Sucker Bet (8 page)

“What are you going to do?” he asked his friend.

Bill turned and looked him square in the eye.

“Want to know the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Stick a gun in my mouth,” he said.

“Seriously,” Valentine said.

“Seriously,” he replied.

12

“She’s lying,” Zoe declared.

Kat was lost. She ripped off the sunglasses that gave everything a velvety look of a dying sunset, and tried to get her bearings. Mabel had given her instructions to the Tampa airport, and like a dope Kat hadn’t written them down. Had she gone the wrong way on 60? Up ahead she saw the beach. She had.

“Who’s lying, honey?”

“Mabel.”

“Her name’s Mrs. Struck, honey.”

“Okay, Mrs. Struck. She’s lying.”

There was no place to make a U-turn. That was one of the infuriating things about Florida. For a state with a trillion tourists, the roads were hardly marked. The people who really suffered were the Europeans. They came so far, only to spend half their time lost.

Traffic was bumper to bumper, and Kat threw the Mustang into park, then glanced at her daughter. Zoe had crossed her arms and was giving her the Little Miss Ugly pout that was part of the Berman genetic code.

“You’re not listening to me,” Zoe said.

“I’m listening to you and driving the car.”

“So what did I just say?”

“You said Mrs. Struck was lying.”

“That’s right. I heard what she told you, that Tony had gone on a cruise. That was bullshit the moment it came out of her mouth.”

“
Zoe!”

“Tony hates cruises. I heard him tell Donny that once. So before we left, I did a little snooping.” Reaching into her pocket, her daughter removed a square of paper and unfolded it. “I found this next to the phone in Tony’s study. It’s a phone number where he’s staying. See for yourself.”

Kat snatched the paper out of her daughter’s hand. Tony’s name was written on it, and the name of the Fontainebleau hotel, and a phone number.

“Your face is doing that funny thing,” her daughter warned.

Kat stared at herself in the mirror. She had thin bluish skin that flushed salmon pink whenever her blood pressure rose. Traffic inched forward, and she threw the car into drive.

“You shouldn’t have done this,” she told her daughter.

Zoe stared resolutely ahead.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Say thank you, Mom.”

“
Excuse me?”

“Say thank you.”

“Now you listen to me, young lady—”

“You wanted to find Tony, right? I mean, it’s why we drove all the way over here, isn’t it? Well, I found Tony. So, say thank you.”

They had come to the roundabout on Clearwater Beach. It was not for the timid, and Kat punched the accelerator and merged into the maddening swirl of vehicles. To drive around it, she needed to change lanes, only none of the cars were willing to let her in. Zoe hit the horn, and a space appeared. Moments later, they were finally going in the right direction on 60.

“Thank you, Zoe,” she said.

Valentine did not like talking about suicide while standing on a hotel balcony, so he took Bill Higgins out for coffee. One block south of the Loews, they got sucked into the South Beach parade of freaks and model types, and ducked into an eatery where people were sitting on futons and the servers were guys with boa constrictors wrapped around their necks. They beat a hasty retreat and found a restaurant where the chairs had four legs and you were allowed to sit in them.

“Black,” Valentine told the waitress taking their order.

She Rollerbladed away, leaving them in their quiet corner. Bill lit up a cigarette and offered him one.

“I’ve been clean for two months,” Valentine said.

“Want me to put this out?”

“I can take it. So tell me why you want to blow your brains out. I mean, you’ve got a couple of more good years left.”

Bill cracked the thinnest of smiles. “You think so?” Plumes of purple smoke escaped each nostril. The waitress Rollerbladed back with two steaming cups, then sprinted away. “Look, Tony, this is going to ruin me, and not just in terms of my job. Once this comes out, Running Bear will know I set him up, and he’ll let every tribe in the country know. I’ll be an outcast among my own people.”

“He’s got that much clout?”

“Yes. You know anything about him?”

“I know he wrestles alligators pretty well.”

Bill blew the steam off his cup. “Running Bear is a half-breed, only one in his tribe. His daddy was a white marine who ran off after he got Running Bear’s mother pregnant. The day Running Bear was born, his mother took him down to the creek to be drowned—”

“She did what?”

