“Never,” Valentine replied.
“Ever tempted?”
“No. I got the cure.”
“What happened?”
They were sitting in Celebrity’s sports bar, waiting for their hamburgers. Bill had given Sammy Mann another chance, and they’d left him in the control room to come downstairs for lunch. All around them sat guys who’d been knocked out of the tournament and relegated to watching the action on the giant-screen TV behind the bar. DeMarco had lost a twelve-million-dollar pot, and the room was buzzing.
“Two things,” Valentine said. “The first was because my old man was a gambler, and I saw what it did to my mother. The second happened when I was eighteen. I lent three hundred bucks to a friend of mine who thoughthe was a gambler. That cured me.”
“Did your friend blow the money?”
“Yeah.”
Lunch came, and they dug in. Once upon a time, food in Las Vegas was a real bargain. Then the corporations had taken over. Now, a burger cost ten bucks, and the french fries could be counted on the fingers of two hands.
“What happened?” Bill asked.
“It was the summer of my eighteenth birthday,” Valentine said, “and I was caddying at the Atlantic City Country Club. The pay was fifty bucks a week, and I’d saved three hundred bucks and was planning to buy a used car. There was another caddy named Kenny Keane. Kenny was a degenerate gambler and would bet on anything. One day, he begged me to lend him three hundred dollars, said he needed to see a doctor. I was pretty naive, so I lent it to him.
“Kenny immediately marched into the clubhouse and challenged the club champ to a match. Kenny was an eight-handicap, and the champ was a scratch golfer. They went out and started playing. Luckily, the champ played tight when there was money on the line, and on the last hole, Kenny sank a miracle thirty-foot putt, and won by a stroke. As we were walking back to the clubhouse, Kenny said, ‘I told you I could beat that guy!’
“I told Kenny I wanted my money. I was dreaming about owning that car. Kenny said sure, and we went to take a shower. When I got out, I found Kenny in a poker game in the locker room. I looked at his hand. He had absolutely nothing. A stone cold bluff. I begged him for my money. He said, ‘I can beat these guys.’ And he did. They folded, and Kenny won two grand.
“We went into the clubhouse, and Kenny headed for the casino in the back room. Gambling was illegal in Atlantic City then, but that didn’t stop anyone. I told Kenny to give me my money or I’d never speak to him again. He said, ‘Can’t you see I’m on a roll? I’m going to make us famous tonight.’
“I watched Kenny play blackjack and double our money. Then he played craps, and doubled it again. The guy was absolutely on fire. Then he went to the roulette table, and put everything on the black. The ball rolled and I remember saying a prayer when it dropped. It landed on the red.
“Kenny didn’t stop yelling for ten minutes. I remember wanting to cry, only there were too many people around. As we were leaving, another caddy came up and asked Kenny how much money he’d lost. Kenny said, ‘Just three hundred bucks that I borrowed from this dope.’”
Bill’s cell phone was lying on the bar, and began to crawl between their plates. It was on vibrate mode, and Bill picked it up and stared at its face.
“I need to take this,” he said.
Bill retreated to a less noisy area of the bar, and Valentine continued eating while watching the TV behind the bar. The players had taken a break, and the network was showing a replay of the monster pot DeMarco had lost. Valentine hadn’t paid much attention to it the first time—everyone lost when they gambled—but watching it a second time, he felt the hairs on his neck stand up. The player who’d beaten DeMarco was a scruffy Houston gambler named Skins Turner, a lanky guy with a hooked nose, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a vagrant wisp of hair on his head. But his arresting feature was his hands. They were large and delicate, with long tapering fingers and manicured fingernails. They could have belonged to a surgeon, or a concert pianist, but in the world of gambling, they belonged to another animal. They were a mucker’s hands.
The camera shifted to DeMarco, who’d lost a third of his chips to Skins. DeMarco was shaking his head, and Valentine sensed that the kid knew he’d been cheated.
Bill was still on the other side of the bar, talking on his cell phone. Valentine borrowed a pen from the bartender and scribbled on a cocktail napkin that he was going upstairs to the surveillance control room. He tucked the note beneath Bill’s plate then threw down money for their meals and left the bar.
Entering Celebrity’s surveillance control room, Valentine went to the office where Sammy Mann was holed up. To his surprise, the old hustler had cleared out. He found a technician and asked him where Sammy had gone.
“He went home ten minutes ago,” the tech said.
Valentine talked the tech into pulling up the tape of the twelve-million-dollar pot, then he pulled up a chair to watch the action. The tech had a boyish face and didn’t look old enough to be driving a car. Sensing that something was brewing, the tech put down the Slurpie he was drinking, and stared intently at the video monitor.
They watched the dealer shuffle the cards then sail them around the table, with each player getting two. In Texas Hold ‘Em, the player’s starting cards were critical, with the best hand being two aces, followed by two kings. As Skins got his two cards, his hands covered their backs, and he lifted up their corners to peek at their values.
“See that?” Valentine asked.
“No,” the tech said. “What happened?”
“Play it again, and I’ll explain.”
The tech rewound the tape. He hit play, and they watched the dealer sail the cards around the table.
“Freeze it,” Valentine said.
The tech froze the tape, and Valentine pointed at Skins. “See his hands? He’s got a king palmed in his right hand. It was stuck in a bug beneath the table.”
The tech brought his face so close to the picture that his breath fogged the screen.
“Well, I’ll be. But where did he get the king from?”
“He mucked it out earlier,” Valentine said. “Hustlers call it doing ‘the chop.’ When he tossed his cards to the dealer, he only tossed one.”
“The dealer didn’t notice?”
Valentine shook his head. The technique of stealing a single card during play had been developed by blackjack cheaters, and it flew by most dealers. Stealing a card was even easier in poker, since no one paid attention to a player when he dropped out of a hand. Valentine made the tech restart the tape.
“Now watch the switch,” he said.
The tape continued, and they watched Skins cover his cards with his hands. The tech slapped his knees. “Holy cow. He peeked at his cards without letting the hidden camera in the table see them,” the tech said. “That’s on purpose, isn’t it?”
Valentine nodded. The kid caught on fast.
“Okay,” the tech said. “Now he’s doing the switch, even though I can’t see the move.”
“Cameras can’t see through hands,” Valentine said.
“No, but I can tell when someone’s got a card palmed, and this guy does.” The tech pointed at Skins’s right hand, which rested on the table edge. “He’s got the card he just switched hidden in his palm, doesn’t he?”
“Correct.”
“What will he do? Destroy it later on?”
“No,” Valentine said. “He’ll add it to his cards, and toss it into the muck. That way the deck won’t be short. Hustlers call it ‘cleaning up.’”
On the monitor, they saw Skins drop his guilty hand into his lap and stick the switched card into the bug. If a problem arose during the game, Skins would simply toss the card beneath the table.
“So let’s arrest this guy,” the tech said. “We’ve got enough evidence.”
It was the sanest thing Valentine had heard anyone say since he’d started investigating the tournament. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. Bill Higgins was standing behind him with a grim look on his face. Valentine got up, and they went to a corner where no one could hear them.
“I just got some bad news from the FBI’s Las Vegas office,” Bill said. “Guess who escaped from Ely prison this morning.”
“Someone I know?”