by James Swain
His stomach growled. It was lunchtime. Only too many things were bothering him to think about food. Like how Jack Lightfoot was cheating, and Bill’s situation, and Jacques’s dice cheater, and this damn tape. Too many puzzles to keep straight.
His stomach growled again. His body was telling him something, and he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door.
He decided to take a drive and got his car from the valet.
Traffic crawled, then stopped, then crawled some more. A kid on a moped scooted between lanes, making them all look stupid. He pulled into the entrance for the Castaway Hotel. Down the road, he could see the Fontainebleau. It had taken him ten minutes and a gallon of gas to go a lousy half mile.
The Castaway was one of those old Miami Beach dumps that he could identify with, the flowery wall coverings and mushy carpet a throwback to his youth. Behind the hotel was a poolside restaurant, and a greeter-seater showed him to a table with an umbrella. Next to the pool, a trio was playing jazz, the music battling with screaming kids and their parents screaming at them. He ordered a hamburger and coffee.
Ten minutes later his lunch came. The waiter said, “We’re changing shifts. Mind cashing out?”
Valentine paid the bill. It was seven bucks, so far the best deal he’d found. He watched the new shift come in. Several of the waiters were in street clothes and carried their uniforms in see-through dry-cleaning bags. He stared at the uniforms, then removed from his wallet the list of items that Jacques had told Mabel he’d found inside the dealers’ lockers, and read them again.
shoe polish
hair gel
combs/brushes
mustache trimmer
mouthwash/breath mints
aftershave
hair tonic
toothpaste
deodorant
clothes iron
sewing kit
newspaper
nude picture
candy bar
Smiling, he powered up his cell phone and called Mabel.
“Grift Sense.”
“Do you do psychic readings?”
“Very funny,” his neighbor said. “I’ve been trying to call you. Don’t you ever leave your cell phone on?”
No, he never did. He hated hearing cell phones ring in public places and private ones, as well. He ignored the question, and said, “I solved the mystery of Jacques’s dice cheater.”
“You did! Jacques called twenty minutes ago. He’s so irritating!”
“Tell Jacques the craps dealer who has the clothes iron in his locker is the cheater.”
“The clothes iron?”
“That’s right. I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out sooner.”
“Figure what out?”
“I’ve known a lot of craps dealers over the years,” he said, “and none iron their shirts. They have them dry-cleaned. Jacques’s cheater is using the iron to shrink the dice. You put a die up to a red-hot iron and hold it against the metal for a split second. The iron shrinks the circumference of the die. That causes the die to be biased, and certain combinations will come up more than others. The neat part is once the die cools off, it returns to its original size. All the evidence disappears.”
Mabel laughed with delight. “That’s wonderful. Now we get to keep the money.”
“After you call Jacques back, I’ve got two more things for you to do.”
“Fire away,” she said.
“First, I need you to call Detective Eddie Davis in Atlantic City and ask him to run a check on a guy named Rico Blanco.”
“The same Rico Blanco who ripped off your son?”
Valentine nearly slapped himself in the head. Two months ago, a hoodlum named Rico Blanco had stolen fifty grand from Gerry by getting him to bet on a videotape of a college football game. It had to be the same guy.
“You’re a genius,” he said.
“Thank you. Then what?”
“Turn on my computer—”
“Done.”
“—and boot up Creep File. Pull up the file on Victor Marks.”
Creep File was a database of over five thousand hustlers, crossroaders, and con men that he’d crossed paths with during his years policing Atlantic City’s casinos. It was a veritable Who’s Who of Sleaze.
“Here he is,” Mabel said. “Victor Marks. Professional con artist. Came to Atlantic City in 1982. Doesn’t read like he stayed long. No picture.”
Valentine closed his eyes and tried to remember him. He drew a blank.
“There’s no physical description,” Mabel added, “so I guess he got away. Ah, here’s something. He had a partner who you arrested. Saul Hyman.”
Valentine smiled thinly. Saul he did remember. An old-time scuffler, one of those guys who couldn’t stop stealing if his life depended on it.
“Pull up his file, will you?”
Mabel’s fingers tapped away. “Saul Hyman, aka the Coney Island Kid. Your notes are several pages long. Did he really do all these things?”
“That’s the tip of the iceberg. See if the file has his last known address.”
Mabel laughed out loud when she found it. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“What’s that?”
“He lives on Miami Beach.”
Saul Hyman lived in a retirement village in north Miami called Sunny Isles. He had to be pushing eighty, and Valentine imagined him doing what most old guys in Florida did: going to doctors, going to the track, and ogling the pretty girls who dotted the landscape like palm trees.
“Would you like his phone number?” Mabel asked.
“How did you get that?” Valentine asked.
“I typed his name into a search engine called whitepages.com.”
Valentine scribbled the number down. “While you’re at it, give me Gerry’s number in Puerto Rico.”
Mabel gave him the hotel’s number, and Valentine wrote it beneath Saul’s. His son was honeymooning at the Ritz-Carlton with his pregnant bride. Nothing but the best for his boy, especially when his old man was paying. “Listen,” he said, “have you ever watched that TV show, Who Wants to Be Rich?”
