Wild Card (Tony Valentine Series)

by James Swain

  They sat around a square table, with Dick springing for coffee from the school cafeteria. Back when Dick was an art teacher, he’d sported a goatee, worn his hair on his shoulders, and spouted a lot of counter-culture nonsense. All of that had flown out the window the day he’d made principal. Now he was clean-shaven and blow-dried his hair.

  “Is Gerry here?” Dick asked.

  “He’s waiting outside in the car,” Lois said.

  “Good. This is a serious thing these boys have going on.”

  “How serious?” Valentine asked, drawing his wife’s glare.

  Dick took a brown paper bag from his desk, and placed its contents onto the table. A deck of playing cards and six dice spilled out. “Gerry and two boys in the ninth grade are running a gambling ring. The other two have a history of problems. It appears they talked your son into joining their gang.”

  “Can I examine these?” Valentine asked.

  “By all means,” the principal said.

  Valentine removed the cards from their case. The backs had a busy design, and he held the deck in his right hand, and riffled off the edge with his thumb. Little fluttering birds appeared on the backs of the cards. Bill Higgins had taught him this trick. It was the easiest way to tell if a deck had been marked.

  Next he examined the dice. His eyes had gotten used to staring at casino dice, and he could tell these were not clean. The spots on three sides — the one, three and five — were drilled extra wide and filled with metallic paint. They were loaded, and would favor certain combinations more than others when thrown. My son the cheater, he thought.

  “Mind if I keep these?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” Dick said.

  “What about the pot,” Lois said.

  “It doesn’t appear Gerry’s involved with that,” Dick said. “It was a scam.”

  “A scam? What do you mean?”

  Dick took a second paper bag off the desk. From it, he removed a plastic bag filled with a green leafy substance. Dick dropped it on the table dramatically, then gave the worried parents a hard, no-nonsense stare.

  “It’s oregano,” he said.

  Lois wrinkled her face. She had never experimented with drugs, and looked to her husband for clarification. Valentine said, “And the ninth-graders were selling it as pot.”

  “Yes. Ten dollars a bag.”

  “But oregano is an herb,” Lois said. “Wouldn’t the kids they sold it to be able to tell the difference?”

  “This oregano smells like pot. We think the older boys mixed it with a little bit of pot, so it smells like the real stuff.”

  “But it isn’t?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Valentine saw the tension melt from his wife’s face. Lying in bed the night before, she’d worried incessantly over the notion that Gerry had broken the law. This new revelation was bad, but it wasn’t as bad. She could live with this, and so could he.

  “Gerry will be suspended for one week, the other boys for two,” Dick said. “I want all three boys to pay restitution to the boys they cheated, and the students they sold oregano to. And, I would suggest that your family get some counseling.”

  “What kind of counseling?” Lois said stiffly.

  “With a psychologist. Gerry has two different faces. The one he wears at home, and the one he wears at school. You need to get to know your son better.”

  Valentine nearly told Dick Henry to mind his own business. Doing stupid things was part of growing up, and didn’t mean the whole family was falling apart. Only Lois was giving him the evil eye, and he kept his mouth clamped shut.

  Dick handed the distressed parents a business card. It was for a local psychologist who specialized in adolescent behavior and family problems.

  “This is who the school uses,” Dick said. “He’s expensive but good.”

  “Is he a relative?” Valentine asked.

  Lois kicked him beneath the table. Dick consulted his watch, then blew out his cheeks like Ed Sullivan used to do before he announced a really big act.

  “Looks like we’ve run out of time,” the principal said.

  Dick escorted the Valentines to the door of his office and opened it. Another pair of anxious parents sat in the reception area, awaiting the sales pitch.

  “I’ve got a question,” Valentine said.

  “What’s that?” Dick asked.

  “How’d you know it was oregano?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It smells like pot, and it looks like pot. Did you have a lab test it?”

  “Well, no —”

  “Let me guess. You fired some up in a pipe, and hacked your brains out.”

  Dick’s face turned bright red. The other parents had risen from their chairs and were listening intently to their conversation. Valentine took the psychologist’s card out of his wife’s hand, and tucked it down into the principal’s shirt pocket.

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” he said.

  Valentine drove home while staring at Gerry in his mirror.

  “You were cheating,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Gerry stared out the window like he was going to the gas chamber. “It was Lou and Joey’s idea. They said the casino cheats, so there was nothing wrong if we did.”

  It was the same excuse used by every cheater Valentine had busted. The casino cheated me, so I was getting my money back. He tried to control his voice. “I work in the casino, and it doesn’t cheat . The games are clean. I would have told you that.”

  Gerry leaned between the front seats. “How much trouble am I in?”

