by James Swain
He went to the registration desk and asked for Bill Higgins. A man behind the desk picked up a walkie-talkie and called inside. Bill emerged through the doors thirty seconds later, all out of breath. Bill was Navajo by birth, and had the demeanor of a statue. Not only was he the most powerful law enforcement officer in Nevada, he was the best law enforcement person Valentine had ever known.
“One of the dealers is passed out cold,” Bill said.
“Heart attack?”
“Could be. He keeled over during the middle of his deal.” He turned to the guards. “An ambulance will be here soon. Be prepared to clear a path for them.”
“Yes, sir,” they both said.
Bill opened the doors, and Valentine followed him in. The unconscious dealer was in the room’s center, being attended to by several other dealers. A crowd of gamblers stood off to one side, making wagers on whether or not the dealer was going to live. Valentine went over and told them to knock it off.
“You a cop?” a guy holding a fan of bills asked.
“How bad do you want to find out?” Valentine replied.
The parasites scattered. He joined Bill, and knelt down beside the dealer. One of the other dealers was shaking his head.
“He just had radiation treatment for cancer a few weeks ago,” the dealer said. “I guess he wasn’t as strong as he thought.”
“What’s his name?” Valentine asked.
“Ray Callahan.”
The name was vaguely familiar. Valentine gently slapped Callahan on the cheek.
“Hey Ray, rise and shine. Breakfast is on, and everyone’s waiting for you.”
Callahan slowly came around. He blinked hard, and for a brief moment was wide awake. He stared at Valentine with a glint of recognition, then went back under. Three EMS guys pushing a gurney rushed into the room. They got Callahan on a stretcher, then rolled him out.
A gambler across the room called out, “Is he still alive?”
Valentine spotted the guy who asked this, and shook his fist at him.
“I met with Gloria Curtis earlier and got her under control,” Valentine said when he and Bill were in the coffee shop. “She’s willing to play ball.”
“You going to give her an exclusive if you find anything?” Bill asked, blowing the steam off his drink.
“I didn’t have a choice. Look, I need to level with you about something.”
Valentine took out his wallet, and removed the playing card Jack Donovan had given Gerry. Bill stared at the card, then turned it over and stared at it some more.
“This is from this casino, isn’t it?” Bill said.
“That’s right. It turned up in a murder investigation in Atlantic City. The victim gave the card to my son before he died. He claimed he could beat any poker game in the world. Trouble is, we can’t find anything wrong with the card.”
Bill dropped the playing card on the table. “Was this person credible?”
“He was a scammer. He and my son were childhood friends.”
“So the tournament is being cheated.”
“Yes. The problem is, I have no idea how. I’d suggest you start checking every deck of cards before and after it’s used. Especially those at Skip DeMarco’s table.”
Bill made a face. “So DeMarco is cheating.”
“That’s where the evidence is pointing.”
“But he’s legally blind. How could he be reading the cards?”
Valentine had thought about it during his flight out that morning, and had come to the conclusion that DeMarco, like many sight-impaired people, must have an elevated sense of hearing that compensated for his lack of sight. If someone at the table were reading the backs of the cards—such as the dealer—they could signal DeMarco by the way they breathed. Hustlers called this The Sniff and often used it to pass information.
“I think someone’s reading them for him,” Valentine said. “Start watching the dealers at DeMarco’s table.”
The waitress came and topped off their cups. As Valentine raised his to his lips, he stared at Bill. The look on his friend’s face said he was frustrated as hell. Despite his obnoxious behavior, Skip DeMarco was the darling of the tournament. Busting him for cheating was the last thing Bill wanted to do.
“Rufus Steele called me earlier,” Bill said. “He heard you were in town, and wants to talk to you. He’s staying in the hotel.”
Valentine put his cup down. Rufus’s interview with Gloria Curtis had bothered him. It was rare for a cheater to call another player a cheater. Rufus must have had good reason, and Valentine wanted to know what that reason was.
“Give me his room number,” Valentine said.
15
“It’s open, and I’ve got nothing worth stealing,” Rufus Steele called out.
Valentine opened the door to Rufus’s hotel room and poked his head in. Rufus was standing by the bed with the phone pressed to his chin, the look on his face pure agitation. Seeing Valentine in the doorway, he flashed a crooked grin, and motioned him inside.
“Hey, Tony, you’re a sight for sore eyes. How you been?”
“Fine,” Valentine said, shutting the door behind him.
Rufus hadn’t changed that much since Valentine had last seen him. He was in his scruffy cowboy clothes and looked like he’d just stepped out of a spaghetti western. Back in his day, he’d been the greatest poker player in the world, but that had been a long time ago. Compared to the brash young kids who now ruled the poker world, Rufus looked sadly out of place.
“Hello,” Rufus said into the phone. “Is this the hotel’s general manager? Well, listen to what I’m about to say. You have as much chance of getting me to leave this room as you do getting French kissed by the Statue of Liberty. That’s right, son. I know the law, and you can’t throw me out. You think I’m mistaken? Well, here’s an idea. Why don’t you take this phone and shove it up your ass?”