“Once in a while.”
“Victor Marks scammed it. I’d like to figure out how.”
“As in cheated it? I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Why not?”
“I read in TV Guide that the security on the show is like Fort Knox.”
“Talk to you later,” he said.
14
Gerry Valentine’s father had been yelling at him since he was a kid.
It had started when Gerry had gotten caught selling marijuana in the sixth grade, and had continued until a week ago, when he’d hit his father up to pay for his honeymoon. Twenty-three years of yelling, and always over the same thing: Gerry didn’t listen.
Gerry didn’t deny it. He marched to the beat of his own drummer, always had, always would. Take the night before in the hotel casino. For years, his old man had told him not to gamble in the islands. “The regulation stinks,” his father liked to say, “and there’s no one to gripe to if something seems fishy.”
Only, Gerry hadn’t listened. Yolanda had gone to bed early, leaving him with the evening to kill. Taking the last of the money his father had lent him, he’d gone downstairs to give Lady Luck a whirl.
The hotel’s casino was small and European in flavor. Gerry knew enough to avoid playing roulette, the Big Wheel, and Caribbean stud poker—which were games for suckers—and he also steered clear of the craps table, which gave a player decent odds if you knew what you were doing. The only other game that gave you a chance was blackjack, and he found a vacant seat at a table with a hundred-dollar minimum.
Having grown up in Atlantic City, he knew a thing or two about the game. The only smart way to play had been published in a book by Edward Thorp called Beat the Dealer. Thorp had doped out a system that he called Basic Strategy. It was as exact a science as algebra.
Sitting beside Gerry was a cruise-ship drunk. The
drunk wore an ugly parrot shirt dotted with catsup and a green avocado-like substance. Belching into his hand, he said, “You Puerto Rican?”
“Italian. What’s it to you?”
“Sorry. With that tan, you look Puerto Rican.”
“You got something against Puerto Ricans?”
“Puerto Ricans aren’t allowed to play in the casino,” the drunk said defensively.
“Says who?”
“Says the government. They just want us tourists playing.” The drunk lowered his voice. “If you ask me, I think it’s because they’re too stupid to understand the rules.”
Yolanda was Puerto Rican. Had he been on his home turf, Gerry would have smacked the guy in the head. He glanced at the dealer. He was an effeminate Puerto Rican with olive skin and wavy hair. He didn’t say much, but in his eyes a fire was burning. He heard the drunk, Gerry thought.
His father had told him to never play with a pissed-off dealer. But what could the dealer do? A pit boss was watching, and the cards were dealt out of a plastic shoe. Deciding to go against his old man’s advice, Gerry had stayed put.
That had been his first mistake.
The dealer had cleaned out everyone at the table. Because Basic Strategy required intense concentration, Gerry had noticed the inordinate number of small cards being dealt. Small cards—two, three, four, five, six—favored the house, while big cards—ten, jack, queen, king, and ace—favored the players. Not enough big cards were coming out of the shoe, which meant something fishy was going on. He’d decided to call the dealer on it.
That had been his second mistake.
“How do you know the dealer was cheating?” Yolanda asked the next day, applying a fresh ice pack to Gerry’s eye. For his imprudence he’d been asked to step outside, where a security guard had punched him.
“Because I figured out what the dealer was doing.”
“You did?”
“He was keeping a slug of high cards out of play. My old man told me about it. It isn’t very hard, once you understand the basics. I should have done what my father said.”
“Which is?”
“If you think you’re getting cheated, leave.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I’m a dope,” he said.
His beautiful bride kissed him on the cheek. “No, you’re not.”
There was a knock on the door. Yolanda ushered in a waiter with the meal she’d ordered from room service. She was loving every minute of their honeymoon, and Gerry struggled with how to tell her that he no could longer pay for their room, or her treatments at the spa, or the lavish meals, or all the other bills they’d rung up. The phone rang and she answered it.
“Hi, Dad,” she said cheerfully.
Gerry groaned. She spoke to her own father in Spanish. Which meant it was his father, the last person on earth he wanted to talk to. He made a move for the bathroom.
“He’s right here,” Yolanda said.
“No, I’m not,” Gerry whispered. “Tell him I’m in the crapper.”
“Talk to your father,” she whispered back, handing him the phone.
Gerry held the receiver in his outstretched hand. He could already hear his old man yelling at him, and he hadn’t even told him what he’d done. He stared at his wife’s protruding belly. Was he really ready to be a parent?
“Hi,” he said.
There was a time in every man’s life when he had to admit his mistakes, and Gerry realized now was that time, even if it meant his father might explode and Yolanda might kill him. But before the words could come out of his mouth, his father stopped him dead in his tracks.
“I don’t know how to ask you this,” his father said.
“What’s that?”
There was a brief silence. Then his old man let him have it.
“I need your help,” he said.
15
Rico knew something was wrong the moment he laid eyes on Candy Hart.
