Sucker Bet (4 page)

4

Valentine ate lunch, then called Smooth Stone and took the job. Smooth Stone sounded relieved. He explained to Valentine how a blackjack dealer named Jack Lightfoot had rigged a game and dealt a player eighty-four winning hands in a row. Smooth Stone wasn’t above admitting that he had no idea what had gone down.

“What was he trying to do, get into the
Guinness Book of World Records
?”

“It was damn stupid,” Smooth Stone said.

“How much did he take you for?”

“Eight hundred and forty dollars. We have a ten-dollar limit on blackjack.”

“You have problems with this Lightfoot character before?”

“No, but he’s new.”

Valentine found none of this surprising. Indian hustlers had been popping up all over the country. Because Indian casinos were not regulated by government agencies, many of these dealers were exceedingly bold. Valentine had heard plenty of stories, but dealing eighty-four winning hands was a record. The Micanopys needed to address it before another dealer “in the know” tried to rip them off again. He got instructions to the reservation, then set a time to meet Smooth Stone. They agreed on seven that night.

Taking his suitcase to his car, Valentine remembered something. Florida law limited the Micanopys to running Class II games, like bingo and slot machines. Table games like blackjack were forbidden, which meant the Micanopys were breaking the law.

Again.

Eight weeks earlier, Florida’s baby-faced governor had sent shotgun-toting federal agents onto the Micanopy reservation with orders to remove a hundred video poker machines. While not a table game, video poker fell into a gray area in terms of classification.
“Video poker must go!”
the governor had declared from the steps of his mansion in Tallahassee.

Eventually, the Micanopys won out, and the federal agents left. Like every other Indian tribe, the Micanopys were a sovereign nation. The governor had violated that sovereignty, and Valentine guessed that had spurred the Micanopys to put in blackjack tables, just to rub his face in it.

He went to Mabel’s house to say good-bye. When she wasn’t working for him, his neighbor wrote inspired classifieds for the local papers. He found her composing on her front porch and pulled up a chair. She handed him her notepad.

“It’s going to run in the Help Wanted section,” she said.

Taking out his bifocals, Valentine read the meticulously printed page.

Adult Enhancement Center seeks hostesses to model, massage, and wear Victoria’s Secret undergarments. Must be familiar with all aspects of Kama-sutra. English not required. Hours as flexible as you are. Fax résumé and pictures to (727) 981-1405.

“Whose fax number?”

“The police department’s,” she said. “I figured I’m doing them a favor.”

“Mabel, you can’t do that.”

“This town is filled with sleaze, Tony. Strip joints, lap dances, massage parlors, hookers trolling on Alternate 19, warming their cans in every hotel bar. It’s disgusting.”

“You still can’t print the police department’s fax number.”

“Spoilsport.”

“By the way, I took the job with the Micanopys.”

She hesitated. “I guess you didn’t hear from Kat.”

“No.”

Together, they walked down her front path. If his situation had one silver lining, it was that Mabel had shown little resentment toward his romance with Kat. She’d stuck by him, and now that his head had started to clear, he realized how difficult it must have been for her to watch him behave so foolishly. He kissed his neighbor on the cheek, then walked back to his house and climbed into his Honda.

He crossed the Sunshine Skyway forty minutes later, the ocean shimmering like a sea of brand-new coins. Interstate 275 took him to 75, and he headed south and put his foot to the floor. If there was one thing he liked about the folks on Florida’s west coast, it was the speed at which they drove, and he did eighty for the next hundred miles.

In Fort Myers he got off and filled the tank. Buying a bottled water, he got behind the wheel and powered up his cell phone. A blinking light indicated the phone’s battery was nearly dead. He considered cell phones one of the greatest intrusions in recent memory, and he thought how wonderful it would be to toss it out the window. A great idea, only it wasn’t practical. In the casino business, the store never closed. If he wanted his consulting to stay alive, he needed to be able to retrieve messages. He plugged the phone’s jack into his cigarette lighter, and the tiny green light came on.

A half hour later, he was sitting in line at a toll booth, waiting to get on Alligator Alley. The Alley bisected the lower half of the Everglades and was one of the last pristine roads in Florida. No strip centers or rows of ugly tract houses; just one rest stop and a gas station for eighty miles. Paying the toll, he slipped a collection of Sinatra’s greatest hits into his tape deck and turned on the cruise control.

Singing a duet with Old Blue Eyes, he spotted a tour bus parked on the grassy shoulder and pulled over.

