by James Swain
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a joke, Uncle George. Lighten up.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” his uncle snapped.
DeMarco pushed himself away from the wall. He could vividly remember the day his uncle had come to him with his scheme about scamming the World Poker Showdown. Winning would be child’s play, his uncle had said, and would make DeMarco the most famous poker player in the world. Only it wasn’t turning out that way, and DeMarco sensed they were about to get beaten at their own game.
“Where you going?” his uncle asked.
“To take a leak,” DeMarco said.
“Have Guido walk with you.”
“Whatever you want, Uncle George.”
DeMarco felt his uncle’s hand on his wrist.
“You sure you’re okay, Skipper?” his uncle asked.
“I’m great, Uncle George. Just great.”
For as long as he could remember, DeMarco had hated to lose. It didn’t matter what the game was, or the stakes: if he didn’t end up on the winning end, he lost his temper, and sulked for days. He had to win, just as some guys had to be the best at a particular sport. As he’d gotten older, he’d wondered if it had something to do with being blind, as if winning put him on a level playing field with everyone else.
Only today had been different. He’d lost a monster pot, and it hadn’t fazed him. The surprise of losing had been upsetting, but the actual loss hadn’t affected him the way it normally did. He couldn’t put his finger on why, and as he and Guido walked to the lavatory, he thought about the snapshot he’d been given. He’d studied it between hands, and decided the little boy in the photograph was indeed him, the woman holding his hand, his mother. Everything else was a mystery, and he hoped the woman who’d given him the photograph hadn’t been driven away by his obnoxious behavior.
Guido stopped. “We’re here. Want me to go inside with you?”
“No, Guido. Go watch my uncle. He’s acting strange.”
“I can’t just leave you here,” the bodyguard said.
“It’s okay. I’ll get one of the players to walk me back.”
“You sure, Skipper?”
There was real concern in Guido’s voice. As nannies went, Guido had always been there for him. “Yeah, Guido. I’m sure. Thanks. I’ll see you in a few.”
The bodyguard walked away, and DeMarco went into the lavatory. When he emerged a minute later, he smelled lilac-scented perfume, and offered a smile when he felt a woman’s hand on his arm. “I need to talk to you,” a familiar voice said.
“Sure,” DeMarco said.
The woman led him to a corner table and they both sat down. She positioned her chair so their knees were touching. “Did you look at the photograph I gave you?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s of me and my mother, isn’t it?” DeMarco said.
She placed her hand on his wrist, her grip strong and firm. “That’s right.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Your mother gave it to me.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your mother’s younger sister, your aunt.”
And where have you been for the past twenty years? he nearly asked.
“What’s your name?” he asked instead.
“Marie DeMarco.”
It felt like a scene out of a daytime soap opera, and DeMarco guessed he’d be dealing with plenty of people like her, now that he was famous. Out of curiosity, he leaned forward and brought his eyes a few inches from the woman’s face. The resemblance to his late mother was slight. He leaned back.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
“I wanted to see you,” she said. “Your father also wanted to come. He lives in Philadelphia, not far from where I live.”
“My father?”
“That’s right.”
DeMarco removed her hand from his wrist. His father had abandoned him and his mother a long time ago. His uncle had told him so, and he’d accepted the explanation, simply because he’d never heard from his father. “I don’t know what your angle is, but I’m not giving you any money. You’ve got a lot of nerve coming here, and pulling this shit.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath, then her dress going swoosh! as she rose from her chair. “I don’t want your money, Skipper. I came here to check up on you. I saw a piece on television that said you’d cheated the tournament, and was afraid you might be in trouble. So I came to make sure you were okay.”
The first day of the tournament, his uncle had arranged for a bunch of players to fold to him, giving DeMarco a huge stack of chips to play with. It was a ploy used by many top-flight players to ensure they survived the early rounds of tournaments, only DeMarco had the bad fortune to knock out Rufus Steele, who’d gone on national television and told the world what he’d done.
