Deadman's Poker: A Novel (Tony Valentine)

by James Swain

  “Glad you think so,” Valentine told him.

  Valentine drove back to the motel with Gerry sitting beside him. The motel was called the Casablanca, although he didn’t think he’d find a guy wearing a white dinner jacket running the place. As he parked, he spotted a guy in a baggy suit standing outside the door to his son’s room. It looked like a thinned-down Pete Longo, chief detective of the Metro Las Vegas Police Department’s Homicide Division, and he muttered under his breath.

  “Something wrong?” his son asked.

  Valentine did not respond. The last time he’d seen Longo, the detective had been having an affair with a stripper that nearly cost him his career and his marriage. Longo had been out of his mind, and had picked a fight with Valentine. It had been ugly, and Valentine had ended up breaking Longo’s nose.

  Valentine had kept tabs on Longo since then. He’d heard that Pete had publicly apologized to his colleagues for what he’d done. He’d also patched up things with his wife and two teenage daughters. He was attempting to redeem himself, and Valentine gave him a lot of credit. Falling on your sword and starting over was never easy.

  As Valentine got out of his car, Longo spotted him, and a jolt of recognition spread across the detective’s face. He said something to one of the cops, then hustled over. He’d lost a lot of weight, and his suit swayed from side to side as he walked.

  “Tony Valentine, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Valentine spread his palms to the sky. “I love the outdoors. How about you?”

  “I’m investigating a murder. You here on a job?”

  “Bill Higgins hired me to look into some cheating at the World Poker Showdown. My son and his colleagues are helping me.”

  Longo glanced at Gerry sitting in the car, then into the second car at Vinny, Frank, and Nunzie. Cops were good at picking out lowlifes, and Longo’s brain was telling him that these boys hadn’t been to choir practice in a long time.

  Valentine decided to take the bull by the horns, and pointed at the door to his son’s room. “That’s my son’s room. What’s going on?”

  “The hotel manager found a dead body in it,” Longo said. “Your son been with you today?”

  “Part of it.”

  “What was he doing the rest of the time?”

  “A job for me. Who’s the stiff?”

  “A local dirtbag named Russell John Watson,” Longo said. “His death is no great loss to the world. Watson was put in your son’s room, then shot again in the head.”

  Longo’s admission was surprising. The detective was saying more than he was supposed to, considering it was Gerry’s room the stiff had ended up in.

  “How can you tell that?” Valentine asked.

  “Lack of blood,” Longo said. “Whoever brought Watson here propped him up in a chair, stuck a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. His head had already drained, so there wasn’t much blood on the wall when the bullet came out, just bone and brain tissue. Believe it or not, I’ve seen this before.”

  “Sorry.”

  Longo smiled thinly. He looked different from the last time Valentine had seen him, and it wasn’t just the loss of weight. His face had taken on a gravity, like he knew how lucky he was to be getting a second chance at life.

  “I need to talk to your son and his friends,” the detective said.

  “Of course.”

  “Any idea why someone might be trying to set up your son?”

  “It’s a bad world, Pete. I have no idea.”

  A uniformed cop standing in the doorway to Gerry’s room called to Longo, and the detective turned and hurried across the lot to where the cop was standing. Valentine went back to his car, and saw Gerry roll down his window.

  “You fix it, Pop?”

  “Yeah, I fixed it. You’re going to need to talk to the cops. Stick to your story, and you’re home free.”

  “Oh man, Pop, that’s great.”

  Gerry was smiling like he’d won the lottery. It was a look that Valentine had seen on Gerry’s face many times before, and had always reminded him of a pardoned man on death row. He knelt down so he was eyeball-to-eyeball with his son.

  “Where’s the bag of insulin you stole?”

  Gerry produced the bag and passed it through the window. Valentine peered into it, and saw a white plastic box and a baggie of melting ice. Gerry had been telling him the truth, and planned to give the insulin back. His son was learning, even if he was doing it the hard way, and Valentine guessed that was all he could ask for.

