vegas a few years ago, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Sammy said. “You like college football?”

“I’ve covered it for years,” she said. “This game was a big upset. The Rebels were heavy favorites, but the Badgers ran them all over the field and won by twenty points. If I remember correctly, something odd happened at the very end of the game.”

Sammy raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Yes?”

“The lights in the stadium went out, and the game was awarded to the Badgers,” Gloria said. “I don’t think that’s ever happened in a college football game before.”

“First time it ever happened,” Sammy said. He pointed at the screen. “Watch.”

On the screen, a team of guys in red jerseys were playing a team of guys in white. The white team was getting the worst of it and looked ready for the showers. A healthy-sized crowd was cheering the red team on. Suddenly the stadium lights flickered, then went out altogether, throwing both teams into darkness. The action on the football field stopped, with no one knowing what to do.

The tape ended and the screen went dark. Sammy shifted his gaze to the window, his eyes fixed on the casinos lining the strip. “People think this is a gambling town, but it’s not,” he said. “Las Vegas does not gamble. Never has, and never will. Take the Foreman fight. This city hosts a hundred boxing matches a year. Nobody cares who wins, or loses. Except if there’s a lot of money on the fight. Then everyone cares.

“Axel Schultz beat George Foreman silly that night. Every journalist and sports writer who was there said so. But the judges gave the fight to Big George. Why do you think they did that?”

“Because a lot of German tourists came to the fight, and bet heavily on their boy to win,” Valentine said.

“That was one reason,” Sammy said. “There’s another.”

“I know,” Gloria said. “George Foreman was a huge draw, and Axel Schultz wasn’t. If the judges gave the fight to Schultz, he’d take the belt home to Germany, and Las Vegas would lose out.”

Sammy nodded. “Very good. By denying Schultz the title, Las Vegas didn’t lose any big fights.”

“What about the football game,” Valentine said. “What happened there?”

“Seventeen thousand Wisconsin fans were in town for that game, and bet heavily on the Badgers to beat the Rebels,” Sammy said.

“But the Badgers did beat the Rebels,” Gloria said.

“Yes, but the Wisconsin fans didn’t collect,” Sammy said. “Las Vegas’s sports books have an unusual rule. If a football game is stopped with more than four minutes left to play, the game is considered no contest, and everyone’s money is returned. When the stadium lights went out, there were more than four minutes left on the clock.”

“So the lights were turned out on purpose,” Gloria said.

Sammy nodded.

“That’s unethical,” Gloria said.

“No one out here saw it that way,” Sammy said. “Just smart business. You’re probably asking yourself, what does this have to do with the World Poker Showdown? The answer is simple. Every casino boss in town knows DeMarco’s cheating. But if he’s exposed, it will hurt their business. So the town is going to let it slide until the tournament is over. After that, it will get cleaned up.”

“But what about the other players in the tournament? Or the fans?” Gloria asked, unable to hide the indignation in her voice. “Don’t they matter?”

Sammy shook his head sadly. Valentine pushed himself off the couch. Las Vegas doesn’t gamble. It was another way of saying that Las Vegas wasn’t in the business of losing. He supposed someone had to pay for all those fancy casinos and flashing neon signs. He shook Sammy’s hand and thanked him for his time, then escorted Gloria out of the apartment.

36

Gerry Valentine was surprised. He’d expected Detectives Eddie Davis and Joey Marconi to drive to the address of the tailor who Angelo Fountain had fingered and grill him. But the detectives had instead driven to the municipal courthouse on Atlantic Avenue and gone upstairs to the second floor to see a judge in his chambers.

Marconi and Davis had an interesting theory that they’d presented to Gerry during the drive. The detectives had originally thought that the baseball caps were being manufactured on an assembly line. But while sitting outside Angelo Fountain’s house, they’d had a change of opinion.

