Loaded Dice

11

The first thing Valentine did when he reached the Acropolis was call Gerry. He hadn’t told his son he was coming to Las Vegas, and realized it might come as a shock when they eventually did hook up. So he decided to break it to him gently.

“Hey, Gerry, this is Pop,” he said, getting his son’s voice mail. “I was thinking about coming out to Vegas. What do you say we hook up? Call me on my cell.”

He hung up feeling guilty as hell. They hadn’t done much together when Gerry was growing up, and trying to sound chummy felt awkward. He hoped Gerry’s relationship with his own kid was different than theirs had been.

The next thing he did was look for his luggage. He pedaled the bike he’d borrowed that morning over to Sin and inquired at the concierge desk.

“It hasn’t arrived yet,” the concierge said, staring at her computer screen.

“You can still keep the bike,” he said.

She frowned, not getting the joke. He started to leave, then halted at the glass front doors. He was forgetting something. Something really important.

His fee.

Mabel was always chiding him about not collecting his money. Maybe it was because he’d lived most of his life broke and never put much value in it. He went back to the concierge and explained the situation. The woman on duty called upstairs to Chance Newman’s office.

“Go to the cashier’s cage on the south side of the casino,” she said, drawing a map as complicated as a football play on a sheet of paper. “Hugo, Mister Newman’s bodyguard, will meet you there. He’ll have the money, and your equipment.”

Valentine entered Sin’s casino with the map in his outstretched hand. The casino was enormous, its motif a boozy interpretation of ancient Rome. As he walked, he imagined he was giving the boys upstairs in surveillance fits. He’d come in on a bike and was now doing a serpentine stroll. Seeing a smoky dome in the ceiling, he waved.

Hugo awaited him at the cage. He had a wrestler’s body and the face of a mad Bulgarian. He opened a leather bag and let Valentine see the stacks of money and Deadlock equipment lying inside.

“Your fee and your equipment,” Hugo said.

“Count it,” Valentine said.

Hugo’s face turned an Eastern European mean. “I already did that.”

Valentine thought he’d seen Hugo playing volleyball with the nuns, but asked him to count it again anyway. Then added, “If you don’t mind.”

Hugo was wearing a walkie-talkie setup that was practically invisible. Valentine sensed that someone was talking to him, and he watched him hand the bag through the bars to the cashier.

“Do it,” Hugo said.

The cashier counted the money. It was all there. Valentine took the Deadlock from the bag and made sure the guts hadn’t been ripped out. Then he signed a receipt for the money.

“How long you been out of the slammer?”

Hugo’s mouth opened, then snapped shut.

“You didn’t get those muscles hitting the gym a few nights a week.”

“You are a Webster,” Hugo said.

A Webster was casino slang for a floor person who thought he knew everything. Valentine said, “I want you to tell Chance Newman something.”

“What’s that?”

“Tell him I’m no pigeon. You know what that is?”

Hugo smiled. “Everyone’s favorite customer.”

“That’s right. Chance thought that by making me walk the casino, I might stop on my way out, make a few bets, and he’d win his money back. Maybe he put a plant at a table to lure me.”

“A plant?”

“A house girl, a hooker. Know what those are?”

Hugo touched his lapel. Valentine realized he was turning his walkie-talkie off.

“Get out of the casino, or I’ll throw you out,” the bodyguard said.

Valentine was impressed he’d strung all those words together himself. As he hoisted the bag off the counter, it occurred to him that something was wrong with this picture. Hugo hadn’t touched him. Security always grabbed troublemakers. But why hadn’t Hugo touched him? He looked like he could lift a car.

“Know what they say about guys who lift weights?”

Hugo shook his head.

“They say they have little dicks. If they had big dicks, they wouldn’t spend so much time in the gym.”

Hugo still didn’t want to touch him. Valentine walked away shaking his head.

He checked into the Acropolis, put his twenty-five grand into the hotel vault, and rode the elevator still shaking his head. What good was a bodyguard who didn’t like to fight?

Nick had comped him into a penthouse suite. In the Acropolis, that meant three high-ceilinged rooms filled with polished chrome and cushy leather, the bizarre color schemes reminiscent of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. That was the thing about Nick. He loved the old stuff.

He went into his suite and saw a chambermaid’s cart sitting in the living room. Chambermaids never locked themselves into rooms, and he looked around the suite.

“Anybody home?”

He heard something. He stood by the dining room entrance and stared through a pair of sliding glass doors leading to the outside balcony. No one out there.

Taking off his shoes, he flung them into the dining room. The second shoe struck a flower vase and shattered it. He heard movement inside the kitchen. Picking up a marble ashtray, he walked into the dining room.

A fat guy wearing a stocking over his head came out of the kitchen. His hands were balled into fists, and for a few seconds they danced around each other. The guy looked like he tipped the scales at two-fifty. Big guys usually just ran over people. Not this guy. He had an attitude.

“I thought you knew how to fight,” his intruder said.

Valentine held the ashtray like a Frisbee and shook his head.

“Guess that stuff in the movie was bullshit, huh?”

Valentine remembered Hugo’s earlier hesitation. “Guess so,” he said.

“You’re just an old fuck with a dried-up dick, huh?”

He placed the ashtray on the dining room table. “Take your best shot, asshole.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

His intruder threw a right hook with a telegraph attached. Valentine ducked the punch but didn’t see the second shot coming, a sneaky uppercut that caught him in the side of the head. Falling backward, he shot his leg out and kicked his intruder squarely in the shin.

The shins were one of the body’s weak spots. His intruder howled and danced on one leg. Valentine straightened and felt his head spin. He hadn’t been sucker-punched in a long time.

He considered his options. He could sweep his intruder’s legs out from under him, or he could flip him. Those were correct ways to deal with an attacker. Only the guy had pissed him off. So he punched him in the face.

His intruder staggered backward, hitting the glass doors leading to the balcony with his head. A thousand spiderwebs magically spread across the glass. He shakily drew a gun and pointed it at Valentine. It was a slimmed-down Glock .45, a weapon favored by detectives with the Metro LVPD.

“Why did you kill her?” he asked.

“Who?” Valentine said.

“Kris Blake. I found your stuff in her townhouse. You brought her home from the Pink Pony last night and shot her. Why did you do it?”

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

“Tell me, goddamn it.”

He sounded like a lovesick boyfriend, not someone who really wanted to shoot him. Valentine said, “My stuff couldn’t be at your friend’s place, buddy. I don’t have any stuff. The airline lost it.”

Blood seeped out of the stocking. “Bullshit.”

Valentine pointed at the bedroom door on the other side of the suite. “I filled out a lost claim form for my luggage. It’s on the night table, lying in the same sleeve as my airline ticket. For Christ’s sake, look at it.”

“If you’re lying, I’m going to kill you,” he said.

“I’m not lying.”

His intruder crossed the dining room. As he opened the bedroom door, a uniformed chambermaid came out, kneed his groin, and ran out of the suite screaming at the top of her lungs. Valentine ducked into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife from the utensil drawer. Then he glanced around the corner. His intruder was running away. He grabbed a cordless phone off the counter and punched zero.

“It’s a beautiful day at the Acropolis,” an operator said.

“Help!” he yelled.

Chasing someone with a gun was a stupid idea, and he hunkered down in the kitchen and waited for someone to rescue him. A minute later, Wily appeared, all out of breath. He slid the steak knife back in the drawer and came out of hiding.

“Did you catch him?”

“Who?” Wily said.

“The guy who broke into my room.”

Wily shook his head, staring at the broken vase on the floor and the cracked sliding glass doors. “You get in a fight?”

“No, I was recording a sound effects record. Of course I was in a fight.” He came over to where the head of security stood. “The guy was six-one, weighed about two fifty, and wore a stocking over his head. How could you miss him?”

Like most guys who ran casinos, Wily hated to be questioned, and he shrugged. “The casino is mobbed, and so is the hotel. You know how it is.”

Valentine felt his heart racing. He had reached the age when bad things upset him in ways he could not control. He pulled a chair out from the dining-room table and sat down. After taking several deep breaths, he said, “No, I don’t know how it is. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

Picking up the phone, Wily called the hotel’s maintenance department and ordered new sliding doors for the room. Hanging up, he said, “It’s like this. The Acropolis has a hundred eye-in-the-sky cameras. That sounds like a lot, but they can’t watch everything. So they watch one area of the casino, then they watch another.”

“So?”

“Do the math,” Wily said. “One hundred percent of the time, fifty percent of the casino floor isn’t being watched. The same is true for the hotel. Things happen that don’t get picked up. Like your guy.”

“What about security on the floor?” Valentine said.

“What about them?”

“The guy was bleeding from the nose. Think they would have spotted that?”

“You pop him?”

“He’s got a thing about heights. Yes, I popped him.”

Wily called downstairs. The Acropolis employed ex-cops to patrol the floor. They were sharp guys, and when Wily hung up a few moments later shaking his head, Valentine had his answer. His intruder was someone the guys on the floor all knew.

“Must have disappeared,” Wily said sarcastically.

Valentine rose from his chair. The side of his face really hurt. His intruder had said his girlfriend worked at the Pink Pony. So had the dead stripper Nick had told him about. Had to be the same woman.

It was time he paid Bill Higgins a visit. Bill was the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and one of the most powerful law enforcement figures in the state. If anyone would know what this was about, it was Bill.

He went into the hall, slammed the door, and listened as the broken sliders came down with a thunderous crash, followed by Wily’s string of four-letter expletives. He smiled all the way down in the elevator.

12

Valentine got his rental car from the Acropolis’s valet. The vehicle was a real piece of junk. Roll-down windows, a sputtering heater, and a front seat with enough legroom for a circus midget, all for thirty-nine bucks a day.

Leaving the Acropolis, he followed the signs for Las Vegas Boulevard and soon was driving south into the desert. As the towering casinos grew small in his mirror, he felt himself relax. He’d been offered several lucrative full-time jobs in Las Vegas over the years and always turned them down. He needed to be rooted in reality, and this town was anything but that.

After five miles he hung a left on Cactus Boulevard, and a mile later a right on Hibiscus. It was a newer suburb, with roads seeing blacktop for the first time. Although he didn’t remember Bill’s address on Hibiscus, he was certain he’d recognize Bill’s place when he saw it.

He powered up his cell phone. He considered cell phones one of life’s great intrusions and rarely left his on. He had a message in voice mail and retrieved it.

“Tony, please call me,” Mabel said. “It’s an emergency.”

He punched in his work number. His neighbor answered on the second ring.

“What’s going on?”

“You must start leaving your cell phone on,” she scolded him. “It’s Gerry.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“Yolanda did earlier. Gerry is involved with something very bad.”

What’s new, he nearly said.

“Yolanda got a call from American Express,” Mabel went on. “They saw a lot of activity on Gerry’s credit card. He bought a gun in Las Vegas.”

“He did what?”

“A three fifty-seven Smith and Wesson. Yolanda is worried, and so am I.”

He saw Bill’s place up ahead, a single-story ranch house with a terra-cotta tile roof and all-natural landscaping. The colors were earthy and seemed to bleed beneath the bright sunlight. Slowing down, he said, “I need you to do something for me. Contact every casino boss in Nevada we do business with, and see if you can get the address of Bart Calhoun’s school.”

“Certainly. May I ask what you’re going to do when you find Gerry?”

Wring his neck, he thought. “Bring him home.”

“Can I tell Yolanda that?”

“You can tell her whatever you want.”

Mabel was silent as he pulled into Bill’s driveway. Venting his frustrations on her was juvenile, and he said, “Am I starting to sound like a cranky old man?”

