by James Swain
Sitting, he buried his face in his hands. When his uncle had come to him with a way to scam the World Poker Showdown, he hadn’t hesitated to say yes. The scam would let him cheat the people who’d cheated him, and claim what was rightfully his. But he’d never considered that he might get caught. How stupid was that?
His chest was heaving up and down. He took several deep breaths, and told himself to calm down.
Ballas was waiting when DeMarco came out a minute later. “There’s a woman wants to talk to you,” Ballas said. “Said she was a big fan, wanted to say hi.”
“Nice looking?” DeMarco asked.
“A major league speed bump,” Ballas said.
DeMarco had promised his uncle not to talk to strangers. Only he’d heard the other players talking about the women they’d seen hanging around the tournament. Women beautiful beyond compare. He’d gone to bed thinking about them every night.
“Lead the way,” he said.
Ballas led him to a table in the corner of the room. DeMarco heard the woman rise from a chair, felt her hand clasp his. Her perfume was strong and lilac scented. He envisioned a long-legged, dark-haired beauty, and waited to hear what she had to say.
“Hello, Skipper,” she said. “Do you remember me?”
He felt something catch in his throat. Her voice was vaguely familiar, but he could not place from where. “I don’t know if I remember you or not,” he said.
“You were little. It was a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Twenty years. You were a child.”
“You worked for my uncle as a nanny, right?”
“No, I was before your uncle,” she said.
The tournament director’s voice came over the public address system. Play would resume in one minute, and players needed to return to their seats. Ballas touched DeMarco’s sleeve, said he was going back to the game.
“I’ll get back on my own,” DeMarco said.
“You sure?” Ballas asked.
DeMarco said yes. Ballas walked away, and DeMarco asked, “What do you mean, before my uncle?”
“You had a life before you went to live with George Scalzo,” she said. “I was a part of it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I used to make you raisin cookies and sing you songs. On your birthday, I bought you a Roy Rogers costume, and you went to your party as a cowboy.”
DeMarco heard a series of rapid clicks in his earpiece. Play had resumed, the dealer sailing the cards around the table. The clicks were in Morse code, the dots and dashes telling him what cards his opponents held. He listened intently. His opponents had ace–king, a pair of deuces, 2–9, a pair of fours, 7–8 of clubs, and a k–9, also known as a Canine. He didn’t like missing the hand, but wanted to hear the woman out.
“You didn’t work for my uncle?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
The woman grabbed his wrist and tried to stuff something into his hand. It was stiff, and felt like a photograph. When he wouldn’t take it, she shoved it into the breast pocket of his shirt.
“What did you just give me?” he asked.
“A gift. I saw you on the television, and flew here from Philadelphia to see you.”
“Please let go of my wrist,” he said.
She released him and he stepped back. He wanted to tell this woman to stuff her head in a toilet. The only person in his life before Uncle George was his mother, and she was lying dead in a cemetery in New Jersey. Uncle George had taken him to her grave.
“I tried to contact you many times,” she said, “but your uncle wouldn’t let me near you. I even once tried to visit you at school. Do you remember that?”
“No,” he said.
“You were in the third grade. I came to the school, and the teacher pulled you from the class.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. I need to go.”
“Your uncle sent his bodyguard to my house in Philadelphia,” she said. “He threatened me. Said he’d hurt my family if I tried to contact you. So I stayed away.”
“Good,” he said.
“You don’t care?” she said.
“Not in the least.”
She stifled a tiny sob. He’d wounded her, and heard her hurry away. So this is what it feels like to be a celebrity, he thought.
DeMarco let the noise of the poker room guide him back to the table. Before he reached his chair, his uncle was by his side, holding his arm and breathing on his neck. “Skipper, where the hell you been?” his uncle asked.
“Some woman grabbed me, started chewing my ear off,” DeMarco said.
“I don’t want you talking to strangers,” his uncle said.
“So tell the strangers that.”
DeMarco returned to his seat. The hand was still going on, with two players playing for a huge pot. It pissed him off to know he’d missed out, and in anger removed the photograph the woman had given him from his pocket, ready to tear it up. Ballas, who’d dropped out of the hand, spoke up.
“Man, you haven’t changed a bit.”
“What do you mean?” DeMarco said.
“The photograph.”
“What about it?”
“You haven’t changed since you were a kid. It looks just like you.”
DeMarco stiffened, then raised the photograph to his face, and stared at the little boy dressed in shorts and bright red suspenders staring back at him.
24
“So what?” Valentine asked. “What do you mean, ‘so what?’” Longo said.
“A chambermaid found my bloody shirt in the trash in my bathroom. So what?”
They sat in Longo’s cluttered office at Metro Las Vegas Police Department headquarters, a few blocks from Glitter Gulch. The door was open, and in the other detectives’ offices they could hear suspects lying their fool heads off. Their conversation felt normal, only Valentine was handcuffed to the arm of a chair. Lying on the messy desk was a tagged evidence bag containing his bloody shirt.
“It’s a solid piece of evidence—” Longo said.
“That I had a bloody nose.”
“—to you murdering those two guys.”