It was lunchtime, and they were sitting in the Delano’s patio restaurant. The tables were filled with pasty-skinned young women and their coke-sniffing boyfriends, the waiters balancing monster trays as they darted between tables. Candy had called him an hour ago. Nigel had gone to play eighteen holes on the Blue Monster, and she wanted to talk.
It was the clothes, Rico realized. She was wearing a yellow sundress that made her look like a Sunday school teacher. That was okay—she couldn’t be a hooker twenty-four/seven—but her hair was different, and she wore less makeup. No more bedroom eyes, he thought.
“I want out,” she said.
“Out?”
“Out.”
“Now?”
“Uh-huh.”
Rico tapped his fingertips on the table. Too many people were around for him to raise his voice. So he just frowned, working it out in his head. Candy’s leaving he could handle; he could always find another pretty hooker. But Candy wasn’t leaving, she was staying right here at the Delano, shacked up in Nigel’s bungalow. Removing his wallet, he dropped two thousand dollars on the table and slid it her way. Her eyes locked on the money, then met his face.
“What’s that for?”
“Your last payment. I don’t want anyone ever saying Rico Blanco stiffed them.”
“You sure?”
“It’s yours.”
She started to pick up the money. Rico brought his hand down forcefully on the bills. In a harsh whisper he said, “Do you really think it’s gonna last with this guy? He’s slept with more women than I’ve had bowel movements. You’ll wake up one morning and he’ll be gone. For good.” He saw her eyes well up and went for the kill. “You know why I’m scamming him? Because he’s got it coming. Nigel Moon is a fake.”
The waiter brought their drinks, and Rico drew his hand away. Candy picked up the money and stared at him. Rico looked at his beer. It was an Amstel Light. He hated light beer. The waiter had brought the wrong drink.
“What do you mean, he’s a fake?”
“You want the gory details?”
Candy’s cute mouth twisted into something harsh and unfriendly. “No.”
“Well, for starters—”
“I said no. Shut up.”
“I’ll pay you five grand to stay in.”
“Is that what I’m worth to you, Rico? Five grand?”
“That’s on top of what I’ve already paid you,” Rico said.
Candy picked up the money and threw it into Rico’s face. In a loud voice she said, “Stick it up your ass, you crummy piece of shit,” and stormed down the path toward the hotel’s bungalows. Rico sipped his beer, trying to act nonchalant. People were staring at him, and his money was scattered all over the floor.
He glanced at the glass door that led from the patio into the hotel. His driver was standing behind it, his face pressed to the glass. Rico motioned to him with one finger. Splinters came out and picked up his money.
Five minutes later, driving north on Collins Avenue, Splinters lowered the window that separated him from his boss. “I can’t believe she did that to you.”
Rico opened a real beer from his private stash and chugged it. “Me neither.”
“She cursed you in front of all those people.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“And threw your money on the floor.”
“Shut up, will you?” It was strange, but the worst part had been the taste the Amstel Light had left in his mouth. It tasted exactly like beer wasn’t supposed to taste. The Eden Roc came into view. Splinters put his indicator on and parked by the front entrance.
A uniformed doorman opened Rico’s door, and he got out. He was halfway to the elevators when he had an idea. He retraced his steps.
Splinters was still in the limo, playing with the radio. He’d told Rico that in Cuba there was nothing good on the radio. Rico went around to the driver’s side and tapped on the window. It lowered automatically.
“I need you to do a job for me,” Rico told him.
“Sure,” Splinters
said, his fingers clicking to the music blaring out of the speakers.
“Kill her,” Rico said.
Gerry didn’t know what to make of the way his father was acting.
First his old man had wired him money to pay for his hotel and for Yolanda to stay a few more days and for Gerry to fly to Miami that afternoon. Then his old man had met him at the airport, all smiles and hugs, and helped him rent a car, which he’d put on his credit card. And not just any car, but a BMW 540 from Hertz, a hundred bucks a day.
Driving over the Causeway to Miami Beach, Gerry had found himself whistling to a song on the radio. It all seemed too good to be true. Then he’d spotted the flashing lights of the police cruiser in his rearview mirror.
“I’ll take care of it,” his father said when Gerry showed him the speeding ticket at the Fontainebleau. They were drinking sodas by the pool with scores of pretty girls all around them. Gerry felt his father’s eyes burning his face.
“Cut it out,” his father said.
“What?”
“You’re a married man.”
“Just because I’m on a diet doesn’t mean I can’t read the menu.”
His old man leaned across the table, grabbed Gerry’s ear, and gave it a twist. “Listen to me. First your eyes wander, then your dick wanders. And because your dick has only one eye, it sees only half the picture. So cut it out, okay?”
Gerry grunted in the affirmative, and his father let him go. This felt a lot more like his old man. A bikini-clad girl strolled by their table and gave him a wink.
“How you doing,” he said without thinking.
She stopped to chat, leaning over the table so they got the full picture.
“Did you see those lungs?” Gerry said when she was gone.
“She nearly poked my eye out,” Valentine said. “Besides, they’re not real.”
“They were beautiful,” his son said.
“You like fake titties?” his father asked.