Jackpot (Tony Valentine series)

by James Swain

  He’d never won anything in his life. It made him want to run around the casino and pound his chest. After a minute, the floor manager appeared, and congratulated him on the casino’s behalf. Her name was McDowell, and she wore glasses and a sharp-looking suit. She asked him if he’d like another beverage.

  “Actually, I’d like to collect my money,” Klinghoffer said. “I need to be getting home to my family.”

  “We have to inspect the machine first,” McDowell said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Governor Smoltz has ordered us to check slot machines that pay out any jackpots. It’s a new rule.”

  Karl brought the bottle to his lips, trying to act nonchalant. To his surprise, it was empty. “What are you looking for?”

  “Tampering,” she said.

  McDowell escorted him away from the machine. The same cocktail waitress returned and stuck a fresh beer in his hand. This time Klinghoffer tipped her two dollars, and she gave him a wink.

  Soon a team of casino employees in work clothes appeared on the casino floor. They opened the Quarter Mania machine, and, using a laptop computer, began running a diagnostic test on the machine’s RNG chip. Klinghoffer felt the beer rise in his stomach as waves of numbers rapidly appeared on the laptop’s screen. When it came to cheating, there was no way to fool a computer. He was doomed.

  “Is something wrong, Mr. Klinghoffer?” McDowell asked.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” he mumbled.

  She pointed the way, and he went into the men’s room and puked in a stall. What a god damn fool he was. The last guy to know about a scam was always the sucker who got caught. Washing his face in the sink, he thought about Becky, and how disappointed she was going to be in him. When he emerged from the men’s room, McDowell was waiting with a smile on her face.

  “Everything’s fine,” she said cheerfully.

  Klinghoffer thought it was a ruse, and looked around for the police. “It is?”

  “Yes. The machine hadn’t been touched. Are you all right?”

  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I guess all this excitement’s gotten to me.”

  “Well, hopefully this will make you feel better.”

  She removed a certified check from her pocket, and handed it to him. He could tell that she was genuinely excited, and it made all the bad things he’d been feeling disappear. As far as the casino was concerned, he’d won the jackpot fair and square. And that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

  McDowell handed him his driver’s license. Klinghoffer didn’t remember giving it to her, and slipped it into his wallet along with his newfound wealth.

  “Much obliged,” he said.

  Chapter 10

  The pit bulls had Gerry pinned in the corner of the living room. Gerry held a cushion he’d grabbed off the couch for protection, and the dogs were ripping it apart with their teeth, the stuffing littering the floor like cotton candy.

  Valentine stood fifteen feet away, looking for something to knock the dogs away. Bill came into the living room with his gun drawn, trying to get a bead on one of the dogs, but afraid of hitting Gerry.

  “Pop, do something,” his son cried.

  Valentine grabbed the gun out of Bill’s hand. He inched closer to his son, while remembering a pair of attack dogs he’d dealt with during a botched jewelry store heist in Atlantic City. Raising his arm, he aimed the gun at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. The blast was louder than he’d expected, and the side of his head went numb. The dogs hit the floor, their legs splaying out spastically. He let off another round, and they hightailed it back into the other part of the house. He tossed the gun back to Bill.

  “Lock them up, will you?”

  “How did you do that?”

  “It’s the way they’re trained. At least some of them.”

  Bill went down the hall to deal with the dogs. Valentine went to Gerry, took the tattered cushion out of his hands, and stood waiting for an explanation.

  “Bill told me not to touch the door,” Gerry said.

  “So what happened?”

  “I opened it anyway,” his son said.

  Bill went outside, and found the pair of local cops sitting in their car by the curb. They hadn’t heard the dogs, or Gerry screaming, or the gun being fired. Bill explained what had happened, and asked them to call Animal Control.

  Twenty minutes later, a pair of dog catchers appeared. Gerry sat on the couch with a cold beer, and watched the dogs being marched past. Valentine sat down beside him, took the beer, and poured it into a potted plant.

  “No drinking on the job,” he said.

  “They nearly ripped me apart, Pop.”

  “People get hurt at work all the time,” Valentine said. “You think they all stop what they’re doing, and slug down a beer?”

  They resumed searching Bronco’s house. The dogs had been living in a spare bedroom with an open bag of dog food, and a water bowl that refilled itself. The room didn’t smell, leaving Valentine to guess that a neighbor had been letting them out. The room was otherwise empty, save for a metal table. On it were dozens of coin holders filled with silver-dollar sized coins. They were slugs, and designed to fool a device in a slot machine called a comparitor. Valentine flipped one to his son.

  “I thought only amateurs used these,” Gerry said.