If a tailor was making the caps, then the caps were custom jobs. If that was true, then George Scalzo’s blackjack cheating gang were coming to the tailor’s place of business, getting fitted, then returning when the cap was done. That meant the tailor probably had records containing the gang’s names and phone numbers. It would be enough evidence to show that the gang was conspiring to cheat the island’s casinos, and land them in jail.

“A slam dunk, ” Davis had said in the car.

Gerry hadn’t seen it that way. The tailor wasn’t going to rat out the mob.

“If the tailor has records,” Gerry had replied.

“Every good tailor keeps records,” Marconi said, handling the wheel. “It’s part of the business. The only thing we need is a warrant to search the tailor’s premises. That’s where you come in.”

“Me?” Gerry said.

“Yes. We’ll need to have you explain the scams to the judge. You’re the expert.”

Gerry had shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Whatever you say.”

The judge they went to see was named Alva Dopking. Dopking was a lanky, cleft-chinned former prosecutor who’d been making criminals’ lives miserable in Atlantic City for thirty years. Gerry had come up before him in juvenile court and had not enjoyed the experience. Sitting in Dopking’s book-lined chambers, he kept his eyes glued to the floor while Davis and Marconi stood in front of Dopking’s desk, and argued their case.

Dopking listened while sucking on an unlit cigar. His wavy dark hair had turned snow white; otherwise, he looked the same as Gerry remembered. He was a tough nut, and he didn’t like it when his directions weren’t followed.

“I’m just not buying your argument,” Dopking said, tossing his cigar into an ashtray on the desk. “First of all, the tailor who gave you the information — Angelo Fountain — how do you know he doesn’t have a gripe with this other tailor, Bruno Traffatore, and isn’t out to make the man’s life miserable?

“Second, I’m not comfortable with your theory that these gaffed baseball caps are being custom-made by Traffatore. I’ve had cheating cases brought before me in the past, and the equipment came from magic shops or companies that mass-produce this stuff.”

Davis stepped forward. “Your Honor, we have an expert who’s been helping us with this case. The consulting firm he works for specializes in catching casino cheaters. He’ll confirm everything we’ve said to you this afternoon.”

Dopking looked Gerry’s way. “Him?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Dopking shot Gerry an unfriendly look, and Gerry felt himself squirm. Dopking had a reputation for unflinching honesty, and as a result, commanded more respect than all the island’s politicians rolled together.

“What is this expert’s name?” Dopking asked.

“Gerry Valentine,” Davis replied.

The hint of a smile played on Dopking’s lips. “I’d like to hear what Mr. Gerry Valentine has to say,” he said.

Davis turned around, and motioned for Gerry to come forward. Gerry wedged himself between the two detectives and identified himself.

“Tony Valentine’s son?” Dopking asked, as if wanting to be sure.

“That’s right. I mean, yes, Your Honor.”

Dopking’s smile vanished. “I thought you were a bookie.”

Gerry opened his mouth but nothing came out. The judge leaned forward.

“I do keep track of the people who step before me, you know,” Dopking said.

Gerry found his voice. “Yes, Your Honor. I gave up the rackets and now work in my father’s consulting business. I’m here to ask you to grant the detectives’ request, and give them a warrant to search Bruno Traffatore’s place of business. I will personally vouch for the integrity of Angelo Fountain, the informant who gave us the name. He offered up the name only after I pressured him.”

“So he has no gripe with this other tailor?”

“No, Your Honor.”

Dopking studied him. “I’m still doubtful of the detectives’ claim that Traffatore is custom-making cheating equipment. Aren’t these things mass-produced?”

“The items that are mass-produced are junk. The real work is made by pros.”

The gaffed baseball cap was sitting on the desk. “Give me an example besides this baseball cap,” Dopking said.

Gerry removed a five-dollar casino chip from his pocket and handed it to the judge. The chip was actually a shell with a hollowed-out interior. Dopking examined it, then said, “Explain how this works.”

