Deadman’s Poker

26

“I think I’m being watched,” Gloria Curtis said. Valentine had insisted on paying their dinner bill, and was struggling to figure the tip. The service had bordered on comical, with none of their courses coming out when they were supposed to. But the waiter still had to pay his rent and put food on the table, and Valentine didn’t see any point in penalizing him just because the guy hadn’t been properly trained. He calculated 20 percent before tax, and added it to the bill.

Then he looked into Gloria’s eyes. They were a hazel green, and very soft. She had a face that got prettier every time he looked at her. They’d been eating dinner for an hour, and not once had the conversation lagged.

“By who?” he asked.

She’d lit up a cigarette after they’d finished their desserts, and it had taken all his resolve not to bum one off her. She drew back in her chair, and took a deep drag.

“Someone inside the hotel.”

“Any idea who it might be?”

She shrugged, and seemed to be wrestling with how to proceed.

“I don’t know if I should be telling you this,” she said.

He studied her face. He’d learned a long time ago that a woman wouldn’t confide in a man until she trusted him. It didn’t matter who that man was — a cop, a lawyer, or even a judge. If she didn’t think he was trustworthy, she wouldn’t talk. He sensed the same thing was taking place with Gloria. She’d spent dinner getting to know him, but still had reservations. He decided to take a stab in the dark.

“I was hired by the Nevada Gaming Control Board to investigate the tournament,” he said quietly. “I don’t work for the hotel, or the tournament, or the casino. I’ve also never been employed by any of them before.”

“No ties, huh?”

“None whatsoever.”

She crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “So what you’re saying is, if I can’t trust you, there probably isn’t anyone in the hotel I can trust.”

“That would be a fair assumption,” he said. Then he added, “If there’s someone spying on you, I’d be happy to help you get to the bottom of it.”

“You can do that?”

He glanced at his cell phone lying on the table. As a rule, he kept his cell turned off, and in his pocket. But being that his son was in Las Vegas and had hitmen trailing him, he’d decided to make an exception and keep his phone within reach.

“With a single phone call,” he said.

Her face took on a new look. “Really? You have that kind of juice?”

“Yes,” he said.

The waiter came and took the bill. He thanked Valentine, and as he was walking away, opened up the bill holder and stared at the tip. Satisfied, he began to whistle.

“Looks like you made his day,” Gloria said.

No sooner was the waiter gone than a Hispanic bus boy appeared. He cleared off the table, oblivious to the fact that they were still sitting there. Valentine decided it was time to give the maitre d’ a piece of his mind when Gloria stopped him. She wanted to talk, and suggested the bar next door.

A hostess dressed in black greeted them at the bar’s entrance. She explained that the bar was full, and she couldn’t let them in without reservations. Valentine slipped a twenty into her hand, and she led them inside and seated them at an empty table.

The bar was typical of Las Vegas drinking holes, and filled with loud, obnoxious men. A bottle blonde with gravity-defying breasts was behind the bar, simultaneously mixing martinis, Manhattans, and Latin-style drinks as the men cheered her on.

“Scotch and soda,” Gloria told the waitress.

“I’ll have a water,” Valentine said.

“Perrier or sparkling?” the waitress asked. She was also in black, from her nail polish to her nose ring.

“Tap, if you have it,” he said.

The waitress frowned, then picked up the drinks menu from the table, studying it to see if his request was printed with the other outrageously expensive drinks.

“I’ll have to ask the bartender,” she said.

“Please,” he said.

Gloria waited until the waitress was out of earshot before slapping the table and breaking out in uncontrollable giggles. Valentine was glad one of them found the situation funny. It made it almost tolerable.

“Who do you think is watching you?” he asked.

Gloria lit another cigarette. “Let me tell you what happened, and then maybe you can tell me. I got a call from Zack in my room this afternoon. He said another dealer in the tournament had passed out, and been sent to the hospital. We decided to go downstairs, and check it out. When I was in the elevator, I realized I’d left my wallet on the bedside table. I went back to my room, and found two hotel employees inside. They were standing by the closet, and jumped when I came in. They claimed they were restocking the minibar, but that was bogus.”

“How can you be sure?”

“They’d closed the door to my room. They’re not supposed to do that when they’re servicing a room. One of them was wearing a tool belt. He was going to open my room safe.” She glanced at the bar, then looked at him. “I had my notes and copies of my interviews locked in the safe.”

“Did you take them out?”

“Yes. They’re hidden now.”

What Gloria was describing was a serious crime. Hotel employees could not open room safes unless the person occupying the room requested it. Employees who got caught breaking this rule not only got fired, but often went to jail. The waitress appeared with their drinks balanced on a tray.

“Tap water is on the house,” she said.

The waitress left, and they clinked glasses with smiles on their faces.

“Based upon what you just told me, I’d say someone from the hotel is keeping tabs on you,” Valentine said. “They legally can do that a number of ways. They can listen to your voice messages, and they can monitor your room through the door lock. Each time the door is opened, it’s seen. There are also surveillance cameras in the hallways which can follow you around.”

“This is all legal?”

“It is in Las Vegas.”

“You don’t approve of that, do you?”

“Not in the least. But I don’t make the rules.”

Gloria held her drink in one hand, her burning cigarette in the other. It was a pose straight out of a Humphrey Bogart movie, and he didn’t think she was doing it on purpose.

“Who’s behind it? The tournament?”

“That would be my guess,” he said. “You aired the piece with Rufus, and all hell broke loose. Someone at the tournament pressured the hotel to start following you, and maybe break into your room safe. It’s not a pretty picture.”

“You mean for me?”

He nodded. He didn’t want to tell Gloria that Las Vegas was notorious for keeping scandals out of the news. The city spent a hundred million dollars a year marketing itself, and the money bought a lot of favors with the press. Gloria glanced at his cell phone, which he’d placed on the table when they’d sat down.

“Can you really call someone, and make this stop?”

Valentine nodded again. He would call Bill Higgins later, and tell him Gloria was being electronically tailed by the hotel for no good reason. Bill would send his agents to Celebrity’s surveillance control room, and have them read the riot act to Celebrity’s technicians. Hopefully, that would stop the problem.

Gloria smiled at him with her eyes. Her face had become enveloped in a curl of cigarette smoke, and it gave her features a dreamy quality.

Valentine’s cell phone began to move across the table, and they both stared at it. He remembered that he’d put it on vibrate, and he picked it up and stared at its face. It was Gerry, the prodigal son. He answered it.

“What’s up?” Valentine said.

“Frank just shot a guy to death,” his son said.

Valentine brought his hand up to his eyes. Just when everything was moving along in brilliant fashion, his son spoiled the party. Sensing his distress, Gloria shot him a concerned look.

“Where are you?” Valentine asked.

“At a gas station on Sahara, just off the strip,” his son said.

“I’ll be right over.”

“Thanks, Pop. Thanks a lot.”

Valentine killed the connection while shaking his head.

“Is something wrong?” Gloria asked.

“It’s my son.”

“Problem?”

“Yes. A big problem.”

“Well, he certainly called the right person,” she said.

27

Mark Perrier, Celebrity’s forty-two-year-old general manager, sat in his office on the top floor of the casino, staring at the burnt orange desert that was his property’s backyard. The desert stretched as far as his eyes could see, and he often imagined himself taking a long walk across it. Maybe someday, he thought.

His eyes fell on the spreadsheet lying on his desk. It contained yesterday’s take from the casino, and showed the money they’d made for slots, video poker, keno, the Asian games, Caribbean stud poker, blackjack, craps, and roulette. The total was one million, one hundred thousand dollars, or fifty thousand dollars over their nut. The casino had made money yesterday, but just barely.

He pulled off his necktie, then took a bottle of Scotch out of his desk and poured a finger into a glass on his desk, then gulped it down. The Scotch made his throat burn; he shut his eyes, and felt himself relax. He didn’t think anyone in his life understood the pressure he was under.

His wife, Tori, was a perfect example. She looked at the opening of Celebrity’s Las Vegas hotel like the opening of any other hotel that her husband had been involved with. Mark had opened five-star hotels from Perth to Paris, and all of them had been wildly successful. Why should this be any different?

His bosses at corporate headquarters in Chicago also didn’t understand. To them, Celebrity’s Las Vegas hotel was one more casino in the chain. They didn’t want to discuss the fact that Celebrity had never run a property in Las Vegas, the company content to stay in smaller, less competitive markets. They had never swum with sharks this large.

Celebrity’s stockholders didn’t understand, either. When construction of Celebrity’s Las Vegas hotel had been announced two years ago, the company’s stock had shot up 20 percent and become the darling of Wall Street. The stockholders were banking on the property to pay huge dividends, and had no idea how tough the market really was.

But Perrier knew better. He’d been a hotel guy his whole life, and had cut his teeth running resorts all over the world. He could spot a good property in a minute. It was all about location, location, location. Everything else was camouflage.

Celebrity’s Las Vegas hotel was a dog. The property was four miles from the strip, which was too damn far. His bosses had tried to buy property on the strip, but had been turned off by the high prices. Instead, they’d bought a hundred-acre tract out in the desert, and called it paradise.

The other problem was the staff. Corporate had promised to transfer the best people from their other casinos to run the Las Vegas hotel. Only no one had wanted to come, forcing Perrier to fill hundreds of positions with retreads and high school dropouts.

Which left Perrier sitting on a nine hundred million dollar white elephant. Long term, the hotel wouldn’t survive. But short term was a different story. The World Poker Showdown was being shown live on national television. It was the best advertising going, and would keep the place filled long enough for him to find another hotel to run.

The phone on his desk rang. His private line.

“Perrier here.”

“Are you watching Valentine?” his caller asked.

“That you, Jasper?”

Karl Jasper growled at him. He was the founder and president of the WPS, and as trustworthy as a snake oil salesman. On television, Jasper projected the image of a devoted family man and all-around good guy. In person, he was a foul-mouthed thug, and would go to any extreme to get what he wanted.

“Are you watching him or not?” Jasper asked.

Perrier played with the keyboard on his desk. A picture appeared on his computer screen, showing Valentine in the rooftop bar with Gloria Curtis.

“Yes. He’s with the newswoman, Gloria Curtis.”

“Are you taping their conversation? I want to know what they talking about. That woman is poison, and so is he.”

Perrier shut his eyes. Jasper had a pattern. He would ask you to break the law, then explain why it had to be done. The reasons were always logical.

“Wiretapping is illegal in Nevada,” Perrier said.

“I thought that was just for telephones,” Jasper said.

“All private conversations.”

“What’s he doing now?”

Perrier opened his eyes. Valentine was talking to the waitress. The resolution of the picture was so clear, Perrier could see a tiny stain on his blue shirt.

“Nothing much,” he said.

“I want you to keep watching him,” Jasper said. “This goddamn situation has to go away. Rufus Steele is stirring the pot, and Valentine is sniffing around the bushes like a bloodhound. That son-of-a-bitch could spoil a picnic if you gave him the chance. He’s cost more casinos money than any cheater he’s ever busted.”

“Cost them how?” Perrier asked.

“By making them play by the rules,” Jasper said. “What’s he doing now?”

Perrier stared at the screen. The waitress had brought the check, and Valentine and Gloria were fighting over it, only they were doing it in a way that was making them both laugh. They liked each other. He groaned.

“What’s the matter?” Jasper asked.

“You really want to know?” Perrier asked.

“Yes.”

“This tournament is what’s the matter,” Perrier said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll tell you. First, your tournament director screws up, and lets DeMarco play with his friends. Now everyone thinks he’s a cheater. Then, your dealers forget to get Sheriff’s Cards from the Metro Las Vegas Police Department, and the chief of police is calling me every hour. Oh yeah, and your dealers keep dropping like flies. I feel like I’m sitting on a nuclear bomb, Jasper.”

“Last night’s ratings were through the roof,” Jasper said.

Perrier didn’t think Jasper had heard a word of what he’d just said. Television ratings were all Jasper talked about, and cared about.

“So I heard,” Perrier said.

“Where is Valentine now?”

Perrier stared at the screen. Valentine and Gloria Curtis had settled the bill and were getting up from their table, sharing meaningful looks.

“He’s leaving the bar,” he said.

“I need to get him out of Las Vegas,” Jasper said. “And that goes for Rufus Steele, and that newscaster woman. My ass is on the line, and so is yours, my friend.”

Perrier shook his head. One of his great assets was his ability to watch his mouth. Then he’d had drinks with Jasper, and let it slip that he thought the hotel was a dog. He’d regretted it ever since.

“What do you want me to do?” Perrier asked.

“Keeps tabs on Valentine and the newscaster,” Jasper said.

“We’re already watching them.”

“Beef it up,” Jasper said. “Record everything they do, who they talk to, the works.”

“What about Rufus? Isn’t he the one causing all the trouble?”

“I’ve got Rufus taken care of,” Jasper said.

Perrier didn’t like the sound of that. He played with his keyboard, and checked the hotel’s res system. Rufus Steele had left his room a few hours ago, and was now sharing a room with Valentine. The information had been filed by a maid.

He typed a command into his keyboard, and found the hallway outside Valentine’s room. As luck would have it, Rufus was coming out of the room. Perrier followed him down a hallway to an elevator. He switched cameras, and watched Rufus get into the elevator, and push the button for the sixth floor.

“You going to beat him up?” Perrier asked.

“No, no,” Jasper said. “No rough stuff.”

“Then what?”

“Trust me. He won’t give us any more trouble.”

Perrier watched Rufus depart the elevator, and walk to a room on the sixth floor. The door opened, and a guy with a grin on his face greeted him. Perrier saw a card table inside the room. Then the door closed. They were going to fleece him, Perrier thought. He could live with that.

“Will you do it?” Jasper asked.

“Do what?” Perrier asked.

“Keep tabs on Valentine and Gloria Curtis. Come on, Mark. Help me out here.”

Perrier hesitated. He could get in a ton of trouble for spying on people. But if he didn’t do it, Valentine and Gloria Curtis might bring the tournament down in flames, and he’d be out on the street looking for work.

“All right,” he heard himself say.

Jasper exhaled deeply on the line.

“I knew I could count on you,” the president of the WPS said.

28

“Your father is crazy,” Vinny said after Gerry explained his father’s solution.

“No, he’s not,” Gerry replied. “This is the best way to handle what’s happened.”

Vinny shook his head in exasperation. “Go back to the scene of the crime? Call the cops and tell them what happened? Those are suicide tactics.”

Vinny, Gerry, Nunzie, and Frank were sitting in the rental in the convenience store parking lot. Vinny was sweating like he was going to the electric chair, and dabbed his forehead with a napkin stained with jelly doughnut. The jelly was cherry, and made Vinny look like he’d been stabbed in the face. Gerry tilted the mirror so Vinny could see what he’d done to himself.

“For the love of Christ,” Vinny said, and went inside to clean himself off.

Gerry turned so he was facing Nunzie and Frank in the backseat. They didn’t looked too thrilled with the idea of going back to Lucky Lou’s, either. They’d been running away from the law since they were teenagers. A minute later, Vinny returned to the car. “Explain it to me again, will you?” Vinny asked.

