Deadman's Poker: A Novel (Tony Valentine)

by James Swain

  “But you’re leaving the most crucial part out,” Gloria said. “How does Rufus make the fly land on the sugar cube?”

  Rufus had risen from his chair, and was looking around the room for him. The fly was still buzzing around the mayo jar, looking no more hypnotized than when Rufus started staring at him. Valentine saw a smile crease the old cowboy’s lips.

  “I think we’re about to find out,” Valentine said.

  “Okay cowboys and cowgirls, I’m ready,” Rufus declared.

  By now there were fifty-plus people in the room. Gloria got them to bunch up behind Rufus, which made the group look much bigger. She stuck her microphone into Rufus’s face, and tried to get him to say a few words.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but this takes a lot of concentration,” he said.

  The sucker tore open a box of sugar cubes. He removed ten, and laid them across the table in a line. Rufus took a plastic coffee stirrer from his shirt pocket. It had been resting there all along, and Valentine had not paid any attention to it. Rufus said, “Okay, now here’s the deal. Everyone has to be clear on which sugar cube you want the fly to land on before the fly is released from the jar. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” the sucker replied.

  “Good. Now, which one do you want? And you can’t change your mind, and confuse things. Whichever cube you pick, that’s the one the fly lands on. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then let’s go. Which cube do you want, son?”

  “Third from the left,” the sucker said.

  “Your left, or my left?”

  “My left.”

  Rufus brought the tip of the coffee stirrer directly above the sugar cube that was third from the sucker’s left. “You mean this one, son?”

  “That one,” the sucker said.

  Gloria stood between them, moving her microphone back and forth as they spoke. She was cool under pressure, and reminded Valentine of a referee at a boxing match. You knew they were there, yet paid no attention to them. Rufus put the stirrer back into his shirt pocket. Then he picked up the mayo jar from the table. Staring into it, he said, “Third from his left, pardner.”

  He handed the mayo jar to the sucker.

  “You open it, son. Good luck.”

  The sucker carefully unscrewed the jar, and allowed the inmate to escape. The fly flew around their heads like an angry kamikaze, causing several gamblers to duck. The fly flew straight up, and did several circles above their heads. Finally, its wings lost their steam, and it descended upon the table, where it landed upon the sugar cube third from the sucker’s left. Gloria was filming the table when it happened, and got a shot for the ages. The sucker’s mouth dropped open and his pink tongue fell out. One earful of cider, coming right up!

  Valentine was watching Rufus, and saw the old cowboy wearily shake his head. All the talking had plumb worn him out, and he sat back down at the table, threw his cowboy boots onto a chair, and tilted back his Stetson.

  “I win,” he declared.

  17

  The fly remained on the sugar cube for half a minute, oblivious to the gamblers gawking at it, or the TV camera, or the pulsating sounds of the casino filtering in every time someone opened the door. It was just a fly, small and harmless, yet for those thirty seconds, it was the most important thing in the room. Finally it flew away, and Gannon’s backers paid up and the gamblers drifted off and everything returned to normal.

  “Rufus, would you mind doing a wrap-up interview?” Gloria asked.

  “My pleasure,” Rufus said, getting to his feet and straightening his string tie. Gloria stuck the microphone up to his face, and he flashed his best smile.

  “This is Gloria Curtis, talking with world-famous poker player Rufus Steele, who just hypnotized a fly into landing on a sugar cube. Rufus, that was quite a performance. What are you going to do with the money you won?”

  Rufus was a good foot taller than Gloria, and the microphone hung a few inches below his chin. He paused, then said, “Challenge that boy who beat me.”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “I’m going to challenge that boy who beat me two days ago,” Rufus declared.

  “Skip DeMarco?”

  “Yes. I’d like to play him again, heads-up, winner-take-all.”

  “This is the same man who you accused of cheating in the tournament,” Gloria said. “Now, you’re saying you’d like to play him again.”

  Rufus glanced briefly at Valentine, who was standing behind the cameraman, then back at Gloria. “I’ll let the authorities decide whether anything inappropriate happened on Thursday. In the meantime, I’d like to play that boy again, see if he really knows anything about cards. My guess is, he doesn’t.”

  “You do realize that DeMarco is currently the chip leader in the World Poker Showdown, and has won over a half-million dollars in just two days,” Gloria said.

  “Not to be impolite, but that doesn’t mean much,” Rufus said.

  “Would you care to explain to our viewers?”

  “This is a tournament, and you play for these little plastic coins called chips. I’m talking about playing for cold hard cash, the way we play down in Texas.”

  “Do you think that would give you an advantage?”

  “Ma’am, that young man would be like a missionary with a bunch of hungry cannibals. I’d eat him alive.”

  Gloria knew an ending when she heard it, and faced the camera. “This is Gloria Curtis, reporting from the World Poker Showdown in Las Vegas. Back to you.”

  “I owe you a steak and an ice-cold beer,” Gloria said a few minutes later. “That was really wonderful.”

  The room had emptied, leaving Gloria and Valentine and the empty mayonnaise jar. Gloria’s cameraman stood off to the side, breaking down his equipment.

