Sucker Bet (3 page)

2

Palm Harbor sat north of St. Petersburg, on Florida’s laid-back west coast. Back when Valentine and his late wife had considered retiring there, there were five thousand residents. Sleepy and small, it had seemed like another world compared to bustling Atlantic City.

Fifteen years later, the residents numbered fifty thousand, the town’s quaintness run over by a developer’s bulldozer. Every day, the roads got more clogged, the public schools got more overcrowded, and the drinking water tasted a little less like drinking water.

Winter was particularly gruesome. The restaurants were asses-to-elbows with rude northerners, as were the beaches and malls. Valentine had been a rude northerner once, but had shed that skin soon after arriving. Palm Harbor’s lazy cadence suited him just fine, and he looked forward to the sweltering summers, when the snowbirds flew home.

He sat on his screened front porch and read the paper. The stock market had been flip-flopping, and he checked his mutual funds. As a cop, he’d never made much money. Now, in retirement, he had more than he knew what to do with.

Mabel came up his front walk, wearing canary yellow slacks and a blue blouse, her hands clutching a Tupperware container. He rose expectantly from his rocker.

“Good morning,” he said. “How you doing?”

“Who cares?” she replied.

Florida’s elderly took grim delight in discussing their ailments, their deterioration becoming monumental epics of collapse and decay. Mabel was having none of it.
Who cares?
summed up her attitude nicely.

“You up for breakfast?” she asked.

“Sure.”

They went inside. Mabel had been bringing him meals since Lois had died, nothing fancy, always hot and good. He set two places at the kitchen table, then fixed a pot of coffee while she stuck the container of scrambled eggs, sausage, and home fries in the microwave. The phone rang and he answered it.

“Go to hell,” he said, then hung up.

“Tony, that’s rude,” Mabel said.

“It was a salesman.”

“Salesperson.”

“This one was a guy.”

“You’re being obtuse.”

“I’m sick of the intrusions. I don’t want to change my long-distance carrier, get my carpets cleaned, or buy penny stocks. If I’m abusive long enough, they’ll go away.”

Mabel doled out the steaming food. Valentine sprinkled everything with Tabasco sauce and dug in. He was big on sauces, and guessed it came from years of eating crummy diner food.

“You going to tell me about it?” Mabel asked when they were done.

“What’s that?”

“What happened between you and Kat. I may be losing my vision, but I’m not
blind
.”

He cleaned his plate with a biscuit while giving her the
Reader’s Digest
version of the scene in the dressing room. “I drove home realizing what a horse’s ass I’ve been the past two months, dressing up in that ridiculous suit. I’m sorry you had to watch.”

Mabel reached across the table and touched his wrist. “Did you call her?”

“I left a message on her cell phone and at her hotel.”

“She didn’t call back?”

“No.”

“What about the diamond pin you bought for her at Avant Gold?”

“What about it?”

“Did you give it to her?”

“I threw it out of the window of my car.”

“Oh, Tony . . .”

“Zoe picked it up.”

“Do you think she gave it to her mother?”

No, she probably pierced her navel with it,
he thought. “I hope so,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Get on with my life, I suppose.”

They heard a car pull up the driveway, and Mabel went to the front door. She returned with a thick Federal Express envelope. “It’s from Jacques. You remember. He sent the five-thousand-dollar check. Luminous readers.”

“Right. The jerk from South Africa.”

“Tony, that’s no way to talk about a client.”

“You’re right. Open up the envelope. Maybe there’s more money.”

She did, and to both their surprise, there was. Another check, this one for two grand, his usual fee. Inside the envelope was a leather pouch filled with casino dice and a note. Mabel read aloud. “Dear Tony Valentine. I realize you are a busy man, but I need your help again. We have arrested the gambler for marking the cards, and he gave a full confession. He was once an employee, and has offered to turn in another employee, who he claims is stealing more money than he was.

“The gambler says the scam is happening at our craps tables, but won’t say who is involved. Last week, we lost five hundred thousand dollars at craps, so the gambler may be telling the truth. I have sent several dice, in the hopes you will examine them. Sincerely, Jacques Dugay.” Mabel looked up. “Wow, a half-million bucks.”

“Wow is right.”

“You think he got ripped off?”

“You bet. What a dope.”

Mabel waved the check in front of his face. “A dope with money.”

He heard it in her voice.
Take the job, even if you are in a lousy mood.
Mabel had been raised in the same era as him: tail end of the Depression. Money wasn’t their god, but walking away from it was something you just didn’t do.

“Okay,” he said.

In early 1981, a pewter canister had been found by scavengers in the muddy banks of the Thames near London Bridge. Instead of coins or jewelry, the canister had contained twenty-four ornate dice dating back five hundred years. Close examination of the dice had revealed that eighteen were loaded with quicksilver, while the remaining six were misspotted, and marked only with three numbers on each die.