“Yes. I think you need to pack your bags and come home.”

“Once my bags get here and I find Gerry, I will.”

“Wonderful. Just remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Start leaving your cell phone on!”

As he got out of the rental, Bill emerged from the house, walking with a metal cane. Bill was a Navajo Indian, a shade under six feet, with a stony face offset by piercing eyes and a full head of hair. The gunshot wound he’d endured in Miami two months ago had been slow to heal, and he was still working from home.

They shook hands on the lawn. Valentine asked him how his leg was holding up. Bill said okay, then asked him about his ear. The same guy who’d shot Bill had blown off Valentine’s left ear. Valentine showed him the replacement.

“Is that real skin?” his friend asked.

“Yeah. Don’t ask where they grafted it from.”

They went inside. Bill’s house was U-shaped, the rooms facing a courtyard with a meticulously landscaped Japanese garden complete with a running waterfall and a pond filled with exotic goldfish. The back of the property was walled off, hiding everything from view. Bill and his partner, Alex, liked it that way. On a coffee table in the living room sat a pitcher with lemon water, and a tray of glasses. Bill filled two, handed him one. They toasted each other’s health.

“What brings you to Las Vegas?” Bill asked.

Valentine stared at the waterfall in the garden. Telling Bill he was looking for Gerry was not a good idea. If Gerry was breaking the law, Bill would have to do something about it. He didn’t want to put his friend in that position, so instead he said, “I’m doing a consulting job. That’s not why I came to see you, though.”

Bill sipped his water, waiting for him to continue.

“A guy wearing a stocking paid me a visit earlier. Swore I’d killed his girlfriend, a stripper at the Pink Pony. We mixed it up, and he ran.”

“You call the cops?”

“That’s the bad part. I think he was a cop.”

Bill raised an eyebrow.

“I had lunch with Nick Nicocropolis,” Valentine said. “Nick told me about a call he got from the FBI regarding this same stripper. The FBI thinks she was laundering casino chips.”

“Any idea how your name got tied up in this?”

“No. Have you heard about the case?”

“Yeah,” Bill said. “But I can’t talk about it.”

“Not even to an old friend?”

It was a Navajo custom not to make eye contact during conversation. Only Bill was staring right at him. He said, “Not even to you. When the FBI contacts you—and trust me, they will—you need to play ball with them. Whatever they want to know, tell them. Otherwise, they’ll make your life a living hell.”

“But I don’t know anything.”

“Let them be the judge of that, okay?”

Valentine went back to sipping his water. Bill rarely lectured him. The FBI had him scared, just like they had Nick scared. The bureau had invaded Las Vegas right after 9/11 and, along with setting up an extensive surveillance operation, was watching the casinos’ cash flows. They were Big Brother, and making everyone’s life miserable.

Bill was still staring at him like a hawk.

“Whatever you say,” Valentine said.

“Believe it or not, I was just about to call you,” Bill said after they’d both emptied their glasses.

“You missed my cheery voice?”

“I’m reviewing a case, and I’m stumped.”

They went to Bill’s study in the back of the house. The walls were decorated with Native American artifacts and paintings from New Mexico where Bill’s parents lived on a ranch. He was a teenager when his parents learned he was gay, and they sent him away to school. Somehow they had managed to reconcile, and their pictures were scattered around the room.

Bill picked up a remote and the TV on his desk came to life. “This is a tape of a robbery that happened last week. It went down so fast, the casino is convinced it’s an inside job. They had their employees submit to polygraphs. Everyone came out clean.”

The tape showed a woman in her fifties with a Dolly Parton hairdo standing inside the cage. Her job was to change chips into money when players wanted to cash out. A bearded man appeared at the cage’s window and shoved a gun through the bars. The woman put her hands on her head as if to scream. The bearded man motioned with the gun, silencing her.

The woman opened a cash drawer and started pulling out bundles of bills, which she slipped through the bars. The man shoved the money into the pockets of his windbreaker, then sprinted away. The woman again put her hands on her head. Then she tripped an alarm, and all hell broke loose inside the casino.

Bill shut the tape off. “What do you think?”

“Did they polygraph her?” Valentine asked.

Bill broke custom again and stared at him. “The woman in the cage?”

“Yeah. My guess is, they didn’t, considering the trauma she went through.”

“You think she’s involved?”

It seemed so obvious that Valentine paused before answering him. “I counted twelve cash drawers where she was standing. She went to the one with the big bills without the robber telling her to. She’s part of it.”

Bill rewound the tape, watched it again, and laughed out loud. “Now that you mention it, it does look kind of strange, doesn’t it?”

It was nearly three o’clock, and Valentine realized he wasn’t going to find his son by hanging out with Bill. He said good-bye and started to leave, then noticed a large Federal Express box sitting on Bill’s desk. The shipper was a company in Japan, the receiver Chance Newman. The top was sliced open, and he glanced inside.

“That was intercepted yesterday by our friends at FedEx,” Bill explained. “The shipping instructions say the contents are PalmPilots, only they’re really card-counting computers. I called Chance Newman, asked him what was up. He said he’s giving them to his surveillance people to help track counters.”

Chance’s explanation to Bill made perfect sense. The easiest way to spot card-counters was by tracking their play with a computer. There were several good ones on the market. Only the devices Chance had bought from Japan weren’t computers. They were Deadlocks.

It had been a day filled with troubling questions, and now Valentine had another. Why had Chance paid him twenty-five thousand dollars to explain an illegal device that he obviously already knew about? That was a lot of money to blow, even for someone as rich as Chance.

He waited until Bill’s back was turned. Taking a Deadlock from the box, he slipped it into his pocket and showed himself to the door.

“Talk to you later,” he said.

13

Hey Gerry, you ready to rumble?”

Gerry lifted his eyes from the men’s magazine he was reading. Pash stood in the doorway that separated their motel rooms. He wore jeans and a football jersey that was so large he was swimming in it. Gerry had told him that they made jerseys in his size, but Pash had laughed at his suggestion.

“I want to feel like a gladiator,” he said.

Rising from his chair, Gerry went to the window and shut the blinds, then flipped on the TV and blasted the volume. The hotel wasn’t responsible for theft, so he’d started taking measures.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

He followed Pash into the adjacent bedroom. As usual, it was trashed. The maid came in the morning and made the beds. By late afternoon, it looked like a tornado had visited.

“Where’s your brother?” Gerry asked.

“Getting a soda,” Pash said. “We have a new member to our team I want you to meet. Hey Dean, you ready?”

The bathroom door swung open. Out stepped a guy with a forked beard, glasses, and a baseball cap. He wore jeans and a denim work shirt with multiple food stains. He looked like what gamblers called a scellard, or a scale. A loser.

“Meet Dean Martin,” Pash said.

Gerry stared at the disheveled stranger, then at Pash. “Dean Martin? This isn’t Dean Martin. He’s dead!”

Pash brought his hand to his mouth. “Oh, no!”

“You idiot,” the stranger said to Pash. “I told you that was a bad name to use!”

“I didn’t realize he was that popular,” Pash said.

“Everybody knows Dean Martin,” Gerry said. He got close to the stranger and said, “Amin, that you hiding in there?”

Something resembling a smile crossed Amin’s lips. He didn’t do that very often. For Amin it was no booze, no butts, and no staring at naked chicks. Real introspective, but also a real wizard with numbers. He could do basic math in his head as fast as a computer.

“I really fooled you, huh,” Amin said.

Amin had flared his nostrils with pieces of plastic tubing, lowered his forehead by combing his hair straight down, and painted a mole where none had been before. He was a master of disguise, and he had to be. His face was in a database of known card-counters called FaceScan. For a fee, a casino could e-mail a player’s picture to FaceScan and find out if the player was a counter.

“Sure did,” Gerry said. “But you need another name. No more celebrities.”

“But it has to be a name we can both remember,” Pash chimed in. He had a problem with American names, except for those he’d seen in the movies. “How about James Dean?”

Gerry nixed that with a shake of his head. “That’s going to attract attention. You want something that won’t seem out of place. How about John Dean? He was a character in All the President’s Men.”

“Ohh,” Pash said. “John Dean. Yes.”

Amin worked his mouth up and down the way he did when he was thinking. He stepped in front of the dressing mirror that hung next to the bed and appraised himself.

“John Dean,” he said. “Yeah, that will work.”

That night, they took two cars into town. Pash and Amin shared one while Gerry followed in his rental.

Amin parked across the street from Mandalay Bay, and Pash hopped out. They did not want to be seen entering the casino together, or even being in the same car near the casino. Casino surveillance cameras were extremely powerful, especially those used on the outside of buildings. A license plate could be read from a block away.

Pash strolled over to the Glass Pool Inn and stopped to stare at the kidney-shaped, aboveground swimming pool in the parking lot. The pool had seven portholes, allowing bystanders to see the limbs of underwater swimmers. It had been used in many movies, all of which Pash had seen. Amin beeped his horn and drove away.

Gerry pulled off to the side of the road to wait. Tonight they were going to hit the MGM Grand, and the surveillance there was top-notch. Better to take his time. That way, he would not be seen with Pash or Amin until he was inside the casino.

Ten minutes later, he pulled into the MGM’s valet area. It was twelve cars wide and looked like an auto show. While he waited for someone to take his car, he took out his cell phone and powered it up. There was a message in voice mail. He retrieved it.

His father, saying he was coming to Las Vegas.

“Just what I need,” Gerry muttered.

He erased the message, then turned the phone off. He’d considered calling his father the last four nights. Each time he’d gone into a casino with Pash and Amin, he’d whipped his cell phone out and considered asking his old man to bail him out.

He hadn’t made the call.

He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the invisible pressure of fatherhood that had gotten a stranglehold over him the past few months as Yolanda had grown bigger, and his problems had started to include those that hadn’t been born. What was his father’s expression? It was time for Gerry to stop trying and start doing.

Maybe that was why he hadn’t called his old man.

Gerry entered the lobby a few minutes later, and paused dutifully to stare at the wall of movie screens at the check-in that showed acts playing in the hotel. That was what everyone did, and he didn’t want to appear any different.

He took his time, going first to the bar and ordering coffee, then heading across the casino, stopping occasionally to watch folks lose their money. Pash had picked the casino tonight, and now Gerry realized why he’d chosen this one. The MGM was owned by a movie studio, and the casino was filled with famous black and white movie stills.

Nearing the blackjack pit in the back, he saw Amin. Amin was playing third base—the last spot at the table. The seat next to him was open.

Gerry’s seat.

“This seat open?” Gerry asked, putting his coffee down at the empty spot. The dealer nodded and so did Amin. Gerry took the seat and tossed two hundred dollars in wilted twenties onto the green felt.

“Changing two hundred,” the dealer called out.

Soon Gerry was gambling, ten bucks a hand. He played Basic Strategy and never deviated. His role in the scam was simple. Try not to lose his money too quickly. That was all he had to do.

Amin, on the other hand, was on another mission. He wasn’t supposed to win too much. He could win thousands of dollars an hour if he wanted, but then the people staffing the eye in the sky would start studying him and, if they didn’t like what they saw, place him under “Special Ops.” They would scrutinize his every move, run it through a computer, maybe even start to harass him. It was as much fun as being chased by a police car.

So Amin played it safe and won five hundred dollars an hour. It was a grind, but it rarely drew heat. The system he used was called the Hi-Lo. By assigning +1 and –1 values to the dealt cards, he could determine when the game was favorable to the player, and when it was favorable to house. He would bet accordingly, and almost always come out ahead.

Amin executed Hi-Lo flawlessly. He always knew the game’s exact count. Bart said even the best counters were only 70 percent accurate. Not Amin. The man was focused.

