by James Swain
“Because I just spoke to a roomful of cops.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because there wasn’t a fat one in the bunch. And one of them was packing heat. They’re working for you, aren’t they?”
“Maybe,” Lamar said. “You see a lot.”
Gerry looked through the windshield at an orange tour bus disgorging a gang of elderly passengers. He’d seen them leaving the hotel for the casino, all hearty and full of pep. Now, they looked tired and beat up. Not a winner in the bunch, he thought.
“You have a real problem, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” Lamar said.
“How many games are getting ripped off?”
Lamar took a deep breath, as if considering whether or not he should talk about it.
“From what we can tell, all of them,” he said quietly.
“Blatant stealing like what I described?”
Lamar nodded. The last of the tour bus junkies walked past the car. A white-haired woman was all smiles and chattering up a storm. None of her friends were listening to her. She must have won a jackpot, Gerry guessed. He started to get out of the car again, then glanced at Lamar a final time. “Let me know if we can help.”
“I’ll do that,” Lamar said. “Good luck with Tex.”
“Am I going to need it?”
Lamar smiled. “Yeah. I hear he’s a real asshole.”
14
Valentine got a man in the parking lot of Slippery Rock High to give him a lift back to his rented house. At least one person in town hadn’t been there for Ricky’s shining moment. Then he took his Honda into town and bought a ham-and-Swiss sandwich at a deli. It was a real deli, and not located inside the bowels of a supermarket like the delis back home in Florida. The sandwich filling was easily an inch thick, what they used to call a Dagwood. He ate the sandwich at the kitchen table while drinking a homemade lemonade he’d also bought at the deli. It was a little tart and had the kind of taste you could never get out of a bottle. He drank it slowly, thinking about the public embarrassment he’d endured that morning. Ricky had played him like a fiddle.
He went outside onto the screened-in porch. The furniture was covered in plastic, and he peeled a protective sheet off a love seat and made himself comfortable. The porch was in the shade and very cold, and he felt his head clear. His thoughts went back to Ricky holding the winning ticket in front of his face an hour earlier. Why had Ricky done that? He thought about it for several minutes before the answer came to him. Because Ricky didn’t want him to think he had somehow printed the ticket after the fact. Ricky had wanted to establish the numbers. Which meant the barker had somehow manipulated the selection of the five Ping-Pong balls. There was no other logical explanation.
He heard a loud banging coming from inside the house, followed by a man’s voice. He went inside and walked through the house to the front door. The voice sounded familiar, and he jerked the door open and saw Ricky jump back.
“Hey, don’t hit me,” he said, flashing his court-jester grin.
“Should I?”
He stood on the steps, still smiling. “You were pretty pissed when you left the school.”
“You set me up.”
“Me?” Ricky put his hand over his heart. “Scout’s honor, I did no such thing. You just don’t want to believe what you saw is real. You’re a skeptic.”
“So why the house call? You want to rub it in?”
“No, no,” his visitor said. “I came to make peace. I don’t want you thinking I’m some kind of crook. I know that’s what you deal with every day; I went on your Web site. But I’m not a crook. Never broke a law a day in my life. I want to convince you of that.”
“There’s only one problem,” Valentine said.
“What’s that?”
“You are a crook.”
Stepping onto the stoop, Valentine jabbed his forefinger hard into Ricky’s chest. “Tell me something. When you were on your streak at the Mint, why didn’t you try the slot machines? They have a progressive jackpot worth ten million. Why didn’t you take a shot at that?” He could see the gears grinding inside Ricky’s head. “I’ll tell you why. Because you couldn’t rig a slot machine. Practically nobody can. So you avoided them.”
“Slots are for idiots, that’s why I didn’t play them,” Ricky said, slapping Valentine’s hand away. He was blushing and acted like his feelings had been hurt. He stuck his hands into his pockets. “You have a real serious anger issue, you know that?”
“So I’ve heard. Now what do you want?”
“Another chance.”
