Loaded Dice

21

Mabel had always believed that the majority of the world’s problems could be solved with a good meal. So she took Yolanda to the Bon Appétit restaurant in nearby Dunedin, and they spent the afternoon watching the sailboats in Clearwater Harbor while sampling wonderful seafood appetizers. By the time the waiter brought the check, Yolanda was acting like her old self, and smiling again.

“I’m sure there’s an explanation for everything that’s happened,” Mabel said during the drive back to Palm Harbor. She saw Yolanda shift uncomfortably and couldn’t tell if it was the baby, or her fears about Gerry. “By the way, how would you like to sample the world’s best pound cake?”

“Only if you made it,” Yolanda said.

A few minutes later, Mabel pulled into Tony’s driveway. She baked several pound cakes every month, and always put one in Tony’s refrigerator. They were good warm, better cold, and Yolanda was smiling again when they sat down in Tony’s kitchen.

“I love eating for two,” she said, cutting herself a thick piece.

“Enjoy it while you can,” Mabel said.

The doorbell rang. Mabel found her shoes and walked through the house to the front door. The door had a glass cutout, and she spied an attractive male in a suit and tie on the stoop. Most of their visitors were delivery people who resembled rejects from a hostile alien planet. She unchained the door and pulled it open.

“Good afternoon. Can I help you?”

“Special Agent Timothy Reynolds of the FBI,” he said, holding up a laminated ID. He was about six-one and athletically built, with a cleft in his chin and eyes too small for his face. Mabel squinted at the ID, and he flipped his wallet shut.

“I’m looking for Tony Valentine. May I come in?”

The two statements did not go together, and Mabel felt herself stiffen.

“Tony is out of town, and no, you cannot come in.”

“I was being polite, ma’am,” he said.

He opened the screen door and put his foot deliberately inside the house. Mabel didn’t budge. Two months ago, a man from the swamps had entered the house and abducted her. She’d made it easy for him by turning her back. Never again.

“No,” she said firmly.

“Ma’am, by the powers vested in me—”

“My name is Mabel. Mabel Struck.”

“Ms. Struck, by the powers vested in me by the United States government, I’m asking you to please stand aside so that I may enter this house.”

“Where’s your subpoena?”

Reynolds paused, studying her. “Homeland Security Act. I’m sure you’ve heard of it?”

“Yes,” she said coolly. “I didn’t know that it meant that you could come to a private residence and, without stating what you wanted, barge unannounced into someone’s home. There happen to be other people here.”

“I told you what I wanted,” Reynolds said.

“And I told you, Tony isn’t here. Do you want to search the place?”

“I want you to step aside so that I may enter the house. Otherwise . . .”

Reynolds didn’t want to say it. Otherwise, he’d have to cite her for obstructing justice. Up close, he wasn’t a bad-looking young fellow. Nice teeth, strong jawline. His breath smelled like a mint, and she guessed he’d popped one into his mouth in the driveway. Not a beast, she decided.

She let him enter, then locked the door behind him. “I thought the FBI always worked in pairs,” she said.

“We do,” Reynolds replied.

Reynolds’s partner had come in through the back door. As Mabel entered the kitchen he introduced himself. Special Agent Scott Fisher. Another handsome, clean-shaven fellow in a suit and tie.

Reynolds pulled a chair out from the kitchen table. “Please, make yourself comfortable, Ms. Struck.”

Mabel remained standing. She glanced at Yolanda, who still sat at the table, and saw the frightened look on her face. Yolanda was equating the FBI’s appearance with something Gerry had done.

“These men are looking for Tony,” Mabel explained.

“Oh,” Yolanda said.

“Please sit down,” Reynolds said.

Mabel felt herself growing angry. Two men imposing themselves on two women, that’s what was going on here. Her rear end made a loud rhump! as she hit the chair.

Reynolds crossed the kitchen so he was standing beside his partner. He pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of his back pocket, flipped it open, and stared at his notes. “Here’s the deal, ladies. We need to talk to Tony Valentine, and we need to talk to him right now.”

“Good luck,” Mabel said.

When neither man said a word, she explained. “Tony considers cell phones one of life’s great nuisances. He rarely leaves his on, even when someone says they’ll call him.”

“Have you spoken to him recently?”

“Yes. A few hours ago.”

“Where was he calling from?”

“Las Vegas.”

“We know that. Where in Las Vegas? The FBI has been looking for him since yesterday. He’s not registered in any hotel.”

Mabel stiffened again. How did they know that? “He’s on a job. If you want to talk to him, leave a message on his cell phone. I’m sure he’ll get right back to you.”

Reynolds flipped his notebook shut. The nice-guy look had vanished from his face. “Are you his wife?”

“Office manager,” she replied.

“Are you aware that Tony Valentine wrote a letter right after 9/11, claiming the FBI was harassing Arab Americans living in the United States?”

Mabel nearly choked. “What?”

“And that he’s a suspect in the murder of a woman suspected of laundering casino chips for an Arab gambler, who’s also wanted by the FBI?”

Mabel shook her head, stunned.

“My partner and I are going to search the house,” Reynolds said. “We are looking for any correspondence between your boss and any Arab gamblers. We’re also looking for these.” From his pocket, he removed a casino chip and held it in front of Mabel’s face. It was brown, or what gamblers called a chocolate chip. “If you can help us in any way, please do so right now. Otherwise, I advise you to remain seated.”

“And if we don’t,” Mabel said.

“Then we’ll be forced to arrest you.”

He stared at Mabel with murderous intensity, then shifted his gaze to Yolanda. The younger woman looked petrified, and an alarm went off in Mabel’s head. Yolanda was as big as a house, yet neither man had mentioned it. Men always said something around a pregnant woman. Tony was always telling her to look for the little incongruities, and Mabel realized this was one. These men weren’t FBI agents. They were imposters.

“Do you understand?” Reynolds asked them.

The two women nodded their heads.

“Good,” he said.

Mabel knew who they were. They worked for a competitor of Grift Sense. The same competitor who’d tried to hack Creep File from Tony’s computer a month ago. Tony’s firewall had stopped them, so the competitor had sent these thugs.

“I’d like to see your credentials again,” Mabel said.

Reynolds glared at her.

“I didn’t have my glasses when you came to the door.” She picked them up off the kitchen table and put them on. “If you don’t mind.”

Reynolds shook his head. “No,” he added for emphasis.

“A real FBI agent wouldn’t refuse my request,” she said.

“Don’t push it,” Reynolds said.

It was all the proof Mabel needed. To Yolanda, she said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m parched. Want a cold drink?”

Yolanda said “sure” under her breath, her eyes glued to Reynolds’s face. Mabel thought of the burden of carrying the unborn, and what had to be going through her head. She rose from the table, looked casually at Reynolds and Fisher and repeated the question. She touched the refrigerator door, waited.

“Nothing for me,” Fisher said.

Reynolds grunted, “No thank you.”

Opening the refrigerator, Mabel removed the loaded Sig Sauer keeping the cottage cheese company. It had been Tony’s idea to put the gun there, instead of the hollow book in his study. It was the same gun she’d used two months ago to shoot her abductor through the heart. The therapist she’d gone to see had asked her if she felt revulsion toward the weapon. On the contrary, she’d told him. She kissed its barrel every day.

Pivoting on the balls of her feet, she aimed the gun at the two men and saw the life drain from their faces.

22

Valentine sat behind the desk in Wily’s office in the surveillance control room. The office was windowless and as dreary as a cave. Wily materialized in the doorway, clutching a stack of file folders to his chest.

“These are the personnel files of the new hires,” he said, placing the folders on the desk. “Nick’s right. It is as suspicious as hell they all flocked over here at once. I should have suspected something.”

Valentine started examining the files and saw that Wily had done a smart thing. He’d separated the employees by the games they worked. Of the new hires, four dealt blackjack, one was a pit boss, six dealt craps, six worked roulette, four dealt poker, six emptied slot and video poker machines, two worked the cage, and one was in finance.

Valentine closed his eyes. He was working with a big puzzle, and there were a lot of pieces here. He spent a minute sorting through them in his head. Then he opened his eyes. Wily was standing in front of the desk, waiting expectantly.

“What you got?” he asked.

“Nick said something interesting before,” Valentine said. “He said he knew that Chance Newman wanted to tear down the Acropolis and run a road through the property. That’s why Fontaine was brought in.”

“So?” Wily said.

“The Acropolis makes money, right?”

Wily smiled brightly. “Nick cleared six million last year.”

“Okay. Fontaine isn’t going to close Nick down by stealing twenty-five grand at blackjack. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Wily cast his eyes downward. Then, like a comic strip character, the proverbial lightbulb went off above his head, and he said, “What you’re saying is, we’re getting scammed at all our games.”

“That would be my guess.”

“But that would be obvious, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if it’s being hidden.”

Wily took a deep breath. The look of a man about to lose his job was no longer on his face. Now it was one of anger. He drew a file from the pile and held it beneath Valentine’s nose. It was the file for their new guy in finance.

“This joker’s hiding all the losses, isn’t he?”

“I think so,” Valentine said.

“So we’re getting bled to death.”

“Yes.”

