Gift sense tv-1

by James Swain

  "I mean, would you mind?"

  "Not at all, Pop," his son said quietly.

  Valentine had already booted up Frank Fontaine's profile on his Compaq notebook when Gerry called back ten minutes later.

  "You need to fire your cleaning lady," his son informed him.

  "Don't have one," he replied.

  "That's what I mean. There are piles of crap everywhere. You're living like a hermit."

  "It's work," Valentine replied. "I'm running a business. Don't touch any of it."

  Normally, his son would have said something, and Friday Night at the Fights would have resumed. But not tonight; Gerry was different, more subdued. Maybe Mabel had said something, or perhaps flying down to Florida and finding his old man gone was a much-needed reality check.

  "I've got the C prompt on the screen," Gerry said.

  "Good. Type in shell and hit Enter. Five or six icons will come on the screen. Double-click on DCF."

  "Done," his son said. "You need to get a new mouse."

  "Don't use the one I've got."

  "You don't use your mouse?"

  "I can't see that damn little arrow."

  "Suit yourself," Gerry said. "What's DCF stand for anyway?"

  "Dead Creep File. Your ex-wife convinced me that instead of deleting a file every time a hustler died, I should transfer it to another program, in case I needed to reference it one day."

  "That sounds like Lucille. She never threw anything away."

  What about you? Valentine wanted to ask. He reined in his desire to insult his only child and said, "Here's the deal. You're going to create a profile with some information I'm going to give you, and then you'll run a match against the other profiles in the DCF file. I want you to print whatever DCF spits out and fax it to my hotel. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes."

  "Hey, I'm happy to help. Can I ask you a question?"

  "Shoot."

  "Why are you interested in looking at profiles of a bunch of dead hustlers?"

  "It's a long story," Valentine said. "I'll fill you in when I get back home."

  His son paused, and Valentine realized what he'd just said. To fill Gerry in, he was going to have to either call or go see him. His son had won this round.

  "Sounds great," Gerry said.

  The casino was jumping when Valentine ventured downstairs fifteen minutes later. It was a no-nonsense kind of crowd, guys in torn jeans and stained denim shirts, women in tank tops and Day-Glo shorts, their jewelry bought off the TV. Out of hunger, they'd made their way to this city in the desert with money they could not afford to lose-either begged, borrowed, or stolen-to chase the dreams that radiated from every billboard and storefront in the country. They were the worst class of gamblers, their knowledge so minimal that it made their chances of winning infinitesimal, and because other casinos would not allow them through the door in their blue-collar clothes, they ended up at the Acropolis, the poor man's gateway to heaven.

  Roxanne awaited him at the front desk. She'd tied her flowing hair in a bun-pretty no longer described her. She was now in another league of beauty, and his heart did a little pitter-pat.

  "Did you and your son kiss and make up?" she asked.

  "Sort of. Thanks for the pep talk."

  She slid Gerry's two-page fax across the marble counter. "You know, deep down, you're a pretty decent guy."

  "I'm just old-fashioned," he confessed.

  "I like old-fashioned," she said.

  Her coal-dark irises looked ready to ignite, and Valentine felt his heart speed up. There was no doubt in his mind what was on her mind. It would be one hell of an experience, only he just wasn't ready. He'd abstained from sex since Lois's death, knowing the next woman he bedded would forever cut the tie to his late wife. It would have to be someone special, not a woman he'd known less than twenty-four hours, so he backed away from the desk.

  "I bet you've seen Jurassic Park ten times," he said.

  Roxanne frowned, not getting his drift.

  "You like dinosaurs," he explained.

  Back in the elevator, he unfolded Gerry's fax and read the scribbled message on the cover page. Hey, Pop, Only one file came up. Doesn't look like a match, but what do I know? Gerry

  Valentine flipped the page. The single profile DCF had pulled up contained a mug shot, the face instantly familiar. Closing his eyes, he mentally compared the face to that of Frank Fontaine.

