Grift Sense (10 page)

His eyes fell on the profile of Devon Ames, a Philadelphia-based dice scooter of some renown. Valentine began to read, determined to miss nothing. Like a bloodhound, he was going to sniff Fontaine out, even if meant reading all five thousand profiles in his computer, one at a time.

10

W
hat do you mean, you're dropping charges?” Sammy Mann bellowed, his face a few inches from Pete Longo's.

“You heard me,” the chubby lieutenant replied, parking his butt on his trashed desk and firing up a Marlboro. It was Saturday afternoon, and he wanted to watch some college football; the last thing he needed to hear was this shriveled-up old hustler telling him how to run his investigation. “I'm dropping charges. If you were smart, you'd hire Nola Briggs back ASAP.”

“Are you crazy?” Sammy howled. “She ripped us off!”

“That's debatable. Look, Sammy, her defense attorney, the one and only Felix Underman, had Nola take a polygraph test a few hours ago. The man who administered the test is an ex-detective and a pal of mine. He was kind enough to messenger over a transcript of her questioning. Care to hear it?”

“I sure as hell would,” Sammy said, making the springs sag on the lumpy couch in Longo's rat-hole office. Wily, who sat on the other end, rose a few inches.

“He asked her fifty questions,” Longo said, flipping through the typed transcript. “I'll just share the juicy stuff with you gentlemen. Here's one. ‘Miss Briggs, before he walked into your casino and sat down at your table, had you ever met a gambler named Frank Fontaine before?' Answer: ‘No, it was the first time I ever saw him.'”

Longo looked up into their faces. “The polygraph says she's telling the truth. Here's some more. Question: ‘Do you know what it means to flash?' Answer: ‘Yes. It means that the dealer is illegally flashing her hole card to a player.' Question: ‘Were you flashing your hole card to Frank Fontaine when he was sitting at your table?' Answer: ‘No, I did not flash my hole card to Frank Fontaine.' Question: ‘Have you ever flashed a hole card to a player?' Answer: ‘I'm sure I have, but never intentionally.' Question: ‘Was Frank Fontaine sitting in such a manner that he would have been able to glimpse your hole card?' Answer: ‘No, he was upright. You have to drop your head on the table to glimpse a dealer's hole card. He wasn't doing that.' Question: ‘Did you signal Frank Fontaine in any fashion?' Answer: ‘No, I did not.' Question: ‘Did Frank Fontaine solicit you in any way before this incident took place?' Answer: ‘No, he did not.'”

Longo put the transcript down and gazed tiredly at his two guests. “Her answers are all reading true. I'm sorry to spoil your party, but I've got to let her walk.”

“Maybe she took speed and got her heart racing before she took the test,” Wily suggested, a worried look distorting his blunt features. “Maybe everything she's saying is actually a lie.”

Longo shook his head wearily. “The examiner took her pulse before and after the test was administered. Seventy beats a minute before, eighty-two after. That's within the normal range that the heart rate jumps when someone's strapped to a polygraph.”

“You're saying she's telling the truth,” Sammy said, his face deadpan. “You're saying we're screwed.”

“I don't know if you're screwed or not,” Longo said, glancing impatiently at his watch. “I do know that the guy who administered this test worked for Metro LVPD for eleven years and is the same guy we use when we want a second opinion. He's the best.”

“Nick's going to kill us,” Sammy said. He glanced sideways at Wily, who was nervously scratching a stain on his necktie. “He'll fire us for making him look bad. We're fucked.”

“Don't let her go, Pete,” Wily begged, standing up to plead their case before the chubby lieutenant. “If she walks, we get the blame. We'll never be able to work in Las Vegas again. I got a wife and two kids; Sammy's ready for retirement. You can't make us walk the plank.”

Longo held his palm up like he was directing traffic. “Guys, stop—you're killing me. Evidence is evidence, and you don't have any. I gotta drop the charges.”

“You can't,” Wily insisted.

“Hey,” Longo said, “you should be thanking me. And so should Nick.”

“Thanking you for what?”

