Sucker Bet (6 page)

8

It was Running Bear who finally came to Valentine’s rescue.

The chief sauntered out the back door with a cigarette dangling from his lips. Seeing Valentine’s predicament, he charged the alligators lurking around the Honda. For a big guy, he was surprisingly quick, and he grabbed each gator by the tail, dragged it across the lot, and tossed it into the swamp. It was impressive to watch, and Valentine found himself admiring the chief’s technique. He’d seen signs for alligator wrestling shows inside the reservation and had assumed it was a hokey stunt, the animals drugged or without teeth.

Done, Running Bear wiped his palms on his blue jeans. Valentine pointed straight down. “You missed one.”

Running Bear peeked through the open driver’s window. The gator inside nearly bit his head off. The chief staggered backwards, twisting his leg. The gator wiggled through the window and went after him.

Running Bear danced around the gator, then jumped on the animal’s back and started to really wrestle. This gator was a lot more aggressive, and soon the chief was gasping for breath. The gator was also getting tired, and its tail no longer banged the ground. Valentine climbed off the roof of the car.

“May I?”

The chief gave him a puzzled look. “May you what?”

“Cut in.”

The chief had his arms wrapped around the gator’s stomach and was holding the animal vertical to the pavement. “He’s still got a lot of fight left in him,” he grunted.

“So do I,” Valentine said.

They switched places, with Valentine doing the holding. He gently loosened his grip, and the gator started to twist furiously. Using his hips, he body-slammed the animal headfirst to the pavement. The gator stopped twisting and did not move.

“Shit,” Running Bear said. “You wrestle?”

“Judo.”

“Damn good.”

“Thanks. You mind my asking you a question?”

“Not at all.”

“Are all the surveillance cameras in this parking lot broken?”

“Broken?” the chief said. “Why do you think they’re broken?”

“Because someone stuffed an alligator in the trunk of my car and your surveillance people didn’t do anything about it.”

Running Bear took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his shirt pocket and stuck one in his mouth. Sweat was pouring off his face like he’d just stepped out of a shower. He offered one to Valentine. When it was declined, he lit up and filled his lungs with smoke.

“My boys did this, huh,” he said, blowing a giant plume.

“That’s right. Probably watching us right now.”

Running Bear shot him a glance. “Smooth Stone, you think?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Why?”

“You tell me.”

Running Bear inhaled deeply and expanded his chest. The gator had awakened, and they watched it disappear in the saw grass and then heard its splash as it entered the water. Running Bear said, “I guess you’re not taking the job, huh?”

Valentine nearly said yes, then realized he’d have to return the videotape of Jack Lightfoot, something he had no intention of doing.

“No, I am,” he said.

Running Bear looked at him. “You still want to work for us?”

“I need the money,” he said.

He got into his car. The seat was covered in reptilian slime. Running Bear stuck his face in the open window.

“I’ll deal with Smooth Stone,” the chief said.

Valentine understood. Running Bear didn’t want him calling the Broward police, who would come onto the reservation if he filed a complaint.

“You do that,” he said.

Valentine decided to stay on Miami Beach, the architecture a real time warp for someone of his generation, and was halfway there when he realized he didn’t like the way he was feeling. His heart was beating a hundred miles an hour and the opposing traffic was passing by faster than normal. With his cell phone he found the nearest hospital, and walked into its emergency room and was sitting on a doctor’s table fifteen minutes later. The doctor was a woman, her manner cool and detached.

“Not a heart attack or a stroke,” she informed him when she was done.

He felt himself relax. “Great.”

She wrote something on her clipboard. “Everything is fine except your heart rate. Do you mind telling me what you were doing that got you so worked up?”

“Wrestling alligators.”

“Seriously,” she said.

He showed her the palms of his hands. He’d lost a lot of skin.

“Did you get lost in the swamps?” she asked.

“The gator was in my car,” he said.

The doctor excused herself. Valentine went to the door and peeked outside. At the hallway’s end, she stood talking to another doctor. Florida had a law called the Baker Act, where people acting strangely could be locked up even if they hadn’t broken any laws. Tossing his clothes on, he got out of the emergency room as fast as he could.

Checking into the Fontainebleau hotel, he got a room facing the ocean.

Growing up, he’d known guys who’d bussed tables in Atlantic City in the summer, then went south in the winter to work the Fontainebleau. It had been the only real hotel on Miami Beach, the others simply there to handle the overflow.

He got pretzels from the minibar and went onto the balcony. The beach looked wider than he last remembered, and clusters of mature palm trees surrounded the octopus-shaped swimming pool. Otherwise, the place was still the same.

