Grift Sense (9 page)

His breath grew short. Underman was a rich man, with a garage filled with fancy sports cars and a yacht in San Diego and a beach house in Acapulco, yet money still intrigued him. His father had toiled at two jobs all his life, running a synagogue and teaching elementary school, and had died with less money than was in Nola Briggs's paper bag.

“I'll give you ten grand if you'll just consider my case,” Nola said. “I need help, Mr. Underman.”

Underman closed the paper bag and slid it to a neutral corner of his desk. Over the years, he'd gotten good at visually counting bills, as most of his clients paid him in cash. Nola's bag contained close to fifty thousand dollars.

“I would be happy to discuss your situation,” he replied. “If I think I can help, we can then discuss my fee.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Underman, thank you,” she gushed. “I've always heard you were a gentleman.”

“My upbringing,” he confessed. “My father beat it into us with a stick. Now, why don't you start at the beginning.”

For the next twenty minutes, Underman let Nola talk. He had heard of her arrest through one of the snitches he employed on the Strip, as he made it his business to know who in Las Vegas was getting arrested, a tactic that allowed him to decide if he wanted a case well before it ever walked through his door. And Underman certainly wanted Nola's case. The crime she was being prosecuted for, called flashing or signaling, was difficult to prove, and the fact that the Acropolis had allowed her alleged accomplice to walk was the kind of hole he could drive a Mack truck through. Underman liked beating the casinos in court, as it was the only place he had an advantage over them.

An excellent witness, he decided when she was finished. Good teeth, soft voice, an engaging smile. Dealer of the month ten times. Perhaps, if he got the charges thrown out, he could convince her to file a libel suit against Nick Nicocropolis and take that little Greek Neanderthal to the cleaners.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” Underman said.

“Shoot.”

“Any previous disciplinary problems with the casino?”

“None,” Nola said proudly.

“Not one?”

“No sir.”

“How about the law?”

“Never. I've never even gotten a parking ticket.”

“Let me guess,” he said. “You don't drive.”

Nola's face lit up, and Underman imagined the effect she was going to have on a jury. No record, a squeaky-clean past, and that wonderful smile. She was almost too perfect.

“Any problems with current or past employees?”

“Problems, no. Relationships, yes.”

“You had a relationship with someone at the hotel?”

“I dated Nick Nicocropolis ten years ago.”

Underman sat up very straight in his chair. He'd been divorced three times and knew that there was no greater wrath than a woman scorned. He gave his prospective client a hard look.

“And?” he asked.

“And nothing,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “It lasted ten glorious days and then Nick dumped me. Later he offered me a job dealing twenty-one. I took it, thanked him, and went on with my life.”

“So you don't have an axe to grind with Nick?”

“I wasn't happy then,” she admitted. “But it wasn't the first time I'd been dumped. I've been around the carnival a few times, Mr. Underman.”

“Haven't we all, Miss Briggs?”

“Please, call me Nola.”

“Of course. Nola, I'd like to take your case, but only under one condition.”

“Which is?”

“I want you to take a polygraph test. If you pass it, I'll petition the judge who arraigned you. I'll argue that the Acropolis has made a grievous error. In their zeal to nab Frank Fontaine, their security people assumed you were his accomplice, something that often occurs in cases like this. I feel confident the judge will dismiss the case.”

“I'll do it,” Nola said.

Underman smiled. In his experience, only people with nothing to hide were willing to let themselves be strapped to a polygraph and grilled. This was going to be too easy. Consulting his desk calendar, he said, “Let's see. I have a deposition on Monday, an all-day meeting Tuesday. How about Wednesday morning?”

“I want to do it right now,” Nola replied.

“Miss Briggs—”

“It's Nola, Mr. Underman.”

Underman made a conciliatory gesture with his hands. “I have other clients, Nola, some of whom are sitting in jail, awaiting my services. I can't let them down.”

Nola pulled her chair up, her knees again banging the desk. With trembling lips, she said, “Forgive me for sounding presumptuous, but your other clients are nothing but scumbags and two-time losers who've probably spent the better part of their lives behind bars. They're bad people who need a man of integrity like you to defend them. Well, I'm different. I'm not a bad person. I'm an innocent victim who's being wronged by a system that allows a powerful person like Nick Nicocropolis to trample whoever he pleases. Nick's already hurt me once, Mr. Underman. Please, don't let him do it again.”