“It’s like this,” Gerry said. “My father has already told Bill Higgins, the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, that we’re in Las Vegas helping him with a job. My old man fronted for us, okay?”

“I thought your old man hated us,” Nunzie said.

“That’s beside the point,” Gerry said. “He did it, which means when we talk to the police, Bill Higgins will back our story. My father just gave us a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.”

“But why go back to Lucky Lou’s?” Vinny asked. “We didn’t see a single camera in that section of the parking lot. There wasn’t one at the exit, either. We got away without being photographed.”

Vinny didn’t know it, but he was dead wrong. Gerry’s father had explained it to him. Every major intersection in Las Vegas had a surveillance camera hidden in its traffic light. It was part of a massive surveillance campaign that had begun right after 9/11. The police would review the tapes of the intersections around Lucky Lou’s, and match their departure time with the approximate time of the shooting. They’d also get the license of the rental they were driving, and eventually track them down.

“Because it’s the smart thing to do,” Gerry said. “My father has established an alibi for us. We’re law-abiding citizens, working for my father’s company. That’s our story, and I’m sticking to it. Now, are you in, or are you out?”

Fifteen minutes later, Gerry’s father pulled into the lot and parked by the front door to the convenience store. The look on his father’s face was one Gerry had seen countless times before. Frustration mixed with anger mixed with resignation. Gerry walked over to his father’s car, and knelt down by the open driver’s window.

“Hey, Pop, thanks for coming so fast.”

“You okay?” his father asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Are you sure going to the police is a such good idea?”

His father glared at him. “Sure, I’m sure. Why, you getting cold feet?”

“My friends think Jinky Harris has the police department in his back pocket,” Gerry said. “They don’t think turning ourselves in is such a smart idea.”

His father frowned. It was a look that made Gerry feel ten years old.

“Hoods don’t have police departments in their back pockets,” his father said. “At best, they have a cop they pay off to do them favors. This is the best way to go, trust me.”

“I still think they’re apprehensive,” Gerry said. “These are street guys, Pop.”

“Want me to talk to them?” his father asked.

“Sure. But don’t yell, okay?”

His father got out of the car and gave him a look. Gerry stared at the ground.

“Sorry,” he said.

Cops were pricks, especially the good ones. It wasn’t just what they said, but how they came on to you, rough and hard and full of piss and vinegar. It was the only advantage they had when dealing with lowlifes and scumbags. That veneer didn’t wear off when a cop got older. It sure hadn’t with his old man.

His father slid into the passenger seat of the rental, and faced the Fountain brothers and Frank. For a long moment, his father did nothing but stare at the three men. Gerry stayed outside, listening through the open window.

“Which one of you did the shooting?” his father asked.

Frank raised his hand like a kid in sixth grade. “I did.”

“You ever kill anyone before?”

“In the ring,” Frank said.

“How did it make you feel?”

“Shitty.”

“How about this time?”

“ ’Bout the same,” Frank said.

“Where’s the gun you used?”

Frank took a paper bag off the floor of the backseat and carefully handed it to Valentine. He looked inside the bag, then placed it on the seat. “Here’s the deal,” Valentine said. “We’re going back to Lucky Lou’s, and you’re going to tell the police what happened. I want the cops to know you’re out here, doing a job for me. I know you don’t have police records, but if the Metro Las Vegas sheriff starts digging, he might discover there’s a file on you with the Atlantic City Casino Commission, and that file has you tied to a scam several years ago.” Valentine turned, and glanced out the window at his son. “All of you. So, let’s go back there, and get this settled while we still can. Okay?”

Gerry swallowed the lump rising in his throat. His old man had a sixth sense when it came to knowing all the dumb things he’d done in his life, yet he still stuck with him. He was going to have to remember that when his daughter grew up.

“You’re going to vouch for us, Mr. Valentine?” Vinny asked.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” Valentine snapped.

“I just wanted to be sure.”

Valentine growled at Vinny. Then he took the paper bag off the seat and climbed out of the rental. Valentine crossed the lot and got into his own car without a word. Gerry slid into the rental and looked at his friends.

“Let’s go,” Gerry said.

Expectations and reality were never the same. Expectations took place inside your head, reality on the street. Gerry had expected Lucky Lou’s parking lot to be packed with police cars and an ambulance, but when Vinny pulled into the lot a few minutes later, the place was no different from when they’d left it.

As Vinny drove the rental down the aisle, Gerry saw why. The construction worker’s body was gone. Gerry jumped out, and went to where the construction worker had gone down. There was a pancake-size bloodstain that was slowly blending into the jet black macadam, but otherwise no evidence of what had happened.

Gerry glanced over his shoulder. His father was sitting in his car behind Vinny, his face demanding an explanation. Gerry raised his palms to the sky, then saw a silver-haired security guard speeding toward him in a golf cart. Gerry waved the guard down.

“What’s up?” the guard said, braking the cart.

“Sorry to bother you,” Gerry said, “but we heard some gunshots, and ran over to see what was going on.”

“Gunshots?” The guard tapped the hearing aid in his ear to make sure the battery was working. “There weren’t no gunshots here.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive. How many did you hear?”

“Five or six,” Gerry said.

“Five or six? You’re making it sound like this here’s the OK Corral,” the guard said, now sounding annoyed.

“I’m just telling you what we heard.”

“You all heard it?”

“Yeah, didn’t you?”

The guard didn’t like being challenged and picked up the walkie-talkie lying on the dashboard of his cart. “No, I didn’t. Unless you’ve got some business here, I’d suggest you boys get off the premises immediately. Understand?”

Gerry didn’t need another invitation to leave. He walked over to his father’s car and knelt down to his open window. “The body’s gone, and the security guard swears there wasn’t any shoot-out. I honestly don’t know what’s going on, Pop.”

His father tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. The look on his face said he was thinking hard. It was a look that Gerry always identified with hope. Like the time his father had bought him a ten-speed bicycle that had come in pieces through the mail, and needed to be assembled from scratch. His father had read the instructions aloud several times with that same look on his face. The thinking look.

“Get in the car,” his father said.

29

Raising a kid was the hardest thing Valentine had ever done. It wasn’t the discipline of teaching his son right from wrong that he’d found so challenging, or the sense of futility that had come from not succeeding. What had made it hard was the realization that his son was his own person, and could not be molded into the person Valentine wanted him to be.

Because the body of the construction worker was gone from the parking lot, Gerry assumed that the shooting was no longer a problem. He was ready to walk away, and get back to whatever he’d been doing. Valentine knew better. A dead man was always a problem, even if you couldn’t find the body.

“Pop, you can’t be serious,” his son said.

“I’m dead serious,” Valentine said.

“You want us to confess to the police?”

“Yes. That guy’s body is going to turn up.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Valentine blew out his cheeks in exasperation. Sometimes, reasoning with his son was like talking to an atheist about religion. “Think about it, Gerry. Twice today you had guys try to whack you. You kill one of them, and the body disappears. It’s going to turn up, and when it does, it’s going to be tied to you. If you don’t talk to the police before that happens, you and your friends are screwed.”

“We’re screwed if we do talk to the police,” Gerry said. “Frank and Nunzie didn’t graduate high school. Do you honestly think either one of them can keep his story straight? A smart detective will trip them up in five minutes. Then we’ll all be in real hot water.”

Valentine realized that his son had a point. If the Las Vegas police thought Frank or Nunzie were lying, they’d arrest them, and individually interrogate each man until they got a straight story.

“There’s our motel,” Gerry said, pointing up the block. “Why don’t we dump the bag I stole, and talk about this some more?”

Valentine tapped his fingers on the wheel. He hadn’t told his son that he’d seen him rob the Tuna earlier, and now he decided to see how truthful Gerry was being with him.

“You stole something?”

Gerry nodded. “I stole a bag from George Scalzo in the lobby of Celebrity’s hotel this afternoon. I thought it was Jack Donovan’s secret. Turns out it was a bag of insulin.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Give it back to him, I guess.”

It was the smartest thing his son had said so far.

“Okay,” Valentine said.

His son’s motel was a two-story run-down stucco building that looked like a hooker’s hangout. As Valentine pulled into the parking lot, he spotted three Metro Las Vegas Police Department cruisers and an ambulance in the lot, then a pair of medics wheeling a gurney out of a ground-floor room. Lying on the gurney was a black body bag. His son jumped in his seat like he’d been jolted with a cattle prod.

“Holy shit,” Gerry said.

“Let me guess,” Valentine said. “That’s your room.”

His son nodded vigorously. Instead of pulling in, Valentine spun the wheel, and drove past the motel. At the next intersection was a traffic light, and he hit his brakes while glancing in his mirror. Vinny had pulled up behind him, and was trying to calm Nunzie and Frank down, both of whom looked petrified.

“Nunzie and Frank didn’t graduate high school, huh?” Valentine said.

“No,” Gerry said.

Valentine stared at the road in front of him. His son was right: Nunzie and Frank would crack once a smart detective started to press them. The light changed and he pumped the accelerator. “Time to regroup,” he said.

Once you got away from the glitz and glitter of the strip, Las Vegas was a wasteland. Two blocks later, Valentine pulled into a graffiti-covered grocery with metal bars covering its windows, and parked behind the building. Moments later, Vinny pulled in behind and parked next to him.

Valentine got out, walked around the car to his son’s side, and had Gerry hand him the paper bag with the .38. There was an overflowing Dumpster behind the building, and he opened the lid, untied the drawstring to a bag of rotting food, and tossed the weapon in. When he turned around, Gerry, Vinny, Nunzie, and Frank were standing behind him. They had expectant looks on their faces, and looked ready to play ball.

“Do any of you know what K-I-S-S means?” Valentine said.

The four men shook their heads.

“It means Keep It Simple Stupid,” Valentine said. “You need to remember that when you talk to the police. Keep your story simple, and you shouldn’t have any problems. With me so far?”

They all nodded. The Dumpster was a magnet for flies, and they were starting to buzz around their heads. Valentine kept talking.

“Now, when was the last time you were in your motel room?”

“Late this morning,” Vinny said.

“Good. An autopsy will show that the guy you shot in the parking lot of Lucky Lou’s was killed after that. So, here’s the story I want you to tell the police. Ready?”

The four men moved a little closer. They were more than ready.

“You came to Las Vegas to help me investigate allegations of cheating at the World Poker Showdown,” Valentine said. “You left your motel this morning, and went to Celebrity’s casino to do some scouting around. I saw you there, and so did Bill Higgins, who believes you’re working for me. That establishes your first alibi. With me so far?”

Their heads went up and down.

“Good,” Valentine said. “You left Celebrity in the early afternoon, and decided you needed a break. You drove to Lucky Lou’s casino, and hung around for a while.”

“I talked to a cocktail waitress and a pit boss there,” Gerry said.

“Think either of them will remember you?”

“I gave the waitress a twenty-dollar tip for a bag of ice to keep the insulin cold,” his son said. “I also had a conversation with a pit boss. The guy knew you, and I gave him my business card.”

Valentine saw a funny look cross Vinny, Frank, and Nunzie’s faces, and sensed that something had happened inside Lucky Lou’s casino that wasn’t kosher. He said, “You weren’t scamming Lucky Lou’s, were you?”

The three men all stared at the ground.

“Gerry talked us out of it,” Vinny said quietly.

Valentine looked at his son. “That true?”

“Yeah, Pop.”

“Mind my asking why?”

“I thought it could end up hurting our business.”

It was the second smart thing his son had said.

“Okay,” Valentine said. “That’s your second alibi. After leaving Lucky Lou’s, you drove to a convenience store and got coffee and doughnuts. Did you get a receipt?”

Gerry dug into his pocket and triumphantly pulled out a crumpled receipt.

“Alibi number three,” Valentine said. “After you finished your coffee, you called me. We met up, came back here, and discovered the police at the motel. You don’t know who the dead guy is, or how he got in your room. This all make sense?”

“Yeah, Pop,” his son said.

Valentine looked at the other three. The flies were swarming around them like roadkill. He had always marveled at how guys this dumb could survive in such a hostile world, and had come to the conclusion that God even looked out for scumbags some of the time. The three men slowly lifted their gazes. They had lost their deer-in-the-headlights expressions, and looked relieved. They nodded as well.

“That’s beautiful, Mr. Valentine,” Vinny said quietly.

“Glad you think so,” Valentine told him.

Valentine drove back to the motel with Gerry sitting beside him. The motel was called the Casablanca, although he didn’t think he’d find a guy wearing a white dinner jacket running the place. As he parked, he spotted a guy in a baggy suit standing outside the door to his son’s room. It looked like a thinned-down Pete Longo, chief detective of the Metro Las Vegas Police Department’s Homicide Division, and he muttered under his breath.

“Something wrong?” his son asked.

Valentine did not respond. The last time he’d seen Longo, the detective had been having an affair with a stripper that nearly cost him his career and his marriage. Longo had been out of his mind, and had picked a fight with Valentine. It had been ugly, and Valentine had ended up breaking Longo’s nose.

Valentine had kept tabs on Longo since then. He’d heard that Pete had publicly apologized to his colleagues for what he’d done. He’d also patched up things with his wife and two teenage daughters. He was attempting to redeem himself, and Valentine gave him a lot of credit. Falling on your sword and starting over was never easy.

As Valentine got out of his car, Longo spotted him, and a jolt of recognition spread across the detective’s face. He said something to one of the cops, then hustled over. He’d lost a lot of weight, and his suit swayed from side to side as he walked.

“Tony Valentine, what the hell are you doing here?”

Valentine spread his palms to the sky. “I love the outdoors. How about you?”

“I’m investigating a murder. You here on a job?”

“Bill Higgins hired me to look into some cheating at the World Poker Showdown. My son and his colleagues are helping me.”

Longo glanced at Gerry sitting in the car, then into the second car at Vinny, Frank, and Nunzie. Cops were good at picking out lowlifes, and Longo’s brain was telling him that these boys hadn’t been to choir practice in a long time.

Valentine decided to take the bull by the horns, and pointed at the door to his son’s room. “That’s my son’s room. What’s going on?”

“The hotel manager found a dead body in it,” Longo said. “Your son been with you today?”

“Part of it.”

“What was he doing the rest of the time?”

“A job for me. Who’s the stiff?”

“A local dirtbag named Russell John Watson,” Longo said. “His death is no great loss to the world. Watson was put in your son’s room, then shot again in the head.”

Longo’s admission was surprising. The detective was saying more than he was supposed to, considering it was Gerry’s room the stiff had ended up in.

“How can you tell that?” Valentine asked.

“Lack of blood,” Longo said. “Whoever brought Watson here propped him up in a chair, stuck a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. His head had already drained, so there wasn’t much blood on the wall when the bullet came out, just bone and brain tissue. Believe it or not, I’ve seen this before.”

“Sorry.”

Longo smiled thinly. He looked different from the last time Valentine had seen him, and it wasn’t just the loss of weight. His face had taken on a gravity, like he knew how lucky he was to be getting a second chance at life.

