Loaded Dice

by James Swain

Getting photographed with Amin at the MGM’s blackjack tables was going to be more difficult to disassociate himself from. He wasn’t sure what the solution was, except to ask his father to step in. The MGM was a client, and that would probably help.

  He rubbed his arms and felt himself shiver. The desert didn’t hold the heat; once the sun went down, the air got really chilly. He considered getting into his car and finding some food, then told himself no. He needed to finish this process and come to grips with things. He needed to purge himself.

  Going home to Florida and confessing to Yolanda was a start. He’d hidden a lot of things from her, and he was going to have to come clean or risk her leaving him. She was a doctor, and wouldn’t need him to pay the bills and put food on the table. He felt himself start to choke up. God, did he love her.

  Then he had to swallow his pride and confess to his father. There was so much on his slate, he wasn’t sure where to begin. Maybe the first time he’d ever stolen money from his mother’s purse was a good place to start.

  And then, when he was finished spilling his guts to Yolanda and his father, he was going to fly to Atlantic City and look up Father Tom, the family priest. He hadn’t taken confession since . . . he couldn’t remember the last time. But he needed to do it soon, and open up his soul. He needed to sit in a confessional and, for however long it took, tell his creator all the things he’d done wrong. Being a Catholic, he had an out. He could accept God and ask to be spared from his crimes.

  “Or risk eternal damnation,” he whispered.

  Taking out his cell phone, he got the toll-free number for several airlines. He started calling them, determined to find which one had the first flight out.

  While he was on hold with American, he thought about his father again and began to choke up. He wondered how his father had found the strength to put up with him for all these years. It was a strength he knew he didn’t possess.

  American came through. They had a nonstop flight to Tampa at seven AM with two seats left in coach. He and his father could leave Las Vegas together.

  Pash came out of the motel and stood beside him while he gave his Visa number to the booking agent. He offered Gerry a cigarette. Gerry took it, and a light, while the booking agent read his confirmation number back to him. He’d inherited his old man’s memory, and burned the number into his head, then hung up.

  “You’re not cold?” Pash asked.

  Gerry shrugged. “I grew up in New Jersey, on the ocean.”

  “It gets cold there?”

  “We used to sing songs about how cold it was. It’s colder than a nipple on a witch’s tit, it’s colder than a bucket of penguin shit, it’s colder than an icicle on a polar bear’s ass, it’s colder than the frost on a champagne glass.”

  Pash slapped his hands and laughed. Up until that afternoon, Gerry had liked Pash about as much as he could like anyone he’d known for five days. But the shootout at the deserted gas station had changed that. Beneath the Jim Carrey personality, there was a bad person hiding. Trusting him was out of the question, and Gerry stared at the headlights of cars coming down the highway next to the motel.

  “I guess you’re disappointed in me and my brother,” Pash said.

  “Yeah, I’m disappointed,” Gerry said, blowing a monster cloud of smoke. “I came to you with a legitimate business proposition, and you played me for a chump.”

  Pash cocked his head and stared at him. “You came to us with a way to make money. We showed you another way to make money. Is that so bad?”

  The afternoon had disappeared, and the fractured light reflecting off the motel’s neon sign gave Pash a ghoulish quality. Gerry wagged a finger in his face. “Right. Next we’ll be robbing banks and shooting guards. No thanks.”

  “My brother has never shot his gun before. It was just . . .”

  “One of those things?”

  “Yes.”

  Gerry inched closer to Pash and breathed on him. An old mobster trick, and a great way to get another guy’s attention. Pash shrank a few inches.

  “I killed a guy this afternoon saving your brother’s ass,” Gerry said. “He may have had it coming, but that doesn’t matter. I killed him.”

  “I know,” Pash said.

  “Some guys will tell you that killing someone is liberating. It wasn’t for me.”

  Pash swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You’re happy I killed that guy. I saved your brother’s life. You understand what I’m saying?”