“You’re making a big leap, Pete.”
“I’m too old for that,” Longo said.
“What are you, fifty? That’s not old.”
Longo pushed himself back from his desk. He’d dropped a lot of weight in the past six months, and his face looked like a refugee’s. “Tell me what happened again.”
“Two guys barged into our room and attacked us,” Valentine said. “My nose got busted during the scuffle, and I bled all over myself.”
“Are you saying our forensics team won’t find any of those guys’ blood on this shirt?”
“I kneed one of them in the face. He may have bled on me. That’s not evidence to hold me for suspicion of murder, and you know it.”
“No one’s arguing that an altercation occurred in your suite,” Longo said. “But the fact is, you and Rufus Steele are still walking around, and those two guys are growing cold in the morgue. I have to treat this as evidence.”
“How long will it take your forensic people to examine the shirt?
“A day or two.”
Valentine tried to raise his hand to his face, and heard the handcuff’s chain rattle. The tournament would be over by then. Had someone set him up, just to take him out of the picture? There was a cold cup of coffee on the desk. He raised it to his lips with his free hand and took a slurp. Longo glanced up from his paperwork.
“Someone from the hotel called you and told you about the shirt, didn’t they?” Valentine asked.
“That’s right,” Longo said.
“They also told you I was in Celebrity’s poker room.”
“Right again.”
The cup was empty, and Valentine stared at grains. Before he’d taken the job, the hotel’s general manager, a stuffed suit named Mark Perrier, had threatened him wit
h a lawsuit if Celebrity’s reputation was smeared by Jack Donovan’s murder investigation.
“Was it Mark Perrier, the general manager?”
Longo put his pencil down, trying not to act surprised. “Who told you that?”
“Believe it or not, I figured it out by myself,” Valentine said.
“You have a history with this guy?”
“He threatened me a week ago. Didn’t want me investigating his tournament. This was before Bill Higgins hired me.”
Longo gave him a thoughtful look. “You’re saying Perrier set you up.”
“I’m investigating a cheating scandal inside his hotel. Of course he set me up. Last night, I had you paraffin me for gunshot residue. I may have changed my shirt, but I hadn’t showered. Do you think I would have told you to give me the test if I’d shot those guys?”
Most cops didn’t like the kind of backward logic he was throwing at Longo. It made them go outside their comfort zones. Longo looked at the bagged shirt.
“I need to wait for the blood test,” he said.
“You mean you’re going to hold me,” Valentine said, exasperated.
“Afraid so.”
A woman’s voice came out of the black squawk box on the desk. Longo pressed a button on the box. “Hey Lydia, what’s up?”
“Bill Higgins, director of the Nevada Gaming—”
“I know who Higgins is,” he snapped. “Is he on the line? Tell him I’m busy and will call him back.”
“He’s standing next to my desk,” she said.
Longo clenched his teeth. “Send him in,” he said, and took his finger off the button.
Like most people who worked in law enforcement, Bill had a tough side. When he got angry, he tended to throw his considerable weight around. He was doing that now, and Longo was shrinking in his chair.
“How dare you arrest Tony without first calling me,” Bill said, leaning on Longo’s desk like he was going to do a push-up. “I got authorization from the goddamn governor to keep Tony on this job. You’re screwing with my investigation. If you don’t let Tony go right now, I’ll burn your ass so badly you won’t be able to sit down.”
The lowlifes and miscreants in the other detectives’ offices had stopped talking, the only sound coming from the overhead air-conditioning. Longo pointed at the bagged shirt lying on the desk. “What about this?”
“So what?” Bill said, mimicking Valentine perfectly.
“It’s evidence,” Longo protested.
“It corroborates Tony’s story, but it doesn’t corrobo rate your story,” Bill said. “Why don’t you ask the hotel to show you the surveillance tapes from the stairwell, if you want to know who shot those two scumbags? There’s your evidence, Pete.”
“I already asked the hotel,” Longo said.
“And?”
“They said there isn’t a surveillance camera in the stairwell,” Longo said. “It’s optional under state law to have cameras in stairwells, and they didn’t do it.”
“Who told you that?” Bill asked.
Longo swallowed a rising lump in his throat. “Mark Perrier.”
“Perrier fed you that line of bullshit?”
“How do you know it’s bullshit?” Longo asked.
“Because any door leading off the main lobby of a casino, or its hotel, must have a working surveillance camera according to Nevada state law,” Bill said. “The stairwell where those two scumbags got plugged was right off the lobby. Celebrity couldn’t have gotten a license to operate its casino if there wasn’t a camera in there.”
“But why would Perrier lie?” Longo asked.
Bill finally did his push-up. He worked out religiously, and looked like he could do a hundred of them. “I don’t know, Pete, why don’t you ask him?”
Rubbing his wrist, Valentine walked out of Longo’s office and followed Bill past a warren of detective’s offices to the main reception area. In one office, a black pimp was getting processed by the detective who’d arrested him. The pimp wore flashy clothes and enough gold jewelry to open a pawn shop. Seeing Bill, he threw up his arms.
“I need you, man,” the pimp said.