“Your father was going to come with me, but he’s in court, trying a case,” she went on. “He’s a criminal defense attorney.”
“Where’s he been all my life?”
“He didn’t know that you existed until I contacted him a few years ago. Once he found out he had a son, he tried to contact you, just like I tried. Only your uncle stopped us. Your uncle’s bodyguard threatened to kill us if we didn’t stay away.”
“That’s bullshit. My uncle wouldn’t do that.”
She abruptly sat back down. This time when she took his wrist, her fingernails dug into his flesh, and when she spoke, her voice was as sharp as a knife.
“Do you really want to know the truth?” she asked.
“Of course I want to know.”
“Are you sure, Skipper?”
DeMarco took a deep breath. He’d caught his uncle in enough lies over the years to realize that there was a lot about his past he didn’t know. Was this woman finally going to reveal it to him?
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s like this. Your mother got hooked on drugs when she was a teenager, and became a prostitute to support her habit. We tried to help her clean herself up. Myself, her mother, her friends, we all tried. She went into rehab, and for a while she was clean. That was when your mother met your father, who was in law school. She hid her past from him, and they fell in love. Then she got pregnant, and ran away.
“She had you without any of us knowing. Then went back to drugs and the street. We didn’t hear from her for several years. I finally tracked her down and persuaded her to come home. She lived with me for a while, and so did you. She wanted to contact your father, but never did. I think she was afraid of telling him the truth about herself.
“Your mother couldn’t stay off the drugs. One day I came home and she was gone. She called a month later from Atlantic City, said she was living there. The next call came from the police, saying she was dead. You were put into a foster home. I tried to get you back, but George Scalzo paid off a judge and adopted you.”
DeMarco shut his eyes. He tried to speak and heard his voice crack. He forced out the words anyway. “My mother was a hooker?”
The woman put her fingers to DeMarco’s lips, and gently closed them. “Your mother was a beautiful woman who loved you more than anything in the whole world. Never forget that, Skipper.”
The air trapped in DeMarco’s lungs had escaped, and he felt empty and hollow and lost. He heard her rise from her chair, and rose as well.
“I need to fly home to Philadelphia this afternoon,” she said. “I have a husband and family waiting for me.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why did you come here?”
“I wanted you to know that you have a family besides your uncle,” she said. “Your father and I care about you. We both wanted you to know that. That’s why I came.”
He heard her open her purse, then felt a stiff piece of cardboard being put into his hand. He lifted it to his face and stared. It was a business card for Christopher Charles Russo, an attorney in Philadelphia. He felt her lips brush against his cheek.
“Good-bye, Skipper,” she said.
30
“You’ve never gambled, have you?” Bill Higgins asked.
“Never,” Valentine replied.
“Ever tempted?”
“No. I got the cure.”
“What happened?”
They were sitting in Celebrity’s sports bar, waiting for their hamburgers. Bill had given Sammy Mann another chance, and they’d left him in the control room to come downstairs for lunch. All around them sat guys who’d been knocked out of the tournament and relegated to watching the action on the giant-screen TV behind the bar. DeMarco had lost a twelve-million-dollar pot, and the room was buzzing.
“Two things,” Valentine said. “The first was because my old man was a gambler, and I saw what it did to my mother. The second happened when I was eighteen. I lent three hundred bucks to a friend of mine who thought he was a gambler. That cured me.”
“Did your friend blow the money?”
“Yeah.”
Lunch came, and they dug in. Once upon a time, food in Las Vegas was a real bargain. Then the corporations had taken over. Now, a burger cost ten bucks, and the french fries could be counted on the fingers of two hands.
“What happened?” Bill asked.