He was sitting on the bed tugging off his shoes when he remembered Mabel. He’d been talking to her on his cell phone when the gator had nearly taken his arm off, and he’d forgotten to call her back. He picked up the phone on the night table and dialed her number.

“Oh, Tony,” she exclaimed. “I was so worried.”

“A thousand apologies,” he said. Then he told her everything that had happened.

“Thank goodness you’re all right,” she said when he was done.

He felt like a heel. Mabel had done more good things for him in the past year than anyone on the planet. So why didn’t he treat her with more respect? Losing his wife had hardened his heart; he knew that for a fact. But had it also hardened his soul?

9

Candy Hart had never known love.

It was true. There had been a football player in high school who’d broken her heart, but they’d spent most of their time in the backseat of his car, humping like bunnies. Only fifteen, and already a member of what her Bible-thumping mother called the Itchy Ovary Club. Brad, or was it Burt? She’d known quite a few after him. There was no doubt about it. Candy liked boys.

But none that she’d ever loved with her heart. She’d gone looking plenty of times—in bars, gyms, even in church—and always come back with the bucket half full. It was another of her mother’s cockamamie expressions.

At twenty, she had married a carpet salesman named Claude, then run off to Las Vegas when he started beating her. Needing a place to stay, she’d let a slick casino boss talk her into sleeping with a high roller for five hundred bucks. It hadn’t seemed like work, and when the casino boss had called a few days later, she’d agreed to do it again.

She knew it was whoring, but she also set rules for herself. No more than one trick a night. No drugs. And she kept a day job, teaching aerobics at a gym. Her hooker friends thought she was crazy, but Candy knew better.

She’d gone to work for an escort service, then quit after two girls got their throats slit. Scared, she’d called the casino boss who’d gotten her started, and started working exclusively for his hotel.

The casino boss had a cool system. Before he’d send Candy to a room, he did a background check on his computer, making sure her dates were upright citizens when they weren’t in Vegas. It made the work easier, and she probably would have hung around if she hadn’t let a high roller sweet-talk her into staying longer than the usual one hour. Champagne had followed, and room service. It had been heaven.

The next day, the casino boss had called Candy to his office. His name was Marvin, and he had a face like a bedpan. Candy stood in front of his desk flanked by a pair of security guards.

“Six hours?” he said angrily.

“He fell in love.”

“You’re not supposed to let that happen.”

Candy shrugged. “Tell him that.”

“That guy took me for two hundred and fifty grand yesterday. I want him on the tables, giving me my money back, not upstairs doing the horizontal bop until he passes out.”

“You want me punching a time clock?”

“I pay you by the hour, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So that’s what I want. An hour. Get it?”

Candy had stiffened. Last night’s Romeo had given her his card and asked her to dinner. Guys had offered this before. Although she’d never accepted, she’d always looked at it as another out. And now Marvin was telling her to forget it. No more dreams.

She was a whore, good for an hour, nothing more.

She hated how it rhymed.

And how it made her feel.

Then she’d done something really stupid. Picking up an ashtray, she’d flipped it across the room like a Frisbee. It had crashed into the floor-to-ceiling window behind Marvin’s desk, the glass coming down in a thousand pieces, the desert sand blowing through the open space.

“Fuck you,” she’d added for good measure.

And for that, she’d gotten run out of Las Vegas.

South Beach had seemed a natural place to relocate. Great weather, funky people, and lots of tourists with money. Renting a condo two blocks from the ocean, she worked the hotels at night. The concierges were easy to deal with and took a flat 20 percent. During the day, she taught aerobics to plump Cuban women in Coral Gables, and every other weekend went snorkeling in the Keys. It was as normal as life got, and she’d been happy.

Then she’d met Rico.

A concierge had set them up. She’d gone to his room at the Eden Roc and found him sitting on the balcony, wearing black silk pants and a cream-colored sports jacket. A handsome guy, for a hood. He’d pointed to the empty chair across from his. As she’d sat down, he’d handed her an envelope.

“That’s for talking with me,” he’d said.

She counted ten hundred-dollar bills.

“So talk,” she said.

Rico had a mouth that never quit. He explained how he was a professional con man and needed her to help butter up a sucker. It would require Candy seeing the guy for a week or more. Rico was willing to pay her daily rate, plus expenses. There was only one hitch.

“What’s that?” she’d said.

“You can’t fall for him.”

“You got it backwards,” she’d said. “They fall for me.”

“He’s famous,” Rico explained.

“Right.”

“Nigel Moon.”