“I need to talk to your son and his friends,” the detective said.

“Of course.”

“Any idea why someone might be trying to set up your son?”

“It’s a bad world, Pete. I have no idea.”

A uniformed cop standing in the doorway to Gerry’s room called to Longo, and the detective turned and hurried across the lot to where the cop was standing. Valentine went back to his car, and saw Gerry roll down his window.

“You fix it, Pop?”

“Yeah, I fixed it. You’re going to need to talk to the cops. Stick to your story, and you’re home free.”

“Oh man, Pop, that’s great.”

Gerry was smiling like he’d won the lottery. It was a look that Valentine had seen on Gerry’s face many times before, and had always reminded him of a pardoned man on death row. He knelt down so he was eyeball-to-eyeball with his son.

“Where’s the bag of insulin you stole?”

Gerry produced the bag and passed it through the window. Valentine peered into it, and saw a white plastic box and a baggie of melting ice. Gerry had been telling him the truth, and planned to give the insulin back. His son was learning, even if he was doing it the hard way, and Valentine guessed that was all he could ask for.

“Call me when you’re finished with the police,” Valentine said.

30

Las Vegas sat in a desert basin surrounded by mountains, and nighttime seemed to settle over the town more slowly than anyplace else Valentine had ever been. It was like a big party was about to begin, the house lights slowly being dimmed.

By the time he pulled into Celebrity’s valet stand, the casino’s blazing neon was the only thing visible across the vast desert. He grabbed the bag of insulin off the front seat and got out. Tossing his keys to the valet, he glanced at the tiny TV sitting in the valet’s alcove. It was tuned to the World Poker Showdown, and showed Skip DeMarco playing earlier that day. The kid looked good on TV, and the camera was showing him to the exclusion of the other players at the table. As Valentine went into the hotel, a concierge appeared before him.

“Mr. Valentine?”

“That’s me.”

“There’s a call for you on the house phone.”

He followed the concierge to his desk, and was handed a white house phone. He guessed it was Bill Higgins, spying on him from the surveillance control room.

“Valentine, here.”

“Sammy Mann, at your service,” a man’s voice said.

“Not the Sammy Mann, king of the cooler mobs?”

“In the flesh,” Sammy said. “I’m upstairs in surveillance, doing a job for Bill Higgins.”

“So I heard. Want to get together?”

“Yeah, but don’t bother coming up here,” the retired hustler said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby bar, if that’s okay with you.”

Valentine was tired, and felt like going to his room and taking a nap. Only he’d learned a long time ago that when crooks wanted to talk, he needed to listen.

“Sure. I’ll grab us a table inside.”

“See you in ten minutes,” Sammy said.

Hanging up, Valentine turned to the concierge, and handed him the canvas bag with the insulin. “I need you to put this someplace cold for a little while.”

“Certainly, Mr. Valentine,” the concierge said.

“I took your advice, and started hiring myself out to the casinos,” Sammy said ten minutes later, nursing a ginger ale while untying his necktie. In his day, Sammy had been the epitome of a classy cheat, and had gone back to wearing his trademark clothes — a navy sports jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons, silk tie, and white shirt with French cuffs. He’d once run with a cooler mob, and could take eight decks of prearranged playing cards out of an arm sling he was wearing, and exchange it with eight decks being held by a crooked blackjack dealer, all in three seconds flat.

“They paying you good?” Valentine asked, sipping a decaf.

“Like a king. I went through chemotherapy two years ago, and came out a new man. I decided the best way to stay alive was by working.”

“What did you think of DeMarco?” Valentine asked.

“What do you think of him?”

“I never played poker, so I don’t know,” Valentine said.

Sammy’s coal dark eyes scanned the crowded casino bar. He was Arab, and had the dark good looks of an aging movie star. Valentine was glad to see that he was doing well, but still wouldn’t confide in him. Sammy had been a thief for too long to be fully trusted.

“He’s cheating,” Sammy said quietly.

There were plenty of people inside the bar, many of them associated with the WPS. Valentine raised his glass to his lips. “How?”

Sammy smiled. “My guess is, he’s being fed information.”

“By who?”

“The dealer. The cards are marked. The dealer reads the marks during the deal, and signals DeMarco what his opponents are holding.”

“But the kid is blind.”

Sammy leaned back in his chair. The bar had a plasma-screen TV, and was broadcasting the same rerun of the tournament Valentine had seen at the valet stand. DeMarco was on, and had just knocked another world-class player out of the tournament.

“Doesn’t mean a thing,” Sammy said. “Maybe the signal is verbal — you know, by breathing loudly. Or maybe it’s the way the dealer pitches the cards to DeMarco during the deal. DeMarco has some vision.”

Valentine had already considered those methods, and ruled them out. Breathing loudly — called The Sniff — was too noticeable, and so was The Pitch. He sensed that Sammy was taking stabs in the dark.

“Any other ideas?” Valentine asked.

Sammy stared at him coolly. “You think I’m wrong?”

“Yes.”

Sammy grabbed a passing waitress and bummed a cigarette off her. He could have been the greatest salesman who’d ever lived, so natural were his charms of persuasion. He lit up, and blew a perfect smoke ring into the air. “Tony, that’s the only explanation for what’s going on. The kid is getting outside help. Period.”

There was real resentment in Sammy’s voice, and Valentine guessed he’d heard DeMarco call Rufus Steele an old man on TV, and taken exception to it.

“Maybe he’s lucky,” Valentine said.

“Poker isn’t about luck, and it isn’t about the cards you get dealt,” Sammy said. “It’s about playing your opponent, and knowing when he’s strong or weak. That’s the entire formula in a nutshell. This kid is being fed information.”

The smell of Sammy’s cigarette reminded Valentine of every cigarette he’d ever smoked. He tagged the waitress and talked her into giving him a cigarette as well.

“The cards aren’t marked,” he said after he’d lit up.

Sammy turned and gave him a long stare. “Who checked them?”

“The Gaming Control Board and the FBI. Every single card in the tournament has been checked.”

“Like I told you before, that doesn’t mean anything,” Sammy said.

Valentine choked on his cigarette smoke. When he finally got his breath, he saw the old hustler smiling at him. Sammy had gotten his choppers whitened, and they looked like a million bucks.

“Why not?”

“Because there are ways to mark cards that you don’t see,” Sammy said.

“That’s a new one,” Valentine said.

“New to you,” Sammy replied.

Valentine shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He’d recognized long ago that no matter how much he knew about cheating, there would still be things he didn’t know.

“If I admitted I was a sucker, would you smarten me up?”

“Sure,” Sammy said.

“I’m a sucker,” Valentine said.

“It’s like this,” Sammy said, an impossibly long ash dangling from his cigarette. “Twenty years ago, you arrested me for ringing in a cooler in Atlantic City, and assumed that was my speciality. Well, it wasn’t.”

“Switching decks wasn’t your speciality?”

“No,” Sammy said.

“But at the sentencing you told the judge you’d switched decks in casinos over a hundred times,” Valentine said.

“That’s right,” Sammy said. “And remember my sob story? I said I was turned out by my uncle, who was a cheater, and that he started training me when I was six years old.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t have an uncle.”

“No, but I had eight aunts.”

Valentine laughed through a cloud of smoke. The judge at Sammy’s sentencing had been a woman, and she’d gone soft on Sammy, and put him in a work-release program.

“All right, I’m stumped,” Valentine said. “If you weren’t a specialist at switching cards, then what were you a specialist at?”

Sammy gave him a sly look. He was holding back, as if this piece of information would somehow change things. Cheaters wore many layers, and it was rare that they ever pulled them all back at the same time. Only after a long moment had passed did he speak.

“My speciality was marked cards.”

It took a long moment for the words to sink in, and then Valentine felt like someone had hit him in the head with a lead pipe. Marked cards. Sammy was telling him that the decks of cards he’d switched in casinos were stacked and marked, which let the cards be used more than once to rip off the house.

“That’s brilliant,” Valentine said. “You must have made a fortune.”

Sammy gave him the best smile of the night. “We ate steak and lobster a lot.”

“Who marked the cards?”

“I did. I also trained the other members in how to use the information. One player would read the dealer’s hole card in blackjack, and signal its value to the other players at the table. The other players all were small betters, so their wins didn’t look too horrifying to the house. They would leave, and another team would sit down, and do the same thing. It was like taking candy from a baby.”

“The marks must have been spotted later on,” Valentine said. “Every casino checks for them when the cards are taken out of play.”

“They were never spotted,” Sammy said.

“What about by a forensic lab?”

“I imagine it would fool them as well.”

“You’ve lost me,” Valentine said. “If the mark can’t be seen, and can’t be tested for, it doesn’t exist.”

Sammy shot him the You’re-So-Stupid look, and Valentine swallowed hard. There was a paddle for everyone’s ass in this town, and his was getting royally spanked.

“Or does it?” he said.

“I came up with this marking system by accident,” Sammy said. “My crew used it for over twenty years. When we retired, so did the system.”

There was a glass of water sitting on the table in front of them. Sammy stuck his fingertips into it, then sprinkled several drops on the tabletop. After several moments he brushed the drops away with his napkin, and pointed at the tabletop. Valentine stared at the tiny marks left on the table’s finish.

“Water stains,” he said.

“Exactly. They reduce the shine on the back of the card. It’s not uncommon for water to get sprayed on cards in casinos. The casino people who were looking for marks were used to seeing water stains, so they didn’t pay any attention to ours. We used a lot of clever patterns to mark the cards. I used to be able to read them from across the room.”

“That’s brilliant,” Valentine said.

“Thank you. Over time, we also made the marks fainter. We would record each casino’s lighting with a light sensitivity machine, then learn to read the marks under those conditions. I used to practice for an hour a day reading those marks, and so did the members of my crew.”

Sammy had finished his ginger ale and was looking at his watch. Valentine took out his wallet and settled the bill. It was rare for a hustler to reveal his secrets, especially one that had worked so well, and Valentine guessed there was a motive behind Sammy’s generosity. Leaning forward, he said, “Do you think this is what DeMarco is doing?”

Sammy coughed into his hand. “Or something like it.”

It slowly dawned on him what Sammy was saying. DeMarco had a marking system that wasn’t immediately obvious, just like Sammy’s.

“So what do I do?”

“Keep examining the cards,” the retired hustler said. “You’ll find the marks eventually.”

Sammy’s eyes drifted to the plasma-screen TV showing DeMarco playing poker. DeMarco’s image was larger-than-life, and dwarfed everything else in the bar. Sammy gritted his teeth in displeasure, then took out his business card and handed it to Valentine. They shook hands, and Valentine watched him walk away, then stared at the card.

31

Valentine left the bar shaking his head. Everyone seemed to know that DeMarco was cheating, yet no one could do anything about it. There was an old baseball expression — “It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught” — and it applied perfectly to this situation. Until they found evidence that proved DeMarco was rigging the game, the tournament had to let him play.

At the concierge’s desk he got the bag of insulin and asked to use the house phone. The concierge obliged him, and after a moment the house operator came on. Valentine asked to be put through to Skip DeMarco’s room.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve been instructed not to put any calls through to Mr. DeMarco,” the operator informed him.

“Tell him I’ve got his bag of insulin, then call me back,” Valentine said.

He hung up, and waited for the callback while tapping his foot to the live music coming from the casino. If Las Vegas had anything in abundance, it was good live music, and he kept time to an old Count Basie tune until the phone rang.

“You found my bag?” a gravelly voice said.

The voice had a lot of years behind it, and Valentine guessed it was the Tuna. He said, “A bag of insulin was found in the parking lot which I believe belongs to you.”

“How much you want?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much money you want for it? That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want your money,” Valentine said. “I just wanted to return the bag to its rightful owner.”

“Who is this?”

“My name’s Tony Valentine.”

A short silence, then, “There was a cop in Atlantic City named Tony Valentine. A real prick, if I remember.”

“That’s me,” Valentine said.

The hallways in casino hotels were the longest hallways in the world, and Valentine beat a path to DeMarco’s room while smothering a yawn. He’d been going nonstop all day, and the three-hour jet lag was starting to wear on him. That was one of the tough things about getting old. You no longer told your body what to do. Your body told you.

DeMarco was staying at the hallway’s end. Valentine rapped on the door, and stepped back so the person on the other side could see him through the peephole. He heard the door being unlatched, then saw a bodyguard dressed in black standing before him.

“You Valentine?” the bodyguard asked.

Hoods had a tendency to ask ridiculously stupid questions, and Valentine had discovered that he couldn’t answer them without insulting someone. He handed the guy his business card. The bodyguard stared at it in a way that suggested his inability to read had driven him from seeking a higher education, and motioned him inside.

DeMarco was staying in a high-roller suite, and Valentine entered a large living area with ornate furniture that looked straight out of Buckingham Palace and with a view of the city that matched anything he’d ever seen. He wondered how DeMarco rated such digs, as he knew that hotels did not normally rent their high-roller pads, preferring to offer them as freebies to their best customers, called whales. In all his years in the business, he’d never heard of a single poker player getting this kind of treatment.

“You must be Valentine,” a voice said.

An older Italian guy with slicked back hair stood by the window, gazing at him through the reflection. Stocky, about five ten, wearing black slacks and a flowing black shirt that hid his paunch, hands festooned with gold jewelry, mouth retracted in permanent distaste. Valentine assumed this was the Tuna and nodded, then placed the bag of insulin on a chair.

“It probably went bad, you know,” the Tuna said.

He still hadn’t turned around, preferring to let Valentine see the back of his head.

“What went bad?” Valentine asked.

“My nephew’s insulin.”

“I kept it cold for you,” Valentine said.

Valentine could see the Tuna’s face in the reflection. He look surprised.

“I appreciate that,” the Tuna said. “You like something to drink?”

“A glass of water would be fine.”

“You on duty?”

Valentine realized the Tuna thought he was still a cop.

“I’m retired. I don’t drink the hard stuff.”

The Tuna nodded that this was acceptable, then snapped his fingers. The bodyguard went to the bar, which was filled with bottles of top shelf brands. He poured a Scotch for his boss and a glass of tap water for his guest, then delivered them to the two men. The Tuna turned around but remained by the window, as if getting too close to a cop, even a retired one, was not anything he planned on doing in this lifetime.

“Salute,” he said, raising his glass.

Valentine raised his glass and took a sip. He could hear someone in the next room, and glanced over his shoulder through an open door. Skip DeMarco was standing in the next room with his shirt off. He was built like a martial artist, his body lean and sinewy, and he practiced his exercises in slow motion, his movements quick and fluid. Valentine stared at the ugly red scars that marred his arms and chest and spoiled his otherwise perfect physique. He’d seen scars like that before, when he’d been an undercover cop assigned to narcotics in Atlantic City. He’d seen them on little kids whose parents were crackheads. They were cigarette burns. He shifted his gaze to the Tuna, and lowered his glass.

“You once threw me out of a casino in Atlantic City,” the Tuna said.