“It was the summer of my eighteenth birthday,” Valentine said, “and I was caddying at the Atlantic City Country Club. The pay was fifty bucks a week, and I’d saved three hundred bucks and was planning to buy a used car. There was another caddy named Kenny Keane. Kenny was a degenerate gambler and would bet on anything. One day, he begged me to lend him three hundred dollars, said he needed to see a doctor. I was pretty naive, so I lent it to him.
“Kenny immediately marched into the clubhouse and challenged the club champ to a match. Kenny was an eight-handicap, and the champ was a scratch golfer. They went out and started playing. Luckily, the champ played tight when there was money on the line, and on the last hole, Kenny sank a miracle thirty-foot putt, and won by a stroke. As we were walking back to the clubhouse, Kenny said, ‘I told you I could beat that guy!’
“I told Kenny I wanted my money. I was dreaming about owning that car. Kenny said sure, and we went to take a shower. When I got out, I found Kenny in a poker game in the locker room. I looked at his hand. He had absolutely nothing. A stone cold bluff. I begged him for my money. He said, ‘I can beat these guys.’ And he did. They folded, and Kenny won two grand.
“We went into the clubhouse, and Kenny headed for the casino in the back room. Gambling was illegal in Atlantic City then, but that didn’t stop anyone. I told Kenny to give me my money or I’d never speak to him again. He said, ‘Can’t you see I’m on a roll? I’m going to make us famous tonight.’
“I watched Kenny play blackjack and double our money. Then he played craps, and doubled it again. The guy was absolutely on fire. Then he went to the roulette table, and put everything on the black. The ball rolled and I remember saying a prayer when it dropped. It landed on the red.
“Kenny didn’t stop yelling for ten minutes. I remember wanting to cry, only there were too many people around. As we were leaving, another caddy came up and asked Kenny how much money he’d lost. Kenny said, ‘Just three hundred bucks that I borrowed from this dope.’”
Bill’s cell phone was lying on the bar, and began to crawl between their plates. It was on vibrate mode, and Bill picked it up and stared at its face.
“I need to take this,” he said.
Bill retreated to a less noisy area of the bar, and Valentine continued eating while watching the TV behind the bar. The players had taken a break, and the network was showing a replay of the monster pot DeMarco had lost. Valentine hadn’t paid much attention to it the first time—everyone lost when they gambled—but watching it a second time, he felt the hairs on his neck stand up. The player who’d beaten DeMarco was a scruffy Houston gambler named Skins Turner, a lanky guy with a hooked nose, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a vagrant wisp of hair on his head. But his arresting feature was his hands. They were large and delicate, with long tapering fingers and manicured fingernails. They could have belonged to a surgeon, or a concert pianist, but in the world of gambling, they belonged to another animal. They were a mucker’s hands.
The camera shifted to DeMarco, who’d lost a third of his chips to Skins. DeMarco was shaking his head, and Valentine sensed that the kid knew he’d been cheated.
Bill was still on the other side of the bar, talking on his cell phone. Valentine borrowed a pen from the bartender and scribbled on a cocktail napkin that he was going upstairs to the surveillance control room. He tucked the note beneath Bill’s plate then threw down money for their meals and left the bar.
Entering Celebrity’s surveillance control room, Valentine went to the office where Sammy Mann was holed up. To his surprise, the old hustler had cleared out. He found a technician and asked him where Sammy had gone.
“He went home ten minutes ago,” the tech said.
Valentine talked the tech into pulling up the tape of the twelve-million-dollar pot, then he pulled up a chair to watch the action. The tech had a boyish face and didn’t look old enough to be driving a car. Sensing that something was brewing, the tech put down the Slurpie he was drinking, and stared intently at the video monitor.
They watched the dealer shuffle the cards then sail them around the table, with each player getting two. In Texas Hold ‘Em, the player’s starting cards were critical, with the best hand being two aces, followed by two kings. As Skins got his two cards, his hands covered their backs, and he lifted up their corners to peek at their values.
“See that?” Valentine asked.
“No,” the tech said. “What happened?”