During the same year, a team of archaeologists on a dig in Pompeii had found similar gaffed dice, only their heritage was several thousand years earlier.

Valentine had heard about both discoveries and hadn’t been terribly surprised. While there were hundreds of different ways to cheat at cards, there were only three surefire ways to cheat at dice: loading them, misspotting them, or shaving them.

Sitting at his desk, he used a micrometer to measure the dice Jacques had sent him. Each was a perfect one-inch square. Had one of the sides been short—even by as little as fifteen one-hundredths of an inch—the die would have favored certain combinations and destroyed the house edge.

Then he checked each with a calibrator. In the old days, dice were dropped in a glass of water to see if they were loaded. The calibrator was a little more scientific. He spun each die on its axis. To his surprise, they were clean.

He rolled them across his desk. The fact that they were normal didn’t mean that crooked dice weren’t being used. The cheater, or cheaters, might be switching crooked dice in and out of the game, without anyone being the wiser.

“So call him up,” Mabel said when he returned to the kitchen.

He sat at the kitchen table. “I don’t want to.”

She split the last of the coffee between two mugs and sat down.

“But he’s desperate.”

“They usually are when they’re losing money.”

“Tony . . .”

He sipped his coffee. “The guy’s such a jerk.”

“How do you know him?”

“He ran one of Trump’s joints in Atlantic City for about sixty minutes. Everybody hated his guts.”

“Would you like me to call him?”

Mabel was great at finding solutions. It would be fun to let Jacques think that he didn’t rate an audience with the boss. “Sure,” he said.

Jacques’s phone number was in the letter. Mabel dialed it and awoke him from a deep sleep. She stuck her hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s cursing in French.”

“Tell him French wine tastes like urine and hang up.”

She waved him off. To Jacques she said, “We just received your Federal Express package. Tony examined the dice—”

“Zee dice,” Valentine corrected.

“—and found nothing wrong with them. He believes the cheater must have switched out the crooked dice for clean ones.” Mabel listened for a minute, then stuck her hand over the mouthpiece. “Jacques says that the casino searches its employees before their shift starts and after it’s over. That way, the dealers can’t bring crooked dice in or take them out.”

“Ask Jacques where the craps dealers go on their break.”

She asked. “To the employee lounge.”

“Are there lockers where they change into their uniforms?”

She asked. “Jacques said yes.”

“Tell Jacques one of his dealers is taking normal dice to the lounge and altering them. He needs to search the dealers’ lockers and be on the lookout for the following items. Ready?”

“Ready.”

“A file, a drill, a vise, a burr for hollowing, celluloid rope, fast-drying cement, ink, a bottle of mercury, some kind of polishing compound, and sandpaper. If any of those items turn up, that’s their man.”

Mabel relayed it all to Jacques. When she hung up, she was smiling. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but when she found reason to smile, Valentine didn’t think there was a prettier face on the planet. “Jacques says you are a genius,” she said.

“He’s still a pain in the ass,” Valentine replied.

He spent the morning sifting through his mail. Over a dozen casino surveillance videotapes of suspected cheaters sat on his desk. Beside them was a stack of mail-order catalogues that had come addressed to U. R. Dead, and he guessed someone he’d put in prison had decided to get creative.

For a while he pushed papers around his desk. Three times the business line on his phone lit up. Mabel was still in the kitchen, and he heard her answer each call. Yesterday he’d been on top of the world. Now, he felt like he’d stepped off a cliff and was falling through space. Going to the kitchen, he found her working on the
St. Petersburg Times
crossword puzzle and pulled up a chair.

“I’m stumped,” she said. “The clue reads ‘Floored Ali.’ The answer is six letters. I was going to write Foreman, only it doesn’t fit. George Foreman floored Ali, didn’t he?”

“No. Ali floored Foreman.”

“Frazier. Joe Frazier floored Ali.”

“He sure did. But his name’s got seven letters.”

Mabel frowned. “Then who is it?”

“Wepner,” Valentine said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A strapping can of Ragu named Chuck Wepner. One of the worst fighters to ever grace the heavyweight ranks. He floored Ali.”

“Where, in a bar?”

“No, in the ring. Chuck was from Bayonne. Ali fought him because he thought Chuck was a patsy. Chuck was lousy, but he was nobody’s water boy. In one of the later rounds, Chuck stepped on Ali’s foot. Ali was going backwards and lost his balance. Chuck popped him, and Ali went down. Ali got up and tortured Chuck, opened a million cuts on his face.”

“A Jersey boy,” Mabel said.

“A Jersey hero,” he corrected.

She put the paper aside, then read from a message pad beside the phone. “Your son called from Puerto Rico to say he and Yolanda are loving every minute of their honeymoon. He asked if you were still mad at him, and I said I thought you’d gotten over having to pay for his wedding
and
his honeymoon.”

