“Yeah, after I got home.”
“It must have been real clever.”
“It was,” the old cowboy said.
Valentine sipped his soda. Rufus was not going to tell him how the scam worked unless he begged him. That was how it worked with these old-timers. You had to beg. Only Valentine had never been good at begging, so he gave it some thought. Rufus had said that his opponents knew what cards he was holding. That had led Rufus to conclude there was a hole in the ceiling, and somebody was watching him. But that wasn’t the only use for a hole in the ceiling, and he said, “They were using luminous readers.”
Rufus’s face sagged. “You’re not slowing down, are you?”
“Not so you’ll notice. Want me to explain the rest?”
“Be my guest.”
“The cards were marked with luminous paint,” Valentine said. “The paint is invisible to the naked eye, and can only be read by someone with tinted glasses. Only in this scam, the tinted glass was in the ceiling. The guy upstairs was reading the cards as they were being dealt. He passed the information to the waiter, who told your opponents. When you got dealt kings, and your host aces, and the flop turned ace, king, four, the guy upstairs knew you were in trouble. That’s when they trapped you.”
Rufus stopped rubbing his feet to give him a round of applause. It would have seemed sarcastic coming from anyone else, but from this old codger it meant something.
“That’s damn good,” Rufus said, clapping.
“Here’s my theory about DeMarco,” Rufus said. “I know the cards in the game are being checked every night, and so far nothing’s come up, but maybe DeMarco’s using a special luminous paint that grows invisible after a few hours.”
“No such thing exists,” Valentine said.
“Maybe someone invented it.”
The snapshot of Rufus was lying on the coffee table. Valentine thought over what Rufus had told him about the scam in London.
“You think there’s a hole in the ceiling of the poker room, and someone is reading the cards, and signaling their values to DeMarco,” Valentine said.
“It would make sense, don’t you think?”
“But how many times could they do that without people noticing?” Valentine asked, having seen enough scams to know that what eventually doomed them was repetition. “It would become obvious.”
“Yes, it would.” Rufus stretched his arms and made the bones crack. “But I learned a good lesson in jolly old England. You only have to cheat a man once in a poker game to get his money. I’ve checked the ceiling of every poker room I’ve ever played in since that little episode.” He paused. “Except here.”
“Checked how?”
“With a flashlight.”
“Do you have one with you?”
Rufus flashed his best cowboy smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”
7
Casinos never slept. It was the greatest thing they offered people who liked to gamble. At any hour of the day or night, you could enter one and make a wager. Old-timers called it the itch for play.
Casinos’ surveillance departments never slept, either. They watched the floor of the casino every minute of every hour, every day of the year. When President Kennedy was assassinated, one Las Vegas casino had stopped play for an hour in his memory, but the surveillance department had not stopped watching the casino.
Valentine knew he was taking a risk searching Celebrity’s poker room for holes in the ceiling, but it was a risk he was willing to take. Celebrity had surveillance cameras covering the poker room, but that didn’t necessarily mean those cameras were being used. Surveillance technicians were trained to watch the money. Places where money didn’t change hands were often neglected, or ignored.
Celebrity’s poker room was a good example. Tournament play ended at six o’clock each night, with everyone’s chips stored in a safe and the room locked down until the next day. Since the opportunity for theft no longer existed, the technicians stopped watching the room. They might glance in from time to time, but chances were, they probably wouldn’t.
Valentine and Rufus stood in the lobby in front of the poker room. Valentine had decided to pick the door and he eyeballed the lock. He’d used lock picks as a cop, and had kept them after he’d gone to work for himself. His lock pick kit looked like an ordinary car key case, and contained a dozen picks made from tungsten steel. He unzipped the case, and chose the appropriate pick.
“You’re a man after my own heart,” Rufus said.
Valentine heard a whirring noise and stopped what he was doing.
“What the heck’s that?” Rufus asked.
Acoustics in casinos could be deceiving. The lobby was empty, and Valentine decided the noise had come from behind the door. He grasped the door’s handle, and to his surprise, found that it was unlocked.
“This is our lucky day,” Rufus said.
Putting his picks away, Valentine stuck his head in side. In the old days, casino poker rooms had been toilets, reeking of ashtrays and body odor. Televised poker tournaments had changed that. Celebrity’s poker room had thick carpet and cut-glass chandeliers the size of wrecking balls. He spied a team of Hispanic cleaning men vacuuming the floor with a level of enthusiasm you hardly saw anymore.
“Follow me, and take off your hat,” Valentine said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want anyone in surveillance who might be watching to see it and recognize you.”
“Got it.” Rufus removed his Stetson.
Walking to the room’s center, Valentine took from his pocket Rufus’s flashlight and twisted it on. He shone the light at the ceiling, then moved it back and forth in a slow, steady pattern. If what Rufus had alleged was true—and the cards at Skip DeMarco’s table were marked with luminous paint—then someone was reading them while looking down from above. That someone had to be looking through red-tinted lenses, which would become reflective the moment his flashlight shone against them. The hidden accomplice in the ceiling trick. An old scam but still a good one.
After a minute his hopes came crashing to earth. No glitters had appeared in the ceiling, the pure white alabaster not showing a single crack or imperfection.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“No luck?” Rufus asked from several tables away.
Valentine’s neck hurt from looking up, but he kept looking anyway.
“No, and it’s pissing me off.”
He twisted the flashlight off, returned it to his pocket. The cleaning men were racing around the room on their machines, making a game out of who could finish first. He saw Rufus take out a pack of cigarettes and light up.
“You want one?” Rufus asked.
“I’m trying to quit.”
“I tried to quit once. Enrolled in one of those special progams.”
“Did it work?”
“Yeah. Every time I wanted a smoke, I called a special phone number, and a guy came over and got drunk with me.” Rufus laughed through a mouthful of smoke. His pack fell from his hand, and he bent over to pick it up. As he did, he glanced beneath one of the poker tables.
“Well, lookee here,” he said.
He pulled something from beneath the table, then held it on his palm for Valentine to see. It was pink and looked like it had been thoroughly chewed.
“Know what this is?”
“Gum?”
“Silly Putty.”
Valentine came over for a closer look. “You think it’s a bug?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So we’ve got a mucker in the tournament.”
“Sure looks that way,” Rufus said.
A mucker specialized in switching cards during play. The bug was his assistant, and used to secretly hide a card beneath the table. When the mucker needed the card, he brought it up, switched it with a card in his hand, then put the extra card back in the bug. The switch required terrific timing, skill, and plenty of nerve.
“There’s also a paper clip involved,” Rufus said. “The paper clip is wedged into the Silly Putty, and the card is stuck in the clip.”
“Did you see a paper clip on the floor?”
“No, but there has to be one.”
Valentine searched the floor beneath the table. The carpet was sticking up after being vacuumed, and he walked over to the cleaning men and took out his wallet. They instantly silenced their machines.