By ten PM, Gerry was down to fifty dollars and sweating through his clothes.

Amin was up. Way up. To hide his winnings—something gamblers called “rat-holing”—Amin had been palming his hundred-dollar chips, then dumping them in Gerry’s half-filled coffee mug. If anyone in surveillance had been paying attention, they would have noticed that Gerry’s drink was growing as the evening progressed.

Amin had also started dumping chips into Gerry’s jacket pocket. That was okay, except there were so many that Gerry could feel the chips pulling down his coat. Amin was acting so blatant that Gerry almost felt like he was being set up. Finally, he rose from the table, leaving his remaining chips, and said to the dealer, “Where’s the john?”

The dealer gave him instructions. Left, right, left, you can’t miss it.

Gerry marched through the casino, holding his filled coffee cup, afraid to drink the liquid and expose the chips shimmering just below the surface.

The john had photos of famous Hollywood actors hanging on the walls. He found Pash standing at the urinals and sidled up next to him. Pash was staring at a photo of Cary Grant and said, “The first movie I ever saw was with Cary Grant. It was called Gunga Din. He played a character named Archibald Cutter. Have you seen it?”

Gerry shook his head. “Look, we need to talk about Amin.”

“The theater was wonderful. You paid for a ticket, walked through a lobby, then went outside into a courtyard and watched the film beneath the stars. I was six years old. When I first saw Cary Grant, I thought to myself—This is the man I want to grow up to be!” He burst out laughing. “It was so funny. I thought that as I grew older, I could change my skin and hair color, and look like Cary Grant!”

“Your brother is fucking up,” Gerry said through clenched teeth.

Pash pulled up his fly and glanced over his shoulder. The johns were the only place in the casino where there were no surveillance cameras. It was against the law. But that didn’t stop people in security from occasionally popping their heads in and having a look around.

“How?” Pash asked.

Gerry showed him the chips in his pocket and his coffee cup.

“Is anyone else at the table winning?” Pash asked.

“No, and that’s the problem,” Gerry replied. “Everyone else is losing their shirts. But the dealer’s tray is being depleted. Someone in surveillance is going to notice, and your brother and I will be fucked.”

With one eye on the door, Pash took Gerry’s chips and stuffed them into the fanny pack he was wearing. “Pick me up at the Glass Pool Inn in twenty minutes. I’ll signal to my brother that we are leaving.”

“I’ll tell him,” Gerry said. “I still haven’t cashed out.”

Gerry started to leave, and Pash touched his sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Gerry wanted to tell Pash that it was okay, only it wasn’t okay. Amin was a known card-counter. If Gerry got pegged as a member of his team, he’d be photographed and have his face added to FaceScan’s database. He’d never be able to set foot inside a casino again, much less work for his father. He was mad, and Pash knew it.

“Very sorry,” Pash added.

14

Out of the corner of his eye, Amin watched Gerry come up to the table, grab his chips, wish everyone good luck, and walk away. Their eyes never met, yet Amin knew what was happening.

Gerry was running out on him.

Amin continued to play. Back in his country, men who broke their promises were made to pay, and often lost a hand, or an eye. Not here in America. It was the thing about Americans that he hated the most. They would change their minds, and their allegiances, whenever it suited them.

He glanced down at his chips. He’d been keeping a running track of his winnings in his head. Over six thousand dollars. It was a lot of money, but he needed to make up for the bag of chips he’d left in the stripper’s townhouse the day before.

Kris. Another traitor. Like Gerry, her job had been simple. Every few days, she brought Amin’s chips to the casinos and cashed them in at the cage. If anyone questioned her—and someone usually did—she would say that she received them as tips. Strippers did it all the time, and the casinos accepted it.

Only Kris had decided to pull a fast one. She wasn’t willing to accept 10 percent as her take. She wanted 20. When Amin protested, she’d threatened him.

“My boyfriend will beat you up,” she’d said, lying on the couch in her townhouse. She always wore crummy clothes when Amin came over, saving the G-string and slutty makeup for her customers. “He’ll put the screws to you.”

“Your boyfriend?” Amin had said skeptically.

“Yeah. Pete Longo. He’s a cop.”

Amin had tried to play it cool. He didn’t think a cop would be stupid enough to date this woman. Sitting on the arm of the couch, he’d said, “Ten percent is standard. Come on.”

“I want twenty.”

“I can find another girl.”

She lit up a joint and blew the disgustingly sweet smoke in his face. “Do that, and I’ll tell Pete what you’re doing.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “There is no Pete Longo.”

Kris went into the bedroom and returned with a digital camera. Loaded into its memory were a dozen pictures of her and her beau, a monster of a man with a balding head and a wedding ring and a loose smile that spelled trouble.

The last picture in the camera was of an open wallet. It showed a detective’s badge and photo ID. It was the same man in the photo. Pete Longo.

Amin liked to wear his shirt out of his pants, and he’d reached beneath it and drawn the .357 he’d purchased with Gerry Valentine’s credit card that morning. Seeing it, Kris had nearly choked.

“Amin, I was only—”

“Joking?”

Kris smiled. “Yeah.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She offered to have sex with him, as if fucking would lessen the betrayal. They’d gone into the bedroom, and he’d watched her undress and fold her clothes neatly and lay them in a pile. Then she lay on the water bed and motioned for Amin to join her.

She was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The tiny brain that hung between his legs wanted to have sex with her, and he’d started to undo his pants.

Then he caught himself. He couldn’t do it, not even in a moment of weakness. Screwing Kris would be the beginning of the end. She would destroy his resolve, and then he’d be lost. Lying on top of her, he’d pressed the .357 against her rib cage and pulled the trigger, killing her, as well as his desire to have her.

He snapped back to the present. The pit boss was standing behind the table, whispering to the dealer. The dealer nodded, then removed the cards from the shoe and added them to those in the discard tray.

“What are you doing?” Amin asked.

“Shuffling up,” the dealer replied.

The dealer was starting the game over. It was called preferential shuffling, and a favorite method of casinos to thwart card-counters. It meant he’d been spotted by MGM surveillance. Rising, he scooped up his chips, and left the table.

The MGM had four exits. His rental was parked behind the casino, so he took the escalator down to a subterranean mall, and walked past the shops to the exit. The mall was filled with people, and he overheard someone say that a computer convention was in town. Reaching the exit, he spied a destroyer standing by the glass doors, and felt himself shudder.

Most of the big casinos employed destroyers. Their job was to guard the exits and thwart card-counters and cheaters from entering. They worked off hot tips and were financially rewarded when they nailed an undesirable.

The MGM’s destroyer was black and built like an American football player. He had a tiny walkie-talkie headset and was talking rapidly. His eyes suspiciously brushed Amin’s face. Then he stepped forward and tapped Amin’s shoulder.

“Don’t touch me,” Amin said loudly.

The destroyer dropped his hand. “Let’s see some ID.”

“You don’t have any right to ask for my ID,” Amin said.

“Let’s step outside.”

Amin followed the destroyer through the glass doors. The destroyer stopped, and whipped out his wallet from his back pocket. He was going to read from a card and inform Amin that he was trespassing. Then he would tell Amin never to step foot on MGM property again. Amin would agree and walk away. He’d done it many times, and saw tonight as nothing special.

Only the destroyer had a funny look in his eye as he read from the card. He cocked his head, as if trying to get a better look at Amin through the disguise.

“Don’t I know you?”

Amin turned and began walking toward the garage. He knew his rights. He hadn’t broken a single law. The MGM couldn’t back-room him, like they could with a suspected cheater. They can’t touch me, he told himself as he fled.

He heard the destroyer keeping pace behind him. This was unusual. He saw a couple walk past and cast him a suspicious look.

“I’m talking to you, brother,” the destroyer said.

Amin knew that certain casinos routinely beat up counters. Bart had said it was what had driven him out of the business.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the destroyer said.

He sounded like a cop. A lot of the casinos hired ex-cops to be destroyers. Still walking, Amin removed his hand from his pocket and let his car keys dangle from his fingertips. “Just my keys,” he said.

He stopped at the garage’s stairwell. He couldn’t remember on which level his rental was parked, and didn’t want to go to the wrong floor.

The destroyer was right behind him. He came up, and pointed an accusing finger in Amin’s face.

“I know you.”

The third floor, Amin thought. He’d parked in the middle aisle on the third floor. He started up the stairs.

The destroyer grabbed him by the shoulder, and shoved him into the wall. Then he tore away Amin’s beard and baseball cap. For a long moment, he stared.

“You.”

Amin’s keys were also a weapon. A little treasure he’d picked up during his travels. He squeezed the ring, and a stainless-steel three-inch blade popped out. In one swift downward motion, he sliced the destroyer’s throat.

The destroyer staggered backward in the stairwell. The blood flowing down his neck shone brightly against his black skin. Amin’s aim was good; he’d cut an artery. He raced up the stairs to the third floor and quickly found his car.

Climbing in behind the wheel, he felt his heart beating wildly and took several deep breaths. This was the closest he’d ever come to being caught. Hearing the engine turn over, he screeched backward out of the spot.

The car hit something solid. He threw the vehicle into park and jumped out. The destroyer lay face down on the asphalt behind the car, his legs quivering.

Amin’s eyes found the long ribbon of blood running back to the stairwell. For a long moment, he wrestled with what that meant. What type of man chases someone when he is dying?

Amin thought he knew. Bending over the destroyer, he pulled his wallet from his pocket. No ID. That was odd. He searched his other pockets. In the destroyer’s inner jacket pocket, he found a second wallet, designed to hold business cards. The ID was in there. Amin stared at it, felt himself shudder.

The destroyer was an FBI agent.

Amin backed over him a second time, then drove away.

15

Valentine had killed his evening cruising the Strip in his rental, looking for Gerry.

It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, but sometimes that approach worked. As a kid, he’d read an O. Henry story about a boy who sees his father’s murder, grows up to become a cop, and asks for the beat outside the New York Public Library, his reasoning being that the killer would someday walk past. The killer eventually did, and justice was served.

It was nine thirty when he walked into the Acropolis. Grabbing a house phone, he called upstairs to the surveillance control room and asked for Wily. Friday nights were when casinos made hay, and most security heads worked double shifts.

Wily came on a minute later. “What’s up?”

“I want to get my room changed, just in case that guy I tangoed with earlier gets any more stupid ideas,” Valentine said.

“No problemo.”

“I also want to disappear from the hotel computer.”

“You think someone in the hotel told that guy what room you were in?”

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Valentine said.

He heard Wily’s fingers tap a computer keyboard. “Done. I put you in the penthouse, Suite Four. Nick said you agreed to look at the tape of Lucy Price. Mind if I send it up?”

“Go ahead,” Valentine said.

He got a key from the front desk and went upstairs. His new suite faced west and afforded a perfect view of the Strip. He called room service, ordered a cheeseburger and fries. His food arrived at the same time as the tape of Lucy Price.

He ate his dinner while sitting on the balcony. He’d left his cell phone on, and now the battery was running down. Every time it beeped, he thought it was his son calling. He stared down at the thousands of people milling on the sidewalks. Gerry was down there; he could feel it in his bones.

He finished his dinner, then went into the suite and popped the tape into the VCR. Going into the kitchen, he grabbed a Diet Coke from the mini fridge and drained half the bottle. He’d read somewhere that artificial sweetener was bad for you, and he imagined that after he died, a doctor was going to cut him open and discover that every artery in his body was clogged with the stuff.

Then he sat a foot away from the giant-screen TV and stared at Lucy Price.