“It’s a dealer/agent scam, Your Honor. Let’s say a blackjack dealer wants to rip off his own game. His agent plays at his table, and bets the shell. Every time the agent loses, the dealer picks up the shell and places it over another player’s losing bet. The shell is put in the dealer’s tray, and the agent buys the shell back. What he gets in return is the shell, and whatever denomination chip the dealer just stole off the table.”

Dopking tossed the shell back to him. “And these shells are custom-made?”

“Yes, Your Honor. They have to be.”

“Why is that?”

“Because of the extremes casinos take to ensure their chips aren’t counterfeited, Your Honor. A shell must be made from one of the casino’s own chips.”

“Do you know this from experience?” the judge asked.

Gerry flushed. He’d thought a lot about the file Marconi had shown him that linked his name to numerous scams on the island. He guessed there were a lot of law enforcement people who had a bad opinion of him as a result of that file. “No, Your Honor. I’ve never used that scam, nor have I ever scammed a casino. My father explained it to me.”

Dopking leaned forward. “That was inappropriate of me to ask. Please accept my apologies.”

“Of course, Your Honor.”

“Tell me something. You did well as a bookie, didn’t you?”

Gerry didn’t know what to say. Part of the success of being a bookie was his ability to hide the success of his operation. From the law, the Internal Revenue Service, and his father. Telling a judge how well he’d done didn’t seem like a good idea.

“My uncle was a bookie, used to work out of the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel,” Dopking went on. “He did well, so I’m assuming you also did well.”

“It wasn’t a bad way to make a living,” Gerry conceded.

“I’d like to know why you left that and joined your father’s business.”

The hardest part of going straight was having to tell the truth. Gerry didn’t like it — the truth made you vulnerable — but in this case, he saw no other choice.

Taking out his wallet, he showed Dopking a recent snapshot of his wife and daughter.

“I’d say you made a smart choice,” the judge said. “Is there anything else you wish to add?”

Gerry couldn’t tell which way Dopking was leaning, and didn’t want to leave his chambers empty-handed. “Yes, Your Honor. Bruno Traffatore has made other items used to scam Atlantic City’s casinos. If Detectives Davis and Marconi search the tailor’s business, I believe they’ll find the records of these other scammers.”

“So we’re talking about more than one crime, here?”

“Many crimes, Your Honor.”

“Would you be willing to sign a sworn affidavit supporting the need for a search warrant? You can do it anonymously, with the detectives attesting to your honesty.”

Gerry hesitated. He was about to take a bunch of crooks down, and had a feeling that some people he knew were going to get burned as a result. He felt bad about it, but wasn’t going to let that stop him. “Yes, Your Honor, I would.”

Without further discussion Dopking issued the warrant to the detectives. As they started to leave, the judge said, “I heard about your mother’s passing. How’s your father holding up?”

“He’s back to his old tricks,” Gerry replied.

Dopking picked up his cigar and sucked on it. “Good. Tell him I miss him.”

Bruno Traffatore lived on the east side of the island in a depressing neighborhood of 1950s shotgun-style houses. Gerry remained in Marconi’s car while the detectives went inside the house and searched the premises.

After ten minutes, a black Cadillac Eldorado pulled up in front of the house and parked in front of Marconi’s vehicle. The big Italian guy who climbed out was the epitome of a goombah, and carried a crumpled paper bag. Seeing Gerry, he sauntered over.

“Yo,” the goombah said.

Gerry rolled his window down. “Hey.”

The goombah scratched his stomach. “You waiting to see Mr. Traffatore?”

Another customer, Gerry thought. “Yeah,” he said.

“Let me go ahead of you,” the goombah said, removing a Yankees cap from the paper bag. “I’m in a rush, you know?”

Gerry hid the smile forming on his lips. They’d hooked a live one. “Sure,” he said.