  Facially, the two men were as different as night and day, one handsome and debonair, the other smarmy and uncouth, and it was easy to see why no one was making the connection. The fingerprint that bonded them was Fontaine's play, which was smooth and deliberate and absolutely flawless, the play of a man who could memorize every card dealt in a six-deck game of blackjack or go to a ball game and determine batting averages in his head, the play of a man who knew not only the odds on every game of chance ever invented but also every possible way to turn those odds in his favor, through either deceit, outright trickery, or sheer mathematical genius.

  It was the play of a cold-blooded, ruthless individual born with the most terrible of gifts, a perfect brain.

  If anyone was capable of rising from the grave, Valentine thought, it would be him-the one, the only Sonny Fontana.

  12

  Valentine decided to call the Gaming Control Bureau and break the news to Bill Higgins first. Sonny Fontana had been the bane of Bill's existence since the late eighties, when he'd burst onto the Las Vegas scene like a meteor shower. Bill had acted swiftly and gotten Sonny banned from every casino in the state, but Sonny had not gone away. Instead, he'd gone underground and begun training other hustlers who in turn paid him a percentage of their winnings. Along with cheating at blackjack, Sonny's students had learned the latest methods of dice scooting, rigging slot machines, and altering the outcome at roulette. He'd created a small army of clones, and the casinos had been on the defensive ever since.

  Higgins's cell phone was on voice mail. Valentine didn't like leaving bad news on tape, so he said, "Bill, it's Tony. Call me once you get this. It's urgent."

  The next person he called was Sammy Mann. He tried Sammy's home first, and when no one answered, he took a chance and called the casino's surveillance control room. To his surprise, Sammy was at his desk, and Valentine asked if he could come down.

  "This must be important," Sammy said.

  Valentine told him it was.

  "We're on the third floor," Sammy told him.

  Valentine took the stairs. He made it a point to take a vigorous walk a few times a day and get his heart pumping. It seemed to make him more alert. On the third-floor landing, he found two chambermaids having a smoke. They directed him to the surveillance control room, which was tucked away behind Housekeeping.

  The door was unmarked and made of steel. He knocked and took a step back, knowing it was against the law to enter without proper clearance. Moments later, the door swung in and Sammy ushered him into a high-ceilinged, windowless room.

  "I'm usually off Saturday nights," Sammy explained, locking the door behind him. "I was crashed in front of the TV when Wily called. A little old lady from Pasadena got hot at the craps table and Wily thinks she's past-posting. So I came in."

  "Is she?"

  "Hell no," Sammy said. "Wily's dreaming."

  Valentine's eyes adjusted to the room's muted light. Every casino in the world had a surveillance control room, and he supposed they all looked something like this one. At one end stood an eight-foot-tall semicircle of video monitors. Each monitor was connected to an eye-in-the-sky downstairs in the casino. The monitors were watched by five security experts, all men, who sat at a master console, their desks covered in maps, telephones, two-way radios, keypad controllers, and dead coffee cups. The people in these jobs usually had law enforcement backgrounds and took great pleasure in busting cheats. Tonight's crew appeared hypnotized by the monitors' ghostly black-and-white images, their faces expressionless.

  Sammy's office sat in a partitioned corner. T
hey went in and Sammy shut the door. The call button on his phone lit up. He answered on the squawk box. "Mann here."

  Wily's voice filled the room. "So what do you think? Is the old broad past-posting or what?"

  "You're seeing things. She's clean."

  "Clean, my ass," Wily spit back. "She's taken us for ten grand."

  "Would you like a second opinion? I've got Valentine standing right here."

  "Sure," Wily said. "Let him look."

  "Screen six," Sammy said.

  Valentine went and had a look. Screen six offered an aerial of a craps table. It was easy to spot the offending party: Her stack of chips dwarfed everyone else's. Someone at the console hit a toggle switch and the camera zoomed in on her. She was eighty if she was a day, and her hands were shaking with arthritis. Valentine could not imagine her palming a chip and secretly adding it to her bet after the dice had been thrown. What was Wily thinking?

  "Clean as a whistle," Valentine announced on his return.

  "No fucking way," Wily said over the box.

  "Look, Tony's got something to tell us," Sammy said. "Why don't you come up?"

