Loaded Dice

by James Swain

  Mabel hung up the phone with a smile on her face. Leave it to Tony to end the conversation with a puzzle. On TV doing what? she’d wanted to ask.

  She booted up the computer on his desk. The study was her favorite room in Tony’s house, its walls lined with a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment and gambling books. But when it came to catching cheaters, the most important thing in the room was a computer program called Creep File. The program contained the names of five thousand cheaters and con artists whom Tony had tangled with during his twenty years policing Atlantic City’s casinos. When it came to catching cheaters, there was nothing like it.

  Pulling up a blank profile, she typed in Lucy Price’s particu-lars. Then she ran it against the other profiles in Creep File. No matches came up.

  She reread what she’d typed, just to be sure she’d filled in all the boxes. There was something unusual about Lucy Price’s profile, only she couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Then she had an idea. Tony said the best way to tell if something wasn’t right was to compare it to something that was right. She went into the database and pulled out a profile of Patty Layne, one of the greatest casino cheaters of all time. She compared it to Lucy Price’s profile and immediately saw the difference.

  For the heck of it, she pulled up three more women. And saw the same thing.

  Tony had known Lucy Price’s height, weight, and age. For the other four women, he had put in estimates. He hadn’t known exactly, so he’d guessed.

  He hadn’t guessed on Lucy Price.

  Tony was old-fashioned when it came to the opposite sex. And he rarely talked to strange women when he was working. Too fearful of being set up, she guessed. So how had he known so much about Lucy Price? There could only be one explanation. He was attracted to her.

  She shook her head sadly. She loved her boss, but had also accepted that he didn’t quite love her. Not that he didn’t treat her well; he was an absolute prince in that department. He paid her a wonderful salary with terrific benefits, made her laugh every day, took her out to meals and to the movies, and was willing to share just about everything he knew. But he didn’t love her. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  Hearing the front door chime, she went to greet her visitor.

  Yolanda stood on the stoop, clutching a paper bag to her pregnant belly. Her eyes were bloodshot, and Mabel realized she’d been crying. It was a nasty day; rain pelted her shoulders like stones thrown by wicked little boys. She ushered her inside.

  “Drink it,” Mabel said, offering her a glass of milk in the kitchen. “It will make you feel better.”

  Yolanda drank the milk in one big gulp. She had put the paper bag between her legs. It fell forward, the mail spilling across the faded linoleum floor. Leaning down, Mabel squinted at the return addresses on the envelopes. Credit card companies. Lots and lots of credit card companies.

  “Bills?”

  Yolanda nodded. Eight months’ pregnant and she still looked intoxicatingly beautiful. Beneath the pretty face and figure was a wonderful person: a doctor who sent money to her elderly parents in Puerto Rico. She and Gerry had moved across the street a month ago, and Gerry had gone to work for Tony. Not an easy arrangement, but so far it seemed to be working. Mabel refilled Yolanda’s glass and one for herself.

  “Gerry’s in trouble,” Yolanda said.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes, this morning.”

  “How did it go?”

  “All he did was lie to me.” Yolanda’s eyes shifted to her pregnant belly and she smiled. “The baby’s doing the cha-cha. Mark my words, kid’s going to be a dancer.” She lifted her eyes, and met Mabel’s stare. “Gerry never lies to me. It’s why I’ve stayed with him. Gerry’s no angel, but deep down he’s a decent person. You know what I mean?”

  “Of course,” Mabel said.

  “But he’s not acting so decent anymore,” Yolanda said. “I just got a call from a lady at American Express. She’d seen a lot of activity on Gerry’s credit card and wanted to be sure he was making the charges. I asked her to read me what he’d bought.”

  Yolanda put her glass on the table’s edge and leaned forward. “He bought a gun.”

  “In Las Vegas?”

