Mr. Lucky

32

Valentine was still steaming over Mary Alice’s remark when Bill Higgins called him late Sunday afternoon. She’d made him feel absolutely rotten, and he’d known her exactly one day. Women were amazing that way, the power they wielded far greater than they knew.

“You forget about me?” Bill asked.

Just what he needed. More guilt. No, he hadn’t forgotten about Bill. He just didn’t have anything solid to tell him. He now remembered why he liked to keep his cell phone turned off. It allowed him to lead a normal life.

“I’m on the case,” Valentine said. “Casino bosses biting at your heels?”

“They’re calling me on the carpet tomorrow afternoon,” Bill said.

“I thought your meeting wasn’t until Friday.”

“So did I. The Associated Press won’t leave the story alone. They’re hounding the mayor’s office and the convention and visitors bureau for closure. Did you know that Ricky Smith hired a public relations firm in New York?”

“With whose money?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

Valentine was sitting on the rocker on the screened porch of his house, staring at the forest. In Florida, a forest was another name for an overgrown swamp; here, it was maples and pines and vegetation that didn’t have alligators hiding behind it. “My gut tells me Ricky Smith is as crooked as a corkscrew,” he said. “Problem is, I can’t prove it.”

Bill breathed heavily into the phone. He’d worked for the Gaming Control Board for thirty years; finding another job at this stage of his life wouldn’t be easy. He said, “I stumbled upon something strange earlier.”

“What’s that?”

“The night Ricky beat the Mint, I interviewed all the floor people. Everything seemed on the square. It occurred to me that I hadn’t talked to anyone in the surveillance control room. I read their log sheets, and no one reported anything suspicious while Ricky was winning, so I didn’t take it any further. But I figured, what the hell, I should talk to these folks, feel them out.”

“And you found something.”

“Yeah. There were two techs watching the craps table. They got a call from the floor ten minutes before Ricky started to roll the dice. A floor manager thought two rail birds at the table might be stealing other players’ chips.”

Rail birds were bystanders who watched the action but never played. Casino people hated them, but there was no way to get rid of them. It was a free country.

“The rail birds were standing at opposite ends of the table,” Bill went on. “The techs watched them. They didn’t see any stealing, but you know, that stuff is almost invisible.”

“Sure.”

“So one of the techs calls downstairs and gets a cocktail waitress to approach them. She tells them that if they’re staying in the hotel, she’ll get them free drinks. They said yes and volunteered their names. She called upstairs and passed the names to the techs. They contacted the police and the GCB to check if either had a criminal record.”

“Did they?”

“No, both were clean. But here’s the good part: When I interviewed the techs, one of them pulled the names off a sheet and gave them to me.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Frank Barnes and Clayton McCormick.”

Valentine racked his memory. “Never heard of them.”

“They’re both from Slippery Rock, North Carolina,” Bill said.

“Must be friends of Ricky.”

“That’s what I figured. But then I remembered something. Ricky told me he’d come to Las Vegas alone.”

Valentine jumped out of the rocker and in the woods heard a small animal scurry through the leaves for cover. The epiphany he’d had the day before came back to him. This is a small town. It should have dawned on him that if people in the town were willing to help Ricky Smith rig lotteries and fix horse races, they might also be willing to step on a plane and go to Las Vegas and help him work his magic out there.

“Barnes and McCormick were staying at the Mint,” Bill said. “They came out that morning and left the next day.”

It was like the trees had parted and Valentine could see clear through the forest. Every time he’d watched the tape, he’d watched Ricky. That was a mistake. He needed to be watching the other players at the table. He felt the heady rush that came when a puzzle began to come together.

“I’ll call you right back,” he told his friend.

Valentine went into the bedroom, pulled his suitcase from beneath the bed, and removed a copy of the videotape of Ricky Smith. In the living room he popped the tape into the VCR beside the TV. The VCR made a sound like it was regurgitating, and he thought it had eaten the tape. Then the TV flickered to life.

He fast-forwarded the tape to Ricky’s streak at craps. Ricky had rolled the dice fifteen times and beaten the house every time. The odds were about the same as stepping outside and being hit by lightning. He watched the tape, then called Bill back. “I’ve got the tape of Ricky frozen on the screen of my TV. Which guys are Barnes and McCormick?”

