by James Swain
“I’ll be there,” he said.
“Good,” Rufus said. “In the meantime, I was hoping I might ask you a favor.”
Rufus suddenly stopped looking drunk, and Valentine realized he was putting on an act, and probably had a sucker he was trying to reel in. Valentine’s eyes canvassed the bar, and saw the Greek sitting on the other side of the crowded room.
“What’s that?” Valentine asked.
“The Greek has been running around the hotel saying I cheated him with my Ping-Pong bet. He’s claiming the reason he didn’t challenge me was because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yessir. The Greek says I hired you to protect me, and that you were an ex-cop with a bad reputation. He’s also saying you’re a suspect in a double homicide, and he was afraid you’d put a bullet in him if he squawked about me using the iron skillets as paddles in the game.”
“Is that so?”
“Yessir. I’ve been fixing to make the Greek eat his words, and figured you might enjoy helping me.”
Valentine considered Rufus’s request. He’d already helped Rufus scam the Greek several times, and each time told himself no more. Scamming people wasn’t right, even if they deserved to be taught a lesson. Then he reminded himself that the Greek had been part of a team that had cheated Rufus in a card game in an effort to make the old cowboy leave town. The Greek was a crook, and crooks needed to be punished. He glanced sideways at Gloria and placed his hand atop her wrist. “Do you mind if I help Rufus?”
“Only if you let me watch,” she said.
“Hot damn,” Rufus said.
The Greek was waiting as they approached his table. He’d finally taken a shower and combed his hair, and no longer resembled a clump of seaweed washed up on the beach. Sitting beside him was a red-haired poker player named Marcy Baldwin, whose departure from the tournament had included loud cursing and flipping the bird to the TV cameras. Marcy believed every male player was out to get her, yet she still competed in men’s events. On her lap was a designer handbag containing a sleeping Persian cat.
“Hey, Marcy, you calmed down yet?” Rufus asked, back to his drunk act.
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Sore head.” He turned to her companion. “So, Greek, any truth to the fact that you want to challenge me again?”
The Greek eyed him suspiciously. “What do you have in mind?”
“I hear you’re good at golf,” Rufus said, sipping his whiskey. “Someone said you were runner-up at the National Amateur Championship once. That true?”
“That’s right,” the Greek said.
“You still play?”
“Now and then.”
“What’s your handicap?”
“I don’t have one,” the Greek said.
“Except that lovely lady sitting beside you.”
“Fuck you,” Marcy said.
“Mine’s about ten,” Rufus went on. “Want to play?”
The Greek was still simmering from the losses he’d suffered at Rufus’s hands. If a gambler had anything in abundance, it was ego, and the Greek’s had taken a beating.
“For how much?” the Greek asked.
“Same as before,” Rufus said. “Half a million bucks, winner-take-all. I’ll even give you an edge, since I know you don’t trust me, and figure I’m going to cheat you.”
“What kind of edge?” the Greek asked suspiciously.
“On every hole, I’ll let you take three drives. You can pick which drive you want to use, and that will be your ball. Sound fair?”
Valentine couldn’t believe what Rufus was suggesting. He’d tried golf a couple of times, and knew it was a game in which you beat yourself. Giving a scratch golfer three drives a hole was the same as throwing the match.
“Do I get to pick the course?” the Greek asked.
“Sure,” Rufus said.
The Greek looked at Marcy, their eyes communicating silently. She was an attractive woman, save for the harshness her chosen lifestyle had produced.
“Go for it,” she said. “I’ll call my mother.”
“You sure she’ll lend it to you?” the Greek asked.
“Sure,” Marcy said. “She’s loaded.”
“You’re on,” the Greek said to Rufus. “When do you want to play?”
“How about crack of dawn, tomorrow?” Rufus said.
“Okay,” the Greek said.
They shook hands on it. Rufus pretended to notice Marcy’s cat for the first time. With his finger he pulled her handbag farther open. The cat cracked an eye, but did not stir.
“Nice cat,” Rufus said. “What’s its name?”
“Medusa,” Marcy said.