Candy had nearly laughed. Fall for one of the world’s biggest assholes? She’d seen pictures in
People
magazine of Moon dropping his shorts. All the money in the world couldn’t erase that kind of ugly.

“Give me a break,” she said.

“He’s got a lot of dough.”

Nigel Moon was no richer than plenty of guys she’d done in Las Vegas, and she hadn’t fallen for any of them. Her body might be for rent, but her soul wasn’t.

“I don’t care.”

Rico had smiled. “That’s my girl.”

So that was the deal. Candy had been okay with it, until something strange had happened.

After the Davie carnival, they’d gone to Nigel’s bungalow at the Delano on South Beach and burned up the sheets. Candy had clutched a stuffed panda the whole time Nigel had screwed her. Then Nigel had ordered room service.

The hotel had a killer restaurant, and they drank champagne and ate lobsters in their bathrobes, the stereo playing a Joshua Redman CD, the music on loud because Nigel’s eardrums were shot from his drumming days. Normally, Candy hated loud music, but tonight she hadn’t minded, the notes flowing over their overheated bodies like a siren’s song.

Still in their robes, they’d ventured outside. The moon hung a few fingers above the horizon, looking ten times its normal size. A hundred yards away, guests ate on the patio. They walked to the edge of the property, away from the noise. Not many stars were visible, and Candy had to search until she found a constellation whose name she knew.

“There,” she’d said, pointing.

“Where?” Moon said, straining to see.

“Over there.”

“Okay,” he’d said after a few moments. “I see it.”

“Know which one it is?”

“No.”

“The Little Dipper,” she said.

“Let’s not get personal.”

“Huh?” she said.

Turning, he parted his bathrobe and exposed his round English belly and the fleshy little ornament that hung beneath it. Candy had shrieked with laughter.

And that was when the strange thing had happened. Nigel’s dick was small, but so were most guys’ dicks. Only, most guys lied about their dicks. Yet here was Nigel, telling her he didn’t care if
she
didn’t care. Making a joke out of his little dick.

Only, it wasn’t a joke to Candy. Her whole life, she’d been looking for a guy who would come clean with her. It didn’t matter if he was fat or bald or had a little dick, just so long as he was honest about it. All she was asking for was an honest, down-to-earth guy. What her mother had called the full bucket.

And she’d found the full bucket in Nigel Moon.

10

“You were telling me about Jacques when we got interrupted,” Valentine said to Mabel the next morning, trying to get back on track. It was eight-thirty, and his neighbor was at his office, manning the phones.

“He called yesterday in a tizzy,” Mabel said. “He checked the employee lockers like you suggested, only he didn’t find any of those tools you told him to look for. No sandpaper or drills or fast-drying cement. He thinks you were wrong about one of his employees doctoring the dice on his craps tables.”

He’d ordered room service, and a piece of toast hit the plate. “Is that what Jacques told you, that I was wrong? Why that stupid horse’s ass—”

“Tony! That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“All right, he’s not stupid.”

“
Tony!”

“His casino is bleeding money, and he’s got the chutzpah to tell you I’m wrong.”

“He’s just frustrated.”

“Call him back, and have him inventory everything in those lockers. One of his employees is doctoring those dice. And I’m going to find out how.”

“You’re sure about this,” she said.

“One hundred percent sure. And you can tell Jacques that if I’m wrong, I’ll give him his money back.”

His neighbor fell silent. Valentine picked up the toast and bit into it. The end was burned and tasted like soot. He ate it anyway.

“Will you really give him all the money back if you’re wrong?”

“
I’m not wrong
. One of his employees is doctoring the dice. That’s why his casino lost a half-million bucks.”

“Couldn’t a player have gotten lucky? It happens, you know.”

Had anyone else said that, Valentine would have laughed into the phone. Once in Atlantic City, a computer geek had gotten arrested for scamming a keno game by using a software program to predict the winning numbers. As he was handcuffed, the geek had asked the arresting officer a question. “How did you know I was cheating?”

“Easy,” the officer replied. “No one’s ever won the Keno jackpot before.”

Sometimes players got lucky, and sometimes people got hit by lightning. Not coincidentally, the odds of the two events happening were about the same.

After saying good-bye to his neighbor, Valentine called Bill Higgins.

As director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Bill ran the most powerful gaming enforcement agency in the country. His team of four hundred agents monitored every Nevada casino and gaming establishment. Bill’s voice mail picked up, and Valentine remembered that it was three hours earlier on the West Coast, and left a short message.

