Mr. Lucky (17 page)

Mary Alice folded her hands in her lap. “Is that where Lucy Price needs to go?”

“Yes.”

“But you gave her twenty-five thousand dollars. Surely that helped her.”

“It only made things worse,” he said. “I had this selfish dream that by giving her the money, she’d get her life back in order and we’d get together. Instead, she took the money and went on a gambling binge. When it was over, she was broke. She got so despondent, she left one of the casinos and ran her car over the median of Las Vegas Boulevard. She hit another car and injured several tourists. One died.”

“Do you blame yourself for that?”

“Yes.”

“And you honestly believe that she’d be better off if you hadn’t given her the money.”

“I don’t know if Lucy would be better off or not,” he said. “I just know that someone wouldn’t have died.”

The crow started cawing at him. It was like being heckled from a crowd, and Valentine fished a coin out of his pocket to throw at it. Before he could, Mary Alice stood up from the swing. She did it suddenly, and his legs shot out from the sudden shift in weight. She marched across the porch to the front door of her house, then turned to face him.

“Goodness is never a sin,” she said.

He stared at her, his face burning.

“Shame on you for thinking so,” she added.

“Don’t you want me to take you to Brevard?”

“No,” she said.

She went back inside and shut the door behind her. He heard the dead bolt being thrown. It was a humiliating sound, and he sat for a long moment and let the crow berate him. Then he got her suitcase from the trunk and put it on the front mat.

30

A
t three-thirty Sunday afternoon, Lamar pulled his car into the parking lot of Dixie Magic, found one of the few remaining spaces, and killed the engine. The casino was doing a brisk business, and Gerry stayed low in the passenger seat.

“You think I’ll be safe here?”

“I’m not putting you inside the casino,” Lamar said. He pointed at a construction trailer at the rear of the lot. “I’m putting you there.”

Gerry stared at the trailer. It was covered in aluminum siding, and an air conditioner hanging from a window was dripping water. It looked like a pit.

“Why there?”

“That’s command central,” Lamar said. “Come on.”

Lamar took his gun off the seat and slipped it under his belt. They got out and crossed the lot, with Lamar standing between Gerry and the road.

Lamar knocked three times on the trailer door, paused, then knocked three times again. The door popped open, and a blast of cold air greeted them. They went in, and Lamar closed the door behind them and locked it. Gerry was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and felt himself shiver.

“We keep it this cold so the humidity doesn’t ruin the equipment,” Lamar said.

Gerry stared at the tables cramming the trailer’s interior. They contained dozens of video monitors stacked atop each other, and machines that generated the date and time on a tape. There were also phones and logbooks and plenty of empty coffee cups. Watching the video monitors were two guys Gerry remembered from his lecture the day before. Both men turned in their chairs and said hello.

“We set up command central a few weeks back,” Lamar explained. “It lets us watch the action inside the casino without anyone knowing it.”

Gerry stared at the monitors. “Discover any more cheating?”

Lamar scratched his chin. “Well, that’s where I was hoping you could help us.”

“Help you how?”

“You know, like you did with the chip scams.”

“You want me to figure out how you’re getting ripped off?”

“Only if you want to,” Lamar said.

Gerry felt breakfast turn over in his stomach. He’d watched videotapes of cheaters from his father’s library and had always been stumped. His lying was going to be the death of him one day. “Sure,” he said.

Lamar’s two men were named Kent and Boomer. Both had played football for Ole Miss and were likable guys. The only problem was their shoulders. Sitting between them, Gerry felt like he was wedged between two boulders.

Kent and Boomer had both worked for the Mississippi Gaming Commission for ten years and were knowledgeable about gaming security. Both men understood that the best way to detect a scam was to figure out which table was the problem, then work backward. His father did this all the time. He called it Logical Backward Progression.

They had isolated which tables were losing the most money in the casino, and determined that this was where the majority of cheating was taking place. The problem areas included a craps table, a roulette table, and a blackjack table. They had videotaped these tables for two days and were watching the tapes in slow motion in an effort to determine how the money was being stolen.