“If I drop charges and get you guys to say you're sorry, Nola says she won't sue for false arrest and slander. That lets you boys off the hook.”

“She's threatening to sue us?”

“She sure is. Seems she's got a pretty good case. After all, we arrested her on the basis of evidence you gave us, and that makes Nick liable.”

“You're shitting me,” Wily said.

“No, I'm not. If she can prove that Nick had it out for her and you two were following Nick's orders . . .” Longo shook his head sadly. “I hate to think of the consequences.”

It was Sammy's turn to stand up. Every time he got together with Longo, the lieutenant made him feel two feet tall. He was always shaking them down for fight tickets and comps and an occasional suite so he could hire a college-age hooker to give him a blow job or entertain his girlfriend of the month. Whoever said gangsters no longer ran in Las Vegas had never been worked over by this lowlife two-bit mutt. It was the experience of a lifetime.

Digging into his pocket, Sammy begrudgingly extracted a Ticket Master envelope. It contained a seat for Tuesday night's Evander Holyfield heavyweight title fight at Caesars, third row center. Scalpers were getting five grand and more for seats this good. He handed it to Longo.

Longo removed the ticket and examined it. “Only one?” he asked innocently.

Wily shot Sammy a helpless glance.

“For the love of Christ,” Sammy swore under his breath. From his other pocket, he removed a second ticket and handed it over.

“You know, I've always been a big fight fan,” Longo said, slipping the two tickets into his sharkskin wallet.

“Me, too,” Wily said. “So's Sammy. Aren't you, Sammy?”

Sammy didn't say anything. They were his tickets. Now he'd have to watch the fight at home on Pay-Per-View or go to a bar with a bunch of other clowns who couldn't afford a real seat.

“What are friends for,” he said through clenched teeth. “So, are you going to help us or not?”

“I can buy you a few days,” Longo said.

Sammy jerked his head around to stare at Longo.
“A few days?”

“I should let her walk right now.”

“A few days?”

“Here's what I'll do,” Longo said. “I'm going to ask the judge who arraigned Nola to stall Underman until next week. Tomorrow's Sunday and Monday's a state holiday. That gives you three days to come back to me with hard evidence. Bring me something credible, and I'll gladly lock horns with Underman on Tuesday morning.”

Sammy ran his hand through his thinning hair, not believing what he was hearing. He'd known hoods with better manners than this sorry excuse for a law enforcement officer. Biting his tongue, he said, “We really appreciate it, Pete.”

“You da man,” Wily said apishly.

“It's been a pleasure doing business with you,” Longo said, shaking their hands at the door. “See you boys at the fight.”

“I wish I was going to the fight,” Wily said, pouting as Sammy paid three bucks to get his car out of the lot. “How about you?”

“I'll probably go to a bar or watch it on Pay-Per-View,” Sammy admitted. “I love the fights.”

“Pay-Per-View sucks,” Wily said.

“Well, you can see it on cable. They usually show it a week later.”

“Cable sucks, too. I won't watch cable.”

It was rare for Wily to have an opinion about anything. He was vanilla and proud of it. When they were on the Maryland Parkway, Sammy said, “You got something against the cable company?”

“How many times you seen the fights on cable?” Wily asked.

“I don't know. Say a thousand.”

“A thousand even?”

“No, a thousand and one. Get to the fucking point.”

“You've seen a thousand and one fights, and how many ring girls have you ever seen? Bet you can't count them on the fingers of one hand. The best-looking broads at a fight are the ring girls, and they never show them on cable.”

“And that's why cable sucks.”

“Sucks the big one,” Wily said.

Reaching beneath his seat, Sammy removed a flask of whiskey and removed the top with his teeth. He took a long pull, licking his lips when he was done.

“Why are you drinking again?” Wily asked.

“Because we're screwed.”

“You think Nick will can us?”

“He should.”

For a while they rode in silence, each man considering what that meant. For Sammy, it meant retiring to someplace cheap like Arizona or Florida where he'd spend his days hustling loose change at cards so he could afford to buy premium cigars. Wily's future was not as bleak; for him, there was always a decent-paying job at an Indian reservation casino or on a cruise ship. He'd survive, but he'd do so knowing his best days were behind him.