“You heard me. That’s the Micanopy tradition, been going on for centuries.”

“Why?”

“It keeps them pure. The Micanopys are the last pure tribe of Indians in North America. No outsiders have ever been let in. A true sovereign nation. If any tribe rightfully deserves to have a casino, it’s them. So where was I?”

“Running Bear’s mother was about to drown him.”

“Right. So she’s dunking him in the water, and one of the tribe’s elders holds up his hand. He takes the baby from her and looks at him. And says, ‘This one was meant to help us.’ So Running Bear was spared. A few years later, his mother dies. Running Bear gets passed around the tribe. He becomes a delinquent. The police start chasing him, and he hides in the swamps, living with the alligators.

“Eventually, he grows up. He enlists in the army. He becomes a ranger and ends up going to South Vietnam as the head of a long-range reconnaissance unit. He goes back and forth into enemy territory, creating havoc. I guess compared to the Everglades, the rice paddies in the Mekong Delta were a cakewalk.

“In ’68 he came home on leave. Somehow the Viet Cong found out, and they set a trap for his unit and executed his men. Running Bear was devastated. He got discharged, drifted around for a while, then got arrested.

“While in prison, he started going to the library. He’d heard about the Cabazon Indians in California operating a poker room, and how the white man shut it down. The Cabazons sued, and eventually the case made its way to federal court. Running Bear followed the case closely. When the Cabazons won, he took the court’s majority opinion and taped it on the wall of his cell.”

The white man. All the years they’d known each other, Bill had never used that expression. It had come out of his mouth sounding ugly, the product of an open wound hidden somewhere in his psyche. It bothered Valentine to think that was how Bill viewed him.

“The gist of the court’s opinion was that the Cabazons could run poker games without having to adhere to local laws. This was their right as a sovereign nation. What Running Bear figured out was that this right applied to all Indian tribes, not just the Cabazons.

“In 1981, the chief of the Micanopys stepped down, and an election was held. Running Bear ran as a dark horse and promised to build a casino. At the time, the only industry on the reservation was running rodeos. They were so rinky-dink run that the tribe would use their pickup trucks to light the ring.

“Running Bear won the election. Two years later, Micanopy bingo was born. Within a year, every tribal member was receiving a monthly stipend. And Running Bear built a school and a hospital. All around the country, tribes were watching. You ever been on a reservation?”

“Only to work for a casino,” Valentine said.

“Many have no running water or electricity. When the Rural Electrification Act was passed by FDR in 1936, it didn’t apply to the Indians. There’s also chronic unemployment and the suicide rate is sky-high. And the kids who are problems, you know what happens to them?”

“No.”

“They get sent off to reform schools where they’re not allowed to speak in their native tongue or send letters to their parents. They’re cut off from their world and trained not to be Indians. It’s barbaric.”

Valentine could hear it in Bill’s voice, but had to ask anyway.

“You one of those kids?”

“Haskell Institute, class of ’64.”

Valentine’s coffee had gone ice-cold. Through the restaurant window a conga line of tattooed bodies was passing, South Beach’s revelry kicking into high gear. Bill’s face had turned to stone. The check came and Valentine picked it up. Eleven bucks for two lousy cups of coffee. He paid and they went out.

The geeks and freaks parted like the Red Sea, and Valentine and Bill walked back to the Loews. Next door was the original hotel, an unassuming three-story structure. Bill’s vibes were nothing but hostile, and Valentine suggested they go outside to the verandah.

They took a table in the shade and said nothing for a while, Valentine wondering how to get things back on track. “What’s eating you?” he finally asked.

“You pissed me off.”

“I did?”

Bill stared at him, then shifted his gaze toward the water. “I asked you what you thought of Running Bear. You told me he’s a guy who wrestles alligators pretty well.”

“That pissed you off?”

“He’s a savior.”

“As in Jesus?”

Bill looked back at him. “As in Jesus. You have a problem with that?”

Valentine didn’t know what to say, so he kept his mouth shut.

