Sucker Bet

23

The afternoon had turned into evening, and still no sign of Gerry.

Valentine sat on his balcony, growing worried. Gerry’s cell phone was in Puerto Rico with Yolanda, and there was no way to reach him. What if something had happened during his meeting with Rico? The phone in the room rang. Valentine ran inside and snatched it up.

“Where have you been?”

“Right where I’ve always been,” Mabel replied. “Someday, Tony, I’m going to convince you to keep your damn cell phone on.”

It was the first time Valentine had ever heard his neighbor swear. He swallowed the snappy retort about to trip off his tongue. Taking his cell phone out, he hit power.

“You just did,” he said.

“Oh, my,” she said. “Did you actually just turn your cell phone on for my benefit?”

“Yup.”

“I’m touched. I left a message for you earlier. Rather than repeat it, why don’t you just pick it up, and hear what I had to say?”

The line went dead. His cell phone beeped, a message waiting in voice mail. He retrieved it and heard Mabel’s voice. “Tony, it’s me. I’ve been trying to reach you. Now, you may not like this, but I made an executive decision an hour ago.”

“Uh-oh,” he said.

“Jacques called. He said the craps dealer admitted to shrinking the casino’s dice. The craps dealer told Jacques he wanted to cut a deal. He said another gang of cheaters was ripping the casino off for a thousand bucks a night at roulette. Jacques had the roulette wheel tested and also watched surveillance tapes of the table, but he didn’t see anything wrong. He wants you to look at the tapes.

“First I said no,” his neighbor said, “knowing how busy you are. But Jacques insisted and said he’d wired your fee to a nearby Western Union office. I called the office, and, yup, the money’s there, so I caved in and said yes. I mean, he has been a good customer.”

“And a jerk,” Valentine said into the phone.

“So here’s what I had Jacques do,” Mabel said. “He sent an E-mail to your hotel that contains a copy of the surveillance tape of the roulette wheel. Go to the front desk and ask for Jodisue. She’ll retrieve the E-mail from her computer, and you can have a look. And, Tony . . .”

“Yes, Mabel,” he said.

“Start leaving your cell phone on!”

Jodisue was the night manager, a gal his age who’d migrated down from Boston. As she led him back to her office, Valentine spied a half-finished letter on her computer screen and the remains of a club sandwich in a cardboard box on her desk. With eyes in the back of her head, she said, “You hungry?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Intuition.”

She pointed at an empty chair. As he sat, a bag of potato chips landed in his lap. Opening it, he shoved a handful in his mouth.

Closing out of her document, Jodisue went into E-mail and pulled up Jacques’s missive. There was a note and an attachment.

Dear Tony Valentine,

Here is the tape. I see nothing, but I am not you. Thanking you in advance, I remain,

Jacques Dugay

She double-clicked her mouse on the attachment. “You a cop or something?”

“I’m a consultant,” he said, staring at the static blue screen. “I catch people who cheat casinos.”

“I thought it was the other way around.”

“It’s pretty serious crime. About a hundred million a year alone in Las Vegas, and that’s just the cheating they know about.”

“Don’t you have to be there and actually see it?”

“The surveillance films are usually enough.”

Windows Media Player appeared on her computer screen. Jacques’s film was taking its time downloading. They bantered for several minutes, and Valentine felt like he was dancing. The film began to play. It was of good resolution, and showed a game of roulette with over a dozen players placing bets. Right away, Valentine saw something he didn’t like, and pointed at the screen.

“This guy bothers me,” he said.

The man in question was an employee. His job was to change the players’ cash into chips, which was called the buy-in.

“How come?” Jodisue asked.

“His body language is wrong.”

“Maybe he’s upset about something,” she suggested.

“He wouldn’t bring it with him to work.”

“How can you know that?”

“Casinos are strange places,” he said. “There’s constant energy flowing back and forth. It’s impossible not to get caught up in it. Now, look at the guy. He’s detached himself from the action. He’s on the outside, looking in.”

Jodisue stared at the screen. “You’re very perceptive.”

Valentine thought back to what Jacques had told Mabel. If the cheats were stealing a grand a night, it was probably going out in dribs and drabs, and not in one big killing, where it might be picked up by the cameras.

The film ended. Without being asked, Jodisue moved the cursor over the screen and hit replay. The film started over. This time, Valentine watched the change man to the exclusion of everyone else at the table.

Part of the change man’s job was to deposit the players’ money into a locked drop box. Twice the bills got stuck, and he had to jiggle the plunger to get them down the chute. Valentine leaned back in his chair, convinced he’d made the scam.

“You mind my asking you a question?” Jodisue said.

“Go ahead.”

“The lady who works for you . . .”

“Mabel?”

She nodded. “She your wife?”