Gerry stared at the monitors while sipping a cup of bitter coffee. Watching videotapes was about as stimulating as watching paint dry. Knowing someone was stealing made it a little more interesting, but not by much. More than once his father had caught him switching channels when he was supposed to be studying casino tapes.

“We’ve watched these damn tapes forward and backward and still can’t see what’s going on,” Kent said, biting off the end of a candy bar. “It’s frustrating.”

“It’s probably something simple,” Gerry said.

Both men glared at him. So did Lamar, who stood in the corner.

“They can be the hardest ones to detect,” he added.

“Like the chip scams you showed us,” Boomer said.

“Exactly. Chip scams are considered the lowest form of stealing, yet they cost casinos millions a year.”

The three men stopped glaring at him. A short silence followed.

“So what are we missing?” Lamar said.

Gerry didn’t have a clue. Only, it was too late in the game to admit that and not get run out of town. Then he had an idea. He’d call his old man. “I need to look at these tapes in privacy for a little while. Would you mind if I used your office?”

“Gonna go consult your crystal ball?” Lamar said.

“Something like that.”

“Be my guest.” Lamar led him to his corner office. It was dark and about as inviting as a cave, and contained a desk with a computer and a phone. Lamar turned the computer on and told Kent to send the feeds from the video monitors they were watching to his computer. Seconds later, a matrix appeared on the computer screen, with the different feeds showing in each of the matrix’s boxes.

“There you go, sport,” Lamar said, showing himself out.

Gerry shut the door behind him. Getting behind the desk, he took his cell phone out and powered it up. As he punched in his father’s number, he was suddenly seized by a sense of panic. His father had promised a dozen times that he’d start leaving his cell phone on, but so far, it hadn’t happened. His old man was a dinosaur when it came to technology.
Come on, Pop, surprise me,
he thought as the call went through.

“When the hell are you going to stop lying to these people?” his father said after Gerry told him what was going on. His father rarely swore. And Gerry couldn’t remember the last time he’d sworn at
him
. Not that he didn’t deserve it. But his father had somehow always shown restraint.

“Is something wrong, Pop?”

“I just had a blind librarian tell me what a bum I was for avoiding Lucy Price,” his father said. “Do you think I’m a bum for avoiding her?”

Gerry stopped staring at the matrix on Lamar’s computer screen and shifted his eyes to the wall. His father sounded upset. Lucy Price was bad news. Gerry had discussed her with Mabel, and they’d both decided that the best thing his father could do was get Lucy out of his life. She was drowning and was only going to pull down his father with her.

“You bailed her out already, Pop. You gave her a chance to redeem herself. That’s all you can do with someone like that. The rest was up to her, and she blew it.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes. So don’t go flogging yourself over it.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“It sure sounds like it.”

His father took a deep breath. “Okay. Thanks for listening. Now, tell me what you’re seeing on these video monitors.”

Gerry shifted his gaze to the computer screen. He couldn’t remember ever giving his father advice before. “Where do you want me to start?” he said.

“Start with the procedures they’re using at each of the games,” his father said. “That’s usually how table games get scammed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Crooked dealers and croupiers will change a procedure. The change usually doesn’t look like much, but it’s enough to help them hide how they’re stealing money. They’ll use the new procedure for a while to see if it creates any suspicion. If no one says anything, they start the scam. Hustlers call this
putting the eye to sleep.
”

“Huh,” Gerry said.

“You know, I already told you this once before.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, about three weeks ago. I guess you weren’t listening.”

Gerry swallowed hard, then described to his father what he was seeing on the screen.

Ten minutes later Gerry walked out of Lamar’s office with his chest puffed out and a shit-eating grin on his face. He’d been able to nail each scam just by listening to his father and staring at the matrix on Lamar’s computer. His old man could be a bear sometimes, but he never let you down.

Kent and Boomer separated their chairs and gave him space to sit. Gerry took the seat and pointed at the monitors. “Where do you want to begin?”

Lamar was standing in the corner. “You figured out all three of them?”

“Sure did.”

“Well, paint me blue and call me Quincy. Okay, start with the roulette scam.”