Rufus dropped the receiver into its cradle. Then he grabbed two sodas from the minibar, and pointed at a pair of chairs by the room’s window. They made themselves comfortable and clinked bottles.
“They trying to throw you out?” Valentine asked.
“They sure are. They’re mad I blew the whistle on that smart-aleck DeMarco kid,” Rufus said. He took a long swig of soda and let out a belch. “Besides, I can’t leave the hotel even if I wanted to.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t pay the bill. I blew the last of my money on the entry fee.”
“Times been hard?”
Rufus tilted back his cowboy hat. His forehead was covered with liver spots and his hair was a thin reminder of the mane he’d once sported. “Yeah, but I guess I should have expected it. They say a poker player spends the first twenty years of his life learning, the second twenty years earning, and the last twenty years yearning for what he once was. I believe I may have entered into that third stage.”
“You can still beat ninety-nine percent of these kids,” Valentine said.
“Thanks. I needed that.”
“Bill Higgins said you had something to tell me.”
Rufus raised the soda to his lips and all the liquid inside disappeared. “You need to grill the tournament director. He seated those boys together with DeMarco. It was fixed from the start.”
“Can you prove that?”
Rufus frowned. “No, but it’s obvious what happened.”
Valentine leaned forward in his chair. He remembered Rufus once telling him about poker games in Texas where they’d put guys with machine guns on the roof of the house to protect the players inside. Rufus had seen plenty of thieves in his day, and would undoubtedly run across plenty more. “Rufus, you’re taking this personally. That’s not like you. There will be other tournaments.”
“This is different,” Rufus said.
“How so?”
“That kid bad-mouthed me on national television. My ninety-eight-year-old momma called me from the Sunset Nursing Home. She said, ‘You need to teach that loudmouth a lesson, Rufus
.’”
Valentine put his soda on the windowsill. Then he pulled his chair a few inches closer to his host. “I want you to do me a favor.”
“Name it.”
“Stop calling DeMarco a cheater. That’s my job.”
“So what should I call him?”
“A worm, a toad, a snot-nosed schoolboy who doesn’t know his ass from third base, a rank amateur, whatever you want.”
Rufus grinned, getting his drift. “I’ll do it, provided that you return the favor, and let me go about my business.”
“Meaning what?”
“I made a bet with a guy in the tournament which I’m about to go downstairs and settle.”
“A sucker?”
“I suppose you could call him that. He fancies himself a professional poker player.”
“What’s the bet?”
“I bet him ten thousand dollars that I could make a fly land on a sugar cube. The sucker thinks I’m off my rocker. I ask that you not tell him otherwise.”
“I thought you said you were broke,” Valentine said.
Rufus put down his drink, then pulled out both his pockets. There was nothing in either of them. “I am. That’s what makes the bet so intriguing.”
There was an impatient knock on the door. Rufus took his time getting to his feet, his old bones moaning and creaking. He’d been a cowboy all his life, had a wife and a bunch of screaming grandkids, and still called Texas home. He’d once told Valentine that he didn’t permit gambling around the house, and Valentine had believed him.
Rufus opened the door and stuck his head into the hallway. A hotel maintenance man stood outside accompanied by a beefy security guard. The guard did the talking.
“Mr. Steele? I’m with hotel security. We’d like to come into your room.”
“What for?” Rufus asked.
“The general manager informed me that you swore at him a few minutes ago,” the guard said.
“All I did was ask him to shove the phone up his ass,” Rufus said.
“He was deeply offended by the remark.”
“Guess he doesn’t spend much time inside his casino, huh?”
“The general manager has instructed our maintenance man to take your phone out of your room,” the guard said.
“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?”
“Afraid not,” the guard said. “Please step aside.”
Rufus’s shoulders sagged. He turned and looked back into the room at Valentine sitting by the window. “Can you talk to this guy, Tony?”
“I’m afraid it won’t do any good,” Valentine said.
“I thought you were here on behalf of the hotel.”
“The Gaming Control Board hired me.”
Rufus’s shoulders sagged some more. He stepped away from the door, and gestured weakly with his arm. The two men entered the suite. The maintenance man took an electric screwdriver off his belt, and placed it on the bed. Then he dropped to his knees, and peered behind the bed, looking for the electrical outlet that the phone was plugged into. Valentine got out of his chair, and came over to where Rufus stood. He felt bad for Rufus, but didn’t know how to express it without offending him any further. Take away a man’s pride, and there wasn’t much left.
Rufus turned to the guard. “Can I make one last call?”
The guard scratched his chin. “Is it local?”
“It’s right here in the hotel,” Rufus said.
“I don’t see why not.”
“I have your permission?”
“Sure,” the guard said. “Go ahead.”
The maintenance man got off the floor, and gave Rufus some room. Rufus picked up the phone’s receiver, and punched in zero. An operator came on the line, and Rufus asked to speak to the hotel’s general manager. A few moments later, he was put through.
“This is Rufus Steele,” he said when the GM came on. “Remember that phone I suggested you shove up your ass? Well, hold on, son. They’re about to deliver it to you.”