The goombah stuck his meaty paw through Gerry’s open window and they shook hands. Gerry guessed his age to be about thirty, his rank in Scalzo’s organization no higher than a soldier. He watched the goombah walk up the brick path to Traffatore’s house and punch the bell. Moments later, Davis opened the front door. From the car, Gerry pointed at the goombah while mouthing the words Arrest him. Davis flashed him the okay sign, then ushered the goombah inside.

Fifteen minutes later Davis emerged from the house, the look of exhaustion on his face having been replaced by one of glee. He knelt down next to Gerry’s open window. “Looks like we hit the mother lode. Traffatore keeps records of all his clients in a shoe box. We’ve got the names, phone numbers, and addresses of every member of Scalzo’s gang.”

“What about the goombah?” Gerry asked. “Did you arrest him?”

“Yeah. Name’s Albert Roselli. He’s screaming for a lawyer.”

“Screaming?”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen anything like it. Marconi told him to shut his yap or we’d tape it shut. Guy’s sweating, too.”

Gerry stared at the Eldorado parked in front of him. I’m in a rush. Was Albert going to work, and needed to get his baseball cap fixed? He relayed his suspicion to Davis, and saw the detective’s face light up.

“Wait here,” Davis said.

Roselli’s vehicle was unlocked and Davis gave it a thorough search. When he finished, he came back to Marconi’s car and tossed Gerry a black address book.

“The hits just keep coming,” Davis said.

Gerry thumbed through the address book, his eyes scanning the pages. It was Scalzo’s play book, and it contained the names of the island’s casinos and the dates and times they were to be ripped off by his gang.

“Beautiful,” Gerry said.

It took Davis two hours to marshal the necessary manpower to start making the busts. Over half of Scalzo’s gang were working that afternoon, and over a hundred police and casino security forces were needed to arrest them.

Gerry stayed with Davis and Marconi as they went from casino to casino and systematically apprehended Scalzo’s gang. The baseball caps made the gang members easy to locate and allowed the detectives to march up to the tables, speak to the gang members by name, and arrest them. As Gerry watched the gang members being led away to vans waiting outside, he was surprised the gang hadn’t retired the scam after the incident at Bally’s the night before. His father said that what usually brought cheaters down was the greed factor. Once a cheater started stealing, it was often hard for him to stop.

The final arrests were made at Resorts International, the island’s oldest casino. By now it was dark, and Gerry stood outside on the Boardwalk, sipping a double espresso to stay awake. He’d scored a big victory, but it felt hollow. He still didn’t know how Scalzo was ripping off the World Poker Showdown, and suspected that none of the people who’d been arrested knew, either. Davis came out through the double doors and gave him a whack on the arm. “I owe you dinner, man.”

Gerry forced a smile. The busts were going to make Davis and Marconi into heroes. That was worth celebrating, even if he wasn’t in the mood.

“You’re on,” he said.

37

It was quitting time, and Mabel was heading out the door when the phone on Tony’s desk rang. Glancing at the Caller ID, she saw that it was Special Agent Romero of the FBI.

“It’s about time,” she said aloud.

She’d called Romero earlier, gotten an impersonal voice mail, and left a message saying she urgently needed to speak with him about George Scalzo. She’d expected a prompt call back, having done Romero a huge favor a few days ago. The fact that he’d taken over half a day to respond was annoying to say the least.

“Grift Sense,” she answered.

“Hello, Ms. Struck,” Romero said. “I apologize for not getting back to you sooner, but I had to testify in court today, and they don’t permit cell phones at the federal courthouse.”

Mabel smiled into the receiver. An immediate apology, and a believable one to boot. “Thanks for calling back. I need your help.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Romero said.

She settled into her chair. “I’m assisting my boss with a case which involves a murder I believe George Scalzo was involved with.”

“A recent murder?”

“Yes. It took place two weeks ago at the Atlantic City Medical Center. I’m trying to determine Scalzo’s whereabouts during the time of the murder. When we spoke a few days ago, you told me that the FBI watches Scalzo, which I assume means you follow him whenever he goes out in public.”