  “Call me when you’re finished with the police,” Valentine said.

  30

  Las Vegas sat in a desert basin surrounded by mountains, and nighttime seemed to settle over the town more slowly than anyplace else Valentine had ever been. It was like a big party was about to begin, the house lights slowly being dimmed.

  By the time he pulled into Celebrity’s valet stand, the casino’s blazing neon was the only thing visible across the vast desert. He grabbed the bag of insulin off the front seat and got out. Tossing his keys to the valet, he glanced at the tiny TV sitting in the valet’s alcove. It was tuned to the World Poker Showdown, and showed Skip DeMarco playing earlier that day. The kid looked good on TV, and the camera was showing him to the exclusion of the other players at the table. As Valentine went into the hotel, a concierge appeared before him.

  “Mr. Valentine?”

  “That’s me.”

  “There’s a call for you on the house phone.”

  He followed the concierge to his desk, and was handed a white house phone. He guessed it was Bill Higgins, spying on him from the surveillance control room.

  “Valentine, here.”

  “Sammy Mann, at your service,” a man’s voice said.

  “Not the Sammy Mann, king of the cooler mobs?”

  “In the flesh,” Sammy said. “I’m upstairs in surveillance, doing a job for Bill Higgins.”

  “So I heard. Want to get together?”

  “Yeah, but don’t bother coming up here,” the retired hustler said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby bar, if that’s okay with you.”

  Valentine was tired, and felt like going to his room and taking a nap. Only he’d learned a long time ago that when crooks wanted to talk, he needed to listen.

  “Sure. I’ll grab us a table inside.”

  “See you in ten minutes,” Sammy said.

  Hanging up, Valentine turned to the concierge, and handed him the canvas bag with the insulin. “I need you to put this someplace cold for a little while.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Valentine,” the concierge said.

  “I took your advice, and started hiring myself out to the casinos,” Sammy said ten minutes later, nursing a ginger ale while untying his necktie. In his day, Sammy had been the epitome of a classy cheat, and had gone back to wearing his trademark clothes—a navy sports jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons, silk tie, and white shirt with French cuffs. He’d once run with a cooler mob, and could take eight decks of prearranged playing cards out of an arm sling he was wearing, and exchange it with eight decks being held by a crooked blackjack dealer, all in three seconds flat.

  “They paying you good?” Valentine asked, sipping a decaf.

  “Like a king. I went through chemotherapy two years ago, and came out a new man. I decided the best way to stay alive was by working.”

  “What did you think of DeMarco?” Valentine asked.

  “What do you think of him?”

  “I never played poker, so I don’t know,” Valentine said.

  Sammy’s coal dark eyes scanned the crowded casino bar. He was Arab, and had the dark good looks of an aging movie star. Valentine was glad to see that he was doing well, but still wouldn’t confide in him. Sammy had been a thief for too long to be fully trusted.

  “He’s cheating,” Sammy said quietly.

  There were plenty of people inside the bar, many of them associated with the WPS. Valentine raised his glass to his lips. “How?”

 
Sammy smiled. “My guess is, he’s being fed information.”

  “By who?”

  “The dealer. The cards are marked. The dealer reads the marks during the deal, and signals DeMarco what his opponents are holding.”

  “But the kid is blind.”

  Sammy leaned back in his chair. The bar had a plasma-screen TV, and was broadcasting the same rerun of the tournament Valentine had seen at the valet stand. DeMarco was on, and had just knocked another world-class player out of the tournament.

  “Doesn’t mean a thing,” Sammy said. “Maybe the signal is verbal—you know, by breathing loudly. Or maybe it’s the way the dealer pitches the cards to DeMarco during the deal. DeMarco has some vision.”

  Valentine had already considered those methods, and ruled them out. Breathing loudly—called The Sniff—was too noticeable, and so was The Pitch. He sensed that Sammy was taking stabs in the dark.

