Mr. Lucky

42

Stanley Kessel owned a house on a two-acre lot on the outskirts of Slippery Rock. Or rather, his company did. Gaylord knew the place but hadn’t been there in years.

“Can’t believe he’s been right here under my nose and I didn’t know it,” Gaylord said as they drove down a dirt driveway. The house was on a dead-end street with no streetlight. Gaylord killed the engine of his car and sat perfectly still. It was nearly 1:00 A.M. He’d gone to a judge’s house and gotten him to sign a search warrant.

He started to climb out, then glanced sideways at Valentine. “Stay here.”

“You don’t know what you’re looking for,” Valentine said.

“You don’t think I’ll recognize cheating equipment if I see it?”

“You don’t know what cheating equipment is.”

Gaylord’s chin sagged. “So what do you suggest I do?”

“Deputize me. Then I can’t taint the crime scene.”

Valentine could tell that Gaylord wasn’t thrilled with the idea. He raised his right hand, just to goad him. Gaylord shook his head and swore him in.

They got out and stared at the house in the darkness. It was practically falling down, with a patchwork shingle roof and shutters hanging on one hinge. The front porch creaked unhappily as they stepped on it. Gaylord put his face to the glass cutout in the door. Finding it locked, he said, “Step back.”

“You going to kick it in?”

“No, I’m going to blow it down.”

Valentine smiled. It was the first funny thing he’d heard the sergeant say.

“Try the back door,” he suggested.

“Why?”

“It’s obvious no one used the front much.”

Gaylord mumbled under his breath and walked off the porch. He was packing the weight but could put it into high gear when he needed to. As they came around the house, a motion-detector light went off, the bright orange light shining directly in their faces.

It took a moment for Valentine’s eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw that the lawn behind the house was littered with broken refrigerators. Gaylord shook his head.

“The town will pick this stuff up, free of charge.”

Valentine got close to the machines and realized his eyes were playing tricks on him. They were slot and video-poker machines with their guts ripped out. The gang wanted to steal a jackpot but couldn’t figure out how, he thought.

Gaylord tested the back door and found it locked. He punched out a pane of glass with the butt of his automatic and stuck his hand through.

“Hold on,” Valentine said.

“You think there’s something behind the door?”

“You said Kessel was a weasel. You want to put your life in a weasel’s hands?”

Gaylord stepped away from the door. “No.”

Valentine went into the garage behind the house and came out with a piece of rope. He tied the rope around the doorknob, then walked into the yard. He handed Gaylord the end, and the sergeant gave it a sharp tug. The door banged open, followed by a loud thwap! An arrow flew through the back door. Its path took it directly between where Valentine and Gaylord were standing. Both men heard its whistle as it flew by their heads.

The arrow went into an oak tree in the backyard with such force that Valentine could not pull it out without snapping it in two. Drawing his sidearm, Gaylord said, “Thanks for saving my life,” and marched into the house. Valentine saw a light come on and followed him into the kitchen. It was a square room with a yellowing linoleum floor. Sitting in the room’s center was a crossbow strapped to a metal chair. Tied to the trigger was a bungee cord, which was also tied to the back door.

Valentine had never seen a crossbow except in the movies. It was a fierce-looking weapon. He decided he’d be happy if he never saw one again.

He cased the downstairs. The rooms were sparsely furnished and covered with a coat of dust. The upstairs was the same, with box springs lying on the bedroom floors. Returning to the kitchen, he said, “I didn’t find anything. Does this place have a basement?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I live in Florida. We don’t have basements.”

“I’m sure it’s got one.”

“Then it must be hidden, because I can’t find it.”

Gaylord banged on the walls. Inside the pantry he found a hollow wall and pried it open with his fingernails. Cold air blasted their faces. He stuck his head into the space, then found a light string and tugged on it. A naked bulb came on. Valentine peeked over his shoulder and saw a stairway descending into the basement. Gaylord started to go down, and Valentine touched the sergeant’s shoulder.

“Can I go first?”

“Let me guess. You don’t want me touching anything.”

“If you don’t mind.”

Gaylord let him go first. The air in the basement was extremely cold, and Valentine felt a chill go through his body that went straight to his toes. At the bottom of the steps, he paused to stare and felt the sergeant bump into him.

“Pay dirt,” he said under his breath.

The basement resembled a small casino. On one wall was a blackjack table with two chairs; in the room’s center, a roulette table and betting layout; on the far wall, a regulation-size craps table. On the floors around each of the tables were dozens of chalk Xs. Gaylord pointed at them and said, “Looks like a dance recital.”

Valentine went to the blackjack table. It had been bugging the hell out of him that he couldn’t figure out how Ricky had won every single hand of blackjack he’d played at the Mint. He’d never met a scam he couldn’t figure out, and he’d decided that it was because it was a tape.

So he stood a few feet away from the blackjack table and just stared. There were only two chairs, one for Ricky and one for someone else. He remembered back to the tape. An elderly woman with white hair was at the table. She had fronted Ricky his initial stake. Was she also involved?

He stared at the table for a full minute. Everything looked normal, except the pack of Lucky Strikes sitting on the right side of the table. If he remembered correctly, the elderly woman had smoked like a chimney. He stared at the position of the cigarette pack. It was directly beneath the shuffle machine. The Mint used shuffle machines at their blackjack tables, as did many Las Vegas casinos. Shuffle machines sped the games up and made them more profitable.