Romero cleared his throat. “That would be a logical assumption.”

“Good. I realize that this is all hush-hush, but figured since we’re both trying to accomplish the same thing—”

“Which is?”

She hated when men turned dense, and she let her tongue slip. “To put the murderous bastard in jail.”

Romero laughed softly. “Yes. That’s the FBI’s goal as well. Please continue.”

“I was hoping that you could look at your records and see if Scalzo visited the Atlantic City Medical Center the night of the murder. It would be a tremendous help in putting another piece into this puzzle we’re wrestling with. Of course, it would remain strictly confidential.”

There was silence as Romero weighed her request. Mabel picked up a pair of misspotted dice lying on Tony’s desk and rolled them across the blotter. The dice had the numbers 2, 4, 6 printed on both sides. Because the human eye could see only three sides of a square, the duplication went unnoticed, allowing the cheater to win 90 percent of the time that he used them in a game of craps.

“I will need to speak with the agent in charge of monitoring Scalzo,” Romero said. “It will be his decision whether or not to release the information you’re asking for.”

“Of course,” Mabel said. “Should I give you the date?”

“Please.”

Mabel gave Romero the date and time of Jack Donovan’s murder.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Romero said. “Good-bye, Ms. Struck.”

“When should I expect to hear back from you?” Mabel asked.

There was another silence on the line. Then Romero said, “Is this an emergency, Ms. Struck?”

Tony and Gerry were tangling with a man who wanted them both dead. If that wasn’t an emergency, she didn’t know what was. “It most certainly is.”

He exhaled into the phone. “How about twenty minutes?”

“Twenty minutes would be perfect,” she said.

Mabel had once bought a pamphlet off the Internet that detailed all the free stuff you could get from the government. It included the obvious health care benefits and food stamps, and the not-so-obvious government grants. What the pamphlet didn’t mention was free help from the FBI, which to Mabel’s way of thinking wasn’t as outlandish as it sounded. The FBI were civil servants, no different from the working folks who picked up the trash and worked at the post office. They needed to be reminded of that every now and then.

She heard the front door slam. “Yolanda, is that you?”

“Yes,” Yolanda replied from the front of the house. “I was out taking a walk and saw the light was on.”

“Come on back, I could use the company,” Mabel said.

Yolanda appeared, holding her sleeping baby. The office was small, and she settled on the floor, sitting in a lotus position. She wore cut-offs and a T-shirt, no makeup, her hair topknotted carelessly. Mabel thought she’d never known a woman as comfortable in her own skin.

“Any luck with the FBI?” Yolanda asked.

“Matter of fact, that’s who I’m waiting to hear from,” Mabel said. “I spoke with Special Agent Romero and explained your theory about George Scalzo being involved with Jack Donovan’s murder.”

“Our theory,” Yolanda corrected her.

“Our theory. He promised to look into it and get right back to me.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Me too. Stay put, and I’ll whip something up. Do you mind holding the baby?”

“Of course not.”

Yolanda put the child on Mabel’s lap and headed for the kitchen. Lois was fast asleep, yet Mabel felt compelled to sing to her. Six months old and the picture of innocence. It was hard to believe we all started out this way.

“Does Tony have stock in Subway?” Yolanda asked a few minutes later. Finding several Subway sandwiches in Tony’s refrigerator, she’d cut them up and put them on paper plates. She returned to the floor and took the baby. They started to eat.

“I’ve tried to convince Tony to cook for himself, but it’s a lost cause,” Mabel said. The phone rang and she snatched it up. “Grift Sense.”

“Ms. Struck, I think I’ve got something for you,” Special Agent Romero said.

Mabel scribbled on a legal pad while Romero talked.

When he was done, she had over a page of notes. He reminded her that the information was confidential.