  “Yes. A Smith and Wesson Model Sixty-five.” Yolanda fished a square of paper from the pocket of her blouse. “I went on the Internet to a gun dealer’s Web site. This is what I found posted about it. ‘The Model Sixty-five is made of stainless steel. It has a serrated front ramp sight, exposed hammer, and holds six rounds of three fifty-seven ammo. It is a hefty, solid piece of American steel, built to handle the violent three fifty-seven round. Shot at night, the unburned powder from the bullet will make a huge yellow flash and a noise you don’t want to hear inside a building without protection. This gun is an attention-getter.’ ”

  “Oh, my,” Mabel said.

  Yolanda let the paper float to the floor. It did a butterfly spiral and landed atop the bills. She shook her head in the way that people do when they’ve given up hope.

  “Gerry is in real trouble,” she said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  Mabel remembered her two pregnancies, when the hormones raging in her body during her last trimester had been on the verge of going out of control. The more Yolanda stresses, she thought, the more it’s going to affect the baby.

  “This is terrible, Yolanda. I’m going to tell Tony.”

  “I hope . . .” She let her voice trail off.

  “What?”

  “It’s not too late.”

  Mabel patted her arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry. Tony’s gotten Gerry out of plenty of jams before.”

  11

  The first thing Valentine did when he reached the Acropolis was call Gerry. He hadn’t told his son he was coming to Las Vegas, and realized it might come as a shock when they eventually did hook up. So he decided to break it to him gently.

  “Hey, Gerry, this is Pop,” he said, getting his son’s voice mail. “I was thinking about coming out to Vegas. What do you say we hook up? Call me on my cell.”

  He hung up feeling guilty as hell. They hadn’t done much together when Gerry was growing up, and trying to sound chummy felt awkward. He hoped Gerry’s relationship with his own kid was different than theirs had been.

  The next thing he did was look for his luggage. He pedaled the bike he’d borrowed that morning over to Sin and inquired at the concierge desk.

  “It hasn’t arrived yet,” the concierge said, staring at her computer screen.

  “You can still keep the bike,” he said.

  She frowned, not getting the joke. He started to leave, then halted at the glass front doors. He was forgetting something. Something really important.

  His fee.

  Mabel was always chiding him about not collecting his money. Maybe it was because he’d lived most of his life broke and never put much value in it. He went back to the concierge and explained the situation. The woman on duty called upstairs to Chance Newman’s office.

  “Go to the cashier’s cage on the south side of the casino,” she said, drawing a map as complicated as a football play on a sheet of paper. “Hugo, Mister Newman’s bodyguard, will meet you there. He’ll have the money, and your equipment.”

  Valentine entered Sin’s casino with the map in his outstretched hand. The casino was enormous, its motif a boozy interpretation of ancient Rome. As he walked, he imagined he was giving the boys upstairs in surveillance fits. He’d come in on a bike and was now doing a serpentine stroll. Seeing a smoky dome in the ceiling, he waved.

  Hugo awaited him at the cage. He had a wrestler’s body and the face of a mad Bulgarian. He opened a leather bag and let Valentine see the stacks of money and Deadlock equipment lying inside.

  “Your fee and your equipment,” Hugo said.

  “Count it,” Valentine said.

  Hugo’s face turned an Eastern European mean. “I already did that.”

  Valentine thought h
e’d seen Hugo playing volleyball with the nuns, but asked him to count it again anyway. Then added, “If you don’t mind.”

  Hugo was wearing a walkie-talkie setup that was practically invisible. Valentine sensed that someone was talking to him, and he watched him hand the bag through the bars to the cashier.

  “Do it,” Hugo said.

  The cashier counted the money. It was all there. Valentine took the Deadlock from the bag and made sure the guts hadn’t been ripped out. Then he signed a receipt for the money.

  “How long you been out of the slammer?”

  Hugo’s mouth opened, then snapped shut.

  “You didn’t get those muscles hitting the gym a few nights a week.”

  “You are a Webster,” Hugo said.

  A Webster was casino slang for a floor person who thought he knew everything. Valentine said, “I want you to tell Chance Newman something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tell him I’m no pigeon. You know what that is?”

