Deadman's Poker: A Novel (Tony Valentine)

by James Swain

  Gloria’s cell phone was sitting on the table beside her plate. She fixed him reproachfully with her green eyes. “Did you forget how to dial a phone?”

  He swallowed hard. The polite thing would have been to call, and tell her he was running late and not to wait for him. But he hadn’t done that. He considered taking out the photograph of his bloodied son and showing it to her, only that was what a kid in the sixth grade would do, beg forgiveness and ask for sympathy at the same time. He needed to take his medicine like a man, and said, “No, I just forgot about our lunch date. It was wrong of me, and it won’t happen again. Scout’s honor.”

  The look on her face said she wasn’t buying it. She looked incredibly sexy when she was angry, and he guessed if he told her so, she’d slap him right across the face.

  “Look, Tony,” she said, “you’re my life support system right now. Every story I’ve gotten in the past two days has come from you. Understand?”

  He wasn’t sure that he did, but nodded anyway.

  “My job and my career are on the line,” she went on. “I’m depending upon you to come through. On top of that, I’ve decided that I really like you.”

  “I like you, too,” he said.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I can’t turn into your shadow, or be a puppy dog that waits for its master to come along and toss it a bone when he feels like it. I’ve got too much pride for that.”

  He stared down at the white tablecloth. If anything good had come out of this job, it was meeting her, and now that was going up in flames. He looked up into her eyes.

  “Let me make it up to you.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “Let me try, anyway,” he said. “I feel very bad about this. I don’t mean to lead you and Zack around. I’m not that kind of guy.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. I just…”

  “Suffer from short-term memory loss?”

  No matter how old he got, Valentine was never going to use his age as an excuse for bad behavior.

  “I get preoccupied sometimes,” he explained. “It drove my late wife crazy. She used to make me write appointments on my hand so I wouldn’t forget them.”

  “On your hand? I used to do that as a little kid.”

  “Hey,” he said, “it works.”

  Gloria leaned forward, and gave him another hard look. Her own look was neither friendly nor unfriendly, and he sensed that she wanted to believe him, and get things back on track, only she wasn’t going to let him wound her a second time.

  “All right,” she said, “I’ll give you another chance.”

  Valentine took his hand, and placed it upon her hand resting on the table.

  “I won’t let you down,” he said.

  45

  Gerry Valentine had decided that people who couldn’t fit in anywhere else, fit in just fine in Las Vegas.

  Take the four goons working for Jinky who’d been beating the daylights out of Frank, Vinny, and Nunzie for the past two hours. As enforcers went they were laughable, and did not know the first thing about getting someone to talk. Rule number one was that you never used your bare fists to hit someone, because knuckles usually broke before jaws did. Rule number two was that if you started out by hitting someone hard, they’d never cooperate with you. But these guys had never been to that school, and after two hours of abuse, two of them had broken hands, and no one had spoken a word.

  “How’s your face feel?” Gerry asked Vinny, who’d been dragged in his chair to where Gerry was sitting, his face a bloody pulp.

  “My nose is broken, my teeth are broken, and I can’t see out of my left eye,” Vinny said through horribly swollen lips. “But you know me, I can’t complain.”

  Gerry forced himself to smile. Even in the worst of times, you had to find reasons to smile. He looked across the warehouse at Nunzie and Frank. The goons were beating up Nunzie, and making Frank watch. They still were asking the same question—“Which one of you shot Russ Watson in the parking lot?”—and neither Nunzie nor Frank had uttered a peep in response.

  “You think Nunzie will crack?” Gerry whispered.

  Vinny shook his head. “Not the Nunz. He’s solid as a rock.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” Vinny asked.

  Gerry stared at the steel door across from where they sat. Sunlight seeped through the bottom and had formed a small puddle of light. Twenty minutes ago, Jinky Harris had driven his wheelchair through that door, and moments later they’d heard a car drive away. Not having Jinky around had bothered Gerry. He could talk with Jinky, maybe strike some kind of bargain. He couldn’t do that with the guys he’d left behind.