“Nola was in on it,” Wily said. “You agreed with me.”

“Stupid me,” Sammy said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I didn't think it through. If I'd known this broad was holding a grudge against Nick, I never would have had her arrested. I would have watched her, figured out what she was up to. The scam with Fontaine was a smoke screen; something else was going down, a big con, and we didn't see it.”

They were back at the Acropolis. Sammy lapsed into silence as he passed the busty statuary that illustrated Nick's checkered marital history. He thought about Nola driving past the fountains each day, her hatred ignited by the sculpted mountains of silicone. No wonder she had it in for the boss.

Sammy pulled his car up to the front doors and threw it into park. The casino was dead, the uniformed valet nowhere to be seen. Letting the engine idle, he said, “What the hell is Valentine doing anyway?”

“I talked to him a few hours ago,” Wily said. “He's holed up in his suite on his computer.”

“Did he make Fontaine?”

“Not yet.”

“Who put him in the suite, anyway?”

“I sure as hell didn't.”

Sammy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “What's he charging us, anyway?”

“Thousand bucks a day, plus expenses.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sammy muttered, getting out as the valet came running. “What a thief.”

Sammy found Nick alone on the catwalk, hunched over the railing, his attention consumed by the torrid action on a craps table below. Shadows danced on his face, tiny angels of light coming off a big-chested woman dripping with cubic zirconias. She was trying to make eight the hard way and kissed the dice like she was planning to make love to them if they pulled through.

“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night,” Nick said after she crapped out, “and I lie in the dark and think about all the crummy things I've done in my life. At least the ones I can remember. They gnaw at you, especially the ones that ended up being worse than you had in mind.”

“Like Nola,” Sammy said quietly.

“I swear to God I don't remember her,” Nick said, breathing heavily. “Now, with her clothes off, it might be a different story.”

Sammy was in no mood to laugh. If Nick was trying to make a confession, it certainly wasn't coming across that way.

“Anyway,” Nick went on, “Nola is a good example. Sherry said we dated for ten days. My guess is we fucked like bunnies for nine, then finally got down to talking. Maybe I did ask her to get her tits blown up; stupider things have come out of my mouth. But the truth is, I was being honest with her. I like my women a certain way. There isn't a crime against that, is there?”

“Not that I know of,” Sammy said.

“So look where my honesty got me,” Nick said, glancing briefly at Sammy before returning his attention to the tables. “I've got a real enemy in this broad.”

“You think Sherry's leveling with us?”

“She's not clever enough to make something like that up,” Nick said. “Nola definitely has it in for me.”

Sensing Nick's reflective mood, Sammy gently broke the bad news to him. “The police want to drop charges. Seems she passed a polygraph with flying colors.”

“Beautiful,” Nick said.

Nick began to take a walk. Sammy followed, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. They stopped at the blackjack pit and both men put their elbows on the railing. The tables were half full, the action light.

“I do know one thing,” Sammy said after a minute.

“Only one?” Nick said.

“It's a figure of speech.”

“I know what it is,” Nick snapped. “So what's this one thing you know?”

“I know there isn't a flaw in our security system,” Sammy replied. “Nobody can waltz in here and start robbing us without the alarms going off. No one's going to ruin you, boss.”

Down below, a dealer had busted and was paying off the table. Several players had doubled down on their bets and the two men silently added up the house's losses: over twelve hundred on the turn of a single card.

Nick said, “It won't take much. Fifty grand here, a hundred grand there. It all adds up. You hear what I'm saying?”

Sammy swallowed hard: It was the first time Nick had come out and admitted his financial shape was nothing to write home about. If the Acropolis had to shut down because of losses at the tables, he and Wily would never find work anywhere ever again.

“I won't let you down,” Sammy promised him.

Nick thumped him fondly on the back.

“Glad to hear it,” he said.

