Sucker Bet

13

Running Bear had decided to pay a visit to Harry Smooth Stone’s trailer.

Smooth Stone’s shift had ended at noon. Through a surveillance camera, Running Bear had watched him leave the reservation. Then he’d called Smooth Stone at home, just to make sure that was where he was. Harry had answered, already half-asleep.

Running Bear tried the door and found it locked. The trailer was identical to the one he worked in. Someday, they would all be housed in a gleaming steel and glass building, but that day was years off. First a water treatment plant needed to be built, then a hospice. Nice digs for the casino people would come later. The tribe’s elders had decided this, and their word was law.

He put his shoulder to the door. The hinges gave way. He went in and flicked on the overhead light. The air reeked of cigarettes. A desk, two file cabinets, a TV, and a VCR made up the furnishings. He got behind the desk and tried the top drawer. Locked. Again he put his muscles to work.

The lock popped, and he pulled the drawer out. A black ledger book practically jumped into his hands. He opened it to the first page. Smooth Stone’s handwriting was primitive and easy to recognize. Like Running Bear, he’d dropped out of high school and had finished his education later on.

The page was dated and contained the names of five blackjack dealers. Next to each name was an equation that derived a percentage. The percentages were totaled at the bottom of the page and used to determine another percentage. That percentage was circled: 44%.

Running Bear leafed through the other pages in the ledger. They were nearly identical to the first, except the dates and percentages changed. Some days, the percentage was in the thirties, while others it was in the fifties. He looked at the names of the dealers again. Two of them worked the day shift, two the evening shift, and one the graveyard shift. His eyes locked on the last name on the page.

“God damn,” the chief said.

It was Jack Lightfoot’s.

Taking a ruler off the desk, he placed it against the edge of the page. The page came out cleanly, and he folded it into a neat square and tucked it into his shirt pocket. Then he put the ledger back in the drawer. The trailer had grown hot, and he was sweating profusely, a sensation he did not find uncomfortable. He flicked off the light and stepped outside.

Smooth Stone was waiting for him in the parking lot. With him were four of the dealers whose names had been in the ledger. All were large men. They stood beside Running Bear’s Jeep, looking agitated.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Smooth Stone asked.

Running Bear shrugged and walked down the trailer steps. He walked with his palms pointing toward the sky, letting them see he wasn’t armed. “Not really,” he said, then kicked Smooth Stone in the groin when he got close enough, just to see what the others would do. As he’d expected, the men took a universal step backwards. Had they known anything about combat, they would have jumped him, their combined weight enough to beat the best fighter in the world.

Running Bear punched the closest dealer in the face. Hit him hard, and sent the man flying over the hood of the Jeep and onto the ground in a sprawling heap.

That left three dealers. A porker named Joe Little Owl stepped forward and threw a haymaker. Running Bear ducked the punch. Little Owl was still coming forward when their skulls met.

One of the two dealers still standing looked Running Bear squarely in the eye, then took off down the road at a dead run.

That left Karl Blackhorn, a Choctaw with a bad attitude. Recently, Running Bear had reprimanded him for being rude to customers, and he saw Blackhorn draw a knife from a sheath on his belt, its long blade dancing in the sun.

“Kill him,” Smooth Stone said, writhing on the ground.

With his heels, Running Bear felt for a soft spot in the road. Blackhorn inched forward, grinning wickedly. “Payback time,” he said.

Kneeling, Running Bear picked up a handful of dirt and tossed it into Blackhorn’s face. Blackhorn stepped back, swiping desperately at his eyes. Running Bear kicked the knife out of his hand. It flew through the air and disappeared in the mangroves.

Blackhorn fell onto Running Bear’s Jeep. Blinking wildly, he jammed his hand down into his jeans and tried to pull a gun. Running Bear stepped forward and grabbed his wrist.

“Don’t be a fool,” Running Bear said.

Then the gun went off.

Valentine got his Honda from the Loews valet. Alligator slime had penetrated the cloth seats and floor mats, and he drove to the Fontainebleau trying not to gag.

Back in his room, he took Bill’s tape and slipped it into the cassette player next to his bed. It was easy to tell which man was Rico Blanco and which was Victor Marks. Rico sounded Sicilian, either first-generation or maybe a native who’d come over as a kid, and used words like gotta and outta. Victor Marks used a voice-alteration machine and sounded like Al Pacino with a head cold. Valentine strained to understand what they were saying.

Victor: “You’ve got to play the C for that old pappy.”

Rico: “I can do that.”

Victor: “You know the difference between a payoff and the payoff against the wall?”

Rico: “Yeah.”

Victor: “Listen, kid. I’m talking about playing this apple without a store, boosters, or props. If you’re good, you can take off this touch without help, but it’s going to come hot.”

Rico: “Hot I can handle.”

Victor: “What if he tries to run? What are you going to do then?”

Rico: “I gotta raggle.”

Victor: “The raggle doesn’t always work. What if he blows?”

Rico: “I’ll put the mug on him.”

Victor: “Sounds like you got all the bases covered.”

Rico: “You bet.”

The conversation ended, and Valentine killed the tape. Hustlers and crossroaders had a special language, and over the years he’d gotten pretty good at deciphering it. Paint meant marked cards, a mitt man someone who switched cards during a game. There were hundreds of expressions, only Rico and Victor Marks weren’t using any of them. A raggle? Play the C for that old pappy? Put the mug on? He was clueless.