  “What plan?” he asked Vinny.

  “The plan to get us out of this rat hole,” Vinny said.

  “I don’t have a plan.”

  “So, come up with one. You were always the man with the plan when it came to disaster relief.”

  “I was?”

  “Yeah. Remember the time I owed that money to those gangsters in Atlantic City? You came up with the best plan.”

  “I did?”

  Vinny spit something onto the floor, and Gerry watched it roll past his feet and stop. It was small and white. A tooth.

  “Yeah,” Vinny said, making himself talk so he wouldn’t be scared. “I borrowed five grand from two gumbas who ran the Italian Men’s Social Club on Fairmont Avenue. I was supposed to pay them back on Wednesday at noon, only I wasn’t going to have the money to pay them back until Saturday. You remembering this?”

  Gerry was watching two of the goons take turns whacking Nunzie in the kisser. Nunzie had a neck like a weight lifter and his head hardly moved from the blows.

  “A little,” he said.

  “So, I called you up, and you came up with the best plan.”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “You knew two squares who worked at a bank,” Vinny said. “They had short hair and wore blue suits and neckties. You called them, and talked them into helping me out. They agreed to meet me on Wednesday at a few minutes before noon in the parking lot of Harold’s House of Pancakes where I was supposed to be paying off the gumbas.”

  One of the goons connected with a solid right cross. Nunzie let out a soft grunt, the sound being amplified in the warehouse’s high ceiling.

  “You left a part out,” Gerry said.

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. I also told you to buy the bank guys attaché cases and dark sunglasses to wear so they’d look like FBI agents.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right,” Vinny said. “It was a nice touch.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, I pull into Harold’s at a minute before noon on Wednesday, and the gumbas are sitting there in their Caddy, waiting for me. I hop out of my car holding a brown paper bag stuffed with crumpled newspaper—”

  “I think that was my idea, too.”

  “It was, and as I’m crossing the parking lot, the two bank guys jump out of their car holding their attaché cases. They stopped me, pulled out their wallets, and shoved them in my face. I never understood that part.”

  “They were supposed to be showing you their badges,” Gerry explained. “You know, like they were FBI agents.”

  Vinny looked stunned. “So that was what it was about. Well, they hustled me across the parking lot, shoved me into their car, and we drove away. I was in the backseat with the paper bag in my lap, and saw the gumbas standing in the parking lot by their Caddy with these looks on their face. It was fucking priceless.”

  “Did you give them their money?”

  “Oh yeah,” Vinny said. “On Saturday I went to the club and paid them off. They took me aside and said, ‘We saw what happened. You took it like a man.’”

  “You made two new friends.”

  “That’s right. So, come up with a plan like that.”

  Gerry stared at the ceiling. Bound to a chair in a warehouse in the middle of the deser
t and Vinny was telling him to come up with a plan to let them escape. If he had that kind of power, he wouldn’t have gotten himself in this situation to begin with.

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Hey,” Vinny said, “we’ve got all day.”

  The sound of a man screaming snapped their heads. Gerry stared across the warehouse at one of the goons who’d been punishing Nunzie. He was clutching his hand and dancing around in agony. Nunzie, his face swollen and distorted, was laughing at him. Frank was laughing as well. Three down, one to go, Gerry thought.

  “We need to keep stalling these guys,” Gerry said.

  “That’s your plan?” Vinny asked.

  “Yeah. My guess is, my old man has the cavalry looking for us. If we keep stalling and don’t tell them what they want to know, they won’t kill us right away.”

  Vinny spit some bloody mucus on the floor. His eyes had been bulging out of his head, his heart racing out of control, and now, finally, he was beginning to look normal.

  “If we get out of this alive, you’ve got to explain how it works between you and your old man.”

  “How what works?”

  “How you manage to get along, but not always like each other.”