  “I’ll take you up on the steak,” Valentine said.

  “You don’t drink?”

  He shook his head. She looked surprised, like all cops were supposed to drink.

  “My father was a drunk. I swore off the stuff before it ever touched my lips.”

  “Then I guess we’ll just have to settle for a steak. Maybe over dinner I can bribe you into telling me how Rufus pulled that little stunt.”

  Valentine was not about to tell Gloria that he didn’t have the slightest idea. She went to speak with her cameraman, giving him the opportunity to pick up the ten sugar cubes on the table. Most animals were attracted to sugar’s sweet smell, and he wondered why the fly hadn’t hopped around from cube to cube, instead of landing on the cube third from the left. He remembered his office manager once predicting where a fly would land on a table, and had the sneaking suspicion that the scam was older than he was. He went over to where Gloria stood with her cameraman.

  “Would you do me a favor?” he asked.

  “Name it,” she said.

  “Would you consider interviewing DeMarco, and informing him of Rufus’s challenge? I’d like to see his expression when you break the news to him.”

  Her eyes sparked. “Think you’ll see something in his face?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “What do gamblers call those?”

  “Tells.”

  “Ooh,” she said. “This is fun. If DeMarco really is a cheater, you think he’ll cringe at the idea of playing Rufus again.”

  “I sure do.”

  “Will that help your investigation?”

  “Let’s just say it will put me one step closer to the truth.”

  “Ooh,” she said. “I love it.”

  They went into the lobby, and found DeMarco standing outside the card room being interviewed by a Japanese TV crew. He was a shade under six feet, and looked like he worked out, his shoulders tapering down to a thin waist. He held a long metal cane in his hand, and was wearing thick dark glasses. Valentine had seen plenty of blind people in casinos—most liked to play the slot machines—and he’d seen people pretend to be blind as cover for a scam. DeMarco’s body language said h
e was the real thing.

  DeMarco’s handlers stood behind him. One was big and looked like a bodyguard, the other an old man carrying a canvas bag. The old man was dressed in black, and had silver hair slicked back on both sides and lizard eyes. He was the epitome of an old-time gangster, and Valentine guessed this was George “the Tuna” Scalzo.

  “Someone’s done a marketing makeover on DeMarco,” Gloria said under her breath. “New haircut, new wardrobe. Very smart.”

  “Think he’s being groomed?”

  “Sure looks that way.” To her cameraman she said, “Zack, ready to rock?”

  “Uh-huh,” Zack said, hoisting the camera onto his shoulder.

  DeMarco was wrapping up his interview as they approached him. Hearing them, he turned his head and offered the thinnest of smiles.

  “Gloria Curtis, WSPN Sports Television,” Gloria said, sticking the microphone in his face. “Congratulations on being the tournament money leader the second day in a row.”

  “Nice perfume,” he said.

  “Do you still feel confidant that you’ll win the tournament?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “There are over two thousand players left in the field.”

  “And they’re all chasing me,” he said.

  “Rufus Steele, an old-timer who accused you of cheating the other day, has issued a challenge. Are you aware of it?”

  DeMarco froze, the bluster leaving his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and then he squared his shoulders and shrugged it off. A nice recovery, Valentine thought.

  “Rufus is challenging me?” he said.

  “Yes,” Gloria said. “He wants to play you heads up for cash.”

  “If I played every person I beat in this tournament, I’d never leave,” he said. “No thanks. I’ve got more important things to do.”

  “Would you play him after the tournament was over?”

  “You mean, after I win the tournament?” he said.

  “Very well. After you win the tournament.”

  “Sure, I’d play him. A million bucks, heads up. Neither of us leaves the table until the other guy has all the money.”

  Gloria turned to the camera. “And there you have it. A pair of gamblers, one old, the other young, ready to lock horns and play poker for two million dollars, cash. It doesn’t get any better than that. Back to you.”

  “That was great,” Zack said, lowering his camera.

  “We done?” DeMarco asked.

  “Yes,” Gloria said. “Thank you.”

  DeMarco lowered his cane and walked away. He was either blind as a bat, or up for serious Academy Award consideration for Best Actor. He entered one of the casino’s noisy bars with his handlers behind him. Valentine felt a hand on his arm, and turned to find Gloria standing beside him.

  “Did you ever think of being a producer?” she asked.

  “No, should I?”

  “Yes. You’re filled with good ideas.”

  Gloria needed to review and edit the film before Zack sent it to the network. Still holding Valentine’s sleeve, she said, “How about dinner tonight? The hotel has a steak house. I’ll buy you a New York Strip, and you can explain how the sugar trick works.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” he said.

  “Eight o’clock at Bogart’s,” she said. “I’ll make the reservations.”

  He watched her walk away. Then he crossed the casino, and found a bank of phone booths. He entered one, shut the door, and pulled out his cell. Mabel, his office manager, was coming home from her cruise today. He wanted to say hi, hear how it had gone, and find out how the damn sugar trick worked. He finished punching in her number when the white courtesy phone in the booth rang. Out of curiosity, he answered it.

  “Tony, this is Bill Higgins,” the caller said.

  Valentine nearly dropped his cell phone on the floor. “How did you find me?”