The pang of recognition he’d felt on the balcony that morning returned. Like being stabbed with a beautiful memory. The tape was black and white, and showed Lucy and two men sitting at a table playing blackjack. Lucy was winning, and the look on her face was pure joy.

He took another swig of soda. Caffeine had a way of making him think clearly, and he watched the cards fly around the table. Lucy acted like she’d never played before, consulting a laminated Basic Strategy card each time she needed to make a decision. Valentine found himself smiling. She really was a beginner.

Basic Strategy for blackjack had been developed by a mathematician named Ed Thorp. It was the optimal way to play every hand, based upon the dealer’s “up” card. Lucy would stare intently at the dealer’s “up” card, then consult her Basic Strategy card.

It was comical to watch. Every time Lucy had to make a decision, the game came to a screeching halt. Casinos let players use Basic Strategy cards because the house still held a minimum 1.5 percent edge. It was enough to beat the daylights out of anyone.

Except Lucy.

After ten minutes, her pile of chips had grown by several thousand dollars. Only Lucy wasn’t on a hot streak. She was just winning a few more hands than normal. Since she was betting five hundred dollars a hand, her winnings were adding up. Just a few hands was making a big difference.

What the hell, he thought.

Fifty minutes later, Lucy was up five grand.

Wily had said that Lucy had won a total of twenty-five grand, which meant she’d beaten them for five hours straight. Valentine found himself shaking his head. Somehow Lucy had changed the game’s odds to be in her favor, and she was cleaning them out.

He killed the power on the VCR. Then he went onto the balcony and stared down on the neon city. The Strip had kicked into high gear, and he tried to guess how many people were down there. Five thousand? Ten? It was like trying to guess the number of ants in an anthill. Inside, he heard someone knocking on his door.

He crossed the suite and stuck his eye to the peephole. Wily stood outside, an empty cocktail glass in his hand. He looked three sheets to the wind.

Valentine hated drunks. His father had been one, and slapped him around when he was a kid. Then he’d grown up and paid his father back. In people who drank he saw weakness, and little else.

He let Wily in and offered him a chair. The head of security reeked of scotch, and he tried to keep the contempt out of his voice.

“What’s up?”

“Look at the tape yet?” Wily asked, smothering a belch.

“Yeah. I’m surprised you let her play so long.”

“You think she’s cheating?”

Valentine thought back to the tape and chose his words carefully. “It’s definitely not on the square. She always wins the big hands. Did you notice that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Whenever Lucy Price doubled down, she won. Whenever she split pairs, she won. That’s why she beat you silly. She won the important hands.”

A pained expression crossed Wily’s face. “You tell Nick that?”

“I haven’t told Nick anything. My guess is, you saw her reading the Basic Strategy card and pegged her a sucker. When she won a few grand, you credited it to beginner’s luck. When she got way up, you figured she was on a hot streak and would eventually fall back to earth. Am I right?”

Wily stared into his glass. He seemed surprised that it was empty.

“You should have been a mind reader,” he said.

Valentine found himself feeling sorry for him. Bad losses often cost security heads their jobs. He said, “Forty-nine out of fifty pit bosses would have done the same thing you did, and let Lucy Price continue to play.”

Wily brightened. “Is that what you’re going to tell Nick?”

“Yes. Tell me something. Did you interrogate the dealers who worked Lucy’s table during her streak?”

“I did better than that,” Wily said. “I had them polygraphed.”

“And?”

“They came out clean.”

Valentine leaned back and stared at the drunken head of security. Novice blackjack players did not win twenty-five grand placing five-hundred-dollar bets. The odds just weren’t there for it to happen. He hated to be stumped, and this had him stumped.

“I need to talk to this woman,” he said.

Wily gave him a scornful look. “How you going to do that?”

Valentine thought about the little dance on the balcony that morning. He couldn’t deny the magnetism he’d felt when he’d held her in his arms. But that wasn’t going to stop him from figuring out what she was doing. If Lucy was cheating, he would make her pay.

“Easy,” he said. “I’ll call her.”

He had no trouble getting Lucy’s phone number. She was a slot queen, and played in slot tournaments held by the large casinos. That meant her name, address, phone number, and preferences were stored in their databases. Calling around, he’d gotten a casino he did work for to give him Lucy’s number. It had been easy.

She had three numbers: work, home, and cell. He nestled the cordless phone into the crook of his neck and debated which to call. There was a chance she was in a local hospital under psychiatric observation, but more than likely she’d been released and was home. Las Vegas was bad that way. It had the highest suicide rate in the country, yet the treatment that everyone subscribed to was to ignore the problem.

He decided to call her house. An answering machine picked up, her voice bright and cheery. “Well, hi there. You caught me at a bad time. Wait for the beep, and don’t forget to leave your number. Bye.”

The beep came a few seconds later. Clearing his throat, he said, “This is Tony Valentine calling for Lucy Price. We met this morning at the Acropolis. I was hoping—”

His words were interrupted by a piercing sound.

“This is Lucy Price,” a woman’s voice said.

“Hello,” he said stiffly.

“Do you believe in kismet, Mister Valentine?”

“It’s Tony. No, not really.”

“I do. I’m sitting in front of my computer, staring at your Web site.”

He didn’t know what to say. Putting up a Web site had been Mabel’s idea. Good for business, she’d assured him, and cheap. Only it made him uncomfortable as hell when he was on the phone with someone and she told him she was staring at his Web site. Trying to trip me up? he wanted to ask.

“So what do you think of my Web site?” he asked when they met for breakfast at ten o’clock the next morning.

“The graphics are cool. And the articles you wrote about casino cheating for Gambling Times were interesting, too,” she said. “I never realized that there was so much cheating going on.”

He was finding it hard to take his eyes off her. He’d woken up mad as hell that he hadn’t heard from Gerry. But those feelings had disappeared when he’d set eyes on Lucy. She was a symphony in blue—a powder-blue pantsuit, a blue bow in her hair, and light blue eyeliner. Had the Web site mentioned blue was his favorite color? If not for the dark circles beneath her eyes, he would have found her beautiful.

He plunged a fork into his egg and watched the yolk burst. He had suggested breakfast, having remembered an advice column in a newspaper saying that it was a neutral meal. Lucy had agreed, and now they were sitting in the recently opened breakfast shop at Caesars Palace. She poured skim milk over a bowl of granola, then raised a spoon to her lips.

“How much is Nick paying you to check up on me?” she asked.

He blinked. Her voice hadn’t changed, but her eyes had.

“Nothing. I’m doing it as a favor.” Her eyes were burning a hole into his face, but she was still eating. He bit into his toast and said, “It’s an interesting case. You believe Nick robbed you, and Nick thinks you cheated him. Nick’s a square guy—I’ll vouch for his honesty. So that would mean you’re a cheater. Only I watched a surveillance tape of you playing blackjack, and I don’t think you are. Which means both of you are wrong.”

Lucy’s spoon hit her bowl with a plop. “How’s that possible?”

“Someone else is involved. What’s the expression? Playing both sides for the middle? I think that’s what is going on here.”

“Which makes me a dopey dame who got suckered and didn’t see it coming,” she said, standing and throwing her napkin into her bowl. “Thanks a lot, Tony.”

Embarrassed, he stood up. Only his pants didn’t come with him. He grabbed them by the waist and tugged. She smirked inconsiderately.

“Airline lost my luggage,” he said stupidly.

“So buy yourself another pair. It’s called shopping. Ask your wife.”

His mouth went dry. “Who told you I was married?”

“Your Web site has your name, and your son’s.”

“My wife died of a heart attack two years ago.” He saw something in her face change. A chink in the armor. He said, “She used to buy my clothes, pick out the colors. I don’t think I own anything that she didn’t buy me.”

“Except those pants,” Lucy said. “You an odd size?” He nodded and she said, “So was my ex. Look, Tony, I don’t know where this conversation is headed, but all I really care about is getting my twenty-five thousand dollars back. If you can’t help me, then shove off.”

Her voice had turned harsh. This was Lucy the gambler, and he didn’t like it.

“That’s pretty inconsiderate,” he said.

“Just because you talked me off that balcony doesn’t mean I owe you anything.”

“I wasn’t helping Nick when I met you,” he replied.

She had to think about what that meant. His breakfast was getting cold, and he sat back down, picked up his fork, and resumed eating. To his surprise, so did she.

The best thing about getting old was you appreciated how precious time was. They decided to start over. Lucy went first.

She’d grown up in Cincinnati. At seventeen, she drove to Las Vegas with her belongings tied to her car, became a dental hygienist, got hitched, had two kids, got divorced, and lost custody to her ex. She’d played slot machines for relaxation. She called her current financial situation “a setback.”

Then it was his turn. His life was no movie—he’d been a doting husband, a good cop, and a so-so father, according to his son—and she stopped him when he’d said he was retired. “I know this is none of my business, but how old are you?”

“Sixty-three.”

“I would have guessed fifty-three. I’m fifty-two.”

He saw her smiling. It was starting to feel like a date, and he decided to put the conversation back on track. “After my wife died, I started consulting. Back when I was a cop in Atlantic City, I had this knack for catching cheaters. I could pick one off the floor, even if I didn’t know what he was doing. Hustlers call it grift sense.”

“How can you spot a cheater, if you don’t know what he’s doing?”

“Cheaters are actors. They know the outcome, so they have to fake their emotions. That’s the hardest part of the scam.”

“You can tell the difference between a realie and a phony?”

“That’s right.”

“So what am I?”

“A realie,” he said.

He saw her smile again, and motioned to the waitress for their check.

They left the coffee shop. Of all the joints in Vegas, he had a soft spot for Caesars. There was live entertainment everywhere you looked, plus beautiful statues, Olympian wall art, and a staff that made visitors feel special.

They stopped at the Forum Shops. A sign for the TALKING ROMAN GOD SHOW said the next performance was in ten minutes. He’d seen the show before. Animatronic statues of Roman gods narrated a wacky story to the accompaniment of lasers and booming sound effects. It was brainless, yet lots of fun.

They found an empty bench. Lucy sat sideways, her knee almost touching his. It was hard to believe she was the same woman he’d met yesterday. She’d bounced back quickly from the edge of despair.

“How can you tell I’m a realie?”

“I don’t think Sharon Stone could fake the emotion I saw on the tape of you winning at blackjack,” he replied.

For some reason, this made her laugh. “Okay. If you could tell by the tape that I’m not a cheater, then why did you want to talk to me?”

She was grinning like a cat, and he wondered if she was trying to trap him into admitting there was an ulterior motive in him inviting her to breakfast. There wasn’t, so he answered her honestly.

“Because there are two things bothering me.”

Her smile faded. “Oh. What are they?”

“The first is the simple fact that you started with ten thousand dollars, and you ended up with twenty-five thousand of the casino’s money.”

“So? Aren’t people allowed to win sometimes?”

“They are, but not like that.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitated. Lucy was a gambler. Most gamblers thought they understood the games. They did, when it came to the rules and strategy. But few understood the math, especially when it came to winning and losing. In that department, just about everyone who gambled was a sucker. He stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

He bought stationery in the gift shop. When he returned to the bench, a guy with a bad dye job and lots of gold chains was putting the moves on Lucy. Seeing him approach, the guy shrugged and left. Valentine sat down and tore the plastic off the paper.

“All right,” Lucy said, “show me why I’m not supposed to win.”

He drew a chart on a piece of paper. It was the same chart he used when he gave talks at Gamblers Anonymous. Finished, he turned the paper upside down. Her eyes locked onto the page.