  That was a good question, and one that Gerry wasn’t sure he knew the answer to. He and his old man had always been civil to each other. Over the years, that civility had turned into tolerance, and now it was bordering on something that felt like what a father and son were supposed to feel toward each other. But it sure hadn’t started out that way.

  The guy who’d broken his hand came over to where Gerry and Vinny were sitting. The look on his face said he’d had enough screwing around, and wanted a straight answer out of one of them.

  “You assholes going to tell us which one of you killed Russ?” he asked.

  “You want to know who killed Russ?” Vinny replied.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Russ died of a broken heart,” Vinny said. “He couldn’t stand being in love with Jinky, and not having his love returned. So Russ shot himself.”

  There was only so much nonsense a person could take, and Gerry thought the mutt was going to shoot Vinny right there. Instead, he walked to the center of the warehouse, and took out a cell phone. He made a call, and spoke to someone in a hushed voice while glaring at them. Hanging up, he turned to his partners and called out in a loud voice.

  “They’re bringing over the flamethrower,” he said.

  46

  At exactly two o’clock in the afternoon, Gloria Curtis appeared in the lobby of Celebrity’s hotel with her cameraman. She wore a white blouse and a black suit with a diamond broach on the lapel that made her look like a million bucks. Valentine stood near the lobby phone booth, watching. She saw him as she passed, and winked.

  Gloria walked over to the doors leading to the World Poker Showdown, and stood a few yards away from the pair of stern-faced security guards blocking the entrance. Zack’s camera had a light, and it basked Gloria in its artificial glow. Her presence immediately drew a crowd of curious passersby coming out of the casino.

  “Good afternoon. This is Gloria Curtis reporting from the World Poker Showdown in Las Vegas. Today is day four of the tournament, and folks, if you don’t mind my saying so, we’ve got a couple of bombshells for you.”

  Valentine saw three men in tailored suits standing on the far side of the lobby. The man in the middle appeared to be in charge, and had dyed black hair, padded shoulders, and teeth so artificially white they appeared to glow. Valentine guessed this was Karl Jasper, president of the WPS. He had called Jasper’s room ten minutes ago, and left an anonymous message to be in the lobby at two if Jasper knew what was good for him.

  “But first, a rundown on today’s tournament,” Gloria said, her eyes focused on the camera. “Skip DeMarco, the blind poker phenom from New Jersey, is still in first place, and has accumulated four million dollars in chips. In second place with two million dollars is last year’s winner, Gene Mydlowski. The rest of the pack is far, far behind.

  “But the real story is not the action taking place behind these doors. The real story comes from Rufus Steele, the legendary poker player who lost in the first round, and claims he was cheated. Rufus has told me that he’s learned from the Metro Las Vegas Police Department that a dealer who was working the tournament is a known cheater, and was prosecuted in New Jersey for cold-decking a poker game. For those of our viewers who don’t know what cold-decking a poker game means, we’re going to show you a clip of this cheating move in action.”

  Gloria went silent and lowered her mike. Mabel had e-mailed Gloria a surveillance tape of a poker dealer cold-decking a game, which Zack would later edit into the segment. After ten seconds had passed, Gloria brought the mike up to her face.

  “Rufus Steele has also told me that the dealers being used in this tournament are not from this casino, and in fact have not been cleared by the Las Vegas sheriff’s department to deal these games. That’s the law here in Las Vegas, and the folks running the World Poker Showdown are breaking it.”

  Valentine was watching Jasper, and saw the president of the WPS ball his hands into fists while his face turned the color of a fire truck. Jasper was standing next to a large bird cage, and seemed oblivious to the yellow-headed parrot flapping its wings and screeching at him.

  “Now, let’s talk to Rufus Steele, the man who broke this story,” Gloria said. “Here he comes right now.”

  Zack turned and pointed his camera at the elevator banks. Rufus had stepped out of a car a few moments before, and was waiting to make his entrance. He wore a fluffy white hotel bathrobe, white socks and sneakers, and his Stetson. As he crossed the lobby, he began punching the air like a prizefighter. Many in the crowd applauded, and Rufus waved to them good-naturedly, then sidled up beside Gloria.

