Funny Money

by James Swain

Valentine waited. Anna threw her arms around him.

  “Thank you. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you.”

  That was more like it.

  “You're welcome, Anna,” he said.

  She gave him a kiss as good as any of Kat's, a kiss from the soul. It was great until Juraj decided he wanted to kiss him too, and planted his lips on both of Valentine's cheeks, then gave him an old-fashioned bear hug.

  The Croatians walked him down to the shoreline. Valentine wanted to tell them how lucky they were—he was not in the habit of letting hustlers go, even well-meaning ones—but he sensed they already knew that. They said another round of good-byes, with Anna giving him another kiss. Valentine pinched her sleeve as Juraj walked away.

  “You're going to keep cheating casinos, aren't you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Don't lie to me, Anna.”

  She crossed her arms defiantly. “No!”

  “Anna . . .”

  “All right, yes.”

  Taking two crisp twenties from his pocket, Valentine shoved them into her hand.

  “What is this for?” she asked.

  “If you're going to keep playing the five thousand dollar tables, make him get a decent haircut.”

  He walked the beach he'd grown up on. The tide was low, the waves a bare ripple across the black sea. A brightly lit cruise ship was anchored offshore, and he stopped to stare. There was a late-night party going on, everyone having a swell time. He felt himself shudder.

  Hindsight being twenty-twenty, it hadn't taken him long to realize what he'd done. He'd solved a crime that hadn't occurred. No one had missed the money. Not Archie, or the Division of Gaming Enforcement or the Casino Control Commission. And if no one missed the money, then who cared?

  The money. That was what it always came down to in Atlantic City. The money. It flowed back and forth, changing hands every day, but in the end, it stayed in the casino's coffers, because the casinos set the odds, and the casinos never lost. Somehow, Porter and the rest of The Bombay gang had forgotten that.

  He slipped off his shoes and socks and let the waves slap his toes. The water was freezing cold, but that was okay. He wanted to feel connected to something besides here, and the icy waves sure did the trick.

  He stared across the ocean, trying to imagine himself cleaning up after sick people. It had to be the worst job in the world, yet Gerry had made it sound okay. Like he was getting something in return.

  There was a message there somewhere, he thought.

  Back at the motel, he found Davis hanging out by the manager's office. He started to walk away. The detective followed him.

  “You always so antisocial?”

  “I'm done,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

  The detective kept following him. “You ever read any Balzac?”

  “Who?”

  “He was a nineteenth-century French novelist.”

  “No, I never read him.”

  “I did. In high school. One line in a book stayed with me. Behind every great fortune, there is a crime.”

  The cold was making Valentine's ears ring. “So?”

  “When we raided The Bombay, you told me to watch where the employees ran to. Well, they ran to two places. The employees in the casino ran to the Hard Count room. But a bunch of employees in the back ran to a storage room.”

  Valentine stared at him. “Did you find anything?”

  “Yeah. Cases and cases of champagne sitting out in the open. While behind locked doors, a few thousand cartons of cigarettes.”

  “So?”

  “Case of champagne costs what—a thousand bucks? Carton of cigarettes costs twenty. Why keep the cigarettes locked up, unless they're hot. So I had a check run on them.”

  Valentine stuck his hands in his pockets, remembering it like it was yesterday. He'd pulled Archie over for speeding and found the trunk of his car stuffed with bootleg cigarettes.

  “And?”

  “They're hot,” the detective said.

  “Did you jam him?”

  “About twenty minutes ago,” Davis said. “You should have seen Archie squawk.”

  It had been one of the saddest weeks of Valentine's life, yet he found himself smiling. Selling bootleg cigarettes in New Jersey is a felony: Archie Tanner would do hard time and lose his casino license. Valentine couldn't help himself, and he pinched Davis on the cheek.

  “You are one smart kid,” he told him.

  42

  Three Weeks Later

  Valentine stood before a full-length mirror, grimacing.

  The dressing room's concrete walls shook. Outside, the Centroplex's standing-room-only crowd was getting ugly. They were not used to waiting, and Valentine could hear calls for blood, the faithful stomping their feet. His own feet felt frozen to the floor.

  The dressing room door opened and shut. Kat edged up beside him, looking worried.

  “Tony, you okay?”

  No, he wasn't okay, he was light years from okay, only that didn't matter. He'd said yes, signed the stupid contracts, let them dress him up like a clown. Ha, ha, only now it didn't seem so goddamn funny.

  “Tony, please say something.”

  Valentine kept staring at himself. He did not look right, or even real, his hair done up in a ridiculous bouffant like an Elvis impersonator, his costume a canary yellow sports jacket, yellow pants, and a shimmering yellow tie. First there was Donny the grape, now Tony the banana.

  “Tony?”

  The dressing room door opened. Donny and Vixen popped their heads in. They were both freaking out.

  “They're rioting out there,” Donny said.

  “Come on Tony,” Vixen said, “you can do it.”

  Valentine stared at his ridiculous image in the mirror.

  “It's just opening-night jitters,” Kat reassured them. “Give us another minute, okay?”

  They left and the dressing room fell silent. Kat got close enough so they were able to share the mirror's reflection. Her eyes met his in the glass.