THE REAL ODDS Objective: Double your money before going broke. Player starts with $200 and makes single-dollar bets. Game is blackjack, with house holding 1.4% advantage. # of Hands Played The House Edge 1x 50.7% 5x 53.5% 10x 57% 20x 63.8% 50x 80% 100x 94% 200x 99.7%

She lifted her eyes from the page. “Is this for real?”

“Afraid so,” he said.

“But how can the casino’s edge increase? Doesn’t it always stay the same?”

“For each hand, yes.”

“So the edge doesn’t change.”

“No, but it eats into your bankroll. The edge gives the casino one-point-four cents of every bet you make. You lose gradually, which makes your objective of doubling your bankroll impossible. The more bets you make, the worse it gets. It’s what pays for this place, and every other place in town.”

“The edge,” she said.

“That’s right. Over the long haul, you can’t beat it.”

“Only I did. Did I get lucky?”

He pointed at the top of the chart with his pen. “Luck is betting all your money on a single hand. The first bet, you’re playing nearly even with the house. If you win, that’s luck. You played for five hours, and won over fifty percent of your hands. Luck had nothing to do with it.”

She drew back into herself, not sure where the conversation was headed. “You said there were two things bothering you. What’s the second?”

He hesitated. Lucy caught it, put her hand on his knee and dug in her nails hard. Grimacing, he said, “Your story sounds like a fairy tale. You never played blackjack before. Well, why did you play? My guess is, someone talked you into it.”

A startled look spread across her face.

“I also think this same person staked you ten grand. He talked you into playing blackjack at the Acropolis. You had a deal with him.”

“Why do you think someone staked me?” she asked, growing angry. “Why couldn’t it have been with my money?”

Because you owe money all over town he would have said to anyone else sitting on that bench. Only he didn’t want to hurt this woman. She’d been through enough.

Her hand was still on his knee. He rested his hand on hers.

“Greasy guys with diamond pinkie rings bet five hundred a hand,” he said. “Or oil tycoons wearing Stetsons. But a novice playing her first time? A hundred a hand I could live with. Not five hundred. Someone told you to do that.”

He saw the flicker of understanding register on her face. He was on to her, and she knew it. “Lucy, please, level with me. Who staked you? What’s going on?”

“I . . . can’t tell you that.”

“Please.”

She shook her head. “I have to go.” She jerked her hand free of his grasp and abruptly stood up. She walked away quickly, purse clutched to her chest, eyes scared.

“Lucy—”

“No!”

He saw the guy who’d been hitting on her emerge from one of the Forum Shops. Walking over, he tried to start up a conversation. Mister-Never-Give-Up. Lucy stopped long enough to slap him in the face, the harsh sound reverberating across the Forum’s domed ceiling like a gunshot.

16

Taking cabs in Las Vegas was a waste of time, so Valentine hiked back to the Acropolis. It was only three blocks, plus the long walk down Caesars entranceway. The casino had moving sidewalks to bring people in, but not out.

The air was brisk and clean, the sun a metallic sliver in the vivid sky. He walked quickly, wanting to burn off the bad feelings weighing him down. Lucy was somehow involved in this scam, and he didn’t want her to end up getting hurt. He normally didn’t feel that way about cheaters, and found himself trying to rationalize his feelings. She didn’t seem to be a part of a gang, and was probably just a patsy. She was being taken advantage of, he decided.

He strode past the entrance, the sun’s harsh rays showing every crack and paint chip. Behind the dreams there was always a harsh reality. Lucy’s reality was that someone had staked her to play blackjack and pointed to a specific table. That same someone gave her a Basic Strategy card and told her to follow it. Wily had polygraphed the dealers who’d worked Lucy’s table. But that didn’t mean someone else wasn’t involved in the scam. Perhaps it was one of the other players. Or someone standing behind the table, out of the surveillance camera’s range. That person had engineered the scam and later stolen Lucy’s winnings from the safe in her room. It was the only possible explanation for what had happened.

He walked up the Acropolis’s winding entrance. A workman was scrubbing Nick’s ex-wives with a soggy mop, the soapsuds clinging to all the wrong places. Nowhere else in America could someone get away with this, he thought.

Going inside, Big Joe Smith pulled him into One-Armed Billy’s alcove, and he got his picture taken with a gang of tourists, autographed their visors and T-shirts, then left.

“Hey, Mister Celebrity,” Wily said when he entered the surveillance control room a minute later. He’d been watching on the monitors, and was laughing.

“I need to ask you some questions,” Valentine said.

“Your wish is my command.”

“The night you taped Lucy Price, did you film her from any other angles?”

“We filmed her from every angle but up her skirt,” Wily said.

“Was anyone standing around the table, watching her play?”

“There were a couple of people watching her, now that you mention it,” Wily said. “Think they might be involved?”

Valentine wanted to smack Wily in the head. Fifteen years working for Nick, and Wily was lucky he found his way to work every day. Lucy Price was an amateur. Other players never watched amateurs play.

“Yeah, I think they’re involved. Let me see the tapes.”

“No problem, Kemosabe.”

Wily went to the raised console that sat in the room’s center. The console was the casino’s version of central command. Sitting in front of a computer, he pecked a command into the console’s keyboard, then leaned back in his chair and waited for a response.

Since nearly being ripped off by Frank Fontaine, Nick had bought an advanced surveillance system called Loronix. Loronix recorded digitally and could hold seven days’ worth of film. The picture had a special watermark that showed any foul play or image altering after the fact. That way, the tapes would always stand up in court.

Wily pointed at the wall of video monitors. “Lucy’s on monitors one through four.”

Valentine crossed the room and stared. On the monitors, he saw two spectators watching Lucy play. A plump woman clutching a plastic coin bucket, and a skinny guy wearing a baseball cap and cheap shades. Wily edged up beside him.

“Recognize either of them?” Valentine asked.

“The woman’s a local,” Wily said. “She comes in and blows her Social Security check playing video poker.”

“Ever have any problems with her?”

“Naw. Wait. There was one time . . . she found a gold coin on the casino floor, thought it was Nick’s lost treasure. Got real upset when she discovered it was a piece of candy wrapped in tinfoil.”

Nick’s lost treasure was a part of Vegas lore. During one of his divorces, Nick had told a trusted employee to hide a cache of gold coins he’d bought from a treasure hunter. The coins were from a sunken Spanish ship called the Atocha, and worth a fortune. Nick’s employee had hidden the coins, then dropped dead from a heart attack. No map had been left, nor any clues leading to the coins’ whereabouts.

Valentine resumed staring at the monitors. The woman with the coin bucket left, leaving the man with the baseball cap. He was scruffy and hadn’t shaved in several days.

“Recognize him?”

Wily brought his face next to the screen. “No. Hard to see his face beneath the cap and the whiskers and the shades.”

“No kidding.”

“Think he has something to do with it?”

“Yes.”

They watched the scruffy guy for ten minutes. The man shifted his position and once walked away, but then came back. He was definitely watching Lucy play.

“See anything that doesn’t look right?” Valentine asked.

Wily was smart enough to know when he was being baited. He stared for another minute, then said, “I give up.”

“Take a look at his shoes.”

Wily did, and spotted the discrepancy immediately. “Cowboy boots made out of alligator or snake. Doesn’t go with the cheap sunglasses, does it?”

“No, sir.”

Wily trotted over to the master console and began typing. The picture on the monitor froze, and the man’s reptilian cowboy boots became enlarged. Valentine walked behind Wily, trying to figure out what the head of security was doing.

“What are you doing?” Valentine asked him.

A surprised look crossed Wily’s face. In a loud voice, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please. Something historic has just happened.” Ten technicians in the room collectively lifted their heads. “I just did something that Tony Valentine—the Tony Valentine—hasn’t seen before. Please mark down the date and time for future reference. Thank you.” Turning to his guest, he said, “Hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

“Just answer the question.”

“Loronix has this great feature. I can freeze an image—like this guy’s cowboy boots—and compare it to the last seven days’ worth of film on the computer’s hard drive. Loronix will find all the matches and pull them up. It’s a great way to gather evidence on someone.”

Valentine was stunned. He’d been given a demonstration of Loronix, and this feature had never been mentioned. He patted Wily on the shoulder and saw him smile.

“Good work,” he said.

A yellow light on the console began to flash. Wily punched in a command. The console had a small screen, and a bunch of gibberish appeared. Wily spent a moment deciphering it, then said, “Looks like our friend with the cowboy boots was in the casino twelve times in the last week. Want to look at him some more?”

“I sure do.”

Valentine returned to the wall of monitors. The retrieved films of the guy with the cowboy boots appeared on twelve separate screens. The guy was a stroller, and the films showed him walking around the casino, pausing occasionally to watch the action at roulette, blackjack, the craps table, and the Asian domino game called Pai Gow. Not once did he stop and actually play.

On one screen, he was standing at a pay phone. As he brought the receiver to his mouth, he lifted his face. The surveillance camera caught his profile, and Valentine felt a knot tighten in his stomach.

“For the love of Christ,” he said under his breath.

He stared across the room at Wily. Wily had been there the night the Acropolis had nearly gone down. “It’s Frank Fontaine,” he said.

“Fontaine’s in the slammer, doing thirty,” Wily replied.

“Look at him.”

Wily came over and put his face up to the monitor. “There’s a resemblance, but that’s it. Besides, this guy has a scar on his face.”

Frank Fontaine was the greatest casino cheater of the past twenty-five years. His scams were works of art, and always involved employee collusion. There was no doubt in Valentine’s mind it was him.

“You think I’m wrong?” Wily said.

“Yes.”

“Tony, you’re getting old.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to tell Nick.”

A look of apprehension crossed Wily’s face. “You really think it’s him?”

“Yes.”

Wily went to the console, punched in a command, then crossed the room to the laser printer in the corner. A printed sheet came out. He held it up so Valentine could see it. It was the photograph of Fontaine talking on the phone.

Walking over to a technician, Wily handed him the photograph and said, “Make a few hundred copies and distribute them to every employee. If anyone sees this guy, tell them to send up a flare.”

Valentine watched the technician leave. Then he looked at Wily. He hadn’t liked the crack about getting old. That was the thing he hated the most about Las Vegas. People didn’t stay your friend for very long.

Walking over to the printer, he removed Fontaine’s photograph and left without saying a word.

17

Mabel got up Saturday morning, fixed herself a fruit smoothie, and walked down the street to Tony’s house. She drank her breakfast while sitting at Tony’s desk, fielding e-mails and phone calls from panicked casino bosses that had come in the night before. In a business that never went to sleep, Friday nights were particularly hectic, and she spent an hour going through Tony’s messages. At ten o’clock the phone rang. It was Tony’s private line, and she snatched it up. It was Yolanda.

“Can you come over here?”

“Of course. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Yolanda said. “It’s about Gerry.”

“Be there in five,” Mabel said. She exited Tony’s e-mail, then shut his computer down. They lived in the lightning capital of the country, and leaving the computer on was an invitation for disaster. As she rose from her chair, the business line rang. She stared at the caller ID, then brought her hand to her mouth.

“Oh, no,” she said.

The caller was Richard Beamer, manager of the exclusive Liar’s Club in Beverly Hills. He had overnighted a certified check two days ago and been calling ever since. And she’d forgotten to tell Tony.

Beamer’s check lay on the desk. It was for three grand, Tony’s usual fee. She’d grown up during the tail end of the Depression and could remember eating three-day-old bread, and standing on line with a wooden bucket to scoop sauerkraut and pigs’ feet from a barrel. She answered the call.

“Grift Sense. Can I help you?”

“This is Richard Beamer. Did you speak to your boss?”

“He’s on a job in Las Vegas,” she said truthfully. “He asked me to take the information. Once he figures out what these cheaters are doing, he’ll call you.”