Wily bit his lower lip. There was no way of knowing how bad the damages were until they started digging. Judging by the amount of time the thirty new hires had been employed by Nick, the chances were the losses were heavy. Nick might very well be ruined, and Wily knew it.

Valentine got up and patted the head of security on the shoulder. He saw the life come back to Wily’s face, but not much of it, and said, “Where is Nick, anyway?”

“Upstairs with Wanda.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nick’s a creature of habit. Time for his afternoon screw.”

Valentine had to give Nick credit. He knew things were bad, but he didn’t let it spoil his day. Pointing at the files, he said, “How many of these folks are working right now?”

Wily looked through the stack. “Sixteen.”

“Let’s figure out what they’re doing before we start pointing fingers. Don’t want Nick to get sued on top of everything.”

“Wouldn’t that be swell,” Wily said without humor. “Where do you want to start?”

“The catwalk,” Valentine said.

The Acropolis was one of the last joints in Las Vegas to have a catwalk. Back before computers dominated the world, every casino had a catwalk. Usually, they were cavernous spaces in the ceiling with a narrow walkway and a railing. Through two-way mirrors, security people had watched for cheaters. Valentine had made his chops on a catwalk, and still considered them the best thing going.

“Ready when you are,” he said to Wily.

“What game you want?”

“Craps.”

Wily had spread the personnel files across the catwalk. He pulled the files of three employees dealing craps, and Valentine thumbed them open. Each had a snapshot of the employee. All guys. One redhead, one bald, and a blonde who spent too much time sunbathing. Staring down, he quickly found them at the table.

Craps was a furious game. The three new hires were working different sides of the table. They seemed to be working the table hard. Too hard, he decided.

He scouted the faces of the other players. A flashy kid in an Armani suit was shooting the dice. On his coming-out roll, he shot a six. That made the point six. He needed to throw a six again before shooting a seven or eleven, and losing.

The flashy kid picked up the dice and shook them. A hot girl in a leather mini skirt was draped on his arm. The kid raised the dice to her lips, and had her kiss them for luck.

The kid lowered his arm. His hand hung over the girl’s pocketbook for a split second, and Valentine envisioned the dice secretly being dropped, and the loaded pair in his palm, called tops, invisibly replacing them. Tops had only three numbers on each die—in this case, the two, four, and six. With tops, the flashy kid would never roll a seven or eleven and crap out, and eventually roll a six. Because the human eye could only see three sides of a die at any single time, the gaff was undetectable.

Three rolls later, the kid won. Using a purse to switch dice wasn’t new. What Valentine didn’t understand was the three employees’ role in the scam. He decided to watch them closely. Wily did the same.

To his credit, Wily made the scam.

“They’re screwing the other players at the table,” the head of security said. Pointing at the redhead, he said, “He’s talking players out of making smart bets, where the odds are good, and steering them to making proposition bets, where the odds are terrible.”

“What’s the blonde’s angle?”

“He’s shorting the legitimate winners on the payoff,” Wily said. “He’s the banker. When he pays out, he cuts the chips on the table, then makes a giant stack out of the winnings and pushes them toward the winner, palming one in his hand.”

“And adding them back to the tray,” Valentine said.

Wily nodded. “He’s making the losses look less than they are.”

“Which is why no one up in the surveillance control room caught on,” Valentine said.

“Guys upstairs are trained to watch the stacks. If they get short, they get tense.”

“How about the bald guy?”

“The stick man? He’s getting the crooked dice off the table and switching them with a regular pair in his apron. If a floor manager strolls by and wants to look at the dice, they’ll be clean.”

Valentine pushed himself off the railing. He was positive similar scams were taking place at the other tables where the new hires were working, scams that required gangs of hustlers schooled in the art of subterfuge. It was a Frank Fontaine trademark, with Oscar nominations going to everyone involved.

“Give me the file on the finance guy,” he said.

Wily handed the file over. Valentine opened it and stared at the new hire’s picture. Albert Moss, age thirty-five, a curly-haired guy with a loose smile. Moss’s job was to check the daily financials and keep Nick appraised of the casino’s win–loss ratios. Only Moss wasn’t doing that. He was cooking the books and telling Nick that there was money coming in the door, when the money was really going out the door. He was painting a picture of financial stability, letting Nick spend his afternoons in the arms of his nubile young bride without a worry in the world.

“I’m going to go see Nick, tell him what’s going on,” Valentine said.

Wily hesitated. “You going to tell him I screwed up?”

Valentine whacked him on the shoulder with Moss’s file. “You didn’t screw up. So I won’t say that.”

Wily grinned. “Thanks, man.”

Nick’s office in the Acropolis was like his house: a testimonial to bad taste that had been converted into a Laura Ashley showroom. Nick’s secretary didn’t work on weekends, and Valentine walked unannounced into the great one’s office. It was empty.

He went to the door that led to Nick’s private bedroom. A DO NOT DISTURB sign hung from the knob. Screwing was to Nick what eating was to the rest of the world. If he didn’t get enough, there was no worse person to be around. Valentine tapped lightly on the door.

“Come on,” Nick called out.

He cracked the door open. The room was huge. Nick sat on a bed in his jockeys, clapping like a kid at his first baseball game. Wanda, who was stark naked, was standing on her head on a metal contraption that let her spin with her legs stuck out in opposite directions. Blaring disco music played in the background.

“Come on . . . baby!” Nick exclaimed.

Valentine immediately shut the door. Then it registered in his brain what he’d just seen. It was Wanda’s act from the talent portion of the Miss Nude World competition, the act that had captured Nick’s eye, and stolen his heart.

He made it into the hallway before peals of laughter seeped out of him. It was laughter to make you hurt, and he leaned against a potted plant and held his sides until it subsided.

Valentine waited ten minutes before rapping on the bedroom door again.

“We’re all friends here,” Nick called out.

He opened the door and stuck his head in. Nick lay beneath satin sheets, staring dreamily at his reflection in the mirrored ceiling. The bathroom door on the other side of the room was closed. Behind it, Valentine could hear water running. Nick lifted his head, then sat bolt upright.

“No offense, Tony, but can’t this wait?”

“No. Can I come in?”

“Sure. Make yourself at home. We’re only screwing.”

Nick slipped naked out of bed. His body was covered with black hair and looked like something that had just washed up on the beach. Putting on a monogrammed bathrobe, he met Valentine in the room’s sitting area. Valentine handed him Albert Moss’s file. Nick read through it.

“So, what’s Curly doing?” he asked.

Valentine explained how Nick was being systematically bled by Fontaine’s gang, then said, “The reason you’re not seeing it on your books is because Albert Moss is hiding it from you. Moss has been cooking the books for three to four weeks, which means you’re out a whole bunch of money.”

“How much?”

Valentine had thought about it while waiting in the hallway. He’d done enough work for Nick to know how much money flowed through the Acropolis each day. He also knew there was a limit on how much cheaters could steal before it became obvious.

“Seven to eight million bucks. That might be on the low side.”

Nick shut his eyes. “What’s the high side?”

“Ten to twelve million.”

Nick whistled through his teeth. “Does that put me in the Guinness Book of World Records?”

“It might.” Valentine hesitated, then asked him the question that had been bothering him since he’d done the math. “Can you cover it?”

Nick opened his eyes, and shook his head.

“No way,” he said.

23

Mabel wanted to talk to Tony before calling the police. Only Tony’s cell phone wasn’t on. Damn him!

Hanging up, she stared across the kitchen at Reynolds and Fisher. They were handcuffed together, hanging from a chin-up bar in the kitchen doorway. They looked madder than hell. Yolanda had cuffed them and gone through their pockets while Mabel held the Sig Sauer on them. Their IDs said they were FBI agents, but Mabel wasn’t buying it. There was no reason for them to come barging in the way they had and accuse Tony of being unpatriotic and anti-American. The FBI had worked with Tony on many cases; they knew him.

“Shit,” Mabel swore under her breath. What if they were FBI agents? Then she and Yolanda would be in more trouble than an army of lawyers could handle. If only she hadn’t pulled the gun on them. But Reynolds and Fisher had acted like gestapo, and something inside her had snapped.

“Call him back,” Yolanda said. She’d taken a yogurt out of the refrigerator and was eating it with a spoon. It somehow added normalcy to a picture that had none.

“Okay.” Mabel hit REDIAL, and was immediately put into Tony’s voice mail. “Damn.”

“What’s the matter?”

“His cell phone’s still turned off.”

She hung up and saw Reynolds staring helplessly at her from across the kitchen. He had an embarrassed look on his face. Tony had said that having a gun pointed at you disrupted your bowels, and she wondered if he’d wet his pants.

Yolanda put her spoon in the sink. “I think we’d better call the police. It’s what Tony will tell us to do anyway.”

Yolanda was right. The local cops needed to get involved. Mabel glanced at her watch. Several minutes had passed since she’d pulled the gun from the fridge. The police were going to ask her why she’d waited to call them. She didn’t have a good answer, but figured she’d come up with something by the time they arrived.

She picked up the phone and, while punching in 911, heard the dial tone go flat, then fade away and disappear. She clicked the receiver several times with her finger, but got nothing. Hanging up, she said, “That’s strange.”

