by James Swain
“You got it back from them, didn’t you?” she asked.
Another nod. The eggs were terrible. He kept shoveling them into his mouth, wanting her to do all the talking.
“I’m not going to ask you how,” she said, her face glowing. She picked up the stacks of bills from the floor and held them tightly against her bosom. “Do you know what this means, Tony? Do you know what this means to me?”
She kissed him, then jumped to her feet, kicked off her flip-flops, and danced around the kitchen like a ballerina, pausing to do an occasional pirouette, the stacks of money slipping from her grasp. He put his fork down and smiled.
“It means you can get your life in order,” he said.
She stopped in the middle of a spin. “What’s that?”
“It’s what you said to me on the balcony. The money was going to help you get your life in order.”
“Is that what I said?”
“Yes. Now you can.”
She laughed. The sound was harsh as it escaped her lips. “It means that my luck’s changed, that’s what it means. It means that Lucy Price is back.”
The eggs were doing a number on his stomach. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and stood up. The moment of truth was at hand, and he could feel his legs shake.
“I want to talk to you about something,” he said.
Lucy picked up the money from the floor and put it into the bag. Done, she rose.
“What’s that?”
“I want you to do something for me.”
A dreamy look spread across her face. “Whatever you want,” she said.
“I want you to enter into a Gamblers Anonymous program and start going to meetings. They hold them every night. You’ve got to address this problem.”
It was as if he’d slapped her across the face. Lucy stepped back until she was leaning against the kitchen counter, looking at him like he was the most horrible person alive.
“What problem? What are you saying?”
“Your gambling problem, the one you can’t control.”
“Who said I have a problem?”
“I did.”
“What makes you the expert? You’re not a shrink.”
“I’ve worked in casinos most of my life. I can recognize a gambling problem when I see one.”
“I’m down on my luck. So are a lot of people.”
No, he thought, you’re desperate. It was why she’d let Fontaine talk her into being his shill. Deep down, she’d probably sensed the deal was too good to be true, only her situation had clouded her judgment.
“You need help,” he said.
“Don’t fucking lecture me,” she said angrily.
“That’s what I want.”
“No. Go to hell.”
“Please. For me.”
Her face had gone red, and she shook her head violently. The Lucy he knew was gone. This was Lucy the gambler. From his jacket, he removed the Valentine’s Day card he’d found in his suite and propped it beside his plate of food. Then he looked at her.
“I’m leaving,” he said.
“Are you going to take the money back?”
“It’s yours,” he said.
She crossed the kitchen while staring suspiciously at him. Then she snatched up the bag with the ferocity of a mother pulling her child from a rushing stream. He waited, always the optimist when it came to things of the heart.
“Good-bye,” she said.
39
The sound of someone banging on her front door awakened Mabel from the deepest of sleeps. She lifted her head off her pillow and found a dead phone lying on her chest. Beside it was a pad of paper and the things a desperate casino boss had asked her to write down last night. Had she gone to sleep while the casino boss was talking to her? She honestly didn’t remember.
Climbing out of bed, Mabel threw on a bathrobe and walked barefoot down the cold hardwood floors of her house. “Hold your horses,” she called loudly, and ducked into the bathroom.
A minute later, she cracked open the front door. Yolanda stood on the stoop, dressed like she was going on a trip. In her hand was a suitcase. Mabel threw the door open and said, “Did your water break?”
Yolanda shook her head. “No, but it’s time. Can you drive me?”
“Are you dilating?” Mabel said, backing down the drive five minutes later.
“No, everything’s normal.”
“Then how—”
“I just know,” Yolanda said.
Just about everybody in Florida went to church on Sunday, and the traffic out of Palm Harbor was miserable. Mabel drove the speed limit, taking Route 19 to State Road 60 then heading east over the causeway to the mainland.
“But how do you know?” Mabel asked.