16
The sucker was waiting for Rufus in one of the tournament side rooms. He was in his mid-twenties, wore his shirt out to hide his round stomach, and had yellow spiked hair. He was extremely loud, and jabbered away like he’d already won the bet. With him were a pair of tanned guys sporting expensive clothes and nice haircuts. Valentine guessed these were the hairy legs backing the sucker’s play.
Hairy legs were a big part of gambling. They were the money men, and often had more capital than common sense. In Valentine’s opinion, they were a major reason why high-stakes poker had exploded around the country. Most had gotten their wealth from the stock market or the high-tech boom, and frittered it away backing egotistical movie projects and professional poker players.
Introductions were made, with Rufus telling the sucker and his backers that Valentine was “an ex-police detective from the fair state of New Jersey who I asked to be here to keep things honest.” The sucker eyed Valentine skeptically, as did the hairy legs.
Valentine nodded politely to them.
“I want to establish some rules before we start,” the sucker said.
“By all means,” Rufus replied.
“First of all, we get to provide the sugar cubes. We’ll put them on the table, then you get to pick which cube you think the fly will land on.”
“How many sugar cubes do you want to put on the table?” Rufus asked.
“Ten,” the sucker said.
“That’s a lot.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it makes it harder. Let’s make the bet twenty thousand,” Rufus said.
The sucker’s mouth dropped down, as did his backers’ mouths.
“You want to bet twenty thousand dollars instead of ten thousand?” the sucker said.
“That’s right,” Rufus replied. “If you put ten sugar cubes on the table, it will be harder for me to persuade the fly to land on a particular one. I’m willing to take the gamble, provided we bet twenty thousand dollars on the outcome. I think that’s fair, don’t you?”
One of the hairy legs let out a laugh. “Sure, why not?”
“There’s one other stipulation,” the sucker said. “We get to provide the fly.”
Rufus tilted his Stetson back like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Excuse me, son, but I figured we’d use one of the flies that was buzzing around the place. It’s never too hard to find a fly inside a casino, you know.”
The sucker shook his head. It was obvious he’d thought this out, and decided that Rufus was somehow going to provide a trained fly to win the wager. They were standing beside a round table with a tablecloth draped over it, and the sucker reached beneath the table, and triumphantly came up with a glass mayonnaise jar. The jar had the lid on, into which were poked several airholes. Buzzing around inside the jar was a large house fly.
“We’ll use this one,” the sucker said.
Rufus extended his hand, and the sucker handed him the jar. The old cowboy stared at the buzzing fly, then held the jar up to the light, and stared some more. After some thoughtful consideration, he handed the jar back to the sucker.
“You’re on,” Rufus said.
Rufus explained to the sucker that he was going to have to hypnotize the fly, and would need at least five minutes in order to do so. The sucker agreed, and placed the mayonnaise jar on the center of the table. Rufus sat down at the table, and stared into the jar while the fly flew around making an angry buzzing sound.
Valentine removed Gloria Curtis’s business card from his wallet and retreated to the corner of the room. He flipped open his cell phone and punched in her number. She answered on the second ring, and sounded like she was in a restaurant.
“I’ve got a neat human interest story for you,” he said.
“That was fast,” she said.
“Come to the first side room next to where the tournament is being played. And bring a cameraman with you.”
“I’m in the restaurant across the lobby, having lunch wi
th my cameraman,” she said. “We’ll be right over.”
Gloria and her cameraman appeared sixty seconds later. Valentine cornered them, and got them out of earshot of the sucker and his backers. Standing in the corner of the room, he explained Rufus’s bet and the sucker’s stipulations, then explained how Rufus was hypnotizing the fly to do his bidding. Gloria looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
“Excuse me, but you think this is suitable for TV?” she said, sounding more than a little put out. “For Christ’s sake, Tony, we don’t put crazy people on.”
“He’s crazy like a fox,” Valentine said. “Rufus will win, trust me.”
“But how?”
“I have no idea, but he will.”
Gloria pointed at the sucker standing on the other side of the room. “That’s Benjamin Gannon. He’s a graduate of MIT, and a bona fide mathematical genius. I’m sure he’s looked at every angle there is with this bet, and knows he can’t lose. Rufus Steele is going to look like a fool. I’m not going to televise that.”
She was really annoyed, and her cameraman seemed to mirror her feelings. He was a young guy, and wore a gold earring in each ear like a pirate. Valentine guessed they had never heard the Damon Runyon tale about the gambler betting the farmer that he had a deck of cards where the jack of spades would spit cider in your ear, and the farmer taking the bet, and proceeding to get an earful of cider. He made them both sit down, and explained what was going on.
“Rufus is pulling the hook, line, and sinker. Rufus met Gannon during the first day of the tournament. My guess is, there was a fly buzzing around, and Rufus made some offhand remark about flies being able to be trained. That’s the hook. Then, Rufus wondered whether flies really could be trained. He tells Gannon he might have found a way. He knows Gannon is a genius, and will think he’s crazy. That’s the line, and Gannon bit on it. Now Rufus is performing the sinker. He’s gotten Gannon’s backers to double the bet, and if any more suckers come into the room, he’ll get them to make wagers as well. That’s how the game is played, and Rufus is a master at it.”