Yolanda plucked an apple from the fruit bowl sitting on the counter. “What is?”

“The phone just went dead.”

The kitchen wasn’t terribly big, and from where Mabel stood, she had a clear view of the backyard through the window above the sink. Tony said fences made good neighbors, and a three-board one lined his property. Butting up to it was a phone pole, and Mabel saw a man scurry down it. He cut the line, she thought. She shot a glance at Reynolds and saw him shake his head.

“Is he with you?”

Reynolds licked his lips, hesitated.

“Go ahead and say it,” she told him.

“Yes, he’s with us. Ma’am, you are in so much trouble,” he said.

Mabel felt an icy finger run down her spine. That wasn’t the kind of threat that thieves made. She edged up to the window and watched the man jump off the phone pole, then go running down the narrow alley behind the house. Across the alley was another New England clapboard house constructed by the same builder who had built Tony’s house. On its shingle roof she saw a man hiding behind the chimney. Yolanda bumped into her, munching on her apple and sharing her view.

“What’s that guy doing up there?” she asked.

“I was wondering that myself,” Mabel said. Leaning over the sink, she brought her nose up an inch from the glass and stared. “It looks like he’s holding something.”

Yolanda dropped her half-eaten apple into the sink.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

Mabel kept staring. “What is it? It looks like a shovel . . .”

“Oh, my God,” Yolanda said again.

Mabel pulled away from the window. Yolanda had her hand over her mouth, and the expectant-mother glow had drained from her face. Mabel grabbed her by the wrists.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“He’s holding a rifle,” Yolanda said fearfully.

Nick had owned the Acropolis for more than thirty years, and had experienced a lot of bad times and misfortune along with every other casino owner. What he hadn’t experienced was the widespread looting that Valentine had described to him. Few casino owners had.

“Ohhh, Nicky,” Wanda called from the bathroom.

Nick raised his head. “I’m busy, honey. We’ve got company.”

“But I have something to tell you. Something wonderful.”

“Can’t it wait?”

His bride emerged from the bathroom wearing six-inch heels and a bathing suit made from pink dental floss.

“But Nicky . . . ,” she pouted, standing expectantly in the room’s center.

Nick stared through her, too immersed in his casino’s demise to realize Wanda might have something important to say. Stung, she grabbed a robe from the closet and marched out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Shaking his head, Nick said, “The other day, Wanda tells me it’s my duty to make the coffee every morning. My duty. I say, baby, why is it my duty? And she goes and gets her Bible, and opens it up to a page, and points. Guess what it said.”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Hebrew.”

A few moments passed, then Nick said, “So what do I do?”

Valentine had given Nick’s options some serious thought. If he could prove to the Gaming Control Board that the Acropolis had been cheated, Bill Higgins would throw the thirty employees in jail, seize their bank accounts, plus their homes, cars, and everything of value they owned. They would be stripped clean. It wouldn’t cover Nick’s losses, but it was a start.

“Call an emergency meeting of your new hires,” Valentine said. “We’ll back-room them, and I’ll interrogate them. I’ll turn them against each other. I’ll promise to cut deals with the guys I have by the balls in return for the information I don’t have.”

“You think it will work?”

He nodded. “Cheaters always squeal. It’s their nature.”

Nick called Wily and had him set the meeting for four o’clock in the casino’s basement. “No, I’m not going to fire you,” he told his head of security. Hanging up, he said, “Give me five minutes to get dressed. We can go downstairs together.”

Valentine went into Nick’s office to wait. He remembered his earlier promise to Mabel and powered up his cell phone. She’d asked him many times to leave it on, but he’d never seen the value in it. Too damn intrusive.

He had a message. He retrieved it and heard his neighbor’s voice.

Mabel was screaming at him.

24

Valentine’s heart jumped into his throat. Hysterical women did that to him. From what he could make out from his neighbor’s message, there were two men inside his house who may or may not be FBI agents and were handcuffed to his chin-up bar, while a third man was on the neighbor’s roof with a rifle. The phone lines had been cut, and Mabel was calling him from Yolanda’s cell phone.

“Call me back on Yolanda’s cell!” she told him.

He punched in Yolanda’s number. A frantic busy signal filled his ear. The call wasn’t going through. Going to the bedroom door, he rapped loudly. Nick bid him entrance, and he stuck his head in. “I need to use a phone. It’s an emergency. My cell phone isn’t cooperating.”

Nick emerged still dressed in his robe. He escorted Valentine across the room to his desk. It was as big as a sports car and covered with photographs. He pointed at the phone. “Use line two. It’s my private line.”

Nick went back to the bedroom. Valentine picked up line two and dialed Yolanda’s cell number while staring at the photographs. Groups of smiling Greek fishermen stared back at him. In the photos, the men were standing on fishing docks and holding up their catches.

He heard the connection ring through. Mabel answered on the first ring.

“Hey,” he said.

“Oh, Tony,” his neighbor replied. “I’ve done something truly awful.”

He listened to Mabel explain what had happened. She and Yolanda were staying away from the kitchen window, fearful of the sniper on the roof next door. And there was a strange car parked in his driveway, and she had heard scratching sounds around the house.

“Why did you pull the gun on them?” he asked when she was done.

“Because they barged in here and practically called you a traitor,” she hissed. “You always told me you had a good relationship with the FBI, and these men acted like they’d never heard of you.”

“They called me a what?”

“Well, they said you were unpatriotic.”

Valentine felt his face burn. He hung his flag out on Veterans Day, paid his taxes, and believed in truth, justice, and the American Way.

“Are they within earshot?”

“You bet they are,” his neighbor seethed.

“Put one of them on.”

He heard Mabel cross his kitchen, and the sound of the cell phone being placed beneath someone’s mouth. Mabel had said she’d handcuffed the agents to his chin-up bar, and he wondered how they felt about being outwitted by a sixty-five-year-old woman. He said, “This is Tony Valentine. Who is this?”

“FBI Special Agent Reynolds,” a man’s voice replied.

“Sounds like you and your partner are in a pickle,” Valentine said.

There was a long pause. Reynolds cleared his throat. “Your friend Mabel is in a lot of trouble, if you hadn’t already figured that out.”

“So are you,” Valentine replied. “I want you to call off your dogs.”

“Excuse me?”

“The guys who’ve surrounded my house, and the guy on the roof with the rifle. I want you to call them off.”

“What are you offering in return?”

“The opportunity to end this peacefully, without anyone getting hurt.”

Another pause. Reynolds said something to his hanging partner. Valentine made out the words It’s worth a shot and heard Reynolds agree.

“Mind telling me how?” Reynolds asked him.

“Easy,” Valentine replied. “I’m going to have a chat with Peter Fuller, your boss. You wouldn’t have a number where I might reach him, would you?”

Reynolds gave him Peter Fuller’s private number, then promised to keep the agents surrounding the house at bay. Valentine hung up and walked out of Nick’s office.

He took the elevator to the penthouse floor, which was one floor below. From his suite he got the laptop computer he’d bought when he’d opened Grift Sense and went back upstairs.

Sitting at Nick’s desk, he ran a wire from the laptop to the phone jack in the wall, and within a minute was connected to the Internet. He picked up the phone and punched in Peter Fuller’s number at the FBI. A woman answered with a curt, “May I help you?”

“This is Tony Valentine for Director Fuller.”

“Director Fuller is unavailable. May I help you?”

“Get him anyway. And while you’re at it, give me his e-mail address.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Tell him I have the pictures.”

“Excuse me?”

“The pictures. Tell him I still have the pictures from Atlantic City.”

The woman hesitated. How much did she know about Fuller? Plenty, he guessed; most personal secretaries knew more about their bosses’ habits than their wives.

“Please hold,” she said.

While Valentine waited, he entered his e-mail account and went into the SAVED MESSAGES folder. Retrieving a message titled FULLER, he opened it. On the laptop’s blue screen appeared ten pictures of Fuller screwing a hooker in Atlantic City in 1979. The hooker was tied to the headboard of a bed, and did not look happy with the arrangement. Valentine had gotten the pictures from a serial killer who’d blackmailed Fuller into leaving Atlantic City with his partner. By leaving, Fuller had allowed the serial killer to claim one final victim, an injustice that Valentine had never forgiven him for.

Fuller was a bad apple. Law enforcement had its share of bad apples. The system was supposed to weed them out the higher you rose, but occasionally one slipped through the cracks like Fuller had.

He and Fuller spoke a couple of times a year, usually when Fuller needed help on a gambling-related case that had the bureau stumped. Fuller was always quick to remind him that he’d patched things up with his wife, whom he’d abused, and his partner, whom he’d lied to. He liked to say that he’d found the good life. When he wasn’t working, he was driving his daughter to soccer practice, or leading his son’s Boy Scout troop.

Valentine didn’t believe a word of it.

Fuller liked sex, and he liked it rough. To get it, he hired prostitutes to service him. The patterns he’d shown in Atlantic City were of a man who lived in two worlds—the real one, and the one behind the curtain of his conscience. Hurting women during sex turned him on. It was what psychologists called his erotic mold, something he couldn’t change.

“Valentine?” a man’s voice said.

“That you, Fuller,” he said.