  “The school is suspending you for a week,” Valentine said. “You’re also going to pay back the boys you cheated. And, your mother and I want you to bring the boys you cheated to the house, and apologize to them in front of us.”

  His son fell back into his seat. His greaser clothes had gone out with the garbage the night before, and he looked like your average thirteen-year old kid again.

  “Okay,” he whispered.

  Valentine felt his wife’s hand on his knee. He glanced at her, then in the mirror at his son. “You’re going to stop this behavior right now. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One more thing. Where did you get the marked cards and loaded dice?”

  “The what?”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, Gerry. Where did you get that stuff?”

  “Some magic shop on Atlantic. Are you going there?”

  Valentine said nothing, and drove his family home.

  Uncle Al’s Magic & Joke Emporium was located in a dreary shopping center on the corner of Mississippi and Atlantic Avenue. Finding the front door locked, Valentine hit the buzzer, and watched an elfish man wearing a purple fez with a red tassel emerge from behind a curtain. Releasing the dead bolt, he ushered Valentine inside.

  Valentine had dabbled with magic as a kid, and the store was a pleasant trip down memory lane. Brightly painted tricks lined the shelves — the Square Circle, Hippity Hop Rabbits, Passe Passe bottles — with smaller mysteries resting in a dusty glass counter. The stuff looked as magical as Uncle Al, who was seventy if he was a day, with extra-thick glasses that made his impish face look child-like. Pumping Valentine’s hand, he said, “Stand up straight, my boy.”

  “I saw you on the Steel Pier when I was a kid,” Valentine said.

  “Of course you did. They called me the Atlantic City Fakir. Worked the pier for over fifty years. Ask me why I don’t swim.”

  Valentine knew a set-up when he heard one. “Why don’t you swim?”

  “Because I drowned a hundred and sixty-eight times.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “I was doing my act at Fortescue’s beer garden. Whenever business was slow, I’d jump in the ocean, pretend to drown, and get my rescuers to drag me back to Fortescue’s. There was always a crowd. When I recovered, a shill suggested everyone toast my good fortune.”

  “That’s beautiful,” Valentine said.

 
; “Thank you. Now, what can I interest you in? A whoopee cushion? Or would you like to learn a simple trick to fool your kid?”

  From his pocket, Valentine removed the marked cards and loaded dice he’d gotten from Gerry’s principal, and handed them to the proprietor. “Recognize these?”

  Uncle Al examined the merchandise. “Cards came from here. Not the dice.”

  “You don’t sell crooked dice?”

  “Didn’t say that. These just happened to come from someplace else. You a cop?”

  “Detective. I want you to stop selling this stuff. It’s getting in the wrong hands.”

  “You mean kids?”

  “I mean my son.”

  Uncle Al’s face turned serious. Removing his glasses, he said, “I’m terribly sorry, detective. I’ll get the stuff off my shelves immediately. Now, how about a trick for your son? Something you can fool him with, then teach him.”

  Dick Henry had been right about one thing. Valentine needed to spend more time with Gerry, and get to know him better. “Sure. What have you got?”

  “What’s your price range?”

  “Five bucks.”

  “Five bucks it is.” Uncle Al removed a stack of nickels from his pocket, and placed it on the counter. Taking a brass tube from the same pocket, he handed it to Valentine to examine. It was clean, and Uncle Al made him cover the stack of nickels with it. Then, the elderly magician clicked his fingers three times. Lifting the tube, Uncle Al pointed at the stack of dimes now sitting on the counter, and knocked them over with his finger. The nickels had vanished. Valentine picked up the brass tube and examined it. Empty.

  “Get’s them every time,” Uncle Al said triumphantly.

  Valentine pulled out his wallet. “Show me,” he said.

  The trick was called Nickels to Dimes. The stack of nickels was actually a hollow shell with a nickel glued on top, it’s inside painted the same color as the brass tube. A stack of dimes was hidden inside the shell from the start. The brass tube fit so snugly over the shell, it took a special device to pry it free.

  Uncle Al went through the trick several times, then let Valentine have a try. To his surprise, Valentine did it perfectly the first time.

  “You’re a natural, kid,” Uncle Al said.

  Pocketing the trick, Valentine thanked him and went to the door. “Remember, no more crooked gambling equipment.”

  “You got it.”

  Valentine was sticking the key into the ignition when he had a strange thought. The Nickels to Dimes used the same principle as the chip cup that Banko had shown him. Both were clever magic tricks, designed to fool the brain, and the eye.

  He sat in his car and thought about it. He’d been having a hard time catching cheaters inside the casino, and now he knew why. The cheaters were doing magic tricks to rig the games. They were magicians, disguised as ordinary people.