“To do what?”
“Convince you that this isn’t a scam, that I really am lucky.”
“You going to make me look like a fool again?”
“No,” Ricky said.
Valentine burned a hole into Ricky’s face with his eyes.
“That’s a promise,” Ricky added.
“You just buy this?” Valentine asked, sitting in the passenger seat of Ricky’s Lexus a few minutes later. The car had more amenities than most third-world countries, and he counted twenty-six different buttons on the dashboard and his door.
“I bought it with the money I don’t have,” Ricky said with a derisive laugh.
“You mean the Mint’s money?”
“That’s right. I’ve got an unlimited line of credit everywhere I go in town. It’s like being king for a day, every day of the week.”
They began to descend a steep hill, and Valentine listened but could not hear the car’s gears shift as they reduced speed. It was a hell of a car, and it reminded him that he was going to need new wheels someday soon. He’d been putting off thinking about it, not wanting to jinx the car he had. So far, the philosophy was working just fine.
“I want to explain something about my lucky streak,” Ricky said when they reached the bottom of the hill and the road flattened out. “If I’m drawn to something, I go to it. If not, I don’t. I can’t just sit down at a slot machine and expect to win.”
“Unless you’re drawn to it,” Valentine said.
“That’s right.”
“Let me guess. A little voice tells you.”
Ricky bit the words about to escape his lips. He was trying not to be a jerk, and it was killing him. Valentine, on the other hand, could be a jerk whenever he wanted to, and said, “There was one flaw to the Ping-Pong scam this morning. Want me to tell you what it was?”
Ricky flashed a village-idiot grin. “Oh, pray tell, do.”
“There were a hundred Ping-Pong balls with numbers in that bag. What do you think the odds of you getting all five on your ticket were?”
“I have no idea,” Ricky said, staring at the road.
“More than seventy-five million to one. Which is the same as walking out of your house, and being struck by lightning twice. Get it?”
“No. What’s your point?”
“My point is, if you got four out of five, I could buy that. But not five out of five. There’s a name for what you did. It’s called the too-perfect ending. It screams fix. You and your barker friend and whoever else is involved messed up.”
Ricky blew his cheeks out. They were on a highway, driving away from town, and Valentine glanced at the dashboard and realized they were doing eighty. It didn’t feel that way, the car insulated from everything on the outside except the fleeting scenery.
“And based on that, you’re calling me a cheater.”
Valentine hid the smile forming at his lips. It was the second time that Ricky had used that word. He leaned back in his seat and didn’t respond. After a minute he saw Ricky point at a green highway sign. They were crossing into South Carolina.
“Our exit is a few miles ahead. South Carolina legalized betting on horses last year. I’m going to pick some winners.” He smiled and added, “Don’t worry. For some reason, I’m never one hundred percent when it comes to the ponies. I guess even luck has its problems with stupid beasts.”
The Off Track Betting parlor was a fe
w miles across the state line. From the distance, it resembled a black outhouse with tinted windows. Valentine’s father had frequented OTBs back in New Jersey, and he could still remember the night his old man had lost his paycheck before his mother could get her hands on it. She had cried for hours.
He followed Ricky inside the building. The parlor was packed with unshaven, chain-smoking men staring at a wall of color TVs showing racetracks around the country. Ricky waved at the men, and got dull looks in return.
“Guess you didn’t pick any winners for them, huh?” Valentine asked.
“You think they’d listen?” he said, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his coat.
“Probably not,” Valentine admitted.
“Probably not is right. I could pick winners all day, and they wouldn’t notice.”
Valentine followed him to the far end of the room. Three skinny, sallow-faced men sat behind barred windows and took bets. Valentine wasn’t sure who was worse looking—the people who frequented OTBs, or the people who worked in them.
“You know why they wouldn’t notice?” Ricky said, peeling off his jacket. “Because they all have a system or a premonition or a hunch that tells them how to bet. They think luck is going to wave a magic wand over them, and they’re going to get rich.”