She was fighting back tears, and Underman found himself at a loss for words. He pushed a box of Kleenex her way and glanced at the bag of money. His poor father was probably rolling in his grave. When he looked back at Nola, she had regained her composure and was staring directly at him.

“Half now, the other if you get me off,” she said.

His breath grew short. She was offering him a fortune for a day's work. He counted to five so as not to appear greedy.

Then he said, “Very well, Miss Briggs. I'll take your case.”

9

P
umping the Acropolis's staff about Frank Fontaine proved a far bigger challenge than Valentine expected. Fontaine had visited the casino three successive days and had come into contact with dozens of employees, yet except for Wily and the giant African-American named Joe Smith, no one seemed to remember him.
Frank who?
the employees collectively asked.
Never heard of the guy.

Not that Valentine could blame them. Nevada was one of the few states that vigilantly prosecuted its citizens for even
knowing
about a casino's being ripped off, the crime a felony and punishable by five years in a federal penitentiary. No wonder the staff had quickly wiped Fontaine from their collective memories.

By noon, he was finished. He slipped into Nick's Place and was disappointed to learn they didn't serve lunch. Sliding onto a stool, he laid his notes on the bar and reviewed them while munching on Goldfish and pretzels. His favorite bartender served him a glass of tap water with a lemon twist without being asked.

It was Joe Smith who'd given him the most new information about Fontaine. Each time Fontaine had visited the casino, he'd played One-Armed Billy and chatted with Joe about his hoop days at UNLV. During these conversations, Joe had noticed that Fontaine wore elevator shoes and guessed he was two or three inches shorter than he appeared. He also had a hair weave, something that was not apparent from the surveillance tapes. And he was a smoker. Joe had seen him toss a cigarette into the gutter before he'd entered and knew a nicotine habit when he saw one.

“Company,” the bartender mumbled under his breath.

In the back bar mirror, Valentine saw Roxanne making a beeline toward him, her pretty features distorted by an ugly expression. Turning on his stool, he flipped his notes upside down on the bar.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said. “Thanks for upgrading me to a suite.”

“You're welcome,” she said through clenched teeth. “I hope you didn't find any unexpected girls in the room.”

Valentine blanched, remembering his comment to Wily.

“He's used the line all over the casino,” she said, seething.

“I'll kill him.”

“Get in line.”

She started to leave, and Valentine grabbed her arm. She resisted, but not as much as he'd expected. Was she really hurt, or just disappointed? Probably a little of both. Jumping to his feet, he said, “Roxanne, please. I'm terribly sorry. It was a stupid thing for me to say. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

She let him take her to a table and buy her a drink. Her shift had just ended, and she ordered a Bombay and tonic. The bartender served them and gave Valentine a sly wink.

“Heard from my son recently?” Valentine asked.

“He called three times this morning. I told him you didn't want to talk with him, but he kept calling back.”

“That's my boy,” Valentine said.

“You shouldn't hate him so much,” she said, jumping in where they'd left off the last time. “I mean, what's the harm of taking a few bets? Most bartenders I know do it. It's part of the business.”

Valentine didn't know what to say. Leave it to Gerry to talk out of school. He could run from his son, but he couldn't hide.

“Roxanne,” he said after a pause. “I don't want to discuss this. My son and I have been at odds for as long as I can remember. When my wife was alive, she played referee and kept things civil; now that she's gone, we can't be in the same room without going at each other's throats.”

“Are you still mad he's a bookie?”

“Of course I'm mad. He's breaking the law. He's been breaking the law most of his life. And I gave him the dough to open the bar. He—” Valentine bit his tongue. “I just want to give him time to think about it.”

“So you won't talk to him.”

“That's right. I won't talk to him. But I do need to talk to you.”

Roxanne brightened. “You do?”

“The hotel has hired me to conduct a little investigation.”

“You a dick?”

“Ex-cop. I run a consulting business.”

The news seemed to relax her. Taking a swallow of her drink she said, “No kidding. Wily said your company was called Grift Sense. What does that mean?”