A group of Asians was huddled up to a chain-link fence. He got out and joined them. Down in the swamp, an alligator covered in duckweed was sunning itself. He’d read that Florida was one of the few places in North America where dinosaurs had flourished, and he guessed that alligators were the leftovers.

A tourist said something. Valentine turned, thinking the man wanted him to snap a picture. The man pointed at his car. His cell phone was ringing. Getting in, Valentine looked at the phone’s face. It was Bill Higgins, the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

“Hey, Bill,” he said.

“Did you get my message?”

“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t call you back, but I’ve been in a bad way.”

“That’s what the lady who answers your phone said. Feeling any better?”

“A little,” Valentine admitted.

“Remember those roulette cheats you helped me bust? They were convicted this morning. They got three years, counting the time they’ve already done. And they have to give the money back.”

“Nice going.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you.”

It had been one of Valentine’s better busts. The cheaters, all Venice Beach bodybuilders, had come up with a unique scam. By pressing on the railing of the table on which the roulette wheel sat, they had used their combined strength to bend the table and cause the wheel to become biased. The bodybuilders’ girlfriends had then bet a particular group of numbers, called a chevron, and taken the casino for a ride during several visits. Higgins had been unable to make the scam, and had flown Valentine in. He had nailed them by discreetly placing a carpenter’s level on the table just as they had started to do their thing.

“I need your help,” Higgins said.

“Something wrong?”

“There sure is,” his friend said.

Valentine drove to a rest stop and parked his car. Inside, he purchased a soda from a vending machine. Sitting on a picnic bench in the shade, he called Higgins back.

“I’m in a real bind,” Higgins said. “A blackjack dealer I recommended for a job at the Micanopy Indian reservation casino has disappeared. I’ve known this kid a long time, and I’m worried about him.”

“And you’d like me to pop down there and see what I can do,” Valentine said.

“I sure would.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack Lightfoot.”

Valentine felt the cold from his drink shoot straight into his head. Harry Smooth Stone hadn’t mentioned that Jack Lightfoot was missing. Normally, casinos didn’t like it when their personnel went AWOL, and got downright panicky when their dealers started disappearing. Yet Smooth Stone had said nothing.

“You say you know this kid?”

“That’s right.”

“He involved in anything? You know, like drugs.”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“What are the people at the casino saying?”

“Head of security is a guy named Harry Smooth Stone. The Micanopys aren’t the most communicative bunch. Harry isn’t saying much of anything.”

Valentine finished his drink and tossed it into a trash receptacle. Jack Lightfoot didn’t sound like the kind of kid who would become a cheater, yet Harry Smooth Stone had said a player at Lightfoot’s table had won eighty-four hands in a row. Something wasn’t adding up. “Maybe I should pay the Micanopys a visit,” he said.

“You don’t mind?”

“For you? Never.”

Higgins thanked him. He was not prone to dramatics, and Valentine was surprised when Higgins offered to get him a comped suite at the Bellagio the next time he was in Las Vegas.

“Sounds great,” Valentine said.

5

Valentine got back on the Alley. A sign said,
MICANOPY CASINO
,
20 MILES
. He’d told Smooth Stone he’d meet him at seven. Which gave him plenty of time to sniff around the casino unobserved.

The best way to walk around a casino was as a tourist. Tourists were considered suckers by casino people and rarely aroused suspicion. Only, looking like a tourist wasn’t easy. People were always pegging him for a cop, which he supposed had something to do with his penchant for black sports jackets and thick-soled shoes. It was his persona, retired or not.

He came to the Alley’s only gas station. It contained a small convenience store, and he was soon inspecting a rack of cheap clothes. A gaudy floral shirt and floppy hat set him back fourteen bucks. He changed in a lavatory stall, then appraised himself in a mirror. He looked like a schmuck. Great.

At six he pulled into the Micanopy casino’s parking lot. The public’s appetite for losing money knew no bounds, and the lot was filled with out-of-state plates. He found a space behind the main building and killed the engine. It bothered him that he still hadn’t talked to Kat, and he powered up his cell phone and punched in her number. It rang for a while, and he was about to hang up when a man’s voice said, “Yeah?”

“This is Tony. Is Kat there?”

“Kat’s busy right now,” the voice said.

Valentine could hear Zoe yelling at her father in the background.

“When’s a good time for me to get back to her?”

“Never,” the voice said.