Yolanda drank from a bottled water. “My mother told me I would have a dream. She said a truck would come to my house. A man would open the back, and the truck would be filled with apples. She said I would smell the apples in my dream. If the apples were green, it was a boy. Red, a girl.”
“And you had this dream last night?”
Yolanda raised her eyebrows and smiled. She could do that, and tell you exactly what she was thinking. Mabel grabbed her hand and squeezed it excitedly.
“What color were they?”
“Red. It’s going to be a girl.”
The hospital Yolanda had chosen was called St. Joseph’s, only everyone called it St. Joe’s. It was a long drive from where they lived, but Yolanda had checked around and been told it was the best. That, and she’d found the right doctor, a white-haired Russian gentleman with a twinkle in his eye and the gentlest of hands. Those hands, she had decided, would bring her child into this world.
“Did you talk to Gerry? Does he know?” Mabel asked when they were on Dale Mabry Highway and only a few miles from the hospital.
“He hasn’t called since yesterday,” Yolanda said.
“Oh,” Mabel said.
A wailing ambulance blew past, and traffic stopped altogether. Mabel threw the car into park. She glanced at Yolanda and saw the corners of her mouth trembling.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
“There was another part of my dream,” she said.
“Please tell me.”
“The man with the truck gave me an apple. I went into our house to show Gerry. Only he was gone, and so were his clothes and all his things. It was like he’d disappeared.”
Cars were moving again, and Mabel tapped the accelerator. Reaching across the seat, she took Yolanda’s hand and held it all the way to the hospital.
Amin pulled up Bart Calhoun’s gravel driveway and saw his teacher’s mud-caked pickup truck parked in the garage. Calhoun had not impressed him as the type who spent his Sunday mornings in church. He killed the engine and took several deep breaths. He did not like this part of it. Calhoun had helped him. But it was necessary.
Amin looked up and down the street. The neighborhood was not fully developed, and Calhoun’s closest neighbor was a quarter mile away. He opened his door and glanced sideways at Pash. His baby brother looked terrified.
“Promise me you will not let me down.”
Pash stared at the dashboard as if hypnotized.
“Answer me,” Amin said.
“I will not let you down,” Pash whispered.
Amin glanced in the backseat at Gerry, still bound and gagged. “What about him?”
“He is not going anywhere.”
“What if he tries to escape?”
“I will beep the horn to alert you.”
Pash’s lips were trembling. Amin put his hand on his brother’s knee and said, “The end of one journey is at hand, while another is about to begin.”
Amin started to climb out. In his mirror, he saw Gerry staring at him. Reaching between the seats, he smashed his fist into Gerry’s stomach. Gerry curled into a fetal position, his gag muffling his screams. Amin had killed five different men whose identities he’d stolen in the past two years, and their final moments had ranged from
defecating on themselves to crying like babies.
“If you try to escape, I will come out and shoot you. Understand?”
“Yes,” Gerry spit through his gag.
Amin adjusted the .357 in his pants so the handle hung over his belt buckle. He covered the weapon with his sweatshirt and got out of the car.
He was smoothing the sweatshirt out when Calhoun answered the door. His teacher was unshaven, and there was lint in his buzz cut. Like he’d just woken up, Amin thought. Only Calhoun’s eyes were alert. He squinted at Amin.
“What’s up?” Calhoun asked.
“Pash and I are driving to Laughlin to play blackjack,” Amin said. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions to help avoid the surveillance.”
There was a hesitation in Calhoun’s response, a split-second delay that wasn’t normally there when he spoke. A screen door separated them. Calhoun kicked it open with his foot.
“Want some coffee?” he asked as they crossed the house and entered the converted garage that served as Calhoun’s classroom.
“No thanks.”
Calhoun flipped the fluorescent lights on, and their brightness momentarily blinded Amin. He walked painfully into a desk and heard Calhoun’s pace quicken. His teacher was heading for his office.
