The Picasso Flop

by Vince Van Patten

  Inside the casino it wasn’t much better at that time of day.

  “Vegas has gone crazy,” Vic said. “I was here once before, years ago, and I don’t like the changes very much.”

  “Same here,” Jimmy said.

  They were approaching the Sports Book when he heard someone call out, “Hey, Jimmy!” He turned and saw Paulie DiCicca. Now he was in a quandary. How to treat Paulie in front of Vic? What to tell Vic about Paulie?

  “Paulie,” he said, as the smaller man reached them.

  “Whoa,” Vic said to Paulie. “What a turtleneck.”

  “Yeah, thanks, man,” Paulie said. “Nice shirt, too.”

  Vic’s Hawaiian shirt today was mostly emerald and azure. Paulie’s turtleneck was a startling orange.

  “Jimmy, it’s time for us to talk.”

  “Not right now, Paulie,” Jimmy said. “I’m showing my friend Captain Porcelli around Caesar’s Palace. We were just heading for the Forum Shops.”

  “Captain?” Paulie repeated. “Like . . . in the army?”

  “No,” Jimmy said. “Captain of detectives with the Philadelphia police department. Show the man your badge, Vic.”

  With a bemused look on his face Vic showed his gold and blue shield to Paulie.

  “Okay, yeah, I see. Good ta meet ya, man,” Paulie said, backing away. “We’ll talk later, Jimmy.”

  Paulie turned and headed right into the Sports Book.

  “Okay,” Vic said, returning his badge to his pocket, “what was that about?”

  “It’s nothing, really—”

  “It’s somethin’ when you want to use my buzzer to scare a guy away,” Vic said. “Ex-con?”

  It took Jimmy a moment to realize Vic was talking about Paulie.

  “Yeah . . .”

  “And you know him how?”

  Jimmy hesitated.

  “I think,” Vic said carefully, “if I’m gonna help you with . . . all this, I need to know everything.”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said, “maybe we really do need to go into the Forum and have something to drink.”

  They stopped at the first place they could get a regular cup of coffee. They sat at a wrought-iron table outside the restaurant on what was a replica of an Italian tiled patio.

  “Take your time, kid,” Vic said. “I get the feelin’ you ain’t talked about this much.”

  “Try not at all.”

  “Not to your family?”

  “I don’t see my family very much, Vic. I don’t get back to Philly very often.”

  “That’s too bad,” Vic said. “Family’s a pain in the ass most of the time, believe me, I know, but sometimes it’s nice to know they’re there.”

  “Look, Vic, I’ve been away for a while . . .” Jimmy started, and eventually explained the past twelve years to him—the year before he went to prison, the ten years in prison, and the year since he got out.

  “The guy I hit was a smart-ass kid who thought two queens was three queens because he said so,” Jimmy explained, “and because of who he was and how much he was worth.”

  “Who was he?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Jimmy said. “Let’s just say he was somebody whose money put me away for a lot longer than I should have been.”

  He was still holding some things back, like the fact that he did ten years of a minimum-fifteen stretch because of Harold Landrigan. That would have meant explaining about Kat, too.

  “Now I know you’re a cop, Vic, and everybody you’ve put away says he’s innocent.”

  “You never told me you were innocent,” Vic pointed out. “All you said was you got put away for longer than you should’ve. I believe you. What’s with this Paulie guy?”

  “He was my cell mate for about a week,” Jimmy said. “He got out a while back and somehow tracked me down here.”

  “And he’s makin’ trouble for you?”

  “He’s trying to.”

  “Well, the cops have got to know. They must’ve checked you out.”

  “They did.”

  “You gonna be in trouble if the poker people find out you did time?”

  “They know already,” Jimmy said. “I’m on the final table tonight.”

  Vic put his coffee cup down before he could spill it.

  “You made it?” he asked. “You got a shot at the big money?”

  “I’ve got a shot,” Jimmy said, “but I’m short stacked. I’ll get back at least a hundred and twenty-five grand.”