  Pash shook his head. He didn’t understand at all.

  “It’s like this,” Gerry said. “You can never feel the way I feel about what happened this afternoon. You’re going to go on with your life, and eventually you’ll forget about it. Me, I’m going to live with it. It’s going to hang heavy on my soul for a long, long time.”

  “Your soul,” Pash whispered.

  “That’s right.”

  Pash could no longer look him in the eye, and used the fading ember of his cigarette to light another. He gestured weakly with the pack, offering him one. That was all that was left between them, Gerry thought, a fucking cigarette and the thread of a friendship.

  “Think about that when you unload those drugs,” Gerry said. Then he went into his motel room and slammed the door behind him.

  29

  Nick jumped up and down in the nurse’s office while Valentine sat on the examining table, getting his face stitched up.

  “That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Nick told the nurse, an older woman with the patience of Job. “First Tony uses these judo moves to take the knife away from Moss—Pow! Bam! Boom!—and then he takes him on, mano a mano, and beats the living daylights out of him.” He threw an imaginary uppercut in the air. “It was great!”

  Valentine winced as the nurse tied the stitches together. Moss had sliced the side of his face pretty good; he was going to need a plastic surgeon to make his puss look normal. He lifted his hand out of a bowl of ice cubes and stared at his badly bruised knuckles. Moss was going to need a plastic surgeon, too.

  He watched Nick prance around the room, still throwing punches. For a guy about to lose everything, he was having a great time, and Valentine remembered why he’d always liked him. Nick knew how to live.

  The nurse finished stitching him up, then applied a bandage to his wound. “You’re going to need to change this dressing twice a day. I’m also going to give you some penicillin. Make sure you take the entire dose, okay?”

  She said the words like she knew Valentine probably wouldn’t do it. He took the little vial of pills and thanked her. Nick stood a few feet away, delivering a knockout punch to an imaginary foe. Valentine said, “Got anything for our friend?”

  “I wish,” the nurse said.

  Valentine went into the hallway and powered up his cell phone. The pain in his face was making his entire head hurt. He called Gerry’s cell, got voice mail, and left a message. He tried to make his voice sound gentle, and saw Nick grimace as he hung up.

  “Be a tough guy,” Nick said, “and tell him to get his ass over here.”

  “You obviously never had kids,” Valentine said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That approach doesn’t work anymore.”

  The nurse’s office was on the first floor of the casino, behind the registration area. They walked out of her office and into the gaming area. At Valentine’s suggestion, Nick had closed the casino down and put a call into the Gaming Control Bureau. At any moment, a team of GCB agents would swarm through the front doors, throw up yellow tape, and turn the place into a crime scene. In Las Vegas, getting cheated was bad, but not telling the authorities about it was worse. Nick let out an exasperated breath.

  “Looks like a tomb, doesn’t it? Here lies Nick Nicocropolis. He never gave in.”

  “You want that on your tombstone?”

  “It’s the only thing I want on it.”

  T
hey walked around the empty casino. There was something sad about the hollow feeling the space gave off, and Valentine was reminded of the time he’d seen a half-sunken ship in a harbor as a kid, and how it had made him cry. He saw Nick stop and pick up a piece of trash from the floor.

  “Old habits die hard,” he explained.

  Valentine wasn’t listening. His eyes had locked on the cage sitting in the center of the casino floor. The cage was where customers turned their chips into cash. Normally, the cage was on the far end of the casino, the thinking being that a customer might stop along the way and place a wager.

  But this cage was in the center of the casino. It was small, with brass bars and cutouts for two cashiers. A sign said CHANGE FOR SLOT PLAYERS ONLY. Inside were several hundred plastic buckets filled with quarters and half-dollars.

  Valentine found himself smiling. So this was how Fontaine’s gang was getting coins stolen from slot machines out of the casino. They were converting them.

  “You got a key for the cage?” he asked Nick.

  “Of course I’ve got a key,” Nick said.

