Wild Card (Tony Valentine Series)

by James Swain

  The evidence was kept behind a giant cage inside metal drawers that were stacked to the ceiling. The Kid unlocked the cage, then busied himself pulling out the plastic bags that contained the victims’ clothes. When he had the four bags, he came out of the cage, and carefully laid them on a rectangular table that served as his desk.

  “Open the bags up, and lay the clothes out,” Banko said.

  The Kid unzipped the bags. He handled the clothes gingerly, like the dead women’s’ spirits might still be in them. Soon, the clothes covered the table. Lois took a step forward and reached for a blouse.

  “Is it okay if I pick them up?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Banko said. “They’ve already been dusted for fingerprints.”

  Lois picked up a sky-blue blouse with peace symbols stitched into the fabric. Around the symbols flowed the words Peace Love & Understanding. She looked at the blouse for a long moment, then opened up the neck to glance at the label.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

  Valentine was standing beside her, and stared at the blouse’s label. Summer of Love. He saw his wife pick up the bell bottoms that went with the blouse. She turned them inside out, and stared at the inseam.

  “No,” she said sharply.

  Then, quite suddenly, his wife burst into tears.

  “You’re absolutely sure about this,” Banko said.

  They were back in Banko’s office. This time, they’d accepted Banko’s offer of a cup of coffee. Sipping her drink, Lois nodded while staring at the floor.

  “Positive. Those are the clothes I wore that day,” she said. “I remember getting to the job, and none of the bell bottoms fit. A seamstress had to let the inseams out.”

  “You’re sure they’re the same clothes,” Banko said.

  “Yes. I quit the job after the first day. The agent in New York was furious, and screamed at me over the phone. I didn’t care.”

  “Why?” Banko asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Banko pulled his chair up closer to her. His tone was gentle. “ I know this is difficult, but I’d like you to close your eyes, and try to think back.”

  “Tony tried to hypnotize me last night. It didn’t work.”

  “Please let me try,” the sergeant said.

  Lois looked at her husband, and saw him nod.

  “All right.”

  Lois folded her hands in her lap, and shut her eyes. The pose made her look like a young girl. A minute slipped away while Banko talked to her, and helped her slip back in time. His wife frowned, struggling with the memory. Valentine remembered something she’d told him on their first date. It’s great to be pretty, but sometimes it can also be scary. Now, twenty years later, he finally understood what those words meant.

  “The exhibit was called Summer of Love,” she said. “We worked out of a tent on the Boardwalk. Besides me modeling clothes, there were performers keeping the crowd entertained. A singer, a juggler, and another variety act. All guys. Their dressing room was next to mine. One of the guys gave me the creeps. He kept staring at me like I was something he wanted to eat. I remember thinking that this was the kind of guy my mother told me to be afraid of.”

  “Do you remember his name?” Banko asked.

  “It was something strange.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “A few inches taller than me, not handsome, kind of shy.”

  “How old was he?”

  “My age, I think.”

  “You remember his face?”

  “Not really.”

  “Which one of the acts was he?” Banko asked.

  “I didn’t see any of them perform. Too busy getting dressed and undressed.”

  “What happened to make you quit?”

  She took a deep breath. “I worked for ten hours the first day, and was exhausted. After the show was over, I went to my dressing room, and discovered that my underwear had been violated. I didn’t know which one of them did it, so I quit.”

  “But you thought it was him.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “Could he have stolen the outfits you were wearing?”

  “They were hanging in my dressing room. He must have.”

  “Did he ever have contact with you again?”

  She strained to remember. “Yes, he called me at home.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few months later. He told me his parents were out of town, asked me to come to his house. I said no, I already had a boyfriend.”

  “Were you seeing Tony then?”

  “Yes. We’d been going steady for a while.”

  Banko glanced at Valentine. There was an apology in his eyes, and Valentine acknowledged it with a slight nod. Then Banko brought his wife up from her trance.

  Valentine extended his hand to his wife. “It’s time to go home,” he said.

  “Did I tell you anything helpful?” Lois asked.

  The color had returned to his wife’s face, and she looked just as beautiful as the day he’d met her. “Yes. You did good,” he said.

  She rose from her chair, and Banko walked them to the door. “I’d like a word with your husband, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” Lois said.

  She stepped into the waiting room, and Banko shut the door, and put his hand on Valentine’s shoulder. “I guess we know now why the killer contacted you the other day. I’m sorry I’ve been so harsh with you, but I didn’t have much choice.”

