by James Swain
“I am.”
“You sure you’re ready for that?”
DeMarco didn’t know if he was ready to run his own life, or not. But the only way he was going to find out was by trying. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
Guido’s fast-paced breathing returned. So fast, in fact, that DeMarco thought he might have a stroke. Guido had always been there for him, and he reached out and touched the bodyguard’s stomach the way he’d done as a little kid. “You’re a good guy, Guido. Thanks for everything you’ve done for me.”
“Just doing my job,” the bodyguard said.
DeMarco took his seat at the feature table. He could hear the dealer riffle-shuffling the cards, the fifty-two pasteboards purring like a cat. He’d been exposed to radiation for five days, and realized the dealers who were bringing radioactive cards to the table had known the health risk as well. To themselves, and to him.
“Drink, sir?” a female voice asked.
“Get me a Coke and a pack of cigarettes,” he said.
The cocktail waitress came back a minute later with his order, putting the drink and pack in front of him. He removed his wallet, pulled out a bill. He hadn’t paid for a thing since coming to Las Vegas. He supposed now was as good a time as any to start.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Eight dollars.”
“How much is this bill worth?” he asked.
“A hundred dollars,” she said.
“Keep it.”
She thanked him and departed. He tore open the pack of smokes, stuck one in his mouth. To the dealer he said, “Give me your lighter, will you?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“The lighter sitting next to you. Give it to me. I want to light up my smoke.”
The dealer didn’t know what to say. DeMarco rose from his chair, grabbed his drink, and leaned forward a little too quickly. He sent the drink in the dealer’s direction and heard the dealer squawk. “Did I soak your cards?” DeMarco asked.
“Yes,” the dealer said angrily.
“Good. Now get out of here,” DeMarco said under his breath.
“What?”
“You heard me. Take your trick lighter and leave.”
The dealer said, “Shit,” under his breath, then pushed back his chair and left the table. DeMarco sat down. Moments later the tournament director came up behind him.
“Where did the dealer go?” the tournament director asked.
“He felt sick and left,” DeMarco said.
The tournament director spoke into a walkie-talkie, and asked for someone to clean up the table, and for a new dealer. When he disconnected, DeMarco asked, “Would you mind telling me the chip count for each of my opponents?”
“Sure,” the tournament director said.
Each player’s chip total was on the electronic leader board hanging over the table, and the tournament director read the totals to him. He was first, followed by seven players with roughly the same amount of chips, followed by the last two players, who were two million shy of the others. He would have to lose a couple of hands to the last two. That would make everyone at the table equal.
“Thanks,” he told the tournament director.
A new dealer came, and the other players returned. DeMarco felt the bright lights of the TV cameras come on. It was showtime.
47
“How dare Skipper disobey me,” Scalzo said, standing with Karl Jasper and his bodyguard on the curb in front of Celebrity. “You should have made him come with you.”
“How was I going to do that?” Guido asked.
“You should have put the heavy on him.”
“There were too many people standing around.”
“Keep making excuses and I’ll smack you in the fucking mouth,” Scalzo snapped.
Guido wanted to tell his boss to calm down, there were bigger problems to worry about. He’d spoken to one of their people in Atlantic City, and the news was getting worse by the hour. Forty-two members of the blackjack gang had been arrested last night, and now one had turned state’s evidence and told the cops that Scalzo had masterminded the scam. Other members were certain to do the same, and point the finger at the boss. Cheating a casino was a serious crime, but conspiring to cheat a group of casinos was much worse. If his boss didn’t get out of the country, he was screwed.
A white Mercedes pulled up to the curb and a valet jumped out. Jasper gave the valet his stub. “Put the suitcases in the trunk,” Scalzo barked.
“Yes, sir,” Guido said.