“You’re Catholic, right? In your religion, Jesus was born to a virgin mother, and heaven is a celestial vacation spot where souls sprout wings and become angels. Indians see Creation differently. The earth is our God. It is all things good, and all things bad. Our saviors are products of this earth. Running Bear broke the cycle of poverty for his tribe and set the example for other tribes. Do you have any idea how many other tribes now have casinos? Three hundred.”

Valentine sipped his soda. Running Bear swore and smoked cigarettes and ran a casino. It didn’t sound like any savior he’d ever read about. But Bill believed it, and when it came to religion, that was all that really mattered.

“You know,” Valentine said, “you’re really pathetic when you’re sulking.”

“Is that your idea of a joke?”

“I’ve never known you to cave in like this. There’s got to be a solution.”

“Name one.”

The sun caught Valentine in the face, and he used his hand to shield his eyes. “You need to dig up evidence linking Rico and Jack Lightfoot to Victor Marks. Something that shows the three of them working this scam. A nice tidy package that you can hand over to the Broward County police.”

“That’s a tall order,” Bill said.

“I’ll help you.”

“How?”

“I’m doing a job for the Micanopys. Smooth Stone called me the same day you did.”

Bill’s stony gaze melted. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did. Any evidence you can share with me?”

“I’ve got a tape of Rico and Victor Marks that Justice didn’t get,” Bill said. “They’re talking in some kind of code.”

“How long until Justice closes the Micanopys down?”

“The governor of Florida is in Spain. He doesn’t get back until next week. I’m sure he’ll want to be here for the fun.”

Valentine stood up from the table. “Not if I can help it.”

“I really appreciate this, Tony.”

It was as close to an apology as he was going to get out of Bill. Leaning across the table, Valentine smacked him on the arm. A group of ladies at a nearby table looked up in alarm.

“What are friends for?” Valentine said.

13

Running Bear had decided to pay a visit to Harry Smooth Stone’s trailer.

Smooth Stone’s shift had ended at noon. Through a surveillance camera, Running Bear had watched him leave the reservation. Then he’d called Smooth Stone at home, just to make sure that was where he was. Harry had answered, already half-asleep.

Running Bear tried the door and found it locked. The trailer was identical to the one he worked in. Someday, they would all be housed in a gleaming steel and glass building, but that day was years off. First a water treatment plant needed to be built, then a hospice. Nice digs for the casino people would come later. The tribe’s elders had decided this, and their word was law.

He put his shoulder to the door. The hinges gave way. He went in and flicked on the overhead light. The air reeked of cigarettes. A desk, two file cabinets, a TV, and a VCR made up the furnishings. He got behind the desk and tried the top drawer. Locked. Again he put his muscles to work.

The lock popped, and he pulled the drawer out. A black ledger book practically jumped into his hands. He opened it to the first page. Smooth Stone’s handwriting was primitive and easy to recognize. Like Running Bear, he’d dropped out of high school and had finished his education later on.

The page was dated and contained the names of five blackjack dealers. Next to each name was an equation that derived a percentage. The percentages were totaled at the bottom of the page and used to determine another percentage. That percentage was circled:
44%.

Running Bear leafed through the other pages in the ledger. They were nearly identical to the first, except the dates and percentages changed. Some days, the percentage was in the thirties, while others it was in the fifties. He looked at the names of the dealers again. Two of them worked the day shift, two the evening shift, and one the graveyard shift. His eyes locked on the last name on the page.

“God damn,” the chief said.

It was Jack Lightfoot’s.

Taking a ruler off the desk, he placed it against the edge of the page. The page came out cleanly, and he folded it into a neat square and tucked it into his shirt pocket. Then he put the ledger back in the drawer. The trailer had grown hot, and he was sweating profusely, a sensation he did not find uncomfortable. He flicked off the light and stepped outside.

Smooth Stone was waiting for him in the parking lot. With him were four of the dealers whose names had been in the ledger. All were large men. They stood beside Running Bear’s Jeep, looking agitated.

“Find what you’re looking for?” Smooth Stone asked.

Running Bear shrugged and walked down the trailer steps. He walked with his palms pointing toward the sky, letting them see he wasn’t armed. “Not really,” he said, then kicked Smooth Stone in the groin when he got close enough, just to see what the others would do. As he’d expected, the men took a universal step backwards. Had they known anything about combat, they would have jumped him, their combined weight enough to beat the best fighter in the world.

