Mr. Lucky

45

We lost our witness,” Bill Higgins said.

Valentine closed his eyes and felt his spirits sink. It was eight in the morning, and he was sitting in the kitchen of his house with Gaylord, sucking down coffee. They’d stayed up and traded war stories while waiting for Bill to call. “Don’t tell me she got away,” he said.

“She put a gun to her head.”

Valentine felt his stomach roll over. That made nine dead people in three days. And for what? A million bucks that Ricky Smith hadn’t even collected.

“We searched her house,” Bill said. “She’s Ricky’s aunt on his mother’s side. I found some letters in a desk and an album with Ricky’s picture in it.”

“Any evidence we can use in court?”

“No. She put her purse into the trash compactor before we could get to her. It crushed the miniature camera she used in the scam into a thousand pieces.”

Bill sounded like he was hurting. No cop wanted to cause a suicide. Helen Ledbetter taking her own life would eat at Bill, just as the three men Valentine had killed would eat at him. Opening his eyes, he said, “I’m sorry this happened.”

There was a pause. Then Bill said, “What are you going to do now?”

Valentine removed Ricky Smith’s winning OTB slip from his pocket. He’d been praying that Bill would haul in Helen Ledbetter, and she’d crack and turn evidence on the rest of the gang. Then he’d be able to leave Slippery Rock and go home. Only, life didn’t always work out the way you wanted it to. “I’m going to ask the sergeant who runs this town to arrest everyone who’s involved,” he said.

“Do you have enough evidence to do that?” Bill asked.

Valentine stared at the slip. Every crime had at least one flaw. The slip was Ricky’s, and it was going to put a whole bunch of people in jail for a long time. “Yes. But first I need you to do something for me.”

“Name it,” Bill said.

Gaylord drove Valentine to the police station in his car. It was a four-door Volvo, and Valentine found himself appraising the vehicle. It had a powerful engine and plenty of amenities, but something felt wrong. Then he realized what it was. The car was meant for a family, which meant that if he bought one, Gerry would abscond with it.

They went inside and found the deputy at the front desk flirting with the cleaning lady. Valentine wanted to ask him where he was a few hours ago, but decided he’d already stirred up the pot. They went into Gaylord’s office, and the sergeant shut the door. Paper was coming out of the fax machine, and Gaylord pulled the cover page from the tray and read it. “It’s from your friend in Las Vegas.”

“How many pages is he sending?”

“Twenty-seven, including the cover.”

Valentine removed the five sheets already in the fax tray. Each was a bill from a Las Vegas hotel with a person’s name on it, along with how many days they’d stayed in the hotel, what they’d spent, etc. Bill was faxing the names of everyone from Slippery Rock who’d been in Las Vegas when Ricky scammed the Mint.

Valentine handed the sheets to Gaylord. As more sheets came through, Valentine passed them to him. By the time the machine had spit out twenty, the sergeant was sitting in a chair and the blood had drained from his face.

“I know these people,” he said, sounding shaken. “I go to church with them and my kids attend the same schools and my wife’s in the PTA with…aw, shit, what am I saying?”

“You’re saying they’re your friends.”

The sheets were clutched in the sergeant’s hand. “My best friends.”

Valentine went into the next room and got another chair. He came back and shut the door, then sat next to the sergeant. “I can leave you out of this. It will take me longer, but I can. I don’t want to ruin your life.”

The last of the sheets had come through. Gaylord pulled them out of the tray. His eyes fell on one, and he groaned. “My kid’s pediatrician.” He put the sheets on his desk and tiredly rubbed his face with his hands. “Let me ask you something. How much time are these folks looking at? A year, maybe two?”

“Try four and a half in the federal pen,” Valentine said.

“What?”

“They all committed felonies.”

“But Ricky didn’t collect the money.”

Valentine saw the pleading look in Gaylord’s eyes. Nevada had the harshest laws in the country when it came to cheaters, with conspiracy to steal from a casino as bad as the act itself. Those twenty-six names sitting on Gaylord’s desk—along with perhaps their spouses and friends—were guilty of conspiracy to defraud. They were toast.

Gaylord leaned forward in his chair. His beard had come out, and he looked like he was about to become a werewolf. “I read in the paper a few weeks back about a casino in Las Vegas that had rigged a promotion. They had a raffle and gave away a Mercedes-Benz, a ten-thousand-dollar chip, and a five-thousand-dollar chip. They rigged the raffle so that some high rollers who’d lost a lot of money won the prizes. You hear about that?”

Valentine nodded, wondering where this was going.

“The Nevada Gaming Control Board fined the casino a million bucks, which is a chunk of change. Only, this casino is making a quarter-billion dollars a year. Two of the upper management guys who rigged the game went on to other jobs. The third got promoted.”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Valentine asked.

“You work for these people.”

Valentine nearly said no. But it was true. He was here in the casinos’ employ, even though he hated every last one of them.

“That’s right.”

“Well, how about we do something similar here?” Gaylord suggested. “We make the people who were involved pay a fine, or do some other kind of community service, provided they give you enough evidence to nail Stanley Kessel and Ricky Smith. Those are the two you want.”

Valentine thought it over. Gaylord was asking him not to rip the guts out of Slippery Rock. For every person he put behind bars, a great many more would suffer. And all because they’d let some fast-talking scumbags talk them into scamming a casino.

“You’re on,” Valentine said.

They shook hands on it. Valentine picked up the stack of faxes from the desk and handed them to him. “Pick out the person in this group who you can talk into helping us.”

Gaylord pulled out the pediatrician. His name was Dr. Russell McFarland. “Russ has too much to lose. He’ll do whatever you want.”

“Let’s go see him,” Valentine said.

Gaylord could be a world-class prick when he wanted to be, just like most good cops. He put the screws to Russ McFarland the moment they were behind the closed doors of McFarland’s office. The doctor worked out of a renovated house a quarter mile from town. It had polished wood floors and was filled with expensive furniture.

McFarland was about what Valentine had expected. Mid-forties, nice clothes, expensive haircut, living high on the hog. Maybe the HMOs had taken a bite out of his income and he’d decided to join Ricky’s gang. Valentine was sorry it was Gaylord putting the screws to him. He hated rich people who cheated. They had the best that life had to offer, yet somehow it was never enough.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” the doctor said, his voice trembling.

“Even rat out your friends?” Gaylord said.

“Yes. Just don’t tell my wife. She thinks I was at my high school reunion.”

Gaylord dropped the stack of faxes on McFarland’s lap. Then he told the doctor what he wanted done.

“You want me to call all of them?” McFarland said.

Gaylord slammed his fist on the desk. The doctor jumped an inch out of his chair, then reached for a phone book on the shelf.

“You learn fast,” Gaylord told him.