Valentine bristled. “He hit me up for five grand on his wedding night. He knows damn well—”

Mabel touched his wrist. “Tony, stop obsessing over it. You have more money than you know what to do with. Your boy’s trying to get his life straightened out.”

“That’s right. He’s
trying
.”

“You make that sound like an ugly word.”

“He’s thirty-five years old. When’s he going to start
doing
?”

Mabel had two grown children and had accepted long ago that she couldn’t control their lives. She glanced down at her pad. “The second message was from Bill Higgins of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. He said he needed your help on a case.”

“I’m not going to Nevada.”

“You are in one foul mood, young man.”

“Every time a casino gets scammed, I get a distress call. You think these morons would consider having me check their joints out
before
they get ripped off? Fat chance.”

“I thought Bill was a friend.”

“I’m not going to run every time he calls, friend or not.”

There were days when she couldn’t win with him. Her eyes returned to her pad. “The third message was from Harry Smooth Stone at the Micanopy Indian reservation casino. He called yesterday, as well. He sounds desperate.”

“Too bad,” Valentine said.

A person could take just so much abuse. Mabel said good-bye, and Valentine walked her to the sidewalk in front of his house.

“You are such a bear,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

“Are you going to sit around, waiting for her to call?”

It sounded pitiful, and he said, “What are you suggesting?”

“Go help Bill Higgins, or Harry Smooth Stone. Take your mind off your problems for a few days.”

He didn’t want to go to Vegas. Too much time coming and going. The Micanopy reservation casino was in south Florida, and a leisurely four-hour drive. Down today, back tomorrow. Maybe Mabel was right. A change of scenery would do him good.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

3

On paper, it had seemed like a great idea.

The town of Davie sat fifteen miles due west of Fort Lauderdale. A carnival had arrived the day before, and sat in the middle of an empty cow pasture, the Ferris wheel and brightly colored tents visible for miles.

Rico’s idea was this: Candy would talk Nigel Moon into taking her to the carnival. Then she’d get Moon to play a few games, like throw the balls in the milk can, and cover the spot. Rico knew these games were rigged and could be juiced to let the players win or lose. All he had to do was bribe the carnival owner, and the Moon’s “lucky” streak would be alive and well.

Only Rico hadn’t counted on the carnival owner’s stubbornness. He was a Cajun named Ray Hicks, and he wore suspenders and a porkpie hat. Rico cornered him outside Hicks’s trailer, a beat-up rig with patched tires and a wheezing air conditioner, and stuck a C note in the old flattie’s face. Hicks looked at the money, then scoffed.

“Get away from me with that chicken scratch, boy.”

Rico upped his offer. He’d worked with carnival people back in Brooklyn when he was under John Gotti’s thumb. The carnival would rent a church parking lot and set up shop. For this privilege, the carnival paid Gotti half the apron, or daily take. Rico’s job had been to collect the apron and make sure Gotti didn’t get shortchanged.

Hicks spit on the ground. “You’re dreamin’, boy.”

On the other side of the carnival, Moon and Candy were riding the Ferris wheel. Candy wore a flaming red pants suit; Moon, Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt.

“I’m just asking you to let this guy win a couple of stinking Kewpie dolls,” Rico said, imagining himself strangling Hicks until his face turned purple. “It will take twenty minutes, tops. Then I’ll be out of your hair. Come on, what do you say?”

The sun came out and splashed on Hicks’s shoulders. He looked older than Rico had first thought, his face a chiseled road map of the hard life. He hooked his thumbs into his suspenders and snapped them against his chest.

“You wanna talk money, boy?”

Sweat marched down Rico’s face. Davie being away from the ocean, the sun was hotter than over on Miami Beach, and he felt himself burning up.

“Sure,” he said.

The first thing Rico noticed when he stepped inside Ray Hicks’s trailer was the overwhelming stench of shit. Not just any old shit, but animal shit, like at the zoo. The kind of smell that could burn a hole in your head.

The next thing Rico noticed was the big black metal cage sitting behind Hicks’s desk. And the chimpanzee in human clothes inside the cage. A big sucker, maybe 150 pounds, his thumbless paws strumming a ukulele.

“Have a seat,” Hicks said.

Rico sat in a folding chair directly across from Hicks’s desk. Plastered on the walls were black-and-white posters of the musical chimp and his proud owner.
NAME ANY POPULAR TUNE,
the posters said.
THEN WATCH THE FUN!

“Say hello to Mr. Beauregard,” Hicks said.

“Hey,” Rico said stupidly.

