Mr. Lucky

by James Swain

  The arrow went into an oak tree in the backyard with such force that Valentine could not pull it out without snapping it in two. Drawing his sidearm, Gaylord said, “Thanks for saving my life,” and marched into the house. Valentine saw a light come on and followed him into the kitchen. It was a square room with a yellowing linoleum floor. Sitting in the room’s center was a crossbow strapped to a metal chair. Tied to the trigger was a bungee cord, which was also tied to the back door.

  Valentine had never seen a crossbow except in the movies. It was a fierce-looking weapon. He decided he’d be happy if he never saw one again.

  He cased the downstairs. The rooms were sparsely furnished and covered with a coat of dust. The upstairs was the same, with box springs lying on the bedroom floors. Returning to the kitchen, he said, “I didn’t find anything. Does this place have a basement?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “I live in Florida. We don’t have basements.”

  “I’m sure it’s got one.”

  “Then it must be hidden, because I can’t find it.”

  Gaylord banged on the walls. Inside the pantry he found a hollow wall and pried it open with his fingernails. Cold air blasted their faces. He stuck his head into the space, then found a light string and tugged on it. A naked bulb came on. Valentine peeked over his shoulder and saw a stairway descending into the basement. Gaylord started to go down, and Valentine touched the sergeant’s shoulder.

  “Can I go first?”

  “Let me guess. You don’t want me touching anything.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Gaylord let him go first. The air in the basement was extremely cold, and Valentine felt a chill go through his body that went straight to his toes. At the bottom of the steps, he paused to stare and felt the sergeant bump into him.

  “Pay dirt,” he said under his breath.

  The basement resembled a small casino. On one wall was a blackjack table with two chairs; in the room’s center, a roulette table and betting layout; on the far wall, a regulation-size craps table. On the floors around each of the tables were dozens of chalk Xs. Gaylord pointed at them and said, “Looks like a dance recital.”

  Valentine went to the blackjack table. It had been bugging the hell out of him that he couldn’t figure out how Ricky had won every single hand of blackjack he’d played at the Mint. He’d never met a scam he couldn’t figure out, and he’d decided that it was because it was a tape.

  So he stood a few feet away from the blackjack table and just stared. There were only two chairs, one for Ricky and one for someone else. He remembered back to the tape. An elderly woman with white hair was at the table. She had fronted Ricky his initial stake. Was she also involved?

  He stared at the table for a full minute. Everything looked normal, except the pack of Lucky Strikes sitting on the right side of the table. If he remembered correctly, the elderly woman had smoked like a chimney. He stared at the position of the cigarette pack. It was directly beneath the shuffle machine. The Mint used shuffle machines at their blackjack tables, as did many Las Vegas casinos. Shuffle machines sped the games up and made them more profitable.

  Valentine had never liked shuffle machines for the simple reason that cheaters could also get their hands on them. The one on the table was called a Shuffle Master. It could shuffle eight decks of cards at once. It also had a unique feature. After the decks were shuffled, the Shuffle Master inverted their entire order, one card at a time. The machine did it at lightning speed, but the inversion was still visible if you stuck your nose to the face of the machine. Or if you stuck a camera beneath the machine.

  He picked up the pack of Lucky Strikes. It looked normal, but felt heavy. He popped the lid and stared at the miniature camera inside. Then he examined the top of the box. The camera’s eye was part of the bull’s-eye pattern on the front.

  Hanging from one of the chairs was a lady’s handbag. He opened it and found a receiving device inside. He heard Gaylord come up from behind him.

  “What did you find?”

  Valentine handed him the pack of Lucky Strikes. “The camera inside the cigarette box recorded the order of the cards inside the shuffle machine. The information was sent to a computer. The computer had a software program that calculated how to play the cards so that the house would lose every hand.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “Ricky constantly switched the number of hands he played. One round, he played one hand; the next he played three. The software program told him to do that.”

  “How did he get the information?”

  Valentine tapped the chair with the woman’s handbag. “The lady sitting next to him received the information. All she had to do was stare into her handbag. She communicated to Ricky with some kind of code.”

  “Is the dealer involved?”

  “The dealer doesn’t have a clue,” Valentine said.

  “And they practiced it all right here in Slippery Rock,” the sergeant said. “Well, this should be enough to convict Ricky of cheating.”

  “It won’t convict Ricky of anything. There’s nothing illegal about owning crooked gambling equipment. The crime is bringing the equipment into a casino.”

  Gaylord shot him an exasperated look. “So what do we do?”

  “Find something that will convict him.”

  Valentine crossed the basement to the roulette table. He spun the wheels and set the ivory ball in motion. The most common way to beat roulette was by gaffing the wheel. This was done by creating a bias in the wheel that would favor one side over another. The other method was to gaff the pocket walls, called frets. Some frets would be gaffed so they’d be more likely to reject the ball, while others would accept the ball more easily. On the betting layout he saw a stack of yellow legal pads. Picking one up, he stared at the rows of figures and mathematical calculations covering the page. In exasperation he dropped the pad on the table.

  “Not good?” Gaylord asked.

  “They’re using visual prediction.”

