by James Swain
“Afraid I was.”
“I can't see a thing without my glasses anymore,” she said, jabbing him in the gut with the container. “You know, this old-age thing really sucks.”
“It beats the alternative. I was just having lunch. Want a ham-and-Swiss?”
“No thanks. You sound stressed.” Fishing her glasses from her pocket, Mabel fitted them on her nose and gave him the once-over. “You look stressed. You feeling okay, young man?”
“Great,” he said without enthusiasm. After Lois had passed away, Mabel had started leaving hot meals on his doorstep, country-fried steak and mashed potatoes or fried chicken and cornbread. It was food for the soul, and he'd eaten every bite, even when he'd had no appetite. He took the container and put it on the top shelf of his refrigerator. It was heavy. He said, “Lasagna? You shouldn't have.”
“It's no bother, really. What's eating you?”
“I'm having a problem figuring something out.”
“Can I help?”
“Sure. Have a seat while I finish lunch.”
Mabel took her usual spot at the kitchen table. A sixty-four-year-old retired AT&T operator from Cincinnati, she'd raised two children by herself and had come to Florida when they'd tried to move back in. She despised retirement and had embarked on a new career that brought her a surprising amount of notoriety.
“Know anything about blackjack?” he inquired.
“Not really. But I used to play bridge.”
“Competitively?”
“Yes, tournament level.”
“Ever catch an opponent signaling cards to a partner?”
“Well, now that you mention it, yes. Back in 1968 in a tournament in Boise, I saw Ethel Bell signal her husband that she had five trump cards. I called the referee immediately.”
“That's enough qualification for me,” Valentine said. “I'd like you to look at a videotape a casino sent me.”
“Sure,” Mabel said, “but before we do that, I want you to critique my newest ad. I think it's ready.”
From her purse Mabel removed a piece of manila stationery and slid it across the table. Her anonymous classifieds had been running in the St. Petersburg Times for over a year and had turned her into a minor celebrity. Newspaper editorials now quoted her witticisms and local politicos used her jokes in their long-winded speeches. She had become a voice, a responsibility she did not take lightly.
“Be honest,” she told him.
Depressed, overweight, domineering older woman, slight drinking problem, hyper, on food stamps and oxygen. Would like to meet a cute young professional man with big abs and a foreign sports car, low mileage. Please send current résumé, blood test results, and nude photo for a platonic relationship.
“Haw, haw, haw,” Valentine brayed, holding his sides. To think that his sweet-faced neighbor possessed this kind of wit was beyond him.
“You like it,” she said.
“You've outdone yourself.”
She produced another sheet. “This one, too. Be truthful.”
“Two? You're going to run two ads in one day? I don't think the locals are ready for this, Mabel.”
“Stop acting retarded. Just read it.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Tired of phone sex, sweet boys? Call Grandma Mabel and I will tell you about my arthritis, my bills, how people are better drivers up north, how hard it is to live on a fixed income, my ex-husband, grandkids, last operation for gallstones, and lots more. No crackpots, please.
“You're killing me,” he said, swiping at his eyes. “This is a classic.”
“You really think so?”
“You're taking practical jokes to a new level.”
“I want to leave something behind,” she said, deadpan.
“You sure you want to use your real name?”
“I could use some groupies. But enough about me. Tell me all about your problem. Maybe Grandma Mabel can help.”
“Maybe you can,” he said.
Mabel was one of the best judges of character Valentine had ever known, her instincts honed from years of talking to strangers on the phone. He escorted her into the living room and helped her get settled, then started the VCR and knelt beside her.
“Something unusual's going on here,” he explained. “The guy on this tape is cheating, and the people who've hired me think the dealer may be helping him. Tell me what you think.”
Mabel pulled her chair up within a few feet of the TV and stared at the screen for several minutes, then cleared her throat. “Well, she's definitely interested in him.”
“Define interested.”
“You sound just like a cop when you talk like that.”
“Excuse me. Please—define interested.”