“When was this?”

“June 7, 1987.”

Valentine tried to remember the incident, but came up blank. The Tuna was good at reading faces, and said, “You said I was an undesirable. You let the niggers and Spics into the casinos, but not me. I always resented that.”

Valentine had heard a lot of hoods use this argument, as if blacks and Hispanics were some social yardstick by which acceptance should be measured, instead of who you were, and what you’d done.

“Just doing my job,” Valentine said.

The Tuna twirled the ice cubes in his drink. “I had you checked out after that. You know, we’re alike in a lot of ways.”

Valentine didn’t think the Tuna could have insulted him any worse than he just had. Nothing about them was alike; not one damn thing.

“How so?”

“We’re Sicilian. Both our fathers were immigrants; both came through Ellis Island. You had a tough upbringing, so did I. You know anything about Sicily’s history?”

Valentine decided to indulge him and nodded.

“For hundreds of years, the Italians treated us like dogs. The island was lawless, people were poor, there was no electricity, no running water, and no one in Rome gave a rat’s ass. Only one thing kept Sicily from falling apart. The dons. They were the law, and everyone respected them.”

“Do you see yourself like a don?” Valentine asked.

The Tuna downed his drink. “Yeah, I do.”

As a child, Valentine’s father had told him about the Sicilian dons who’d traveled to Rome during the early 1900s, and convinced Italy’s leaders to give Sicily food and money to keep its people alive. For the Tuna to liken himself to those men was like comparing the Sistine Chapel to an outhouse.

“Afraid I don’t see it that way,” Valentine said.

“You don’t?”

“No. Those dons saved lives. You destroyed them.”

An ice cube spilled out of his host’s drink. He came forward very quickly, halving the distance between them. But that was as far as he came. Valentine held his ground.

“This isn’t Atlantic City,” the Tuna said. “You watch yourself, Valentine, you hear me?”

Valentine realized he was being threatened, and again found himself looking at the ornate furnishings. DeMarco was getting the royal treatment, which meant that either he, or his uncle, had juice with someone.

“Thanks for the drink and the fun conversation,” Valentine said.

The Tuna turned to the bodyguard. “Guido.”

The bodyguard was standing behind the bar with a bored look on his face.

“Yes, Mr. Scalzo,” he said.

“Throw this asshole out of here.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Scalzo.”

Guido came around from behind the minibar and dropped a massive paw on Valentine’s shoulder. Valentine guessed it was his gray hair, or maybe that he’d said he was retired, that had gotten Guido to drop his guard. He kicked Guido in the instep, a spot that people who practiced judo called a vital point. Guido grunted and began to hop around on one leg. Valentine kicked him again, this time in the ass. He put a lot behind the kick, and Guido hurtled across the room, his arms flapping like he was trying to fly.

“What’s going on?” a voice said.

DeMarco appeared in the open doorway separating the rooms, a towel draped across his glistening torso, his walking cane clutched in his right hand. The two men collided with a bang of heads, and DeMarco hit the floor hard.

“Skipper!”

The Tuna ran across the room to his nephew’s aid. Kneeling, he cradled DeMarco’s head in his arms. When he looked up at Valentine, there were tears in his eyes.

“You’ll pay for this,” he said.

32

It was late, and Mabel was still in the office when Tony’s phone rang. One week of mindless inactivity aboard the Love Boat had turned her brain to mush, and when Tony’s computer had frozen right before quitting time, she’d found herself on the phone with a polite but utterly worthless support technician in New Delhi trying to fix it. She’d wanted Tony to get rid of his desktop in favor of a notebook computer, but was now grateful for the bulkier model. It was less tempting to throw out the window.

“Grift Sense,” she answered.

“Is this a rare coin shop?” her boss’s voice rang out.

“Sometimes I wish it was,” she said, staring at the blank screen.

“What are you doing there so late? It’s eleven thirty.”

“I froze your computer, and have been talking on the telephone with a young man named Vijay trying to get it straightened out.”

“Any luck?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Try whacking it. That always works for me.”

Whacking things was Tony’s answer to a number of problems that demanded more concrete solutions. Still, it was the one thing Mabel hadn’t tried, and in frustration she whacked the PC with the palm of her hand, and saw a lightning bolt flash across the screen. Moments later, Tony’s screen saver appeared She let out a heavy sigh.

“Oh my,” she said.

“Let me guess,” he said. “It worked.”

“Yes, it did. How’s Las Vegas?”

“Still the fun capital of the United States. I have a job for you. I was going to leave a message. If you want to go home, I can call back, and leave it on voice mail.”

Mabel picked up a pen and notepad lying on the desk. She’d downed several cups of coffee while talking with Vijay, and felt like she had toothpicks holding her eyelids apart. “Fire away.”

“I want you to do a background check on two individuals. One is a mobster out of Newark named George Scalzo, aka the Tuna. The second is Scalzo’s blind nephew named Chris ‘Skip’ DeMarco. I’m interested in finding out what Scalzo’s relationship is with DeMarco. Scalzo might have adopted him, or is the kid’s legal guardian. See what you can find. I’d suggest you start with the FBI first.”

“But they’re always such brats,” Mabel said.

“They are. But the FBI has extensive files on every Mafia boss in the country. The files include a lot of personal information. Some of these guys are followed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If Scalzo did adopt DeMarco, the bureau would know about it.”

“Not to be a pill, but just exactly how do I convince the FBI to give me this information?” she said, having scribbled down the names. “The last time I checked, the FBI didn’t have a help line you could call.”

“Easy,” Tony said. “On my desk is an overnight envelope from Special Agent Romero of the FBI. He wants my opinion on a cheating case he’s handling. Tell Romero I won’t charge him, provided he lets us see Scalzo’s file.”

“A horse trade?”

“Exactly. If Romero agrees, you’ll need to look at his cheating case, and see what you think. If you can’t figure out what’s going on, send me an e-mail, and I’ll have a crack at it.”

Mabel felt the color in her face change. A few weeks ago, she’d spotted a woman using her coffee cup to filch chips inside a casino. There was a piece of adhesive on the bottom of her cup, allowing her to steal chips from other players while casually chatting with them. Ever since the bust, Tony had been letting her look at cases.

“Do you have any idea what Special Agent Romero’s case is about?” she asked.

“Craps cheating in the basement of a guy’s house. The guy’s attorney claims he had the table there for fun. Romero believes the guy is cheating people, only the victims are too embarrassed to testify, and Romero doesn’t have any solid evidence. He said the craps table’s position in the basement bothered him, and asked me to study some pictures.”

“And by looking at some pictures, you’ll know how this guy was cheating at dice?”

Her boss laughed. “I already think I do.”

Mabel felt the tingle of excitement that came whenever Tony challenged her. Her boss was saying the mystery could be solved by looking at how the craps table was positioned in the basement. Those were all the clues she needed.

“Talk to you later,” she said.

If there was anything about police work that Mabel enjoyed, it was the sense of immediacy the work demanded. It wasn’t like the real world, where people promised to get back to you, and never did. Law enforcement people understood the importance of time when solving a case. Like grains of sand slipping through an hourglass, every minute meant something.

She found Special Agent Romero’s overnight envelope within a stack of mail on Tony’s desk. The envelope contained a typed letter, and a manila file folder stuffed with crime scene photographs. She read the letter first, and learned the suspect had also been transporting illegal gambling equipment across state lines, which was against federal law and probably why the FBI had gotten involved. Romero also mentioned finding a great deal of money in the house, several hundred thousand dollars.

Finishing the letter, she opened the file folder, and stared at the eight-by-ten glossy on top. The suspect’s basement was decorated like a nightclub, and she immediately found herself disliking the suspect’s defense attorney. Any dimwit could see that his client had pumped a small fortune into turning his basement into a gambling den.

She focused her attention on the craps table in the photograph. It was shaped like a tub, and positioned in the rear of the room, backed up to the wall. The basement was good-sized, and there was no reason the craps table should be in such tight quarters. She flipped through several other photographs. The table was definitely in a strange spot.

Tony had taught her a thing or two about craps cheating. When the house cheated, it was with crooked dice, called bust outs. Bust outs were either shaved dice, which rolled more unfavorable combinations than normal, or loaded dice, which had mercury loads hidden in the numbers, and were controlled by electromagnets in the table. Shaved dice beat the unsuspecting players gradually; loaded dice took their money right away.

She closed the folder and leaned back in her chair. The last time she’d spoken to Tony, he’d explained why casinos on cruise ships were more susceptible to losses because their hours were limited. She guessed the same time restraints applied to casinos that cheated. The fewer hours you were open, the more blatant the cheating had to be. If the cheating wasn’t blatant, you still might lose money. Which led to her next conclusion. The casino in his basement was using loaded dice.

She found herself smiling. Tony was fond of saying that the toughest scams often had the simplest solutions. She picked up the photograph, and instantly understood why the craps table had been positioned near the wall. It was the only way the loaded dice would work.

She picked up Romero’s letter, and looked to see if it had an e-mail address. It didn’t, but Romero had included his phone number. Mabel decided to call it, and leave a message. She punched the number in, and was surprised when a person answered her call.

“Hello,” a man said.

“I’m sorry,” Mabel said. “I was calling to leave a message.”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Mabel Struck and I’m with Grift Sense. Are you the cleaning man?”

“This is Special Agent Romero of the FBI,” the voice said curtly.

Mabel brought her hand up to her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the FBI worked so late.”

“We do when it’s an emergency,” Romero said. “I hope you’re calling about the case I wrote to your boss about.”

“Why yes, I am.”

“Good, because a judge is going to let our suspect walk if we can’t come up with any evidence, and six months of work will go down the drain.”

“The FBI spent six months investigating a man running a casino in his basement?”

“He runs two dozen of these operations around the country,” Romero said. “His net worth is in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars a year.”

“You’re saying this man’s a public menace.”

“That’s a polite term for him.”

“I think I can help you,” Mabel said. “Do you have any agents near the suspect’s house?”

“There are a team of agents there right now,” Romero said. “They’re combing the basement for clues we may have missed. We had the craps table taken out, and examined by our forensics lab. The table was absolutely clean.”

“That doesn’t mean a magnet wasn’t in play,” Mabel said.

“It doesn’t?”

“No. Would your agents by chance have a mallet handy?”

“You mean to break down a door?”

“A wall, actually. They’ll need something with a little heft.”

“They have a battering ram in the trunk of their car,” Romero said. “It’s standard equipment. I’d like to put you on speakerphone with Special Agent Darling who’s in charge at the house. I want him to hear this directly from you.”

“Certainly.”

Romero put her on hold. Mabel took the top glossy off the stack, and stared at it once again. The electromagnet used to control the loaded dice was hidden behind the wall the craps table had been so auspiciously shoved up against. Somewhere in the room was a switch that activated the magnet. With a simple flip, the dice could be made to roll losers. That was how the suspect was making twenty million dollars a year.

Romero came back on the line, and introduced Special Agent Darling. Holding the glossy up to her face, Mabel told Darling which wall in the basement needed to be knocked down.

33

Valentine lay in his hotel bed staring at the ceiling. The drapes in his room wouldn’t properly close and tiny neon angels danced above his head. One of the great injustices of old age was the mind’s unwillingness to do what the body told it to. In this case, it was not falling asleep, even though he was exhausted. Something was bothering him, and no amount of counting sheep was going to let him rest until he figured out what it was.

He climbed out of bed and heard his joints creak. He still took judo classes three days a week, and did exercises every day at home, but some days he felt like he was fooling himself, and that his body kept going on memory.

He slipped into a bathrobe supplied by the hotel. It was a size too small, and felt like a straitjacket. He went into the living room, and not seeing Rufus, parked his tired bones on the living room couch. The casino’s giant neon sign was directly below the room’s window, and bathed him in a rainbow of garish colors. He stared into space, trying to put his finger on what was wrong.

He’d always been adept at finding incongruities. It was what made him good as a cop, and especially good as a casino cop. Sometimes, those incongruities were obvious, like the night he’d spotted a wedding party in Atlantic City walking across a casino carrying balloons and table decorations from the nuptials they’d just attended. He’d called down to security, and told a guard to follow them. Going into the slot machine area, the party had released their balloons and let them float to the ceiling, hiding the view of a surveillance camera as they opened a machine with a skeleton key, and set the reel for a million dollar jackpot. Later, after everyone was arrested, Valentine had told the guard why he’d acted so quickly.

“I’ve never seen balloons at a wedding before,” he’d said.

Other times, those incongruities weren’t so obvious. Like tonight. He’d been in Skip DeMarco’s suite an hour ago, and seen DeMarco practicing his martial arts exercises in the next room. There was nothing unusual about that — he’d met plenty of impaired people who practiced karate and judo — only DeMarco doing it just didn’t feel right. The problem was, he couldn’t put his finger on why.

He got up from the couch and went to the minibar. It had been restocked, and he weighed drinking a diet soda. Caffeine usually put his brain into another gear, but with it came the penalty of not being able to sleep. Of course, if he didn’t figure out what was bothering him, he wouldn’t sleep anyway. He said to hell with it, and drank the soda.

Returning to the couch, he noticed a deck of playing cards scattered across the coffee table. He guessed they belonged to Rufus, and he gathered them up, and began to shuffle them. The cards were old and dog-eared, but had a nice feel to them, and he imagined Rufus’s bony fingers playing with them. Most poker players kept a deck in their pockets at all times. Poker was easy to learn but difficult to master, and even the best players spent hours analyzing a bad hand or strategy.

As he shuffled the cards, he realized what was bothering him. People who played poker for a living lived the game every waking minute. When they weren’t playing in tournaments, they were playing in private games, and when they weren’t doing that, they were fiddling with cards and working out strategies in their heads. That was true for every single player in the tournament, except one. Skip DeMarco.

He hadn’t seen any playing cards in DeMarco’s suite, nor any evidence that DeMarco was a player. Guys who played in tournaments always went back to their rooms, and examined what they’d done wrong during the day. There had been no evidence of that in DeMarco’s suite. That was why DeMarco doing exercises seemed so out of place. It wasn’t what tournament chip leaders did.

He heard a knock on the door, and went to the peephole and peered into the hallway. Rufus Steele stood outside looking drunker than a sailor on a Saturday night. Valentine let him in.

“Having a bad night?”

Rufus belched whiskey in his face.

“I just lost all my money,” he said, falling forward in Valentine’s arms.

Rufus was as light as a feather. He didn’t look that light, and Valentine guessed it was because he stood about six one. But it was all bone and a little sinew. As he shut the door, Rufus straightened up. It was a startling transformation, the old cowboy snapping to attention. With his eyes downcast, he walked into the suite.

“Sorry, pardner, but I’m pretending to be drunk.”

“Pretending for who?”

“Whoever in this stinking hotel is watching me. Too many coincidences in the past couple of hours for someone not to be.”

Gloria had said the same thing. Someone in the hotel was playing Big Brother. He followed Rufus into the living room, and pulled up a chair as Rufus sank into the couch.

