Loaded Dice

by James Swain

  Valentine took the cell phone away from his ear and stared at it, his anger clouding his vision. Something’s come up? What the hell was Gerry thinking? His son knew the FBI was looking for him, and that he’d put his ass on the line to help him out. If he’d been sitting beside him, Valentine would have strangled him.

  A car’s horn made him jump. The parking lot was packed, and in his mirror he saw a burly guy in a pickup truck, hoping to grab his spot.

  “Hey Pop, you leaving?” the guy asked.

  Valentine shook his head and watched the pickup drive away. The guy had called him Pop. Gerry called him Pop, just like he’d called his own father Pop. Gerry never called him Dad.

  Valentine replayed the message.

  “Hey, Dad, Wonder Boy here . . .”

  His son was trying to tell him something. He thought back to the code they’d used in the Second Sight act when Gerry was a kid. Then he remembered: Dad had been part of the code. Dad meant Gerry hadn’t understood him, and needed help.

  Dad meant trouble.

  He burned down the Boulder Highway to Henderson where his son was staying. Digging out his wallet, he extracted the slip of paper with the Red Roost Inn’s phone number and punched it into his cell phone. The night clerk answered. Valentine asked to be transferred to his son’s room.

  “He checked out,” the night clerk said. “Actually, his buddy checked out for him.”

  “Describe the guy who checked my son out,” Valentine said, standing in the motel’s dingy office ten minutes later, having broken every speed limit and run every red light on the drive over.

  The night clerk was walking testimony to the evils of alcohol, his face a mosaic of busted gin blossoms, his eyes runny and dispirited. He scratched his unshaven chin, thinking. Valentine tossed down twenty bucks to prod his memory along.

  “Middle Eastern, five-ten, about a hundred and seventy pounds,” the clerk said. “Not a bad-looking guy, except he was always scowling. He and his brother shared a room.”

  “How long they been here?”

  “Couple of weeks.”

  Valentine removed the surveillance photo from the Excalibur and laid it on the desk.

  “That him?”

  The clerk gave it a hard look. “Yup.”

  A ledger sat on the desk. Valentine flipped it open and heard the clerk squawk.

  “That could get me fired,” the clerk said.

  Valentine tossed him another twenty. Then he scanned the names in the ledger. Two stood out. Amin and Pash Amanni. Pointing, he said, “This them?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Let me see their credit card imprint.”

  “Didn’t use one.” The clerk removed a flask from a drawer. The money had put him in a celebratory mood, and he took a pair of shot glasses from the same drawer and slapped them on the desk. He unscrewed the flask with his teeth.

  “You a drinking man?” he asked.

  Valentine felt something inside him snap. The shot glasses shattered as they hit the floor. The clerk jumped back like he’d been struck.

  “Hey mister, I was just trying to be—”

  “I don’t care what you were trying to be. I need to find these guys. Anything you can remember before you get drunk would help.”

  Valentine put his hand on the flask. The clerk swallowed hard, realizing he wasn’t getting any hooch unless he cooperated. He scrunched his face up, giving it some effort.

  “Come to think of it, there were a couple of things,” he said.

  Amin and Pash Amanni had liked to eat pizza. They also went to the movies a lot. Those were the two things the clerk remembered.

  It wasn’t much, but better than nothing, and Valentine killed the evening visiting every pizza shop and movie theater in Henderson. At each he showed Amin’s surveillance photo to the help, asked if anyone recognized him.

  None of the ringed and pierced employees did.

  By midnight he felt ready to drop from exhaustion. Sitting in a strip mall parking lot, he ate a slice of pizza that tasted like cardboard with catsup. He washed it down with a soda, told himself he had to keep looking. If Amin knew he’d been photographed in the MGM the night before, he was probably staying away from Las Vegas. That left Henderson as his only real hiding place, unless he was camped out in the desert.

