Sucker Bet

6

The first thing Valentine did after he got into his Honda was to tear up Running Bear’s check. He was a man of principles. Principle No. 1 said that he didn’t work for crooks. It meant turning away business, as certain casinos all over the world routinely swindled their customers. Mabel didn’t agree, and felt he should take the money and give it to charity, but Valentine stuck to his guns and felt a hell of a lot better for it.

A gibbous moon gave his car a purple sheen, and he found himself thinking about Donny and his purple suit. Donny wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was always entertaining, and Valentine realized how much he missed the big lunk. Then he thought about Vixen and her vegetarian cooking. No meat, no bones, yet most of it had tasted pretty good. Then he thought about Zoe and her barrage of annoying pubescent questions. One day, they would stop, he was sure of it.

And finally, he thought about Kat.

He’d planned to take her out to dinner tonight and give her the diamond pin while telling her how much she meant to him. He wasn’t good at expressing himself, so he’d composed a little speech and memorized it. Sitting there in the dark, the words came back to him. I go to bed at night thinking about you. You make me happy every day. I hope I do the same for you. You’ve made me look past who I am and try new things.

He gripped the wheel and stared across the parking lot. The wrestling had been fun, until Kat’s ex-husband had shown up. Seeing Ralph and Kat and Zoe together, he’d been reminded of what his own previous life had been like, and how much he still missed it.

He powered up his cell phone and called Mabel.

“You still down in the dumps?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I’ll get over it. Anything going on?”

“Our old pal Jacques called earlier.”

“What did he want?”

“He searched his employees’ lockers like you suggested. Well, you’re not going to believe this, but—”

Valentine felt something heavy bump his car. The parking lot backed up onto a swamp, and he was the only living soul out here. “Let me call you back,” he said.

He hung up, then heard the noise again, a sharp rustling sound like sandpaper rubbing against a blackboard. A sudden flickering movement caught his eye. Turning his headlights on, he saw an alligator lying beside his car, its tail whacking his door.

“For the love of Christ.”

He beeped his horn, and a second gator appeared. It was a monster, and his stomach churned as he saw the bleeding hunk of raw meat between its jaws. He watched the two reptiles fight over dinner.

He thought about starting the car and driving over them, then decided against it. They were just stupid beasts, doing what God created them to do. If he waited a few minutes, they’d probably return to the swamp.

It wasn’t unusual for him to get threatened while on a job. Casino personnel stole from their employers at a rate far higher than the national average. When he was called in, the thieves sometimes tried to scare him off. Usually it came in the form of threatening phone calls or a broken windshield. Once, someone had taken a shot at him. But no one had ever used alligators. That was new.

His eyes drifted to the floor of the passenger side of his car. Something was lying there, and he flicked on the interior light. It looked like a steak. Taking out his pocket handkerchief, he picked it up.

It was an inch-thick porterhouse, the meat starting to go bad. He started to toss it out the window when the Honda’s folding backseat came down with a loud bang! and the alligator hiding in his trunk threw itself between the two front seats and snatched the steak out of his hand.

He heard himself yell, then looked to see if he still had his fingers. All there. The alligator munched on the steak while staring menacingly at him with its giant green eye.

Valentine jammed his elbow into the gator’s face, and an electrifying jolt of pain shot through his arm. The gator shook its head, acting more pissed off than hurt. And he thought, You’re out of options.

Except one. With a strength he didn’t know he possessed, he pulled himself through his open window and climbed onto the roof of his car. He’d seen Charles Bronson do this in a movie once and hadn’t thought it was possible. He crawled to the roof’s center and saw the gator in his car stick its head out the driver’s window, looking for him. The other gators circled the car, trapping him.

Valentine lifted his head. Multiple surveillance cameras were perched atop the casino, and he felt certain that whoever was on duty in the casino’s surveillance control room had seen him and called for help.

He stared down at the gators, his heart racing out of control. Were they agile enough to climb onto the car? He didn’t think so, but didn’t want to be surprised, either. He waved at one of the rooftop cameras.

“Hurry!” he yelled.