“Of course,” she said. “Thank you for going to all this trouble.”

“No problem. Good evening, Ms. Struck,” he said.

Mabel hung up feeling goose bumps on her arms. Yolanda put down her sandwich and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Something good?”

“Yes.” Mabel squinted at her own handwriting. “On the night of Jack Donovan’s murder, Scalzo’s bodyguard drove Scalzo from his home in Newark to Atlantic City Medical Center. While the bodyguard stayed in the car, Scalzo went into the hospital and stayed for thirty minutes. The FBI agent who was tailing Scalzo went into the hospital and talked to the receptionist at the main greeting area. According to the receptionist, Scalzo said he was seeing a sick friend.”

“So our theory is correct,” Yolanda said. “Scalzo met up with the killer at the hospital, and took Jack Donovan’s secret out with him.”

“It certainly appears that way. Now, here’s the odd part. According to Special Agent Romero, Scalzo also visited the hospital the following morning carrying a bouquet of flowers. The FBI agent thought it was odd and this time followed him inside.

“Scalzo went to the cancer ward and talked to a nurse on duty. The nurse went on break, and they both went downstairs to the cafeteria. He bought her breakfast and gave her the flowers. They talked for about fifteen minutes, then Scalzo left.”

“Did the agent get the nurse’s name?”

“Yes. Susan Gladwell. She’s a senior nurse, worked at the hospital for ten years. The agent checked her out, said her record was clean.”

“Until now,” Yolanda said.

Mabel looked up from her notes. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you see? Nurse Gladwell is in cahoots with George Scalzo. That’s how Scalzo was able to sneak Jack Donovan’s secret out of the hospital without being spotted. She covered it up.”

“That would make her an accessory to Jack Donovan’s murder,” Mabel said.

“It most certainly would.”

Mabel chewed reflectively on the eraser end of her pencil. It was a good theory, only it wasn’t logical. Why would a veteran nurse risk her career to help a mobster? And the flowers. Why had Scalzo brought those? There was something else going on here, a thread running beneath the surface that neither of them were seeing.

“You don’t agree?” Yolanda asked.

Mabel shook her head. “I think we’re both missing something.”

“What?”

“The connection between Scalzo and this nurse.”

Yolanda bit her lip. “What should we do?”

“I think I’ll call Gerry and tell him what we’ve found,” Mabel said. “Maybe he can make sense of it.”

38

“God, I must be the most naive person in the world,” Gloria said.

“Second most naive,” Valentine said.

“Who’s the first?”

“Me.”

They sat at a table in Celebrity’s noisy sports bar, Gloria nursing a ten-dollar glass of chardonnay, Valentine a Diet Coke. They’d driven back from Sammy Mann’s condo in a funk, with neither of them uttering more than a few words. Las Vegas had not been built on winners, but Sammy’s explanation of the skullduggery taking place at the World Poker Showdown took that philosophy to a whole new level.

“I’m sorry things turned out this way,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“No? Why is that?”

He’d busted more hustlers than he could remember, and the ones that got away were particularly grating, but he’d never let his work overshadow the things in life that really mattered. He leaned across the table and kissed Gloria on the lips.

“Because I got to meet you,” he said, pulling away.

She lowered her eyes and blushed. It was the first time he’d seen her look the least bit vulnerable. She had a wonderful exterior, but beneath it there was something equally wonderful. He hadn’t done well with the opposite sex since his wife had died, but this relationship was one he wasn’t going to let go. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Rufus Steele lurching past the bar, his Stetson tilted rakishly on his head, a glass of whiskey clutched in his hand like a grenade. Seeing them, Rufus staggered over.

“Just the person I was looking for,” Rufus said, putting his glass on the table. “There’s this rumor floating around that you got banned from the tournament this afternoon.”

“Afraid so,” Valentine said.

“That’s horseshit. You’re one of the good guys.”

“Sometimes good guys finish last,” Valentine said.

