Sucker Bet (11 page)

18

He followed Gladys into the casino through a back door, then into a stairwell marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
. On the second floor they stopped at a door with a surveillance camera hanging over it. Gladys knocked once, then looked into the camera.

“Come on,” she said under her breath.

A lantern-jawed Indian wearing a blue blazer opened the door. His name was Billy Tiger, and he was running surveillance while Harry Smooth Stone cooled his heels in jail. He ushered them in.

The heart and soul of every casino’s security was its surveillance control room. These rooms were generally darkened spaces filled with expensive monitoring equipment used to detect and videotape suspected cheaters. The air was kept a chilly sixty-five degrees so the equipment would not malfunction. It also kept the personnel from turning into zombies as they stared at black-and-white images on their monitors for eight hours a day. Tiger led them to a corner office and shut the door.

“I figured you’d want some privacy,” he said.

Valentine was missing something. How did Tiger know what they wanted? As if reading his thoughts, Tiger said, “I got a call from the elders. All five of them. They said you needed to see some tapes.”

“All five of them?” Gladys said.

Tiger wore the slightly bemused expression of someone who woke up every day with a smile on his face. “Yeah. It was pretty funny. They can’t make a decision without taking a vote. I’d hate to see them ordering takeout.”

From his shirt pocket, Valentine removed the piece of paper that Running Bear had taken from Smooth Stone’s ledger. “I need to see a recent surveillance tape of each of these dealers, except Jack Lightfoot.”

Tiger read the list. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

“And their personnel files.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

Tiger started to leave the room. Valentine had an idea and stopped him.

“Which of these dealers has the least experience dealing blackjack?”

Tiger took the paper and looked at it. “Karl Blackhorn. He was pretty new.”

“How new is that?”

“Four, five months.”

“Let’s start with him,” Valentine said.

Soon, Valentine and Gladys were watching a tape of Blackhorn. He was easily the sloppiest blackjack dealer Valentine had ever seen.

“How did this guy ever get a job?” Valentine asked.

“Running Bear,” Gladys explained. “When the casino has openings it can’t fill, he hires Indians from other tribes. If they have families, they can live on the reservation and go to school without cost. Other tribes around the country have adopted similar policies.”

Valentine watched Blackhorn deal a round. Each player at the table was dealt two cards. As Blackhorn came to himself, he hesitated. Standard casino procedure called for him to use his second card to flip his first card faceup. Then he was supposed to slip his second card underneath his first.

Only Blackhorn didn’t do this.

Instead, he glanced at the players’ hands. Then he awkwardly turned his
second
card faceup onto his first. Valentine stared at the screen. Had Blackhorn forgotten the rules and flipped over the wrong card? It happened sometimes and, as far as he knew, made no difference to the game’s outcome.

The piece of paper from Smooth Stone’s ledger lay on the desk. Picking it up, he stared at the numbers beside Blackhorn’s name.

DROP: 12,104 WINNINGS: 5,812 HOLD: 42%

Blackhorn had kept 42 percent of the bets wagered at his
table. The best blackjack dealers in the world kept 20 percent. These dealers were considered A dealers and assigned to work the tables when “whales” came to town. And here was a wet-
behind-the-ears kid winning
twice
as much money.

“Let me see his file,” Valentine said.

Gladys handed him a Pendaflex folder. Valentine read it, then said, “Blackhorn was in prison for armed robbery. Your casino did a background check and turned it up. Yet you still hired him.”

“That’s right.”

“Let me guess. This was Running Bear’s doing.”

“Yes. Running Bear spent time in prison. So do a lot of boys on the reservation. It’s a by-product of high unemployment and poor schooling.”

So what, Valentine nearly said. No legitimate casino would allow a person with a criminal record to work for them. It was too damn tempting, the money flowing back and forth, night after night. Running Bear had a vision and thought he could change people by treating them well. Only, it didn’t work that way with criminals.

“I’d like to see another tape of this guy,” Valentine said.

They found Billy Tiger standing in front of a curved wall of video monitors, watching the action in the casino. Without taking his eyes away, he said, “You done?”

“We want to see another tape of Blackhorn,” Gladys said.

Tiger peeled his eyes away. And hesitated.