  “Any other ideas?” Valentine asked.

  Sammy stared at him coolly. “You think I’m wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  Sammy grabbed a passing waitress and bummed a cigarette off her. He could have been the greatest salesman who’d ever lived, so natural were his charms of persuasion. He lit up, and blew a perfect smoke ring into the air. “Tony, that’s the only explanation for what’s going on. The kid is getting outside help. Period.”

  There was real resentment in Sammy’s voice, and Valentine guessed he’d heard DeMarco call Rufus Steele an old man on TV, and taken exception to it.

  “Maybe he’s lucky,” Valentine said.

  “Poker isn’t about luck, and it isn’t about the cards you get dealt,” Sammy said. “It’s about playing your opponent, and knowing when he’s strong or weak. That’s the entire formula in a nutshell. This kid is being fed information.”

  The smell of Sammy’s cigarette reminded Valentine of every cigarette he’d ever smoked. He tagged the waitress and talked her into giving him a cigarette as well.

  “The cards aren’t marked,” he said after he’d lit up.

  Sammy turned and gave him a long stare. “Who checked them?”

  “The Gaming Control Board and the FBI. Every single card in the tournament has been checked.”

  “Like I told you before, that doesn’t mean anything,” Sammy said.

  Valentine choked on his cigarette smoke. When he finally got his breath, he saw the old hustler smiling at him. Sammy had gotten his choppers whitened, and they looked like a million bucks.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are ways to mark cards that you don’t see,” Sammy said.

  “That’s a new one,” Valentine said.

  “New to you,” Sammy replied.

  Valentine shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He’d recognized long ago that no matter how much he knew about cheating, there would still be things he didn’t know.

  “If I admitted I was a sucker, would you smarten me up?”

  “Sure,” Sammy said.

  “I’m a sucker,” Valentine said.

  “It’s like this,” Sammy said, an impossibly long ash dangling from his cigarette. “Twenty years ago, you arrested me for ringing in a cooler in Atlantic City, and assumed that was my speciality. Well, it wasn’t.”

  “Switching decks wasn’t your speciality?”

  “No,” Sammy said.

  “But at the sentencing you told the judge you’d switched decks in casinos over a hundred times,” Valentine said.

  “That’s right,” Sammy said. “And remember my sob story? I said I was turned out by my uncle, who was a cheater, and that he started training me when I was six years old.”

  “Let me guess, you didn’t have an uncle.”

  “No, but I had eight aunts.”

  Valentine laughed through a cloud of smoke. The judge at Sammy’s sentencing had been a woman, and she’d gone soft on Sammy, and put him in a work-release program.

  “All right, I’m stumped,” Valentine said. “If you weren’t a specialist at switching cards, then what were you a specialist at?”

  Sammy gave him a sly look. He was holding back, as if this piece of information would somehow change things. Cheaters wore many layers, and it was rare that they ever pulled them all back at the same time. Only after a long moment had passed did he speak.

  “My speciality was marked cards.”

  It took a long moment for the words to sink in, and then Valentine felt like someone had hit him in the head with a lead pipe. Marked cards. Sammy was telling him that the decks of cards he’d switched in casinos were stacked and marked, which let the cards be used more than once to rip off the house.

  “That’s brilliant,” Valentine said. “You must have made a fortune.”

  Sammy gave him the best smile of the night. “We ate steak and lobster a lot.”

  “Who marked the cards?”

  “I did. I also trained the other members in how to use the information. One player would read the dealer’s hole card in blackjack, and signal its value to the other players at the table. The other players all were small betters, so their wins didn’t look too horrifying to the house. They would leave, and another team would sit down, and do the same thing. It was like taking candy from a baby.”

  “The marks must have been spotted later on,” Valentine said. “Every casino checks for them when the cards are taken out of play.”

  “They were never spotted,” Sammy said.

  “What about by a forensic lab?”