  Gaylord shouldered up beside him. “Guess that isn’t illegal either, huh?”

  He shook his head. “It’s an advantage strategy that predicts the outcome without any outside assistance. The player mentally calculates the ball and wheel speed to estimate where the ball will drop from the ball track. Then, based upon bounce swing—”

  “What’s that?”

  “An estimate of how many pockets the ball will bounce after it falls. Each wheel is different. So is each dealer who spins the ball. Anyway, the player takes that into consideration and makes his prediction of which numbers are most likely to be winners.”

  “How could Ricky Smith do that?” the sergeant said. “He’s not that smart.”

  “Ricky didn’t. Another player did,” Valentine said. “That player checked out that wheel days or weeks before. He recorded hundreds of wheel spins and wrote down profiles of the different dealers.” He walked around the table and stood behind the roulette wheel. “That player stood here, did the math, and signaled to Ricky which numbers to bet on. Ricky then quickly bet those numbers.”

  “You’ve seen this before?”

  “Yeah. It only works if the player doing the predicting is sharp.” Valentine tapped the yellow pads on the table. “This guy.”

  “You think that was Kessel’s role? He was real smart in school.”

  “Then why did he steal the SATs?”

  “Like I told you, he’s a weasel.”

  Valentine already knew how the craps scam worked and did not bother to examine the table. Instead, he stood in the room’s center and scratched his chin. Nothing he had found was going to put anyone in jail—except the crossbow, and it was going to be hard to prove who put that in the kitchen.

  “Hey, look at this.” Gaylord was standing on the side of the room beside the furnace. He’d found a door and had his fingers on the knob.

  “Hold on,” Valentine said. He went upstairs and got the rope. They repeated the
door-opening drill, but stood at an angle from the opening. This time, nothing came flying out. Gaylord went in and flipped on the light.

  The room was unfinished, with walls made of packed dirt and an uneven concrete floor. In its center was a table that held two TV sets. A chair sat in front of the table, a remote on the seat. Valentine picked up the remote and pressed the power button. Both TVs instantly came to life. On one set was a commercial; on the other, a female newscaster talking sports. Valentine stared at them, not seeing any connection.

  His eyes fell on the thirty-gallon garbage bag leaning against the wall. It was the same kind of bag he used at home, with a built-in tie at the mouth of the bag. He crossed the room and untied the top. Inside he saw a few thousand used scratch-off lottery tickets.

  “All right,” he said under his breath.

  “What?” Gaylord asked.

  He extracted a handful of tickets. “Ricky won a fifty-thousand-dollar lottery jackpot, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, a few days ago. Let me guess. He found a winning ticket and figured out a way to cover over the circles.”

  “There you go.”

  “Ricky then gave the ticket to his friend, who worked at a convenience store,” Gaylord said, “and was planning to repurchase the ticket and then show everyone he’d won a jackpot. Only, he decided to let Roland Pew in on the action.”

  “Why do you think he did that?” Valentine asked.

  “They’re old buddies.”

  Valentine slung the garbage bag over his shoulder. As he started to walk out of the room, he saw Gaylord standing in front of the twin TVs. A horse race was showing on both sets. It was the same race, only being run at different times, the horses at different portions of the muddy track.

  “I’ve seen this channel before,” Gaylord said. “It’s on cable. It shows nothing but horse races and equestrian events. My teenage daughter loves it.”

  Valentine watched the race end on one set, then watched it end on the other, all the while counting silently in his head. Seven seconds between endings.

  “You know what this means?” Gaylord asked.

  “It’s how you rig a horse race,” he said.

  43

  They left Stanley Kessel’s house at one-thirty. Valentine had Gaylord drive to the Off-Track Betting parlor where Ricky had picked winners the day before. In the backseat of the car was the garbage bag of used lottery tickets they’d found inside the house. Gaylord was convinced that it was evidence, and Valentine was too tired to argue with him. Ricky had bought a bunch of tickets, found a $50,000 winner, and re-covered the scratch-off spots with a similar-looking substance. There was no crime in that.

  They stopped at an all-night convenience store and got coffee. It was really strong. When their cups were empty, Valentine explained to Gaylord why the tickets weren’t evidence. This time, the sergeant got it.

  “So where does that leave us?” Gaylord asked when they were back on the highway.

  “We need to find evidence that Ricky scammed the OTB parlor. Otherwise, we don’t have a case.”

  They did not speak for the rest of the drive. Valentine had dealt with a lot of brilliant criminals, and Stanley Kessel was heading for the top of the chart. He didn’t leave meaningful clues, or evidence that would hold up in court. That was the difference between the average criminal and the pro. The pros rarely went to jail.

  They crossed the state line and pulled into the OTB parlor’s parking lot. A low-slung car was parked in the back of the lot. The vehicle was rocking to the beat of love, and Gaylord pulled a flasher off the floor and stuck it on his dashboard. He turned it on while hitting his siren. Two half-dressed adults bounced up in the seats.

  “Make him take you to a motel,” the sergeant yelled out his window.