His stomach growled. It was lunchtime. Only too many things were bothering him to think about food. Like how Jack Lightfoot was cheating, and Bill’s situation, and Jacques’s dice cheater, and this damn tape. Too many puzzles to keep straight.

His stomach growled again. His body was telling him something, and he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door.

He decided to take a drive and got his car from the valet.

Traffic crawled, then stopped, then crawled some more. A kid on a moped scooted between lanes, making them all look stupid. He pulled into the entrance for the Castaway Hotel. Down the road, he could see the Fontainebleau. It had taken him ten minutes and a gallon of gas to go a lousy half mile.

The Castaway was one of those old Miami Beach dumps that he could identify with, the flowery wall coverings and mushy carpet a throwback to his youth. Behind the hotel was a poolside restaurant, and a greeter-seater showed him to a table with an umbrella. Next to the pool, a trio was playing jazz, the music battling with screaming kids and their parents screaming at them. He ordered a hamburger and coffee.

Ten minutes later his lunch came. The waiter said, “We’re changing shifts. Mind cashing out?”

Valentine paid the bill. It was seven bucks, so far the best deal he’d found. He watched the new shift come in. Several of the waiters were in street clothes and carried their uniforms in see-through dry-cleaning bags. He stared at the uniforms, then removed from his wallet the list of items that Jacques had told Mabel he’d found inside the dealers’ lockers, and read them again.

shoe polish

hair gel

combs/brushes

mustache trimmer

mouthwash/breath mints

aftershave

hair tonic

toothpaste

deodorant

clothes iron

sewing kit

newspaper

nude picture

candy bar

Smiling, he powered up his cell phone and called Mabel.

“Grift Sense.”

“Do you do psychic readings?”

“Very funny,” his neighbor said. “I’ve been trying to call you. Don’t you ever leave your cell phone on?”

No, he never did. He hated hearing cell phones ring in public places and private ones, as well. He ignored the question, and said, “I solved the mystery of Jacques’s dice cheater.”

“You did! Jacques called twenty minutes ago. He’s so irritating!”

“Tell Jacques the craps dealer who has the clothes iron in his locker is the cheater.”

“The clothes iron?”

“That’s right. I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out sooner.”

“Figure what out?”

“I’ve known a lot of craps dealers over the years,” he said, “and none iron their shirts. They have them dry-cleaned. Jacques’s cheater is using the iron to shrink the dice. You put a die up to a red-hot iron and hold it against the metal for a split second. The iron shrinks the circumference of the die. That causes the die to be biased, and certain combinations will come up more than others. The neat part is once the die cools off, it returns to its original size. All the evidence disappears.”

Mabel laughed with delight. “That’s wonderful. Now we get to keep the money.”

“After you call Jacques back, I’ve got two more things for you to do.”

“Fire away,” she said.

“First, I need you to call Detective Eddie Davis in Atlantic City and ask him to run a check on a guy named Rico Blanco.”

“The same Rico Blanco who ripped off your son?”

Valentine nearly slapped himself in the head. Two months ago, a hoodlum named Rico Blanco had stolen fifty grand from Gerry by getting him to bet on a videotape of a college football game. It had to be the same guy.

“You’re a genius,” he said.

“Thank you. Then what?”

“Turn on my computer—”

“Done.”

“—and boot up Creep File. Pull up the file on Victor Marks.”

Creep File was a database of over five thousand hustlers, crossroaders, and con men that he’d crossed paths with during his years policing Atlantic City’s casinos. It was a veritable Who’s Who of Sleaze.

“Here he is,” Mabel said. “Victor Marks. Professional con artist. Came to Atlantic City in 1982. Doesn’t read like he stayed long. No picture.”

Valentine closed his eyes and tried to remember him. He drew a blank.

“There’s no physical description,” Mabel added, “so I guess he got away. Ah, here’s something. He had a partner who you arrested. Saul Hyman.”

Valentine smiled thinly. Saul he did remember. An old-time scuffler, one of those guys who couldn’t stop stealing if his life depended on it.

“Pull up his file, will you?”

Mabel’s fingers tapped away. “Saul Hyman, aka the Coney Island Kid. Your notes are several pages long. Did he really do all these things?”

“That’s the tip of the iceberg. See if the file has his last known address.”

Mabel laughed out loud when she found it. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“What’s that?”

“He lives on Miami Beach.”

Saul Hyman lived in a retirement village in north Miami called Sunny Isles. He had to be pushing eighty, and Valentine imagined him doing what most old guys in Florida did: going to doctors, going to the track, and ogling the pretty girls who dotted the landscape like palm trees.

“Would you like his phone number?” Mabel asked.

“How did you get that?” Valentine asked.

“I typed his name into a search engine called whitepages.com.”

Valentine scribbled the number down. “While you’re at it, give me Gerry’s number in Puerto Rico.”

Mabel gave him the hotel’s number, and Valentine wrote it beneath Saul’s. His son was honeymooning at the Ritz-Carlton with his pregnant bride. Nothing but the best for his boy, especially when his old man was paying. “Listen,” he said, “have you ever watched that TV show, Who Wants to Be Rich?”

“Once in a while.”

“Victor Marks scammed it. I’d like to figure out how.”

“As in cheated it? I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why not?”

“I read in TV Guide that the security on the show is like Fort Knox.”

“Talk to you later,” he said.