Guido dragged his boss’s suitcases to the back of the car. The trunk was locked, and Jasper came around, holding the keys he’d gotten from the valet. Jasper popped the locking mechanism and the trunk opened by itself. Guido hoisted the first suitcase off the ground, then froze. Inside the trunk was a leather satchel. The mouth of the satchel was wide open, exposing a half dozen bundles of hundred-dollar bills, all of them new. The suitcase slipped out of his fingers and hit the ground.
“What the hell are you doing back there?” Scalzo yelled, having climbed into the passenger seat. “Hurry up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Guido lifted the suitcase off the ground while continuing to stare at the money. A slip of paper lay on the bundles with handwriting on it. He glanced at Jasper, who’d gone to the driver’s side but hadn’t gotten in, then pulled the slip out and read it.
There’s more where this came from.
Guido dropped the note into the satchel. He didn’t know what was going on, then noticed a dark blanket lying inside the trunk. Something was lying beneath it, and he pulled the blanket back to have a look. A shovel.
“Need some help?”
Guido looked up. Jasper stood by the driver’s door, watching him. Their eyes briefly locked, and the look in Jasper’s eyes was unmistakable. It slowly dawned on Guido what was going on. Then he made a decision.
“I’m fine,” Guido said, and resumed putting the suit cases into the trunk.
“Scalzo’s getting away,” Gloria said, standing with Valentine and Gerry by the front door. Valentine had come out of the men’s lavatory after confronting DeMarco and walked right up to Scalzo, Jasper, and his bodyguard, in the hopes of eavesdropping on their conversation. When the three men had beaten a path out of the casino, he’d decided to follow them, and grabbed Gloria and his son.
As Jasper’s Mercedes drove away, Valentine took out his cell phone and called Bill Higgins. He got a busy signal and felt Gloria tug his arm.
“Come on,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“To my car. We’re going to follow them.”
Gloria’s rental was parked with several expensive foreign cars near the entrance. She’d bribed the valet attendant to park it there, and had told Valentine it was a common trick with reporters, in case they needed to run down a story. She got her keys from the guy manning the key stand, and Valentine turned to his son.
“I want you to stay here. Someone needs to watch DeMarco, and make sure he doesn’t continue to cheat the tournament.”
His son started to protest, then bit his lip. “Okay, Pop. But you’ve got to promise me you’ll stay out of trouble. You scare me sometimes.”
There was real concern in his son’s voice. Valentine gave him a hug then jumped into Gloria’s car.
In a hurry to get out of her spot, Gloria ran over the curb and burned rubber pulling away. At the bottom of the exit she hit the brakes and looked both ways.
“Which way did they go?” she asked.
Valentine hopped out of the car, climbed on the hood of the rental, then got back in and pointed to his right. “That way.”
She gunned the accelerator and the rental flew down the road. Celebrity was on the southwest side of Las Vegas in an area that had not yet felt the wrath of bulldozers and earthmovers. It was still desert and sage brush; the land stretched out like an artist’s canvas. Gloria got a quarter mile behind the Mercedes and slowed the rental to sixty-five. Valentine tried Bill again, and got another bus
y signal.
Several miles passed. Then a sign for a regional airport popped up.
“He must have a plane waiting for him,” Gloria said.
She sped up. The Mercedes pulled into the airport entrance, but instead of driving toward the main cluster of buildings, took a dusty gravel side road. Gloria followed, the rental lurching like a carnival ride. The Mercedes went a mile up the gravel road, then disappeared behind a mold-colored hangar.
“Park next to the hangar,” Valentine said.
“Shouldn’t I follow them?”
“No. They might have guns.”
She parked and they hopped out, went to the corner of the hangar, and stuck their heads around. Several hundred yards away, the Mercedes was parked beside a deserted runway, with Jasper, Scalzo, and the bodyguard standing in the tall grass, a sharp wind blowing in their faces and making their hair stand on end.
“Where’s the plane?” Gloria asked.
“They must be waiting for it to land. I wish I could see their faces.”