“Ever hear the expression, ‘Seldom do the sheep slaughter the butcher’?” the old cowboy asked.

“A couple of times, sure.”

“Well, this butcher just got slaughtered.”

Rufus doffed his Stetson and examined the crease in it. His eyes had yet to reach Valentine’s face, and he spoke in a monotone. “Got fleeced in a ring game. Lost my twenty thousand bucks, and then some. They were all in on it.”

“How many players?”

“Six guys and a professional dealer.”

“What were they doing?”

Rufus picked up the dog-eared deck from the coffee table, then placed one of the couch’s pillows onto his lap. He put the cards on the pillow and riffle-shuffled them. It was the same shuffle used by every professional dealer in the world, and he did it slowly and efficiently.

“You familiar with riffle-stacking?” Rufus asked.

“I saw a demonstration a few years ago by Darwin Ortiz. It was pretty amazing.”

“Amazing is right. Not many mechanics can riffle-stack. It’s too damn hard. I’m told there are five guys who are any good. Well, I met one of them tonight.”

Rufus stopped the shuffle on his left side while holding back a small number of cards. He dropped the remaining cards on his right, then dropped all of those on his left. The tiny seesaw motion was the move’s only tell.

“I caught the dealer doing that tonight and knew I was screwed,” Rufus said.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. There were six of them, and little ole me. I figured out that I’d been set up, and the dealer hired to wipe me out. My guess is, the World Poker Showdown is behind this.”

Valentine didn’t see the jump. People got fleeced in poker games every day. “How can you know for certain? Tournaments always attract cheats.”

“Easy,” Rufus said. “The cost.”

“The cost of what?”

“Do you have any idea how much a skilled mechanic — especially one who can riffle-stack — gets paid to fleece a poker game in this town?”

“I have no idea.”

“Try fifty grand, plus a cut of the take,” Rufus said. “They won’t get out of bed for less. I lost twenty grand, which didn’t cover the cost of the mechanic. Somebody paid that guy to fleece me. And since I am one of the most beloved figures in the world of gambling, my assumption is that the WPS is behind it. They want me gone.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Yeah. Karl Jasper, the president of that crummy organization.”

“Jasper’s no good?”

“He’s a rattlesnake,” Rufus said.

Rufus squared the weathered cards, then placed them back in his pocket and stuck his Stetson on his head. He looked ready to jump on his horse and fade into the sunset, and Valentine found himself feeling sorry for him.

“What are you going to do?”

“Pay them back,” Rufus said.

There was a twinkle in his eye, and Valentine sensed he was up to no good.

“How you going to do that? You’re broke.”

“That’s where you come in, pardner,” Rufus said.

“You did what?” Valentine said in astonishment thirty seconds later.

“You heard me,” Rufus said, lying on the couch with his legs spread out, his cowboy boots kicked across the floor. “Since those sons-of-bitches fleeced me at poker, I decided to pay them back, and fleece them at a proposition bet. I pretended to get drunk, and told them I had X-ray vision. Before you could say Jack Daniels, those boys had bet me a sizable sum I didn’t. Since I’m broke, I told them you would back me.”

It sounded like something Gerry would do. Valentine took that back; even his son wasn’t this dumb.

“When is this bet going to take place?”

“Tomorrow morning at nine, before the tournament starts.”

“Don’t you think you should have asked me?”

“Don’t go getting hinky on me,” Rufus said, smothering a yawn. “I’m flat broke right now, and can’t pull this off without your help. I need a hairy leg.”

“But what if you lose?”

“I’m not going to lose,” Rufus said. “It’s a scam.”

Valentine shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He’d never gambled a single day in his life, and had no intention of starting now. “I really don’t like the sound of this,” he told his guest.

Rufus showed him his best smile. He could be as charming as a senator when he wanted to, and Valentine felt his resolve give way, and threw up his arms.

“At least tell me what you’ve got me involved with.”

Rufus continued to smile, clearly pleased with himself. “I told these boys I could see through things. I told them I developed my X-ray vision after I got in a car wreck, and had a concussion.”

“And they bought that?”

“We were playing Seven-Card Stud. I pointed to a card in my opponent’s hand, and asked him to pick it up, and hold it with its back toward me. Then I named it.”

“Did you mark it?”

“Of course I marked it. I used the ash from my cigarette. The mark was huge.”

“And they bought it?”

“Of course not! That’s the hook. It’s a dumb trick, and they all knew it. Hell, I think one of them even spotted the cigarette ash on my finger. When they started to challenge me, I insisted I had X-ray vision, and offered to bet them a hundred thousand bucks that I could prove it. Needless to say, the suckers bit on the line.”

“You bet them a hundred thousand bucks of my money?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Valentine slowly got to his feet. There was no way he was participating in this scam, no matter how sorry he felt for Rufus’s situation. The phone rang, and he crossed the suite and answered it. It was Gloria Curtis.

“I hope I’m not calling too late,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you for dinner tonight.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

“Rufus Steele called a little while ago, and told me you were helping him with another proposition bet,” she said. “I was hoping you and I could get together before. How’s eight o’clock in the lobby restaurant?”

“You’re going to film it?”

“Of course I’m going to film it,” Gloria said. “Rufus’s last bet was a huge hit with my boss. I already called him, and told him another segment was on its way.”

Valentine knew when he was beaten and glanced at Rufus. The old cowboy had lowered his Stetson over his eyes, and was feigning sleep. If nothing else, the guy was a fighter, and Valentine had always liked fighters.

“Eight o’clock it is,” he said.

34

“Do you believe in second chances?” a voice asked.

Gerry was standing in the hallway of Metro Las Vegas Police Department headquarters trying to call his father on his cell phone. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Detective Longo standing behind him with two cups of steaming coffee in his hands. Gerry flipped his cell phone shut.

“Sure,” he said. “My wife gives me one every week.”

The detective offered something resembling a smile and handed him a cup. Being a cop’s son had given Gerry good police etiquette, and he followed the detective down the hallway to a conference room with a long wooden desk and a couple of metal chairs. The room had a single window, which was wide open, the evening air twenty degrees cooler than what had been blowing earlier that afternoon. The open window was not lost on Gerry. This was not a normal interrogation room. If it was, the window would have been shut and barred. Longo took a chair, and Gerry sat across from him.

“I believe in second chances, too,” Longo said. “And I’m about to give you and your friends one.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Gerry blew on his drink, waiting to hear what was coming.

“Your story has more holes in it than the Titanic,” Longo said. “Never mind the fact that the Fountain brothers and Frank DeCesar have never worked for your father until this afternoon, when your old man decided to vouch for them.”

Gerry sipped his drink. “This sure is good coffee.”

“Glad you like it. Now, I could be a prick and a half, and sweat your friends until I get something resembling the truth out of them. My guess is, it would take me a day or two, and Nunzie would be the one to crack. He’s the weakest.”

“Did you brew it yourself?”

“Got it from a machine, believe it or not. But I really don’t want to go there. You boys obviously pissed someone in this town off, and Russell John Watson was sent to kill you. The fact that he ended up getting killed is a blessing in disguise.

“The other thing in your favor is that Bill Higgins personally vouched for you, even though I have the sneaking suspicion he’s never met you. How your old man pulled that off, I have no idea, but that’s just my opinion.”

“Can I get another cup when I’m done with this one?”

“Sure. Have as many as you like. So here’s what I’m proposing we do. I let you and your pals skate, in return for you answering a couple of questions for me. I just want to know a couple of things to put my mind at rest. Sound fair?”

Gerry leaned back in his chair and looked around the room. No two-way mirrors, no tape recorder on the table, just him and Longo talking man to man. Longo had a right to know what was going on, and Gerry saw no reason to trample on that right.

“Sounds fair.”

“Who sent Russell John Watson to kill you?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“You must have a suspicion.”

“Jinky Harris.”

A knowing expression spread across Longo’s face, and he put his elbows on the table and gave Gerry a long look. His father once said that in every town, there were a handful of creeps that were responsible for the majority of serious crimes, and that every cop’s dream was to rid the streets of one or more of those individuals during a career. Longo’s dream, Gerry guessed, was to put an eraser to Jinky Harris.

“How did you get mixed up with Jinky?”

“We didn’t,” Gerry said. “Vinny suggested we pay a visit to Jinky, and tell him we were in town investigating a scam at the WPS. Vinny’s feeling was that he didn’t want to cross paths with Jinky, or anything he might be doing.”

Longo scratched the stubble on his chin. “Your friend Vinny is a crook, isn’t he?”

“You want some more coffee?” Gerry asked, rising from his chair.

“Sit down. I’ll rephrase the question. Vinny’s relationship with the law could best be described as tenuous.”

“Vinny knows how the game is played,” Gerry said, returning to his seat. “We went to see Jinky out of respect.”

“And Jinky turned on you.”

“That would be my guess.”

“Think it has something to do with the case you’re investigating?”

Gerry considered the detective’s question. He hadn’t told Longo that Jinky had rigged the ring games at the WPS because he had yet to tell his father, and it would be his father’s call if he chose to pass the information on to the Metro LVPD. But telling Longo that Jinky was up to something had its merits. For one thing, it might lead to getting Jinky thrown in jail, which would suit Gerry just fine.

“Yes,” he said.

Longo raised his coffee cup to his lips, took a sip, and grimaced. “This has to be the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted. You’re some actor.”

“My mother taught me never to be disrespectful to my hosts,” Gerry said.

The detective grinned and put his cup down. “I’ve gone through my life believing that if we all listened to our mothers, the world would be free of problems. I have a proposition for you, which I’d like you to share with your friends.”

“Shoot.”

“I’m going to let you walk. Furthermore, I’m going to write up this case so it will never come back to haunt you, or your friends. Sound good so far?”

“Like a dream,” Gerry said.

Longo nodded. He had put all his cards on the table, something law enforcement people seldom did. Leaning forward, he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Good. Here’s what I want in return. Jinky Harris has slipped through my fingers more times than I can count. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was tapping my phone.

“I need to put this piece of garbage away, and not just because he’s a pimp. We have thousands of whores in this town, and always will. Furthermore, a lot of people make money from pimping these girls — cabbies, bartenders, bellhops, concierges, motel managers, even valets get in the act. Where there’s easy money, there are whores, and people making money off them.

“If Jinky was just a pimp, I wouldn’t be asking for your help. But he’s more than that. He caters to teenage runaways and underage girls. He gives them jobs in his club, then gets them freebasing on cocaine until they owe him money. Then he starts pimping them to his clients. The girls can’t escape because there’s nowhere to go, Las Vegas being the kind of hospitable town that it is. When the girls are used up, he gives them a bus ticket, and kicks them out.”

“You’re saying Jinky is in the slave trade,” Gerry said.

“Yes,” Longo said. He took out his wallet and unfolded it, letting Gerry see the snapshot of two beaming high school beauties that he kept next to his heart. “I’ve been a cop in this town for twenty-plus years. I didn’t pay attention to this kind of stuff until my babies hit puberty. Then one day it hit me what a hypocrite I was. I don’t want that happening to my girls, or for that matter, anyone else’s. Jinky Harris needs to be put away for the rest of his life. If you can help me do that, I’ll be eternally grateful.”

A cool breeze blew through the open window, and invisible particles of sand grated against Gerry’s face. Over the years, he’d heard stories from his father about strange alliances that police formed with crooks, and the uneasy trust that these alliances produced. But he sensed that this was something different. By talking about his girls, Longo had confided in him. Gerry hadn’t done anything to deserve that, and he assumed it was because of the respect Longo had for his father. Longo wasn’t treating him like a crook at all. He was treating him like a good cop’s son.

“I’ll do whatever I can to help you,” Gerry said. Then he added, “And so will my friends.”

35

“I want to go home,” Skip DeMarco said.

DeMarco sat on the couch with an ice pack pressed to his head, his uncle sitting beside him. It was midnight, and his head had finally cleared from the fall he’d taken. He still wasn’t sure what had happened. One minute he was standing in the doorway, listening to his uncle have a conversation with a visitor, the next he was being given smelling salts. His uncle said he’d been out cold for fifteen minutes.

“Once the tournament is over, we’ll go right home,” his uncle said.

“I want to go home right now,” DeMarco said.

“We can’t do that, Skipper.”

DeMarco snapped his head in his uncle’s direction. “We?”

“You can’t do that, Skipper.”

“Why not, Uncle George? Why not?”

“Because we’re committed, that’s why.”

DeMarco could hear his heart banging in his ears, drowning out the rest of the world. Being the nephew of a Mafia kingpin, he understood exactly what that meant. A lot of people were involved in this. His uncle had struck deals, paid people off, made promises that he was bound to keep. His cojones were on the chopping block.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass,” DeMarco said.

“You sound like you’re twelve when you say that,” his uncle scolded him. “Talk like a man, for Christ’s sake.”

“I want to go home. I don’t feel safe here.”

His uncle didn’t have an answer for that. DeMarco lowered the ice pack and took several deep breaths. The fifteen minutes he’d been unconscious had done a number on his head, and he’d woken up knowing something that had been lurking in his subconscious for a long time. He was in over his head. Way over.

“Skipper, I’m sorry for what happened. It won’t happen again.”

“Twice today I’ve been knocked flat on my ass,” DeMarco said, seeing his opening. “Twice. Once in the lobby by a gang; then tonight, right here in my own suite. How can you make a promise like that, considering what’s happened? I don’t feel safe here. Is this deal more important than my safety?”

His uncle’s breathing grew labored. When DeMarco was younger and his vision better, he’d memorized everything about anybody that mattered to him, his uncle George especially. At this very moment, his uncle was staring at the floor, at a loss for words.

“Nothing means more to me than your safety,” his uncle said.

“Even being committed?”

“I cannot back out of my commitments, Skipper, and neither can you. I’m deeply sorry about what happened. And it won’t happen again. I’ve made sure of that.”

DeMarco didn’t doubt that. He’d heard his uncle on the phone, telling someone named Jinky Harris how he wanted Tony Valentine taken out of the picture. Over a dozen times his uncle had called Jinky either a fat fuck, or a worthless piece of shit, obscenities that his uncle used when he wanted to make a point. But that still didn’t change things. His uncle had decided to stay in Las Vegas without consulting him. He pushed himself off the couch in anger.

“Skipper, sit down.”

“No thanks, Uncle George. You could have asked me, you know?”

“I gave these men my word. You wouldn’t ask me to go back on my word?”

It was his uncle’s argument for everything. That a man’s word was more important than his relationships. It said everything you needed to know about the Mafia.

“Would you put my life above your word?” DeMarco asked, bumping into the coffee table because he’d risen too fast, the sudden pain making him wince. He heard his uncle’s body leave the couch. “Don’t. I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Skipper, I would not put your life above anything. But these men are not trying to kill you. They want to discredit you, so you’ll be thrown out of the tournament. You don’t want that, do you?”

DeMarco’s leg was singing the blues where he’d banged it. He hated pain; it ignited too many memories buried deep in his soul. His uncle came over, and offered his arm. DeMarco pushed it away.