11

I
t was past nine o'clock when Valentine scrolled up the last profile in Creep File. He stared at the computer screen, his eyes aching. Outside, the neon city had come alive, and he was itching to go downstairs and take a walk, his brain fried by his notebook's little blue screen.

Staring him in the face was Chan Zing, a notorious card marker from Taiwan. Using the finely sharpened nail on his left pinky, Zing would edge-nick all the high cards in a blackjack game, allowing him to know if the dealer's hole card was high or low. Zing was a crafty guy capable of many things, but turning himself into a sweet-talking Italian was not one of them.

Valentine exited the program and shut down the notebook. This was turning into a nightmare. Frank Fontaine was hiding in his computer and he couldn't find the guy. Was old age robbing him of his powers of deduction, or was Fontaine a hell of a lot more clever than he'd originally thought?

Neither thought made him feel particularly comfortable. Rising, he stretched his legs while staring at the madcap carnival down below. Hordes of skimpily dressed tourists jammed the narrow sidewalks, giving him second thoughts about his walk. He needed some fresh air, and the Strip was probably the last place he was going to find it.

Moving into the living room, he hit the couch like a dead man and punched the remote. A black monolith rose from the floor, its doors parting as if by magic. A split-second later, CNN filled the thirty-six inch screen. It was just the balm he needed.

It was a slow news day. He watched the sports ticker on the bottom of the screen. The Devil Rays had clobbered the Bronx Bombers, with Boggs picking up five ribbies. Oh, to have been in the stands, watching Gerry eat crow each time a Devil Rays player crossed home plate. His son was not a good loser and would have taken the Yankees' loss to an expansion team particularly hard.

The phone rang for a while, then went silent. Moments later, the message light started blinking. He dialed into the hotel's voice mail and retrieved the call.

“Wily here. Just wanted to see if you hit pay dirt. I'm working the floor. You know, I was thinking about Fontaine—” A commotion erupted on the casino floor. “Gotta run,” Wily said excitedly.

Valentine replayed the message. The commotion sounded like a big payout at roulette. Every game attracted different players who made different sounds when the action got hot. He'd always assumed it was something tribal that dated back to the beginning of time. His own tribe, he'd assumed, were the guys who'd sat around the campfire drinking coffee and talking. He listened to the crowd erupt a second time. Definitely roulette.

He called down to the floor and paged Wily.

“You make him?” Wily asked breathlessly when he came on.

“Still digging,” Valentine replied. “So what were you thinking about Fontaine?”

“I don't know. Maybe it's nothing.”

“Try me.”

“I was thinking about his play.”

“And?”

“It was like . . . well, like he was toying with us.”

“How so?” Valentine said.

“I mean, it wasn't even competitive,” Wily said. “He had us beat the moment he walked in. You know what I'm saying? And he wasn't sneaky about it. At one point, he actually laughed at us.”

Valentine gripped the receiver, feelings its cold plastic freeze into his palm. Only one hustler he had ever known had laughed while ripping the house off. Only one.

“You're kidding me,” Valentine said.

“Not at all,” Wily said. “It was how Sammy made him.”

“Sammy made his laugh?”

“Yeah. Said the moment he heard it he knew it was someone from his past.” In the background, a craps table was going wild. “Gotta run. Call me if you come up with anything.”

Valentine killed the power on the phone. Out of the mouths of babes and idiot pit bosses come the most amazing things. It didn't make sense, yet at the same time, it made all the sense in the world. World-class hustlers didn't just appear out of nowhere. They plied their trade for years before attempting to rip off a casino. Frank Fontaine had been around a long time.

Taking out his wallet, Valentine dug out the threatening note he'd received the day before and reread it. Hustlers had threatened him over the years, but only one had actually tried to kill him. And for good reason: because
Valentine
had wanted to kill
him.
And that adversary had possessed a laugh as wicked as the Devil himself.

Of course Sammy Mann thought he knew Frank Fontaine. Everyone in the gambling world knew him.

Only there was one problem.

He was dead.

Valentine thought about it some more, then dialed the front desk. Roxanne picked up.