  The car sped away. Gaylord parked in front of the parlor and killed his headlights. Valentine got out and walked to the front door. He stood on his tiptoes and tried to see the roof. The moon was taking a powder behind some clouds, and he couldn’t see anything. He returned to the car and asked Gaylord for a flashlight.

  “It’s in the trunk. I’ll pop it for you.”

  Valentine walked around to the trunk and took out the flashlight. He twisted the light on and walked up to the front door. Shining the light on the roof, he ran the beam back and forth several times. He saw only one antenna. He went back to the car.

  “Mind if I climb on the hood of your car? I need a better vantage point.”

  “Go ahead. But take your shoes off, okay?”

  Valentine slipped his shoes and socks off and climbed onto the hood. This time, he focused the flashlight’s beam on the spot where the antenna was. A thick black wire protruded from the roof. He swore and climbed down.

  “They beat us here,” he said, getting in the car.

  “They destroyed the evidence?”

  “Yes.” He punched the dashboard and watched the indentation slowly vanish. It was a perfect metaphor for what was happening. He knew how Ricky had scammed every single game, and he couldn’t prove a damn thing. “I need more coffee.”

  “You think that’s going to make you think better?” Gaylord asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You think there’s something you missed?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why don’t you sleep on it? Maybe in the morning—”

  “By tomorrow they’ll have destroyed every piece of evidence there is. If you want to pack it in, I’ll drive you home.”

  “I was only suggesting—”

  Valentine turned sideways in his seat. “Suggest something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a solution.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How would you handle this case if it was yours?”

  Gaylord chewed it over all the way to the convenience store. Valentine had decided that the guy wasn’t stupid, just stuck in a crummy system that wouldn’t let him use his brains for anything besides typing reports. As Gaylord pulled into the lot, he slapped the wheel.

  “Got it,” he said, a triumphant smile on his face. “We go after the woman who helped Ricky with the blackjack scam. She’s an accessory. Stick the computers we found at the house under her nose and turn the steam on.”

  Valentine found himself smiling. Out of the mouths of babes and police sergeants came the most amazing things. He tried to recall the woman at the blackjack table. White hair and cigarettes was all he could pull up. She’d passed Ricky dozens of signals. That took hundreds of hours of practice. And trusting your partner. Only, that had to come naturally.

  “She’s a relative,” Valentine said.

  Gaylord stared at him. “You think so?”

  “Positive.”

  “That first cup of coffee must still be working.”

  Sitting in the convenience store’s parking lot, Valentine called Bill Higgins at home on his cell phone. Normally, he tried not to call Bill at home and ruin his evenings. In the end, it was only casinos’ money they were talking about, and usually that could wait until the next day. But this was different. He had to assume that Ricky had contacted the woman who’d helped him cheat at blackjack and alerted her to what was going on. Bill needed to grill her, before she had a chance to work on her story.

  “Her name is Helen Ledbetter,” Bill said.

  “You know her?”

  “I interviewed her last week. She’s a retired bookkeeper, used to work for the casinos. You really think she was involved?”

  There was real doubt in Bill’s voice. Had Helen Ledbetter served him coffee and something to eat and won him over? She’d rehearsed her role in the scam and probably rehearsed being interviewed by a policeman as well.

  “Let me put it another way,” Valentine said. “She’s the only lead we have. And if you can’t link her to Ricky Smith, we don’t have a case.”

  “And I’ll probably end up losing my job,” Bill said.

  “Correct.”

  “I’ll need a search warrant,
” Bill said. “Considering I don’t have any evidence, I’m going to have to do some tap dancing before a judge. This is going to take time.”

  “How much?” Valentine said.

  “Give me until early tomorrow morning.”

  Valentine filled two sixteen-ounce Styrofoam cups with coffee and walked to the front of the convenience store. Gaylord was shooting the breeze with the manager, a turbaned Middle Easterner with a permanent smile plastered on his face. As Valentine put the cups on the counter, he saw Gaylord glance at the doughnuts sitting in a cardboard box beside the cash register. What did marketing people call that? Point of purchase. Valentine picked up a napkin and plucked a pair oozing with purple jam.

  “These too,” he said. “My treat.”

  “Would you like some cigarettes?” the manager asked as he rang up the items.

  “How did you know I smoked?”

  “Sergeant Gaylord said you were a policeman,” the manager replied.

  “Do all cops smoke?”

  “All the ones that come into my store do.”

  “I’m trying to quit.”

  “Nicotine gum perhaps?”

  Valentine threw up his arms in defeat. The manager’s smile grew, and he added a package of nicotine gum to his items. Taking out his wallet, Valentine extracted a ten-dollar bill and handed it to him. As he waited for his change, he glanced at his money. He was running low and would need to find an ATM soon. He took the change from the manager and tucked it into his billfold, then noticed a piece of paper he hadn’t remembered seeing before.

  He pulled it out and stared at Ricky’s racing slip from the OTB parlor. Printed on it was the date and time of the race and the three winning horses Ricky had picked. Ricky had wagged the slip in his face, then left it on the seat of the car. Valentine guessed he had subconsciously known the slip would come in handy and had stuck it into his wallet. Putting the slip to his lips, he kissed it.

  “Did you win the lottery?” the manager asked excitedly.