The line went dead, and for a long minute Valentine stared at the phone clutched in his hand.
It’s over,
he thought.
So get over it.

Parked by the casino’s entrance were six orange tour buses. Bingo junkies. It was a time killer for people who’d just about run out of time. Yet more people played bingo than all the state lotteries combined.

Inside, he was hit by a blast of arctic cold air. The casino was rectangular and high-ceilinged, with raised floors that broke up the monotony of the layout. The acoustics were unfriendly, the sounds of people gambling painfully loud. He went to the cage and bought a twenty-dollar bucket of quarters.

Casinos watched everyone who came through the front door, at least for a minute or two. Normally, people immediately started gambling or got a drink. If a person didn’t do one of those things, the folks manning the eye-in-the-sky cameras would follow them for a while. He found a slot machine and quickly lost his money.

Then he strolled over to the blackjack pit. The game was two-deck, handheld. That was rare to find in a casino that had only recently introduced blackjack. Usually, the cards were dealt from a shoe, which prevented dealer manipulation.

He studied the various dealers at the twelve tables. They were all men, and they wore loose-fitting blue jeans, denim shirts with wide cuffs, and string ties. In a casino in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, these items of clothing were forbidden. Running table games was different from operating slot machines or a bingo hall, and it was obvious the Micanopys had decided to write their own rules when it came to blackjack. The problem was, they were doing it all wrong.

He switched shirts in the parking lot, then met up with Smooth Stone outside the bingo hall. Smooth Stone was one of those rare individuals who perfectly matched his voice on the phone. Mid-fifties, gaunt, his copper face without cheer. He wore his silver hair in a ponytail, his black shirt buttoned to the neck.

“Running Bear speaks highly of you,” Smooth Stone said. “I appreciate your taking the job on such short notice.”

Valentine remembered Running Bear from a seminar he’d given in Las Vegas, the chief sitting in the first row, towering over the other casino owners. An impressive guy, tall and broad-shouldered, with a face you’d put on a statue in a park.

A commotion started inside the bingo hall. Valentine and Smooth Stone stuck their heads in. Up on the stage, Bingo Bob, the caller, was hugging a tiny woman who’d just won a hundred grand. The tiny woman was bawling, Bingo Bob was bawling, and most of the crowd was bawling. Smooth Stone said, “She plays every day. Her daughter needs a kidney transplant.”

Sometimes beautiful things happened inside casinos. Not often, but sometimes. Gamblers called it dumb luck. Valentine happened to think it was God’s way of putting money into a deserving soul’s hands, and he enjoyed being there when it happened.

“So what do you think of our casino?” Smooth Stone asked when things calmed down.

Valentine hesitated. He was going to create an enemy if he didn’t handle this right. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to answer your question with a question.”

“Okay.”

“How much did Running Bear tell you about me?”

“He said you helped nab hustlers who rob casinos.”

“That’s part of what I do.”

“What’s the other part?”

“The other part involves me finding the flaw that allowed you to get ripped off in the first place.”

Valentine liked the way his words had come out. Straightforward, yet to the point. Smooth Stone didn’t, and his face had turned an angry color.

“You’re saying we have problems?”

“Yes.”

“And this was why we got ripped off?”

Valentine lowered his voice. “This casino is not being run properly. Any smart hustler would take advantage of you. It’s like hanging out a sign.”

Smooth Stone looked away. Valentine knew little about Micanopy customs, but he did know Navajo customs through Bill Higgins, and Navajos didn’t look you in the eye when they spoke to you. Smooth Stone had been looking him in the eye, and now seemed ready to explode. “And you want to tell Running Bear,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“I could lose my job.”

“I’ll sugarcoat it.”

“Why will you do that?”

“Nobody pays me to assign the blame.”

The head of security took a deep breath. He had no choice, and he knew it.

“All right,” he said.

They walked out the back exit and across the macadam lot. The casino was a ramshackle structure, with parts tacked on as the business had grown, and in the dark it resembled a winding snake with several meals in its belly. There was a science to the architecture of casinos, a method to the madness of the moron catchers of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. There was no science to the Micanopy casino, yet it still made money.

Running Bear’s trailer looked like something you’d find on a construction site, with tacky aluminum siding and a window air conditioner. Walking up the ramp to the front door, Valentine said, “Have you talked to Jack Lightfoot recently?”

“He vanished the day before yesterday.”

“Any idea where he went?”