“Well, I hope you plan to stick around,” Rufus said. “Once the tournament is over, I’m going to play DeMarco for two million bucks, winner-take-all, and I want you there to make sure he doesn’t cheat me.”

Valentine sat up straight in his chair. He’d forgotten about Rufus’s challenge to DeMarco and now realized it would be the ideal opportunity to figure out what DeMarco was doing and expose him without it affecting the tournament.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“Good,” Rufus said. “In the meantime, I was hoping I might ask you a favor.”

Rufus suddenly stopped looking drunk, and Valentine realized he was putting on an act, and probably had a sucker he was trying to reel in. Valentine’s eyes canvassed the bar, and saw the Greek sitting on the other side of the crowded room.

“What’s that?” Valentine asked.

“The Greek has been running around the hotel saying I cheated him with my Ping-Pong bet. He’s claiming the reason he didn’t challenge me was because of you.”

“Me?”

“Yessir. The Greek says I hired you to protect me, and that you were an ex-cop with a bad reputation. He’s also saying you’re a suspect in a double homicide, and he was afraid you’d put a bullet in him if he squawked about me using the iron skillets as paddles in the game.”

“Is that so?”

“Yessir. I’ve been fixing to make the Greek eat his words, and figured you might enjoy helping me.”

Valentine considered Rufus’s request. He’d already helped Rufus scam the Greek several times, and each time told himself no more. Scamming people wasn’t right, even if they deserved to be taught a lesson. Then he reminded himself that the Greek had been part of a team that had cheated Rufus in a card game in an effort to make the old cowboy leave town. The Greek was a crook, and crooks needed to be punished. He glanced sideways at Gloria and placed his hand atop her wrist. “Do you mind if I help Rufus?”

“Only if you let me watch,” she said.

“Hot damn,” Rufus said.

The Greek was waiting as they approached his table. He’d finally taken a shower and combed his hair, and no longer resembled a clump of seaweed washed up on the beach. Sitting beside him was a red-haired poker player named Marcy Baldwin, whose departure from the tournament had included loud cursing and flipping the bird to the TV cameras. Marcy believed every male player was out to get her, yet she still competed in men’s events. On her lap was a designer handbag containing a sleeping Persian cat.

“Hey, Marcy, you calmed down yet?” Rufus asked, back to his drunk act.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Sore head.” He turned to her companion. “So, Greek, any truth to the fact that you want to challenge me again?”

The Greek eyed him suspiciously. “What do you have in mind?”

“I hear you’re good at golf,” Rufus said, sipping his whiskey. “Someone said you were runner-up at the National Amateur Championship once. That true?”

“That’s right,” the Greek said.

“You still play?”

“Now and then.”

“What’s your handicap?”

“I don’t have one,” the Greek said.

“Except that lovely lady sitting beside you.”

“Fuck you,” Marcy said.

“Mine’s about ten,” Rufus went on. “Want to play?”

The Greek was still simmering from the losses he’d suffered at Rufus’s hands. If a gambler had anything in abundance, it was ego, and the Greek’s had taken a beating.

“For how much?” the Greek asked.

“Same as before,” Rufus said. “Half a million bucks, winner-take-all. I’ll even give you an edge, since I know you don’t trust me, and figure I’m going to cheat you.”

“What kind of edge?” the Greek asked suspiciously.

“On every hole, I’ll let you take three drives. You can pick which drive you want to use, and that will be your ball. Sound fair?”

Valentine couldn’t believe what Rufus was suggesting. He’d tried golf a couple of times, and knew it was a game in which you beat yourself. Giving a scratch golfer three drives a hole was the same as throwing the match.

“Do I get to pick the course?” the Greek asked.

“Sure,” Rufus said.

The Greek looked at Marcy, their eyes communicating silently. She was an attractive woman, save for the harshness her chosen lifestyle had produced.

“Go for it,” she said. “I’ll call my mother.”