  His thoughts drifted to the Budweiser gang Bill Higgins had warned him about. He’d been wracking his brain trying to figure out how to catch them. Why not ask another magician, he thought.

  Getting out of his car, he went back inside the magic shop.

  Chapter 16

  Uncle Al knew a lot about mirrors, and claimed they were part of every serious magician’s repertoire. Houdini, Thurston, Keller and Blackstone had all used mirrors in their stage shows at one time or another. When Valentine pressed him, Uncle Al admitted that they had one serious drawback. They were light sensitive, and often exposed themselves to the audience.

  “You really want to catch these cheaters using beer cans with mirrors hidden in them?”the old magician asked.

  Valentine nodded enthusiastically. That was exactly what he wanted to do.

  “That’s easy,” Uncle Al said.

  Valentine drove to work with a smile on his face. Going upstairs to the surveillance control room, he rounded up the technicians on duty, plus Mickey Wright and Doyle, and explained how they were going to catch the Budweiser gang. Then he picked up the house phone, and called downstairs to the casino floor.

  “In one minute, I want you to turn up the house lights,” he told the floor manager.

  “Why should I do that?” the floor manager asked.

  “Because I told you to.”

  Valentine hung up the phone, and went to stare at the wall of video monitors that showed the action in the casino. So did everyone else in the room. One minute later, the house lights were raised. On the monitors, all the players looked up.

  “I saw a flash!” a tech shouted.

  “So did I,” another tech said.

  Valentine had seen it as well. A tiny bright light had appeared at Blackjack Table #30. It had come from third base, the last seat at the table. The seat was occupied by a muscular guy drinking a can of Budweiser. The mirror glued to the bottom of the can was so bright, it was impossible not to see.

  “Touchdown,” he said.

  The scam was simple. The muscle head was using the mirror to read the dealer’s hole card, then signaling its value to the other members of his gang at the table. Valentine called downstairs, and got six security guards off the floor. Then, he called Lois, who was at home supervising his son during his suspension from school.

  “Please bring Gerry over here. I want him to see something.”

  Twenty minutes later, Lois and Gerry were sitting in front of the wall of video monitors. Behind them stood six burly security guards, ready for action. Doyle and Mickey Wright had already gone downstairs, and were telling the cashiers working the cage not to pay the cheaters off, in case they tried to leave. Valentine stood next to the monitors, and pointed at the center screen.

  “See those guys playing blackjack?” he asked his son.

  Gerry nodded. His wife had taken him to the barber down the street, and Gerry looked like a baby Marine.

  “They’re cheaters,” Valentine said.

  “Really? What are they doing?” his son asked.

  “That’s none of your business. I had your mother bring you here because I want you to see what happens to cheaters.”

  “Are you going to arrest them?”

  “You bet I am.”

  Then, Valentine marched out of the room with his posse.

  “Pay attention,” Lois said.

  Right before coming over, she’d caught Gerry smoking a cigarette behind the garage, and the foul odor was still on his clothes and breath. Like every damn boy that had ever been raised on this island — and this included her own husband — her son was smoking Marlboros, the man’s cigarette.

  “I don’t get it,” Gerry said. “Why does Pop want me to see this? I promised him I wouldn’t do it again.”

  “This is just in case you get second thoughts,” she said.

  “I’m not going to —”

  Lois slapped her hand on his knee, and several techs lifted their heads from their monitors. “Your father wasn’t born yesterday,” she said under her breath, “and neither was I. Watch the monitor. It’s for your own good.”

  Gerry made a bored face. Lois swallowed the rising lump in her throat. In profile, he was his father’s spitting image.

  “Here we go!” one of the tech announced.

  Lois and her son stared at the monitor in the center of the video wall which showed the Table #30. The gang had won another round, and were giving each other jubilant high-fives. Suddenly, six security guards swarmed around the table, and knocked the gang’s members off their stools, and onto the floor. For a moment, the cheaters seemed dazed, and struggled helplessly.

  Then, the man with the Budweiser can jumped to his feet, and started swinging his arms like billy clubs. Two security guards flew through the air. Soon, more guards were lying on their backs, and Lois watched the melee spread across the casino like wild fire. The cheaters were scattering, the posse doing everything but stopping them.

  “Where’s your father?” she asked Gerry.

  “Over here,” Gerry said, pointing at a different monitor.

  Tony was battling the ma
n with the Budweiser can, his blows bouncing harmlessly off the cheater’s skull. The cheater’s blows were having the opposite effect, and each punch was shrinking her husband an inch. Suddenly, Tony stopped defending himself, and his knees began to buckle.