Gladys said, “Is that a problem?”

His bemused expression had faded. “Not at all,” he said.

While Gladys and Tiger went looking for the tape, Valentine returned to the office. He suddenly felt exhausted. Maybe wrestling alligators had something to do with it. Or the sheer physical exertion of having to be nice with his son. His eyes started to droop, and he stared at the TV on the desk. It contained live feeds of the casino’s hot zones and included the parking lot. A black limousine was parked by the entrance. Beside it stood a redhead smoking a cigarette. He put his face so close to the screen that his nose touched it. One thing that hadn’t slowed down as he’d gotten older was his memory. He’d seen this woman before.

She tossed her cigarette. Then said something to the skinny Hispanic driver and pointed at her watch. The driver made a conciliatory gesture with his hands. The tape of Jack Lightfoot, Valentine thought. The redhead was the raggle.

She got into the limo. So did the driver. Reaching down, the driver removed a handgun from a pocket on the door and slipped it into his lap. Then he shut the door and drove away.

Valentine ran out of the room, looking for Gladys Soft Wings.

19

Splinters had always considered casinos filthy places. In Havana, he’d gone to school in a building that had housed a casino during the Batista regime. Castro had closed the casino after the revolution, along with whorehouses and sex shows, and replaced them with schools and hospitals. Every schoolkid knew the story by heart. Even the bad ones.

“You’re sure Nigel Moon said he’d meet me outside the Micanopy casino,” Candy said from the backseat.

Splinters was driving on the twisting, single-lane road that eventually returned to the turnpike, and his eyes searched for the break in the mangroves where he and Rico had dumped Jack Lightfoot’s body. “Yes, ma’am. That’s what he said.”

In his mirror, Candy had a cell phone against her ear. They were in a dead zone, and she could not get a connection. She tossed the phone into her bag.

“I’m going to kill him. Why are you driving so slow, anyway?”

On the shoulder of the road Splinters saw a sleek black racer. It looked dead until it sprang to life and slithered away.

“Kill who?” he asked.

“Nigel fucking Moon, the bozo who hired you.”

Splinters didn’t like that. Did she have a gun? That could be a problem.

“How?” he asked.

“How what?” she said indignantly.

Splinters looked in the mirror. The hooker’s face was flushed and had turned hot pink. With the hair it almost made her look like she was on fire. He’d watched her from afar a couple of times and had memorized the contours of her body. More than once he’d imagined her naked, and him inside of her, and what her reaction would be.

“You’re going to kill him,” he said.

“With my bare hands.”

He felt himself relax. The break in the road appeared. He tapped the brakes and tucked the gun in his lap behind his belt. “Damn,” he said loudly. “I got a flat tire.” He pulled off the road and parked beside the trail. It was well-worn, and he looked down it but saw no hikers or fishermen. He got out and opened Candy’s door. She gave him a look that suggested her patience had run out.

“I’m not getting out in this fucking swamp.”

“But—”

“You heard me.”

Her face was still a hot pink. The effect it had on him was remarkable, and he hid behind the door, not wanting her to see the erection in his trousers. He imagined screwing her, and her fighting with him like a wild animal. “Tire’s flat,” he explained. “I gotta change the tire.” She wasn’t budging, so he said, “It’s dangerous for you to stay in the car.”

She got out and brushed past him. He saw her walk toward the front of the car and pulled the gun from behind his waistband. Coming up from behind her, he shoved the barrel into the small of her back. “Know what this is?”

She froze, her head tilting slightly back. “Your dick?”

He started grinning. He hadn’t known many whores with a sense of humor. He took the purse from her outstretched hand and tossed it into a stand of mangroves. “It’s a gun. Would you rather see my dick?”

Candy looked over her shoulder into his eyes. She was scared.

“Okay,” she said.

“You want to fuck me?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“I wanna hear you say it.”

“I want your big Cuban prick inside of me.”

Splinters made her turn around and say it again. Then he made her undress herself. She wore a red lace bra, one of those garments that cost hundreds of dollars. She slipped out of it without being asked. Heaven. Pointing at the trail, he said, “You first.”

“Speed up, will you?” Valentine said.