  Valentine realized he was dying for a smoke. He’d gone cold turkey a year ago, and didn’t get the cravings for nicotine unless he was under stress. He pulled Mr. Beauregard’s cigar from his pocket, peeled away the plastic, and passed it beneath his nose. The tobacco was dry, but still smelled wonderful.

  He fired up the cigar with the rental’s lighter and filled his mouth with the great-tasting smoke. It lifted his spirits and calmed his nerves at the same time.

  He saw the lights go out in the pizza parlor. Other stores around Henderson were probably closing as well. Which left fewer places for Amin to hide.

  He started up the car and was backing out of his spot when he heard the explosion. It was right in his face, and very loud. It snapped his head back, and he saw nothing but eternal blackness. Your life just ended, he thought.

  The banging on his window brought him back to the real world, and Valentine stared at the kid who’d served him the pizza standing beside his car. He rolled his window down.

  “Hey mister, you all right?” the kid anxiously asked.

  Valentine touched his arms, and then his face. Everything felt fine.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he mumbled.

  “What happened?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” he replied.

  The kid sauntered off. Valentine inspected the car. The windshield wasn’t broken, nor were any of the windows. He turned on the interior light and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His lips and chin were covered in black soot. It slowly dawned on him what had happened. Mr. Beauregard had given him an exploding cigar.

  Valentine thought back to the chimp handing him the pack of matches. He hated to be played for a fool, and thought about calling Ray Hicks, and giving him a piece of his mind. Then his cell phone rang.

  He stared at the luminous clock on the dashboard. It was twelve-oh-five.

  “I need more time,” he told Fuller.

  “You just ran out of that,” the director of the FBI replied.

  37

  Hog-tied and gagged, Gerry lay across the backseat of Amin’s rental car and watched the sun break over the horizon.

  Dawn was different in Las Vegas. Before the sun ever came up, the sky put on a show, turning from black to magenta to a magnificent dark blue. The changes were gradual, yet also severe, as if the colors were being sucked from the desert.

  Soon sunlight flooded the rental, and he heard Pash and Amin stir in the front seats. They had driven into the desert around eleven o’clock, parked behind a deserted building, and promptly gone to sleep. Gerry hadn’t slept at all, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might explode.

  Amin rubbed the cobwebs from his eyes, then climbed out of the rental and walked away. Lifting his head, Gerry looked through the side window and saw Amin standing twenty yards away, pissing on a cactus. He kicked the back of Pash’s seat.

  “Wake up,” he said through his gag.

  Pash turned around and stared at him. His happy-go-lucky expression had been replaced by one of mounting dread. “Be quiet,” he whispered.

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  Pash reached over and tugged his gag down. “Be quiet, or my brother will put a bullet in your head.”

  “The truth,” Gerry said. “I think I deserve that.”

  “My brother will kill you, do you understand?”

  “Big fucking deal.”

  That hit Pash hard. “You are not afraid of dying?” he asked.

  Not as much as you, Gerry nearly said. Before he could reply, Pash turned back around. “My brother is returning. Please shut up.”

  Gerry lifted his head. Amin was still draining the monster. During the n
ight, he’d realized he might die not knowing what the brothers were up to, and he said, “Come on. I have a right to know.”

  “How so?” Pash said, staring straight ahead.

  “I saved your lives yesterday, didn’t I? Just tell me the truth.”

  “Stop it. Please.”

  “You’re not drug dealers. I figured that out.”

  Pash stiffened like a thousand watts of electricity had been jolted through his body. His chin dropped down and touched his chest, and Gerry realized he was fighting back the overwhelming urge to cry. “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “You didn’t sample the merchandise.”

  Pash lifted his chin and looked over his shoulder into the backseat.

  “Please explain.”

  “The meeting with the Mexicans,” Gerry said. “You gave them cash, and they gave you drugs. Only you didn’t try the drugs, or test them with chemicals. For all you knew, they could have sold you cornstarch.”

  A guilty look spread across Pash’s face.