Running Bear punched the closest dealer in the face. Hit him hard, and sent the man flying over the hood of the Jeep and onto the ground in a sprawling heap.

That left three dealers. A porker named Joe Little Owl stepped forward and threw a haymaker. Running Bear ducked the punch. Little Owl was still coming forward when their skulls met.

One of the two dealers still standing looked Running Bear squarely in the eye, then took off down the road at a dead run.

That left Karl Blackhorn, a Choctaw with a bad attitude. Recently, Running Bear had reprimanded him for being rude to customers, and he saw Blackhorn draw a knife from a sheath on his belt, its long blade dancing in the sun.

“Kill him,” Smooth Stone said, writhing on the ground.

With his heels, Running Bear felt for a soft spot in the road. Blackhorn inched forward, grinning wickedly. “Payback time,” he said.

Kneeling, Running Bear picked up a handful of dirt and tossed it into Blackhorn’s face. Blackhorn stepped back, swiping desperately at his eyes. Running Bear kicked the knife out of his hand. It flew through the air and disappeared in the mangroves.

Blackhorn fell onto Running Bear’s Jeep. Blinking wildly, he jammed his hand down into his jeans and tried to pull a gun. Running Bear stepped forward and grabbed his wrist.

“Don’t be a fool,” Running Bear said.

Then the gun went off.

Valentine got his Honda from the Loews valet. Alligator slime had penetrated the cloth seats and floor mats, and he drove to the Fontainebleau trying not to gag.

Back in his room, he took Bill’s tape and slipped it into the cassette player next to his bed. It was easy to tell which man was Rico Blanco and which was Victor Marks. Rico sounded Sicilian, either first-generation or maybe a native who’d come over as a kid, and used words like
gotta
and
outta
. Victor Marks used a voice-alteration machine and sounded like Al Pacino with a head cold. Valentine strained to understand what they were saying.

Victor: “You’ve got to play the C for that old pappy.”

Rico: “I can do that.”

Victor: “You know the difference between a payoff and the payoff against the wall?”

Rico: “Yeah.”

Victor: “Listen, kid. I’m talking about playing this apple without a store, boosters, or props. If you’re good, you can take off this touch without help, but it’s going to come hot.”

Rico: “Hot I can handle.”

Victor: “What if he tries to run? What are you going to do then?”

Rico: “I gotta raggle.”

Victor: “The raggle doesn’t always work. What if he blows?”

Rico: “I’ll put the mug on him.”

Victor: “Sounds like you got all the bases covered.”

Rico: “You bet.”

The conversation ended, and Valentine killed the tape. Hustlers and crossroaders had a special language, and over the years he’d gotten pretty good at deciphering it. Paint meant marked cards, a mitt man someone who switched cards during a game. There were hundreds of expressions, only Rico and Victor Marks weren’t using any of them. A raggle? Play the C for that old pappy? Put the mug on? He was clueless.

His stomach growled. It was lunchtime. Only too many things were bothering him to think about food. Like how Jack Lightfoot was cheating, and Bill’s situation, and Jacques’s dice cheater, and this damn tape. Too many puzzles to keep straight.

His stomach growled again. His body was telling him something, and he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door.

He decided to take a drive and got his car from the valet.

Traffic crawled, then stopped, then crawled some more. A kid on a moped scooted between lanes, making them all look stupid. He pulled into the entrance for the Castaway Hotel. Down the road, he could see the Fontainebleau. It had taken him ten minutes and a gallon of gas to go a lousy half mile.

The Castaway was one of those old Miami Beach dumps that he could identify with, the flowery wall coverings and mushy carpet a throwback to his youth. Behind the hotel was a poolside restaurant, and a greeter-seater showed him to a table with an umbrella. Next to the pool, a trio was playing jazz, the music battling with screaming kids and their parents screaming at them. He ordered a hamburger and coffee.

Ten minutes later his lunch came. The waiter said, “We’re changing shifts. Mind cashing out?”