A monitor in the center of the table showed roulette. Kent hit some strokes on his keyboard, and every monitor in the trailer switched to show the same thing.

The roulette table was crowded with people. Gerry pointed at the croupier, a guy with a pasty complexion and an ill-fitting tux. It was his job to control the game, spin the wheel and throw the ball, and collect bets at his end of the table. Gerry said, “The croupier is part of the gang. He’s changed a procedure at the table, which is letting his partners past-post.”

“You mean they’re betting after the ball drops,” Lamar said.

“That’s right. Before the wheel slows down and the ball starts to drop, the croupier is supposed to wave his hand over the layout and say ‘No more bets.’ That way the people watching through the eye in the sky know the betting is over.

“Well, this croupier isn’t waving his hand over the table. If you watch the tape, you’ll see that he’s
saying
it, which is why it hasn’t caught the attention of the security people on the floor. But the people manning the eye in the sky can’t hear him because there isn’t any audio on their tapes. The croupier is giving his partners a chance to see where the ball is going to fall, and place a late bet.”

Kent and Boomer stared at the monitors. After a minute Kent spotted the past-poster. It was a man sitting in a wheelchair at the table’s end. He was hugging the table and slipping late bets onto the layout.

“Right in front of our noses,” Kent said.

“How’s the craps scam working?” Lamar asked.

Gerry glanced at him. “Let me guess. You’ve got a bet with Kent and Boomer that I won’t figure them all out.”

Lamar bit his lip and didn’t reply. Kent and Boomer burst out laughing.

“How much?” Gerry said.

“Twenty bucks,” Kent said.

Gerry looked at him. “Twenty between the two of you, or twenty each?”

“Twenty each,” Boomer said. “Lamar is a gambling man.”

“What’s my cut?” Gerry said.

The two ex-football players stopped laughing.

“What do you mean, your cut?” Kent said.

“If I win, you win.
Comprende?
”

Kent shrugged. “How about ten bucks?”

“Each?”

Now it was Lamar’s turn to laugh. “Man strikes a hard bargain.”

Kent and Boomer looked at each other. “Okay,” Kent said.

Gerry turned back to the monitors. Kent typed in a command, and the screens showed the craps table where the stealing was taking place.

“The craps scam is similar to the roulette scam, in that it exploits the fact that there’s no audio being captured on the casino floor. The craps dealer and a partner are pulling off verbal scams. They’re pretty basic, but very effective.

“The craps table is crowded with players, and they’re making lots of noise. The partner comes over to the table and throws his money down. He tells the craps dealer what his bet is. Only, no one at the table hears him. There’s so much noise, no one can. The craps dealer says, ‘Money plays,’ indicating the bet has been accepted. The dice are thrown. Whatever the outcome is, the craps dealer pays the player off as if that was his bet.”

Gerry pointed at the craps dealer on the video monitor. They watched in silence as he paid a player off for a bet that was never made. The payoff was several thousand dollars, and Lamar let out a groan.

“You owe us twenty bucks, each,” Boomer told him.

“He still hasn’t explained the blackjack scam,” Lamar reminded him.

The blackjack scam was Gerry’s favorite of the bunch. It employed an ordinary box of Kleenex and a dealer with a head cold. His father had called it the Runny Nose Scam. He glanced over his shoulder at Lamar. “Want to make another bet?”

“No thanks,” Lamar said.

Above the door was a monitor that showed the outside of the trailer. Standing outside was a fat guy in bib overalls, holding an automatic rifle. The fat guy raised the rifle to his shoulder and took dead aim at the trailer.

“Duck!”

A fusillade of bullets ripped through the aluminum walls. It happened so fast that no one moved. Lamar, Kent, and Boomer let out moans and fell to the floor. Gerry touched himself. He had an angel sitting on his shoulder and was unhurt.

In the monitor he saw the fat guy reloading. Lamar saw it, too. He was lying on the floor, holding his bleeding arm. He drew the gun from behind his belt buckle, then offered it to Gerry.

“You’ve got to stop him,” Lamar said.