  “I imagine it would fool them as well.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Valentine said. “If the mark can’t be seen, and can’t be tested for, it doesn’t exist.”

  Sammy shot him the You’re-So-Stupid look, and Valentine swallowed hard. There was a paddle for everyone’s ass in this town, and his was getting royally spanked.

  “Or does it?” he said.

  “I came up with this marking system by accident,” Sammy said. “My crew used it for over twenty years. When we retired, so did the system.”

  There was a glass of water sitting on the table in front of them. Sammy stuck his fingertips into it, then sprinkled several drops on the tabletop. After several moments he brushed the drops away with his napkin, and pointed at the tabletop. Valentine stared at the tiny marks left on the table’s finish.

  “Water stains,” he said.

  “Exactly. They reduce the shine on the back of the card. It’s not uncommon for water to get sprayed on cards in casinos. The casino people who were looking for marks were used to seeing water stains, so they didn’t pay any attention to ours. We used a lot of clever patterns to mark the cards. I used to be able to read them from across the room.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Valentine said.

  “Thank you. Over time, we also made the marks fainter. We would record each casino’s lighting with a light sensitivity machine, then learn to read the marks under those conditions. I used to practice for an hour a day reading those marks, and so did the members of my crew.”

  Sammy had finished his ginger ale and was looking at his watch. Valentine took out his wallet and settled the bill. It was rare for a hustler to reveal his secrets, especially one that had worked so well, and Valentine guessed there was a motive behind Sammy’s generosity. Leaning forward, he said, “Do you think this is what DeMarco is doing?”

  Sammy coughed into his hand. “Or something like it.”

  It slowly dawned on him what Sammy was saying. DeMarco had a marking system that wasn’t immediately obvious, just like Sammy’s.

  “So what do I do?”

  “Keep examining the cards,” the retired hustler said. “You’ll find the marks eventually.”

  Sammy’s eyes drifted to the plasma-screen TV showing DeMarco playing poker. DeMarco’s image was larger-than-life, and dwarfed everything else in the bar. Sammy gritted his teeth in displeasure, then took out his business card and handed it to Valentine. They shook hands, and Valentine watched him walk away, then stared at the card.

  SAM
MY MANN

  Casino Cheating Consultant

  “It takes one to know one.”

  702-616-0279

  31

  Valentine left the bar shaking his head. Everyone seemed to know that DeMarco was cheating, yet no one could do anything about it. There was an old baseball expression—“It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught”—and it applied perfectly to this situation. Until they found evidence that proved DeMarco was rigging the game, the tournament had to let him play.

  At the concierge’s desk he got the bag of insulin and asked to use the house phone. The concierge obliged him, and after a moment the house operator came on. Valentine asked to be put through to Skip DeMarco’s room.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve been instructed not to put any calls through to Mr. DeMarco,” the operator informed him.

  “Tell him I’ve got his bag of insulin, then call me back,” Valentine said.

  He hung up, and waited for the callback while tapping his foot to the live music coming from the casino. If Las Vegas had anything in abundance, it was good live music, and he kept time to an old Count Basie tune until the phone rang.

  “You found my bag?” a gravelly voice said.

  The voice had a lot of years behind it, and Valentine guessed it was the Tuna. He said, “A bag of insulin was found in the parking lot which I believe belongs to you.”

  “How much you want?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How much money you want for it? That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t want your money,” Valentine said. “I just wanted to return the bag to its rightful owner.”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name’s Tony Valentine.”

  A short silence, then, “There was a cop in Atlantic City named Tony Valentine. A real prick, if I remember.”

  “That’s me,” Valentine said.

  The hallways in casino hotels were the longest hallways in the world, and Valentine beat a path to DeMarco’s room while smothering a yawn. He’d been going nonstop all day, and the three-hour jet lag was starting to wear on him. That was one of the tough things about getting old. You no longer told your body what to do. Your body told you.