Jackpot (Tony Valentine series)

by James Swain

  “I’m Dr. Bob Smith, the prison psychologist,” he said.

  “Where’s Lucy?”

  “She asked me to come instead.”

  “Is that so. Where’s the warden?”

  “Why do you want to see the warden?”

  “Because I’m not talking to you.”

  The good doctor acted surprised. He was a gentle-looking man, the kind of thoughtful person that Valentine had hoped the prison system would provide to help Lucy get her gambling problem sorted out. Smith said, “Can we first go to the employee cafeteria, and discuss this over a cup of coffee?”

  “I didn’t come here to drink coffee. I’m conducting a criminal investigation. Were you aware of that?”

  Smith brought his hand up and tugged nervously at his beard. “No, I wasn’t. Is Lucy in some kind of trouble?”

  “She could be. She helped a cheater steal a slot machine jackpot a few years ago. She wrote me a letter about it. I need her to identify the cheater from a group of photos so we can apprehend him. If she refuses to help, I might have to haul her in.”

  “You can haul her in for that?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Because there are dozens of women in here who’ve done the same thing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They help cheaters,” Smith said. “I hear about it regularly during my counseling sessions. It’s goes on all the time. ”

  Valentine stared into Smith’s eyes. It sounded like a bunch of crap, only there was sincerity in Smith’s voice. Was this how Bronco lured innocent people into being claimers for him?

  “I’ll take you up on that cup of coffee.”

  The employee cafeteria was a rectangular room with six tables, a refrigerator and a Mr. Coffee machine with a glass jar for donations. Valentine poured two cups and dropped two dollars into the jar. They sat at a corner table, and shared a short silence.

  “Have you ever studied the work of Charles Darwin?” Smith asked.

  Valentine’s proper education had ended when he’d graduated from highschool.

  “I think I was out sick that day.”

  Smith blew the steam off his cup. “Darwin said that evolution relentlessly encouraged the survival of the fittest. If that’s true, human beings should be naturally selfish, and only care for themselves. Yet, the fact is, we are not a selfish species, per se. We interact with scores of individuals, sometimes hundreds or even thousands, and we cooperate with them.”

  “We do?” Valentine said.

  “Of course. We tip waiters in restaurants, give blood, drive on the correct side of the street, obey rules, and cooperate with people we’ll never see again. And we do it for a purely selfish reason. We want to survive.”

  “You’ve lost me. How does that lead to survival?”

  Smith put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Throughout human history, groups of cooperators have been more successful than groups of selfish individuals, and have driven the selfish individuals into extinction. Darwin believed that the desire for survival led to humans’ mutual aid and trust. He called it the evolution of cooperation.”

  The coffee tasted like rocket fuel, and Valentine felt it kick his brain into another gear. “Let me see if I can guess where you’re taking this. You think Darwin’s evolution of cooperation is happening inside casinos. People like Lucy Price cooperate with cheaters because they want to beat the casinos, just like every other player. Lucy helps, even though she knows it’s wrong.”

  “Wrong in a legal sense, but not in a cooperative one,” the doctor said. “Inside a casino, it’s us vs. them, and them is the casino.”

  “If that were the case, lots of people would be helping cheaters.”

  “They are. Lucy told me you work with the casinos. How often do players turn in other players for cheating, or stealing, or not playing by the rules?”

  “Hardly ever,” Valentine conceded.

  “But those things go on. The casino is the oppressor. The casino never loses. The players know this, and they hate it. As a result, players who see cheating either turn a blind eye, or become accomplices. Make sense?”

  Valentine’s coffee suddenly didn’t taste so good. He’d assumed that people like Bo and Karen Farmer had been talked into becoming thieves by promises of lots of money. But Smith was saying that money was only a part of it. The Farmers had turned bad because it was human nature to fight something that was beating you silly.

  “You still haven’t told me why Lucy won’t speak to me,” Valentine said.

  “Lucy is afraid that by talking to you, she’ll regress,” Smith said. “She believes that by seeing you again, she’ll undo all therapy.”

  “I need her help. Doesn’t she know that?”

  “She knows, but she has to think about herself.”

  Valentine drummed the table. Where was the evolution of cooperation that Smith had just spoken about? Valentine had helped Lucy plenty of times, even given her money when her situation had seemed hopeless. How could she now be so unwilling to help him? He didn’t like it. In fact, it made him mad as hell.

  He’d been walking around with an envelope tucked under his arm since he’d entered the prison. Opening it, he laid the photographs of the seven suspected gaming agents on the table. Five men, two women. He removed the photos of the five men, and handed them to Smith.

