by James Swain
They met in one of the hotel’s swanky conference rooms. Bill Higgins was a lean, unusually handsome Native American with a mop of black hair that touched the collar of his shirt. He wore cowboy boots and a suit that had gone out of style years ago, yet still looked good on him. He came around the table where Mickey, Doyle and Valentine were sitting, and shook their hands. Valentine noticed Higgins was holding a video tape in his other hand, and wondered what it was.
“Bill is in town helping us prosecute a crooked blackjack dealer, ” Banko said. “I asked him to give us some pointers on catching casino cheaters. Take it away, Bill.”
Higgins faced the three men. There was a tension in his movements, like the news he was about to give them wasn’t so good. “I’d like to start with a question,” he said. “How much experience policing casinos do you guys have?”
“None,” Mickey said brightly.
“That’s what I thought.” Higgins crossed the room to where a TV with a VCR sat, and inserted the tape into the machine. The TV came to life, and he paused the tape.
“Do any of you know what a candy store is?” he asked.
Mickey, Valentine and Doyle shook their heads.
“A candy store is a casino that’s wide open to cheating. It means the people running things are clueless. It’s what you have here in Atlantic City.”
“Hey — watch it!” Mickey exclaimed.
Valentine knew there were problems in the casino — with so much money flowing in, it was hard to imagine there wouldn’t be — but he hadn’t expected Higgins to waltz in, and call them morons. He decided to take the high road, and said, “You sure about that?”
“Yes, I am,” Higgins said.
“How recently did you see this cheating?”
“About an hour ago.”
Exactly one hour ago, Valentine and Doyle had canvassed the casino floor — all thirty thousand square feet — and seen nothing to indicate they were being swindled.
“I think you’re wrong,” Valentine said.
Higgins pressed the Play button on the VCR. “See for yourself.”
“This tape is of a blackjack game in your casino,” Higgins explained. “Sergeant Banko had one of your techs video tape the table for me.”
The tape was in grainy black & white. Six people — one woman, five men — were playing blackjack with a mustachioed dealer. In the lower right corner of the tape was the date and time. The tape had been made sixty minutes before.
Valentine watched in silence. He wasn’t seeing a single bad thing happening at the table. He glanced at Doyle, then Mickey. They weren’t seeing anything unusual, either. Sensing their discomfort, Higgins shut the VCR off.
“Had enough?” he asked.
“What are we missing?” Valentine said.
Higgins used the chalkboard to draw a blackjack table. He assigned the players numbers, then turned the VCR on, and let them watch the action while he explained the scene-behind-the-scene. He was low-key, and would have made a good teacher.
“Six players and a dealer. Each player is doing something dishonest.”
“All of them are cheating?” Mickey said.
“Afraid so. Let’s start with the sweet little lady at spot #1. If you watched her all night, you probably wouldn’t catch what she’s doing. Hustlers call her scam ‘Excuse me!’ At the start of each round, she puts a hundred dollar chip in the betting circle. Only the chip isn’t completely inside the circle. That’s on purpose. The dealer deals her a card, which is face up. If the card is a Ten, or an Ace, she doesn’t say anything. Know why?”
Valentine had been reading a book on casino games, and was halfway through the section on blackjack. “Because high-valued cards increase her chances of winning,” he guessed.
“Correct. With a Ten, she has a 12% advantage over the house. With an Ace, a 50% advantage. What happens if her first card isn’t one of those cards?”
The answer seemed obvious, only no one knew what it was. Valentine took a stab in the dark. “She asks for change for her hundred dollar chip?”
“Very good. If the dealer balks, she’ll say, ‘Excuse me, but I thought you knew I wanted change!’ Chances are, the dealer won’t challenge her. She’ll take her change, and put down a minimum bet.”
Mickey was fuming. “Come on. Is that really cheating? I mean, she can only do it once a night without it being obvious.”
“It certainly is cheating,” Higgins said. “Casinos rotate dealers every fifteen minutes. She can scam four dealers, wait until a shift change, and scam four more.”
Mickey ran his fingers through his oily pompadour. “Oh.”
Higgins pointed at the chalkboard. “Player #2 is a hustler from Las Vegas called The Wheel. Supposedly, he’s missing a couple of spokes. That’s a little Western humor. The Wheel is adding chips to his bet after he’s seen his cards. Hustlers call this capping. Any time the Wheel gets good cards, he adds a chip. I’ll give you a hint. It’s palmed in his right hand.”
They watched The Wheel do his thing. Each time he brought his right hand over his bet, his bet magically grew in size.