“Put yourself in my shoes for once,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” his uncle said.

“I’m blind. I don’t see this shit coming. It’s like running into a tree. I did that when I was little, hit the tree as fast as I could. I was on the ground for ten minutes.”

“I’m sorry, Skipper.”

“You’re always sorry, Uncle George, but you never do anything different.”

“I don’t like the way this conversation is going,” his uncle said.

“You don’t? You know what I think, Uncle George?”

“I never know what you’re thinking, Skipper.”

“I think this is another of your deals.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. This is just another deal. You figured out a way to make a killing on this tournament, and sweet-talked me into being your shill. Only you didn’t bother to tell me that I was going to get the shit kicked out of me in the process. Thanks, Uncle George, thanks—”

There was only so much lip that his uncle George would take and he slapped his nephew’s face. DeMarco grabbed his uncle’s wrist, and twisted it. His uncle tried to resist. DeMarco twisted harder.

“How does it feel, Uncle George? How does being helpless feel?”

“Skipper!”

“These are my shoes, Uncle George. Try them on.”

“Let me go!”

“It really stinks, doesn’t it, Uncle George?”

“Guido! Help me!”

DeMarco heard a door bang open and Guido’s patent leather shoes come plodding across the suite’s inch-thick carpet. As Guido’s hands came down on his arms, DeMarco shoved his uncle aside, and found Guido with his hands. He had enrolled in self-defense classes when he was a teenager and been a disciple of the martial arts ever since. If he managed to get his hands on someone, he could beat anyone.

Guido had hands shaped like cow udders. DeMarco got one of his thumbs and bent it back, paralyzing him. Guido groaned, and DeMarco pulled him close. “You know something, Guido? You were the first person to cheat me in cards. We were playing for nickels at the kitchen table and I felt the bends you were putting in them. Can you believe that, Uncle George? Guido picked the one way to cheat me that I’d catch on to. He bent the cards.”

“Let him go,” his uncle declared.

“Took a couple of steps back, didn’t you, Uncle George?” DeMarco said. “Not used to this dynamic, are you?”

“Please, Skipper.”

His uncle was using his nice voice. He didn’t do that very often. Like maybe five times since the turn of the century. DeMarco obliged him, and released the bodyguard. Guido stalked away, muttering under his breath.

“I did this for you, Skipper,” his uncle said. “This isn’t just another deal. I did it for you.”

“For me? That’s a new one.”

His uncle stepped very close. He was shaking his head emphatically, and wanted DeMarco so see it. He did this sometimes when he was desperate to make a point.

“For you, Skipper. As payback. How many times did you get cheated in those poker tournaments you entered in Atlantic City? Every time! You said the other players saw the injured animal, and took you out. You said they whipsawed you, by raising the bets so early that you couldn’t afford to stay in. Am I right?”

DeMarco nodded reluctantly. Whipsawing was a form of collusion between two players. The pair would raise and reraise early in the hand, convincing the other players to fold. Usually, the players had nothing, and would later split the pot between them.

“You also told me that your opponents played cousins, and signaled their hands when they thought you were weak. They used hand signals that you couldn’t see.”

DeMarco nodded again. It was becoming a night of painful memories.

“So this is payback, Skipper. You’re the best poker player in the world; you told me so yourself.”

DeMarco found himself nodding. He was the best poker player in the world, at least on the Internet. He’d won over twenty online tournaments and nearly a half a million dollars in prize money. Several poker Web sites had banned him, forcing DeMarco to play under pseudonyms. He was a blind guy playing under a fake name and he was beating everyone out there. Sure, it wasn’t the same as playing in live events, but in time, he was certain he would win all of those as well.

His uncle pinched DeMarco’s arm. He’d been doing that since DeMarco had gone to live with him. It was his way of being affectionate.

“Yes, Uncle George.”

“I’m sorry,” his uncle said. “You’ll be included in all decisions from now on.”

“No more keeping me in the dark?”

His uncle laughed under his breath. “That’s a good one.”

His uncle led him across the room, and parted a curtain. The suite looked down upon the casino, the neon lighting the glass so brilliantly that DeMarco could see it a foot from his face. It made him feel normal, even if just for a little while, and he continued to stand there long after his uncle had said good night.

36

Nothing worked quickly in law enforcement, and it was nearly three A.M. before Gerry was given a sworn statement by Detective Longo regarding the discovery of Russell John Watson’s body in Gerry’s motel room. The statement was three pages long, and typed on legal paper. Gerry read it twice, just to make sure the details were right, then scribbled his signature across the bottom and slid the statement across the desk to the detective. Longo stood up, and the two men shook hands.

“How long you planning to stay in Las Vegas?”

“A couple more days,” Gerry said.

“Try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

Longo led him to the reception area in the front of the station house, which was filled with angry-looking people and several mothers with screaming babies. The area had plastic benches molded to the walls and steel chairs hex-bolted to the floor, and Gerry felt like he’d been dropped into an asylum. The detective shook his hand again.

“Your friends should be out in another ten minutes or so,” Longo said.

Gerry thanked him again, then found an empty seat on a bench, and watched Longo be buzzed back into the station house. Then he spent a few minutes unwinding. He’d been in plenty of tight spots in his life, but today took the cake. He needed to call his father and tell him he was okay, and also to thank him. Mr. Black and White had pulled through again.

He took out his cell phone and powered it up. Several bars of music came out of the phone, indicating it was ready to be used. The large African American sitting beside him emitted a menacing growl. Gerry glanced at him.

“What’s up?”

“Make a cell call in here, and I’ll make you eat that thing,” the man said loudly.

The reception area got still, with even the babies quieting down. Gerry looked around the room, and noticed that he was the only person with a cell phone. Leave it to him to find the one place in the country where people were gathered, and weren’t talking on cell phones. He snapped his phone shut, then rose and went to the front doors. Pushing them open, he glanced back at the man who’d threatened him.

“Save my seat?”

No one in the reception area laughed. Tough crowd, Gerry thought.

He stood on the edge of the parking lot and made the call. His father’s cell phone was turned off, and he left a rambling message on voice mail, thanking his father more times than was necessary, which he guessed was his way of compensating for not thanking him enough for saving his neck when he’d been a kid. Someday it would all balance out, although Gerry knew that day was a long ways off.

He heard the front doors open and someone come out. There was a breeze in the air, and he smelled perfume, then felt a hand touch his sleeve.

“Excuse me, are you a cop?”

He turned to find a woman who resembled Heather Locklear standing beside him. She wore jeans that fit like baloney skins and a sweater molded to her ample bosom.

“No, are you?”

She let out a little-girl giggle. “I was just wondering if you’d walk me to my car.”

Gerry obliged her, and they walked across the visitor parking lot. He was able to pick out her car before they reached it, a bloodred Mustang convertible. She opened it by pressing a button on her key chain, then thanked him with a smile.

He walked back to find Vinny, Nunzie, and Frank waiting by the front doors.

“Where you been?” Nunzie wanted to know.

“Being a good Boy Scout. Ready to go?”

The three men nodded. The apprehension of being inside a police station was slow to leave their faces, and Vinny took out a pack of cigarettes and offered it around. They all accepted, and shared a silence while allowing themselves to relax.

“How we ever going to pay your father back for this?” Vinny asked.

Gerry stared at the cigarette he’d just lit up. Yolanda was bugging him to quit, and he guessed now was as good a time as any. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his shoe, then said, “You’re not.”

“Your father isn’t going to demand something in return?”

Gerry shook his head. He took a deep breath, sucking in the secondhand smoke all around him. Vinny had survived as a hoodlum because he’d learned that favors must always be paid back. Except it was different with his old man. You couldn’t pay him back because there wasn’t anything his old man wanted.

“I’d still like to do something for him,” Vinny said. “You know, show my respect.”

“Maybe you could send him a turkey at Thanksgiving,” Nunzie suggested.

“Or a ham,” Frank said, speaking for the first time. “They’ve got these places that precook them, and deliver.”

“You think he’d like a ham?” Vinny asked.

Gerry realized they were being serious, and tried to imagine what his father would do with a baked ham sent to him by a bunch of hoodlums. He’d either take it to a local homeless shelter, or to the neighbors, but he wouldn’t eat it himself.

“Sure,” Gerry said.

“Bah-zoom,” Nunzie said under his breath. “What do we have here?”

The four men’s attention shifted to the attractive member of the opposite sex coming across the visitor parking lot toward them. It was the young woman Gerry had escorted to her car, only now she had a pissed-off look on her face, and her car keys dangling from her fingertips.

“I’m sorry to bother you again, but my car’s engine is as dead as a doornail,” she said. “Is there any way you could give me a ride home? I don’t live that far.”

Gerry looked at his friends, and not seeing any objections, said, “Sure, but I’ve got to warn you, it’s not that big a car.”

“I’ll squeeze in,” she said.

Her name was Cindy Dupree, and she sat sandwiched between Vinny and Gerry in the front seat, and told them how she’d come to Las Vegas expecting to get a job as a blackjack dealer in a casino — “I heard you could live pretty decently on tips” — but had ended up working the graveyard shift as a bartender — “The tips suck” — and was hoping to scrounge up enough money to move to Los Angeles and enroll in a beautician’s school. She called Las Vegas a whorehouse sitting on a hot plate, and hoped never to return for as long as she lived.

While she talked, Cindy directed Vinny to a nameless subdivision on the northern outskirts of town. There were no streetlights, and Gerry squinted to see the street names, trying to remember them so they could get back to town. They passed a billboard for a smiling attorney named Ed Bernstein, then turned down a dead-end street named Cortez, and Cindy said, “This is it,” and pointed at a single-story ranch house in the middle of the block. Vinny pulled up to the curb, and threw the rental in park.

“Well, I guess this is where we part ways, gents,” Cindy said. “Thanks for helping a girl out of a tight spot. I really appreciate it.”

Gerry slid out of the car and offered his hand to her. She took it, gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek when she was out of the car, then brushed past him on her way up the front path. She had her key ring out, and he saw her press a button that made her garage door automatically open. His father was always telling him that where there was smoke, there was usually fire, and he found himself questioning why she’d come to the police station by herself. She hadn’t felt safe walking across the parking lot, yet had been willing to let four strange guys give her a ride home. It didn’t make sense, and he jumped into the car while looking back at Cindy’s garage. The door had come up, and as she went inside, two men hiding in the garage swept out past her.

“Cute broad,” Vinny said.

“Get out of here!”

“What’s wrong—”

“I said go!”

A Pontiac Firebird was parked in front of them, twenty yards down the street. Its headlights came on, bathing their rental in light. The car’s engine roared, and it came forward as if to hit them, then suddenly stopped. Two men wearing jeans and sweatshirts jumped out. Together with the two men from Cindy’s garage, they surrounded the rental. In their hands were automatic pistols with silencers, and Gerry heard the quiet pop, pop, pop as they shot out their tires, the rental slowly sinking several inches. He glanced at the house, and saw Cindy standing in the garage. She’d turned the light on, and was watching the action. Their eyes briefly met, and she shrugged and killed the light.

One of the armed men tapped Vinny’s window with the tip of his silencer. Vinny rolled down his window while keeping his other hand visible on the wheel.

“Which one of you is Gerry Valentine?” the man asked.

Gerry said that he was. He’d put his hands on the dashboard and was trying to stop his bowels from exploding. The only thing worse than getting whacked was soiling yourself before it happened, and he struggled to retain his dignity.

“You and the driver get out of the car,” the man said.

Gerry got out of the rental and faced the man doing the talking. He’d inherited a lot of things from his father, one of which was his phenomenal memory. He’d seen this guy before, then it clicked where: the guy was a valet at the Sugar Shack. The fact that he wasn’t wearing a mask did not bode well for what was about to happen to them.

The valet made them empty their pockets, frisked them, led them to the back of the Firebird, and made Gerry and Vinny climb into the open trunk. He slammed the trunk down hard, and they were instantly enveloped in suffocating darkness.

They listened to Nunzie and Frank being put through the same drill, and put in the trunk of another vehicle. This was how hoodlums executed people, and they both knew it.

“It’s been nice knowing you,” Vinny said.

37

Valentine had never used an alarm clock in his entire life. When the sun rose, so did he.

His hotel bedroom wasn’t big enough for him to get on the floor and do his exercises, so he went into the living room, and did his push-ups and sit-ups to the accompaniment of Rufus Steele’s apocalyptic snoring. He’d told Rufus off before going to bed, and sensed the old cowboy was faking sleep, his Stetson conveniently hiding his face. Valentine stole glances at him while he worked up a sweat.

He’d always thought of Rufus as a man born a hundred years too late. He had uncanny street smarts, and a century ago might have become a prominent businessman or politician. But those days were long past, and his lot in life was playing cards.

Finishing his exercises, he sat on his haunches in front of the window, watching the sun rise. Dawn was the best part of the day, the first rays of sun filled with promise and hope. His mother had taught him that, and he had never forgotten it.

He shaved, then took a hot shower. His exercises consumed twenty minutes of every day. That, his walking, and his judo classes kept him sharp. He wasn’t the man he used to be, but he was a hell of a lot closer than most guys his age.

He took his time dressing, and was ready to go downstairs to have breakfast with Gloria Curtis at eight. His cell phone was on his night table, and he powered it up and found a message from Gerry. He listened to it, his son’s overapologizing making him smile. If only his wife were alive to hear this. He walked out of his bedroom with the cell phone in his hand. As he passed the couch, Rufus spoke up.

“You ain’t running out on me, are you?”

Valentine reached over and removed the Stetson from Rufus’s face. The old cowboy was wide awake and twirling a wooden toothpick between his gums.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Valentine said, tossing the hat into Rufus’s lap. “I’m meeting Gloria Curtis for breakfast, and then we’ll both come over to the poker room to film you and your X-ray eyes. I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Well, there is one thing I failed to mention, come to think of it.”

The words had a serious tone to them, and Valentine stared at him. “What’s that?”

“The boys who fleeced me last night — the ones I’m about to fleece back?”

“What about them?”

“I told them they could invite their friends to the demonstration this morning, and that if their friends wanted in on the action, they could have some.”

Valentine felt something drop in his stomach. He’d reluctantly agreed to front Rufus the hundred grand he was going to need to fleece the boys who’d cheated him at poker. Now, Rufus was telling him that there was going to be more action, and that he was going to have to cover it, since Rufus was flat broke. He pulled up a chair and sat in it so he was facing his guest.

“Their friends?”

“You know, some of the boys.”

“In other words, more suckers.”

“Now, I didn’t say that, but I wouldn’t call these boys the most knowledgeable gamblers who’ve ever lived, just some of the greediest.”

“How much additional action will I have to cover?”

Rufus scratched the steel-gray stubble on his chin. His posture on the couch reminded Valentine of the uneasy sleepers he used to have to run off from the public places in Atlantic City when he was a street cop. “That’s hard to say,” Rufus said.

“Take a wild guess.”

“Okay. Another hundred and fifty grand. Maybe two hundred, if we’re lucky.”