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“I’m calling about a situation at my house. Two of your agents are being held at gunpoint by my office manager. You aware of this?”

“What did you tell my secretary about the pictures?”

“What pictures?”

“Don’t pull that horseshit with me,” Fuller thundered at him. “What did you say to her?”

“I said I still had the pictures from Atlantic City.”

“You told me you destroyed them.”

“I did. But first, I burned them onto the hard drive on my computer. I’m looking at them on my laptop. You know, you’ve hardly aged.”

Fuller cursed like he’d hit his thumb with a hammer.

“What do you want,” he seethed.

“An explanation,” Valentine said. “I don’t deserve to have my house searched without the decency of a phone call. Your agents inferred that I was some kind of traitor. I resent that.”

“Your name came up in conjunction with a case involving national security. It was decided that your house should be searched.”

“Decided by who?”

“By me,” Fuller said.

“You couldn’t call me? You didn’t think I’d help you?”

“I couldn’t call you because you’re a suspect in a murder investigation. Your business card, and a Nike gym bag identical to one you purchased six months ago, were found at the crime scene.”

“I got here yesterday,” Valentine said. “You want to hear my itinerary? I didn’t have time to kill anybody, for Christ’s sake.”

“Your flight landed the day before yesterday,” Fuller corrected him, “a few hours before the victim was killed. Your things were found at the scene.”

“My flight was delayed in Dallas,” Valentine replied. “I arrived yesterday morning at one A.M. The airline lost my bag, and I killed two hours at the airport, filling out a claim sheet. If you don’t believe me, call Delta.”

“How do you explain your card and gym bag, “ Fuller said.

“I’ve given out plenty of business cards in Las Vegas,” he replied. “And the Nike gym bag is back in my closet at home. I don’t travel with it.”

“You landed when?”

“One A.M. I checked into Sin at three. There’s records of all this stuff. And plenty of eyewitnesses.”

There was silence. Then Fuller cursed under his breath.

“My sentiments, exactly,” Valentine said. “Now are you going to call your dogs off my house, or should we keep talking until somebody gets killed?”

25

Negotiating with people with guns was a tricky proposition. One party had to give in and put their weapons down first. That was the hard part. Since Mabel had drawn first, Valentine knew it would put the FBI at ease if she relinquished first. And since the FBI had his house surrounded, he talked her into it.

“Are they going to arrest me?” his neighbor asked.

“Absolutely not,” he assured her.

“But I pulled a gun on them.”

“They’re going to call it a big misunderstanding.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re not a traitor?”

Valentine’s face burned at the mention of the word. Fuller had never explained that. Someday he was going to pin the man down and find out why his agents had said that.

“No, I’m not a traitor.”

“So his men won’t be searching your house, then?” she said.

Valentine smiled into the receiver. Searching the house was the last thing Fuller wanted his agents to do. He’d told Fuller the photographs of him and the hooker were on the hard drive of his computer. His agents would certainly look there, and the cat would be out of the bag.

“Absolutely not,” he said.

“All right,” Mabel said. “I’m putting the Sig Sauer back in the refrigerator. Now I’m closing the refrigerator door. I suppose my next step is to release these two young men.”

“Not yet. I’m going to hang up, and then you’re going to get a call from Director Fuller. He’s going to want to speak to Reynolds. Put the cell phone next to Reynolds’s ear, and listen in. I’ll be listening in as well.”

“How will you do that?”

“I’ve got Fuller on the other line.”

His neighbor’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Oh, Tony, I’m so sorry this happened.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” he said. “You did what you thought was right.”

As Mabel hung up, she tried to hide the smile on her face.

“Looks like our bosses have reached an agreement,” she announced.

Reynolds and Fisher said nothing. Yolanda let out a sigh of relief, and sat down at the kitchen table. The chair was old and creaky. A startled expression crossed her face. She glanced at the back door as if expecting it to come crashing down and a SWAT team to enter the house.

“It’s all right,” Mabel said. “They’re leaving. Tony fixed everything.”

Yolanda went to the window over the sink. Parting the curtains, she peered outside at the neighbor’s house and said, “You’re right. He’s climbing down off the roof.” She walked into the living room with Mabel behind her. Through the front window they saw the car with tinted windows that had been parked in the driveway speed away. Yolanda put her arms around Mabel and began to cry.

“There, there,” Mabel said.

Yolanda’s cell phone chirped. Mabel pulled it from her pocket. “Hello?”

The caller identified himself as Director Fuller of the FBI and asked to speak to Special Agent Reynolds. Mabel remembered Fuller from his picture in the newspaper. Blond and handsome, his only flaw was his mouth, which was too thin for his face.

“He’s right here,” she replied.

Going into the kitchen, she put the cell phone next to Reynolds’s ear, then listened as Fuller told Reynolds that the bureau had acted on bad information, and that the job was to be aborted. Reynolds closed his eyes and muttered under his breath.

“Yes, sir,” Reynolds said. “I understand. We’ll leave the premises once Ms. Struck releases us.” Looking at Mabel, Reynolds said, “Director Fuller would like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Mabel said.

Putting the phone to her ear, Mabel listened as Fuller apologized for what had happened. His voice was flat and unemotional, the way so many law enforcement people were. Taking the handcuff key from her pocket, she released Reynolds and his partner.

Valentine listened to Fuller apologize to Mabel, then hung up. As he pushed himself out of the chair, a strange thought occurred to him. His house had been raided by the FBI.

His house. The FBI was probably the best law enforcement agency in the world. They could be world-class jerks and arrogant as hell, but it didn’t belie the job they did. They were pros, which meant there had been a really good reason for them to raid his house. His business card, and a gym bag that resembled one he’d purchased six months ago, had been found at the murder scene. A coincidence? Someone much smarter than him had once said that there are no coincidences in police work.

His business card, his gym bag.

He picked up the phone and redialed his house. The phone lines had been restored, and he heard Mabel’s cheery voice say, “Grift Sense. Can I help you?”

“Just calling to see how you and Yolanda are doing.”

“Oh, how thoughtful of you. We’re making out fine. Those two FBI agents turned out to be real gentlemen. They apologized up a storm and actually took the garbage out when they left. It was quite a shock.”

“Glad you didn’t shoot them, huh?”

“Listen to you!”

“Look, I need a favor.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Go into my bedroom and open up my closet.”

Mabel put him on hold. When she picked up a few moments later, she was talking to him on the speaker phone in the bedroom. “All right, I’m opening up your closet. Oh my, would you look at this mess.”

Valentine had never left a mess a day in his adult life. “What are you talking about?”

“Dirty clothes. They’re shoved in the corner in a pile. There’s a dirty jock strap, a dirty judo uniform, and a T-shirt with holes in the armpits that you must throw away.”

“Is my gym bag there?”

He heard Mabel shuffle some things around.

“Why no,” she said. “It’s gone.”

He sat back down and for a long moment stared at the phone. Only one person would throw his dirty clothes on the floor and take his gym bag without asking.

Gerry.

He glanced up. Nick was standing in the doorway, ready to go downstairs and bang some heads.

“I need to run,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”

26

When Pash and Gerry returned from Pahrump, they found a much different-looking Amin waiting for them at the motel. His beard and mustache were gone, and he’d trimmed his hair. It was short and choppy, and looked like the punk kids you saw walking around. He’d also changed his wardrobe, and now wore chinos and a striped rugby shirt.

“You get laid?” Amin asked his brother.

Pash took off his windbreaker and sat on the bed. “Yes. It was wonderful.”

“I hope you wore a rubber.”

“I did not have a choice. The woman put it on me.”

Amin made a face like he couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting. He was a handsome guy, and Gerry guessed he had no problem getting action when he wanted to. Pash, on the other hand, was always going to have to pay for it.

“They also wash you down,” Pash threw in for good measure.

“You let a strange woman wash your penis?”

Pash flashed a smile. “Oh, yes. With antibacterial scrub. When it starts to tingle, it actually feels quite good. There is one drawback, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Whenever I smell Betadine, I get an erection.”

Amin let out a rare laugh. Pash had promised to soften him up so Gerry could sell his idea of card-counting in “easy” casinos. Seeing his opportunity, Gerry pulled up a chair and launched into his sales pitch.

First, he explained the concept of how he planned to use his father’s information to target casinos, and saw Amin nod in agreement. Then he went into the numbers. Three hundred grand apiece was his first year’s estimate.

“These casinos you describe are small,” Amin said. “Surely they’ll notice such large losses.”

“My father has access to the daily financial sheets of every casino he works for,” Gerry said. “He examines them to see fluctuations in the holds of the various games.”

“How does this help us?”

“Certain times of the day the action is heavy, others it’s not. You’ll only play when the action is heavy and there’s money flying around. That way, your winnings won’t be noticed the way they would if the place was dead.”

Amin steepled his fingers in front of his chin, deep in thought. Then he spoke to Pash in their native tongue. Gerry hated when he did that, and planned to mention it when their relationship got farther along. Amin ended the conversation by standing, and slapping Gerry on the shoulder. “I think we should become partners.”

Gerry looked into his eyes. Amin bought the pitch.

“You’re in?”

Amin nodded approvingly.

Gerry nearly let out a shout. “How about I buy you and Pash a steak? I think this is cause for celebration.”