  “You don't have to do this,” she said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don't.”

  “But I'll let you down.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “I can live with it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Valentine breathed a sigh of relief. He'd been dreading the thought of stepping into the ring and making a fool of himself in front of ten thousand beer-guzzling lunatics. Dreading the notion of doing something different, for once in his life.

  In the mirror he saw sadness in Kat's eyes and realized she was lying. Lying because she cared more about his feelings than her own. Lying because she loved him.

  He slapped her on the ass. Kat jumped an inch off the floor.

  “But I want to,” he said.

  By James Swain

  Published by Ballantine Books:

  GRIFT SENSE

  FUNNY MONEY

  SUCKER BET*

  *Forthcoming

  “GREAT FUN—

  with oddball characters, a twisted plot,

  and scheming dreamers out for the big score.”

  —Lansing State Journal

  “Turn the pages and expect to be entertained and enlightened by Swain's deft prose and dialogue . . . . With realistic humor and creativity, Swain pilots this novel through rough waters, giving the reader one great ride.”

  —The Tampa Tribune

  “The same warmth, honesty, and inside expertise that made Grift Sense a memorable crime debut is back—in spades.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “An insider's view of how far people will go to get rich quick . . . There's a certain intelligence to a book that teaches you something—even something as esoteric as how to spot a casino cheat—and Swain juggles that mix of learning and adventure perfectly.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Extremely engaging . . . The suspense moves the story along quickly. . . . hel
ped by an unusual cast of characters.”

  —The Current

  “A smooth narrative, credible situations, and a nervy plot make this second Tony Valentine mystery a highly recommended choice.”

  —Library Journal

  For an exciting look

  at James Swain's

  next novel,

  SUCKER BET,

  please turn the page.

  Available in hardcover

  at your local bookstore.

  Published by Ballantine Books.

  The Turn of a Card

  The mark's name was Nigel Moon.

  Jack Lightfoot recognized Moon the moment he stepped into the Micanopy Indian reservation casino. Back in the eighties, Moon had played drums for an English rock band called One-Eyed Pig, his ransacking of hotel rooms as well-publicized as his manic solos. Unlike the other band members, who'd fried their brains on drugs and booze, Moon had opened a chain of popular hamburger joints that now stretched across two continents.

  As Moon crossed the casino, Jack eyed the delicious redhead on his arm. She was a plant, or what his partner Rico called a raggle. “The raggle will convince Moon to come to your casino,” Rico explained the day before, “and try his luck at blackjack. She'll bring him to your table. The rest is up to you.”

  She looked familiar. Jack frequented Fort Lauderdale's many adult clubs and often picked up free magazines filled with ads of local prostitutes. The raggle was a hooker named Candy Hart. Her ad said she was on call twenty-four hours a day, Visa and MasterCard accepted.

  “Good evening,” Jack said as they sat down at his empty table.

  Moon reeked of beer. He was pushing fifty, unshaven, his gray hair pulled back in a pigtail like a matador's coleta. He removed a monster wad from his pocket and dropped it on the table. All hundreds.

  “Table limit is ten dollars,” Jack informed him.

  Moon made a face. Candy touched Moon's arm.

  “You can't bet more than ten dollars a hand,” she said sweetly. “All of the table games have limits.”

  Moon drew back in his chair. “Ten bloody dollars? What kind of toilet have you brought me to, my dear? I can get a game of dominos with a bunch of old Jews on Miami Beach with higher stakes than that.”

  Candy dug her fingernails into Moon's arm. “You promised me, remember?”

  “I did?”

  “In the car.”

  Moon smiled wickedly. “Oh, yes. A moment of weakness, I suppose.”

  “Shhhh,” she said, glancing Jack's way.

  Moon patted her hand reassuringly. “A promise is a promise.”

  Moon slid five hundred dollars Jack's way. Jack cut up his chips. During a stretch in prison, Jack heard One-Eyed Pig's music blasting through the cell block at all hours, and he knew many of the lyrics by heart.

  Jack slid the chips across the table. Moon put ten dollars into each of the seven betting circles on the felt. Jack played a two-deck game, handheld. He shuffled the cards and offered them to be cut.

  “Count them,” Moon said.

  “Excuse me?” Jack said.

  “I want you to count the cards,” Moon demanded.

  Jack brought the pit boss over, and Moon repeated himself again.

  “Okay,” the pit boss said.

  Jack started to count the cards onto the table.

  “Faceup,” Moon barked.

  “Excuse me?” Jack said.

  “You heard me.”

  Jack looked to the pit boss for help.

  “Okay,” the pit boss said.

  Jack turned the two decks faceup. Then he counted them on the table.

  “What are you doing?” Candy asked.

  “Making sure they're all there,” Moon said, watching intently. “I ran up against a dealer in Puerto Rico playing with a short deck and lost my bloody shirt.”

  Jack finished counting. One hundred and four cards. Satisfied, Moon leaned back into his chair.

  “A short dick?” Candy said, giggling.

  “Short deck. It's where the dealer purposely removes a number of high-valued cards. It gives the house an unbeatable edge.”

  “And you figured that out,” she said.