  “I understand,” Valentine said.

  “No hard feelings?”

  “No, sir.”

  His superior lowered his arm. “I’m calling the FBI, and bringing them back in. I’m also assigning several extra detectives to work this case. Knowing this guy was an entertainer should make him easy to track down. Oh, and one other thing.”

  Valentine waited expectantly.

  “I’m lifting your suspension, effective immediately. However, what I said before still applies. I want you to stay away from this investigation. This killer has designs on your wife. You can’t be chasing him down.”

  “But —”

  “Another word and I’ll suspend you again,” Banko said.

  Valentine clamped his mouth shut.

  “I’m assigning two detectives to guard your wife until this sicko is caught. I want you back at the casino immediately.”

  “What’s going on at the casino?”

  “Bill Higgins called last night. A gang of blackjack cheats that stole a million bucks in Las Vegas are now in Atlantic City. Bill said you drew a bead on them.”

  Valentine remembered the tape Bill had sent him, and the suspicious woman with the Coke bottle. “That’s right,” he said.

  “Bill took the red eye out of Las Vegas last night, and is flying in this morning. I want you to help him nail these people. Think you’re up to it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Welcome back.”

  He shook his superior’s hand, and saw him smile. It had been years since he’d seen Banko do that, and he left the office feeling better than he had in a long time.

  Chapter 51

  “Here we go,” Bill Higgins said a few hours later.

  They were standing before the wall of video monitors in Resorts’ surveillance control room. A block of twelve cameras were isolated on a blackjack table with a five thousand dollar limit. Higgins hadn’t slept on the plane and looked like death warmed over.

  Valentine studied the blurry images on the monitors. At the blackjack table sat the same two players from the tape Higgins had sent him. Both were in their mid-thirties with sandy brown hair and easy smiles. Cameras were recording them from every conceivable angle. So far, everything looked clean.

  “You’re sure they’re cheating,” Valentine asked.

  “Trust me,” Higgins said. “It’s a scam.”

  Valentine wasn’t convinced the two players could be cheating. They were playing carelessly while flirting with four stewardesses playi
ng at the adjacent table, which had a five hundred dollar limit. Everything looked on the square.

  Then, after a few minutes, he saw something he didn’t like. The stewardesses had locked up their table, and were playing all seven hands. That wasn’t normal.

  “I smell a rat.”

  “You think the stewardesses are involved?” Higgins asked.

  “Yes. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many women I’ve seen play multiple hands at blackjack. It’s strictly a guy thing.”

  The two players had increased their bets to a thousand dollars a hand, and drawn the pit boss’s attention. At the same time, the dealer at the stewardess’s table began to shuffle, and Valentine saw the dealer’s muscles grow taut beneath his ruffled tuxedo shirt.

  “You see that?” he asked.

  Higgins stared blankly at the monitor. “See what?”

  “The tell. The dealer at the stewardess’s table is doing sleight-of-hand. That shuffle isn’t real.”

  “I’m not seeing it.”

  “There’s nothing to see. He’s a mechanic. But look how tensed up his shoulders are. His adrenalin is racing. He’s working.”

  “You sure?”

  Valentine nodded. Izzie Hirsch had taught him this trick. Mechanics often gave away their moves through awkward body language. They watched the dealer finish his false shuffle, then offer the cards to be cut. One of the stewardesses picked up the laminated plastic cut card. She stuck it into the deck.

  “I saw that,” Higgins said.

  So did Valentine. The stewardess had stuck the cut card in a brief in the deck caused by a piece of rubber band placed there by the dealer. Hustlers called it a “lug.” The dealer finished the cut, and fitted the cards into the plastic shoe used for dealing. Then the stewardesses began to stall. One threw a wad of small bills on the table, and requested more chips. The dealer slowly counted the money, then killed more time converting the money into chips.

  “What are they doing?” Higgins said.

  Valentine wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t stop staring at the woman with the Coke bottle standing behind the table. He crossed the room to a raised platform where Doyle sat at the master console into which all the casino’s surveillance cameras sent their pictures. “I need you to rewind this tape we’re watching,” he said.

  “How far back?” Doyle asked.

  “Five minutes.”

  Doyle sent the film back in time, then hit play. Valentine went to the wall and brought his face up close enough to kiss the image of the woman with the Coke bottle. Her lips were moving, and he found himself smiling.

  “She’s talking into the bottle,” Valentine said.

  “Must have a mini-transmitter,” Higgins said.