Amin glanced at his watch. “We can eat later. There are some friends of mine I want you to meet. Do you mind driving?”

Gerry tried not to laugh. Did he mind driving? Amin was about to make him rich. He’d drive Amin wherever he wanted, and even wear a chauffeur’s cap.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

Amin sat in the passenger’s seat and had Gerry drive through Henderson, then get on Highway 93 and head east. The road was long and ruler-straight. Ten miles outside of town, Amin pointed to an unpaved road sitting off the highway.

“Take that,” he said.

Gerry drove down the road in a cloud of dust. Soon a gas station came into view. The building was abandoned and sagged drunkenly to one side. Nailed to its rusted tin roof was a crude, hand-painted sign. BOULDER AUTO RESTORERS. NO JOB TOO SMALL.

Behind the gas station was another tin-roofed structure. Pointing at it, Amin said, “I’m meeting my friends there.”

Gerry spun the wheel, no longer feeling good about things. Friends met at bars and restaurants, not behind abandoned buildings in the desert. Something bad was going down. He drove around back to an auto graveyard filled with car skeletons and pyramids of empty lacquer cans. The air was chemically ripe, and he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray.

A beat-up station wagon was parked in the lot’s center. Two stern-faced Mexican men stood beside it. In their thirties, with jet-black hair and complexions the color of pencil erasers. Gerry glanced sideways at Amin. “These your friends?”

“Yes,” Amin said.

He parked a hundred feet from where the Mexicans stood. Then glanced at the paper bag sitting on the floor between Amin’s feet. He’d assumed it was food that Amin had brought for the trip. Now he knew otherwise.

“You packing?” Gerry asked him.

Amin ignored the remark. Grabbing the paper bag, he climbed out of the car. He started walking toward the two Mexicans and waved. The Mexicans waved back.

Pash leaned between the two front seats. “Is something wrong?”

“You bet there is.”

Pash’s face begged for an explanation.

“They’re border rats. Smugglers. Your brother set me up.”

“Set you up how?”

“He asked me to come as backup. In case these guys got any funny ideas.”

“You do not trust these men?”

Gerry shook his head. Back when he’d run a bookmaking operation in Brooklyn, a local hoodlum had brought two Mexicans by and tried to talk him into bankrolling a cocaine run out of Mexico. Gerry had listened because he was interested in how these things worked, then said no thanks.

What he’d learned was that border rats had become popular in the smuggling world since 9/11. Bribing border guards to ignore a truckload of cocaine was a thing of the past. Contraband was having to take different routes, and border rats were cheap alternatives. They carried the drugs on their backs, entering the country with illegal immigrants in southern New Mexico’s boot heel.

Amin’s friends looked menacing. Short and broad-shouldered, with steely glints for eyes and sweatshirts that hung over their belts. Gerry guessed they were packing heat. The Mexicans he’d met in Brooklyn had been.

“How well does Amin know them?” he asked.

“They’ve met once before,” Pash replied.

Gerry spun around in his seat and stared at him. “And Amin is about to give them a bag of money? Is he crazy?”

“You think they’ll kill him?”

“Of course they’ll kill him.”

“But they come highly recommended.”

“By who? Pablo Escobar?”

Pash’s eyes turned as big as silver dollars. “Oh, no,” he muttered under his breath. “Something is wrong.”

Gerry stared out the windshield. One of the Mexicans was holding stacks of money in his hands. His partner was pointing at the money and shouting. Gerry didn’t have to understand Spanish to get the argument’s drift. Amin had delivered less than he’d promised. That happened a lot in drug deals.

Only Amin wasn’t apologizing. He needed to fall on his sword and let the Mexicans have their pride restored. Amin was just standing there, talking calmly.

“He’s asking for trouble,” Gerry said.

Amin took something from his pocket. It looked like a casino chip. He offered it to the Mexicans, finally extending the olive branch. The shouting Mexican knocked it out of his hand, then went for his gun.

Amin lifted his shirt and drew his own piece. He was lightning-fast, and shot the Mexican three times in the chest. The Mexican’s gun discharged into the ground. He staggered backward and fell against the skeleton of a car.

The Mexican holding the money was helpless, and looked at Amin as if to say Now what? The guy was cool, Gerry thought. Telling Amin with a shrug that he’d settle for less, no harm done. A real businessman.

Amin lowered his gun. He reached for the battered briefcase the Mexicans had brought. Had his fingers on the handle when the Mexican leaning against the car came to life and started shooting. There were bullet holes in his sweatshirt, but no bloodstains. He’s wearing a vest, Gerry thought.

His partner ran for cover. The Mexican doing the shooting hid behind the pyramid of lacquer cans and kept letting off rounds. He was a crummy shot, but Gerry knew he was eventually going to hit Amin, who was standing in the open. Then the Mexican would come after him and Pash, and get rid of his witnesses.

“The car,” Pash said. “Drive it between them.”

Gerry shook his head. That would only get them shot. He looked out his window at the cans lying nearby. The labels said PAINT REMOVER. He jumped out and started shaking them. Finding one half-filled, he unscrewed the lid, pulled a snot rag out of his pocket, and made a Molotov cocktail.

“I need a light,” he told Pash.

Pash found his cigarette lighter and jumped out of the car. He made a flame appear, and turned the snot rag bright orange.

Gerry came around the car with the burning can in his outstretched hand. Running three steps, he threw the flaming can over his head with all his might. As it soared through the air, Amin, who was crouching on the ground, craned his neck to watch.

The flaming can landed on the pyramid and toppled it. There was a loud pop! as everything that was flammable caught fire at once. An orange wall rose up around the Mexican, and he screamed. Gerry could feel the heat from where he was standing. The Mexican ran out from his hiding place covered in flames.

Pash appeared at his side. “The human torch,” he mumbled.

They watched the Mexican run into a nearby field, his clothes throwing off black smoke. His partner ran in the opposite direction, the stacks of money clutched to his chest. They got in the car, and Gerry floored it. He jammed the brakes a few yards from where Amin stood. He saw Amin pick up a brown casino chip from the ground. He wondered if the Mexican had realized that it was worth five thousand dollars.

Amin dragged the briefcase across the dirt and got in. Smoke began to pour out of the ground, and Gerry stared at flames that seemed to rise an inch every second. Their motion was sensuous, almost taunting.

“Hold on,” he said.

He was doing seventy down the dirt road leading back to Highway 93 when he heard a muffled explosion. Slowing down, he turned in his seat. Everything behind them was on fire: the abandoned gas station, the auto graveyard, even the adjacent field. Had he not known better, he would have sworn that a giant bomb had just been set off.

Amin touched his sleeve. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re a lying son-of-a-bitch,” Gerry said. “You know that?”

27

You realize that I’m ruined,” Nick said as they rode downstairs in the elevator.

The little Greek said it like he was commenting about the weather. Only his voice was strained, and Valentine realized he was dying inside.

“The Gaming Control Board will take the assets of the thirty employees who ripped you off,” Valentine said. “You can use that to run the casino until you get a loan from a bank.”

Nick laughed harshly. “That’s not going to happen. Chance Newman and Rags Richardson and Shelly Michael control the banks—they run a few billion bucks through them every year. I’m a small fry. I’ve got no juice.”

Juice. It was the magic elixir in Las Vegas, even more powerful than money. Who you knew, and how well you knew them. And Nick was saying he didn’t have any.

“Have you considered selling the place?” Valentine asked as the elevator docked.

“I’ve had offers,” Nick said. “Venture capitalists, banks. Everybody wants to tear the place down, put in a big moron-catcher. Know what I tell them?”

“No.”

“I tell them to get lost.”

As they got out of the elevator, Nick punched Valentine in the arm. It really stung, and Valentine thought he understood. Nick had accepted that his run was over.

“Let’s nail these people ripping me off,” he said.

They found Wily in the surveillance control room, hovering before the wall of video monitors. He was watching the roulette table, and Valentine could tell by the hunch in his shoulders that he was on to something.

“Figure out what Fontaine’s gang is doing?”

Wily nodded, surprising Valentine by not gloating over it.

“So tell us,” Nick said.

“The gang is double past-posting,” Wily replied.

Valentine was impressed. He’d only seen the scam once, down in Puerto Rico, where the game of roulette bordered on high art. The San Juan gang had lightened the house by over a million bucks. He decided not to steal Wily’s thunder.

“How?” he asked.

Wily pointed at the monitors. Because the roulette layout was large, two cameras covered the action. One camera watched the wheel, while the second watched the layout on which the bets were made. It was impossible for anyone in surveillance to watch both cameras at once, a fact known to most roulette gangs.

“The gang has three members,” Wily said. “The dealer, and two women standing at the end of the table.”

He pointed at two women playing roulette. Both were dressed like tourists. One was quiet and reserved, the other a blond woman who liked to bang the table.

“The quiet one’s past-posting. In the last twenty minutes, she’s won five grand. The reason we’re not seeing it is because the dealer and the table-banger are distracting us. Watch.”

They watched the ivory ball roll around the wheel. As it started to slow down, the dealer announced the betting was over. The ball landed, and they saw the table-banger attempt to place a late bet. The dealer stopped her and politely explained that the betting was over. Then he pushed her chips back.