“Is she friendly?”
“No.”
“Just like her owner,” Rufus said.
“Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on,” Marcy hissed.
Rufus downed the rest of his whiskey, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. As if adding an exclamation mark to the picture, he belched into his hand. “I used to train house cats down on my ranch. They can do just about anything, once you teach them. You train this one, Marcy?”
“You’re drunk,” Marcy said. “Cats can’t be trained.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. I’ve owned cats my entire life.”
“I can train any cat. Including yours.”
“Train them to do what?”
“Circus tricks, real clever stuff.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“Wanna bet?”
“Sure,” Marcy said. “I’ll bet you.”
Rufus went to the bar, returned with an unopened sixteen-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola. He dropped it on the table with a loud plunk! “Five thousand bucks says I can train Medusa to pick up that bottle, cross the room, and drop it on a table of your choice.”
Marcy did not hesitate. She turned to the Greek. “Put up the money,” she said.
The Greek pulled back in his chair. “But…”
“No buts, unless you don’t want to see mine anymore,” she said. “Put it up. There’s no way on God’s green earth that this broken-down cowboy is getting my cat to do that.” She looked at Rufus. “You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
“I’ll handle your kitty with kid gloves,” Rufus said.
“Take the bet,” Marcy told the Greek.
“But…”
“Do it!”
The Greek put up the five thousand.
Rufus reached into his pockets and removed a pair of tan gloves. Slipping them on, he reached into Marcy’s handbag and removed the comatose kitty, putting her elastic body on the table. He grabbed the animal by the base of the tail and lifted her into the air. The cat opened its eyes and emitted a scream horrible enough to wake the dead.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt her!” Marcy screeched.
“I said I’d use kid gloves,” Rufus corrected her.
“These are kid gloves I’m wearing.”
“Do something!” Marcy told the Greek.
The Greek had crossed his arms in front of his chest, and seemed resigned to his fate. “Go ahead,” he told Rufus.
Holding Medusa by the base of the tail, Rufus lifted her clean into the air. The cat twisted its body and tried to scratch him, but couldn’t get through the gloves with its claws. In desperation, Medusa stuck its paws out, and attempted to latch onto the table. Rufus positioned her paws directly over the Coca-Cola bottle, and the cat grabbed the bottle by the cap and lifted it clean into the air. It was truly something to see: a drunk cowboy holding a screaming kitty holding a bottle of pop.
“Which table?” Rufus inquired.
“Make him stop!” Marcy cried.
“That one,” the Greek said, pointing across the room.
“God damn you!” Marcy exclaimed.
Rufus crossed the bar while holding the screaming cat at arm’s length. It was a great way to clear a path, and someone snapped a picture of him. Rufus came to the specified table and stoppe
d. A handsome young guy was sitting there, chatting up a pretty young girl. Introducing himself, Rufus asked the guy to hold out his hands. The guy obliged him, and Rufus loosened his grip on Medusa’s tail. The cat dropped the bottle into the guy’s hands, then slipped out of Rufus’s grasp and ran away.
The guy handed the bottle to his girlfriend.
“Thanks, mister,” the guy said.
Rufus returned to the Greek’s table. Medusa had run to Marcy’s handbag and was shivering in fear. Marcy had turned her back on the Greek and acted like she was never going to speak to him again. The Greek wiped a crocodile-size tear from his eye.
“I win,” Rufus declared.
Part IV
Showdown
39
“You busy?” Gerry Valentine asked. Nurse Susan Gladwell lifted her eyes from the hospital report she was filling out. It was a few minutes past midnight, and she’d just come on her shift at the cancer ward of Atlantic City Medical Center, which was as quiet as a church.
“Yes, I am,” she said.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, you’re Gerry Valentine, Jack Donovan’s friend,” she replied, putting her pencil down. “We spoke yesterday about the poker scam you were investigating. I was going to look into the hospital records to see if anything was stolen from our medicine department while Jack was here. Which I actually did, believe it or not.” Reaching across the cluttered desk, she plucked a blue folder from a stack. “Here’s the report.”