  "I'll come up later."

  "This won't wait. And leave the old broad alone. She isn't cheating."

  "I'm tossing her anyway."

  "You're an asshole."

  "I won't deny that."

  "Bad night?" Valentine asked when Wily sauntered in ten minutes later, a butt in one hand, a glass of Johnny Walker in the other, his necktie ringing his collar like a noose.

  "Rotten," the pit boss admitted. Sipping his drink, he eyed Sammy, whose hand nursed an aching gut. "You okay?"

  "To tell you the truth, I've felt better."

  "Stomach acting up again?"

  "My stomach, my head, my back," Sammy complained. "If it's not one thing, it's the other."

  "Maybe it's cancer," Wily said, bursting into laughter.

  Sammy looked ready to hit him. "Is that supposed to be a joke? You're sick in the head, you know that?"

  "Hey, my kid told me that joke," Wily said defensively.

  "Your kid told you that and you didn't hit her?"

  "Hit my kid? Are you nuts? I could go to jail."

  "You've punched enough morons in the casino."

  "That's different," Wily said.

  "Which kid?"

  "The youngest, Michelle."

  "She's twelve, right?"

  "Eleven."

  "You poor bastard."

  Valentine stood mutely in the corner. During the wait, Sammy had told him about Wily's miserable home life. His kids were the casualties of his wife's first marriage and as mean as junkyard dogs. By working double shifts, Wily saw them only two weekends a month, which made the situation tolerable.

  "Tony has some bad news," Sammy announced.

  Wily looked Valentine in the eye. "You made Fontaine?"

  "He sure did," Sammy said.

  Wily continued to stare at him. "And?"

  "It's Sonny Fontana," Valentine told him.

  Wily slammed his drink on the desk. Miraculously, not a single drop escaped. "What? That's horseshit. Sonny Fontana is dead. Everyone and his brother knows that. We're paying you a thousand clams a day and you turn up a dead guy? Get serious."

  Sammy tossed Wily the DCF profile and said, "Forget what you know. Tony made the match."

  Valentine watched the blood drain from Wily's head as his eyes absorbed what was on the page. Looking up, he said, "Didn't some guy in Lake Tahoe crush Fontana's head in a door so hard his brains came out of his ears? That's the story I heard, and the guy who told me swore to God it was true."

  "I heard the same story," Sammy said.

  Valentine had heard the story, too, his source none other than Bill Higgins. Which was why Sonny's file had been retired.

  "Then this can't be him," Wily said.

  "I don't want to have an argument about this," Sammy said, growing annoyed. "I knew when I heard Fontaine laugh that he was someone I'd run with. This confirms it. We got robbed by the best cheat who's ever lived. Now we gotta make sure it doesn't happen again."

  "Jesus." Wily took another swallow of his drink, set it on the desk, and then pushed it in Sammy's direction. The head of surveillance raised the whiskey to his lips.

  "Salute," he said, downing it.

  "Didn't you once run with Fontana?" Wily asked.

  "A long time ago," Sammy said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Sonny's got no loyalty to me now, if that's what you're thinking."

  Wily looked to Valentine for help. "Why us?"

  That was a good question. Why would Fontana waste a good face-lift to hit a dump like the Acropolis? Fontana would know the casino would sweat a big loss and lean on him.

  "I don't know," Valentine admitted.

  "You ever arrest him?" Wily wanted to know.

  "No," Valentine said.

  "Tony's got a grudge against Fontana," Sammy informed him.

  "You do?" Wily said.

  Valentine nodded that it was so.

  "Well," the pit boss said, "maybe now you can settle it."

  "So who's going to tell Nick?" Wily asked a few moments later.

  "You are," Sammy said.

  "Me? I think Tony should. He made him."

  Sammy shot Valentine a weary look. "You up to that?"

  Normally, Valentine would have declined; being the bearer of bad news was not in his job description. Only, Sammy looked terrible and Wily was a little drunk. "Okay," he said.

  "I'll toss you for who gets to chauffeur," Sammy said. He fished a worn Kennedy half-dollar from his pocket and flipped it into the air. The coin rotated lazily above their heads. Catching it, he slapped it against the back of his hand. "Call it."

