“Are Gerry and Tony all right? Please be truthful with me.”
Mabel hesitated. Then her eyes fell on the frame hanging over Tony’s desk. It contained five playing cards—two black aces, two black eights, and the five of diamonds. Wild Bill Hickock had been holding aces and eights the night he’d been shot in a poker game, murdered by a gang of cheaters who were afraid of being run out of town. They were known as a Deadman’s Hand, and had been bought by Tony as a reminder that no job was worth getting killed over.
“I’m afraid they’re up to their eyeballs in trouble,” she blurted out.
“So my dream was a premonition,” Yolanda said.
“I hope not,” Mabel said.
There was a loud noise in the background, and Yolanda said, “They’re boarding my plane. I need to run. I’ll be home soon.”
The phone went dead in Mabel’s hand. Identical dreams couldn’t be a coincidence. Tony and Gerry were going to get hurt if they didn’t do something. She stared at the Deadman’s Hand, then shut her eyes and prayed, not wanting Wild Bill’s fate to be Gerry’s and Tony’s as well.
21
“Iowe you a big steak,” Eddie Davis said. “I might just take you up on that,” Gerry replied.
Davis was signing paperwork so he could be released from the emergency room of Atlantic City Medical Center. The ER was relatively quiet, the groaning drunks and shooting victims and other casualties of the night having been treated and moved out. A bearded doctor stood beside Davis, holding a medicine bottle filled with white pills. He shoved them into Davis’s hand.
“This is penicillin. Follow the instructions on the bottle,” the doctor said. “The wound on your back could become infected. You need to watch it.”
“I will,” Davis said, pocketing the bottle.
The doctor handed Davis another sheet of paper to sign. It was printed in bold lettering, and stated that Davis had been given instructions from a doctor and fully understood them. Gerry guessed this freed the hospital from liability in case Davis got sick, and decided to sue. Davis scribbled his name across the bottom.
Outside in the parking lot they found Marconi sitting in a Chevy Impala, fighting to stay awake. Gerry guessed Marconi would rather be home sleeping than sitting there, only there was an unwritten code that said if your partner got hurt, you hung with him. His father had done it many times. Marconi climbed out of the car and whacked Eddie on the arm.
“Hey brother, glad to see you’re still in one piece. I spoke with the district attorney about Abruzzi getting killed outside Bally’s. Everything’s cool.”
“Did you nail the guy’s partners?” Davis asked.
“They escaped. I managed to grab a good piece of evidence, though.” Opening the back door of the car, Marconi took the gaffed Yankees cap off the passenger seat and handed it to Davis. “Take a look at this.”
Davis examined the cap, trying to hide his disappointment that Marconi hadn’t nailed Abruzzi’s partners. As he handed the cap back, Gerry stuck his hand out.
“Can I look at it again?”
Marconi handed him the cap. The cap had been bothering Gerry, only he hadn’t known why. Turning the cap over, Gerry ran his finger over the LEDs and receiver sewn into the rim. Most cheating equipment was crudely made, with the main emphasis on getting the money. The niceties were almost always ignored. But this cap was different. It was new and looked liked a tailor had stitched it. The transmitter and LEDs were unusually thin, and he suspected they’d cost a lot of money.
Then it occurred to him what was wrong.
Cheating equipment was expensive. Several underground companies sold devices to rip off games, and the equipment often cost several thousand dollars. The markup was incredible, the reasoning being that a cheater would make the money back in one night. Gerry tried to imagine how much the baseball cap would cost from one of these companies. They charged through the nose for anything electronic, and he guessed the cap would cost ten grand. He handed the cap back to Marconi.
“Can I ask you a couple of questions?” Gerry asked.
“Go ahead.”
“The gang you were chasing inside Bally’s, how many members were there?”
Marconi stuck the cap on his head. It was several sizes too large, and made him look like a little kid. He counted on the fingers of one hand. “One woman was nicking the cards. A second guy was reading the nicks and transmitting the information. And there was the guy wearing the cap and doing the betting. Three members.”
“Don’t forget Abruzzi,” Davis said.
“Correction. Four members.”
“Okay,” Gerry said. “Four members, but only one is actually stealing.”
“That’s right.”
“How much was the gang winning?”
“Around fifteen hundred a night,” Marconi said.
Gerry stared at the cap on Marconi’s head. Now he knew what was bothering him.
“That’s not enough money,” Gerry said.
Marconi shot him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the overhead the gang has,” Gerry explained. “Four members, plus the cost of the cap and a police scanner. Oh, and there’s George Scalzo’s take to consider, since he’s bankrolling this operation. Fifteen hundred a night hardly covers the cost of doing business.”
“You’ve lost me,” Marconi said. “If fifteen hundred isn’t enough money, then why were they cheating Bally’s? For laughs?”
Gerry asked to see the cap again, and turned it over. The expert tailoring job was the clue. A pro had stitched this cap, and if his hunch was correct, many more just like it.
“If my hunch is right, there are more members of this gang cheating Bally’s, not just the ones you were after,” Gerry said.
Marconi and Davis snapped to attention.
“Can you prove that?” Davis asked him.
“I sure can,” Gerry said.
Marconi drove them to Bally’s with the gaffed baseball cap on his head. During the drive, he broke the news to Davis that his prized Mustang had been totaled from Gerry ramming it into Abruzzi’s car. Davis stared out the window and sulked.
“You’ll find another one,” Marconi said.
“Like hell I will,” Davis replied.
Bally’s entrance was jammed with tour buses. Marconi maneuvered around them and parked by the valet stand. As they got out, he said, “Boat people.”
Boat people was casino slang for senior citizens. Like every other casino in Atlantic City, Bally’s relied on seniors to make its nut. They were easy customers, staying long enough to squander their social security checks in slot and video poker machines. Inside they found a sea of white hair and polyester. They walked to the cashier’s cage where Marconi cornered the casino’s floor manager, a red-faced man wearing a purple sports jacket. Marconi explained why they were there.
“You want to do what?” the floor manager said.
“Go up to your surveillance control room and take a look at some tapes,” Marconi said.
“Gaining entrance to that room takes a fricking act of Congress,” the floor manager said. “I need to tell the people upstairs what this is about.”
Marconi took off the cap, and showed the floor manager the rim. “This cap was used to scam your blackjack tables. We want to watch the tapes of the guy who was wearing it. Think you can arrange that?”
The floor manager muttered something unpleasant and left. Casino people were fiercely territorial, and tended to bang heads with cops as a matter of principle. They went into a coffee shop to wait.
“Do senior citizens rip off casinos?” Marconi asked a few minutes later.
Gerry had ordered coffee and was gulping it down to stay awake. “Seniors can be as bad as anyone else. My father nailed a gang who were stealing six figures a year.”
“What were they doing, putting slugs in slot machines?” Marconi asked.
Gerry shook his head.
“Fudging their Keno cards?” Davis asked.
Gerry shook his head again. “It was a bus scam. The tour operator was in cahoots with them.”
Cops liked to think they knew everything when it came to crime. Davis and Marconi traded looks, then stared Gerry down.
“What the hell’s a bus scam?” Davis asked.
Gerry put down his coffee. “The casino was paying a tour operator ten dollars a head to bus seniors in twice a week. The seniors had a larcenous streak, and told the tour operator they’d inflate the count if he’d split the money with them.”