Sucker Bet

16

Running Bear had forgotten how much he hated being in jail.

A day had passed since he’d shot Karl Blackhorn. Blackhorn had gone to meet his ancestors on the way to the hospital, and Running Bear, Smooth Stone, and the other three dealers had been arrested by tribal police and thrown into the reservation jail.

He stood at the bars in his cell. They were rubbed smooth where other inmates had instinctively held them at chest height. Smooth Stone and the others were a stone’s throw away, whispering frantically. Like mice knowing they were about to be eaten by a cat, he thought. He sat on his cot, leaned against the concrete wall, and shut his eyes.

The last time he’d been incarcerated—over twenty-five years ago—he’d had a vision. In it, he’d seen his people living in nice homes and having enough food to eat and good health care, and all the other things they didn’t have when he was growing up. He’d seen a future where there was no future. And it had changed him.

When he opened his eyes, a Micanopy woman in a business suit was standing in his cell. In her left hand was a briefcase; in her right, a plastic chair. Running Bear motioned for her to sit. “So, Gladys Soft Wings, how are you?”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me,” she said.

“You went to Stetson and got a law degree,” he said. “And now you’re here to represent me before the elders.”

“Yes, and to the Broward police, if you’d like me to.”

Running Bear considered it. It would be up to the tribe’s elders to decide which story to present to the police when they reported the shooting—his, or Smooth Stone’s. The elders were old men set in their ways, and Running Bear had clashed with them many times over how he marketed the casino.

“One thing at a time,” he said.

She did not seem offended. Opening her briefcase, she removed several sheets of paper, then read aloud Smooth Stone’s and the other dealers’ accounts of what had happened. In their story, Running Bear had vandalized Smooth Stone’s trailer, then attacked them when confronted. Running Bear laughed softly when she was done.

“You find this funny?”

“I find their reasoning funny,” he said. “It was five against one. Blackhorn had a knife and a gun. I was unarmed.”

“Blackhorn is dead. And you’re a martial arts expert.”

“They attacked me.”

“So it was self-defense. But why were you in the trailer?”

“I hired a consultant to do a job. This consultant is an expert in catching cheaters. Someone put an alligator in his car. I suspected Smooth Stone, so I went to his trailer. I found a ledger in Smooth Stone’s desk that implicated the men who attacked me.”

Gladys opened her briefcase again and handed him a sheet of paper. It was a list of the items the tribal police had found in Smooth Stone’s trailer after they’d searched it.

“The tribal police didn’t find a ledger,” she said.

Running Bear removed from his shirt pocket the page he’d torn out of the ledger. Unfolding it, he handed it to her. “I took this as a memento.”

Gladys studied the page. Running Bear could vividly remember her as a child. Shoeless, dirty most of the time, hardly ever spoke. And now here she was, wearing nice clothes and talking for a living. He saw Gladys shake her head.

“I don’t know what any of this means,” she said.

“Neither do I,” Running Bear said. “But I know someone who does.”

“Your consultant?”

“Yes,” he said. “My consultant.”

Saul Hyman’s condo was on the fourth floor of a dumpy high-rise in north Miami. Valentine had called and caught Saul riding his stationary bike. Hearing his voice, Saul had acted like he was a long-lost brother and not someone who’d once busted him.

“Of course you can come on over,” Saul said. “Provided it’s a social call.”

“I’m retired,” Valentine had replied.

“How many years has it been?” Saul asked an hour later, ushering Valentine in. He was small and wiry, maybe one-fifty soaking wet, and sported a debonair little mustache, which he dyed along with his hair. Normally, Valentine didn’t like dye jobs. But Saul’s looked okay.

“Twenty.”

“Miss me?”

“Not for a minute.”

“You were my favorite cop.”

“Why’s that?”

“That partner of yours wanted to beat the daylights out of me. You stopped him.”

Valentine vaguely remember the incident. Atlantic City had been a candy store in the early days, and cheaters were often pummeled before reaching the station house. Saul led him into the living room. It was small and had a view of two apartment buildings across the street. Between them, he could see a tiny sliver of ocean.

“Nice view.”

“Thanks,” Saul said, pointing at a chair as he took the couch. “So when did you retire?”

“Last year. I opened a consulting business. I help casinos nail cheats.”

“I hope you’re charging them through the nose.”

“You bet.”

Saul smiled, and the sunlight reflected brightly off his teeth. They’d been artificially whitened and looked like piano keys. “Good for you,” he said.

“Because I went out on my own?”

“Because you’re making money off the fucking casinos.” He slapped his hands on his knees. “So, how about a drink? I can offer you soda or fruit juice. I’ve got this Indian doctor, Deep Pockets Chokya, who made me swear off the hard stuff.”

“That’s his real name?”

“That’s what I call him. Every time I see him, I leave a little lighter.”

“Diet Coke, if you have it.”

“Diet Coke I can do.”

Saul sprang off the couch and disappeared. While he waited, Valentine appraised Saul’s digs. It wasn’t a great place, but it wasn’t a trailer park, either. Saul’s philosophy toward cheating had obviously paid off. “It’s better to gamble with someone else’s money than your own,” he’d said after Valentine had arrested him. “Much better.”

It had happened at the old Resorts International in Atlantic City. The casino had just opened, and security was a shambles. But the owners had done a smart thing. In the basement was a computer that did daily financial analysis of the different games. And the computer said something was wrong at their roulette table. Resorts’ security had called the police. Valentine had been given the assignment, and set up shop in Resorts’ surveillance control room.

Sitting in front of a video monitor, he’d watched the roulette table through an eye-in-the-sky camera called a pan/tilt/zoom. Roulette tended to attract an eccentric mix of people, and it took a while before he’d spotted Saul and sensed that something was not right.