Throwing the jacket over his arm, he approached the betting window. The teller pushed a racing slip through the bars, and Ricky picked up a pencil while staring at the names of the horses. In a matter of seconds he circled the names of three horses for a race at Belmont Park in New York and pushed the slip back through the bars. From his pants pocket he extracted three crisp hundred-dollar bills. He shoved them through the bars into the teller’s hands.
“Those three horses to show,” Ricky said.
Valentine watched the teller place the three bets. To show meant that Ricky would win money if the horse came in first, second, or third. It was a safe bet, except the three horses Ricky had picked were long shots. The odds were heavily against him winning any money at all.
They crossed the room to the TV sets to watch the race. The room was a smoker’s paradise, and Valentine found himself struggling not to grab a pack out of the nearest guy’s hand.
“You a punter?” Ricky asked.
It was an English expression for a gambler, and Valentine shook his head. “My father was. He lost all our money.”
“And the son was forever cured,” Ricky said. He pointed at a TV set in the center of the wall and said, “That’s us.”
Valentine stared at the set. Belmont Park near Queens, New York, was one of the most respected thoroughbred tracks in the world. He remembered once hearing about a race that was fixed by a jockey at Belmont. Somehow, the track stewards had found out the moment the race was about to start. Instead of letting the horses run, they’d shut off the power to the starting gate and offered refunds to everyone who’d placed a bet. Ricky Smith might somehow rig a casino game or a high school lottery, but he wasn’t capable of rigging a race out of Belmont. No one was.
The race was a mile and a half long. There were nine horses, a crowded field. Valentine had memorized the numbers of the horses Ricky had picked. As they came out of the gate, all three horses started strong. Ricky broke out in a crazy dance, drawing the ire of his fellow bettors.
“Sorry, guys,” he said. “Just working my mojo.”
At the mile marker, Ricky’s horses were lined up in a row and fighting for the lead. In fourth place was the favorite, a horse named Four Leaf Clover. The jockey had run a poor race and allowed himself to get boxed in. His horse had the speed; he just couldn’t properly use it.
A cry went up among the other bettors. As Four Leaf Clover faded from the picture and Ricky’s three picks crossed the finish line, they tore up their tickets and stomped their feet. Ricky was oblivious to their pain and started doing a faithful rendition of the twist. Valentine saw a bettor ball his hand into a fist, and instinctively stepped between him and Ricky.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Valentine said.
“Your friend’s a flaming jerk,” the man growled.
“I’m not arguing with you there,” Valentine said.
Ricky had shut his eyes and was rolling his head like Stevie Wonder. He was making fun of them, and the men quickly surrounded them. They had wolflike looks on their faces, as if they were planning to tear Ricky up and devour him.
“Cut it out,” Valentine told him.
Ricky’s eyes snapped open. Seeing the situation he had created, he stuck his leg out and gyrated like Elvis Presley.
A door banged open on the far side of the room. The teller who’d taken Ricky’s bet stuck his head out. “Knock it off!” he exclaimed.
Ricky kept doing his crazy dance. The teller marched across the room and shoved Ricky’s winnings into his hand. Then he pointed at the door.
“Get the hell out of here.”
Ricky was still gyrating as Valentine dragged him out the door.
15
Gerry stopped at the Holiday Inn’s front doors. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Lamar give a short nod. He nodded back and watched Lamar drive away, then went inside.
The lobby floors glistened from a recent mopping. If there was one thing he liked about the south, it was how clean people kept things. The bank of elevators was next to the reception area. As he started to push the call button, an elevator’s doors opened.
A beautiful young woman came out and swept past him. She wore tight black pants and a clinging red blouse. Her gaze met his, and she flashed a coy smile. She was a few eyelashes short from being a supermodel, and Gerry watched her cross the shiny lobby in her stiletto heels, pausing at the glass doors to steal a glance over her shoulder. The look was just long enough to be an invitation.