  Hugo smiled. “Everyone’s favorite customer.”

  “That’s right. Chance thought that by making me walk the casino, I might stop on my way out, make a few bets, and he’d win his money back. Maybe he put a plant at a table to lure me.”

  “A plant?”

  “A house girl, a hooker. Know what those are?”

  Hugo touched his lapel. Valentine realized he was turning his walkie-talkie off.

  “Get out of the casino, or I’ll throw you out,” the bodyguard said.

  Valentine was impressed he’d strung all those words together himself. As he hoisted the bag off the counter, it occurred to him that something was wrong with this picture. Hugo hadn’t touched him. Security always grabbed troublemakers. But why hadn’t Hugo touched him? He looked like he could lift a car.

  “Know what they say about guys who lift weights?”

  Hugo shook his head.

  “They say they have little dicks. If they had big dicks, they wouldn’t spend so much time in the gym.”

  Hugo still didn’t want to touch him. Valentine walked away shaking his head.

  He checked into the Acropolis, put his twenty-five grand into the hotel vault, and rode the elevator still shaking his head. What good was a bodyguard who didn’t like to fight?

  Nick had comped him into a penthouse suite. In the Acropolis, that meant three high-ceilinged rooms filled with polished chrome and cushy leather, the bizarre color schemes reminiscent of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. That was the thing about Nick. He loved the old stuff.

  He went into his suite and saw a chambermaid’s cart sitting in the living room. Chambermaids never locked themselves into rooms, and he looked around the suite.

  “Anybody home?”

  He heard something. He stood by the dining room entrance and stared through a pair of sliding glass doors leading to the outside balcony. No one out there.

  Taking off his shoes, he flung them into the dining room. The second shoe struck a flower vase and shattered it. He heard movement inside the kitchen. Picking up a marble ashtray, he walked into the dining room.

  A fat guy wearing a stocking over his head came out of the kitchen. His hands were balled into fists, and for a few seconds they danced around each other. The guy looked like he tipped the scales at two-fifty. Big guys usually just ran over people. Not this guy. He had an attitude.

  “I thought you knew how to fight,” his intruder said.

  Valentine held the ashtray like a Frisbee and shook his head.

  “Guess that stuff in the movie was bullshit, huh?”

  Valentine remembered Hugo’s earlier hesitation. “Guess so,” he said.

  “You’re just an old fuck with a dried-up dick, huh?”

  He placed the ashtray on the dining room table. “Take your best shot, asshole.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  His intruder threw a right hook with a telegraph attached. Valentine ducked the punch but didn’t see the second shot coming, a sneaky uppercut that caught him in the side of the head. Falling backward, he shot his leg out and kicked his intruder squarely in the shin.

  The shins were one of the body’s weak spots. His intruder howled and danced on one leg. Valentine straightened and felt his head spin. He hadn’t been sucker-punched in a long time.

  He considered his options. He could sweep his intruder’s legs out from under him, or he could flip him. Those were correct ways to deal with an attacker. Only the guy had pissed him off. So he punched him in the face.

  His intruder staggered backward, hitting the glass doors leading to the balcony with his head. A thousand spiderwebs magically spread across the glass. He shakily drew a gun and pointed it at Valentine. It was a slimmed-down Glock .45, a weapon favored by detectives with the Metro LVPD.

  “Why did you kill her?” he asked.

  “Who?” Valentine said.

  “Kris Blake. I found your stuff in her townhouse. You brought her home from the Pink Pony last night and shot her. Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, pal.”

  “Tell me, goddamn it.”

  He sounded like a lovesick boyfriend, not someone who really wanted to shoot him. Valentine said, “My stuff couldn’t be at your friend’s place, buddy. I don’t have any stuff. The airline lost it.”

  Blood seeped out of the stocking. “Bullshit.”

  Valentine pointed at the bedroom door on the other side of the suite. “I filled out a lost claim form for my luggage. It’s on the night table, lying in the same sleeve as my airline ticket. For Christ’s sake, look at it.”