Gladys Soft Wings’s hands gripped the wheel of her Volvo. Valentine had run out of Billy Tiger’s office, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her to the parking lot. Now he was insisting she speed down tribal roads, something she was loath to do.

“Someone’s life is at stake.”

She hit the gas. The roads twisted like a corkscrew, and the tires screeched on every curve. She’d bought the car to drive on I-95, south Florida’s crazy drivers more frightening than anything she’d ever known. Rounding a curve, she saw a black limo on the side of the road and slammed on the brakes.

Valentine hit the windshield. He saw stars, then pulled himself off the dashboard, the warm sensation of blood creeping down his face. He touched his nostril and swore.

“Sorry. Why aren’t you wearing your belt?”

“Because I’m a dope.” He pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it against his nose. “Do you have a gun by any chance?”

“No. Don’t you think we should—”

“Call the tribal police? No.” He climbed out of the car, then stuck his head back in before shutting the door. “I want you to drive up the road a hundred yards and wait. If someone besides me comes out of that trail, beat it. Understand?”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“No,” he said.

The Volvo pulled away. Valentine walked down the trail until he was in the thick of the swamp. It was like being in a forest, only the ground was gooey soft. He heard voices. Peering around a cypress tree, he saw two figures standing on a grassy knoll next to a pond. He put on his bifocals. It was the redhead and the limo driver. The redhead was naked. The driver was stripping out of his uniform while holding a gun on her, the act made more complicated by the big boy distorting his trousers.

Valentine weighed his options. Making a run at them was out of the question. The distance was too great, and he’d given up wind sprints years ago. The other option was sneaking up on them and disarming the driver, which wouldn’t be terribly hard once they started going at it. He stepped off the trail into a thicket of mangroves.

As he approached, he listened to the redhead talking to the driver. Her voice was soothing, like she knew she was about to get raped and didn’t want to do anything to make it worse. The driver told her to get on her knees.

Valentine parted a bush and had another look. The redhead was on all fours. The driver was behind her, poised to make his statement. She was still talking, the fear absent from her voice. Leaning forward, he felt his shoe catch an exposed root and fell into a disgustingly soft belly of muck.

His head came out of the water just in time to hear the redhead scream. Rising, he stared into the clearing. The redhead had tried to run, and the driver was holding her underwater. Her legs were thrashing as air bubbles burst the water’s surface. The kicking grew faint, then stopped altogether. Valentine broke through the mangroves.

“Let her go.”

The driver’s eyes went wide. He had the gun in his left hand, the girl’s head in his right. He looked
scared
. Like he’d seen a ghost. And Valentine supposed he probably did look like a ghost, his wet hair in his face, the blood from his nose flowing down his chin. Or a dead man risen from a swampy grave.

“
Who are you?”
the driver said.

“Jack Lightfoot,” he growled.

Valentine saw the redhead sink beneath the water’s surface. “I deal blackjack,” he said. “Remember?”

The driver was out of the pond and picking up his clothes, the gun still pointed in Valentine’s direction. He was going to run, and Valentine stepped back into the mangroves and ducked out of sight. Barefoot, the driver raced past moments later, swearing in Spanish.

Valentine pulled the redhead out of the pond and gave her CPR. Her face had turned blue, and he didn’t think there was much hope. In between breaths, he wiped at the blood on his face, hoping not to get any on her. Stupid, but he did it anyway.

She was a natural redhead, and it was hard not to look at her privates. That had always been the hard part of police work. Every day, he’d be confronted by things that he knew were wrong but wanted to do anyway. Like staring at naked corpses.

He heard something like a frog trying to climb out of her stomach. An eruption in the making. He leaned backwards, but not in time. She puked on him.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Oh, my God.”

She lay on her back, fighting for breath. Valentine lay down next to her. The world was spinning, and his head was starting to throb. She reached out and found his arm.

“Who are you?”

“Tony Valentine.”

“I’m Candy. Where’s—”

“The guy trying to kill you? I scared him off. Look, try not to talk.”

She found his hand and squeezed it. “I owe you, Tony.”

Gladys Soft Wings entered the clearing. She was visibly frightened and stared at them lying in the grass, holding hands.

“I hope I’m not interrupting something,” she said.