Mr. Beauregard strummed away. The tinny music coming out of his dime-store instrument sounded familiar.
Happy Days Are Here Again.
The chimp made eye contact, and every hair on Rico’s body went stiff. Behind the chimp’s muddy brown eyes lurked something eerily human. Putting the ukelele down, he took a pack of Lucky Strikes from the floor of his cage and fired one up.

“You let him smoke?”

“Sure.”

“Isn’t it bad for his health?” Rico said.

“He likes it.”

“I get it. He’s already got a purple ass, so what’s a couple of black lungs.”

Hicks’s eyes grew into slits. “You’re not funny.”

Rico disagreed. He happened to think he was fucking hysterical. So had John Gotti, who’d nicknamed him the Mook, which in Italian loosely translated into
big mouth
. He watched Mr. Beauregard crush out his cigarette, then eat it.

“What kind of scam you got going?” Hicks said.

Rico shifted his gaze to his host. “Huh?”

“You heard me. You fleecing this guy?”

“What guy?”

“The bloated Brit with the hooker.”

“What I’ve got going is none of your fucking business.”

“Please don’t swear in my presence,” the carnival owner said.

Rico didn’t like the direction the conversation was going. He parted his jacket and exposed the .45 Smith & Wesson strapped to his side. It was his favorite piece, a present from the Teflon Don on Rico’s twenty-fifth birthday. Hicks made a face like he’d busted a tooth. Raising his voice, he said,
“Mr. Beauregard, he has a gun!”

Mr. Beauregard flew out of his cage. It had never occurred to Rico that the cage wasn’t locked, and he sat helplessly as the chimp pinned him to his chair and pawed through his linen sports jacket. Mr. Beauregard slid the .45 across the desk along with Rico’s wallet.

“Thank you, Mr. Beauregard. You may resume your playing.”

Soon strains of
Rocky Mountain High
were competing with the noisy air conditioner. Hicks removed a business card from Rico’s wallet and stared at it.

“Club Hedo. That a tittie bar?”

“Yeah,” Rico said.

Hicks unloaded the gun and slid it back along with his wallet. “You are scamming the man with the hooker. Correct?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And by allowing him to win a few harmless games, you will be able to perpetuate your little charade.”

“Right again,” Rico said.

“Four thousand two hundred dollars,” Hicks said.

“Huh?”

“Four thousand two hundred dollars. That is my price.”

Rico screwed up his face. “What kind of number is that?”

Hicks made a clucking sound with his tongue. “Call it a permission fee. Four thousand two hundred dollars is what I pay the town clowns to run my carnival.”

“The what?”

“You’re not familiar with the term?”

“No.”

Hicks turned in his chair. “Town clowns, Mr. Beauregard?”

Mr. Beauregard’s crooked fingers froze on the strings of his beloved instrument. He picked up a tin sheriff’s badge from the floor of the cage and clipped it to his shirt. Striking a he-man pose, he pounded his chest.

“Thank you, Mr. Beauregard.”

The cops. Rico should have known. Organized crime had never gotten a strong foothold in south Florida, and for one simple reason. The local cops were too crooked to be influenced by the mob.

“Forty-two hundred it is,” Rico said.

Rico sat in his limo, staring through binoculars at Moon and Candy. They were standing at the Six-Cat booth. Knock three stuffed cats off a shelf, win a prize. It looked easy, only no one ever won. The operator made sure of that. By stepping on a foot break, he moved a loose board behind the cats back a few inches. By widening the shelf, the cats would not fall no matter how hard they were hit.

Rico watched Moon throw the baseballs. One, two, three cats fell in a row. By not touching the foot brake, the operator had given Moon a fair game. Candy squealed as the operator handed her a giant panda bear. She already had a Kewpie doll and a Big Bird, and looked like she’d robbed a toy store. The operator caught Moon’s eye and winked.

Rico loved it. Carnival people were great at building up suckers. He folded up his binoculars and put them on the seat.

“Forty-two hundred is too much,” Splinters said, sitting behind the wheel.

“I got what I wanted,” Rico said. “Moon’s having a gas.”

“Two grand, maybe,” Splinters said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” his Cuban driver said. “Two grand, tops.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Fucking guy robbed you.”

There it was again: the refusal to let things go. It was starting to get on Rico’s nerves. Splinters was not your ordinary Cuban refugee. He was sensitive about things like honor and a man’s reputation. Once, in South Beach, Rico had seen him carve up a guy just because he had found Splinters’s name funny.

“Fugettaboutit, will you?”

“Ahhh,” his driver said.

Splinters just didn’t understand how business was done in America. Hicks had given him good value on his dollar. Rico had no gripe with him.

Soon they were speeding south on I-95, and Splinters was blowing monster clouds of smoke out his window, obviously pissed off. That was the problem with Cubans, Rico had decided. They thought you cared how they felt.

Splinters needed to get over it, or Rico would have to get rid of him.