  “What I can’t figure out is, what the hell did they sell you?” Gerry said. “Amin got a beat-up briefcase. It was too small to be filled with weapons. So what was in it?”

  Pash was trembling, as if the secret were burrowing a hole in him. He reached between the seats and readjusted the gag over Gerry’s mouth.

  “I am sorry this is happening,” he said.

  Valentine dragged himself through the Acropolis’s deserted lobby. He’d driven around Henderson until three AM, then stopped at an all-night gas station for a coffee and a jelly doughnut. The next thing he remembered was waking up in his car at nine o’clock with a pancake-sized coffee stain on his shirt.

  He heard someone call his name. It was Lou Ann, the pleasant receptionist he’d chatted with yesterday. He shuffled over to the front desk.

  “I’ve got some terrific news for you,” Lou Ann said.

  Terrific news? He thought he’d run out of that. He waited expectantly.

  “Your airline found your luggage,” she said.

  On the scale of one to ten, it was a minus two. Then he remembered that the shirt he was wearing was his last clean one. That made it a plus two.

  “Great,” he said. “Where is it?”

  Lou Ann removed a piece of paper from the counter and read from it. “Your suitcase was in Portland. The airline is routing it to Los Angeles. It should be here sometime tomorrow.”

  He thanked her and went to the elevators. While he waited for a car, he took out his cell phone and stared at its face. No messages. No Gerry. For all he knew, his son was in another city, or buried in the desert. He’d called Bill Higgins twenty minutes ago to see if the FBI had maybe found his son. Bill had said they hadn’t.

  The elevator doors parted. As he stepped in, a hand clasped his shoulder. He spun around and stared at Wily. He was so tired, he hadn’t heard him approach.

  “Mind some company?” Wily asked.

  “Only if you don’t mind my yawning.”

  Wily said he didn’t. As they rode up to the penthouse, Valentine removed Amin’s photograph from his pocket and showed it to the head of security.

  “Ever see this guy before? He’s a card-counter.”

  Wily studied the photo. “No, but he shouldn’t be too hard to track down.”

  Valentine didn’t think he’d heard Wily right. The doors parted, and they got out.

  “How you going to do that?”

  “Easy,” Wily said. “The casino subscribes to FaceScan. They have the face of every known card-counter in a database in their computer. I’ll give them your picture, see what they turn up.”

  Valentine had a feeling the FBI had already tried that, but there was always the chance they’d missed something. He slapped Wily on the arm.

  “Anyone ever tell you how smart you are?”

  Wily feigned embarrassment. “Look, there’s something I need to talk to you about. As a friend.”

  “What’s that?”

  Wily hemmed and hawed. Valentine didn’t think he could have made a speech if his life depended upon it. Finally, Wily gave up, and walked down the hallway to Valentine’s suite. “Give me your key,” he said.

  Valentine gave him the plastic key. Wily swiped the door and pushed it open.

  “This is what I want to talk to you about,” he said.

  Valentine entered the suite. The living room was filled with flower arrangements, their fragrance strong enough to knock over a horse. A card was propped up on the coffee table, addressed to him. Picking it up, he tore the envelope open.

  It was a Valentine’s Day card with a big heart in its center, only his name had been added to the front. A Tony Valentine’s Day card. It made him smile, and he opened it and read the note.

  I THINK I’M FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU

  Wily told him to sit on the couch, then got two Diet Cokes from the mini bar. Valentine held the card in his fingers and stared at Lucy’s proclamation of love.

  Wily made the couch sag and handed him a soda. Valentine took a long swallow. He’d read that the artificial sweetener in Diet Coke stimulated the body’s craving for sugar, and was bad for you. It was a shame it tasted so damn good.

  Wily cleared his throat. “Look, Tony, what I’m going to say isn’t easy. But you’ve got to hear it. For your own good.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Lucy Price is bad news.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. Know what her nickname is?”

  “No.”

  “The Blowtorch. She burns everyone she gets near.”

  Valentine put the card on the coffee table. “I really don’t want to hear this right now, okay?”