Valentine paid the bill. It was seven bucks, so far the best deal he’d found. He watched the new shift come in. Several of the waiters were in street clothes and carried their uniforms in see-through dry-cleaning bags. He stared at the uniforms, then removed from his wallet the list of items that Jacques had told Mabel he’d found inside the dealers’ lockers, and read them again.

shoe polish

hair gel

combs/brushes

mustache trimmer

mouthwash/breath mints

aftershave

hair tonic

toothpaste

deodorant

clothes iron

sewing kit

newspaper

nude picture

candy bar

Smiling, he powered up his cell phone and called Mabel.

“Grift Sense.”

“Do you do psychic readings?”

“Very funny,” his neighbor said. “I’ve been trying to call you. Don’t you ever leave your cell phone on?”

No, he never did. He hated hearing cell phones ring in public places and private ones, as well. He ignored the question, and said, “I solved the mystery of Jacques’s dice cheater.”

“You did! Jacques called twenty minutes ago. He’s so irritating!”

“Tell Jacques the craps dealer who has the clothes iron in his locker is the cheater.”

“The clothes iron?”

“That’s right. I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out sooner.”

“Figure what out?”

“I’ve known a lot of craps dealers over the years,” he said, “and none iron their shirts. They have them dry-cleaned. Jacques’s cheater is using the iron to shrink the dice. You put a die up to a red-hot iron and hold it against the metal for a split second. The iron shrinks the circumference of the die. That causes the die to be biased, and certain combinations will come up more than others. The neat part is once the die cools off, it returns to its original size. All the evidence disappears.”

Mabel laughed with delight. “That’s wonderful. Now we get to keep the money.”

“After you call Jacques back, I’ve got two more things for you to do.”

“Fire away,” she said.

“First, I need you to call Detective Eddie Davis in Atlantic City and ask him to run a check on a guy named Rico Blanco.”

“The same Rico Blanco who ripped off your son?”

Valentine nearly slapped himself in the head. Two months ago, a hoodlum named Rico Blanco had stolen fifty grand from Gerry by getting him to bet on a videotape of a college football game. It had to be the same guy.

“You’re a genius,” he said.

“Thank you. Then what?”

“Turn on my computer—”

“Done.”

“—and boot up Creep File. Pull up the file on Victor Marks.”

Creep File was a database of over five thousand hustlers, crossroaders, and con men that he’d crossed paths with during his years policing Atlantic City’s casinos. It was a veritable Who’s Who of Sleaze.

“Here he is,” Mabel said. “Victor Marks. Professional con artist. Came to Atlantic City in 1982. Doesn’t read like he stayed long. No picture.”

Valentine closed his eyes and tried to remember him. He drew a blank.

“There’s no physical description,” Mabel added, “so I guess he got away. Ah, here’s something. He had a partner who you arrested. Saul Hyman.”

Valentine smiled thinly. Saul he did remember. An old-time scuffler, one of those guys who couldn’t stop stealing if his life depended on it.

“Pull up his file, will you?”

Mabel’s fingers tapped away. “Saul Hyman, aka the Coney Island Kid. Your notes are several pages long. Did he really do all these things?”

“That’s the tip of the iceberg. See if the file has his last known address.”

Mabel laughed out loud when she found it. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“What’s that?”

“He lives on Miami Beach.”

Saul Hyman lived in a retirement village in north Miami called Sunny Isles. He had to be pushing eighty, and Valentine imagined him doing what most old guys in Florida did: going to doctors, going to the track, and ogling the pretty girls who dotted the landscape like palm trees.

“Would you like his phone number?” Mabel asked.

“How did you get that?” Valentine asked.

“I typed his name into a search engine called whitepages.com.”

Valentine scribbled the number down. “While you’re at it, give me Gerry’s number in Puerto Rico.”

Mabel gave him the hotel’s number, and Valentine wrote it beneath Saul’s. His son was honeymooning at the Ritz-Carlton with his pregnant bride. Nothing but the best for his boy, especially when his old man was paying. “Listen,” he said, “have you ever watched that TV show,
Who Wants to Be Rich?”

“Once in a while.”

“Victor Marks scammed it. I’d like to figure out how.”

“As in cheated it? I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Why not?”

“I read in
TV Guide
that the security on the show is like Fort Knox.”

“Talk to you later,” he said.