“It's an old gambling expression,” he explained. “A grifter was a cross-roader, a hustler. Having grift sense was the highest compliment a hustler could pay another hustler. It meant that you not only knew how to do the moves, you also knew when to do them. Sometimes that's the most important thing.”

“And you have that.”

“I can feel when a hustle's going down, even if I don't know exactly what it is.”

“Grift sense.”

“Right. Anyway, I need to talk to you about Frank Fontaine.”

“Okay.”

As Valentine fiddled with his pen, she said, “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

He raised an expectant eyebrow.

“My old man was a cop,” she explained.

There was a lot more to Roxanne than met the eye. She was working on her MBA at UNLV's night school while holding down two part-time jobs, her days split between managing the front desk and balancing the hotel books. She was a savvy young woman with a boatload of ambition, and Valentine found himself liking her more than he probably should.

Early on, Roxanne had recognized the threat Fontaine posed to the Acropolis. A player who never lost could quickly put the casino out of business. She had been working the front desk the morning of Fontaine's third visit and remembered the encounter in vivid detail.

“Frank Fontaine may be the greatest blackjack player who's ever lived,” she said, working on her second drink, “but when it comes to having class, he was a mutt trying to act like a poodle. My father always said, ‘You want to see if a guy has class, look at his shoes. No polish, no class.' Fontaine didn't polish his shoes.”

Valentine scribbled furiously. “What kind of shoes?”

“They looked like Ferragamos.”

“Anything else?”

“His vision isn't very good.”

“How could you tell?”

“He popped a contact lens and came up to the desk begging for some drops so he could put it back in. When he brought his hand to his face to put the lens in, he nearly poked his eye out.”

He added
far-sighted
to his list of notes. He already had enough information to run another check on his database. Ten to one, it was someone they all knew.

“Did you get a good look at his eye?”

“Yeah. It was the same color as the contact.”

Good girl. “Anything else?”

“No, I think that's it.”

He put his pen away. The bartender brought another round without being asked. The guy was beginning to grow on him. Valentine drank the water in one long swallow. There was something about the desert heat that made his thirst unquenchable.

“You sure know how to pack them away,” Roxanne said, wiping her lips with a frilly cocktail napkin.

“It's water,” he said.

She took the glass out of his hand.

“Well, excuse me,” she said, licking her finger. “It is water. You don't look like the type.”

“And what type is that?”

“People who drink water are either alcoholics or Mormons.”

Every interview came with a price. This one was getting a little costly, so he said, “There's a third category you're forgetting. It's called children of alcoholics. My father was a rummy. I saw what it did to my mother.”

“So you don't drink.”

“That's right,” he said. “End of story.”

“Hey. Sorry if I stepped out of bounds.”

“Don't mention it.”

He walked her out to her car. The employees parked in a giant macadam lot behind the casino, their cars baking in the desert inferno. Roxanne wrapped her hand in a handkerchief before daring to touch the handle of her gleaming white Grand Prix.

“Well,” she said, “I guess this is good-bye. I'm sorry for butting into your personal life. But your son just seems like a nice kid.”

“Sometimes he is a nice kid.”

“Then why all the hostility?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I spent my life putting people like him behind bars.”

“Oh. Well, I'm sure you'll settle things one day. I can't have kids, so I tend to mother people. I know it's a pain, but that's just me. See you.”

Her lips pecked his cheek and then she slid behind the wheel of her car. Valentine stepped back as she fired up the engine. Being childless was no fun, especially when you wanted them. Had he known her a little better, he would have told Roxanne about the two-year struggle he and Lois had gone through to conceive his beloved Gerry.

The midday sun jumped out from behind the clouds, so he shielded his eyes with his hand to get a good look at Roxanne's license plate as she drove away. She seemed to be a wonderful woman, but who really knew these days? Taking out his pen, he jotted the license plate number down on the palm of his hand, then went back inside before he passed out from the heat.

His suite had been cleaned, and Valentine lay down on the circular bed and shut his eyes. Jet lag had suddenly caught up with him—he was dog-tired. He swam around in the sheets for a while, struggling to get comfortable.