Jodisue’s fingers wore no rings, and the framed pictures on her desk contained nothing but panting canines. Another time, another place, he would have taken her out for a milk shake, if for no other reason than to say thanks.

“Yes,” he said.

“That’s what I figured,” Jodisue said.

Back in his room, Valentine lay on the bed and called Mabel. “You still steamed at me?” he asked.

“A little. You know, Tony, you need to think about people besides yourself every once in a while.”

The truth be known, he did think about other people all the time—Gerry, Kat, Bill Higgins—but what his neighbor was saying was, he needed to start thinking about her more, especially if she was going to run his business.

“I will,” he promised. “Scout’s honor.”

“Good. Did you watch Jacques’s film?”

“Yes. The cheater is the change man at the table. He’s using a double drop box.”

“What’s that?”

“The box has a second box hidden in one of its walls. He uses a plunger to push the money down a chute into the box. By pushing the plunger sideways, the money goes into the hidden box. It’s based on an old magic principle. Tell Jacques the man who empties the drop box is also involved in the scam.”

“He’ll be so happy,” she said.

“I know it’s late, but I need you to go on the Internet.”

“I’m in your study,” his neighbor said. “Give me a minute.”

Riding up in the elevator, he’d thought about the surveillance tape of Karl Blackhorn he’d watched earlier. Blackhorn was cheating, yet nothing on the tape looked suspicious, except for the one time he’d turned over the wrong card in his hand.

“Ready,” she said.

“Type in this address: www.blackjackedge.com.”

“Done. It says I need a password.”

“Griftsense,” he said.

“How clever. Is this a site for people who cheat at blackjack?”

Valentine acknowledged that it was. The site’s members were card-counters, mathematicians, and some of the smartest BJ hustlers in the world. “I want you to post a message for the discussion group.”

“Go ahead.”

He shut his eyes. “Dear group. I have a question regarding the change in house advantage on a two-deck game of blackjack when the following occurs. During the deal, the dealer’s cards are dealt facedown. Normally, the dealer would turn over his first card and expose it to the players at the table. Instead, the dealer turns over his second card. Does this switch alter the house advantage, assuming the players are using Basic Strategy? Thanks for your help.”

“What’s Basic Strategy?”

“It’s the best way to play blackjack without cheating. A mathematician named Thorp developed it. It shrinks the house edge.”

Mabel read the message back to him. It sounded fine, and he told her to send it, then heard a knock on the door. Putting the phone down, he crossed the room and put his eye to the peephole. Kat stood in the hallway, dressed in a leather miniskirt and a red silk blouse. Attached to the blouse was the diamond pin he’d planned to give her. His heart did a little pitter-pat.

Picking up the phone, he said, “I need to run.”

Up until Kat, he’d slept with only two women in his life, and the effect she had on him as they sat on the bed was remarkable. His heart started to race, and his eyes started to see things better than they had in years. Even his voice sounded different.

“I missed you,” she said, then explained the whole sorry episode with Ralph. When she was done, she said, “Zoe’s downstairs playing video games near the pool. I slipped a lifeguard ten bucks to keep an eye on her.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“No,” she said.

Her lips parted ever so slightly, and Valentine realized she wanted him to kiss her. Traveling with Zoe, they’d gotten good at finding moments to slip away, the sex always better on the sly. The clothes started to come off, then Valentine felt a stab of pain in his arm and pulled back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I banged up my elbow the other night wrestling an alligator,” he explained.

“Jesus. Wait till I tell Donny.”

Pain, he’d learned from judo, was good at clearing a person’s head, and he took her hands and squeezed them gently. “I’m sorry about everything that happened in Orlando. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that things happen for a reason.”

“They do?” she said.

“Yeah, they do. I needed to leave you for a while and help out a friend of mine.”

“Is that why you’re here?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What about our show in Memphis next week?”

“I won’t be there.”

“This job?”

“I’ve decided to hang up the banana suit and retire the hair gel.”

“Why . . .”

“Three days ago in Orlando, I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw.”

“Which was what?”

“A sixty-two-year-old guy dressing up like a cartoon character so he could impress a woman twenty years his junior.”

Valentine heard the scraping sound of a plastic key being put into the door. Kat jumped off the bed and buttoned her blouse. Gerry came in with a greasy bag of Chinese takeout clutched to his chest. He looked at Kat, then his father, said “Whoa,” and started to back out the door. Kat said, “I was just leaving,” and brushed past him with Valentine following her down the hall with his shirt hanging out of his pants.

At the elevator she said, “And I thought we had something wonderful between us.”

A tray of food sat outside one of the rooms. The meal looked the same way he was starting to feel—devoured but not finished.

“We did,” he admitted.

“Then why are you doing this?”

Because I wasn’t put on this earth to play the fool, he thought. The elevator doors parted and she got in, then stood with her arms crossed.

“It’s Memphis or forget it,” she told him.

Then she was gone.