  “If you’re lying, I’m going to kill you,” he said.

  “I’m not lying.”

  His intruder crossed the dining room. As he opened the bedroom door, a uniformed chambermaid came out, kneed his groin, and ran out of the suite screaming at the top of her lungs. Valentine ducked into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife from the utensil drawer. Then he glanced around the corner. His intruder was running away. He grabbed a cordless phone off the counter and punched zero.

  “It’s a beautiful day at the Acropolis,” an operator said.

  “Help!” he yelled.

  Chasing someone with a gun was a stupid idea, and he hunkered down in the kitchen and waited for someone to rescue him. A minute later, Wily appeared, all out of breath. He slid the steak knife back in the drawer and came out of hiding.

  “Did you catch him?”

  “Who?” Wily said.

  “The guy who broke into my room.”

  Wily shook his head, staring at the broken vase on the floor and the cracked sliding glass doors. “You get in a fight?”

  “No, I was recording a sound effects record. Of course I was in a fight.” He came over to where the head of security stood. “The guy was six-one, weighed about two fifty, and wore a stocking over his head. How could you miss him?”

  Like most guys who ran casinos, Wily hated to be questioned, and he shrugged. “The casino is mobbed, and so is the hotel. You know how it is.”

  Valentine felt his heart racing. He had reached the age when bad things upset him in ways he could not control. He pulled a chair out from the dining-room table and sat down. After taking several deep breaths, he said, “No, I don’t know how it is. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  Picking up the phone, Wily called the hotel’s maintenance department and ordered new sliding doors for the room. Hanging up, he said, “It’s like this. The Acropolis has a hundred eye-in-the-sky cameras. That sounds like a lot, but they can’t watch everything. So they watch one area of the casino, then they watch another.”

  “So?”

  “Do the math,” Wily said. “One hundred percent of the time, fifty percent of the casino floor isn’t being watched. The same is true for the hotel. Things happen that don’t get picked up. Like your guy.”

  “What about security on the floor?” Valentine said.

  “What about the
m?”

  “The guy was bleeding from the nose. Think they would have spotted that?”

  “You pop him?”

  “He’s got a thing about heights. Yes, I popped him.”

  Wily called downstairs. The Acropolis employed ex-cops to patrol the floor. They were sharp guys, and when Wily hung up a few moments later shaking his head, Valentine had his answer. His intruder was someone the guys on the floor all knew.

  “Must have disappeared,” Wily said sarcastically.

  Valentine rose from his chair. The side of his face really hurt. His intruder had said his girlfriend worked at the Pink Pony. So had the dead stripper Nick had told him about. Had to be the same woman.

  It was time he paid Bill Higgins a visit. Bill was the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and one of the most powerful law enforcement figures in the state. If anyone would know what this was about, it was Bill.

  He went into the hall, slammed the door, and listened as the broken sliders came down with a thunderous crash, followed by Wily’s string of four-letter expletives. He smiled all the way down in the elevator.

  12

  Valentine got his rental car from the Acropolis’s valet. The vehicle was a real piece of junk. Roll-down windows, a sputtering heater, and a front seat with enough legroom for a circus midget, all for thirty-nine bucks a day.

  Leaving the Acropolis, he followed the signs for Las Vegas Boulevard and soon was driving south into the desert. As the towering casinos grew small in his mirror, he felt himself relax. He’d been offered several lucrative full-time jobs in Las Vegas over the years and always turned them down. He needed to be rooted in reality, and this town was anything but that.

  After five miles he hung a left on Cactus Boulevard, and a mile later a right on Hibiscus. It was a newer suburb, with roads seeing blacktop for the first time. Although he didn’t remember Bill’s address on Hibiscus, he was certain he’d recognize Bill’s place when he saw it.

  He powered up his cell phone. He considered cell phones one of life’s great intrusions and rarely left his on. He had a message in voice mail and retrieved it.