“They were here last night,” Beamer said. “The other members want them thrown out. My job is at stake.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“I can’t expel them without proof. They’ll sue the club.”

“What game are they playing?”

“Poker.”

Mabel had an idea and put him on hold. From the bookshelf, she removed one of Tony’s favorites: Poker to Win, by Al Smith. Tony said that 99 percent of the guys who cheated at poker used three scams described in the book: Top Hand, the Cold Deck, and Locating. She opened the book to the table of contents and picked up Beamer’s line.

“I’m back. Let me ask you some questions.”

“Is Mister Valentine going to call—”

“Do your cheaters sit beside each other when they play?”

“Why yes, they do,” Beamer said. He sounded like someone who’d had acting lessons, his voice animated. “How did you know that?”

“It’s common among cheaters. Now, does one of your cheaters always drop out of the game, and the other wins?”

Beamer gave it some thought. “No. Sometimes they both stay in.”

Mabel smiled. That ruled out playing Top Hand, which was the signaling between players of who had the strongest hand, with the weaker dropping out. “Next question. Have you seen either player spill a drink on his cards, and replace them with a new deck?”

Another pause. “Not that I can recall. Let me guess. The new deck is stacked so they’ll win.”

“Yes. It’s called a Cold Deck,” she said, reading from the book. “The cards are usually false-shuffled when they’re introduced into the game.”

“I would have noticed that,” Beamer said. “I’m a card player myself.”

“Last question. Have you noticed the cheaters comparing hands after they’ve both dropped out?”

Beamer didn’t hesitate this time. “Yes. They do that a lot. They’ll drop out of a hand and then compare the cards they had. I thought it was harmless.”

“They’re memorizing them,” Mabel said, having flipped to the section on Locating. “The next round, the cards are passed to one of the cheaters. He shuffles but doesn’t disturb the memorized cards. On the last shuffle, he adds twenty cards to the bottom, then offers them to his partner to be cut.

“His partner cuts at the memorized stack and brings the cards to the top. The cheater then deals. He plays a game like Seven Card Stud, where the first two rounds are dealt facedown.”

“The hole cards,” Beamer said.

“That’s right. By looking at their own hole cards, the cheaters work backward in their memorized stack and know the other players’ cards.”

“That’s it!” he exclaimed.

“It is?” Mabel said.

“That’s exactly what they’re doing,” Beamer said triumphantly. “They always play Seven Card Stud, where each player gets two facedown cards. You nailed it, Miz . . .”

“Call me Mabel,” she said.

“You nailed it Mabel,” he said. “Much obliged.”

The line went dead, and Mabel placed the receiver in its cradle. She picked up the Liar’s Club check and gave it a kiss, then remembered that Yolanda was waiting for her.

Mabel locked the door to Tony’s house and walked down the front path. It was a beautiful morning, the air crisp and infused with ocean spirits, and she crossed the street with a smile on her face.

Yolanda and Gerry lived across the street in a 1950s clapboard house. The house had a screened front porch and all the original fixtures and appliances. Having them in spitting distance—Tony’s words—wasn’t easy, but Mabel had come to the conclusion that family relationships rarely were. She pressed the buzzer, and the door opened.

“Hey,” Yolanda said. She wore a pink maternity dress, no makeup, her hair tied in a ponytail. Her brown eyes looked very sad.

“Sorry it took me so long,” Mabel said.

Yolanda ushered her inside, then padded noiselessly down the hallway to the back of the house. Mabel followed, glancing at the silent TV in the living room. It had a cartoon on, and there was a yellow legal pad in front of it. Yolanda had started watching the popular kids’ shows, and was rating them based on the level of violence and the content. She had decided that she was going to determine what her child watched on the boob tube.

Mabel stepped into the kitchen. It was small, with barely room for a breakfast table. She saw Yolanda moving a pile of medical books from the kitchen table.

“Let me help you with those.”

Mabel helped her put the books on the stove. Yolanda had been interning at Tampa General Hospital across the bay until she’d gone out on maternity leave. The hours were long, the pay lousy, and she was loving every minute of it. She pulled out a chair for Mabel, then took the one beside it.

“What did Gerry do now?” Mabel asked, sitting.

Yolanda let out an exasperated sigh while looking at the picture of Gerry on the table. He was dark and handsome, with a smile that could light up a room.

“He sent me an overnight package.”

“Is that bad?”

Yolanda rose from her chair and took a cardboard box off the counter. It had an OVERNIGHT label plastered on its side. She handed it to her.

Mabel peeked inside and felt her heartbeat quicken. She looked at Yolanda, and the younger woman nodded. Mabel removed a stack of bills and held them in her hand. Twenties and fifties, most of them wrinkled. She took out the other stacks. It looked like more than it was, but it was still a lot.

“Did you count it?”

Yolanda nodded. “There’s sixty-five hundred dollars in that box. I may have had a sheltered upbringing in San Juan, but I’m not dumb. Why didn’t Gerry send a check, or wire the money?”

Mabel knew the answer, but refused to say it.

“Because he stole the money, that’s why.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Mabel said. “You should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Yolanda stared into her guest’s face. “Tony sent Gerry to Las Vegas to learn how to card-count. I think it was a test. I think Tony wanted to see if Gerry could resist the temptation. And Gerry failed. He’s stealing from the casinos.”

“Card-counting isn’t stealing,” Mabel said.

“Call it what you want, it’s still wrong, and Gerry’s doing it.”

“But he’s only been in Las Vegas for five days,” Mabel reminded her. “He couldn’t have learned how to card-count that quickly. It’s more difficult than that.”

Yolanda considered it while staring at the stacks of money in Mabel’s lap. Lifting her eyes, she said, “Okay. If my husband isn’t card-counting, then what is he doing?”

It was a good question, and Mabel racked her brain for an intelligent answer.

“Let me know when you think of something,” Yolanda said, and walked out of the kitchen.

18

Valentine was still smarting over Wily’s crack when he walked into his suite a few minutes later. What did getting old have to do with his vision? He knew a crook when he saw one, and the man on the surveillance tape was the biggest crook of all.

An envelope with his initials was propped on the coffee table. He tore it open and saw it was from Nick.

Hey Jersey Boy,

Bart Calhoun is the invisible man. All my spies could dig up was his cell #. Sorry.

NN

Bart’s cell number was at the bottom of the page. Valentine got a soda and went onto the balcony, his mind wrestling with how to handle this.

He and Bart had a history. In 1980, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission had decided to try an experiment and let card-counters play blackjack at Atlantic City’s casinos. The result had been the immediate loss of millions of dollars. The experiment was halted, and the counters left town.

Except for Bart. Bart liked the little city by the shore, and devised a unique way to keep playing. He sent teams of counters into the casinos and had them sit at different blackjack tables. When a counter determined a table was “ripe,” a signal was given—usually the lighting of a cigarette. Bart would descend, bet heavily, and clean up.

Stopping Bart hadn’t been easy. Technically, he wasn’t counting, so barring him wasn’t an option. Valentine had solved the problem by contacting the IRS and making them aware of the gigantic sums Bart was winning. They had swooped down like vultures, and Bart had run.

Most counters had phenomenal memories, and he was sure Bart remembered him. The question was, was he holding a grudge? There was only one way to find out. Going inside, he found the cordless phone and dialed the number on Nick’s note.

“Who’s this?” a husky voice answered.

“Hi. My son is enrolled at your school, and I need to speak to him.”

“How’d you get this number?”

“A friend gave it to me.”

“Who’s that?”

Valentine had learned that when you were bullshitting someone, it was best to tell as few lies as possible. “Nick Nicocropolis.”

There was a long pause. “What’s your son’s name?”

“Gerry.”

The sound of a match being struck against a flint crackled across the phone line.

“What’s this about?”

“His wife is going to have a baby.”

Calhoun snorted. “Figures. She’s been calling him every ten minutes. Hold on.” He put him on hold, then returned a few moments later. “Most of my students stay at the Red Roost Inn while they’re here. It’s in Henderson. 702-691-4852.”

Valentine thanked him and started to write the number down.

“Mind answering a question, mister?” Calhoun asked.

“Not at all.”

“Is this Tony Valentine I’m speaking with?”

Valentine stopped writing. He hated it when people he’d once chased got the goods on him. “Yeah. What did Gerry do? Use his real name when he registered?”

“Naw, he used a phony,” Calhoun said. “He just looks like you. It’s a funny world. You ran me out of Atlantic City, and now your son is learning to be a crook.”

“Hysterical,” Valentine replied.

Calhoun hung up on him. Valentine smiled, happy he’d gotten in the last jab. He punched in the number for the Red Roost Inn.

Gerry was lying in bed in his motel room when the phone rang. He tried to imagine who it was. Yolanda? Or his father? He didn’t want to speak to either one, fearful of the tongue-lashing he knew was coming. Better to let his caller leave a message.

The ringing stopped. He waited a minute, then went into voice mail and found a message. His father, sounding pissed off.

“Your wife is worried sick, and so am I,” his father said. “I’m staying at the Acropolis. 611-4571. Suite Four. Call me when you get this. You hear me?”

Gerry realized he was grinding his teeth. Leave it to his old man to track him down. He’d call his father back, but not right away. He erased the message and climbed out of bed.

He took his time dressing. He hadn’t slept much, too worried by what had happened at the MGM Grand. There was no doubt in his mind that he’d gotten photographed, and that his face was now in a computer. His days of rat-holing chips for Amin and Pash were over.

But that didn’t mean they couldn’t make money together. He had an idea, a really good idea. But he needed to run it by Pash first. He went to the door that separated their rooms and knocked. Pash appeared, holding a toothbrush.

“Want to take a road trip?” Gerry asked.

“What do you have in mind?”

“A whorehouse.”

Pash smiled, the toothpaste making him look like he was foaming at the mouth.

“A wonderful idea,” he gushed. “Let me tell Amin.”

Gerry stared through the open door. Amin lay naked in bed, staring at the mute TV. He watched Pash tell him he was going out. Amin cast him a disapproving stare. Pash shrugged and went into the bathroom. A minute later he emerged with his hair freshly parted and smelling of aftershave.

Great, Gerry thought.

Pash pulled out his cell phone when they were on the road, and called a brothel. They were legal in every county in the state with less than four hundred thousand residents. Gerry pulled into a convenience mart and went inside.

When he came out, Pash was in the middle of a heated negotiation. Pash’s taste was for dark-skinned girls, and he knew to call ahead to avoid being disappointed. He also knew it was best to hammer out a rate before stepping foot in a place.

“Hey,” Pash said, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece. “The madam said she’ll give us a deal for two. What kind of girl you want?”

Gerry sucked on his Slurpee. He’d planned to take Pash to the brothel and pretend none of the ladies were to his liking. “I’ll decide when I get there,” he said.

“Come on, what do you want?”

“Do your own deal,” Gerry said.

“But—”

“I’m doing this for you, buddy.”

The words were slow to sink in. Pash’s face brightened. “You are?”

“Yeah,” Gerry said. “You need to get laid.”

Nevada had thirty licensed brothels, or ranches as everyone liked to call them. Pash had decided that he wanted to try the Chicken Ranch.

“Everyone says it’s the best,” he explained to Gerry.

It was in a burg called Pahrump, the town a shining example of what would happen if the nation’s gun laws were repealed. In Pahrump, rifles and shotguns were displayed in gun racks of every pickup, the locals proud of their Wild West heritage.

“There’s the sign,” Pash said excitedly.

A billboard loomed ahead. HIT THE GAS! THE WORLD-FAMOUS CHICKEN RANCH, FIVE MILES. They pulled into the gravel lot a few minutes later.