Valentine had never liked shuffle machines for the simple reason that cheaters could also get their hands on them. The one on the table was called a Shuffle Master. It could shuffle eight decks of cards at once. It also had a unique feature. After the decks were shuffled, the Shuffle Master inverted their entire order, one card at a time. The machine did it at lightning speed, but the inversion was still visible if you stuck your nose to the face of the machine. Or if you stuck a camera beneath the machine.

He picked up the pack of Lucky Strikes. It looked normal, but felt heavy. He popped the lid and stared at the miniature camera inside. Then he examined the top of the box. The camera’s eye was part of the bull’s-eye pattern on the front.

Hanging from one of the chairs was a lady’s handbag. He opened it and found a receiving device inside. He heard Gaylord come up from behind him.

“What did you find?”

Valentine handed him the pack of Lucky Strikes. “The camera inside the cigarette box recorded the order of the cards inside the shuffle machine. The information was sent to a computer. The computer had a software program that calculated how to play the cards so that the house would lose every hand.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Ricky constantly switched the number of hands he played. One round, he played one hand; the next he played three. The software program told him to do that.”

“How did he get the information?”

Valentine tapped the chair with the woman’s handbag. “The lady sitting next to him received the information. All she had to do was stare into her handbag. She communicated to Ricky with some kind of code.”

“Is the dealer involved?”

“The dealer doesn’t have a clue,” Valentine said.

“And they practiced it all right here in Slippery Rock,” the sergeant said. “Well, this should be enough to convict Ricky of cheating.”

“It won’t convict Ricky of anything. There’s nothing illegal about owning crooked gambling equipment. The crime is bringing the equipment into a casino.”

Gaylord shot him an exasperated look. “So what do we do?”

“Find something that will convict him.”

Valentine crossed the basement to the roulette table. He spun the wheels and set the ivory ball in motion. The most common way to beat roulette was by gaffing the wheel. This was done by creating a bias in the wheel that would favor one side over another. The other method was to gaff the pocket walls, called frets. Some frets would be gaffed so they’d be more likely to reject the ball, while others would accept the ball more easily. On the betting layout he saw a stack of yellow legal pads. Picking one up, he stared at the rows of figures and mathematical calculations covering the page. In exasperation he dropped the pad on the table.

“Not good?” Gaylord asked.

“They’re using visual prediction.”

Gaylord shouldered up beside him. “Guess that isn’t illegal either, huh?”

He shook his head. “It’s an advantage strategy that predicts the outcome without any outside assistance. The player mentally calculates the ball and wheel speed to estimate where the ball will drop from the ball track. Then, based upon bounce swing—”

“What’s that?”

“An estimate of how many pockets the ball will bounce after it falls. Each wheel is different. So is each dealer who spins the ball. Anyway, the player takes that into consideration and makes his prediction of which numbers are most likely to be winners.”

“How could Ricky Smith do that?” the sergeant said. “He’s not that smart.”

“Ricky didn’t. Another player did,” Valentine said. “That player checked out that wheel days or weeks before. He recorded hundreds of wheel spins and wrote down profiles of the different dealers.” He walked around the table and stood behind the roulette wheel. “That player stood here, did the math, and signaled to Ricky which numbers to bet on. Ricky then quickly bet those numbers.”

“You’ve seen this before?”

“Yeah. It only works if the player doing the predicting is sharp.” Valentine tapped the yellow pads on the table. “This guy.”

“You think that was Kessel’s role? He was real smart in school.”

“Then why did he steal the SATs?”

“Like I told you, he’s a weasel.”

Valentine already knew how the craps scam worked and did not bother to examine the table. Instead, he stood in the room’s center and scratched his chin. Nothing he had found was going to put anyone in jail—except the crossbow, and it was going to be hard to prove who put that in the kitchen.

“Hey, look at this.” Gaylord was standing on the side of the room beside the furnace. He’d found a door and had his fingers on the knob.

“Hold on,” Valentine said. He went upstairs and got the rope. They repeated the door-opening drill, but stood at an angle from the opening. This time, nothing came flying out. Gaylord went in and flipped on the light.

The room was unfinished, with walls made of packed dirt and an uneven concrete floor. In its center was a table that held two TV sets. A chair sat in front of the table, a remote on the seat. Valentine picked up the remote and pressed the power button. Both TVs instantly came to life. On one set was a commercial; on the other, a female newscaster talking sports. Valentine stared at them, not seeing any connection.

His eyes fell on the thirty-gallon garbage bag leaning against the wall. It was the same kind of bag he used at home, with a built-in tie at the mouth of the bag. He crossed the room and untied the top. Inside he saw a few thousand used scratch-off lottery tickets.

“All right,” he said under his breath.

“What?” Gaylord asked.

He extracted a handful of tickets. “Ricky won a fifty-thousand-dollar lottery jackpot, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, a few days ago. Let me guess. He found a winning ticket and figured out a way to cover over the circles.”

“There you go.”

“Ricky then gave the ticket to his friend, who worked at a convenience store,” Gaylord said, “and was planning to repurchase the ticket and then show everyone he’d won a jackpot. Only, he decided to let Roland Pew in on the action.”

“Why do you think he did that?” Valentine asked.

“They’re old buddies.”

Valentine slung the garbage bag over his shoulder. As he started to walk out of the room, he saw Gaylord standing in front of the twin TVs. A horse race was showing on both sets. It was the same race, only being run at different times, the horses at different portions of the muddy track.

“I’ve seen this channel before,” Gaylord said. “It’s on cable. It shows nothing but horse races and equestrian events. My teenage daughter loves it.”

Valentine watched the race end on one set, then watched it end on the other, all the while counting silently in his head. Seven seconds between endings.

“You know what this means?” Gaylord asked.

“It’s how you rig a horse race,” he said.