He decided to go downstairs and take a walk. On his way out, he glanced at the surveillance tape of Jack Lightfoot lying on the chair. It had been bugging him that Lightfoot had helped a player win eighty-four hands in a row. No one was that good.

He skipped the walk and watched Lightfoot on the room’s VCR. He was a skinny Indian in his late twenties who handled the cards well. At his table sat an old hippie with a pretty redhead hanging on his arm. Lightfoot dealt the round. The hippie played seven hands and won all seven.

“Huh,” Valentine said.

Lightfoot dealt another round. The hippie won every hand. Then he did it
ten more times.
The ten-dollar limit did not diminish the enormity of the feat, and a crowd gathered, clapping and cheering. The redhead acted like she was going to screw the hippie on the table—there was that much electricity in the room.

Valentine grabbed a Diet Coke from the minibar, a six-ounce bottle for three bucks. His one great addiction was Diet Coke. He rewound the tape and watched it from the beginning. By the time it was over, his drink was gone, and he was scratching his head.

Jack Lightfoot had him stumped.

The Fontainebleau had a fancy gift shop in the promenade. Valentine placed two
I Love Miami
decks of playing cards on the counter. A female cashier with a layer-cake haircut rang up the sale.

“Fifteen dollars and ninety-eight cents, please.”

“How much are they?”

“Seven-fifty apiece, plus tax.”

“That’s highway robbery,” he said.

She stuck a hand on her hip. “So just buy one.”

“But I need two.”

“Fifteen dollars and ninety-eight cents,
please.
”

He was fuming when he got back to his room. He hated getting ripped off, especially in a joint as pricey as this. Why not just have a giant at the front door who picked you up by the ankles and shook until your money fell out of your pockets?

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he turned on the TV. Lightfoot’s face filled the screen. He had seen plenty of blackjack cheats over the years, and none were capable of dealing eighty-four winning hands in a row. The random order of a shuffled deck of cards simply didn’t allow it. Which meant Lightfoot was using a cooler.

Two-deck coolers were hard to bring into a game, but it happened. Most likely, a confederate wearing an arm sling had sat down at Jack’s table. The confederate had switched the casino’s cards for the cooler residing in his sling. To shade the move, a third member of the gang had “turned” the pit boss by asking him a question.

For the cooler to work, Lightfoot needed to false shuffle. Mechanics used one of three false shuffles to get the money: the push-through, strip-out, and Zarrow. Each created a convincing illusion of the cards being mixed. But each also had a tell that a trained eye could detect.

Staring at the TV, Valentine mimicked Lightfoot’s shuffling with the cards he’d bought in the gift shop.

Lightfoot’s shuffles were slow and deliberate, the way they taught in dealer’s school. After a few minutes, it became apparent that when he telescoped the cards together, they were being honestly mixed. Which meant Valentine still didn’t know what Lightfoot was doing. And had wasted fifteen dollars and ninety-eight cents.

He killed the TV. The screen faded to black, a tiny white dot pulsating in its center. The elbow he’d used to crack the alligator had started to throb. He’d dreamed about that alligator last night and had a feeling he’d dream about him again. A real keeper.

The phone on the night table rang. He let voice mail pick up, then retrieved his message. It was Bill Higgins.

“Did you find Jack Lightfoot?” Bill asked when he called back.

“No,” Valentine said.

“Any idea where he went?”

Valentine hesitated. Pieces to this puzzle were missing, and he felt certain Bill was holding a couple of them. “I think he ran.”

“From what?”

“Jack Lightfoot was cheating the Micanopys at blackjack.”

Bill breathed heavily into the phone. “You’re sure about this.”

“Positive.”

Valentine’s leg had fallen asleep from sitting on the floor. Standing, he jerked open the sliding glass door and went onto the balcony. The sun was spitting a thousand flecks of gold off the ocean. He stretched and felt the feeling return to his leg.

“Did the Micanopys let you talk to any of his friends?” Bill asked.

“I’m not a cop anymore, Bill.”

A prop plane passed over the hotel, and Valentine clapped his hand over his cell phone. Tied to the plane’s tail was a red and white banner:
CLUB HEDO—SOUTH BEACH’S PREMIER MEN’S CLUB
. When the plane was gone, he took his hand away.

“You’re sure he was cheating,” Bill said.

Valentine heard a loud racket on Bill’s end. It sounded like someone vacuuming the carpet. Then the noise disappeared.

Going to the edge of the balcony, he leaned over the railing. The prop plane had passed the last hotel on the beach and was heading toward Key Biscayne. He sucked in his breath, the deception hitting him like a punch in the stomach.

Bill was on Miami Beach.