  Wily took a long pull on his soda and stared at him. “Know how many times I’ve wanted to say that to you over the years? About a hundred. Know why I didn’t? Because I realized that everything that comes out of your mouth is true.”

  “Are you suggesting I shut up and listen?”

  “Yeah,” Wily said. “Hear me out.”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  Wily put on his serious face. “It’s like this. Lucy Price couldn’t stop gambling if her life depended on it. She’s lost everything. House, car, family. Six months ago, her husband took their kids and moved to Utah. He got a job and sent her an airline ticket. She won’t join him.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Her husband did. He used to work here. He begged her to get help, but Lucy wouldn’t go. She doesn’t think she has a problem. She’s a lost cause.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  Valentine thought about it. “I’d like to,” he admitted.

  “Don’t.”

  “You make her sound like a leper.”

  “The casinos in Las Vegas have a program for compulsive gamblers. If a person with a problem asks us, we’ll bar them when they come in. Over a thousand people have signed up. It started up in Canada, works great.”

  “So?”

  “Lucy wouldn’t sign up,” Wily said.

  “You tried?”

  “About a dozen times.”

  Valentine finished his soda. What a wonderful time he was having in Las Vegas. He’d lost his son, gotten his face slashed, and now this. He stared at the open card sitting on the coffee table. I THINK I’M FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU. Did Wily know how precious those words were? Wily had a wife, probably got to hear sweet nothings whenever he wanted. He didn’t know what it was like to be alone.

  Wily glanced at his watch, then rose and went to the door. Taking the surveillance picture of Amin from his pocket, he said, “FaceScan’s office is on my way home. I’ll drop this off, ask them to run it through their computer.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “Call them in a couple of hours. They get backed up on weekends.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Wily’s fingers were on the doorknob. Lowering his voice, he said, “I’m sorry, Tony,
but I had to tell you,” and walked out of the suite.

  38

  Valentine drove to Lucy Price’s condo in Summerlin thinking about his conversation with Wily. Wily had called Lucy a lost cause. He didn’t believe that. No one was truly lost. That was the one thing he’d learned growing up Catholic. There was always a shot at redemption.

  Pulling into her driveway, he realized he should have called, and let Lucy know he was coming. After what had happened last night, she’d probably gone and bought a gun. He saw the front door open. Grabbing the paper bag off the passenger seat, he climbed out of the car.

  Lucy stayed in the doorway. Her skin did something magical in the daylight, its glow soft and mysterious. He came up to her and she kissed him.

  “Did you find your son?”

  “Still looking. I had to come and see you. Thanks for the flowers.”

  “After last night, it was the least I could do.”

  She led him inside. The condo smelled of fresh coffee and burned toast. She offered to make him scrambled eggs, and they went into the kitchen. He sat at the breakfast table and placed the bag between his feet. As she fixed breakfast, he found himself staring at her furniture and kitchen appliances. All of it was old and beat-up. Every compulsive gambler he’d ever known lived like this. He tried not to think about it.

  “Hope you don’t mind them runny,” she said, ladling the eggs onto a plate.

  “Not at all. Got any Tabasco sauce?”

  “Sure. I think it’s pretty old, though.”

  She found the Tabasco in a cupboard and sat down. Years of eating crummy diner food had gotten him addicted to Tabasco, and he sprinkled it on his eggs. With his foot, he pushed the bag across the linoleum floor so it touched her chair.

  “This for me?”

  He nodded. “It’s all for you.”

  She made a face, then picked the bag up from the floor. She opened it and let out a shriek. The bag fell from her hands, its contents spilling onto the floor.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Lucy grabbed his arm. “It’s my twenty-five thousand dollars, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

  He nodded and kept eating. It was actually the money Chance Newman had paid him two days ago for demonstrating Deadlock. He’d decided that it wasn’t a coincidence that Chance had paid him the same amount that had been stolen from the safe in Lucy’s hotel room.