They stood beneath a moth-encrusted light next to the trailer door. Smooth Stone jerked the door open. “I haven’t a clue,” he said.

The interior had the unadorned clutter of a college dorm, the furniture worn and plain. Running Bear was at his desk, looking older than Valentine remembered. The chief offered his guest a chair, then something to drink.

“A soda would be great,” Valentine said.

He watched Running Bear rummage through a mini-refrigerator and wondered what he’d gotten himself into. A lot of people were losing sleep over a lousy 840 bucks. The chief placed a soda on the desk along with a plastic cup.

“Tony has some things he wants to tell us,” Smooth Stone said.

Valentine took his time pouring his drink. Being tactful had never been a strong suit. He admired the Micanopys for making good with what they had, and didn’t see any reason to hurt anyone’s feelings.

“A long time ago,” he said, “two New York doctors named Hartshorne and May conducted a study of eleven thousand school kids. The goal was to find a way to measure the kids’ honesty. They came to a lot of interesting conclusions. There are two you should be aware of. The first was that eighty percent of the kids tried to cheat at least once. That’s a high number, but they swore by it. The second was
why
.

“Hartshorne and May said that whether or not kids cheat depends upon the environment you put them into. If you give kids a test, then leave them alone, most will look at another kid’s answers. Which means if you let it happen, it will happen.”

Running Bear frowned. He glanced at Smooth Stone, who leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “This making any sense to you?”

The head of security nodded. “He’s saying that we’ve created a situation in which cheaters will prosper. He thinks there are more Jack Lightfoots out there. He wants us to change some procedures.”

Running Bear stared at Valentine. “More Jack Lightfoots?”

Valentine nodded.

While the chief pondered what that meant, Valentine glanced at Smooth Stone. The head of security dipped his head. Valentine guessed he was saying thanks, and dipped his head in return.

“Okay,” Running Bear said, “how do we prevent this from happening again?”

“First,” Valentine said, “make your dealers deal out of plastic shoes. Letting them handle the cards during the deal is an invitation for trouble. Second, change the way your dealers are dressed. I realize Western garb is in keeping with your casino’s theme—”

“It’s Indian garb,” Running Bear said stiffly.

“Well, it’s all wrong,” Valentine said. “Crooked dealers will create spots on their clothing to hide stolen chips. Like behind wide cuffs and down their pants. Your dealers need to start wearing cummerbunds.”

“But they look stupid,” the chief said.

“Maybe so, but they prevent theft. You ever hear of a pants sub?” Neither man had, so he explained. “The dealer takes two pairs of underwear, puts one inside the other and sews the bottoms together. Stolen chips are dropped behind the waistband and released. They’ve got nowhere to go but the pants sub. Years ago, a gang of croupiers in Nice got caught using pants subs. They’d stolen fourteen million bucks.”

Running Bear frowned. “You getting this down, Harry?”

Smooth Stone picked up a pad and pen off the desk and started scribbling. Valentine suddenly felt warm, and tugged at his collar. There no longer seemed to be enough air in the cramped trailer. Then he realized what was happening.

He was having an epiphany.

He’d been having epiphanies most of his life. Long ago, he had accepted that a part of his brain worked on its own, filtering information. And what this part was telling him was that Jack Lightfoot was dead, and Running Bear and Smooth Stone knew it. If not, they would have been out in the Everglades with bloodhounds searching for him. That was the smart thing to do. In fact, it was the only thing to do.

A man was missing. Find him.

Only, they weren’t looking. Instead, they were concentrating on trying to figure out
how
Lightfoot had cheated them.
They knew Jack Lightfoot was dead, but were they his murderers?

“So what you are saying,” Running Bear said, “is that it’s a miracle we haven’t had more cheating before now.”

Valentine blinked awake. Lois had told him he looked like a zombie when he had these episodes. Then he’d hit sixty, and people had stopped commenting about them.

“That’s right,” he said.

Running Bear opened his desk drawer and removed a videotape. Scotch-taped to it was a check. The chief’s long arm reached across the desk. “This is the surveillance video of Jack Lightfoot cheating us. We need to know what he was doing, so we can prevent it from happening again.”

Valentine slipped the video under his arm. He planned to overnight the video to Bill Higgins first thing tomorrow. Running Bear and Smooth Stone were either murderers or accomplices to murder, and he wanted nothing to do with them. Standing, he felt a bead of sweat roll down his face. He hoped the men did not see it.

“Call you in a few days,” he said.