“Play it again, and I’ll explain.”
The tech rewound the tape. He hit play, and they watched the dealer sail the cards around the table.
“Freeze it,” Valentine said.
The tech froze the tape, and Valentine pointed at Skins. “See his hands? He’s got a king palmed in his right hand. It was stuck in a bug beneath the table.”
The tech brought his face so close to the picture that his breath fogged the screen.
“Well, I’ll be. But where did he get the king from?”
“He mucked it out earlier,” Valentine said. “Hustlers call it doing ‘the chop.’ When he tossed his cards to the dealer, he only tossed one.”
“The dealer didn’t notice?”
Valentine shook his head. The technique of stealing a single card during play had been developed by blackjack cheaters, and it flew by most dealers. Stealing a card was even easier in poker, since no one paid attention to a player when he dropped out of a hand. Valentine made the tech restart the tape.
“Now watch the switch,” he said.
The tape continued, and they watched Skins cover his cards with his hands. The tech slapped his knees. “Holy cow. He peeked at his cards without letting the hidden camera in the table see them,” the tech said. “That’s on purpose, isn’t it?”
Valentine nodded. The kid caught on fast.
“Okay,” the tech said. “Now he’s doing the switch, even though I can’t see the move.”
“Cameras can’t see through hands,” Valentine said.
“No, but I can tell when someone’s got a card palmed, and this guy does.” The tech pointed at Skins’s right hand, which rested on the table edge. “He’s got the card he just switched hidden in his palm, doesn’t he?”
“Correct.”
“What will he do? Destroy it later on?”
“No,” Valentine said. “He’ll add it to his cards, and toss it into the muck. That way the deck won’t be short. Hustlers call it ‘cleaning up.’”
On the monitor, they saw Skins drop his guilty hand into his lap and stick the switched card into the bug. If a problem arose during the game, Skins would simply toss the card beneath the table.
“So let’s arrest this guy,” the tech said. “We’ve got enough evidence.”
&nbs
p; It was the sanest thing Valentine had heard anyone say since he’d started investigating the tournament. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. Bill Higgins was standing behind him with a grim look on his face. Valentine got up, and they went to a corner where no one could hear them.
“I just got some bad news from the FBI’s Las Vegas office,” Bill said. “Guess who escaped from Ely prison this morning.”
“Someone I know?”
“Al ‘Little Hands’ Scarpi. The FBI thinks Scalzo was behind it.”
Valentine clenched his teeth. Every holiday, postcards from Ely State Penitentiary appeared in his mailbox, the name U.R. Dead scribbled in the return address box. Of all the twisted souls he’d put away, Al Scarpi was the one he still had nightmares about.
“Look, Tony, I won’t be mad if you say you want to leave town,” Bill said. “This is getting awfully hairy.”
Valentine shook his head. He would leave Las Vegas after he busted Scalzo. It was that simple.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
31
“I’ve never ridden in a helicopter before,” Little Hands shouted, gazing down at the flat, unforgiving landscape of northern Nevada. The pilot, an athletic blonde wearing aviator shades with mirrored lenses, flashed a toothy grin. He’d picked Little Hands up on a dusty field outside the Ely Conservation Camp ninety minutes ago, tossed a bag lunch into Little Hands’s lap, then pointed his chopper toward Las Vegas.
“Where do you pee in this thing, anyway?” Little Hands asked.
The pilot continued grinning. It was a long trip, over 250 miles, and Little Hands had wished like hell he’d taken a leak before departing.
“You got a radio to listen to?” Little Hands asked.
The pilot continued to grin. Then Little Hands got the picture. The pilot couldn’t hear him over the roar of the helicopter’s blades. Little Hands felt like a fool and folded his hands in his lap. In prison, he’d gone to the library every day and tried to educate himself. If he’d learned anything from the books he’d read, it was that the best thing a dumb person could do was keep their mouth shut and say nothing at all.
