Sucker Bet

33

Valentine and his son spent the afternoon in their hotel room watching the surveillance tape of Jack Lightfoot.

Valentine had enjoyed the company. Normally, Gerry would have been poolside, talking a pretty girl into slathering tanning lotion on his back. Only, he seemed more interested in figuring out how Lightfoot was cheating, and asking lots of questions.

Valentine’s cell phone rang. He retrieved it from the night table and glanced at the caller ID. It was Mabel, calling from his house.

“You shouldn’t be working on a Sunday,” he said by way of greeting.

“Don’t worry, I’m putting in for overtime,” she replied. “I called to see if you got my fax.”

“What fax?”

“The one I sent to your hotel. It was an E-mail from a person named mathwizard. I think he figured out your blackjack scam.”

“You sent it to the hotel’s main desk?”

“Yes. Yesterday morning. When I didn’t hear from you, I figured I’d better call.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

He said good-bye, then called the front desk on the house phone. Two minutes later an apologetic bellman was standing at the door with his fax. Valentine gave him a buck and slipped his bifocals on.

Mathwizard was the alias of a prominent southern California college professor, and one of the top blackjack cheaters in the world. With his son looking over his shoulder, Valentine read the E-mail several times, then found himself staring at the passage at the bottom of the page.

The strategy, which I call Big Rock/Little Rock, has an enormous impact on the game’s outcome. When a dealer chooses to expose a Big Rock (any ten, jack, queen, king, or ace), instead of a Little Rock (deuce through seven), he’ll win most of the time.

Valentine put the E-mail down, then thought back to the piece of sandpaper in the aspirin bottle in Karl Blackhorn’s locker. And then it hit him. This was something new.

His skin tingled. In all his years policing Atlantic City’s casinos, he’d uncovered only a handful of new ways to cheat the house—things that had never been done before—and each time, he’d walked on air for a few days. It was a unique feeling, and he’d had to consult a thesaurus to find a word that accurately described it.

Only one had. Aggrandizement.

He called Gladys Soft Wings. “How soon can you get the Micanopy elders together?”

His son said, “You nailed it?”

Valentine nodded that he had.

“Way to go!”

“How about tomorrow morning?” Gladys suggested.

“How about right now?” he replied.

Mabel hung up the phone and glanced at her watch. The movie started at three. If she hurried, she’d still get a good seat. She heard the computer on Tony’s desk make a doorbell sound, indicating new E-mail had arrived. She hesitated, then let her curiosity get the better of her.

It was from Jacques, informing her that he’d been fired from his job. Too many cheaters had been caught in the past few days for management to have any faith in him. So they’d sacked him.

Mabel erased the message and pushed herself out of her chair. That was the thing that people never understood about cheaters: They often cost security people and pit bosses and dealers their jobs. When the losses were really bad, whole shifts were often fired.

Someone was knocking at the front door. It was a loud, impatient sound. Annoyed, she hurried down the hall into the living room. Through the front window she spied a young man standing on the stoop. His right hand held a padded envelope. He was lean and darkly tanned, his long hair tucked beneath a baseball cap. Mabel didn’t like the looks of him, but she didn’t like the looks of most young people. She cracked the door an inch.

“Yes?”

“Special delivery for Tony Valentine.”

It was not uncommon for Tony to get Sunday deliveries. “Who’s the sender?”

“Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.”

Caesars was a good client and kept Tony on a monthly retainer. She unchained the door and took the envelope out of his hand.

“Do you have a pen?” he asked. “I left mine at my last stop.”

“Wait here,” she said.

Mabel turned to go into the kitchen, then noticed that the envelope was from Federal Express. They delivered packages almost every day, and Tony had put his signature on file with the company. The drivers knew to leave packages in the mailbox. Even the subs.

She suddenly felt light in the head. The fear that every girl knew from the time she was old enough to walk swept over her. She had allowed a strange man to gain her trust.

She heard the front door shut and the sound of footsteps behind her. She opened her mouth to scream and felt the driver’s powerful hands around her throat.

As Valentine stepped out of the hotel elevator with Gerry, he spotted Saul Hyman standing by the house phones, talking to an operator. Valentine heard him say, “No, that’s all right,” and watched him put the phone down. Then Saul walked toward them.

“This must be your son,” Saul said.