“You see it?” Wily asked.

“See what?” Nick said.

“The dealer is blocking the camera when he pushes the chips back. The quiet one is sneaking a bet onto the layout behind his arm. No one pays attention to her.”

Nick looked at Valentine. “You ever seen this scam before?”

It was the stupidest damn thing, but Valentine found himself feeling proud of Wily. He’d smartened up, something chumps rarely did. So Valentine lied and said, “Heard about it, but never seen it.”

“No kidding.” Nick looked at Wily. “If the past-posting is hidden from the camera, how we going to nail them?”

“Was hidden,” Wily informed him.

“Let me guess,” Nick said. “You sent someone down to the floor with a video cam, and captured the whole thing.”

Wily smiled. “Yes, sir. I was thinking of letting the woman leave and having her followed. Who knows. Maybe she’ll lead us to Fontaine.”

Nick beamed at him. “Good thinking. Tony, the kid’s sharp, isn’t he?”

A few years ago, Valentine had likened Wily to a dog trying to walk on its hind legs. No more. “Real sharp,” he said.

Nick slung his arm around Wily’s shoulder. Then he led Wily across the room to a secluded corner and broke the bad news to him. Wily had worked for Nick for seventeen years, which was a lifetime by Las Vegas standards, and Valentine watched Wily’s face change as Nick explained that the Acropolis was doomed. Wily kept trying to interject, but Nick wouldn’t let him. It was over.

By the time Nick was finished, the head of security was weeping.

At a quarter of four, the thirty people responsible for destroying Nick’s empire began to file into the basement meeting room of the Acropolis.

Valentine watched them on the video monitors. The new hires were laughing and joking, unaware they were about to be busted. Nick appeared by his side, chewing a handful of Tums and gulping down water.

“Fucking rats,” Nick said. “I wish this was thirty years ago.”

“Why’s that?”

“In the old days, casinos shot cheaters in the head and buried them in the desert.”

Valentine glanced at him. “You ever do that?”

“Who cares?”

“I like to know who I’m working for.”

“No. I just had their legs broken.”

“That was civil of you.”

“Didn’t have a choice. There were no surveillance cameras back then. Sometimes you could snap a picture from the catwalk, but it was hard. Usually, it was your word against theirs in court. Juries didn’t buy it, and the cheaters walked.”

“So you broke their legs to keep them away.”

“Just one leg.”

“Why only one?”

“I didn’t want them becoming cripples. A guy with a cane can get around, find a job, lead a normal life. I’ve got principles, you know?”

Valentine’s eyes returned to the monitor. Wily was in the basement, standing directly in the camera’s eye. When all the new hires were present, he would stick a pen behind his ear. That was the signal for Nick to come down without Wily calling him and arousing suspicion.

“How much security is down there?” Valentine asked.

“Twenty of my best guys.”

“Remember those martial arts creeps Fontaine sprang on you last time?”

Nick called downstairs and doubled security outside the meeting room. Hanging up, he said, “If they start to tango, you want a piece of one?”

Valentine looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Me?”

“Yeah. Weren’t you a judo champion? The TV movie said you were.”

“About a hundred years ago.”

“Come on, you’re not afraid of these young punks, are you?”

Nick was putting on a brave face, and Valentine tried to think of something to say. He almost told Nick the truth, which was that if you lived long enough, all good things in your life came to an end. On the monitor, he saw Wily stick a pen behind his ear. Nick saw it as well, and hurried from the room.

Five minutes later, Nick and forty security guards rushed into the basement meeting room and announced that the new hires were being held on suspicion of cheating the house.

Valentine was the last through the door. He saw several females start to weep. Other employees lay on the floor and covered their heads with their arms, a sure sign they’d been busted before. A small group of male employees decided to put up a fight and cleared away the folding chairs in the room’s center.

Twenty security guards surrounded them, then charged in. They used billy clubs and their hands, and were not gentle. Nick immediately jumped into the melee and began swinging his arms. He was a lousy fighter, but every tenth punch caught an unsuspecting chin and sent someone to the floor. Seeing Valentine, he yelled, “Are we having fun yet?”

It looked like fun, only Valentine was in no mood for it. His mind had locked on Gerry. He needed to find him before the FBI made the connection between his son and the gym bag. He wanted to help Gerry decide his best course of action. Maybe it was hiring a good lawyer; or perhaps he needed to turn himself in. Either way, he wanted to be there, and help him decide.

He spied a familiar-looking guy crawling across the floor. It was Albert Moss, the rat in finance who’d cooked the books. He stood in front of the exit, blocking Moss’s escape. Moss rose from the floor.

“Get out of my way, “ the crooked accountant said.

“No.”

Moss tried to take his head off with a punch. Valentine ducked the blow, then grabbed Moss’s arm and in one practiced motion flipped him over his shoulder, then slammed his body onto the concrete floor.

Moss lay on his back without moving. Valentine sat on his chest and saw Moss’s eyes pop open. He looked older than his photo, with thin, purplish lips and short curly hair more appropriate for another part of his body.

“I can’t breathe,” Moss gasped.

“I’ll let you up, if you tell me one thing.”

“What . . .”

“We’ve figured out all the scams you’ve got going, except the slot machines. I want to know how you’re ripping them off.”

Moss’s eyes narrowed. “You’re . . . Valentine.”

“No, I’m Bozo the fucking clown.”

“Frank didn’t tell me everything,” Moss whispered.

“You must have some idea.”

“Frank said the slot scam at the Stardust inspired him.”

The Stardust slot scam had happened in 1980 and was the stuff of legend. Fourteen million in quarters had disappeared from the casino, and no one knew how. Valentine guessed Moss knew more than he was letting on.

“You’re lying.”

“I swear, I don’t know.”

“Where’s Fontaine hiding out? ”

“I’ll tell you,” Moss said. “But you’ve got to let me up.”

Moss’s face was turning blue. Valentine pushed himself off his chest. The rest of the employees were standing against the wall, having their rights explained to them. It wouldn’t be long before they would be cutting deals and ratting each other out.

He watched Moss get up. His head left a pancake-sized bloodstain on the floor, and Valentine winced. He’d never believed in hurting people for the sake of inflicting pain, and wondered if he’d cracked Moss’s skull open.

“You want to know where Fontaine is?” Moss asked.

Valentine lifted his gaze. Moss was standing next to him, and had a small knife gripped in his hand. Drawn from his sock, he guessed.

“Frank’s with your girlfriend,” Moss said, slicing his face open.

28

Gerry watched the sun set from the Red Roost Inn’s parking lot while trying to decide what to do.

The sun had bled through the sky as it dropped behind the mountains. His old man had gotten him in the habit of catching sunsets whenever he could. His father hadn’t used to care about that kind of stuff, but becoming a widower had changed him. He savored things now that he’d never paid attention to before.

Gerry smoked his cigarette down to the filter. His father. So many things he’d done in his life had been to defy him, he could see that now. Back when he was a teenager and had started getting in trouble, his father had always rescued him. He’d been his safety net, shielding him from the consequences of his deeds.

He threw his stub onto the pile on the ground. He knew he had to leave Las Vegas. The fact that he hadn’t broken any laws in the past few days didn’t matter. He’d been in the company of two guys who’d broken plenty of laws, and his association with them was going to kill him. Nevada was different that way. If you took money from the casinos, you were guilty until proven innocent.

Taking out his wallet, he removed his American Express card. He’d lent Amin his card several days ago for some stupid reason, and there was no telling what he’d bought with it. He folded the card until it broke in half. He would call Amex, tell them the card was missing. Then, if any of Amin’s purchases came back to haunt him, he could claim his card was stolen. End of story.

Getting photographed with Amin at the MGM’s blackjack tables was going to be more difficult to disassociate himself from. He wasn’t sure what the solution was, except to ask his father to step in. The MGM was a client, and that would probably help.

He rubbed his arms and felt himself shiver. The desert didn’t hold the heat; once the sun went down, the air got really chilly. He considered getting into his car and finding some food, then told himself no. He needed to finish this process and come to grips with things. He needed to purge himself.

Going home to Florida and confessing to Yolanda was a start. He’d hidden a lot of things from her, and he was going to have to come clean or risk her leaving him. She was a doctor, and wouldn’t need him to pay the bills and put food on the table. He felt himself start to choke up. God, did he love her.

Then he had to swallow his pride and confess to his father. There was so much on his slate, he wasn’t sure where to begin. Maybe the first time he’d ever stolen money from his mother’s purse was a good place to start.

And then, when he was finished spilling his guts to Yolanda and his father, he was going to fly to Atlantic City and look up Father Tom, the family priest. He hadn’t taken confession since . . . he couldn’t remember the last time. But he needed to do it soon, and open up his soul. He needed to sit in a confessional and, for however long it took, tell his creator all the things he’d done wrong. Being a Catholic, he had an out. He could accept God and ask to be spared from his crimes.

“Or risk eternal damnation,” he whispered.

Taking out his cell phone, he got the toll-free number for several airlines. He started calling them, determined to find which one had the first flight out.