  “Open it up. I’m about to make you some money.”

  Nick fished a key ring from his pocket and opened the cage door. Valentine went in and searched around the cashiers’ chairs. He found two women’s handbags and poured their contents into Nick’s outstretched hands. Both were stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. Nick counted it. Over thirty grand. He grabbed Valentine’s arm and said, “You’re a beautiful human being, you know that?”

  “Thanks,” Valentine said.

  “Now tell me what was going on here.”

  “Fontaine’s gang rigged the scales in the Hard Count room to show less weight,” Valentine said. “Then they stole the difference and brought those coins back into the casino to this cage. The coins were put in buckets and sold to customers, and that money was put in handbags and carried out by the cashiers.”

  Nick made a face. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Putting this cage in the center of the casino was Albert Moss’s idea. He said it would make things easier for the little old ladies who played the slots.”

  “Little old ladies?”

  “Yeah. And I fell for it.”

  They shared a good laugh. Hustlers had been using little old ladies in their scams since the beginning of time. And it still worked.

  They started to walk out of the casino when Valentine heard his cell phone ring. He pulled it from his pocket and stared at its face. CALLER UNKNOWN. He imagined Gerry calling him from a pay phone, and answered it.

  “Tony? This is Lucy Price.”

  It was the last person he expected to hear from. Saturday night, and she was home alone. “Can I call you right back?”

  “Don’t hang up,” she said.

  “Look, I’m in the middle of something important.”

  “Please don’t hang up.”

  He frowned. Hadn’t she told him off a few hours ago?

  “Please.”

  “Okay, I’m not hanging up.”

  She sniffled into the phone. “I-I have someone here who wants to talk to you.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Him.”

  “Who’s him?”

  “Him, goddamn it.”

  Valentine thought back to Albert Moss’s remark just before he’d cut him: Frank’s with your girlfriend.

  “Fontaine?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He looked at Nick and saw the little Greek start to punch the air.

  “Put him on,” Valentine said.

  30

  It was pitch dark when he drove his rental into Lucy Price’s neighborhood in Summerlin. Fontaine had threatened to kill her, and Valentine had believed him. Twenty years ago, Fontaine had killed Valentine’s brother-in-law in Atlantic City. Stomped him to death on the Boardwalk while a group of other hoodlums had watched. He was different from any other cheater Valentine had ever known, and a true sociopath.

  “Come alone,” he’d said, “or I’ll put a bullet in her head.”

  So Valentine had driven to Lucy’s condo by himself. Nick had offered to send a car of security goons for backup, and he was glad he hadn’t taken Nick up on the offer. A few blocks from Lucy’s house, a car parked on the curb put its headlights on and pulled out. He was being tailed.

  Her neighborhood was quiet, everyone inside eating dinner. Taking out his cell phone, he retrieved Bill Higgins’s home number from its memory bank and hit SEND. His friend answered on the third ring. Valentine quickly told Bill what was going on.

  “Don’t go in there alone,” Bill said.

  Valentine looked at his watch. Six fifty-four. Fontaine had told him to arrive no later than seven o’clock. The smart thing was to wait for backup. But if he waited too long, Lucy would end up lying on a cold slab in a morgue.

  “I have to,” he said.

  “You know this woman?” Bill asked.

  “I met her yesterday.”

  “You armed?”

  Valentine was more than armed; he was a walking commando, courtesy of the cache of weapons Nick kept in his office safe. Valentine had taken every gun he could shove into his pockets. He’d been waiting a long time to pay Fontaine back.

  “To the teeth.”

  “Give me the address.”

  He told Bill where Lucy lived.

  “Stall Fontaine for a few minutes,” Bill said. “I’ll get backup over there pronto.”

  It was the closest thing he had to a plan, and Valentine thanked him. Bill raised his voice. “You be careful, hear me?” and then he was gone.

  Valentine passed one of the area’s many golf courses and spied a kid hitting drives off a fairway in the dark. At Lucy’s street he flipped his indicator on. The tail did the same. Making no pretense about following him.