Valentine blew out his cheeks and stared at the carpet. He’d retired on his pension and social security and a little money squirreled away in the bank. Opening Grift Sense had been a windfall, and the last time he’d checked his bank statement, the account was hovering at three hundred thousand dollars. The notion that he might lose all of it covering Rufus Steele’s bet did not seem real, and he forced himself to his feet.

“You look slightly perturbed,” Rufus said.

“I am,” Valentine said. “This is my life savings we’re talking about.”

“Stop worrying, pardner. This is a sure thing.”

If there was any lesson Valentine had learned from the gambling business, it was that you didn’t mail in the results, and there was no such thing as a sure thing. People who believed otherwise ended up in the poorhouse, and he left the suite without saying another word to his guest.

Talking to Rufus had made him late for his breakfast with Gloria Curtis, and he found her sitting at a secluded table in the hotel restaurant, the simmering look in her eyes suggesting she was ready to walk out. He slid into the seat across from her.

“Oversleep?” she asked.

Her question had a bite to it, like a guy as old as him might need to get his rest.

“Actually, I was up with the sunrise,” he said. “My roommate dropped a bombshell on me, and I needed to have a chat with him. I’m sorry I’m late.”

“Care to share?”

A waitress filled their cups with coffee, then glanced into their faces, and said she’d come back. She was the first competent person Valentine had encountered in the hotel.

“Rufus has bet some guys that he has X-ray vision,” he said.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Well, it appears I’ll be fading the action on his wager. Since we’re talking about several hundred thousand dollars, I wanted to talk it over with him.”

“Fading the action?”

Valentine sipped his coffee and nodded. “It’s one of gambling’s little secrets. A gambler will use another gambler’s money to play with, only he doesn’t tell anyone. The problem with this wager is that Rufus didn’t bother to tell me.”

His words slowly registered across Gloria’s face, and her anger was replaced by a look of concern. Her hand came across the table and encircled his wrist.

“How much money are we talking about?”

“Three hundred thousand dollars.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m always serious.”

“Can you cover it?”

He was tempted to say just barely, but nodded instead. Her fingers felt comforting against his skin, and he suddenly knew exactly what she was thinking. Before the words could come out of her mouth, he said, “I know, he’s wrong, and I shouldn’t be backing him, but these guys cheated him in a poker game, so Rufus is going to cheat them right back.”

“What if he loses the bet?” Gloria said. “Then what?”

Her hand was still on top of his wrist. She’d done that the night before at dinner to gain his confidence, and Valentine decided he liked it. The world of gambling was new to her, and she wanted to learn, so long as the person teaching her was someone she could trust. He decided he liked that, too.

“Then I pay up,” Valentine said.

“You would?”

“Every last cent.”

“But these men that Rufus is gambling with, they don’t know he’s using your money,” she said, lowering her voice. “What if you told Rufus to forget it, that he’d have to find the money someplace else. What then?”

“Then Rufus would have to tell them he didn’t have the money, and give the men IOUs. The gamblers would be angry, and they’d sell the IOUs to wise guys, who’d show up on Rufus’s doorstep in a few days, looking for payment.”

“What if Rufus refused, or was flat broke? What then?”

Valentine looked into Gloria’s eyes while considering the best way to answer her. He’d lived in a violent world for the better part of his life, and had done a good job of shielding the people he cared about from that world. His role was that of a filter, and it was not a responsibility he took lightly. He said, “There used to be this famous gambler in New York City named Arnold Rothstein. Supposedly, Rothstein was responsible for fixing the 1919 baseball World Series.”

“The infamous Black Sox scandal,” Gloria said.

“That’s right. One night in New York, Rothstein got in a poker game with a gambler named Titanic Thompson, and ended up losing half a million bucks. Rothstein gave Thompson an IOU, and Thompson sold the IOU to some hoodlums. They tried to collect, and Rothstein welshed. Guess what happened.”

“That was the end of Arnold Rothstein.”

“Exactly.”

“Would you do that to Rufus?”

Valentine’s coffee cup had mysteriously emptied itself, and he stared at the grounds in its bottom. He was angry with Rufus for putting him in such a bad spot, and also afraid of losing his life savings. But deep down, he wanted to believe that Rufus had one last trick up his sleeve, and was still capable of pulling the wool over the eyes of any gambler in the world. Belief was the only thing a person had in this world, and he realized he was willing to put every cent he had behind Rufus pulling this off.

“Never,” he said.

38

At ten minutes of nine, Valentine and Gloria left the restaurant, and met up with Zack in front of the poker room. Over breakfast, Gloria had explained how she and Zack had worked together for fifteen years, and developed a level of communication that bordered on telepathic.

“We’ve already got a good crowd in there, so we won’t have to make people bunch up like yesterday,” Zack said. “I talked a maintenance man into dimming the lights, so there won’t be a glare problem. And I convinced two security guards to keep the crowd noise down, so we won’t have to redub the sound before we send it to the network.”

“You’re a genius,” Gloria said.

“In my own mind,” Zack replied. His camera was lying on the floor, and he picked it up and hoisted it onto his shoulder. Pointing the lens at Valentine, he said, “So Tony, you have a reputation for being able to see through any con or swindle. How is Rufus Steele going to pull this X-ray vision stunt off, anyway?”

There was no one standing within earshot, and Valentine stared into the lens and said, “I honestly don’t know.”

“I’m not filming,” Zack said. “You can be honest.”

“I am being honest. I don’t know.”

Zack lowered his camera, and a disbelieving look spread across his face.

“Do you think he’s off his rocker?” the cameraman asked.

Gloria edged up beside Valentine, and locked her arm into his.

“Tony’s backing him, so he’d better not be,” she said.

The elevator doors on the other side of the lobby parted, and Rufus Steele emerged, wearing black pants, a gleaming white shirt, and a black bow tie with two long tails, western style. Seeing them, he hustled over, and Valentine read the words inscribed on each tail of his tie: Thin Man.

Rufus doffed his Stetson and bowed to Gloria Curtis, then gave Valentine a friendly whack on the arm. “Hey pardner, you ready to win some money?”

His eyes were twinkling, and Valentine sensed Rufus was prepared to dig down deep into his bag of tricks, and do something really wonderful. He’d never helped anyone win a bet before, and supposed there was a first time for everything.

“Ready when you are,” Valentine said.

Over two hundred men were gathered inside the poker room. They were the gray-faced, unshaven variety of male who populated casinos during the early morning hours; their hotel rooms used for shaving, showering, fornicating, and little else. They applauded politely as Rufus crossed the room with his entourage.

Taking off his Stetson, Rufus gave the crowd a big Roy Rogers wave, then approached the round table in the center of the room where the six players who’d cheated him the night before were assembled. Valentine edged up beside Zack.

“Do me a favor while you’re filming, and get a clear shot of those six guys, okay?”

“Sure,” Zack said.

“I’m also going to need to get a copy of the tape.”

“No problem. You saving their pictures for something?”

Valentine nodded. Back home on his computer was the largest database of cheaters in the world, and he planned to add these six jokers’ pictures to the mix.

“Before we start, I want to establish some rules,” Rufus began. “You gentlemen obviously will take great pains to make sure that I don’t swindle or cheat you, and I understand why you feel the need to take such precautions. I, too, feel the need to take precautions. Since I’m going to be blindfolded, I have asked the house physician, Dr. Robinson, to act as a neutral third party.”

A red-haired, red-bearded man wearing a tailored suit stepped out of the crowd. He wore an annoyed look on his face, and Valentine wondered if Rufus had conned Dr. Robinson into helping as well.

“Here’s the deal,” Rufus went on. “I don’t want someone holding something up to my blindfolded face, and asking me what it is — such as a coin — and then switching it. So, whatever object you’d like me to read with my X-ray vision, you will have to hand to Dr. Robinson to hold. Fair enough?”

The six cheaters went into a huddle and conferred among themselves. After a few moments, one stepped forward. He was a brutish-looking guy with swirls of dark hair sprouting from both ears. Above the pocket of his bowling shirt was his name: The Greek.

“Okay,” the Greek said. “You can use Dr. Robinson, provided you let our doctor — Dr. Carlson — examine you for any hidden transmitters or receiving devices.”

“Sure,” Rufus said obligingly. “Should I strip?”

Dr. Carlson stepped out of the huddle. He was one of the six cheaters, and had the superior air of a man who made too much money. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Shucks,” Rufus said.

Dr. Carlson went over Rufus with a fine-tooth comb, and ended the examination looking down Rufus’s ears with a pen light. Intercanal earpieces were commonly used by cheaters wanting to transmit information inside a casino, and Carlson did everything but stick an ice pick down Rufus’s ears to make sure he wasn’t wearing one. Satisfied, the doctor stepped back.

“He’s clean as a whistle,” Carlson said.

“Okay,” the Greek said, “now, examine Dr. Robinson.”

A hush fell over the crowd. There were common courtesies among gamblers. The Greek had just broken one, but didn’t seem to care. He took Carlson by the arm.

“Do it.”

Carlson looked at Dr. Robinson. “Do you mind?”

Dr. Robinson looked at the ceiling, as if asking God what the hell he was doing there, then nodded his compliance. Dr. Carlson went over him with the same painstaking precision he’d used on Rufus. Again he stepped back.

“He’s clean,” Carlson said.

“Good,” the Greek said.

Taking a paper bag off a chair, the Greek removed a pair of wraparound glasses made of stainless steel. The glasses were the same design worn by Arnold Schwarzenneger in the Terminator movies, and completely covered the wearer’s eyes. As the Greek showed them to the crowd, Valentine got closer, and had a look. The glasses were half-inch thick, and the idea that someone might be able to see through them seemed impossible.

When the Greek was finished showing the glasses around, Gloria Curtis stepped forward and stuck her mike in Rufus’s face.

“This is Gloria Curtis reporting from the poker room at the World Poker Showdown. Standing beside me is Rufus Steele, who has bet a number of gamblers that he has X-ray vision. Rufus, when did you discover you had X-ray vision?”

“About two years ago,” Rufus replied.

“Do you know what brought this on?”

“Happened after I wrecked my car. I’d been drinking.”

Gloria tried not to laugh, although several gamblers in the crowd did.

“How much money have you wagered?” Gloria asked.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” Rufus said. His eyes swept the sea of faces. “If there’s anyone else who’d like a piece of action, please step right up, and talk to this handsome fellow standing to my right. He’ll take care of you.”

Two dozen gamblers formed a line in front of Valentine. He had come prepared, and wrote down each man’s name on a pad of paper he’d gotten in the restaurant, and the amount of his wager. He kept a running tally in his head, not wanting to go over the three hundred thousand bucks he was responsible for, and when the last man was done, did another re-adding. One hundred and ninety-seven thousand dollars in additional bets had been placed. Rufus had called it perfectly.

He went over to Rufus, and showed him the amount.

“That’s a nice number,” Rufus said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

A folding chair was placed in the center of the room. Rufus sat down with a smile on his face, and was quickly surrounded by the crowd. Stepping forward, the Greek fitted the steel glasses onto Rufus’s face, then produced a piece of twine, and tied the glasses behind Rufus’s head.

“That’s a little snug,” Rufus complained.

“Does it hurt?” the Greek asked.

“Come to mention it, yes.”

The Greek added another knot, then another. He wore the twisted look of someone who enjoyed inflicting pain. Finished, he stepped back with a triumphant look on his face.

“You done?” Rufus asked.

“Sure am,” the Greek said.

Rufus stuck his hand into his pants pocket, and produced a leather bag with a drawstring. He tossed the bag in the Greek’s direction, and the Greek plucked it out of the air. “Put that over my head, will you?”

The Greek looked at the other gamblers, a suspicious look on his face. Then he tried the bag on over his own head, then tugged it off, his hair standing on end like he’d been shocked.

“I can’t see through it,” he announced.

“That’s the whole idea,” Rufus said.

Several gamblers who’d made bets with Rufus wanted to examine the bag, and it was passed around the room. Valentine caught Gloria flashing him a nervous smile. When the gamblers were finished examining the bag, it was handed to the Greek. He stepped forward, and began to fit it over Rufus’s head, when the old cowboy stopped him. “One last thing. We need to agree on how many items I have to identify.”

The Greek hesitated, and glanced at his partners.

“Three,” one of the men called out.

“Three?” Rufus asked. “I was thinking more like one.”

“You could guess with one,” the man shot back. “Three is fair.”

“I’ll do three,” Rufus said, “if you’ll make it double or nothing.”

The Greek looked at his partners, then at the other men who’d made wagers with Rufus. Gamblers were good at communicating with their eyes, and without a word being spoken, everyone who’d made a wager with Rufus agreed to double it.

Valentine felt his knees buckle. The only way he could cover the bet now would be to sell his house and his car and probably his giant-screen TV. If there hadn’t been so many witnesses and a camera rolling, he would have dragged Rufus across the room and beaten the living crap out of him.

“Double or nothing it is,” the Greek said.

With a smile on his face, the Greek placed the leather bag over Rufus’s head, and tied the drawstring as tightly as he could.

Dr. Robinson stepped forward with the annoyed look still on his face. He didn’t look like a gambler, or the kind of person who enjoyed gamblers’ company, and Valentine imagined him going straight home after this, and taking a long shower. The doctor looked at the Greek and said, “Ready when you are.”

The Greek fished a worn deck of playing cards from his pocket. Removing one, he held it up to the crowd. It was the four of clubs. He handed the card to Robinson. Without a word, the doctor held the card a few feet from Rufus’s bagged head.

“It’s a playing card,” Rufus’s muffled voice said.

Another hush fell over the group. The Greek acted like he’d been kicked in the groin with a steel boot.

“Which one?” the Greek asked.

“Four of clubs,” the muffled voice said.

Valentine could not believe what he was seeing. There was only one way to pull this stunt off — by having Robinson “cue” Rufus through a verbal code. These codes, called second sight, were the staple of mind-reading acts, and known by cheaters. Only Robinson hadn’t said a word, the annoyed look still painted across his face.

The Greek took a stack of chips from his pocket. They were a rainbow of colors, indicating several different denominations. He plucked out a purple chip, and gave it to Robinson. The doctor held the chip in his outstretched hand.

“It’s a chip,” Rufus’s muffled voice said.

“What denomination?” the Greek asked.

“Ten grand,” the voice said.

The Greek angrily threw the chip to the ground. “You’re cheating!”

Valentine stepped forward to defend his man. “How can he be cheating?”

“He’s somehow seeing through the glasses and the bag,” the Greek said. “He has to be. There’s no such thing as X-ray vision.”

Valentine got in the Greek’s breathing space. “Then why did you bet with him?”

The Greek started to reply, then thought better of it, and shut his mouth.

“Cover my eyes with your hands,” Rufus’s muffled voice said.

Valentine’s head snapped.

“You heard me,” the voice said.

The Greek took the bait, and scurried around to the back of Rufus’s folding chair. Leaning forward, he placed his enormous palms directly over Rufus’s eyes. One of the Greek’s partners stepped forward, and removed a handful of change from his pocket. The man selected a coin — an old-looking silver quarter — and bypassing Dr. Robinson, held the coin up to Rufus’s face.