Gloria went to the rental, and returned holding a camera with a zoom lens. “It’s Zack’s,” she explained.
He took the camera and extended the lens, then looked across the field. Scalzo was shouting at Jasper and looked like he wanted to kill someone. Valentine remembered running Scalzo out of Atlantic City years ago, and the ugly scene Scalzo had made while being escorted out of town. Scalzo was a monster when things didn’t go his way.
“There it is,” Gloria said, pointing at the sky.
A small plane circled the airport, throwing an elusive shadow over the men. Grabbing a suitcase, Scalzo walked to the end of the runway and stared up at the sky, shielding his eyes with his hand. The plane did another pass, then flew away and disappeared in the clouds.
Scalzo turned and shook his fist at Jasper, like it was his fault the plane hadn’t landed. Jasper drew a silver-plated gun from his sports jacket and pointed it at the mobster. Scalzo looked to his bodyguard, as if expecting him to deal with Jasper. Only the bodyguard had turned his back and was looking in the opposite direction.
Jasper fired three times, the explosive sound swallowed up by the wind. The bullets hit Scalzo squarely in the chest and blew holes in his shirt. Scalzo staggered backward and brought his hand up to his heart. He touched himself, came away with a bloody hand, then looked up at the sky and punched the air. Crumpling to the ground, he lay motionless on his back.
“Oh my God,” Gloria said. “Is he dead?”
Valentine watched as the bodyguard removed a blanket from the Mercedes’ trunk and covered his boss. Then the bodyguard took a shovel from the trunk and started to dig a hole. “It sure looks that way. You’d better get back in the car.”
The bodyguard was covered in sweat by the time he’d finished digging. He dragged Scalzo across the ground by his ankles, then laid him in the hole and covered him with dirt. Finished, he smoothed the ground with the shovel’s edge. Jasper did not help, but leaned against the Mercedes and smoked a cigarette while staring at the ground.
The bodyguard stood over the grave and crossed himself. Valentine put the camera down and started to walk away. As he did, a shiny glint caught his eye. It came from the other side of the field, next to a storage shed with pieces of plywood nailed across its windows. He lifted the camera and had a look.
Two men stood in the building’s long shadow. Both were tall and in their late thirties, with short-cropped hair and dark, off-the-rack suits. They had law enforcement written all over them. A car was parked beside them, and sunlight had crept over the building’s roof and caught the car’s windshield. Valentine adjusted the camera lens and read the car’s license plate. He memorized it, then hustled over to Gloria’s rental and hopped into the passenger seat.
“Time to get out of Dodge?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
Gloria made the tires spin on the gravel. Soon they were traveling down the highway and heading back toward Celebrity. She chewed her lower lip as she drove, the memory of Scalzo’s murder not easy to digest. Valentine took out his cell phone and again tried Bill’s number. This time the call went through.
“Higgins here.”
“I need a favor,” Valentine said.
“Name it,” Bill replied.
“I need you to check out a license plate number for me. ZH1 4L7. I think the plate might be government issued.”
“How soon do you need this?”
“As fast as you can,” Valentine said.
Bill hung up and Valentine did the same. Gloria was looking in her mirror, and he spun around in his seat. There was no one behind them.
“I’m just a little paranoid,” she said.
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said.
Two minutes later his cell phone vibrated and he stared at its face. It was Bill.
“Find anything?” he said by way of a greeting.
“You were right,” Bill said. “The car belongs to the FBI’s office in Las Vegas.”
“Thanks, Bill. Thanks a lot.”
He hung up. Gloria drove for another few miles in silence, then said, “Are you going to call the police, and tell them that you saw George Scalzo get rubbed out?”
That was a good question. Two FBI agents had watched Scalzo die, and he suspected that the small plane they’d seen circling overhead was also law enforcement. Sammy Mann had said the cheating at the World Poker Showdown would get cleaned up after the tournament ended, and he suspected the people in town who ran things had decided that the process should be sped up.