Amin followed him, fingering the .357’s handle beneath his sweatshirt. His teacher’s office was Spartan. A desk, and a swivel chair with busted leather. On the desk sat an ancient PC. Its screen saver was on, and showed tropical fish swimming in a deep blue ocean.
Calhoun took the chair and slapped his elbows on the desk. The desk was covered with flash cards that he used to test his students.
“What seems to be the problem?” Calhoun asked.
Amin hesitated. His teacher had already forgotten their conversation.
“Pash and I are going to Laughlin.”
“Oh, that’s right. Why do you want to go there? The casinos are all burn joints. Make a big wager, and management will sweat your play like there’s no tomorrow.”
Amin stiffened. Calhoun had his legs under the desk, and was moving them. His teacher was a cowboy. From what Amin had seen in the movies, cowboys were prone to doing stupid things.
“We need a break from Las Vegas,” Amin said. “You mentioned during class that the facial recognition equipment in Laughlin was easy to beat. You got interrupted and never explained how.”
Calhoun smiled at him. “Most of the casinos in Laughlin use the same surveillance cameras they had ten years ago. Walk through them fast enough, and the lens can’t pick up enough information. I’ve got a book on which casinos in Laughlin have them.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Want to see it?”
“Yes.”
Calhoun shot his hands under the desk. Amin hesitated, then jumped back, the shotgun blast coming straight through the desk and missing his head by a few inches. The flash cards exploded into the air.
Calhoun frantically tried to reload. Amin drew his .357 and pumped four bullets into him. His teacher’s chair was on wheels, and he flew straight back, hit the wall, then fell off the chair onto the floor.
Amin came around the desk. Calhoun lay on his back. His eyes had a flicker of life in them. His lips parted, and Amin realized he was trying to say something.
He had always liked Calhoun. His teacher was what Americans called a man’s man. He knelt down and placed his ear next to his teacher’s lips.
“Fuck your mother,” Calhoun whispered.
His teacher died before Amin could shoot him again.
Amin took the swivel chair and sat in front of the PC. The computer looked like the first one ever made. He clicked the mouse to erase the screen saver. The underwater scene vanished, and he found himself staring at an FBI MOST WANTED poster. In its center was a picture of him, standing on the sidewalk outside the Excalibur. He scrolled up and found a note from the sender.
Bart, every casino in town got this last night.
Ever see this guy before?
Amin read the poster and swore in his native tongue.
The FBI had tied him to the murders in Reno, Detroit, New Orleans, Biloxi, and Atlantic City. It didn’t have a lot of information, but it said just enough—last seen in Las Vegas, armed, traveling with his brother—that he knew he’d made the right choice. He couldn’t run anymore, nor did he want to.
He got off the Internet. Calhoun’s computer had a word-processing program called WordPerfect, and he booted it up. The computer was slow, and he banged it several times with his hand, thinking it might speed it along. Finally, the program appeared on the screen. Hitting the CAPS LOCK button, he typed:
AMIN SHOT ME. GOING TO LA. PLANNING SOMETHING HORRIBLE. MUST STOP HIM.
Amin reread the message. Satisfied, he pushed the chair away from the desk. Pash’s passion for the movies had come in handy. Amin had seen enough scenes where dying people wrote notes to believe this one would pass. It was just dramatic enough.
On the bullet-scarred desk sat a cordless phone. He picked it up and punched in 911. The call went through, and an operator said, “Police emergency. Can I help you?”
“Help,” he said hoarsely into the phone.
“Sir? Are you all right?”
“He . . . shot me,” he said.
“Who?”
“Amin. Going to LA. Must stop him . . .”
“Sir? Sir!”
“Going to do . . . something bad.”
He knocked the receiver off the desk, then listened to the operator’s frantic attempts to get him back on the line. He glanced at his watch. It was ten thirty. It would take ten minutes for the cops to arrive, another ten for them to piece things together and alert the FBI. He glanced down at Calhoun’s lifeless body lying beside him.