Gerry was standing at the nurse’s station where Gladwell worked. He’d brought a cup of steaming hot coffee for himself, and one for her. He made no attempt to take the file. “Let me guess,” he said, “there was nothing stolen.”
She held the file motionless in the air. “That’s right. How did you know?”
“Because most hospitals don’t report theft of medicines to the police. I learned that from my wife. She’s a doctor.”
Gladwell dropped the file on the desk, made an annoyed face. “If you knew that, then why did you have me go to the trouble of pulling up the records?”
“I didn’t know it when I asked you,” Gerry explained.
“But I know now, along with a bunch of other stuff. You and I need to talk.”
“Is that what the coffee is about?”
“Yes.”
“Not interested. Maybe some other time.”
Her eyes dropped to the form, giving him the ice maiden treatment. He cleared his throat. “See that black dude standing in the hallway behind me?”
“I said I’m not interested,” she said.
“He’s a cop.”
Her head came up very slowly. “I see him. Is he with you?”
“Yes,” Gerry said. “He’s an undercover detective named Eddie Davis. If you don’t talk to me, he’s going to haul you down to the police station and grill you about a conversation you had with George Scalzo the morning after Jack Donovan was murdered. He’s going to want to know why Scalzo brought you flowers and bought you a meal.”
She stiffened. “How did you know about that?”
“Does it matter?”
She stared at Eddie Davis standing in the hallway. She wore little makeup, her face pleasantly plain, with tiny freckles on her nose, and soft amber eyes. Something in her face melted, and suddenly she looked scared. Rising from her chair, she took the steaming cup from Gerry’s outstretched hand.
“I’ll talk, but not here.”
“How about the cafeteria?” Gerry suggested.
“Just so long as no one is around,” she said.
The cafeteria was fairly quiet, with a maintenance man mopping the floor. They took a table in the back of the room, and Gladwell waited for a couple of doctors at the next table to leave, then spoke while staring at the reflection in her drink. “I really liked Jack Donovan. He was fun to be around, even when he was getting chemo. Nurses and doctors aren’t supposed to get involved with patients, but it happens. Take off the white coats, and we’re no different than anyone else.”
Gerry glanced at the rings on her third finger, let out a deep breath.
“I saw Jack on the sly for three months,” she went on.
“He confided in me, told me about scams he pulled on the casinos. There was one I’ll never forget. He had a tiny mirror glued to the bottom of a beer can. He could hold the can on a blackjack table, and see the face of the cards as they were dealt out of the plastic shoe. He’d know what the dealer had before the dealer did. Jack said he only had to see the dealer’s hand once an hour to clean up. I never figured out what he meant.”
“Jack was a card counter,” Gerry said. “He played with an edge to begin with. By cheating once an hour, the edge increased, and guaranteed him a winning night.”
“Did you show him that scam? Jack said he learned a lot from you when you were growing up.”
Gerry thought back, smiled. “Come to mention it, I did show that to him.”
“I thought so.” She gulped her coffee, grimaced.
“Jack also told me about the poker scam. At first, he wouldn’t explain how it worked, just said that a player could know his opponents’ cards and never lose.
“Jack told me he was going to sell the scam to a mobster named George Scalzo, and that Scalzo was going to give Jack’s mother a hundred thousand dollars for it. I’d met Jack’s mom, knew she was living on federal assistance, so I didn’t say anything.”
“Would you have otherwise?”
Her head snapped, eyes flaming. “Just because I loved Jack doesn’t mean I approved of what he did. I normally don’t hang out with people like you and Jack.”
Gerry’s face reddened. “Sorry.”
“One afternoon at Jack’s apartment, he sat down at the kitchen table and showed me the poker scam,” she said. “First he gave me an earpiece, which he said was a modified children’s hearing aid, and made me put it in my ear. Then he gave me a deck of cards and had me shuffle them. He took the cards, dealt us a hand. Each time one of the cards came off the deck, I heard a series of clicks. The clicks were in Morse code. Jack had a Morse code chart, and he let me read it while listening to the clicks. The clicks were always right.