He got in the elevator and pushed a button for the top floor. As the doors closed, he turned and saw the woman still looking his way. Before Yolanda, he would have stopped to talk with her. Now that he was married with a kid, that talk would take on a different meaning. It would be like chatting with the devil, and he didn’t need any of that in his life right now.
Tex “All In” Snyder was staying in a suite. The door was ajar, and Gerry peeked inside. A maid’s cart sat in the center of the living room. The place looked like a crazy New Year’s Eve party had just taken place, with stuff hanging from the walls and light shades tilted to one side. He spotted Tex sitting on a couch, talking on a cell phone. His trademark black ten-gallon Stetson sat in his lap. Looking up, he quizzed Gerry with a frown.
“Who’re you?” he asked.
“Lamar’s friend,” Gerry replied.
“Who’s Lamar?”
“Head of security at the Dixie Magic.”
“Oh, right.” Into the phone he said, “Well, I’m sorry I pissed you off, lady, but that’s life.” Hanging up, he barked in Spanish at the chambermaid, and she stopped her cleaning and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Tex pointed at a chair directly across from the couch. “How about a little liquid libation?”
Gerry waved off the invitation and took the seat. Tex smoothed out his thinning hair with his fingers, then stuck his hat on like he was about to be photographed. He was in his late sixties, with a face as rough as raw-hide and gray eyes that could pierce steel. Lowering his voice, he said, “Know what the hard part about being a celebrity is?”
“No.”
“Watching your mouth. That lady on the phone, she’s the mayor of the town I was born in. A week ago, a newspaper reporter asked me if there was anything unusual about the place. I said that the most unusual thing was that the population never changed. Every time a girl got pregnant, some guy always left town.”
Tex slapped his knees and guffawed. Gerry started to laugh, then saw Tex’s face turn dead serious.
“The mayor caught wind of it, and now she’s threatening to drag my name through the mud if I don’t apologize. Guess I eventually will. Then again, maybe not.” Tex rose from the couch and pulled an ice-co
ld beer out of a bucket sitting on the wet bar. Turning, he caught Gerry’s eye. “Sure you don’t want one?”
Gerry stared at the dripping beer bottle. His father had told him no drinking on the job, and he reluctantly said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Tex returned to the couch. “So, what can I do for you? Lamar was a little vague on what you wanted to talk to me about.”
Gerry removed his wallet and handed Tex his business card. While the older man studied it, Gerry said, “My company has been hired by the Mint in Las Vegas to look into Ricky Smith’s winning streak. We want to be sure everything is on the up-and-up. The Mint asked us to talk to you and get your feelings on what happened.”
“Your father’s Tony Valentine?”
“That’s right.”
“Heard his name when I played in Atlantic City.” Tex put the card on the coffee table, then lifted his eyes. He had his poker face on. His features were stone hard, his eyes as friendly as a snake’s. “It’s like this, son. I got beat by a guy on a lucky streak. Ricky Smith doesn’t know shit about cards, but sometimes that doesn’t matter in poker.”
“Could he have been cheating?”
Tex smirked. “Fat chance.”
“You don’t think you could be cheated at cards?”
Tex gave him a look. “No. Ever hear the joke about the four Texans playing poker? One turns to the other and says, ‘I just saw Billy Bob deal off the bottom.’ And the other says, ‘Well, it’s his deal.’ Everyone cheats where I’m from, son. I’ve seen every scam and greasy hustle that’s ever been invented. I would’ve known if Ricky Smith was cheating me.”
Gerry leaned forward in his chair. “My old man has an expression.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a paddle for everyone’s ass.”
Tex drew back in his chair. He picked up his bottle and took a long swig of beer. Then he put the bottle back on the ring it had left on the table, and pointed at the door.
“Get out,” he said.
Gerry went to the door. His father had told him to charm Tex. He wondered what his father had expected him to do. Tickle his ass with a feather? He turned to look at the older man. “Was she any good?”