  "Heads," Wily said.

  Sammy lifted his hand. "Tails. You lose."

  "How come I never win with you?" Wily asked.

  Valentine nearly laughed. Like seventy percent of the population, Wily probably always called heads. Which was why hustlers carried around double-sided coins.

  "Who knows?" Sammy said.

  "Looks like Nick's entertaining," Wily said, pulling his Buick up the driveway of his boss's palatial estate. It was nearly eleven and the manicured property was lit up like a used car lot.

  "How can you tell?"

  "The driveway's empty. Nick's got a staff of four. He gives them the night off whenever he brings a lady home."

  "Classy guy."

  Wily parked by the front door. Valentine got out, counting eight polished pillars supporting the marble portico. History either praised or ridiculed men who built shrines to themselves, and Nick had set himself up for a lot of abuse-not that Valentine thought the little Greek cared.

  Wily rang the bell. A gong sounded dully behind the door. When no one answered, he punched the intercom button.

  "Yeah?" Nick barked over the black box.

  "It's Wily and Valentine," Wily said.

  "I know who it is. I'm watching you with a camera, you moron. Why aren't you home sleeping?"

  Wily brushed a spider's web away before placing his mouth next to the intercom. He did not know who Nick was with or whether that person should hear what he was about to say. It was the smartest thing Valentine had seen the pit boss do.

  "We need to talk," Wily said, dropping his voice.

  "Isn't that what we're doing right now?"

  "Face-to-face."

  "Mano a mano? Why, you want to punch me out?"

  Nick's giddy laugh filled the box. A woman's giggle accompanied it. Valentine got the picture. Sex was Nick's narcotic. When he was getting it, there was no happier male on the planet.

  "We've got some bad news," Wily explained.

  "How bad?" Nick asked, sounding worried.

  "I think we should tell you in person."

  "This must be serious."

  "Yeah, Nick, it is."

  Valentine heard what sounded like the splashing of water and then the front door buzzed open. "Wipe your feet," Nick told
them.

  They did, then entered the ten-thousand-square-foot palace that Nick had somehow salvaged through six messy divorces and countless out-of-court palimony settlements. While questioning the hotel staff, Valentine had heard all about Nick's home, but nothing could have prepared him for the sheer horror of it. Built by the same crazy Greek fairy who'd designed the Acropolis, the house had dozens of false windows that looked onto painted scenes of the Greek countryside, the flora and fauna enhanced by anatomically inflated nymphs and nymphets engaged in every conceivable act of fellatio and intercourse.

  "For the love of Christ," Valentine muttered under his breath.

  "It's something, isn't it," Wily marveled. Heading into the living room he said, "How about a drink?"

  "Water would be fine."

  The bar was marble and shaped like a cock. Wily filled a glass from the tap, then plucked a pair of O'Doul's from the fridge and opened them. An unfinished cocktail sat on the bar, the glass smeared with burnt-orange lipstick. "Someone new," he quipped.

  Drinks in hand, the pit boss marched down a hallway to the master suite. He paused at the door before knocking.

  "Come on in," they heard Nick say. "We're all friends here."

  The suite was massive, with more square footage than Valentine's entire house. It also had more stuff in it. Wily stood in the room's center, looking for his boss.

  "Over here, stupid."

  Wily started grinning. Valentine followed his gaze. Through an open door, he saw Nick in the Jacuzzi with a young miss perched on his lap, still in the act of screwing her.

  "Attaboy," Wily said under his breath.

  Nick waved to them. The woman's shoulders tensed and she spun her head around like Linda Blair in The Exorcist and gave them a wicked stare. It was none other than Sherry Solomon.

  "Make yourself comfortable," Nick called to them.

  The suite had a living room at one end. Wily took the L-shaped leather couch; Valentine, the cushy chair designed like a hand. Under his breath, Wily said, "I wish Nick would stop screwing the help. Someday it's gonna ruin him."

  "You should talk to him," Valentine suggested.

  "Right," the pit boss said.