  “Slugs cost casinos ten million dollars a year in lost revenue,” Valentine said.

  “Can’t the machines detect them?

  “Not if they’re well made. That’s why casino personnel are trained to watch slot players. If they see someone feed a coin into a machine that isn’t shiny, they arrest the player on the spot.”

  “Tony, come here for a minute,” Bill called out.

  He found Bill in the master bedroom. It had nice furniture, with drapes that matched the bedspread, and felt like a room in a model home compared to the rest of the house. Bill stood by an open closet, staring at the collection of women’s clothes hanging from the racks, the dresses and outfits still in their dry-clean bags.

  “Strange, don’t you think?” Bill said.

  “Looks like she lives here,” Valentine said. “Any makeup in the bathroom?”

  “Just a razor and some shampoo.”

  Valentine examined one of the outfits. It reminded him of clothes his late wife used to wear. “These clothes are old,” he said.

  “Maybe she split on him,” Bill said.

  Valentine searched the room. On the dresser he found a framed photograph of a couple taken on a beach. It was Bronco and the woman Valentine had seen on the surveillance tape. Marie.

  He stared at the photograph. What he’d seen on the surveillance tape hadn’t been staged. Bronco had cheated at the craps table, and Marie had reacted in shock. She hadn’t known him. But now here was evidence that she had known him. He put the picture down and looked at Bill. His friend was staring at him.

  “Does this make any sense to you?” Bill asked.

  “None whatsoever,” he said.

  Valentine went outside the house to the backyard. It backed up onto the desert, the baked earth flat and unforgiving. He found Gerry by the pool, torturing his lungs with a cigarette. His son started to throw the butt away, and Valentine stopped him.

  “Let me have a hit.”

  “I thought you were trying to quit.”

  “One hit won’t kill me.”

  His son passed the butt with a grin on his face. “Thanks for saving my ass.”

  “And your testicles.”

  “Those, too.”

  Valentine took a drag off his son’s cigarette. It was a Marlboro, the same brand he’d smoked and his father had smoked. He handed it back, and Gerry flicked the butt into the pool’s sickly green water. It floated lazily across the surface, trailing a thin line of smoke.

  “Give me your impressions of what you saw in there,” Valentine said.

  “My impressions?”

  “Yeah. What do you think is going on?”

  Ge
rry fired up another cigarette. The dogs had scared the daylights out of him, but his father asking his opinion scared him even more. When he answered, his voice was subdued. “Based on the condition of the house, I’d say Bronco is on a downward slide. He sits at home at night, chain-smokes and gets blistered. Except for cheating slot machines, he doesn’t have a life.”

  “Anything else?”

  “One thing did surprise me. Based upon what you told me about him, I expected his place to be filled with high-tech computers and stuff. He doesn’t even own a computer.”

  “So?”

  Gerry faced him. “Think about it, Pop. Bronco is claiming that a Nevada Gaming Control Board agent is stealing jackpots from new machines, right? Well, there’s no way to corrupt those machines unless you use computers. You agree?”

  Think about it. It was the kind of language Valentine had been using with Gerry since he was a kid.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Bronco doesn’t have a computer in his house. Which tells me that either Bronco doesn’t know what this agent is doing, or the information is worthless to him.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because he’d be trying to duplicate it, Pop,” his son said. “There’s no honor among thieves. Whatever the secret is, Bronco isn’t using it.”

  “Otherwise, we’d have found it.”

  “You got it.”

  Valentine took the cigarette from his son’s hand. Gerry had nailed the incongruity on the head. He took a drag, this one deeper than the first, and knew he was hooked again. He handed the cigarette back to his son.

  “Sure you don’t want one of your own?” Gerry asked him.

  “I’d rather smoke yours,” Valentine said.

  Chapter 11

  Mabel was eating a tuna fish sandwich while trying to catch a cheater.

  Sitting at Tony’s computer, she was watching a live feed from the poker room at the Micanopy Indian reservation casino. The Micanopys ran a casino in Tampa where the highway interchanges met. State law let them offer poker, 21, and slot machines. There wasn’t much cheating, and Tony had turned the account over to her. Mabel regularly watched live feeds from the casino’s surveillance cameras.

  She bit into her sandwich while staring at the screen. To help her learn about poker cheating, Tony had video-taped himself doing the moves, like dealing seconds and bottoms, doing the hop, and ringing in a cooler. On the tape, Tony had explained the various “tells” Mabel needed to look for. By watching the tape every day, her eyes had become trained.

  On the screen, the dealer was starting to deal. He was a native American and heavyset. As he sailed cards around the table, Mabel began to record him. On the third round, he snapped a card off the bottom, and dealt it to the player on his right.