“Don't you ever go home?” he asked.

“I wish,” she replied. “Three of my coworkers got the flu. I'm working double shifts until they come back.”

“Poor you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Poor me.”

“Has my son called recently?” he inquired.

“Only about ten times,” she said.

“Did he leave a number?”

Roxanne hesitated, clearly startled. “No. Why?”

“I don't know. I was thinking about what you said.”

“You were?” Another pause. Then, “I mean, that's great.”

Valentine laughed silently. He was getting an inordinate amount of pleasure out of baiting this young lady. As to where he planned to take this, he had no idea, but the ride was certainly fun. He said, “Well, I'm sure I can track him down. Take care.”

“You, too,” she said.

His next call was to Mabel. It was three hours later on the East Coast, which made it dinnertime. Because his neighbor was a passionate cook, he assumed Gerry had weaseled an invitation and now sat at Mabel's dining-room table with a napkin shoved down his collar, utensils in hand, drooling as he eagerly awaited Mabel's next culinary masterpiece.

“How was the game?” he said by way of greeting.

A five-minute soliloquy followed. To hear Mabel describe it, it was the greatest Saturday afternoon of her entire adult life. And Gerry, his degenerate son, was the reason why.

“Is he there?” he asked.

“Your son? Why yes, he's sitting right here.”

Stuffing his face at that very moment, Valentine guessed. “Put him on. Oh, Mabel—I got your fax. It was funny, but not your best. A little off, if you ask me.”

“Gerry and I came to the same conclusion,” she informed him. “He talked me into scrapping it. I'm composing a new ad right now. It's
very
funny.”

Valentine felt his face grow hot. Being Mabel's sounding board was his job, not his son's.

“Here he is,” Mabel announced.

“Hey, Pop!”

“Hey, yourself,” Valentine said.

Gerry's voice was garbled, his mouth stuffed with food. He began to make awful choking sounds into the phone, and then Valentine heard the steady whacking sounds of Mabel pounding Gerry on the back. Soon his son was sipping water, breathing heavily.

“How many times am I gonna have to tell you not to talk with your mouth full?” Valentine bellowed into the receiver. “For the love of Christ, Gerry. Chew your food, then swallow, then talk. It's what separates us from the monkeys, you know?”

“Aw, Pop,” his son said, sounding pitiful.

“Your uncle Louie—”

“Choked to death on a piece of veal on Christmas day,” Gerry recited by heart, “and you and Gramps couldn't bring him 'round. I know the whole story. It runs in the family, and I'm the latest in the line. Stop making a federal case out of it.”

Valentine took a deep breath. A few weeks off, and they'd both come out of their corners swinging like a couple of kids in an amateur boxing match, all anger and no form.

“Hey,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

His son didn't know what to say. Valentine tried another tack. “So how was the game?”

Gerry was not used to getting second chances from his old man, so he picked his words carefully. “Great. I mean, the Yanks got clobbered, but we had a good time anyway. I rented a little TV from a guy at the concession booth so we could see what was going on in the outfield. It was a blast.”

“Sorry I wasn't there,” Valentine said.

“Me, too.”

A brief silence followed. Valentine wasn't really sorry, but he felt better for saying it. He cleared his throat.

“Listen, I need you to help me with a case I'm working on. I want you to go to my house—Mabel's got a key—and turn my computer on. Boot up Windows and pull up a program called DCF. Think you're up to it?”

Valentine bit his tongue the moment the words came out of his mouth. It was the first decent conversation they'd had in a long time, and now he'd gone and spoiled it. Gerry was trying—he'd give him that—whereas
he
was doing his best to burn another bridge.

“I mean, would you mind?”

“Not at all, Pop,” his son said quietly.

Valentine had already booted up Frank Fontaine's profile on his Compaq notebook when Gerry called back ten minutes later.

“You need to fire your cleaning lady,” his son informed him.

“Don't have one,” he replied.

“That's what I mean. There are piles of crap everywhere. You're living like a hermit.”

“It's
work,”
Valentine replied. “I'm running a business. Don't touch any of it.”

