“That’s right,” Bill said.
“What’s wrong?” Sammy asked.
Valentine dug out of his pocket the Silly Putty and paper clip that Rufus had found in Celebrity’s poker room, and placed them on the desk. He deliberately shoved the paper clip into the putty, and saw Sammy wince.
“We’ve got a mucker cheating the World Poker Showdown, and I think you might know who it is,” Valentine said.
Smart crooks never lied; they just kept their mouths shut. Sammy’s lips closed and he continued to stare at the bug. Sammy’s speciality had been switching decks of cards at casino blackjack tables. Because of him and his well-trained gangs, every casino in the world now chained their dealing shoes to their tables.
“Start talking,” Bill said.
Sammy wore a perpetual tan, and it was unsettling to see the color drain from his cheeks. “Are you going to arrest me?” he asked.
“I might if you don’t give us some straight answers,” Bill said.
“On what grounds?”
“Collusion,” Bill said.
“With who?”
“You know every mucker in the country,” Valentine jumped in. “Hell, you trained most of them. The question is, did you see one working the tournament?”
Sammy reached into the pocket of his sports jacket and removed a medicine bottle. He spilled a few dozen tiny pills onto the table, then stuck one on the tip of his tongue. He washed it down with a glass of water sitting on the desk.
“For my heart,” he said, taking a deep breath.
They waited him out. Las Vegas’s casinos liked to boast that they didn’t use ex-cheaters in surveillance, but it wasn’t true. Nearly every casino used them, and for good reason. There was no other way to learn how grifters worked.
“To answer your question,” Sammy finally said, “no, I have not seen anyone I know from the past scamming the poker tournament.”
Valentine slammed his hand on the desk, making Sammy jump.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“It wasn’t?” Sammy asked meekly.
“No. I asked you if you’d spotted any muckers you know, not if you saw them switching cards. My guess is, if you recognized someone, you wouldn’twatch them, just so you couldn’t be pinned down later.”
Sammy was breathing hard. Not reporting a scam was a felony, punishable by up to three years in state prison. Sammy had visited the crossbar motel before, and knew how harsh prison life was for cheaters.
“If you’re asking me if I spotted anyone in the tournament who I know from the past, the answer is yes,” Sammy said. “There are many guys playing here who cheated at one time or another. But that doesn’t mean they’re cheating here.”
“Did you watchthem to make sure they weren’t cheating?” Valentine asked.
A sweat moustache appeared above Sammy’s upper lip.
“No,” he said.
“You’re in serious trouble,” Bill informed him.
The best thing a cop could do to a crook was make him sweat. Leaving Sammy in the office, they went into the surveillance control room to have a little chat.
“What a crummy prick,” Bill said. “He’s sitting there collecting a paycheck to catch cheaters, yet isn’t reporting cheaters he knows are playing in the tournament. When I’m finished with him, he won’t be able to get another job in town.”
“Actually, I was hoping you’d let him skate,” Valentine said.
Bill’s mouth opened a few centimeters. “You were?”
“Yes. I want him working for us.”
“You sound like you’ve got a soft spot for the guy.”
Bill wasn’t far off the mark. Sammy had class. Like Rufus, he could charm the pants off a person while stealing their money. “I wanted to scare him, and we have,” Valentine said. “If you give Sammy another chance, I feel certain he’ll lead us to the mucker. When he does, you can call the governor, and tell him you want to raid the tournament. That way, we’ll kill two birds with one stone.”
“We will?”
“Yes. I watched DeMarco play earlier, and I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the dealer at his table is involved in the scam.”
“Which dealer are you talking about?”
“Heavyset guy with a walrus moustache. He’s doing something fishy when he deals. His movements are too slow.”
“Is he reading the cards and somehow signaling DeMarco?”
The air-conditioning never stopped blowing in a surveillance control room, and Valentine shivered and said, “No. The dealer hardly looked at the deck when he dealt. But I’m certain he’s involved.”
“So the mucker is an excuse to raid the game,” Bill said.
Valentine nodded. He had been studying DeMarco’s scam for a week, and was no closer to the solution than the day he’d started. The proverbial sand was slipping from the hourglass. If he didn’t solve this puzzle soon, DeMarco would be crowned the champion, and he and Bill would look like chumps.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Bill said.
28
Mabel was on the computer when she heard the front door slam. Not long ago a man had entered the house under false pretenses, and held her hostage. She’d learned a valuable lesson from the experience, and reaching across the desk, she grabbed a copy of Crime and Punishmentnestled between a pair of bookends, and removed a loaded Sig Sauer that Tony kept in the hollowed-out interior. She rose from her chair.
“I’m armed,” she called out.
“Don’t shoot,” a familiar woman’s voice called back.
“Yolanda, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get here so fast?”
“I flew Southwest.”
Mabel returned the gun to its hiding place and went to the foyer. Tony and his late wife had bought the house to retire to, and it was a charming relic that represented the way Florida houses used to be made, with hardwood floors, crown molding, and jalousie windows. Yolanda stood by the front door, the baby cradled in her arms.
“I’ve missed you,” Mabel said, hugging her.
“I missed you, too,” Yolanda said. “The baby’s diaper needs changing. Talk to me in the kitchen.”
The kitchen was in the back of the house, and faced a postage-stamp-size backyard. Yolanda put the baby on the kitchen table and said, “So tell me why Tony and Gerry are in trouble.”
“Right before we spoke, I got a phone call from Special Agent Romero of the FBI,” Mabel explained. “He told me that Tony and Gerry have gotten on the wrong side of a notorious mobster, and are in danger.”
“So they couldend up dead, like in my dream,” Yolanda said.
“Yes.”
Yolanda tickled the baby’s stomach and made her giggle. The baby was named Lois, and resembled Tony’s late wife, whom she’d been named after. As a result, Yolanda had Tony and Gerry wrapped around her little finger, yet rarely took advantage of it. Lifting the baby to her shoulder, she said, “I suppose I should call them, and ask them to come home, but somehow I have a feeling that they’d both tell me they’re okay, and not to worry. Am I right?”
Mabel sunk down into a chair. Yolanda was right. Tony and Gerry weren’t going to be forced out of a case by anyone.
“Besides, think of the long-term consequences if I ask them to come home,” Yolanda said, patting the baby’s behind.
“What long-term consequences?”
“I’d be drawing a line in the sand,” Yolanda said, “and telling Tony and Gerry that I’m not willing to let them work under certain situations. If I did that, they might as well close Grift Sense, and go into some other line of work.”
Mabel swallowed hard. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “I see your point.”
“Good. I suggest we take another tack.”
“Which is?”
“Maybe we can help them solve this case, ” Yolanda said.
“How are we going to do that? We don’t know anything about it.”
Yolanda handed her the baby, then dug a piece of folded paper from her pocket. Yolanda was big on writing things down, and unfolded a page filled with notes.
“Oh yes, we do,” the younger woman said.
They went into Tony’s office with Mabel still holding the baby. She’d raised two children of her own, and looked back fondly at the experience, even though she hardly heard from either of them now. One day, they’d have children of their own, and start calling her more regularly. It was how it had worked with her mother.