It resembled an oversized motel, with rocking chairs on the front porch and smoke pouring out of a stone chimney. As they got out, Gerry spied a surveillance camera perched beneath the corner of the building.

A plump, grayish woman greeted them at the door. She reminded Gerry of his Cub Scout den mother. It was a bad image to be carrying around inside a whorehouse, and he tried to erase it from his mind.

“You must be the fellow I spoke to earlier,” she said to Pash.

“That’s me,” Pash said brightly.

“You like dark.”

“That’s right.”

“Very dark?”

She made it sound like he was ordering chicken. Pash nodded vigorously.

“You came to the right place, young man. The Chicken Ranch was voted best brothel in Nevada last year. Best accommodations, best food, best bar, and best of all—”

“The best women,” Pash jumped in.

“You saw our ad.”

“Yes. Your Web site is very good, too.”

She slung her arm through Pash’s and escorted him inside. Gerry stayed two steps behind, grateful she hadn’t latched onto him. Maybe she’d spied the hesitation in his face, or the cowardice in his eyes. He and Yolanda had stopped having sex months ago, and he’d sworn he wouldn’t touch another woman.

Crossing himself, Gerry went inside.

Thirty minutes later, Pash was wearing a FRESHLY PLUCKED AT THE CHICKEN RANCH T-shirt while eating pancakes at a diner down the road.

“Why did we have to leave so fast?” he asked.

Gerry blew the steam off his coffee. “You see all those cameras?”

“What about them?”

“Brothels are like casinos. The state makes them have surveillance cameras. I didn’t want to stay in there any longer than we had to.”

Pash shoved a forkful of dripping blueberry pancake into his mouth. “You think the state is looking for us?”

“After that stunt last night at the MGM Grand? You bet they are.”

“This is not good.”

“You need to start playing in casinos that aren’t slick with their surveillance. Like up in Reno, and those dives in Mississippi.”

“How do you know which casinos are slick, and which aren’t?” Pash asked when he was finished eating. “Isn’t that information secret?”

Gerry pulled out a business card and slid it across the table. “It is secret. But he has access to it.”

Pash stared at the card. “Grift Sense? Who is Tony Valentine?”

“My father. It’s his business. He helps casinos catch cheaters.”

“Your father is a policeman?”

“Retired.”

“Do you work with him?”

“I’m his partner. I’m getting my cards next week.”

Pash tore away the paper napkin tucked in his collar. He suddenly looked scared. “Why are you telling me this? What do you want?”

Gerry smiled at him. “My father sent me to Bart’s school to learn card-counting. What I learned was, it’s a good business, and it isn’t illegal. There’s only one drawback, and that’s if you get photographed. Then you’re screwed.

“My father does consulting work for casinos all over the country. He knows which casinos have sophisticated surveillance equipment, and which don’t. Did you know that the Mississippi riverboats have the least amount of surveillance equipment?”

“Why is that?”

“The riverboats are made of wood and have certain weight restrictions. They cut down on the cameras and recording equipment so they can carry more passengers.”

“This is very valuable information.”

Gerry had gotten his attention, and leaned forward. “You and Amin have worn out your welcome here. You need to move to greener pastures, and I can help you.”

Pash fingered the business card and said, “How much do you want?”

“One-third, same as now.”

“Will you still rat-hole chips for us?”

“On weekends, sure. It will be a breeze.”

“A breeze?”

“Easy as pie. Your risk of getting caught will drop to zero.”

“You think so?”

Gerry nodded. He’d thought it out and saw no flaws in his plan. “There’s a brand-new casino opening every week. Most don’t know their ass from third base when it comes to spotting counters. I’ll tell you and Amin where those casinos are.” He smiled, saw Pash smile along with him. “You’ll be in fat city.”

“Fat city? Where is that?”

Gerry took out his wallet and paid for the meal.

“It’s right next door to heaven,” he said.

19

Valentine spent the morning on the balcony of his suite, enjoying the beautiful weather while waiting for Gerry to call him back. By noon, his patience had run out, and he called the Red Roost Inn. The manager answered sounding all out of breath.

“I hate to cause you work, but would you mind going to my son’s room and knocking on his door? I haven’t spoken to him in days. Save an old man from worry.”

The manager said sure and dropped the phone on the desk. Valentine found himself grinning. He’d never used the senior citizen angle before and was surprised at how well it worked. Maybe getting old wasn’t so bad.

“Room’s empty,” the manager said when he returned. “Your son came by earlier, asked if I had a road map he could look at. I think he was going to Pahrump.”

“Is that an animal, mineral, or vegetable?”

“It’s a little town up in the mountains, about an hour’s drive.”

“What’s the attraction?”

“Beats me,” the manager said.

Valentine thanked him, and hung up feeling mad as hell. There was no doubt in his mind that Gerry was avoiding him. Some days, he wondered why he wasted his time trying to help his son. Going back inside, he slammed the slider closed.

The surveillance photograph of Frank Fontaine lay on the dining room table, beside it the cordless phone. He’d been weighing calling Bill Higgins for several hours. Fontaine had cost Las Vegas’s casinos millions over the years, and Bill would start an investigation once he’d heard that Fontaine had ripped the Acropolis off.

What had stopped him from calling was Lucy Price. He’d left breakfast this morning convinced Fontaine had tricked her into participating in his scam. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, how had he done it? If he could find out, he might be able to save Lucy from getting hauled off to jail.

He removed the card with her phone numbers from his wallet, then picked up the phone. She’d left breakfast pretty angry, and he wondered if she’d take his call. There was only one way to find out, and he called her at home. She answered on the first ring.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

Lucy lived in a modest condo in the community of Garden Terrace in Summerlin, ten minutes from the Strip. He arrived at her front door at twelve-thirty, expecting to take her to lunch. She was wearing jeans and a faded red polo shirt. It was a great color on her.

“My turn, this time,” she said, ushering him inside.

The place wasn’t much to look at—a sagging couch, an ancient TV with rabbit ears, a few mismatched chairs, some art show prints on the walls—but she’d somehow made it feel like home. As he followed her into the dining room, he noticed an abundance of flowers and potted plants that tied it all together. She had a green thumb; something was blooming wherever he looked.

She’d set the dining room table for two. On it was a basket of toasted bread, a bowl of tuna fish, another of egg salad, a basket of potato chips, and two glasses of lemonade. It reminded him of the picnic lunches he and Lois had shared when they’d first dated. He pulled out Lucy’s chair.

“Such a gentleman,” she said, taking her seat.

He sat across from her. Staring into her eyes, he saw a slight puffiness. Had he made her cry earlier? He nearly asked her, then bit his tongue.

“How was your morning?” she asked.

He took two slices of toast when she offered him the basket, and made a tuna fish sandwich under her watchful gaze. “I watched some surveillance tapes.”

“Learn anything?”

She wasn’t touching the food, preferring to watch him. He always got hungry when he was working, and he nodded and bit into his sandwich. The tuna fish was spicy, just the way he liked it. He finished the sandwich, then helped himself to the potato chips. Her eyes never wavered, and once he saw her start to grin, only to see it fade.

“That was good,” he said. “You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”

“I wanted to see you again,” she said.

The words had a more powerful effect on him than he would have liked. Being married forty years, he’d taken for granted that there was a woman in his life who wanted to see him again. Losing that had been one of the hardest things he’d ever endured.

“Oh,” he said.

“I have something for you,” Lucy said.

He followed her into one of the bedrooms. It was as Spartan as the rest of the house, with none of the furniture matching. On the bed lay three pairs of men’s pants, one tan, one black, one brown. She said, “My ex’s. Don’t know why he left them behind, maybe to remind me of something.”

Valentine checked the labels. Waist 35, leg 34. His size. Lucy said, “If any of them fit, they’re yours,” and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. For a long moment he stood there, not knowing what to make of the offer, and then realized she was just trying to be nice. Taking off his pants, he began trying the clothes on.

The black pair fit just right.

He appraised his reflection in the vanity. Black had always been his best color. A strange thought occurred to him. Lucy resembled his late wife in many ways. Did he bear any resemblance to her ex-husband?

He looked around the room for a picture. On the dresser he spied a plastic frame, turned facedown. He picked it up. It was of Lucy, taken several years ago. Her hair was frosted, but otherwise she looked the same. She was holding a giant check and smiling. The check was from the Flamingo casino, and made out to her for $250,000.

He stared at the picture for a long moment. In his mind’s eye, he saw her at the Flamingo, sitting in front of a slot machine, the reels showing JACKPOT and the machine going bonkers. Saw her jump up and down and scream. Felt all her joy.

It answered all the questions he’d had about her. He put the picture back the way he’d found it and walked out of the bedroom. He found her on the couch in the living room, leafing through a glossy magazine. Before he could sit down, she made him walk in front of her, and nodded her head approvingly. “That’s much better. Those other pants made you look—”

“Like an old geezer?”

“Frumpy,” she corrected. “These make you look sexy. Wish they’d made my husband look that way.”

Sexy. He couldn’t remember anyone ever describing him that way before, and he wasn’t sure he believed her. The couch sagged as he sat down. She threw the magazine to the floor and turned sideways. He tried to think of a tactful way to say what he wanted to say, only he’d never been good in that department, so he just spit it out.

“I just had an epiphany,” he said.

“I thought only Joan of Arc had those.”

“I’ve had them since I was a kid,” he explained. “I’ll look at something that doesn’t make sense, and my brain will turn it upside down, and then it does make sense.”

“Are they accompanied by bolts of lightning and clashes of thunder?”

He shook his head. “Nothing that dramatic.”

“Are you going to share yours?”

“It’s about you.”

Her jaw tightened. “Well, then I guess I’m entitled to hear it.”

He put his hands into his lap, suddenly feeling uncomfortable as hell. Taking a deep breath, he said, “In the bedroom I saw a picture of you winning a quarter million bucks. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Was it your first time playing the slots when you won that jackpot?”

She drew back in surprise. “How did you know that?”

“It’s a common denominator among people who play a lot.”

“You mean among slot queens?”

He nodded, glad she’d used the expression first.

“Is that what makes us addicts?” Lucy asked, her voice serious. “We won big the first time and thought we had the magic touch?”

He nodded, and added, “Winning changes people.”

“I can buy that. Is that your epiphany?”

“There’s more.”

“Fire away.”

He took another deep breath, then said, “I need to explain something. Have you ever heard the expression takeoff agent?”

“No.”

“Cheaters use takeoff agents to win money at rigged games. Usually, they’re guys between thirty-five and fifty who like to gamble and resent the casinos for taking their money. Cheaters usually find them in casino bars crying in their beers.

“The cheater takes the guy to a poker game and deals him several winning hands. The guy’s behavior is scrutinized. If he passes muster, he finds out the game is rigged and the other players are part of the team. Then his role in the scam is explained to him.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Not long ago, you were playing slots at the Acropolis, and you met a guy. He’s a smooth talker and a real charmer. So smooth, you stopped wondering where he got the scar on his face.”

Lucy swallowed very hard.

“He’s a crossroader—he rips off casinos for a living. Somehow he knew you had the magic touch. He got talking to you, and asked you if you’d ever played blackjack.”

Valentine hesitated. He was guessing now, and waited for her to respond.

“Go on,” she said.

“You said no, you hadn’t. He told you about virgin luck—how people who play for the first time often win. You knew what he was talking about, because you’d won a quarter million at slots the first time.”

Lucy’s face had turned stone cold. He could no longer read her expressions or her feelings. He said, “He took out a Basic Strategy card and taught you how to play. Then he took out a deck of cards and dealt you several hands. And an amazing thing happened. You won every hand. He was so impressed, he offered to stake you. He gave you ten grand, and pointed at a blackjack table. If you won, you’d split the winnings. If you lost, you wouldn’t owe him a thing.”