“Fuck your mother,” he whispered.
40
Valentine left Lucy’s condo and, having no place else to go, drove up and down the Strip. It was a depressing place on a Sunday morning, and he listened to the clatter-and-cling of slot machines rattling out the casinos’ open doors while imagining Lucy at a machine, blowing the money he’d given her.
It was depressing to think about. Finding a jazz station on the radio, he prayed for Sinatra or any of the old crooners to lift his spirits. Louis Armstrong came on, asking what did I do, to be so black, and blue? A sad song, but he hummed along anyway.
Someday, when he was lonely and feeling sorry for himself, he would kick himself over this. He could have struck up a long-distance relationship, seen Lucy when he wanted, and gone with the flow. He could have pretended the gambling problem didn’t exist. It was how a lot of couples lived their lives.
Only he couldn’t live that way. He couldn’t live within a lie. It was the way he’d always been, and he was a fool to think he could change it.
At eleven o’clock he called FaceScan.
Wily had said it would take them a few hours to compare Amin’s picture against their database of known counters. Maybe they had found something the FBI had missed.
He got FaceScan’s number from information, called it, and got a recorded message. The message gave the company business hours and their address. They were just off Sahara Boulevard, and only a few miles away.
Five minutes later, he pulled into FaceScan’s parking lot. The company worked out of a five-story steel-and-glass monolith. There were several dozen reserved FaceScan spaces in the parking lot. All of them were taken.
The lobby was filled with surveillance cameras. He picked up the house phone and called the company’s receptionist, the extensions listed on a laminated sheet beside the phone. A recorded message answered. Hanging up, he started calling the extensions on the sheet. The fifth one answered. A friendly-sounding guy named Linville.
“This is Tony Valentine. I was hoping you could help me.”
Linville came into the lobby a minute later. Midforties, glasses, a neat beard, he pumped Valentine’s hand and said, “I used to work surveillance for Bally’s. Your name came up
a lot. It’s nice to meet you.”
Linville looked like the kind of guy who’d pull off the highway and help you with a flat. Valentine explained the situation and Linville brought him inside, took him to the second floor, and led him through a warren of cubicles where the company technicians worked. Each technician sat in front of a blue-screened computer fielding requests sent from casinos with suspected card-counters.
They came to an empty cubicle, and Linville pointed at the chair and said, “This is where Monte sits. He handles the Acropolis, so I’m going to guess Wily brought your photograph to him. I just saw him a minute ago.”
Linville stood on his toes and looked over the tops of the cubicles for Monte, then shook his head. “He’s probably helping someone. Sunday mornings are rough. Sometimes we back each other up, especially when a casino is dealing with a team of counters.”
The clock on the wall said eleven twenty. Valentine could feel his opportunity slipping away. Linville sifted through a pile of papers on Monte’s desk and found the picture of Amin near the top of the stack, with a Post-it note attached to it.
“This your guy?” he asked.
Valentine nodded.
“You know how to use a scanner?” Linville asked.
Valentine nodded again. Moments later, he was sitting at Monte’s computer, getting a quick primer from Linville on how to navigate his way through FaceScan’s software program. It had many similarities to ACT, the database management system he used at home, and he quickly felt comfortable with it.
“Yell if you have trouble,” Linville said. “I’m right down the hall.”
Valentine ran Amin’s picture through the scanner, then downloaded it into the computer. For a guy who hated everything electronic, he’d gotten adept at using computers. He typed in the necessary commands and leaned back in Monte’s chair as FaceScan searched its database of card-counters for a match.
The technicians were a noisy bunch, and he listened to them talking to each other. There was a lot of cursing, and it didn’t surprise him. He’d done a lot of cursing on Sunday morning back when he was a cop. Every casino had downtimes in their surveillance department when not enough technicians were working. Most of these downtimes occurred on Sunday mornings.