While he was on hold with American, he thought about his father again and began to choke up. He wondered how his father had found the strength to put up with him for all these years. It was a strength he knew he didn’t possess.

American came through. They had a nonstop flight to Tampa at seven AM with two seats left in coach. He and his father could leave Las Vegas together.

Pash came out of the motel and stood beside him while he gave his Visa number to the booking agent. He offered Gerry a cigarette. Gerry took it, and a light, while the booking agent read his confirmation number back to him. He’d inherited his old man’s memory, and burned the number into his head, then hung up.

“You’re not cold?” Pash asked.

Gerry shrugged. “I grew up in New Jersey, on the ocean.”

“It gets cold there?”

“We used to sing songs about how cold it was. It’s colder than a nipple on a witch’s tit, it’s colder than a bucket of penguin shit, it’s colder than an icicle on a polar bear’s ass, it’s colder than the frost on a champagne glass.”

Pash slapped his hands and laughed. Up until that afternoon, Gerry had liked Pash about as much as he could like anyone he’d known for five days. But the shootout at the deserted gas station had changed that. Beneath the Jim Carrey personality, there was a bad person hiding. Trusting him was out of the question, and Gerry stared at the headlights of cars coming down the highway next to the motel.

“I guess you’re disappointed in me and my brother,” Pash said.

“Yeah, I’m disappointed,” Gerry said, blowing a monster cloud of smoke. “I came to you with a legitimate business proposition, and you played me for a chump.”

Pash cocked his head and stared at him. “You came to us with a way to make money. We showed you another way to make money. Is that so bad?”

The afternoon had disappeared, and the fractured light reflecting off the motel’s neon sign gave Pash a ghoulish quality. Gerry wagged a finger in his face. “Right. Next we’ll be robbing banks and shooting guards. No thanks.”

“My brother has never shot his gun before. It was just . . .”

“One of those things?”

“Yes.”

Gerry inched closer to Pash and breathed on him. An old mobster trick, and a great way to get another guy’s attention. Pash shrank a few inches.

“I killed a guy this afternoon saving your brother’s ass,” Gerry said. “He may have had it coming, but that doesn’t matter. I killed him.”

“I know,” Pash said.

“Some guys will tell you that killing someone is liberating. It wasn’t for me.”

Pash swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m not?”

“You’re happy I killed that guy. I saved your brother’s life. You understand what I’m saying?”

Pash shook his head. He didn’t understand at all.

“It’s like this,” Gerry said. “You can never feel the way I feel about what happened this afternoon. You’re going to go on with your life, and eventually you’ll forget about it. Me, I’m going to live with it. It’s going to hang heavy on my soul for a long, long time.”

“Your soul,” Pash whispered.

“That’s right.”

Pash could no longer look him in the eye, and used the fading ember of his cigarette to light another. He gestured weakly with the pack, offering him one. That was all that was left between them, Gerry thought, a fucking cigarette and the thread of a friendship.

“Think about that when you unload those drugs,” Gerry said. Then he went into his motel room and slammed the door behind him.

29

Nick jumped up and down in the nurse’s office while Valentine sat on the examining table, getting his face stitched up.

“That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Nick told the nurse, an older woman with the patience of Job. “First Tony uses these judo moves to take the knife away from Moss—Pow! Bam! Boom!—and then he takes him on, mano a mano, and beats the living daylights out of him.” He threw an imaginary uppercut in the air. “It was great!”

Valentine winced as the nurse tied the stitches together. Moss had sliced the side of his face pretty good; he was going to need a plastic surgeon to make his puss look normal. He lifted his hand out of a bowl of ice cubes and stared at his badly bruised knuckles. Moss was going to need a plastic surgeon, too.

He watched Nick prance around the room, still throwing punches. For a guy about to lose everything, he was having a great time, and Valentine remembered why he’d always liked him. Nick knew how to live.

The nurse finished stitching him up, then applied a bandage to his wound. “You’re going to need to change this dressing twice a day. I’m also going to give you some penicillin. Make sure you take the entire dose, okay?”

She said the words like she knew Valentine probably wouldn’t do it. He took the little vial of pills and thanked her. Nick stood a few feet away, delivering a knockout punch to an imaginary foe. Valentine said, “Got anything for our friend?”

“I wish,” the nurse said.

Valentine went into the hallway and powered up his cell phone. The pain in his face was making his entire head hurt. He called Gerry’s cell, got voice mail, and left a message. He tried to make his voice sound gentle, and saw Nick grimace as he hung up.

“Be a tough guy,” Nick said, “and tell him to get his ass over here.”

“You obviously never had kids,” Valentine said.

“What do you mean?”

“That approach doesn’t work anymore.”

The nurse’s office was on the first floor of the casino, behind the registration area. They walked out of her office and into the gaming area. At Valentine’s suggestion, Nick had closed the casino down and put a call into the Gaming Control Bureau. At any moment, a team of GCB agents would swarm through the front doors, throw up yellow tape, and turn the place into a crime scene. In Las Vegas, getting cheated was bad, but not telling the authorities about it was worse. Nick let out an exasperated breath.

“Looks like a tomb, doesn’t it? Here lies Nick Nicocropolis. He never gave in.”

“You want that on your tombstone?”

“It’s the only thing I want on it.”

They walked around the empty casino. There was something sad about the hollow feeling the space gave off, and Valentine was reminded of the time he’d seen a half-sunken ship in a harbor as a kid, and how it had made him cry. He saw Nick stop and pick up a piece of trash from the floor.

“Old habits die hard,” he explained.

Valentine wasn’t listening. His eyes had locked on the cage sitting in the center of the casino floor. The cage was where customers turned their chips into cash. Normally, the cage was on the far end of the casino, the thinking being that a customer might stop along the way and place a wager.

But this cage was in the center of the casino. It was small, with brass bars and cutouts for two cashiers. A sign said CHANGE FOR SLOT PLAYERS ONLY. Inside were several hundred plastic buckets filled with quarters and half-dollars.

Valentine found himself smiling. So this was how Fontaine’s gang was getting coins stolen from slot machines out of the casino. They were converting them.

“You got a key for the cage?” he asked Nick.

“Of course I’ve got a key,” Nick said.

“Open it up. I’m about to make you some money.”

Nick fished a key ring from his pocket and opened the cage door. Valentine went in and searched around the cashiers’ chairs. He found two women’s handbags and poured their contents into Nick’s outstretched hands. Both were stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. Nick counted it. Over thirty grand. He grabbed Valentine’s arm and said, “You’re a beautiful human being, you know that?”

“Thanks,” Valentine said.

“Now tell me what was going on here.”

“Fontaine’s gang rigged the scales in the Hard Count room to show less weight,” Valentine said. “Then they stole the difference and brought those coins back into the casino to this cage. The coins were put in buckets and sold to customers, and that money was put in handbags and carried out by the cashiers.”

Nick made a face. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“What’s that?”

“Putting this cage in the center of the casino was Albert Moss’s idea. He said it would make things easier for the little old ladies who played the slots.”

“Little old ladies?”

“Yeah. And I fell for it.”

They shared a good laugh. Hustlers had been using little old ladies in their scams since the beginning of time. And it still worked.

They started to walk out of the casino when Valentine heard his cell phone ring. He pulled it from his pocket and stared at its face. CALLER UNKNOWN. He imagined Gerry calling him from a pay phone, and answered it.

“Tony? This is Lucy Price.”

It was the last person he expected to hear from. Saturday night, and she was home alone. “Can I call you right back?”

“Don’t hang up,” she said.

“Look, I’m in the middle of something important.”

“Please don’t hang up.”

He frowned. Hadn’t she told him off a few hours ago?

“Please.”

“Okay, I’m not hanging up.”

She sniffled into the phone. “I-I have someone here who wants to talk to you.”

“Who’s that?”

“Him.”

“Who’s him?”

“Him, goddamn it.”

Valentine thought back to Albert Moss’s remark just before he’d cut him: Frank’s with your girlfriend.

“Fontaine?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He looked at Nick and saw the little Greek start to punch the air.

“Put him on,” Valentine said.

30

It was pitch dark when he drove his rental into Lucy Price’s neighborhood in Summerlin. Fontaine had threatened to kill her, and Valentine had believed him. Twenty years ago, Fontaine had killed Valentine’s brother-in-law in Atlantic City. Stomped him to death on the Boardwalk while a group of other hoodlums had watched. He was different from any other cheater Valentine had ever known, and a true sociopath.

“Come alone,” he’d said, “or I’ll put a bullet in her head.”

So Valentine had driven to Lucy’s condo by himself. Nick had offered to send a car of security goons for backup, and he was glad he hadn’t taken Nick up on the offer. A few blocks from Lucy’s house, a car parked on the curb put its headlights on and pulled out. He was being tailed.

Her neighborhood was quiet, everyone inside eating dinner. Taking out his cell phone, he retrieved Bill Higgins’s home number from its memory bank and hit SEND. His friend answered on the third ring. Valentine quickly told Bill what was going on.

“Don’t go in there alone,” Bill said.

Valentine looked at his watch. Six fifty-four. Fontaine had told him to arrive no later than seven o’clock. The smart thing was to wait for backup. But if he waited too long, Lucy would end up lying on a cold slab in a morgue.

