Deadman's Bluff

33

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Over here,” the player said.

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

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

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

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

“Thanks,” Skins said.

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

Then he had an idea.

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

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

“Excuse me?” Skins said.

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

“They have it on tape,” Valentine said.

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

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

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

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

“Tony? What’s going on?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you have a name?” she asked.

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

The guard released his grip on Valentine’s sleeve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

“Are you in trouble?”

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

“Probably,” he said.

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

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

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

“Thanks for the update,” Gloria said.

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

“See what?” Valentine said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Was he angry?”

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