“No, we just look alike,” Valentine said.

Saul glanced over his shoulder, as if fearful he was being tailed. “We need to talk. It’s about Victor Marks.”

Valentine glanced at his watch. He’d promised Gladys Soft Wings that he’d meet her at the reservation by three. She’d asked the elders for a hearing this afternoon and wanted to review his testimony before he gave it. If he hung with Saul, he’d be late, only he wanted to hear what the elderly con man had to say. He pointed at the hotel coffee shop. “Want to go in there?”

Saul did, and they went in. It was crowded, and the hostess had to seat them in smoking. Someone in the next booth was puffing away, and Valentine wondered if it was going to drive him crazy. Saul took out a pack of his own.

“Don’t,” Valentine said.

Saul put them away, then nervously drummed his fingertips on the table. A waiter came over, and they ordered coffee. Valentine looked around the coffee shop. Wasn’t Bill supposed to be tailing Saul?

Saul reached into his jacket and removed a thick envelope. It ended up in Valentine’s hands. “Victor called me in a panic. He met with that punk Rico Blanco this morning. Rico knows something’s up. I told Victor that Rico would end up murdering him if he got mad enough. Victor didn’t like that.”

Valentine peeked inside the envelope. It contained photographs taken off a television set, and he recognized Farley Bancroft, the dapper game show host of Who Wants to Be Rich? Opening the envelope a little more, he saw pages of handwritten notes.

“It’s all there,” Saul said in a whisper. “How to scam a TV game show.”

Gerry was looking, as well. “You’re kidding me. You really did that?”

Saul looked at Valentine. “Is he square?”

Valentine laid the envelope on the table. “Yeah.”

Saul said, “You know anything about the rackets, kid?”

“A little,” Gerry conceded.

“He’s a bookie,” Valentine said.

His son winced. “I shut the bookmaking operation down a few weeks ago.”

“You did?”

Gerry nodded. “I decided to go legit.”

Saul was hunched over his drink like it was a small fire. “This is touching,” he said.

“Shut up,” Valentine said, staring at his son. He saw Gerry smile and realized that he was telling the truth. Legit as in what? he wondered.

“So, how do you scam a game show?” Gerry asked.

A sly grin spread across Saul’s face. “It was beautiful. Victor calls me one day and says, ‘I just came up with this terrific con.’ Then he reads me an article in TV Guide about Farley Bancroft. Article says Bancroft owns a piece of Who Wants to Be Rich? Guy’s worth a hundred million bucks, easy.

“So I say, ‘And what does this have to do with the price of eggs?’ And Victor reads some more. The TV Guide interviewer asked Bancroft about the multiple-choice questions he asks on the show. Bancroft says he doesn’t know the answers, so he can be genuinely surprised when the answer is read.”

Saul pulled back in his chair, the grin spreading from ear to ear. “Isn’t that great?”

Gerry was lost. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

“A guy as powerful as Farley Bancroft is going to know the answers on a show he owns,” Saul explained. “He was lying.”

“So?”

“Victor hired a voice expert to analyze Bancroft’s voice,” Saul said as the smoke from the neighboring table created a halo around his head. “When he read the multiple-choice answers, his voice changed on the correct one.”

“A tell,” Valentine said.

Saul nodded. “The voice expert taught Victor how to read the tell. Only, Victor had a problem. He couldn’t get on the show. That’s when he teamed up with Rico Blanco.”

“Why Rico?” Valentine asked.

“The network that airs the show is union. The union is mob-connected, and gave Rico a list of contestants. Rico worked down the list and found a guy he could work with. Victor taught the guy how to read Bancroft. Guy went on the show and won a million bucks.”

“Is that breaking the law?” Gerry asked.

Saul nodded his head vigorously. “The guy signed an agreement not to defraud the network. It’s a serious crime.”

Valentine thumbed through the envelope’s contents. There were names and dates and telephone numbers and copies of E-mail letters and bank account numbers and everything he needed to paint a picture of Rico Blanco as a big-time scam artist. But more importantly, it showed the trail of a crook working solo, and was enough evidence for Valentine to give the newspapers and save the Micanopy casino from being shut down. Bill Higgins was going to be very happy. He slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket, and said, “I really appreciate this, Saul.”

“My pleasure,” the elderly con man said.