  “Gotcha,” she said.

  He dealt a bottom on the fourth round as well. Then, Mabel noticed something strange. On the back of his hand was a tattoo. She brought her nose up close to the screen. It looked like a small bird.

  “Huh,” she said.

  Mabel leaned back in her chair. Normally, she would copy the tape, and e-mail it to the Micanopys. What they did to the dealer was their business. Only she had no way of knowing who at the casino might open the e-mail. What if it was a friend of the dealer, or a relative? That could be trouble. She supposed she could ask Tony, only that seemed like a cop-out. It was her account, and she needed to come up with a solution. She was still thinking about it when the phone rang. She minimalized the computer screen, then picked up the receiver.

  “Grift Sense. Can I help you?”

  “Is Tony there?” a man with a deep voice asked.

  The caller sounded familiar, and Mabel glanced at caller ID. It was Darren Crawford, a likeable FBI agent out of the bureau’s Reno office.

  “I’m afraid not. Can I help you?”

  “Will you be speaking to him, soon?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “This is urgent. Please tell him to check his e-mail. I’ve just sent him something that’s for his eyes only.”

  “Tony’s out of town, and won’t be checking his e-mail right way,” she said. “Would you please tell me what this is about, so I may relay a message?”

  “Do you work for him?”

  “Yes. This is Mabel. We’ve spoken before.”

  “Hello, Mabel. Can you tell me where Tony is?”

  “He’s in Nevada on a case.”

  She heard the sharp intake of Crawford’s breath. “What’s wrong?”

  “You need to get a hold of him, and tell him to open my email. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Life and death?’

  “Yes. Please tell him. Goodbye.”

  The line went dead, and Mabel dropped the receiver in its cradle, then typed a command into Tony’s computer and went into his email account. Within moments, she was staring at several dozen email messages. She scrolled through them and found Crawford’s, which was marked with a red flag. She opened it.

  Tony,

  You are in danger. The FBI is tapping the phones of Bronco Marchese’s lawyer, Kyle Garrow. Garrow is calling around Reno, trying to get someone to take a contract on your life. So far, no takers, but you know how things work out here. Someone will take the job, and come gunning for you. Please keep this to yourself. The tap is illegal, and could land us all in hot water. I will let you know when I learn more. Be careful, my friend.

  Darren

  Mabel felt an icy finger run down her spine. A contract on Tony’s life? She thought she was going to get sick, and snatched the phone off the desk. Her boss never kept his cell phone on, but Gerry did, and she punched in his number.

  Valentine and his son were standing by the pool behind Bronco’s house when Gerry’s cell phone rang. Gerry answered it, then handed the phone to his father.

  “Mabel needs to talk to you.”

  “Hey good looking, what’s up?” Valentine said into the phone.

  “You’re not going to believe the e-mail you just received.” She read the email Crawford had sent. “You need to stay away from Reno until the FBI finds out whose going to take this contract on your life.”

  Valentine stared at the desolate backyard. He should have been shocked, yet he wasn’t. He and Bronco had a history that was written in blood. One day, one of them was going to kill the other, and he had a feeling that day was about to come.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  “Of course I’m right. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.”

  He found himself nodding. Mabel, the voice of reason.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Oh, Tony, I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be. Remember, I’ve got Gerry to protect me.”

  “Now you’re being funny. Please be careful.”

  “I will.” He thanked his neighbor and folded the phone. They went inside the house, and found Bill in the living room gathering evidence.

  “Change of plans. I’m not going to Reno to interview Bronco,” Valentine said.

  Bill looked confused. “How can you conduct this case, and not talk to our only suspect?”

  “Bronco’s trying to hire a hit man to kill me. I don’t want to go until I know who the hit man is. Make sense?”

  “Sure. Who tipped you off?”

  “A little bird.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Switch to Plan B.”

  “Which is?”

  “I know an inmate in the Jean Correctional Facility for Women in Las Vegas,” Valentine said. “She sends me letters. In one, she described getting approached by a guy in a casino, who asked her to play a slot machine a certain way. She did, and won a jackpot. I think the guy who approached her was your bad agent.”

  Bill stared at him. “She’s actually met him?”

  “Yes. It was a few years ago. If I talk to her, I’m sure I can get a description.”

  Bill suddenly looked mad as hell, and Valentine guessed Bill w
as thinking they should have talked to Lucy Price first.

  “This woman’s had a hard life,” Valentine explained when they were in Bill’s car a few minutes later. “I didn’t want to implicate her in another crime if I didn’t have to. I know how the courts treat cheaters out here.”