  “I’m in the Celebrity surveillance control room, watching the casino floor on the monitors,” Bill said. “I saw you enter the phone booth, and called you.”

  Valentine stared at the domed ornamental light in the ceiling of the booth. If there was a hidden camera in the light, he couldn’t see it.

  “I know this is going to sound strange,” Bill went on, “but I was just watching you in the bar.”

  “But I wasn’t in the bar,” Valentine said.

  “Well, I saw you in the bar, drinking a beer. Then on another camera, I saw you duck into the phone booth. And I asked myself, how can he be in two places at once?”

  It took a moment for what Bill was saying to register. His son was in the bar. Bill had never met Gerry, which explained the confusion. “This guy in the bar who looks like me,” Valentine said. “Is he sitting with three Italian guys?”

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “They’re at a table in the corner.”

  “Does one of them look like a boxer who went too many rounds?”

  “Right again.”

  Valentine was still burned that Gerry had lied to him, and come to Las Vegas on the sly. A little payback was in order so he said, “I want you to backroom them.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “The guy in the bar is my son. He needs to be humbled.”

  “Got it,” Bill said.

  Backrooming was a casino’s way of dealing with undesirable people. The person or persons would be led by security to a windowless room, where they were read the riot act by someone who worked for the casino. It was about as much fun as getting arrested, and a perfect reality check for his son.

  “You coming upstairs?” Bill asked.

  “Of course I’m coming upstairs,” Valentine said, opening his cell phone. “But first I’d like to make a phone call, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Sorry,” his friend said.

  18

  Mabel Struck had returned from her cruise ready to go back to work. It wasn’t that cruising wasn’t fun—seven days in the Caribbean was most people’s idea of a dream vacation—and she’d enjoyed the food and nonstop activities. But after a couple of days it had become predictable, and by the week’s end she’d been downright bored. Going away on vacation had convinced her that she had the best job in the world, and she’d come home eager to get back to it.

  She unlocked the front door to Tony’s house and punched the code into the security system, then took off her shoes and walked to Tony’s office in the back. Tony had gotten her in the habit of taking her shoes off, and the house was usually so quiet she could hear a pin drop. Better to hear yourself think, her boss had explained.

  She found a note from Tony Scotch-taped to the computer. Gerry and Yolanda were in San Juan, while Tony was in Las Vegas investigating a poker tournament. Her boss had left a stack of letters on the desk that needed to be addressed, plus a few dozen unopened e-mail messages. He ended by telling Mabel he hoped she’d had a good time, and hadn’t gotten too sunburned.

  Mabel found herself smiling. That was the thing she liked about Tony. He always cared about the personal things. As she started to go through the letters, she glanced at the clock in the shape of a roulette wheel on the desk. It was three P.M. Right about now, the square dancing lessons would be starting on the ship, and the midafternoon tea. It was fine if you liked prepackaged fun, only Mabel had decided that there was only so much of that kind of thing she could take. The nitty-gritty of the real world was more to her liking, and she was happy to be home.

  The phone rang as she was scrolling through Tony’s e-mails. Normally the afternoons were quiet around the office, no doubt because most casinos were quiet in the afternoon as well, and she answered the phone with a cheerful, “Grift Sense.”

  “Are you a shopping service for crooks?” a familiar voice said.

  “Only if they have a sense of humor,” she replied.

  “Sign me up,” Tony said. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

  The fun part about working for Tony was that he never took the job too seriously. As he was fond of saying, no one had ev
er cried when a casino lost money.

  “Yours too. How is sunny Lost Wages?”

  “Hasn’t changed a bit. I read in the paper that they’d built a brand-new elementary school within five hundred feet of a brothel, so they’re going to have to move it.”

  “The brothel?”

  “No, the elementary school. Can’t keep those girls out of work. So, how was your cruise? Did the unlimited buffet live up to your expectations?”

  “The food was incredible,” she said. “But there was one thing which happened on board that bothered me.”

  “Let me guess. You had to beat off all the eligible men who wanted to dance with you.”

  Mabel felt herself blush. Her late husband had been fond of calling her beautiful, but that was her husband. Hearing Tony say she was attractive made her wonder if there was something to it. “No, it was in the ship’s casino. They shut it down one night, right when everyone was winning. When they reopened the next night, they’d lowered the limits on the table games to twenty-five dollars. Do you know why they did that?”

  “I sure do,” he said. “If I tell you, will you answer a question for me?”

  “What is it?”

  “How do you get a fly to land on a sugar cube?”

  She burst out laughing. “Oh, Tony, my great-grandmother taught me that trick. Don’t tell me someone pulled it on you?”

  “Actually, he pulled it on a roomful of guys, and won twenty thousand bucks in the process. It kind of had me baffled.”

  “He’s a fly whisperer.”

  “A what?”

  “Just kidding,” Mabel said. “You go first, then I’ll explain.”

  “Here’s the deal,” Valentine said. “Cruise ship casinos have a problem. They’re only open at night. As a result, they only have a limited amount of time to win money. Most casino games grind you down. A player’s chances of winning are much greater in a casino the less amount of time they stay there.”