Bill described them to a tee. Both were in their mid-thirties, with thinning hair and growing paunches. They stood at opposite ends of the craps table. As Ricky threw winner after winner, they jumped up and down and whooped their fool heads off.

“You said Barnes and McCormick stayed at the Mint,” Valentine said.

“That’s right,” Bill said.

“Same room?”

“Yes.”

Valentine pulled a footstool up to the TV. That was the clue he needed. Barnes and McCormick were friends. Friends didn’t stand on opposite ends of a craps table. They were part of a gang. They had purposely done something suspicious to get the floor manager to call upstairs and ask for them to be watched. That was their role in the scam.

“Let me think about this,” he said.

“I’ll be right here,” Bill replied.

The house soon grew dark and the temperature dropped. Valentine remained frozen in front of the TV. The only thing moving was his finger on the remote control. The tape would end, and he’d rewind and watch the craps shooting over again. Fifteen rolls, fifteen winners. He still couldn’t make the scam. He realized that he’d grown to despise Ricky, if for no other reason than that his cheating ways had kept him here, and away from more important things. His cell phone rang. It lay on the floor between his feet. He looked down at the caller ID. It was Bill.

“Any luck?” his friend asked.

“Not yet.”

“I had a brainstorm,” Bill said.

Valentine stared at the screen. It felt like a portal to another universe. “What’s that?”

“I called the convention and visitors bureau and got them to contact all the hotels in town. I asked them for the names of everyone from Slippery Rock who was staying in Las Vegas that weekend.”

Valentine tore his eyes away from the screen and stared at the phone illuminated in his hand. “And?”

“You’re not going to believe this.”

“Try me.”

“There were twenty-six of them. I’ve got their names right here.”

Valentine froze the picture on the screen. If people in Slippery Rock wanted to gamble, they could visit Biloxi or hit one of the Indian casinos in North Carolina. He counted the number of players standing around the craps table, cheering Ricky on. There were twenty-six on the nose. He hit play and watched the dice fly down the table and everyone cheer.

“For the love of Christ,” he said.

“What?”

“Everyone’s involved.”

Valentine felt like an idiot. The clue he’d been searching for was right in front of his nose. Ricky had learned his trade in a carnival. With carnival scams, everyone was involved. It was what made the illusion so believable.

“What do you mean, everyone?” Bill said.

“Players, employees working the table, even the floor manager,” Valentine said.

“What?”

“It’s a big charade. They’re miscalling the dice, Bill. That’s why the floor manager called upstairs. He asked surveillance to watch both ends of the table to ensure that the camera for the game stayed at a wide angle. On the tape, we see the dice fly down the table, but we’re not seeing the outcome. What we’re seeing is the crowd and employees’ reaction to Ricky throwing sevens or elevens, or making his point. But he isn’t. The crowd is just making us believe he is.”

“Wait a minute,” Bill protested. “I saw the stick man pull the dice back with his stick three times. He did it slowly. I saw that Ricky had rolled sevens.”

“That’s right. Ricky rolled sevens legitimately three times. So the stick man pulled the dice back slowly so the camera could see it. The other times, the stick man kicked the dice over as he retrieved them. That way, the camera couldn’t see the total.”

Bill whistled through his teeth. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Have you?”

“No.”

“So how do we convict them without a videotape we can show in court?”

Valentine killed the VCR and went onto the porch. No jury in Nevada would convict someone of cheating without videotaped evidence. It didn’t matter if the prosecutors had loads of circumstantial evidence; the locals hated the casinos and paid them back whenever they could. He stared at the eerie sheen the moon had cast over his backyard.

“You don’t,” he said.

“You’re saying I should let them skate?”

“Afraid so. No tape, no case.”

“What do I tell the casino owners?”

“Tell them you saved them a million bucks. You have probable cause to keep Ricky’s winnings. I’ll crack one of the other scams, and you’ll have enough evidence for an arrest. They should also fire the employees who were involved and get them banned from working in the gambling industry again. It’s not the punishment they deserve, but it’s better than nothing.”

The plaintive wail of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar ripped a hole in the otherwise peaceful night. Ricky was thumbing his nose at the neighborhood again. He liked to do that. And he obviously liked to corrupt people; especially his friends. And when things had gotten hairy, he liked to send his thugs out and terrorize blind librarians. Opening the screen door, Valentine stepped outside and began walking across the yard toward Ricky’s house.

“I need to have a talk with my neighbor,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”