Sucker Bet

24

Saturday morning found Billy Tiger sitting on an upturned orange crate in Harry Smooth Stone’s cell. Smooth Stone, Tiger’s uncle on his mother’s side, sat on a metal cot, his back to the concrete wall. In the room’s muted light he looked a hundred years old, the bars’ shadows forming a checkerboard on his sunken chest.

“This isn’t good,” Smooth Stone said.

Tiger had just come from the employee lounge. Gladys Soft Wings had obtained the elders’ permission to clean out the lockers of the four dealers accused of cheating. Tiger had seen what was in the lockers, and didn’t think there was anything that could incriminate the dealers. Then again, he didn’t know how the men were cheating.

“It’s not?” he said.

“If Valentine sees what’s in the lockers, we’re screwed.”

Tiger cursed. He knew that Smooth Stone had been rigging the casino’s games for a long time. The slot machines shorted players on jackpots (“Who ever counts the coins?” Smooth Stone said), while others didn’t pay out at all, the EPROM chips that generated the machine’s random numbers having been gaffed. At bingo, when the jackpots got too large, stooges in the crowd sometimes won.

Tiger had known it all along, but he’d never said anything. Smooth Stone had a reason for what he did.

It had all started three years ago, when a group of Las Vegas gamblers had swindled the tribe. Somehow, these gamblers had learned that a particular make of video poker machine had an overlay in its computer. Anyone who played one of these machines continuously for an hour would win seventy-five dollars. It had been the Micanopys’ misfortune to have fifty of these machines in their casino.

The gamblers had hired retired people to work for them. For eight hours a day, the retired people would play these machines. One of the gamblers would sub whenever someone wanted to eat or hit the john.

The scam had lasted a month, then was spotted by the casino’s auditor. Smooth Stone had gone to the Broward County police, convinced the gamblers had ties to the game’s manufacturer in Nevada. When the cops had refused to help, he’d gone to the state’s attorney general, then the FBI. And gotten nowhere.

The injustice had eaten a hole in Smooth Stone. Had the gamblers ripped off a casino in Las Vegas or Atlantic City or Biloxi, the authorities would have thrown them in jail and let them explain their way out. That was how it worked in the white man’s casinos.

Smooth Stone slapped the cot with his hand.

“What?” Tiger said.

“Sit next to me,” Smooth Stone said.

Tiger made the cot sag. When Tiger was a child, Smooth Stone had bounced him on his knee and told him stories. Smooth Stone cupped his hand next to Tiger’s ear.

“I got something I want you to do,” Smooth Stone whispered.

Tiger stared at the scuffed concrete floor. He had come to Smooth Stone out of a sense of loyalty, but now suddenly felt afraid. “What’s that?”

“The key is Valentine. Without him, there isn’t a case.”

“Okay . . .”

“We need to scare him off.”

Tiger gave him a look that said I don’t think so. He’d been in the surveillance control room when Smooth Stone’s gang had stuffed the alligator into the trunk of Valentine’s car, and he’d seen Valentine take the alligator and smash it headfirst on the pavement.

“You’re crazy,” he whispered.

“He has an old woman who works for him,” Smooth Stone said. “We’ll do it through her.”

Tiger buried his head in his hands. Now they were going after old ladies. He wanted to argue, but it was too late for that. He was an accessory to everything that had happened, including murder. If Smooth Stone and the other dealers went to jail, so would he. He stared up into Smooth Stone’s face.

“I hate this,” the younger man said.