“I wouldn’t have come here, and put this imposition on you, if there wasn’t a good reason,” Gerry said.
Angelo Fountain looked into his visitor’s face. “And what might that be?”
“The man who had this cap made has a contract on my father’s life.”
“Ahh,” Angelo Fountain said.
Another minute went by. The older man put his hand on Gerry’s knee, gave it a friendly squeeze. “I like your father. He’s a good man. I’ll help you out.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fountain.”
“A tailor on the island made this baseball cap. I recognize the stitching,” Angelo Fountain said. “This tailor was in prison, made friends with some bad people. When he got out of prison, he started taking jobs from these people.”
“What kind of jobs?” Gerry asked.
“Tailoring jobs. To help them steal from the casinos.”
“Steal how?”
“I’ll show you.” Angelo Fountain went to the other side of the living room, pulled open a drawer on a cabinet, and returned holding a paper bag that he dropped on Gerry’s lap. “This tailor gets a lot of work from these people. Sometimes, he asks me to help out. I always say no, but he still comes by.”
Gerry removed the bag’s contents. There were several cloth bags made of dark material, and a metal contraption tied up with wire that looked like a kid’s toy. Gerry untied the wire, and realized he was holding a Kepplinger holdout, a device used by card cheaters to invisibly switch cards during a game. The Kepplinger was worn beneath a sports jacket, and secretly delivered cards into a cheater’s hand through his sleeve, the mechanism powered by a wire stretched between the cheater’s knees. In order for the Kepplinger to work properly, it had to be fitted to the jacket, and Gerry remembered his father saying that only a handful of people in the country knew how to do this.
Gerry examined the cloth bags. They were subs, a device used by crooked employees to steal chips. The mouth of each sub had a flexible steel blade sewn into it, with an elastic strap attached to both ends. The sub was worn in the pants, between the underwear and belt line. The crooked employee would palm a chip off the table, and by sucking in his gut, drop the chip into the mouth of the sub. The move took a second, and was invisible if done properly.
Gerry put the Kepplinger and the subs back into the paper bag. Angelo Fountain had just told him some thing important. This tailor had so much work, he couldn’t handle it all. A one-man factory.
“The police would like to talk to this tailor,” Gerry said.
“They going to send him back to prison?” Angelo Fountain asked.
Gerry shook his head. “Making cheating equipment isn’t against the law. They just want to ask him who ordered the baseball cap.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all, Mr. Fountain. They just want the name.”
Angelo Fountain got a pad of paper and a pencil from the kitchen. He wrote the tailor’s name and address on the pad, his handwriting painstakingly slow. Then he tore off the slip and gave it to Gerry. They shook hands in the foyer.
“Tell your father I said hello,” Angelo Fountain said.
Gerry and Vinny stood on the front porch buttoning their jackets, the wind blowing hard and cold off the nearby ocean. Davis and Marconi were at the curb, the car’s windows steamed up. Gerry guessed they would drive straight to the tailor’s address, and pressure him. That would put them one step closer to stopping George Scalzo’s operation in Atlantic City, and putting a bunch of hoodlums in prison.
“You need to take your father away for a while,” Gerry said.
“Why?”
“Just to be safe.”
Vinny looked back at the house and shuddered from something besides the cold. “My father and I don’t happen to get along, in case you didn’t notice.”
“He still talks to you, doesn’t he?”
“Meaning what? You and your father didn’t talk?”
“Not for a long time,” Gerry admitted.
Vinny lit up a cigarette, blew a cloud that hung over their heads. “So what changed?”
That was a good question. Up until six months ago, his relationship with his father had been no better than Vinny’s and his father’s. But it had done a one-eighty since he’d gone to work with his father. Now they talked in civil tones and ate meals together and even shared a few laughs. It wasn’t perfect, but if he’d learned anything in his thirty-six years on this earth, few things in life ever were.
“Me,” Gerry said. “I changed.”
35
Valentine folded his cell phone and dropped it in his pocket. He’d been barred from the tournament. It didn’t seem possible, and he tried to guess how many millions of dollars he’d saved Nevada’s casinos since be coming a consultant. Fifty million, and that was a low estimate. And this was how they repaid him. The leper treatment.
“The news wasn’t good, was it?” Gloria asked.
“You’re a mind reader,” he said.
They were still standing beside the cage of noisy parrots in the lobby. Gloria put her hand on his wrist. She was a toucher, something he’d always found attractive in a woman. The lobby noise made it hard to talk, but she tried anyway.
“I hope it wasn’t about your son,” she said.
“No, Gerry’s fine. At least the last time I checked.”
“He’s sort of unpredictable, isn’t he?”
“That’s a nice way to put it.”
“Was it about the job?”
“Yes. The governor has barred me from stepping foot inside Celebrity’s poker room while the tournament is taking place. I’ve also been nicely told to leave town.”
“That’s wrong. I hope you aren’t going to comply.”
There was something in Gloria’s voice that hadn’t been there a few days ago, and he guessed the feeling-out process was over. “I really don’t have much choice.”
“But you haven’t nailed DeMarco.”
“I’m not sure they want me to,” he said.
“You need to stall them.”
“I do?”
“Yes. So you can have more time to solve the case.”
He didn’t have to talk to Gloria very long to be reminded that she was in the entertainment business and liked happy endings. “That’s not a bad idea. How would you suggest I stall them?”
She bit her lower lip, thinking, then snapped her fingers. “Got it. You’re here on a job for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, right?”
“Correct.”
“Make them pay you before you leave. Cash.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, and he could see Bill agreeing to it, knowing exactly what he was up to. He pulled out his cell phone. Moments later, he had Bill on the line and he made his request. His friend chuckled softly into the phone.
“I’ll come by in the morning with your money,” Bill said.
“Not too early,” Valentine said. “You know how I like my beauty rest.”
“Look, Tony, there’s only so far I can push this,” Bill said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at noon with your cash. I’d suggest you leave town after that.”
Valentine glanced at his watch. It was easy to lose track of time in Las Vegas, and he was surprised to see it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Bill was giving him another twenty hours to crack the case.
“Noon is beautiful,” Valentine said.
He tucked his cell phone into his pocket then took out his wallet and removed the valet stub for his rental car. Gloria shot him a concerned look. “You off again?”
“Yes. You’re coming, too.”
Coins of crimson appeared on each of her cheeks. “I am?”
“I need you to help me crack this case.”
“You do?”
“Yes. There’s something wrong with this picture, and I can’t seem to figure out what it is. My old sergeant used to make his detectives share cases, in the hopes that another pair of eyes might see something that the first detective missed.”
“I’m game. Where are we going?”
“To see an old crook,” Valentine said.
Ten minutes later, they were in Valentine’s rental cruising down the strip. Vegas looked different during the day, like a whore without her makeup. Hindsight being 20/20, he now knew that he should have chased Sammy Mann down the moment he’d heard Sammy had run out on them. Sammy was scared, and not because he hadn’t reported the other cheaters he knew to be playing in the tournament. Sammy knew they were close to solving the case, and hadn’t wanted to be around when it happened.