  “That’s great!” Vic said. “Congratulations, kid.”

  “Thanks, but I think I only have a shot if I can play with a clear head.”

  “So on top of all this murder stuff, you got this ex-con on your case.”

  The way Vic said “ex-con” it was clear he’d already forgotten that Jimmy was one, too.

  “Right.”

  “You want me to take care of him?”

  “I’m more concerned right now with the murder thing,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, you’ve seen to it that the last two guys on the hit list are safe.”

  “That doesn’t mean the killer won’t pick somebody else,” Jimmy said.

  “And you’re pretty sure about your theory?”

  “Like you said, I’ve got a hunch. But how can I prove it?”

  “You’ve got one of two ways—find some evidence,” Vic explained, “or make the guy prove it for you.”

  “So what next?”

  “Well,” Vic said, “do you know where the guy lives?”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The apartment house was on Decatur, not exactly what Jimmy had expected.

  “You sure this is right?” Vic asked him as they got out of the cab.

  “This is the address Margaret got off the Web,” Jimmy said.

  “Gotta be right, then,” Vic said. “She knows what she’s doin’ on the computer. Unless her source is wrong.”

  They approached the front door, and Jimmy looked at the mailboxes.

  “It’s the right place,” he said, putting his finger on a name. “Four B.”

  Vic reached for the front door, found it open.

  “This is gonna be easier than we thought—unless he walks in on us.”

  “Actually,” Jimmy said, “that would solve the problem, but I doubt it.”

  There was an elevator, but Vic recommended they walk up.

  “Less chance of running into someone.”

  When they reached the fourth floor, they could hear a TV blaring The Price Is Right and a crying child from another apartment. There were four units on the floor.

  When they got to the door Vic said, “Just keep an eye out.”

  Jimmy looked up and down the short hall while Vic leaned over the lock and did something with both hands. Jimmy heard a snick and the door opened.

  “Inside, quick,” Vic said.

  They both slipped inside and Vic closed the door gently behind them. They could still hear both the TV show and the child through the walls.

  “Not what you expected, huh?” Vic asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, it’s not very big. One bedroom. Let’s take a quick look around.”

  “What are we looking for?” asked Jimmy.

  “We’re just lookin’,” Vic said. “It should jump up and bite us on the ass.”

  Jimmy looked around the living room while Vic went into the bedroom. The place was neat, everything seemingly in its place. It didn’t have a very lived-in look, more like a hotel room after it’d been cleaned. There were some poker and gambling magazines in a holder, none left out on the coffee table, which had some art books on it.

  As Jimmy entered the bedroom, Vic was backing out of the closet.

  “What’d you find?” Jimmy asked.

  “Shoes,” Vic said, “several pairs. What about the living room?”

  “Nothing,” Jimmy said. “Just some magazines.”

  “Check those drawers in the table by the bed.”

  Jimmy found some under
wear and a box of condoms, which he showed to Vic.

  “Look in the garbage,” Vic said. Jimmy did and saw several condom packets, open and empty. Thankfully, there were no used condoms. Those had probably gone down the toilet.

  He found something else in the drawer, too.

  “Vic?”

  Porcelli walked over to stand next to Jimmy and look into the drawer. There were dozens of decks of playing cards. Jimmy took out a deck, went through it, did it with another and a third.

  “Paint’s gone,” he said.

  “What?”

  “All the picture cards are gone.”

  “Picasso flop?” Vic asked.

  “Any three picture cards would make a Picasso flop.”

  They looked at each other, then closed the drawer.

  “Okay,” Vic said. “Let’s look at the bathroom and kitchen real quick and then get out of here.”

  Jimmy followed Vic, watched him go through the medicine chest, the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen.

  “Glasses are real clean,” he observed, taking one down from a cabinet above the counter.

  “There must be a maid.”

  “In this dump?” Vic replaced the glass. “I doubt it. Come on, we’re done here.”