“You sure she’ll lend it to you?” the Greek asked.

“Sure,” Marcy said. “She’s loaded.”

“You’re on,” the Greek said to Rufus. “When do you want to play?”

“How about crack of dawn, tomorrow?” Rufus said.

“Okay,” the Greek said.

They shook hands on it. Rufus pretended to notice Marcy’s cat for the first time. With his finger he pulled her handbag farther open. The cat cracked an eye, but did not stir.

“Nice cat,” Rufus said. “What’s its name?”

“Medusa,” Marcy said.

“Is she friendly?”

“No.”

“Just like her owner,” Rufus said.

“Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on,” Marcy hissed.

Rufus downed the rest of his whiskey, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. As if adding an exclamation mark to the picture, he belched into his hand. “I used to train house cats down on my ranch. They can do just about anything, once you teach them. You train this one, Marcy?”

“You’re drunk,” Marcy said. “Cats can’t be trained.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. I’ve owned cats my entire life.”

“I can train any cat. Including yours.”

“Train them to do what?”

“Circus tricks, real clever stuff.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Sure,” Marcy said. “I’ll bet you.”

Rufus went to the bar, returned with an unopened sixteen-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola. He dropped it on the table with a loud plunk! “Five thousand bucks says I can train Medusa to pick up that bottle, cross the room, and drop it on a table of your choice.”

Marcy did not hesitate. She turned to the Greek. “Put up the money,” she said.

The Greek pulled back in his chair. “But...”

“No buts, unless you don’t want to see mine anymore,” she said. “Put it up. There’s no way on God’s green earth that this broken-down cowboy is getting my cat to do that.” She looked at Rufus. “You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”

“I’ll handle your kitty with kid gloves,” Rufus said.

“Take the bet,” Marcy told the Greek.

“But...”

“Do it!”

The Greek put up the five thousand.

Rufus reached into his pockets and removed a pair of tan gloves. Slipping them on, he reached into Marcy’s handbag and removed the comatose kitty, putting her elastic body on the table. He grabbed the animal by the base of the tail and lifted her into the air. The cat opened its eyes and emitted a scream horrible enough to wake the dead.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt her!” Marcy screeched.

“I said I’d use kid gloves,” Rufus corrected her.

“These are kid gloves I’m wearing.”

“Do something!” Marcy told the Greek.

The Greek had crossed his arms in front of his chest, and seemed resigned to his fate. “Go ahead,” he told Rufus.

Holding Medusa by the base of the tail, Rufus lifted her clean into the air. The cat twisted its body and tried to scratch him, but couldn’t get through the gloves with its claws. In desperation, Medusa stuck its paws out, and attempted to latch onto the table. Rufus positioned her paws directly over the Coca-Cola bottle, and the cat grabbed the bottle by the cap and lifted it clean into the air. It was truly something to see: a drunk cowboy holding a screaming kitty holding a bottle of pop.

“Which table?” Rufus inquired.

“Make him stop!” Marcy cried.

“That one,” the Greek said, pointing across the room.

“God damn you!” Marcy exclaimed.

Rufus crossed the bar while holding the screaming cat at arm’s length. It was a great way to clear a path, and someone snapped a picture of him. Rufus came to the specified table and stopped. A handsome young guy was sitting there, chatting up a pretty young girl. Introducing himself, Rufus asked the guy to hold out his hands. The guy obliged him, and Rufus loosened his grip on Medusa’s tail. The cat dropped the bottle into the guy’s hands, then slipped out of Rufus’s grasp and ran away.

The guy handed the bottle to his girlfriend.

“Thanks, mister,” the guy said.

Rufus returned to the Greek’s table. Medusa had run to Marcy’s handbag and was shivering in fear. Marcy had turned her back on the Greek and acted like she was never going to speak to him again. The Greek wiped a crocodile-size tear from his eye.

“I win,” Rufus declared.