  “One of these five guys is the ringleader of a major casino scam. In the spirit of cooperation that you’re so fond of talking about, I want you to show these photographs to Lucy. Tell her it would be therapeutic for her to turn in a cheater.”

  “That’s out of the question.”

  “Do it anyway.”

  “You can’t order me around.”

  “I can’t?”

  “No. I don’t work for you.”

  Valentine leaned forward. “Your job is being paid for by casino dollars, just like every other employee in this prison. Think about it.”

  Smith blinked as Valentine’s words registered in his brain. “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. If I don’t cooperate, and get Lucy to look at these photographs, you’ll have me fired.”

  “Not me. But maybe the people I’m working for.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “Call it whatever you want.”

  “You realize Lucy will hate you for this.”

  “That’s my cross to bear, not yours.”

  Smith scooped the five photographs off the table and left the cafeteria. Valentine rose from the table, and bought a pack of cigarettes from the vending machine in the corner, pausing to read the Surgeon General’s warning stamped on the glass. Printed in bold letters, it said that smoking would eventually kill him.

  He ripped open the pack and banged out a smoke. Sometimes, a person didn’t want to live forever. For those times, a cigarette was the perfect thing to stick in your mouth.

  Smith returned fifteen minutes later. His face was flush. He angrily tossed the photographs into Valentine’s hands.

  “It’s the guy on top,” the doctor said.

  Valentine took another drag on his cigarette. An investigation was like running a race. Some were sprints, others marathons. The only thing they had in common was the finish line.

  He stared down at the photo. It was Fred Friendly, the head of ESD.

  Chapter 49

  Gerry stood inside the lobby of the Acropolis feeling like he’d entered a 1970's sitcom. The carpeting was an ugly burnt orange color that he hadn’t seen since his grandparent’s house, the walls covered in dark smokey mirrors. Statues of half-dressed women with huge breasts were stuck in every corner, and appeared to be someone’s idea of art. It reminded him of the movie Casino without the beautiful people.

  He entered the casino. It was also a time warp, and was designed like a wheel. A person could not walk through the main floor without passing through that wheel, and hopefully, stopping at a table and wagering a few dollars.

  He went searching for the house
phones. Before he could find them, a hulking security guard approached him.

  “Your name Valentine?”

  “That’s me.”

  The guard pointed to the elevators. “You have a phone call.”

  It had to be his father. Who else knew he was here? He thanked the guard, and went to the elevators where the house phones were located. He picked up a phone.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey?” an unfamiliar voice replied. “What kind of greeting is that?”

  Not his father, but someone with the same attitude.

  “Okay,” Gerry said, “Hey, you.”

  The man snorted at him. “Where’d you go to charm school?”

  “Sing-Sing prison.”

  “You’re hysterical. You come into my casino and don’t say hello?”

  “Who is this?” Gerry asked.

  “Nick Nicocropolis, you pin head. I’m in the penthouse. Come on up.”

  Gerry hung up with a grin on his face. Nick was the hard-headed little Greek who owned the Acropolis. Gerry guessed Nick had seen him in the casino, and mistaken him for his father. He’d heard stories about Nick for years — Nick had been married eight glorious times, all to Vegas knockouts — and had always wanted to meet him. He stepped into an elevator, and pressed the penthouse button. The buttons were made of see-through plastic, and featured silhouettes of naked women in provocative poses.

  “That’s just beautiful,” Gerry said.

  The penthouse was a major disappointment. Nick’s sexual prowess was legendary, and Gerry had expected Nick’s digs to be a living testimonial to his conquests. Instead, his office was a clone of Fortune 500 CEO’s digs, and as sterile as a hospital emergency room. Gerry was bummed.

  Nick was something of a disappointment as well. He was a smallish Greek with a perfectly round pot-belly, bushy eyebrows, bushy hair, and other small bushes of hair sprouting from different parts of his body. As Gerry entered the office, Nick jumped out of his chair, and came around the desk to greet him.

  “Holy shit, you’re not Tony,” the little Greek said.

  “Gerry Valentine. I’m Tony’s son. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nicky!” a woman’s voice crackled over the intercom on the desk.

  Nick froze in his spot and hunched his shoulders. “Yes, honey.”

  “Promise me you won’t swear again,” she purred.

  “I promise, dear.” Smiling sheepishly, Nick lowered his voice. “That’s my wife Wanda. She works in the adjacent office.”

  Gerry grinned. Talk about a short leash, he thought. As if reading his thoughts, Nick said, “It’s not what you think.”

  “What’s not what I think?” Gerry asked.

  “The office isn’t bugged.”

  Nick was a client, and one of the few casino owners in the world who his father implicitly trusted. Gerry couldn’t make fun of him, only he couldn’t stop grinning.