“Players 3, 4 and 5 are a team of card counters,” Higgins went on. “Card counting isn’t illegal, except if you’re getting help, which these players are. They’re using a Hewlett Packard 59 computer. Tell me if you can guess which one’s operating it.”
An excruciatingly long minute passed as the three men stared at the mute images on the screen. Players 3, 4 and 5 were smoking cigars and drinking beer and having a swell time. They were not paying attention to the cards, yet winning every hand.
“None of them,” Valentine said.
“Good call. Any idea who is?”
“The chubby guy standing behind them,” Valentine said. “It’s in the bag he’s holding. He’s punching in the values of the cards as they’re dealt.”
“How did you know it was him?”
“His eyes. He keeps staring at the cards on the table.”
“Right again.” Higgins pointed at the blackboard. “Player #6 poses the biggest threat to the game. The scam he’s doing is called Playing the Anchor, and it involves the dealer.”
“The dealer’s cheating too?” Mickey said in astonishment.
“That’s right. You know him?”
“Shit, I hired him,” Mickey said.
“Dealer/player scams are the worst; they can bleed casinos for huge sums before they’re discovered,” Higgins said. “Playing the Anchor is pretty straightforward. The dealer flashes his hole card to Player #6 each time he slips it under his face card. It’s impossible to see from a surveillance camera. However, the scam does have a tell. Player #6 will sometimes do strange things, like stand on a weak hand, or split a strong pair when the dealer is showing an Ace.”
“You have any idea what he’s talking about,” Doyle whispered.
Valentine had stopped listening to Higgins, and was staring at the screen. Behind the blackjack table, he’d spotted a hooker he’d once arrested, an Hispanic girl with a body that could stop traffic. She was talking to a john, and Valentine watched her take the john’s arm, and walk away. Jack and Jill going up the hill to have a little intercourse, he thought. Then, something strange happened. Out of the john’s back pocket popped a silver flask. The john anxiously shoved the flask back into his pocket. He seemed desperate to hide it, and looked panicked. The hooker didn’t see the flask, and a look of normalcy returned to the john’s face. They disappeared from the picture.
Valentine lifted his eyes from the TV. Higgins had returned to the chalkboard, and was explaining how to detect each of the scams. He put the incident on the tape out of his mind, and focused his attention on their guest.
They wrapped up an hour later. Higgins was leaving for Las Vegas that night, and Valentine walked him downstairs to Resorts valet area to pick up his rental. The line of cars stretched around the block, and Higgins handed the uniformed attendant his stub.
“So, how do we learn this stuff?” Valentine as
ked.
“You mean the scams and hustles?” Higgins said.
“Yeah. Before Resorts gets robbed blind.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen. You’ve got a unique situation here. Ever hear the expression ‘Why slaughter the cow, when you can milk it?’ That’s true with your casino. Resorts is making so much money that smart cheaters will milk it for as long as they can.”
“That’s encouraging.”
He laughed. “Okay, here’s what I’d suggest. Start with the basics. Learn how the games are played, and the odds. I’ve been in Atlantic City two days, and seen two people win hundred thousand dollar jackpots at slot machines. Know what happens in Las Vegas if two people win back-to-back jackpots?”
“What — you throw a party?”
“Far from it. There would be an investigation, and the jackpots would be withheld from the winners until the investigation was completed.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because of the odds,” Higgins said. “Any idea what they are?”
“Of a person winning a jackpot? I don’t know, a million to one?”
“Try seventeen million to one. The same as a person getting struck by lightning twice in the same day. Odds of that happening two days in a row? Not very likely.”
Valentine found himself nodding. If he was going to police the games, he needed to understand how they worked, no different than working vice or narcotics.
“Got it.”
“Mind if I ask you a question? You got fixated on something on the surveillance tape I showed you earlier. What was it?”
“I saw a john picking up a hooker inside the casino,” Valentine said.
“Is that unusual?”
“He hid something from her. Something about his body language didn’t feel right. We’ve had three women killed on the island in the past month, and every cop is on the lookout. I’ve always had this ability to dissect a crowd, and pick out the scum bag.”
“Grift sense.”
“Is that what it’s called?”
Higgins nodded. “It’s an old hustler’s expression. You have the ability to pick out what’s wrong in a situation. It should help you police Resorts’ casino.”
Valentine wasn’t so sure. He’d been on the job for a week, and hadn’t nabbed a single thief. “Would you mind if I called you if I had any questions?”
“Not at all.” Higgins took out a business card, and wrote a number on the back. “That’s my home number. Call me anytime. Good luck.”
His rental had come up. They shook hands, and Higgins got into his car, and drove out of the crowded valet area. Valentine took out his wallet and stuck the card into the billfold. Something told him be talking to Higgins often, and he didn’t want to lose the gaming agent’s number.