“As in she likes him. Would like to know him better.”
Valentine was surprised. If anything, the dealer seemed to be holding back. It was too bad the tapes didn't come with sound; if he could just hear them talking, he might get a better feeling for what had gone down.
“She seems pretty reserved, if you ask me,” he remarked.
“Oh, Tony. Sometimes you act like you just crawled out of a cave. Any woman with an ounce of class acts reserved when she's around men. Women show their interest in the opposite sex in little ways. Take this young lady. She's interested; you can see it when she makes eye contact. And when she smiles. You can definitely see it in her smile.”
Valentine had noticed that, too. As a rule, blackjack dealers did not smile or interact with patrons. But Slick was the only player at her table, which made not having a conversation pretty much out of the question.
“There you are,” Mabel said, pointing at the screen.
“What?” he said, staring.
“He just did it again,” Mabel said.
“Did what?”
“Did you see the corners of her mouth turn up?” Mabel said. “She was going to laugh. The guy keeps making her laugh. I counted three times. He's definitely got her number. I know it's none of my business, but why would a casino worry about someone winning a few hands of blackjack? Don't they make millions a day?”
He paused the tape. “They do. And a guy like this can put them out of business.”
“Out of business? Oh, come on!”
And that was the shame of what Valentine did for a living; no one understood the seriousness of his work. So he explained.
“Let's say our friend bets a hundred dollars and wins twenty hands in a row. If he parlays every bet and the house doesn't stop him, by the end of the twentieth hand, he'll own the casino.”
Mabel paused. “Is the man we're watching capable of that?”
“Definitely.”
She consulted her Mickey Mouse watch, then stood up. “Time to run. I've got to fax my ads to the newspaper's classified department by two.”
“You going to run both?”
“Read tomorrow's paper and find out,” she replied.
He walked Mabel down the front path to the narrow sidewalk that connected the row of New England–style clapboard houses. It was a straight hundred-yard shot to her place. She patted his arm and said, “Heat the lasagna in the oven at three-fifty for thirty minutes. Don't use the microwave; it makes the cheese runny.”
“The guy's a real lady-killer, huh?” Valentine said, never one to leave loose ends dangling.
“A regular Don Juan.”
“You think she's helping him?”
“Could be,” Mabel said. “Later, Tony.”
It was an angle to which he hadn't given much thought, and he went back inside. The VCR was still on, and he slipped into his La-Z-Boy and resumed watching. Slick was on a roll, and as he won hand after hand, Valentine focused on the blonde doing the dealing. After a while, he began to see what Mabel had seen. There was a chemistry between them. She didn't seem upset that he was winning so much, and that wasn't a good thing.
2
Three thousand miles away, Nola Briggs was practicing her riffle-shuffling, her brain on autopilot
. Curls of hours-old cigarette smoke did lazy contortions over her blackjack table, the bluish haze lulling her to sleep.
It was eleven a.m. and the casino was as dead as a church social. A big computer convention was in town, but none of the action had spilled over to their tables. Too bad—she needed the dough. Like most dealers, Nola earned fifty bucks a shift and made up the rest in tips. When it was dead, she barely earned enough to pay her rent and eat at McDonald's once a week. Maybe the casino could survive on little old ladies playing the twenty-five-cent slots, but she sure as hell couldn't.
A native of Queens, New York, Nola had pulled up stakes and driven to Las Vegas ten years earlier, chasing a dream. She'd win a super jackpot or meet a successful guy and end up living on a beautiful spread raising horses or some breed of large dogs. As dreams went, it was a tall order, and the fact that none of it had materialized didn't faze her. Life was a gamble, and she'd played the hand she'd been dealt accordingly.
“Hit me,” a man's voice said.
Nola blinked. The world's cutest guy had materialized at her table. Their eyes met, and she saw the corners of his mouth curl up mischievously.
“Remember me?” he asked.