Normally, his son would have said something, and Friday Night at the Fights would have resumed. But not tonight; Gerry was different, more subdued. Maybe Mabel had said something, or perhaps flying down to Florida and finding his old man gone was a much-needed reality check.

“I've got the C prompt on the screen,” Gerry said.

“Good. Type in
shell
and hit Enter. Five or six icons will come on the screen. Double-click on
DCF.”

“Done,” his son said. “You need to get a new mouse.”

“Don't use the one I've got.”

“You don't use your mouse?”

“I can't see that damn little arrow.”

“Suit yourself,” Gerry said. “What's
DCF
stand for anyway?”

“Dead Creep File. Your ex-wife convinced me that instead of deleting a file every time a hustler died, I should transfer it to another program, in case I needed to reference it one day.”

“That sounds like Lucille. She never threw anything away.”

What about you?
Valentine wanted to ask. He reined in his desire to insult his only child and said, “Here's the deal. You're going to create a profile with some information I'm going to give you, and then you'll run a match against the other profiles in the DCF file. I want you to print whatever DCF spits out and fax it to my hotel. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes.”

“Hey, I'm happy to help. Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Why are you interested in looking at profiles of a bunch of dead hustlers?”

“It's a long story,” Valentine said. “I'll fill you in when I get back home.”

His son paused, and Valentine realized what he'd just said. To fill Gerry in, he was going to have to either call or go see him. His son had won this round.

“Sounds great,” Gerry said.

The casino was jumping when Valentine ventured downstairs fifteen minutes later. It was a no-nonsense kind of crowd, guys in torn jeans and stained denim shirts, women in tank tops and Day-Glo shorts, their jewelry bought off the TV. Out of hunger, they'd made their way to this city in the desert with money they could not afford to lose—either begged, borrowed, or stolen—to chase the dreams that radiated from every billboard and storefront in the country. They were the worst class of gamblers, their knowledge so minimal that it made their chances of winning infinitesimal, and because other casinos would not allow them through the door in their blue-collar clothes, they ended up at the Acropolis, the poor man's gateway to heaven.

Roxanne awaited him at the front desk. She'd tied her flowing hair in a bun—
pretty
no longer described her. She was now in another league of beauty, and his heart did a little pitter-pat.

“Did you and your son kiss and make up?” she asked.

“Sort of. Thanks for the pep talk.”

She slid Gerry's two-page fax across the marble counter. “You know, deep down, you're a pretty decent guy.”

“I'm just old-fashioned,” he confessed.

“I like old-fashioned,” she said.

Her coal-dark irises looked ready to ignite, and Valentine felt his heart speed up. There was no doubt in his mind what was on
her
mind. It would be one hell of an experience, only he just wasn't ready. He'd abstained from sex since Lois's death, knowing the next woman he bedded would forever cut the tie to his late wife. It would have to be someone special, not a woman he'd known less than twenty-four hours, so he backed away from the desk.

“I bet you've seen
Jurassic Park
ten times,” he said.

Roxanne frowned, not getting his drift.

“You like dinosaurs,” he explained.

Back in the elevator, he unfolded Gerry's fax and read the scribbled message on the cover page.

Hey, Pop,

Only one file came up. Doesn't look like a
match, but what do I know?

Gerry

Valentine flipped the page. The single profile DCF had pulled up contained a mug shot, the face instantly familiar. Closing his eyes, he mentally compared the face to that of Frank Fontaine.

Facially, the two men were as different as night and day, one handsome and debonair, the other smarmy and uncouth, and it was easy to see why no one was making the connection. The fingerprint that bonded them was Fontaine's play, which was smooth and deliberate and absolutely flawless, the play of a man who could memorize every card dealt in a six-deck game of blackjack or go to a ball game and determine batting averages in his head, the play of a man who knew not only the odds on every game of chance ever invented but also every possible way to turn those odds in his favor, through either deceit, outright trickery, or sheer mathematical genius.

It was the play of a cold-blooded, ruthless individual born with the most terrible of gifts, a perfect brain.