  Following Vic to the front door Jimmy asked, “Did we find anything?”

  “We did,” Vic said, “but it’s more a case of what we didn’t find.”

  They walked to the corner and managed to flag down a cab back to the Bellagio. Jimmy started to talk in the car, but Vic cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  When they were out of the cab and in front of the hotel Vic said, “We don’t want anyone rememberin’ we were there, not even a cabdriver.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “How long have you got?”

  Jimmy checked his watch, saw that he still had better than four hours before start time.

  “Okay, let’s find Margaret,” Vic said. “I’ve got some questions for her that you probably didn’t ask.”

  As they entered the casino Jimmy said, “How are we going to find her? She could be anywhere.”

  “She told me she wasn’t leaving the Bellagio today,” Vic said, “so you check the penny slots, and I’ll check the nickels.”

  It was Jimmy who found her after twenty minutes. She’d gone back to the penny slots. Over her shoulder he saw the readout on the machine reflected that she had fifteen thousand credits—one hundred and fifty dollars. It looked like she’d be there for a while, so Jimmy went and found Vic at the nickel slots and brought him back to her.

  “Hey, lady, how you doin’?” Vic said, coming up behind her.

  She jumped. “Damn it, Vic!” Then she saw that Jimmy was with him. “Oh, hello, Jimmy.” She looked at her husband. “I’m doing okay. What’s up with you two?”

  “I got a question for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sex.”

  She sighed. “Vic, I told you—”

  “No, not us,” Vic said, looking embarrassed. “The medical records that Jimmy had you pull?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would it be possible for a man in that condition to have sex?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Impotency would be part and parcel of that injury.”

  “And tell me what I’d find in the medicine chest of someone with that condition.”

  “Well . . . painkillers, some lotions and salves for his skin so he doesn’t get sores . . . that kind of thing.”

  “Thanks, honey,” Vic said, planting a kiss on his wife’s gray head. “Go back to your game.”

  “Thanks, Margaret,” Jimmy said.

  “Sure, but—”

  Vic grabbed Jimmy’s arm and pulled him from the aisle before his wife could get her question out.

  “Let’s get over to the Mandalay Bay,” he said. “I want to watch this guy.”

  They grabbed a cab out in front of the Bellagio. When they got to the Mandalay Bay they made a beeline for the Sports Book, then found a position just outside where they could watch.

  “Tell me about this guy,” Vic said.

  Briefly, Jimmy told the Philly cop what he knew about Francisco Remigio Pareira.

  THIRTY-NINE

  So what you’re tellin’ me here is we got a guy who’ll bet on anything.”

  “Right.”

  “And he bets big money.”

  “Always.”

  “Then why is he livin’ where he’s livin’?”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy said.

  “You said he’s your friend.”

  “I haven’t seen him in over twelve years,” Jimmy said, “but, yeah, I consider him my friend.”

  “Come on, take a guess.”

  “Maybe he’s on a losing streak.”

  “Everybody has a losing steak sometime, right?” Vic asked.

  “Yeah, the guy just loves the action. It happens.” Jimmy seemed pained, almost depressed. Could this be right? Could Francisco really be responsible for these murders? His head was spinning.

  Vic picked up on it.

  “Hey, are you all right? You’re doin’ the right thing. Your dad was the same way.”

  Somehow that didn’t make Jimmy feel better.

  “Okay, so let’s say he’s losin’. Then what?”

  “He gets more money from home. They say it’s, you know, family money.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Usually,” Jimmy said, “but wait a minute. I just remembered something.”

  “Good,” Vic said. “Let’s have it.”

  “When I first saw him the other day, he said he was a little short of cash,” Jimmy said. “He said . . . he said he wasn’t having a good season. Maybe his ‘shipment’ hasn’t come in.”

  “You think they cut him off.”

  “Maybe,” Jimmy said. “I don’t know.”