Of course Nola remembered him. He'd sat in the same spot the night before and the night before that. A computer software salesman from upstate New York. She'd been mesmerized by his looks until he'd started drawing on stiffs and beating her when she was holding eighteen and higher. He'd taken her for twenty grand the first night, thirty the second.
“Hit you where?” she inquired.
His smile grew into something more, and Nola's heart began to melt. He was terrific looking without being handsome: soft mouth, gentle eyes, the New York accent having none of the usual rudeness. He drew a wad of hundreds from his pocket.
“Come on, Nola—don't you want to win your money back?”
“Sure, Fred,” she said.
“It's Frank,” he said, ruining the smile with a little frown. “Frank Fontaine.”
Nola knew damn well what his name was. Frank Allen Fontaine, age forty-four, divorced, no kids, star salesman for a computer outfit out of Poughkeepsie, no criminal record. Once he'd started winning, security had called the Mirage, where he was staying, and gotten his credit card number. Within minutes, the results of a complete financial and personal check were spitting out of a fax machine.
“He's a choirboy,” Wily had told Nola during her break, the printout clutched in his hand. “Mr. Clean.”
“What did you expect?” she replied, firing up a cigarette. “Ted Bundy?”
“I don't like his play,” the pit boss declared.
The employee lounge overlooked the casino floor, and they stared through a tinted two-way mirror at Fontaine sitting at Nola's table, awaiting her return.
“What don't you like about it?” Nola said.
“It doesn't feel right. He's hustling us.”
“How?”
“The fuck I know. But he is.”
“People get lucky.”
“Not this lucky.”
“So bar him.”
“And let him walk out of here with our dough? You don't get it, sweetie. I want to break this paesano.”
“Well, you probably will,” Nola said when her cigarette was gone. “He's no player.”
“He's sure soft on you.”
“Well, he is kinda cute. And polite. And he tips great.”
“You sucking his dick?”
Nola stuck her tongue out. “Go sit on a spike, fatso.”
But Wily hadn't given up. Pit bosses were required to make quotas. It had been a rough week and Fontaine's score was going to put Wily's take on the negative side, and that was unacceptable. So Wily had come up with one of his famous stupid ideas. Because Fontaine was attending the computer show, Wily figured he must have some kind of computer device on him. And because it was illegal in Nevada to bring a computer or calculator onto a casino floor, Wily believed he could relieve Fontaine of his winnings without any fear of legal repercussions.
So Wily had frisked him right at the table the second night. Fontaine took it like a real gentleman. Not once did he raise his voice or threaten to sue the casino.
“Perhaps you could tell me what this is about,” Fontaine had said when his pockets produced nothing.
His face beet red, Wily had stammered a lame apology. “I'm really sorry, but you're a dead ringer for a guy who robbed us a while back.”
Fontaine's face betrayed a hint of skepticism.
“On my mother's grave,” Wily swore, putting his hand over his heart. “You could be brothers.”
“I'm surprised I made it through the front door,” Fontaine had replied, giving Nola a wink.
And now he was back, dressed in a navy silk sports jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons and a choirboy smile lighting up his face. Nola pushed him his chips. “Good luck.”
Shuffling the cards a final time, she offered them to be cut, then dealt. She worked a two-deck game, hand held. A lot of casinos on the strip had gone back to hand-held games. The players seemed to like it.
“Insurance,” she said, her face card an ace.
“That's a sucker's bet, isn't it?” he inquired.
Nola looked at his bet. Five blacks: five hundred bucks. He was starting off heavy. It was against the rules to coach, but Nola saw no harm in passing along a little knowledge.
“Not really,” she explained. “Insurance protects your bet if I have blackjack.”
Fontaine looked at his hand, exposing his cards to her. He had a fifteen, a stiff. “Naw,” he said.
Nola bit her lip. When it came to strategy, her dream boy was a dope. She peeked at her hole card. A nine. She had twenty. Fontaine was a goner.
“Guess you don't have blackjack,” he said, smiling.
Nola pursed her lips. The odds against his drawing a six and beating her twenty were astronomically high. Let's see you wiggle out of this one, she thought.
