Deadman's Bluff

12

“Detective Davis wasn’t seriously hurt,” the doctor at the Atlantic City Medical Center emergency room told Gerry. “He landed on a piece of glass on the pavement that put a gash in his back. He’ll be good to go once we stitch him up.”

Gerry wanted to give the doctor a hug but instead just nodded. She was a fiftyish woman with steel gray hair and sunken eyes that had seen their share of heartache. She gently touched Gerry’s sleeve. “You look pale. Are you going to be okay?”

“Just a little shook up,” Gerry admitted.

“Here. Come with me.”

She led him to a visitors’ area where they sat on a small couch. An ambulance had shown up outside Bally’s before any police cruisers, and Gerry had ridden to the hospital with Davis. Watching Davis bleed all over the back of the ambulance, Gerry had realized that he was partially responsible for what had happened. Davis had picked him up at the airport as a favor to his father. Davis should have been home, and not on the street.

“Did the sight of all that blood bother you?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah, how did you know?” Gerry said.

“It’s a common reaction. The human body has a hundred quarts of blood. Eddie lost a tiny fraction of that. He’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Gerry gazed into her kind face, and found it in him to smile.

“You’re a Valentine, aren’t you?” she asked.

His smile grew. “That’s right. Gerry Valentine.”

“Faith Toperoff. I knew your parents. How are they doing?”

“My mom passed away two years ago,” Gerry said. “My dad runs a consulting business out of Florida.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. I always admired your parents for staying on the island after the casinos came,” she said. “Not many people had the stomach for it, especially those first few years.”

“How long have you been here?” Gerry asked.

“All my life.”

There weren’t many like her left on the island, and he said, “My folks talked about packing up and leaving, but my father couldn’t do it. He said he’d be a traitor.”

“It was especially hard on the local cops,” she said. “The crime rate shot up every time a casino opened, and it was already the highest in the nation. I remember the night your father shot to death the man who’d shot his partner. Your father took it hard, even though he’d done the right thing. New Jersey struck a devil’s bargain the day it decided to let casinos take over this island.”

Gerry stared at the scuffed tile floor. He got depressed when locals talked about the old days. Atlantic City had been a decent place to live until the casinos had appeared. He’d been a teenager, and remembered hundreds of restaurants and retail stores closing down, while neighborhoods like South Inlet and Ducktown had disappeared altogether. A voice came over a public address, looking for Dr. Toperoff. She rose and slapped Gerry on the leg the way his mother used to do.

“Tell your father I said hello,” she said.

Gerry stayed in the visitors’ area until he saw the sun come up. He decided he was thirsty, and went downstairs to the basement and bought an iced tea from a humming soda machine. It tasted like the best thing he’d ever drunk.

He walked around, trying to collect his thoughts. Once the police found out he was responsible for sending Abruzzi to the big poker game in the sky, he was going to be put through endless questioning. He was in for a long day.

He came to the hospital cafeteria. It didn’t open for another half hour, and he stared through the doorway into the darkness. Two weeks ago, while visiting Jack Donovan, he’d come downstairs to this same cafeteria to get sodas, then returned to Jack’s room to find his friend’s oxygen tubes ripped out. Jack had died trying to tell him about the amazing poker scam he’d invented.

Gerry continued to stare into the darkness. His father believed the secret to Jack’s scam was hidden inside the hospital, and that if Gerry looked hard enough, he’d discover what it was. Jack had invented the scam while getting chemotherapy, and Gerry decided that would be the best place to start searching.

He found a hospital directory posted by the elevators, and located the floor on which cancer treatments were given. Getting on an elevator, he pushed the button for the floor. He finished his drink while the elevator creaked upward.

Even though Jack knew he was terminal, he’d still continued to get weekly chemotherapy, unwilling to give up the fight despite having already been counted out. It was the kind of courage that Gerry hoped he would summon when he faced the music.

The signs led him to a wing that looked brand new. A honey-blond nurse with the beginning of a double chin manned the nurses’ station, a fat diamond ring and gold band sitting on her third finger. Her eyes said it was okay for Gerry to approach, so he did.

“Can I help you?” the nurse asked.

“Please.” He took a business card from his wallet and placed it on the counter. His title was partner, a nice gift from his father. She stared at it indifferently.

“Grift Sense. What’s that?”

“We help casinos catch cheaters.”

“I thought it was the other way around.”

Gerry started to put the card away, then thought better of it. “Sometimes it is. We nail those guys, too.”

“What does ‘grift sense’ mean?”

“It’s a hustler’s expression, a compliment, really. It means you have a gift for spotting grift.”

“Sounds like fun. What can I do for you?”

There were charts spread all over her work area and a pen stuck behind her ear. Working alone and working hard. Gerry found himself liking her, despite her coolness.

“A friend of mine was getting chemotherapy here,” Gerry said. “His name was Jack Donovan. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions.”

She stiffened. “Jack Donovan is dead.”

“Yes. I know that.”

“I can’t talk to you about his death,” she said.

“There’s an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by the homicide division of the Atlantic City Police Department. I was interviewed by two detectives, along with practically everyone else on the floor who was in contact with Jack.”

“I don’t want to talk to you about his death,” Gerry said. “I want to talk to you about his therapy.”

She pushed her chair back a foot from the desk. “What about it?”

“Jack invented a way to cheat at poker during his therapy. So far, it’s got all the experts fooled.”

“How do you cheat at poker?”

“In this case, marked cards.”

“Marked how?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

From his wallet, Gerry removed the playing card that Jack had given him before he’d died. It was an ace of spades from Celebrity’s casino in Las Vegas. The card had been scrutinized by an FBI forensic lab and found to be clean. Yet it was marked, and could be read if you knew the secret. She examined the card and handed it back.

“So you think Jack Donovan devised some special way to mark cards while getting treatment in this hospital,” she said.

“That’s right,” Gerry said.

Her face changed, and so did her tone. “What do you want me to do, Gerry Valentine, vice president of Grift Sense, let you search the place? Get real.”

This was a real Jersey girl, filled with piss and vinegar and capable of intimidating a three-hundred-pound NFL lineman.

“Of course not,” he replied.

“Then what do you want?”

“Jack Donovan stole something from this hospital,” Gerry said.

“He did?”

“Yes. It was in a metal strongbox in a bag under his bed. I saw it. Whatever was in that strongbox can be used to mark cards, but also happens to be dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can you be looking for something if you don’t know what it is?”

“I’m guessing there has to be a record of the theft. If I know what was taken, I’ll know what the scam is.”

“It’s that easy?” she asked.

Gerry nodded. He would take the mystery substance and coat a few dozen playing cards with it, and the rest would explain itself. To his surprise, she picked up his business card, and slipped it into her breast pocket.

“And it will go no further than that?” she asked.

“That’s right. No one will ever hear about it.”

She pulled out her lower lip and let it snap back, deep in thought. “I liked Jack. He was always cracking jokes, even when he knew what his situation was. I’ll look through the computer, let you know what turns up.”

“Thanks a lot,” Gerry said.

The phone on her desk had several buttons. The red one lit up and rang at the same time. She picked it up and said, “Cancer ward nurses’ station, Gladwell here.”

She listened for a moment, then looked at Gerry a little differently than before. “There are some homicide detectives in ER searching the hospital for you. They want to question you about a dead guy they think you sent through the windshield of a car.”

It was not the way Gerry had hoped to end their conversation.

“Tell them I’ll be right down,” he said.