“It was pretty amazing. Jack let me examine the cards. I couldn’t find anything wrong with them. The clicks just seemed to come out of thin air.”
Ever since Jack had died, Gerry had wondered how the poker scam worked, and he put his elbows on the table and knocked his drink over. Gladwell grabbed the cup before too much of the liquid spilled out and righted it.
“Down, boy,” she said.
She wiped up the spill with a paper napkin. Gerry could see her and Jack hitting it off. Jack had liked strong women.
“Did he show you the secret?”
“I eventually pried it out of him,” she said, smiling at the memory. “There was a cigarette lighter sitting on the table. The lighter had a dosimeter hidden inside that Jack had stolen from the hospital.”
“What’s a dosimeter?”
“It’s a device used to detect X-rays or radiation. You see them in dentists’ offices. When Jack passed the cards over the lighter, the dosimeter picked up a signal from the card and sent it to a computer strapped around his waist. The computer read the signal then told me the card’s value in Morse code. Jack said he’d borrowed the technology from some Japanese company that used it in kids’ toys.”
A group of female nurses came up to the table and spoke to Gladwell while checking out Gerry. Gerry rose, and introduced himself as Gladwell’s old high school friend. The nurses chatted for another minute and left.
“You didn’t have to do that, but thanks anyway,” Gladwell said.
Gerry returned to his chair. “You’re leaving out the important part. How was the dosimeter reading the cards?”
Gladwell’s eyes fell to the dull tabletop. She seemed to be wrestling with her conscience, and a long moment passed before she spoke again. “That was the secret that Jack sold to George Scalzo. You could exa
mine the cards, but nothing would show up. Jack made me promise not to tell. And so did Scalzo.”
Gerry thought back to what Yolanda had said over the phone earlier. The FBI had tailed Scalzo coming to the hospital. They’d seen him bring flowers to Gladwell, then go to the cafeteria with her and have breakfast together. As if reading his mind, Gladwell said, “I wasn’t on duty the night Jack died, and didn’t hear the news until the next day when I came in. Then Scalzo shows up with flowers, tells me how sorry he is that Jack’s dead. He knew I’d been having an affair with Jack, and over breakfast told me I needed to keep quiet, if I knew what was good for me.”
“So Scalzo threatened you.”
“He didn’t have to. If word got out about my affair with Jack, I’d lose my job, my nurse’s license, and probably my marriage. I had a sword hanging over my head, and Scalzo knew it.” She lifted her eyes. “There’s your friend again.”
Gerry glanced over his shoulder. Eddie Davis was siting on the other side of the room, peeling the plastic off a cafeteria sandwich. Gerry looked back at Gladwell.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“I think the word is petrified,” she said.
“I can make this nightmare go away.”
“Right.”
“I’m being serious.”
“How can you make it go away?”
Gerry leaned forward, this time making sure no drinks were in striking range. “Tell me Jack’s secret, and you’ll never hear from me, the police, or George Scalzo again. That’s a promise.”
“How do I know you’ll keep this promise?”
His eyes scanned the cafeteria, and when he was certain no one was watching, he reached across the table and put his hand on her wrist. She did not resist his touch. “You and I share one thing in common. We both loved Jack. So when I tell you that on my friend’s grave I can fix this situation, you’ve got to believe me.”
Gladwell shuddered from an unseen chill. She drank what was left in her cup, grimacing again.
“All right,” she said.
40
Four o’clock in the morning, and Skip DeMarco lay awake in his king-sized hotel bed, his sightless eyes gazing at the ceiling. On the other side of the room, his laptop made a gurgling sound. Its screen saver was an underwater scene, complete with coral, bright tropical fish, and sound effects. Hours ago, he’d gone onto the Internet and found the Web site of the law firm where Christopher Charles Russo, the man claiming to be his father, worked. The site had a section with photographs of the firm’s lawyers. His laptop’s screen was sharp, and he’d planned to enter the section, click on Russo’s picture, then raise the laptop to his face, and take a look at the guy.