“I have to,” he said.

“You know this woman?” Bill asked.

“I met her yesterday.”

“You armed?”

Valentine was more than armed; he was a walking commando, courtesy of the cache of weapons Nick kept in his office safe. Valentine had taken every gun he could shove into his pockets. He’d been waiting a long time to pay Fontaine back.

“To the teeth.”

“Give me the address.”

He told Bill where Lucy lived.

“Stall Fontaine for a few minutes,” Bill said. “I’ll get backup over there pronto.”

It was the closest thing he had to a plan, and Valentine thanked him. Bill raised his voice. “You be careful, hear me?” and then he was gone.

Valentine passed one of the area’s many golf courses and spied a kid hitting drives off a fairway in the dark. At Lucy’s street he flipped his indicator on. The tail did the same. Making no pretense about following him.

He pulled up Lucy’s driveway. The motion-triggered floodlight above the garage door came on. He got out of the car, feeling naked in the bright light. The tail parked a block away, the driver watching him.

He drew a .38 from his jacket and blew the light out. One shot was all it took, and he felt safe again.

The gunshot got a neighbor’s dog barking. He went to Lucy’s front door and glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock on the nose. He pressed the bell and stood to one side.

“It’s open,” a voice inside said.

He grabbed the handle with his free hand and cracked the door open. Light streamed out, cutting a blade in the darkness. He stared inside the condo. Lucy sat on a couch in the living room, facing the door. Fontaine sat beside her, holding a gun to her temple. It was a shitty little .22, just powerful enough to kill her.

Standing beside Fontaine was a straw-haired cowboy. Valentine remembered him from the scam at the Acropolis two years ago. The cowboy had tried to kill him with a lead pipe. He was the only member of the gang to get away.

“I’m coming in,” Valentine said.

“Be my guest,” Fontaine replied.

Driving over, Valentine had wrestled with how to handle this. One of Fontaine’s men would be hiding behind the door. That was a given. How he dealt with him was the big question.

He had two options. He could shoot him, and take him out of the picture. Only shooting blind was risky and a waste of bullets. Or he could use the door to take him out. He couldn’t miss with the door.

Using his shoulder, he opened the door very quickly and heard it bang against the man on the other side. He heard the man fall, and quickly stepped inside.

“That’s far enough,” the cowboy declared.

The cowboy was holding a stainless-steel Colt Anaconda by his side. The gun was thirteen and a half inches of pure menace. Valentine aimed the .38 at the cowboy’s chest, and saw a surprised look appear on his face. Like the cowboy had expected him to fight fair.

Valentine pumped three bullets into him. The cowboy staggered backward and fell onto a glass coffee table with a loud crash. He still looked surprised.

“Goddamn you,” Fontaine said, rocking Lucy’s head with the .22’s barrel.

Valentine took a step into the living room. Lucy stared at him, looking terrified and ashamed. He glanced behind the door. Fontaine’s man had rolled onto his back and was passed out.

“Lay your gun on the floor,” Fontaine said.

“Forget it.”

“I’ll kill her.”

“It’s all you’ll do,” Valentine told him.

Fontaine blinked, the realization sinking in. By sitting on the couch, he’d made himself an easy target. He couldn’t jump behind anything, or fall into a crouch.

“Don’t play that macho shit with me,” he said. “I found your pants in the bedroom. I’m going to shoot your lady. You want that?”

Valentine let the words play through his head. His lady. He looked into Lucy’s face. She was fighting back the tears, holding herself together.

“No,” he said.

“Then put the gun down.”

They heard the death rattle of Cowboy’s boots as he passed into the great beyond. Valentine tried to gauge how much time had passed. A minute? How much more time before Bill’s people or the police showed up? There was no way of guessing, and he said, “I didn’t come here to die. Tell me what you want. I’ll do it, and you’ll let Lucy go, and I’ll let you go.”

“A horse trade?”

“That’s right.”

Fontaine chewed it over. The scar he’d gotten in prison made him look gruesome. It was a look he seemed bent on cultivating, his head shorn like a patient in a psycho ward, his eyes bugged out like he was on drugs.

“Okay,” he said.

“What do you want?”

“Call Nick and tell him to release my people.”

Valentine had expected something like this and played his trump card. “He can’t release all of them.”

“Why not?”

“Albert Moss is in the hospital.”

Fontaine blinked. “You put him there?”

“Afraid so.”

A dark cloud passed over Fontaine’s face. He didn’t care about any of his people except Albert Moss. Moss knew everything; he was the only person the police would need to break to press charges. Letting everyone else go was a smoke screen.

“Have Nick call the hospital.”

“And take Moss out on a stretcher?”

“That’s right.”

“Afraid I left my cell phone in my car.”

“There’s one on the table,” Fontaine said. “I’m going to have Lucy pick it up and slide it across the floor to you.”

“Albert Moss isn’t going anywhere.”

“Do it.”

Valentine hesitated. If Moss skipped town, Fontaine was off the hook. As if reading his mind, Fontaine shoved the .22 deeper into Lucy’s face.

“All right, I’ll call the hospital,” Valentine said.

“Give him the phone,” Fontaine told Lucy.

Lucy’s eyes had filled with tears, but she wasn’t letting them come out. She picked up the cordless phone off the coffee table. Her arm tensed.

Valentine had been involved in two hostage negotiations as a cop. In both, an X factor had upset the balance of the situation. In the first, it had been a flock of seagulls flying over a schoolyard. In the second, a pizza boy coming to the door. This time, it was Lucy slamming the cordless phone into Fontaine’s face. With her other hand, she grabbed the .22 and raised the barrel to the ceiling. The gun discharged, the bullet causing an explosion of sparks as it hit something metallic.

Valentine did not remember physically moving across the condo and jumping on Fontaine. It just happened. Knocking Fontaine to the floor, he began raining blows onto his shaved head. Lucy stood beside him, holding the .22 by her side while bellowing at the top of her lungs.

“Beat the shit out of him! Do it! He deserves it!”

What a woman, he thought.

Moments later, he heard someone yell “Freeze!” and looked up to see the condo become filled with armed men.

Not cops, Valentine realized as they pulled him off Fontaine and got the .22 away from Lucy. And not Gaming Control Board agents. Both of those groups had to identify themselves upon entering someone’s home. These guys didn’t.

There were a dozen, each identically dressed in black pants and black sweaters that were hiding bulletproof vests. All had short hair, and looked to be in their thirties. Six were white, the others black. All looked real strong. He guessed FBI.

One of the agents made him stand against the wall and frisked him. Valentine heard a bunch of surprised grunts as the arsenal he was carrying got dumped onto the couch.

“He’s clean,” the agent finally announced.

“No, he’s not,” another man said, and grabbed Valentine from behind by the balls. It was a sensation like no other, and Valentine yelped as the man took him by the collar with the other hand, and dragged him across the room. Glancing over his shoulder, he stared into the eyes of Director Peter Fuller.

Fuller pulled him into the spare bedroom and slammed the door. Dressed in black like the others, he looked like an action figure from a comic strip, with bulging muscles in his arms and chest. He hadn’t changed much over the years, except for his hair. Once light blond, it had recently turned snow white.

“How would you like to spend the rest of your life in jail?” Fuller said.

“What for? I didn’t break any laws.”

“Oh, no? Tell that to the guy you shot in the next room.”

“That guy is a wanted criminal,” Valentine said. “He and Fontaine were holding Lucy Price hostage. Why the hell are you reading me the riot act?”

“Because I know you have a blood feud with Fontaine. Frank told me you were gunning for him.”

Valentine stared at Fuller in disbelief. “Frank told you? Don’t tell me you sprang him out of prison and have him working for the FBI.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you know that while he’s been working for you, he bankrupted the Acropolis?”

“Can you prove that?”

Valentine thought about Albert Moss lying in the hospital. He was the key, and was probably not going to say anything for a while.

“Eventually, yes.”

“Eventually?” Fuller jabbed him in the chest. “Fontaine’s been working with the FBI for a month. He hasn’t had time to scam the Acropolis.” Fuller jabbed him again. “You lied to me this afternoon. The gym bag we found in the stripper’s townhouse is yours. Your son brought it to Las Vegas. His airline confirmed it.”

Valentine’s face burned from where Albert Moss had slashed him, but it didn’t burn as much as the shame he was feeling. He should have called Fuller back and told him the truth. Only he hadn’t.

“I figured it out after we talked,” he said quietly.

“Did you know about the gun?” Fuller asked him.

“I knew he purchased one.”

“Your son bought a three fifty-seven Smith and Wesson at a Las Vegas gun store. A three fifty-seven was used in the murder of the stripper who had your gym bag. I need to talk to your son immediately. Do you understand?”

Valentine found himself looking into Fuller’s face. He hadn’t called Gerry a murderer. There was a pleading look in Fuller’s eyes, tinged by desperation.

“I’ll bring Gerry in. You can grill him all you want.”

“Do I have your word on this?” Fuller said.

“Yes.”

“You’ve got until midnight. Then all bets are off.”

“I’ll bring him. Then will you tell me what this is about?”

Fuller shook his head. “No,” he added for emphasis.

Then the director of the FBI marched out of the bedroom.