Chapter 6
Lying in bed that night, Valentine used a deck of playing cards to show Lois some of the cheating techniques Bill Higgins had tipped that afternoon. They were like magic tricks, and his wife lay beside him, mesmerized. She wore no clothes, and his heart did the funny thing it always did when she was naked.
He didn’t think there was a more beautiful woman in Atlantic City. Her skin was as fine as porcelain, her soft green eyes as enchanting as emeralds. As a teenager, she’d won every beauty pageant she’d entered — Miss Ventnor, Miss Steel Pier, Miss Mermaid, Miss Atlantic County — while being pursued by every hot-blooded guy on the island. They’d met over a Bunsen burner in an eleventh-grade biology class, and he’d never gotten over the fact that she’d chosen to spend her life with him.
“You learned all that in one day,” she said.
He nodded and put the cards away. He could tell Lois liked his new job. He was learning things, and he wasn’t getting shot at. And, he was home at night at a decent hour. Like every other woman in Atlantic City, the recent killings had put a healthy dose of fear into her. He turned off the light and they lay in the dark, sharing the silence.
“Are the police any closer to catching this killer?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know. I don’t hear about that stuff anymore. The casino is its own little world.”
“You sound resentful.”
“I think I could catch this guy, if Banko would give me a chance.”
“Did you ask him?”
“About a dozen times. He keeps telling me no.”
“Do they have any leads?”
His wife knew him too well. Valentine had talked to the lead investigator on the case and asked the same question. So far, the police had hit a stone wall.
“Not yet. They think someone local is responsible.”
“Why do they think that? Couldn’t a tourist be behind it?”
“Tourists stay around the casino. The killings are taking place around the island. The fact that there haven’t been any witnesses means the killer is probably someone we all know. We’re seeing him, but we’re not making the connection.”
“Oh.”
They fell silent and watched a gibbous moon cut a sphere through the window. Valentine started to drift off when a noise snapped him awake. The music coming out of their son’s bedroom had gone up several decibels, and he got out of bed to investigate.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He tapped lightly on his son’s bedroom door, then entered. The lights were on, and Gerry lay in bed with a copy of The Catcher in the Rye propped on his chest. The room’s walls were covered in posters of rock bands, and his son’s clothes were scattered across the floor along with the other items that made up a thirteen year old’s world.
“You having a Beatles’s reunion in here?”
“It’s the Bee Gees, Pop.”
Valentine killed the stereo. His son was listening to the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. He and Lois had seen the movie at a drive-in, and thought it gave working-class Italians a real black eye. He parked himself on his son’s bed.
“Lights out.”
“I was doing homework, you know.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Gerry slid the book onto the night table. So far, puberty had been kind to him. He was growing like a weed, and his skin was unblemished.
“Your mother said you got your report card today.”
“It wasn’t so hot. I left it downstairs on the kitchen table. You have to sign it.”
“How bad?”
“Three Cs, two Bs and an A in gym.”
“That the only class you showing up for?”
A hurt look crossed his son’s face. “I’m trying, okay?”
“You still getting headaches?”
“Every day.”
Since entering junior high school, Gerry’s grades had taken a precipitous nosedive. He claimed that all the reading was giving him headaches, so they’d taken him to an eye specialist. A hundred bucks worth of tests had revealed his son’s eyesight to be 20/20. Valentine tucked him in, then tousled his son’s hair. “It will get better.”
“That’s what mom said. Are things okay with you and her?”
Valentine felt a knot tighten in his stomach. “Everything’s fine.”
“You seem really uptight. And you’re smoking cigarettes again.”
“Are those bad signs?”
“Yeah. It means something’s bothering you. I don’t want to be one of those kids who gets shuttled around on weekends.”
Valentine’s own parents had broken up when he was a teenager, and his life had never been the same. He lay his hand on his son’s stomach. Nature had only let them have one child, and he loved his boy more than anything in the world.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “Now, go to sleep.”
He switched off the light on the night table. Outside his son’s window he could see the spot in the backyard where he’d buried the Prince’s address book. By hiding it, he’d figured he’d stop thinking about it, but so far it hadn’t worked.
“You sure everything’s okay?” Gerry asked.
<
br /> Valentine kissed his son’s forehead in the dark. “Positive.”
Chapter 7
The telephone call came at seven the next morning.
Gerry had left to catch the bus. He was a drummer in the marching band, and went to practice at the high school three mornings a week. Valentine sat at the kitchen table, staring at his son’s dismal report card while munching on a piece of toast.