  “Is there someone we can ask?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Okay.” Vic was staring straight into the Sports Book. From their vantage point, each sitting in front of a video poker machine, they could see Francisco and his entourage in front of the huge horse screen. “Let’s shelve that for now. Let’s go over what we’ve got. What first made you suspicious?”

  “Last time I saw him he said I should stop playing detective,” Jimmy said. “I never told him I was.”

  “And that leads you to believe what?”

  “That, at some point, he’d been over to the Bellagio and found out what I was doing.”

  “Not necessarily,” Vic said. “He could have simply heard about it. Go on.”

  “His hands,” Jimmy said. “They’re not as calloused as you’d think they’d be, especially someone who’s been wheelchair bound for years.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “By shaking hands with him.”

  “And what does that tell you?”

  “That he’s not in that chair all the time.”

  “Or,” Vic said, “maybe he wears gloves.”

  “Not when I saw him.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t wear them when he’s in the Sports Book.”

  Vic was shooting down everything Jimmy came up with.

  “What else, Jimmy?”

  “His shoes,” Jimmy said. “I notice they’re scuffed, like they’ve been walked in.”

  “Maybe they’re old shoes,” Vic said. “Maybe he’s had them since before his injury, and he still wears them.”

  “So what are you telling me?” Jimmy said. “That everything I’ve observed is wrong?”

  “No, not wrong,” Vic said, “just explainable. Come on, what else?”

  “Detective Devine told me that they think the killer’s big, powerful, and arrogant.”

  “They can tell he’s powerful from the tapes,” Vic said. “Arrogant applies to most killers.”

  “Well, granted, Francisco may not look like a strong guy because he’s in that chair, but, believe me, he’s strong. In his younger days he played socc
er back in Panama. In fact, he got banned for betting.”

  “That’s fine,” Vic said, “but one big thing—he’s in that fucking wheelchair.”

  “Or maybe not,” Jimmy said.

  Vic asked, “Why would a man stay in a wheelchair if he didn’t have to?”

  “You don’t know the mind of a gambler. There’s reasons, maybe some type of hustle.”

  “Like what?”

  “A bet,” Jimmy said. “A big bet, maybe. I knew a guy once that waited five years and never broke a hundred in golf until he bet two poker players over half a million that he could break ninety. He won that bet. That’s a five-year plan. Shit like this happens.”

  “This is crazy. You think this guy would bet somebody that he could stay in a wheelchair for what . . . years?”

  “He might have bet that he could convince people that he was stuck in that wheelchair. Who knows?”

  “And so he did what? Phonied his hospital records?”

  “Maybe they were altered.”

  Vic kept staring at Francisco, then looked at Jimmy. “Okay.”

  “Oh, that you buy?”

  Vic turned in Jimmy’s direction.

  “It’s all plausible,” Vic said. “Let’s just say that’s true. Why the murders?”

  Jimmy just shook his head.

  “Now let me tell you what we found in his apartment.” Vic ticked the points off on his fingers. “You were right about the shoes. He’s got others in the closet, and they all look slightly scuffed, either on the bottoms or the toes.”

  “You explained about the shoes—”

  “One pair, maybe,” Vic said, “but this guy’s got half a dozen pairs. But that’s not all. There was nothing in his medicine cabinet that a paraplegic would have. Also, all the glasses in the kitchen are clean.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They’re up high, Jimmy,” Vic said. “He washes them and then puts them away. He has to be standin’ for that.”

  “So now you’re saying you believe me?” Jimmy asked. “He’s not paralyzed?”

  “I’m sayin’ there’s a good possibility he’s fakin’ it,” Vic said, “if everything you say about him is true. If he’s on a losin’ streak, then he needs a big bet to get him back on his feet—no pun intended—and this could be it.”

  “So how do we prove to the police he can walk?” Jimmy asked.

  “Jimmy, even if we do prove it,” Vic said, “that doesn’t make him the killer. That just makes him some nut who will go to great lengths to win a bet. The cops aren’t gonna care about that.”