“What’s this?”

“A dirty fingernail,” Rufus’s muffled voice said.

Everyone in the room who wasn’t part of the wager started laughing. Those who were part of the wager looked like candidates for Siberia. After a few moments, the room quieted down.

“You’re holding a quarter,” the muffled voice said.

The man holding the quarter started to shake. “What’s the date?”

“It’s 1947.”

Dr. Robinson took the quarter out of the man’s hand and, in a loud voice, verified the date. It was indeed 1947. The doctor handed the quarter back to the man, who passed it to his partners. The other men examined the coin while shaking their heads in disbelief.

No one was more despondent than the Greek, who hurriedly came around Rufus’s chair, and examined the coin. The Greek began to dab at his eyes, and Valentine realized he was crying, never a pretty sight inside a casino.

“Hey, Tony, help me out, will you?” Rufus asked.

Valentine went to where Rufus sat, and untied the drawstring of the leather bag around the old cowboy’s head. He pulled the bag off, then untied the twine holding the steel glasses to Rufus’s face. To his surprise, the glasses hadn’t moved, and he wondered how Rufus had managed to see through them.

Rufus rubbed at his eyes, and then patted down his hair. Standing, he faced Gloria Curtis’s microphone and the camera, and raised his arms triumphantly into the air.

“I win,” he declared.

39

“We’re not going to kill you,” Jinky Harris said.

Gerry Valentine stared at his captor, the rhythmic pounding of flesh reverberating across the dusty warehouse. He was sitting bound to a chair and sweat was pouring off his body. Jinky’s men hadn’t driven very far after abducting them, and Gerry had seen the casinos’ blazing neon in the distance as he’d been pulled from the trunk.

“You could have fooled me,” Gerry said.

The warehouse was shaped like a small airplane hangar. On the other end, Vinny and Nunzie and Frank also sat bound in chairs. Jinky’s henchmen had been slapping them around for a while, then decided to gang up on Frank, their punches sounding like sledgehammers hitting a side of beef.

“You want me to stop it?” Jinky asked.

“Of course I want you to stop it,” Gerry replied.

Jinky played with the automatic controls on the arm of his wheelchair, and pulled around so he was facing Gerry. He’d been eating nonstop since their arrival, and crumbs of food peppered his beard. He pointed across the warehouse.

“Which one of them shot Russ Watson in the parking lot yesterday?” Jinky asked. “That’s all I want to know.”

“Who’s Russ Watson?”

Jinky pulled a candy bar from the pocket of his purple velour tracksuit and tore off the wrapper. “You’re making this hard on your friends.”

Gerry stared across the warehouse at the guy punching Frank in the face. The guy was a gorilla, yet Frank kept smiling at him in between getting hit. Frank had boxed as a pro for six years, and won all his fights except a couple of hometown decisions. His fight philosophy had been simple: he’d been willing to take punishment in order to deliver punishment. They’d picked the wrong guy to beat up.

Gerry’s eyes returned to Jinky. “Let me guess. Russ Watson is the dead guy that turned up in my motel room yesterday.”

“That’s right,” Jinky said. “I want to know who shot him.”

On the other side of the warehouse, Frank let out a sickening grunt. It echoed across the room, and made Gerry’s stomach do a flip-flop.

“Will you tell me something if I tell you?” Gerry asked.

Jinky bit into the candy bar like he had a grudge with it. “Depends.”

“We came to you in good faith, and told you what we were doing in Las Vegas,” Gerry said. “You got in touch with the Tuna, and ratted us out. The Tuna sent a hitman, who killed my best friend, to kill us. When that went south, you tried to have us killed. Why did you do that?”

The candy bar was a memory. Jinky fingered the control on the armrest of his chair, like he was considering taking off. The question obviously made him uncomfortable. Gerry, tied to a chair, had just called him a piece of shit.

“You don’t know how things work in Las Vegas,” Jinky said.

“I don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Then why don’t you educate me?”

Jinky snorted under his breath. “This town is run on juice.”

“It is?”

“Absolutely. The Tuna has juice with people in town, so it was in my best interest to strike a deal with him. Your father has juice with people in town, so it’s in my best interest not to kill you. Get it?”

Gerry gazed across the warehouse. “What about my friends?”

“Your friends are fucked,” Jinky said. “Nobody knows them from Adam. They could die and it would be like they never existed. That’s what happens when you don’t have any juice in Las Vegas.”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“What’s that?”

“Who does the Tuna have juice with?”

Jinky’s laughter filled the warehouse. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

“I guess not,” Gerry said.

“Now, it’s your turn to answer a question. Who shot Russ Watson yesterday?”

“Why do you care?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jinky said angrily.

“He was a hitman,” Gerry said.

Jinky’s face went blank. “So?”

“One of the job dangers of being a hitman is that sometimes people fight back.”

“You think Russ got what was coming to him?”

“You sent Russ into battle and he lost.”

A look of rage flashed over Jinky’s face, and it occurred to Gerry that he wasn’t used to back talk. The big man touched the arm control on his wheelchair and crashed into him, sending Gerry’s chair scraping several feet across the concrete floor.

“Don’t give me any of that philosophy shit,” Jinky roared. “Which one of you shot Russ Watson?”

Gerry studied Jinky’s face. Every time Jinky mentioned Russ Watson, his eyes went soft, and Gerry guessed they’d had a relationship like the one he’d had with Jack Donovan. Telling Jinky the truth would only lead to Frank getting killed.

“It was the security guard,” Gerry said.

“Which one?”

“The guard in the parking lot.”

Jinky had to think. “The old geezer with the hearing aids?”

“Yeah. Your friend got fresh, and the guard shot him. It wasn’t pretty.”

Jinky crashed into him again. Seeing it coming lessened the impact, and Gerry felt his chair tip dangerously to one side, then right itself like a tightrope walker.

“If your father wasn’t tight with Bill Higgins, I’d put a bullet in your head,” Jinky said.

A harsh cry went up across the warehouse. Jinky stared, and Gerry followed his gaze. The man who’d been punishing Frank was clutching his hand while cursing up a storm.

“What happened?” Jinky yelled to him.

“I broke my hand against his face,” the man called back.

“I told you to wrap a towel around your hand, didn’t I?”

“I did wrap a towel around it,” the man said.

“So, walk it off.”

Easy for you to say, Gerry nearly said. He watched the man walk a serpentine pattern across the warehouse. If the look on his face was any indication, he was going to need a doctor. Frank had beaten the guy without ever laying a finger on him. Gerry caught Frank’s eye, and Frank winked. His friend’s face looked like a pepperoni pizza that had been left out for too long in the sun. Gerry winked back.

“Who’s got the digital camera?” Jinky called out.

“I do,” the man with the broken hand said.

“Bring it over here.”

The man came over and handed Jinky a digital camera. Jinky monkeyed with it for a little bit, then aimed at Gerry and snapped a picture. Jinky held the camera away from his face and stared at the picture, then showed it to the man with the broken hand.

“What do you think?”

“He looks too pretty,” the man said.

“Then make him look unpretty.”

The man came over and popped Gerry in the face with his good hand. Gerry felt something run out of his left nostril and knew it wasn’t snot. He stared down at the blood sheeting his neck and the front of his shirt, then saw another flash from Jinky’s camera.

“Take a look,” Jinky said.

The man came around Jinky’s wheelchair and appraised his handiwork.

“Much better,” the man said.

40

Valentine hung around the poker room for a few minutes and helped Rufus Steele collect his money. Poker players were a lot of things, but it was rare that one welshed on a bet. By Valentine’s calculations, Rufus was owed five hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars, and that was exactly the amount collected. When Rufus tried to hand him some, Valentine balked.

“Come on, it’s your cut,” Rufus protested.

“I did it as a favor,” Valentine said, refusing to touch the packets of money being shoved his way. It was at least fifty grand, maybe more.

“I’m well aware of that,” Rufus said, “but I’m not a charity case. Take it.”

The tone of his voice hadn’t changed, but there was a bite to his words nonetheless. Gloria was standing nearby with Zack, and they both turned their backs, and pretended to be watching the segment they’d just shot. Valentine didn’t want to make an enemy of Rufus, and stared long and hard at the money.

“I’m here on someone else’s nickel,” he said quietly. “If word got around that I’d gone into business with you, my real business would suffer. So let’s just say you owe me one, okay?”

“No one ever worked with Rufus Steele and didn’t get paid,” the old cowboy said, waving the stacks in Valentine’s face. “This is your money. I’m going to hold it for you until your job is over. Then it’s yours. Understand?”

Rufus wasn’t going to back down, and Valentine guessed there was a worthwhile charity he could donate the money to before he left town.

“I’ll do it, provided one thing.”

Rufus had eyebrows that looked like fluffy sandpaper. They both went up.

“What’s that, pardner?”

“Explain how you pulled that stunt.”

The old cowboy laughed like someone was tickling both his feet.

“Never in a thousand years,” he said.

“What kind of man puts up nearly six hundred thousand dollars to back a crazy bet?” Gloria Curtis asked when Rufus was gone. There was a bemused look in her eyes, and Valentine didn’t know if she thought he was a fool or an idiot or both.

“I think it has something to do with Rufus’s unique powers of persuasion,” he said. “I’d normally never do anything like that.”

“I sensed that,” she said. “You old guys really stick together.”

“Is that what I am? An old guy?”

She put her hand on his wrist and gave it a squeeze. “A good old guy.”

Gloria had innocently touched him several times in the past two days, and he found himself liking it. Each time they had a conversation, he felt the need to continue it, and he said, “Would you like to have lunch with me?”

She smiled at him with her eyes. “Sure. I have to cover the tournament this morning. Is twelve thirty all right?”

“That’s my nap time.”

“Stop that.”

He felt a smile coming on. “Twelve thirty it is. I’ll meet you in the lobby restaurant.”

“See you then.”

She gave his wrist another squeeze and left with her cameraman. When they were gone, Valentine asked himself where this was going. She was part of the case. Even if this relationship went no further than the platonic stages, it was the wrong thing to be doing. Business was business, pleasure was pleasure, and they weren’t supposed to mix.

He felt his cell phone vibrate, and pulled it from his pocket. The Caller ID said BILL HIGGINS. As he flipped the phone open, he realized he didn’t care. Gloria was smart and pretty and he liked talking to her. His partner in Atlantic City had liked to say that it was easy to find a woman to have sex with, but finding one whom you wanted to talk to, that was tough.

“Hey, Bill, what’s up?” he said into his phone.

“I need to talk to you,” his friend said. “It’s urgent.”

“Just say where.”

“Meet me at Gardunos in twenty minutes.”

Gardunos was a local Mexican restaurant they sometimes frequented. It was away from the casinos, and the food was homemade and exceptionally good.

“I’ll see you in twenty,” Valentine said.

Going outside, he handed the valet his stub, then went to the curb and waited for his rental to come up. Celebrity’s valet stand was decorated with African flora and fauna, and had Congo music playing over a loudspeaker. It was like walking onto a movie set, and at any moment he expected to see Tarzan come swinging through the trees.

While he waited, Valentine found himself staring at a man standing at the end of the curb. The man wore tailored slacks and a white dress shirt that clashed with a floppy tennis hat and Ray-Bans. He sensed the guy was trying to keep a low profile, and guessed he was a celebrity visiting the hotel incognito. The man looked impatiently at his watch, and Valentine got a good look at his face. It was Dr. Robinson, the house physician.

A decrepit Toyota Corolla pulled up to the curb. Robinson picked up a gym bag lying at his feet, and went to the car. He gave the valet his stub and climbed in behind the wheel.

Valentine felt his radar go up. Robinson was driving a junker and hadn’t tipped the valet. Valentine had known plenty of house physicians at hotels, and they all made a decent buck. Something wasn’t adding up here. He walked down the curb, and glanced into the Toyota just as Robinson pulled away. A tattered black suitcase occupied one of the backseats. Stenciled across its front were the words RENFO & COMPANY in bold white letters. It looked like something an entertainer might use, and he went to the valet stand, and found the kid who’d brought up the car.

“Let me see that guy’s stub,” Valentine said.

The kid wore his hair in his face and shot him a defiant sneer. “No way. It’s against hotel rules.”

“I’m a dick doing a job for the hotel.”

“You’re a dick?” the kid said, hiding a laugh.

“It’s short for detective. Let me see it.”

The kid stared at his clothes. Sometimes, looking like a cop had its advantages. The kid produced the stub from his pocket, and Valentine read the name printed across the top: Renfo. He stuck ten bucks in the kid’s hand, then returned to the curb and waited for his rental to come up.

He waited until he was on the highway driving toward Garduno’s before pulling out his cell phone and dialing Las Vegas information. A chatty female operator came on, and he asked for any listings in Clark County for Renfo. Within seconds she had found four. Two were businesses, the other two residential.

“The residential, please,” he said.

She gave him the numbers and he memorized them, then called them while driving one-handed. Both were disconnected. He called information again, and this time got the two business listings. The first number led him to a long-haul trucking company and a friendly guy named Jack. The second number was answered by a middle-aged woman with a smoker’s raspy voice. She was not nearly as friendly.

“Good morning, Renfo and Company,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“Hi,” Valentine said. “I met Mr. Renfo this morning, and he gave me his business card. I’d like to talk to him about some work.”

“You’d like to hire Renfo?” the women asked, sounding skeptical.

“That’s right.”

“What kind of engagement do you have in mind?”

The woman had a cutting edge to her voice, and Valentine felt himself feeling sorry for Renfo. Whatever he did for a living, she sure wasn’t helping.

“Engagement?”

“Yeah, as in work. Are you hiring Renfo for a birthday party, a corporate event, a bar mitzvah, or what? How big is the group? How long do you want him to work? The standard questions, you know?”

She sounded ready to slam down the phone, and Valentine quickly improvised.

“It’s my son’s birthday party next Saturday. There will be about thirty children and ten adults. I’d like Renfo to work for half an hour.”

“How old are the kids?” the woman asked.

“Ten- to twelve-year-olds.”

“That’s good to know. I’ll tell Renfo to leave out the blue stuff.”

“Blue stuff?”

“Yeah, the dirty jokes.”

Renfo was a comedian? That didn’t make sense, and he started wondering if this was another dead end.

“Some of them are actually pretty funny,” the woman added.

“You don’t say.”

“Really, they are,” the woman said. “Renfo’s got one where he says, ‘What’s your favorite bird?’ And Freddy, his dummy, says, ‘A woodpecker.’ And Renfo says, ‘I bet you’ve always wanted one of those.’ Ha, you get it?”

Valentine stared at the bluish bank of mountains rimming the horizon, thinking back to everything that had happened in the poker room that morning. Now he understood why Rufus had wanted a leather bag put over his head. It had muffled his voice, and made it impossible to tell if he was actually doing the talking. Dr. Robinson, aka Renfo, wasn’t a doctor at all. He was a professional ventriloquist.

“Got it,” he said.