  “Stop laughing,” the little Greek scolded.

  “Sorry.”

  “Wanda’s developed a sixth sense to my swearing. It started right after she got pregnant. Every time I swear, she breaks out in hives, and chews me out.”

  “Wow.”

  “Shut up,” Nick told him.

  Nick offered Gerry a seat, then settled into a leather chair behind the desk that made him look several inches taller than he really was.

  “Your dad in town with you?” Nick asked.

  “Yeah. He’s on a case.”

  “I like your old man, even if he is from New Jersey.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell him to call me when he’s done. I’ll treat you boys to dinner in The Wanda Room. It’s our new steakhouse. You should see the waitresses.”

  “Something else, huh?”

  “They’ll poke your eyes out.”

  Gerry smiled to himself. Nick was a dinosaur. Yet he’d managed to survive longer than any other casino boss in Las Vegas. There was a reason for that.

  “I need to ask you a question,” Gerry said. “My father says that you know everything that’s going on in this town.”

  Nick kissed the end of an unlit cigar. “Correct.”

  “This in confidence.”

  “Won’t leave this room.”

  “What happened in the past three years that would make seven Nevada Gaming Control Board’s top agents turn into thieves?”

  Nick’s eyes narrowed, and Gerry almost thought he heard the gears shifting in the little Greek’s head. He tossed his cigar down, made a face that said he wasn’t happy.

  “That’s a loaded question, kid.”

  “Something did happen,” Gerry said.

  “Lots of crap happens in this town. Most of it gets buried in the desert.”

  “My father would be indebted to you if you’d tell me what it is,” Gerry said. Then added, “And, so would I.”

  Nick pushed himself out of his chair and crossed the room to the mini bar. He fixed two Scotches on the rocks and gave one to his guest. Gerry hadn’t had a drink before noon in forever, but this was Vegas, and the rules were different here.

  They clinked glasses, and then Nick told him a story.

  According to Nick, only two things mattered in Las Vegas. Sex, and money. Everything else was just camouflage.

  The story Nick told him was about money. Lots of it. And it did not have a happy ending. It had started three years ago in a casino called Diamond Dave’s.

  Diamond Dave’s was what locals called a sawdust joint, its clientele consisting of tour bus gamblers and locals. Dave’s shouldn’t have been making much money, yet it was. In fact, it was making more than many of its bigger rivals in town.

  A routine audit by the Gaming Commission had uncovered a serious problem. The games at Diamond Dave’s were raking in the cash. The hold, which was the amount of money the casino kept, was double what it was supposed to be. The Gaming Commission had smelled a rat, and asked the Gaming Control Board to investigate.

  The GCB had raided Diamond Dave’s, and shut it down. They’d brought in their experts, and carefully examined each game. What they’d found had shocked them. On every blackjack table the dealing shoes were missing high cards, making it impossible for the players to win. On the craps tables, the dice were shaved so only certain combinations would come up. At the roulette tables, the wheels were magnetized so management could make the ball stop wherever they choose. The slot machines were also rigged so players hardly won; even the lowly Keno game was fixed.

  The casino’s manager was hauled off to jail, and soon confessed. His owner was losing money, and had ordered the casino manager to rig the games. Under pressure from the police, the casino manager agreed to testify against his employer, and was released on bail. Three days later, he was found in his car with two bullets in the back of his head.

  Gerry sat on the edge of his chair, hanging on every word. He’d heard stories about casinos cheating their customers, but never anything on a scope like this.

  “What happened then?” he asked.

  Nick swirled the cubes in his drink. “That’s when things got interesting.”

  Chapter 50

  At eleven-thirty, Bronco took the elevator downstairs and gave the claim check for his car to the hotel valet. Minutes later he was driving south on Las Vegas Boulevard. It was a sunny day, the desert colors so vivid that they hurt his eyes. He’d always loved the fact that Las Vegas was in the desert. The town was like a mirage that did nothing but rip off suckers, and it was fitting that nothing grew here.

  The Instant Replay was five miles from the hotel. He pulled into the gas station across the street and got out of his car. There was a phone booth beside the station, and he made sure the phone was working, then went inside the tiny convenience store, and talked the clerk at the register into giving him a rubber band and some scotch tape.

  Back outside, he got into the booth, took out his wallet, and removed twenty single dollar bills and a single hundred. He wrapped the hundred around the wad of singles, secure
d it with the rubber band, and used the scotch tape to attach it beneath the pay phone. Then, he dialed the phone’s number into his own cell phone.

  When he was done, Bronco glanced across the street at the Instant Replay’s parking lot. No cars had come in since he’d arrived, and he guessed Carmichael was still at the hotel with his son.