  “Yes, my dear, I figured that out.”

  Jack saw Candy's hand slip beneath the table and into Moon's lap. Moon's face lit up like a lantern. “You're so smart,” she cooed.

  Jack reshuffled the cards. For Moon to have figured out that a dealer was playing with a short deck meant that Moon was an experienced card-counter. Card-counters were instinctively observant, and Jack realized that he was going to have to be especially careful tonight, or risk blowing their scam before it ever got off the ground. He slid two decks in front of Moon, who cut them with a plastic cut card.

  “Good luck,” Jack said.

  Then he started to deal.

  Jack Lightfoot was not your typical card mechanic.

  Born on the Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico, he'd been in trouble almost from the time he'd started walking. At seventeen, he'd gone to federal prison for a string of convenience store robberies and spent the next six years doing hard time.

  The prison was filled with gangs. Jack gravitated to a Mexican gang and hung out in their cell block. The Mexicans were heavy gamblers and often played cards all day long. They liked different games—seven-card stud, Omaha, razzle-dazzle, Texas hold 'em. Each game had its subtleties, but the game Jack fell in love with was blackjack. And whenever it was Jack's turn to deal, blackjack was the game he chose.

  Dealing blackjack gave Jack an edge over the other players. He'd worked it out and figured it was slightly less than 2 percent. It was offset by the fact that if he lost a round, he had to pay off the other players, and that could be devastating to his bankroll. But if he won, the other players had to pay him. Blackjack was the game with the greatest risk but also the greatest reward.

  One night, Jack had lain on his cot, thinking. He'd seen a lot of cheating among the Mexicans. They marked cards with shoe polish or palmed out a pair before a hand began. It occurred to him that if he was going to cheat, wouldn't blackjack be the game to do it in?

  He thought about it for months. The Mexicans were suspicious guys, and manipulating the cards was out of the question. But instead of manipulating the cards, why not manipulate the other players into making bad decisions? Guys did it in poker all the time. It was called bluffing.

  Why not blackjack?

  One night, one of the Mexicans gave Jack a magic mushroom. Jack ate it, then went to bed. When he woke up a few hours later, he was screaming, his body temperature a hundred and six.

  While Jack was strapped to a bed in the prison infirmary for two days, his brain turned itself inside out. When he finally came out of it, a single thought filled his head.

  With the turn of a single card, he could change the odds at blackjack.

  With the turn of a single card, he could force other players into making bad decisions.

  With the turn of a single card, he could master a game that had no masters.

  One card, that was all it took.

  And all Jack had to do was turn it over.

  He howled so hard, they kept him strapped to the bed for an extra day.

  Nigel Moon's stack of chips soon resembled a small castle. A crowd of gaping tourists had assembled behind the table to watch the carnage. The Brit cast a disparaging look over his shoulder, like he was pissed off by all the attention.

  “You've got groupies,” Candy said.

  Moon's eyes danced behind his sour expression. He sipped his martini, trying to act nonchalant. Candy stared at him dreamily.

  “Congratulations, sir,” Jack said, his lines committed to memory. “You just broke the house record.”

  Moon fished the olive out of his martini glass. “And what record is that, my good man?”

  “No one has ever won eighty-four hands before,” Jack informed him.

  The Brit sat up stiffly, basking in the moment. “Is that how many I've wo
n?”

  “Eighty-four, yes, sir.”

  “And no one's ever done that before.”

  “Not in a row, no, sir.”

  “So I'm the champ?”

  “Yes, sir, you're the champ.”

  Moon snapped his fingers, and a cocktail waitress came scurrying over.

  “Drinks for everyone,” he said benevolently.

  The crowd gave him a round of applause. Candy brought her mouth up to Moon's ear and whispered something dirty. Moon's eyes danced with possibilities.

  Jack gathered up the cards. He'd dealt winning hands to players before, and the transformation was always fun to watch. Weak men turned brave, the shy outspoken. It changed them, and it changed how others saw them. And all because of the turn of a single card.

  “A question,” Moon said.

  Jack waited expectantly.

  “Is there a limit on tipping?”

  “Sir?”

  “I know there's a limit on betting,” Moon said. “Is there a limit on tipping?”

  “Not that I'm aware of,” Jack said.

  Moon shoved half his winnings Jack's way. Standing, he leaned over the table and breathed his martini onto Jack's face. “Do something wicked tonight. On me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack replied.

  Jack's shift ended at midnight.

  He changed out of his dealer's clothes into jeans and a sports shirt and drifted outside through the back door. Standing in the parking lot were his other dealer buddies. They were planning an excursion to the Cheetah in Fort Lauderdale to gape at naked college girls. Jack told them he had plans and begged off. His buddies got into their cars and left.

  Jack lit a cigarette. A full moon had cast a creamy patina across the macadam. The casino backed onto a lake, and across its surface floated a dozen pairs of greenish eyes. The Micanopy reservation was in the Everglades, and alligators were always hanging around, eyeing you like a meal.

  He smoked his cigarette down to a stub while thinking about the raggle. She had melted when Moon started winning, and Jack had watched her leave the casino draped to his side. Was she falling for him? He sure hoped not.