He stopped because Lucy’s eyes told him to stop. She said, “How the hell do you know that? Were you spying on me the whole time?”

Valentine shook his head.

“Then explain yourself. And don’t give me any more cock and bull about having an epiphany. I stopped believing in that nonsense when I quit reading romance novels.”

He stared at the worn patch of carpet between his feet. He’d never been good at sugarcoating things, and he knew that he’d hurt her.

“He set you up. He turned you into his takeoff agent, only you didn’t know it.”

“How did he do that?”

“He’s a mechanic. When you first played, he dealt you winning hands. There was no luck involved.”

“But I saw him shuffle the cards.”

“Half the deck was stacked. He shuffled the half that wasn’t. You couldn’t lose, trust me.”

“Which makes me what? An unwitting shill?”

Valentine said “yes” in a soft voice.

“The blackjack table he told me to play at,” Lucy said. “He was real specific about which one. Was that game rigged as well?”

“Yes.”

“Someone else involved?”

He nodded.

“But you don’t know who?”

“No, but I plan to find out,” he said. He lifted his eyes. Lucy was seething, her face hard and unforgiving.

“I get it,” she said. “You’re like the Royal Canadian Mounties; you always get your man. That’s what drove you to call me. You wanted to nail him. You didn’t care about the money I lost.” She spread her arms and said, “See the Taj Mahal I live in? I barely scrape by. That money was going to get me back on track. It was my salvation.”

He didn’t know what to tell her. The money had never been hers. Only Lucy wasn’t willing to accept that. He felt bad for her even if she was a sucker, and said, “Can I ask you something? Why did you go along with him?”

“Because he said Nick was a bastard, and he had it coming,” she said.

Valentine blinked. It was Fontaine. He saw her rise from the couch.

“Get up,” she said.

He rose slowly, his hands unconsciously making a conciliatory gesture. She pointed at the front door. “Leave. And don’t ever call me again.”

“Lucy, I’m trying to help you.”

“Sure you are. The next thing I know, the cops will be banging on my door.”

At the door he turned, his mind struggling for something to say. “Thanks for the pants,” he blurted out.

The words hadn’t come out right, and he made it out of the house before she threw an ashtray at him.

20

Talking to women had never been his strong suit. He went back to the Acropolis and found the lobby jammed with gawking tourists. There was a photo shoot going on, and he elbowed his way through the crowd.

In the center of it all, Nick lay on the floor in a garish purple suit, surrounded by a sea of gold coins. Wanda stood behind him in a mermaid’s outfit, her breasts practically exploding over the top of the shimmering costume. Nick was getting in touch with his inner child, and waved gleefully at him.

“We need to talk,” Valentine said over the noise.

“Can’t you see I’m working?” Nick said. “These guys are from the Discovery Channel. They’re filming a show about lost treasures. They’re going to do a segment about my losing the gold coins from the Atocha. Wanda set it up.”

Valentine glanced at Wanda and saw her flash a smile. Was Nick implying that he’d actually married a woman with a brain? That would be a first.

“It’s about Frank Fontaine,” Valentine said.

“Let me guess,” Nick said. “He died in the joint, and you just had to tell me.”

“I saw him in your casino.”

To the anger of the Discovery Channel crew, Nick jumped off the floor, kicking the fake gold coins in every direction. Grabbing Valentine by the wrist, he dragged him into One-Armed Billy’s alcove and threw the chain up so no one could enter. Big Joe Smith remained passively on his stool.

“You saw Frank Fontaine in my casino,” Nick said, just to be sure.

“That’s right.”

“Is he involved with Lucy Price?”

“He set her up.”

“So what do I do?” Nick said anxiously.

“First, I need to figure out exactly how Fontaine ripped you off, and who on your staff is involved. Once I have evidence, I’ll call Bill Higgins and get the Gaming Control Board to make the arrests. You need to make a statement; otherwise, cheaters are going to think this place is a candy store.

“In the meantime, you personally need to start watching things. Start with the cage. If a customer tries to make a large withdrawal, you may want to hold things up and have a look.”

“Am I that vulnerable?” Nick asked worriedly.

Valentine nodded. Frank Fontaine didn’t scam casinos; he shut them down. A lot more money than Lucy Price’s twenty-five grand was at stake here.

Nick kicked the carpet in anger. “Turn your head for a second in this business, and somebody will pick your pocket.”

A woman wearing a DISCOVERY CHANNEL shirt appeared in the alcove’s doorway. She carried a clipboard and appeared to be in charge. “Nick, we need to wrap up the segment. Your customers are stealing the fake coins.”

She left, and Nick suddenly punched the air. “Fontaine wants a fight, he’s going to get one.” He looked at Valentine. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“Meet me in the surveillance control room in ten minutes.”

“Done,” Nick said.

Valentine went to the surveillance control room on the third floor and found Wily in front of the wall of video monitors. Wily had seen them talking on a monitor and knew there was a storm brewing. Valentine got him into his office, then shut the door so none of the other surveillance technicians could hear.

“Am I in trouble?” Wily asked.

“No, I left you out of it.”

The head of security smiled. “Thanks for the save.”

“That’s the good news. The bad news is, the guy I saw on the tape this morning is Frank Fontaine.” He let the news sink in, then continued. “Lucy Price is involved, although she didn’t know it up front. My guess is, Fontaine’s working a much bigger operation downstairs, and we’re only seeing a slice of it. How many times did the computer say Fontaine visited the casino in the past week?”

“Twelve,” Wily said.

“What games did he visit?”

“All of them.”

Valentine leaned on the edge of the desk. If Fontaine was working scams on every game, it meant he was using a small army of accomplices. To do that, he needed someone working with him in the surveillance control room.

“How many people you have working the monitors?” Valentine asked.

“Right now? Fourteen.”

“How many can you trust?”

Wily went into the next room and got a log sheet that showed who was working that shift. His eyes scanned the list of names. “Nine of these people I’d vouch for. The other five are new.”

“How new?”

“A month.”

“Send them home.”

“Right now?”

“Right now. And get their personnel folders while you’re at it.”

Wily went into the next room and sent the five employees home. He left the door ajar, and Valentine saw Nick enter the surveillance control room. The purple suit was gone, replaced by a black silk shirt, black silk trousers, and layers of thick gold chains. Nick was a retro man and proud of it. He found Valentine in the office.

“Let’s kick some ass,” the little Greek said.

Wily got his nine trusted employees to leave their stations and assemble in front of the video wall. All had been in Nick’s employ for ten years or more and had gray or white hair. At one time or another, Valentine had spoken with each of them. Their jobs didn’t pay great, but Nick gave them health insurance and a pension plan, so they hung around and kept things honest downstairs.

“I’ve been doing work for this casino for a while,” Valentine said. “I’ve made good money off Nick, so I think it’s time I give something back. I’m going to teach you how I catch crossroaders. It’s based on a system I developed in Atlantic City. I call it Logical Backward Progression, or LBP. It uses memory, and common sense. Everybody ready?”

Several faces in the group lit up. Others simply nodded.

“A few days ago, a blackjack player named Lucy Price won twenty-five grand at one of your tables. Based upon the astronomical odds against what happened, I’m convinced it was a scam. However, I don’t know how the scam worked. So I’m going to use LBP and examine what I do know.”

He picked up a legal pad from a desk, and a Sharpie, and began to write.

1. Lucy Price/beginner

2. Bets $500 a hand

3. Plays with a Basic Strategy card

4. Plays 5 hours straight

5. One other player at table

6. Also played 5 hours

7. Lost

8. Didn’t play Basic Strategy

Valentine put his pen down and handed the legal pad to the technician to his right. She read the page, then passed it to the next person. He waited until everyone was done, then said, “Based on these facts, what do we know?”

A technician named Nadine cleared her throat. She was from a former Soviet bloc country and had come to Las Vegas right after the Berlin Wall had fallen. Nadine had a knack for spotting improprieties in players. Not grift sense, but damn close.

“Her play is entirely predictable,” Nadine said.

“Because she’s playing Basic Strategy?”

“That’s right. In fact, Lucy Price really wasn’t playing her hands at all. The Basic Strategy card was playing her hands. She was just doing what the card told her to.”

“Why is this important?”

Nadine smiled. “The other player knew exactly what she was doing.”

Valentine wanted to hug her. It was so simple that it had flown right by him. The information was letting the other player at the table play Lucy’s hand. Cheaters called it playing early anchor. Valentine explained, and everyone smiled. Except Nick.

“What do you mean, the other guy’s playing her hand?” Nick said.

“I’ll show you, “ Valentine said.

The nine technicians crowded around the wall of video monitors. Wily brought up the tape of Lucy on the master console and beamed it onto every screen.

The tape showed the end of Lucy’s streak. Valentine watched the other man at the table. He sat to Lucy’s right and drew his cards before Lucy did. He was controlling the play.

Valentine waited for someone else to pick it up. Nadine again came to the rescue. She pointed at the same player.

“He’s playing Lucy’s hand,” she declared. “He knows which cards are coming out of the shoe. If Lucy has eleven, and the next card in the shoe is a ten, he won’t take it, giving Lucy the card so she wins her hand. Conversely, if he sees a scare card on top, say a four or a five, he’ll draw it, so Lucy won’t get it. He’s either helping her, or he’s protecting her. It gives Lucy an unbeatable edge.”

Nick was acting like his pants were on fire. “What the hell are you talking about? How the hell does he know which cards are coming out of the shoe?”

Nadine glanced at Valentine. She had an understated way about her that he’d always admired. Smart, but not a show-off.

“Be my guest,” Valentine said.

“The cards are marked,” Nadine explained. “The player sitting to Lucy’s right is controlling Lucy’s hand by drawing cards that will hurt Lucy, or standing pat when there’s a card that will help Lucy.”

Nick looked at Valentine. “How does Fontaine play into this?”

“He’s standing behind the table out of the camera’s range, directing the action.”

Nick looked at Wily. “Read my mind.”

Wily scratched his chin. “You want to know who delivers the cards to the table.”

“Boy, are you smart,” Nick said.

Going to the master console, Wily accessed the casino’s database, bringing the man’s name up within a matter of seconds. He whistled through his teeth. For a clue to jump out and bite Wily meant it was the size of an elephant, and everyone in the room waited expectantly.

“The guy’s new, too,” Wily said.

Within a matter of seconds, Wily pulled up the name of every new hire the Acropolis had made in the past three months. There were thirty names.

“Is that a lot?” Valentine asked Nick.

“Yeah, it’s a lot,” Nick said. “I should have seen it sooner.”

“Seen what?”

Nick was scanning the new hires’ employment profiles on the computer, and he pointed at the screen. “Everyone of them used to work at Sin. The place has only been open six months. Why are they leaving to come to work for me?”

Nick paused, as if expecting one of the technicians to suggest what a swell boss he was. When no one volunteered, he said, “It’s an invasion, that’s why. Chance Newman and Shelly Michael and Rags Richardson want to tear the Acropolis down and build a moving walkway that will connect their casinos to each other. My spies have told me. I know.” He shifted his gaze to Valentine. “So they hired Fontaine to put me out of business. I just don’t understand one thing.”

“What’s that?” Valentine asked.

“How the hell did they spring Fontaine out of the federal pen?”

The same question had been bothering Valentine. Chance and Rags and Shelly were powerful men, but that power didn’t extend to freeing murderers from prison. There was something else going on here, and he was determined to find out what.

“Let me see the files of those thirty new hires,” he said.