  The wall had dozens of different feeds. Valentine found the monitor which watched the parking lot. Parked in a handicap spot next to the building was a white van with large, moose ear antenna on the roof. The woman with the Coke bottle was talking to someone inside the van.

  “Put us back to real time,” he told Doyle.

  The monitors returned to real time. The four stewardesses were still stalling. Then, one of the women looked at her watch, and made a Can you believe the time? face, and left the table. Two of her friends quickly followed. The one remaining stewardess looked lonely. Seeing her dilemma, the two players at the adjacent table got out of their seats, and joined her at the lower limit table.

  “Here it comes,” Valentine said.

  “Here what comes?” Higgins asked.

  “They’re going to ask the pit boss to raise the table limit.”

  The two players did just that. The pit boss agreed, and the limit was raised to five thousand dollars a hand. A cocktail waitress appeared with a tray of drinks. As she served the gamblers, Valentine saw her hand one his drink, then his napkin, instead of handing the two together.

  “Waitress is involved,” he said.

  “She is?” Higgins said.

  “She didn’t want the napkin to get wet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Something’s written on it.”

  They watched the players place five thousand dollar bets in each of the seven betting circles. Valentine went to the console, picked up the house phone and called the floor. The head of security picked up. “Get ready to arrest these two jokers.”

  “My pleasure,” the head of security said.

  Valentine hung up. “It’s a cooler, Bill.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. The woman with the Coke bottle reads the cards coming out of the shoe to a guy sitting in a van who inputs them into a computer. The computer crunches the numbers, and spits out how to play the cards in the same order so the dealer always loses. Meanwhile, the dealer false-shuffles the cards, insuring they’ll come out in that order. The guy in the van writes down the computer’s instructions on a napkin, and hands the napkin to a runner. The runner brings the napkin into the casino, hands it to the cocktail waitress, who passes it off to the players. The gamblers draw cards based upon what the instructions on the napkin says.”

  “You figured all that out just now?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he admitted.

  The head of security called back. “Ready when you are.”

  The two players were already up seventy grand. The napkin was positioned between them. Valentine didn’t want a drink poured on it. He told the head of security what he wanted done.

  “They won’t know what hit them,” the head of security said.

  A half-hour later, Valentine, Doyle and Higgins were in Valentine’s office, toasting their good fortune. Not a single member of the gang had managed to get off the property. Handcuffed, they now sat in a holding room in the basement, waiting for a police van to take them to the station. The cocktail waitress was already showing signs of cracking.

  “You boys learned the business fast,” Higgins said.

  “Couldn’t have done it without you,” Valentine replied.

  There was a return flight to Las Vegas that afternoon that Higgins wanted to catch, and when their drinks were gone, Higgins said he needed to run, and shook Valentine and Doyle’s hands, then departed. Doyle followed him out, and Valentine shut the door behind them, then sat at his desk and removed an Incident Activity Report from the drawer. Fitting the report into his typewriter, he started to write up what had happened, when his phone rang. It was Higgins, calling from the lobby.

  “I need to discuss something with you in private,” Higgins said.

  Valentine sensed something was up. “I’ll be right down.”

  He met up with Higgins by the front entrance, and they went outside. Resorts’ valet was notoriously slow, and while they waited for Higgins’ rental to come out, his friend from Las Vegas explained what was on his mind.

  “You’ve got grift sense, Tony. I saw it the first time I met you. You see things that nobody else sees. We could use you out in Las Vegas. I’ve got an opening in my department for a senior agent that I’d like you to consider. We’ll pay for you to relocate.”

  Valentine was dumbstruck. It hadn’t been that long ago that Higgins had been teaching him the ropes, and it didn’t seem real that he’d now be offering him a job.

  “What kind of money are you talking about?”

  Higgins told him. The salary was twice what he was making, plus benefits. It was enough for he and Lois to stop skimping, and start saving for retirement. He’d been poor his entire life, which was why the words that came out of his mouth shocked even him.

  “No thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. It’s a generous offer, but I’m going to stay put.”

  “Mind my asking why?”

  Some answers were hard to put into words. Valentine guessed it had to do with his upbringing. He could still remember when Atlantic City had been the greatest place in the world to live, and he secretly longed for the day when the magic would return. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but sometimes those were the
things that kept people going.

  “This is home,” he explained.

  Higgins smiled like he understood. His rental came up, and they shook hands. A few moments later he was gone, and Valentine went back to work.