It didn't work, his brain overloaded with all the things he'd learned that morning. The enigma of Frank Fontaine was slowly unraveling, one piece at a time. Opening his eyes, he stared at his reflection in the mirrored ceiling. He was a large man, a shade over six-one, yet he looked puny in comparison to the bed. Lifting his head, he noticed how inordinately large
everything
was in his suite. Big bed, big bathroom, big murals on the walls, big brass knobs on the doors, a big concrete balcony off the living room. It reminded him of old Miami Beach and its expansive Jackie Gleason architecture. A real time warp.

Rising, he went to the living room and got his notebook computer from its bag and booted it up. The dining-room table had been decorated with fresh-cut flowers and a bowl of fruit. He parked himself at its head and went to work.

During his twenty years working the casinos in Atlantic City, he had kept a profile of every hustler he'd ever come into contact with, jotting down their patterns, habits, vices, and idiosyncracies. A hustler might change his appearance, he reasoned, but he could never change who he was.

By the time he'd retired, he had amassed profiles of over five thousand hustlers, enough to fill up the hard drive on his ancient PC. The same information easily fit onto a Compaq notebook PC, which now accompanied him on every out-of-town job. The profiles, which he collectively referred to as the Creep File, were actually part of a program created by Gerry's first wife, a lovely computer expert named Lucille. Lucille had modeled Creep File after software called ACT, which was a basic database management program.

Booting up Creep File, Valentine hit Search and a blank profile filled the screen. Reading from his notes, he typed in what he'd learned about Frank Fontaine.

Name: Fontaine, Frank

Sex: Male

Height: 5'7”–5'10”

Weight: 150–160

Age: 40–45

Heritage: Italian

Hair color: black, weave

Facial hair: none

Identifying marks/tattoos: none observed

Disguises: none observed

Right- or left-handed: right

Smoke: expensive cigars, cigarettes

Drink: club soda

Nervous habits: none observed

Dress: designer, expensive

Attitude: cool, relaxed

Game(s) played: blackjack

Is dealer involved in scam? yes

Are other players involved? none observed

Player's betting habits: erratic

Range of player's bets: $100.00–$1,000.00

Does player conform to basic rules of game being played? no

How is player cheating (list all possible methods)? NA

Other known information: far-sighted; likes basketball

Done, Valentine hit the Enter button. Creep File would now take Fontaine's profile and compare it against every hustler in the database. Those who matched Fontaine's description in four or more categories would be pulled up in a separate file.

Within seconds, the program was done. Valentine scrolled through the matches and counted forty-eight profiles. Fontaine was finally going to get his mask ripped off. It was about time, for Valentine had come to the realization that if he didn't make this guy, he would never get to the bottom of what was going on here.

For the next hour, he read each profile while sipping on a Diet Coke. Thirty-six of the hustlers were serving time or deceased. Of the remaining twelve, he omitted nine because of age and one who'd had a sex change. That left two hustlers: Johnny Lonn and Frank “Bones” Garcia. Valentine knew each man well.

He jumped back and forth between their profiles, which included mug shots from recent arrests. Johnny and Bones were both Italian, were both world-class card counters, and they bore strong physical resemblances to Fontaine. Each man had also run with a gang and knew the ins and outs of orchestrating a major rip-off.

But with each man, there was a problem. In 1993, Johnny had lost his right thumb in a freak car accident; Bones had recently contracted a rare skin condition that had rendered him completely hairless. Neither man could be Fontaine. His hand slapped the dining-room table in frustration.

Pushing his chair back, Valentine went to the suite's picture window and stared down. Like an ugly woman without any makeup, the Strip was all warts and moles in the harsh daylight, and he watched a line of traffic slither snakelike past the hotel. Fontaine's cocky play was his calling card, and Valentine felt certain that he belonged to that elite club responsible not only for ruining casinos but also for fixing major sporting events, even bankrupting a small country or two. Fontaine was somebody special and had gone to a lot of trouble to keep his identity secret.

Calling room service, Valentine ordered a hamburger and a bucket of ice, then sat back down at the dining-room table. The computer had gone to sleep, and he impatiently tapped the Shift key with his finger. Finally, the screen lit up and he scrolled to page one of Creep File.