  “Rufus, it’s good to see you again,” Gloria said.

  “The pleasure’s mine, Miss Curtis,” he said.

  “During the first day of the tournament, you claimed you’d been cheated by a player. Now, you’re claiming the whole tournament is cheating.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Would you please explain for the folks at home.”

  “This tournament stinks like a three-day-old fish left out in the sun,” Rufus said, a smile plastered across his leathery face. “The dealers haven’t been checked out. One dealer actually got arrested for switching decks in Atlantic City a few years ago. That’s like having a bank robber working as a teller. The people running the World Poker Showdown have some explaining to do.”

  Valentine continued to stare at Karl Jasper. If there was ever a good time for Jasper to step forward and defend his tournament, this was it. Only Jasper wasn’t having any part of the discussion and looked genuinely scared.

  “Well, Rufus, I suppose our viewers would like you to explain the unique getup you have on,” Gloria said. “Are you becoming a boxer?”

  “Just getting ready for my race tonight,” Rufus said.

  “Your race?”

  “Yes. As you know, I’m going to play Skip DeMarco in a heads-up poker game for one million dollars. In order to raise the cash, I’ve agreed to run a footrace against a racehorse, winner-take-all.”

  “A real racehorse?” Gloria said, her eyes widening.

  Rufus put on his serious face, and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. My sources have told me that I’ll be up against a champion, no less. The horse I’ll be running against is being loaned out from Wayne Newton, who has a number of prize horses on his farm. This one’s a thoroughbred, and is being used for stud.”

  “And the horse is a champion?”

  “I believe it ran in the Kentucky Derby a few years ago, and is still competitive.”

  “How much are you betting on yourself to win?”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars,” Rufus said with a toothy smile.

  “How long will the race be?”

  “We’ll be competing in the one-hundred-yard dash.
”

  “Rufus, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but don’t you think you’ve bitten off more than you can chew?” Gloria asked, her tone one of genuine concern. “There isn’t an athlete in the world who can outrun a racehorse.”

  “I can,” he said with a positive air, “and I will.”

  Before Gloria could pose another question, Rufus undid the knot in his bathrobe, then pulled off the garment and let it drop to the floor. He was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of black boxing trunks and had the physique of a telephone pole. He began to do jumping jacks for the camera, and the crowd, which had swelled to over a hundred people, cheered him on. If people in Las Vegas loved anything, it was an underdog, and a chant quickly went up.

  “Rufus! Rufus! Rufus!”

  “I want you folks to all come out and see me tonight,” Rufus said, his face red from exertion. “You too, Miss Curtis.”

  Gloria was holding the mike by her side, and doing all she could not to burst into laughter. “Trust me, I’ll be there,” she said.

  “Rufus! Rufus! Rufus!”

  “Remember, folks,” Rufus said, still doing his jumping jacks. “Roses are red, violets are blue. Horses that lose to cowboys are turned into glue.”

  “Rufus! Rufus! Rufus!”

  Valentine stared across the lobby at Jasper by the birdcage. The president of the WPS had company. George Scalzo was standing beside him, and looked ready to kill Rufus with his bare hands. Valentine wondered how it felt to rig a poker tournament so his nephew could win, only to have all the glory stolen by a sly old fox.

  Valentine suddenly had an idea, and elbowed his way through the crowd. It was illegal for anyone who worked in a casino to be in the company of gangsters, and he assumed the same was true for presidents of poker tournaments. He got up behind Zack, and whispered in the cameraman’s ear. Zack nodded, and pointed his camera at Jasper and Scalzo on the other side of the lobby.

  “Got them,” Zack said.

  47

  At two thirty Valentine was on the road and driving to his rendezvous with Bill Higgins. He’d called Bill before leaving Celebrity, and told him how he’d caught Jasper and Scalzo together on tape.