Bill stopped in the open doorway. “What did you say to me?”
“I said I need you. You know, your services.”
Both of the pimp’s wrists were cuffed to his chair, a sure sign he was a threat. On the desk were his personal belongings, which included an enormous wad of cash and a handful of hundred-dollar black casino chips.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bill asked.
The pimp glanced sideways at the detective who’d busted him, then looked at Bill. “I heard you chewing out that mother down the hall. You sound like you know your stuff. What’s your going rate?”
“You think I’m a lawyer?”
The pimp acted startled. “You’re not?”
Bill marched into the office. Grabbing the chips off the desk, he began peeling back the paper logo on each one. Valentine guessed Bill was looking for the microchip that casinos were required to put in chips over twenty dollars in value. The pimp’s chips didn’t have the microchips, and Bill shoved them into the arresting detective’s face.
“These are counterfeits,” Bill said. “Nail this ass-hole.”
Part III
Deadman’s Hand
25
Lou Preston had struck gold.
The director of surveillance for Bally’s Atlantic City casino had contacted the island’s eleven other casinos, and persuaded them to search their digital databases for any blackjack players who’d recently beaten them and who’d been wearing New York Yankees baseball caps. The search had turned up forty-eight players, all of whom were between the ages of forty and sixty and of Italian descent. Casinos kept records on players who won a thousand dollars or more, and each of these players fell into that category.
As the casinos e-mailed pictures of the players to Preston, Lou projected them onto the wall of video monitors in Bally’s surveillance control room. Gerry, Eddie Davis, and Joey Marconi stood in front of the wall, drinking coffee the color of transmission fluid while watching a montage of sleaze take shape before them.
“These guys give Italians a bad name,” Marconi said.
Gerry sipped his drink, his eyes floating from face to face. The Mafia’s great strength was also its great weakness. The mob didn’t let in outsiders, and consequently there were no women, Asians, blacks, or Hispanics in their ranks. It was all mean-faced, middle-aged Italians with fifties haircuts who tended to stick out like sore thumbs.
He tossed his coffee cup into the trash. His father was always saying that people got what was coming to them. He’d never believed that, especially when it came to crime, but now had a feeling his father was right. George Scalzo was about to get what was coming to him.
He went to the master console where Preston sat. Lou had gotten the directors of surveillance of the other casinos to send him any notes they had on the men whose faces were on the monitors. Surveillance technicians kept copious notes during their shifts, and wrote down anything that was deemed unusual.
“Anything interesting?” Gerry asked.
“All of these guys refused Player’s Cards when they were offered to them,” Preston said. “That’s not normal.”
It was standard practice for casinos to offer gamblers Player’s Cards. The card entitled the person to receive complimentary meals and show tickets and even rooms if their business was strong enough.
“Guess they didn’t want to hand over their identification,” Gerry said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Preston said. “Forty-eight players, all refusing comps. What do you think the odds of that are?”
“Pretty astronomical,” Gerry said.
Preston picked up the gaffed Yankees cap lying on the console. There was a can of soda beside it, which he also picked up. “It’s one more piece of evidence that these players are part of a massive conspiracy to defraud Atlantic City’s casinos.”
“So let’s find out who they are, and arrest them.”
“I wish it was that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
Preston killed the can and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “The police don’t have a digital database like we do. It would take hundreds of hours for them to figure out who these guys are, maybe more.”
“Won’t they do that?”
Preston rubbed his face tiredly. “They would if they had the manpower. The island’s high crime rate isn’t going down anytime soon. The police won’t pull officers off the street to do photo matches.”
Gerry felt his spirits sink. Ruining Scalzo’s Atlantic City operation was the sweetest payback he could think of. He stared at a montage of faces on the video wall.
“I can find out who they are,” Gerry said.
Preston sat up straight in his chair. “You can?”
“Yeah. Ever heard of a guy named Vinny Fountain?”
“Vinny ‘the Sleazy Weasel’ Fountain? Sure.”
“I know him. Vinny’s rubbed elbows with mob guys his entire life. I’ll get their names from Vinny, and the police can find out where they live. My father told me that once the police know where a cheater lives, he’s history.”
“That’s true,” Preston said. “The cops will stake out the cheater’s house. When the cheater goes to a casino, the cops alert the casino, and the casino follows him around with surveillance cameras. Once he makes his move, they pounce.”
“So we’ll screw Scalzo’s gang that way,” Gerry said.
“Are you sure Vinny will help you?” Preston asked. “Generally speaking, hoods won’t rat out other hoods.”
Gerry and Vinny Fountain had nearly died in a warehouse on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Gerry’s father had rescued them, and Vinny owed Gerry’s father his life. Gerry had no problem calling in that marker.
“He’ll help,” Gerry said.
Harold’s House of Pancakes was an Atlantic City institution. Of the two hundred restaurants that had once flourished on the island’s north end, Harold’s was one of the last standing. It served greasy breakfast food all day, its signature egg dish called “the whore’s special” by locals. Marconi pulled into the parking lot, and grabbed a spot by the front door. Davis, who rode shotgun, turned to look at Gerry in back.