  He pulled up Lucy’s driveway. The motion-triggered floodlight above the garage door came on. He got out of the car, feeling naked in the bright light. The tail parked a block away, the driver watching him.

  He drew a .38 from his jacket and blew the light out. One shot was all it took, and he felt safe again.

  The gunshot got a neighbor’s dog barking. He went to Lucy’s front door and glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock on the nose. He pressed the bell and stood to one side.

  “It’s open,” a voice inside said.

  He grabbed the handle with his free hand and cracked the door open. Light streamed out, cutting a blade in the darkness. He stared inside the condo. Lucy sat on a couch in the living room, facing the door. Fontaine sat beside her, holding a gun to her temple. It was a shitty little .22, just powerful enough to kill her.

  Standing beside Fontaine was a straw-haired cowboy. Valentine remembered him from the scam at the Acropolis two years ago. The cowboy had tried to kill him with a lead pipe. He was the only member of the gang to get away.

  “I’m coming in,” Valentine said.

  “Be my guest,” Fontaine replied.

  Driving over, Valentine had wrestled with how to handle this. One of Fontaine’s men would be hiding behind the door. That was a given. How he dealt with him was the big question.

  He had two options. He could shoot him, and take him out of the picture. Only shooting blind was risky and a waste of bullets. Or he could use the door to take him out. He couldn’t miss with the door.

  Using his shoulder, he opened the door very quickly and heard it bang against the man on the other side. He heard the man fall, and quickly stepped inside.

  “That’s far enough,” the cowboy declared.

  The cowboy was holding a stainless-steel Colt Anaconda by his side. The gun was thirteen and a half inches of pure menace. Valentine aimed the .38 at the cowboy’s chest, and saw a surprised look appear on his face. Like the cowboy had expected him to fight fair.

  Valentine pumped three bullets into him. The cowboy staggered backward and fell onto a glass coffee table with a loud crash. He still lo
oked surprised.

  “Goddamn you,” Fontaine said, rocking Lucy’s head with the .22’s barrel.

  Valentine took a step into the living room. Lucy stared at him, looking terrified and ashamed. He glanced behind the door. Fontaine’s man had rolled onto his back and was passed out.

  “Lay your gun on the floor,” Fontaine said.

  “Forget it.”

  “I’ll kill her.”

  “It’s all you’ll do,” Valentine told him.

  Fontaine blinked, the realization sinking in. By sitting on the couch, he’d made himself an easy target. He couldn’t jump behind anything, or fall into a crouch.

  “Don’t play that macho shit with me,” he said. “I found your pants in the bedroom. I’m going to shoot your lady. You want that?”

  Valentine let the words play through his head. His lady. He looked into Lucy’s face. She was fighting back the tears, holding herself together.

  “No,” he said.

  “Then put the gun down.”

  They heard the death rattle of Cowboy’s boots as he passed into the great beyond. Valentine tried to gauge how much time had passed. A minute? How much more time before Bill’s people or the police showed up? There was no way of guessing, and he said, “I didn’t come here to die. Tell me what you want. I’ll do it, and you’ll let Lucy go, and I’ll let you go.”

  “A horse trade?”

  “That’s right.”

  Fontaine chewed it over. The scar he’d gotten in prison made him look gruesome. It was a look he seemed bent on cultivating, his head shorn like a patient in a psycho ward, his eyes bugged out like he was on drugs.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “What do you want?”

  “Call Nick and tell him to release my people.”

  Valentine had expected something like this and played his trump card. “He can’t release all of them.”

  “Why not?”

  “Albert Moss is in the hospital.”

  Fontaine blinked. “You put him there?”

  “Afraid so.”

  A dark cloud passed over Fontaine’s face. He didn’t care about any of his people except Albert Moss. Moss knew everything; he was the only person the police would need to break to press charges. Letting everyone else go was a smoke screen.