Saul gambled every day. Like most gamblers, he was superstitious and followed a set routine each time he entered the casino. First he went to the coffee shop and smoked a cigarette. Then he went into the casino and played roulette. He would always place even-money bets—red, black, odd-even—and usually leave after fifteen minutes to play craps or blackjack. He was a smart gambler and sometimes won big. But just as often, he lost his stake.

What Valentine hadn’t liked was the sameness of Saul’s routine. It felt rehearsed, so he decided to videotape Saul for a week, then compare the tapes. After reviewing them, he wrote down the four things Saul did every single day.

(1) He always smoked.

(2) He always bet a hundred-dollar black chip.

(3) He always tossed his hundred-dollar chip on the table and asked a stickman to place his bet for him.

(4) He always asked the same stickman.

Valentine had pulled up the stickman’s record. In the past year, he’d filed several grievances with the casino’s human resources department, unhappy with his vacation time, his hours, and his level of pay. He was one angry individual.

The next day, Valentine had parked himself on a chair at a shoe-shine stand in the casino. In his lap he’d put a newspaper. Underneath the newspaper was a pair of binoculars. He’d talked baseball with the shoe-shine man until Saul had come in.

Saul had followed his usual routine. Valentine had watched with his binoculars, and what he’d seen was a thing of real beauty.

Approaching the roulette table, Saul said hello to the stickman, then tossed a black hundred-dollar chip on the table and asked the stickman to make his bet. Only Saul’s chip never hit the table. It was attached to a piece of monofilament and flew up his sleeve. At the same time, the stickman dropped a black chip that was palmed in his hand onto the table. To help disguise the switch, Saul blew smoke on the table.

Saul and the stickman did their thing three times. The stickman was stealing chips off the table and palming them, letting Saul play with the house’s money.

But what Saul had done next was even better. Instead of leaving with his winnings, he went and played blackjack. He was giving Resorts a chance to win its money back. More than 50 percent of the time, Resorts would. But the rest of the time, Saul would walk away a winner. And he wasn’t risking a dime.

Saul returned with a tray. He served his guest and made the couch sag as he sat down. “So what brings you to Miami?”

“I’m doing a job for the Micanopy casino,” Valentine said, deciding to get to the point. “A friend of yours is a suspect in a murder case.”

Saul put his drink down. Hustlers were a lot of things, but few were murderers. His voice turned serious. “Who?”

“Victor Marks.”

Saul blinked, and then blinked again. “Victor Marks is the gentlest guy I’ve ever known. You know what his nickname was? The Butterfly.”

“You talk to Victor recently?”

“We haven’t spoken in years. You sure Victor’s involved?”

Valentine nodded. “He’s working with a hood named Rico Blanco. The police fingered Rico in a murder at the Micanopy casino.”

Saul drew back in his seat. Valentine sensed that Saul was wrestling with his conscience. Every hustler had one, only it tended to follow a more convoluted path than most. Valentine lowered his voice.

“The victim was running a scam with Rico Blanco. Something went wrong, and Rico killed him. I don’t want the same thing to happen to Victor Marks.”

Valentine heard Saul mumble under his breath. Mabel did that a lot, and Valentine guessed he would one day, too. You grow old, lose your friends, you need someone to talk to. Saul’s filmy eyes rested on Valentine’s face.

“Neither do I,” the elderly con man said.

Valentine played the tape of Rico Blanco and Victor Marks on Saul Hyman’s stereo.

“They’re talking about conning a sucker out of a lot of money,” Saul said when the tape ended. “The raggle is a pretty girl who’s part of the scam. Playing an apple without a store, booster, or props means that Rico is running solo. The rest of it is Victor asking Rico if he’s got the moxie to pull it off. That’s the hard part.”

Valentine ejected the tape from the cassette player. “Why’s that?”

“It’s like fishing for marlin,” Saul said. “Anyone can throw a line in the water and snag one. But then you’ve got to fight the fish and reel it in. That’s the challenge.”

“Why does Victor use a voice-alteration machine?”

“Victor’s always been careful,” Saul said. “I’m probably the only person in the world who’s got a photograph of him.”

“Can I see it?”

There was no hesitation in Saul’s voice. “Yeah, sure.”

A minute later the two men were sitting on the couch leafing through a dusty photo album. Saul had spent his entire life on the wrong side of the law. In the 1930s, he’d worked on Coney Island as a spiritualist and worn a turban and walnut stain on his face. He’d graduated to being a three-card monte man, then a racetrack tout. Later, he’d moved to Palm Springs and played the sophisticate, and sold fake oil stock and rubber plantations.

“Here we go,” Saul said, finding the picture.

Valentine stared at two couples at a table in a nightclub. Saul with a pretty lady, Victor Marks with a frowning woman. Marks had his hand in front of his face. There wasn’t much to see except a thick head of hair and bushy eyebrows.

“That’s Vic and his date, and me and Sadie at the Copacabana in New York,” Saul said. “We were there to see Count Basie. Vic nearly punched the photographer for taking a photo. I paid the guy and made him destroy the negative.” Saul stared longingly at the photograph. His finger touched the picture and drew an outline around Sadie’s head.

“Your wife?”

“Yeah. Died last January.”

Valentine felt a fist tighten in his chest. Lois had died in her sleep two years ago January. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“Me, too,” Saul said, swiping at his eyes. “I didn’t get where I am by sitting on my ass. Sadie was always there supporting me. When I was in the slammer, she came every week and brought me pies and cookies.” He spread his arms to indicate the room’s modest furnishings. “This was my way of paying her back.”

Loss. It was supposed to mean something was missing. But it was really a monster, ready at any moment to leap out of the shadows and snatch someone away. And when it did, nothing on this earth could replace the loss.

“And now it doesn’t mean shit,” the elderly con man said.