“They already know,” he said.
48
Gloria did not feel well as she pulled into a roadside bar and grill. They went in and Valentine took a seat at the bar, while she searched for a restroom. Two sunburned guys sat at the other end of the bar, their rugged faces bathed in the artificial light of video poker games. He ordered coffee and stared at the TV perched above the bar. It was tuned to the cable channel showing the World Poker Showdown. A commercial for an online gambling site was on.
The coffee was good and strong. He drank it black and felt it warm his insides. He’d come to the conclusion that everyone on the planet had an addiction. His was caffeine. It got his heart going and made him think more clearly. He hadn’t wanted to see Scalzo get whacked, but wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. He believed in the rule of law, and considered cops and law enforcement people who broke the law in order to put criminals away to be rogues. But he also understood that sometimes the rule of law didn’t work, and people took matters into their own hands. The world was a better place with George Scalzo gone.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it. Gerry. There had been times in his life when he hadn’t looked forward to calls from his son. He was happy that had changed. “What’s up?”
“Where are you?” his son asked.
“In the middle of nowhere,” Valentine said. “Scalzo is out of the picture. Case closed.”
“No, it’s not,” Gerry said.
Valentine put his coffee cup down. He sensed his son knew something that he didn’t. “What do you mean? Why isn’t the case over?”
“Because DeMarco just won the World Poker Showdown,” Gerry said.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Afraid not. He started out losing a few hands, and everyone at the table was equal in chips. DeMarco looked beatable. Then he came back strong and wiped his opponents out.”
“Was he cheating?”
“No, Pop. There was a new dealer at the table and a new deck of cards. DeMarco played the final table on the square. It was really something to watch.”
Gloria came out of the ladies’ room looking pale. She sat next to him at the bar and ordered a sparkling water. Valentine asked, “What do you mean, Gerry?”
“DeMarco took a lot of chances, even bluffed a couple of times. I hate to say it, Pop, but he’s a helluva poker player.”
“You think so? He didn’t just ge
t lucky?”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Gerry said. “Pop, I need to beat it. They’re about to give DeMarco his prize, and I want to hear what he has to say.”
Valentine said good-bye and folded the phone. On the TV, the commercial was over, the tournament back on. DeMarco sat at a table surrounded by his ten-million-dollar prize. Dangling off his wrist was the sparkling diamond and platinum bracelet that came with winning the event. Beside him sat the CEO of Celebrity, a ham-faced guy with a loose smile and a loud tie. Clutched in the CEO’s hand was a microphone.
“So, champ,” the CEO said, “how does it feel to beat the best poker players in the world?”
“It feels pretty good,” DeMarco admitted.
“You predicted you’d win the tournament, and you did. Did you come here believing you were the favorite?”
“If I did, I was mistaken,” DeMarco said.
The CEO lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise.
“Really?”
“There were plenty of players in the event who could have won.”
“Sounds like winning has humbled you.”
DeMarco tilted his head almost imperceptibly.
“One of the players you knocked out called you a cheater and challenged you to play heads up,” the CEO said. “His name is Rufus Steele, and you agreed to play Steele if he could raise a million dollars. I’m told that Steele has raised the money and is itching to take you on. Are you still up for playing him?”
DeMarco straightened in his chair and his face turned expressionless. He’d just beaten the best players in the world, and adrenaline was pumping through his veins. But Steele was a different animal. Steele didn’t want his money. He wanted revenge.
“Bring him on,” DeMarco said, the swagger returning to his voice.
“When?”
“How about right now?”
“You sound ready for a fight,” the CEO said.
“No disrespect, but Rufus Steele is past his prime, and I’m entering mine,” DeMarco said. “I’ll play him anytime, anywhere.”
“Eieee!” Gloria said, jumping up from her chair at the bar. The color had returned to her cheeks and her eyes were blazing. “This is my story! Come on!”