“Hit me,” he said.
Nola dealt him a deuce.
“Again,” he informed her.
Nola stared at him. He had a seventeen, a pat hand. Drawing another card was the wrong play unless he somehow knew what her hole card was.
“You sure about that?” she asked him.
“Positive.”
Nola dealt him a four, giving him twenty-one. She turned over her hole card.
“Look at that,” he said, his face begging forgiveness while laughing at the same time. “I win.”
Nola took a deep breath. Was Frank Allen Fontaine going to turn into her own personal Groundhog Day?
Wily sauntered over to her table, a toothpick twirling in his teeth. Earlier, a couple of Asian high rollers had dropped seventy grand shooting craps, meaning he was going to make his weekly quota despite Nola's previous losses. In a show of good sportsmanship, he slapped Fontaine on the back.
“Mr. Fontaine, welcome back. How about a drink?”
“That sounds great,” Fontaine said. “Give me a 7-Up.”
“Can I interest you in something stronger?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
Wily summoned a toga-clad cocktail waitress. Her name was Bonnie, and she took his order with a syrupy smile on her face. She was new and still enthusiastic about working in a casino.
“I was wondering,” Fontaine said to the pit boss. “Do you have any of those terrific cigars left?”
“The Paul Garmirians? I think I can rustle one up.”
“I'd really appreciate it,” Fontaine told him.
When Wily returned ten minutes later, he didn't have Fontaine's cigar. Instead, he was accompanied by Sammy Mann, the ancient, pasty-faced zombie who headed up casino surveillance. Sammy spent twelve hours a day parked in front of a wall of video monitors that watched every square inch of the casino. If someone started winning too much, it was Sammy's job to zoom in with the eye in the sky and start taking pictures. Sammy had been shot in the leg years ago, and as he limped alongside W
ily, the two men appeared joined at the hip.
They halted behind Nola's table. Since Wily left, she'd lost twelve hands in a row and over fifteen thousand dollars. In an angry whisper, Wily said, “Take a break!”
Visibly shaking, Nola clapped her hands and stepped back from her spot. Sensing trouble, Fontaine put his arms around the fortress of black chips in his possession and pulled them close. Tossing Nola a hundred-dollar toke, he said, “Thanks, honey.”
Sammy plucked the chip out of the air. Sammy's eyes were as smooth as glass, and he breathed heavily through his crooked nose.
“I know you,” Sammy declared.
Fontaine's eyebrows shot up inquisitively. “Stonybrook, class of '76?”
Sammy shook his head violently.
“Poughkeepsie High, class of '72?”
“Don't think so,” Sammy snapped.
“You want me to guess,” Fontaine said innocently.
“I know you from the road,” Sammy said. “You're a hustler.”
An ugly look clouded Fontaine's handsome features. Nola felt the whisper of intuition crawl up her spine. There was something familiar about him, yet she couldn't place what.
“You calling me a faggot?” Fontaine spouted angrily.
“No,” Sammy replied. “I'm calling you a cheat.”
In another lifetime, Sammy had earned his livelihood ripping off casinos. At sixty, he'd retired to Palm Springs, become a full-time drunk, and squandered his money. After cleaning himself up, he'd come to Las Vegas and auctioned his ability to spot other hustlers to the highest bidder. He'd gotten religion and was not ashamed to rat on players he'd known from the road.
Fontaine pointed an accusing finger at Wily. “First, this bozo has me frisked; now you're calling me a crook. The problem with this place is you're just a bunch of sore losers.”
Fontaine began stuffing stacks of black chips into his pockets, but Sammy grabbed his arm.
“You and I worked together . . . your laugh hasn't changed.”
“My laugh?” Fontaine shook free of his grasp. “Touch me again and I'll knock you into next week.”
Sammy backed up. Wily barked into a walkie-talkie and two beefy security guards came charging across the floor. Jumping to his feet, Fontaine grabbed the back of his chair.
