“So Rufus used the stirrer to drop moisture onto the cube.”
“Yes,” Mabel said. “It doesn’t have to be very much for the fly to smell it.”
“Well, I guess you learn something new every day,” he said. “ I’ve got to run. Gerry is being held in the back room of a casino, and I need to have a talk with him.”
“I thought Gerry was in San Juan with Yolanda,” Mabel said.
“He came out here on the sly. I’m about to go read the riot act to him.”
“What should I tell Yolanda if she calls?” Mabel asked.
There was a long pause on the line.
“Tell her Gerry’s doing a job with me,” Valentine said.
Mabel smiled into the receiver. No matter what Gerry’s transgressions might be, Tony always stuck up for his son. It was Tony’s biggest flaw, and a constant reminder to Mabel that no matter how much Tony fought with Gerry, he placed parenthood above all else.
“I will,” she said.
19
Valentine killed the connection, thinking how impressed Gloria Curtis was going to be when he explained the sugar scam over dinner. It would make him seem more rounded, knowing that sugar didn’t smell in its natural state. He hadn’t had the urge to impress a woman in a long time, and liked the way it made him feel.
He took the stairs to the third floor of the casino and walked down a windowless hallway to a steel door marked PRIVATE. A surveillance camera was perched above the door, and he stared into its lenses. Moments later the door buzzed, and he entered Celebrity’s surveillance control room.
The room’s lighting was subdued, the air kept at a chilly sixty degrees so the electronic equipment would run properly. Valentine let his eyes adjust, then stared at the opposing wall of video monitors, the four-color digital pictures as clear as real life. Bill Higgins stood beside the monitors, talking on a cell phone. Bill shut his phone, and walked over with a grim look on his face.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” his friend said, “but your son and his friends just robbed someone in the casino.”
“What?”
“I was on the phone, telling hotel security to backroom your son when it happened,” Bill said. “Your son and his three friends ran out to the parking lot, and got away. Your son’s in serious trouble, Tony.”
Trouble. It should have been Gerry’s middle name. Bill spoke to a tech sitting at a desk. The tech typed on a keyboard, and a tape appeared on a monitor showing Skip DeMarco, his bodyguard, and the Tuna exiting the casino bar. The tape had a time and date code in the right-hand corner, and had been taken a short while ago.
“Watch,” Bill said.
Gerry and his friends came out of the bar moments later. They were moving fast, and they threw themselves into the bodyguard and DeMarco, knocking them to the floor. Then Gerry grabbed the canvas bag from the Tuna, and with his friends ran out of the picture. The tech hit a button and froze the tape.
“Have you called the cops?” Valentine asked.
“No, I was waiting for you,” Bill said.
Valentine tried to imagine his son in prison. Nevada’s penal system was one of the harshest in the country, and Gerry would never be the same if he ended up doing time. If he hadn’t asked Bill to backroom his son, Bill wouldn’t have been watching Gerry on a surveillance camera. He felt responsible, even though it was Gerry who’d broken the law.
“Don’t,” Valentine said. “He’s working with me.”
Bill gave him a look of pure astonishment. “Tony, he just robbed a guy.”
Valentine pointed at the frozen picture on the monitor. “See that old guy? That’s George ‘the Tuna’ Scalzo, a mobster out of Newark. I’m convinced he’s scamming the tournament. He’s also backing DeMarco.”
“You’re saying your son robbed DeMarco with your permission?”
Valentine swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Do you have any proof against Scalzo?”
Valentine shook his head.
Bill crossed his arms in front of his chest and gave him a hard look. “Tony, listen to me. Scalzo is downstairs talking to hotel security. He’s going to file charges. I have to show security the tape of your son, and identify him. It’s the law.”
Valentine glanced at the tech, then edged closer to Bill and dropped his voice. “The law? The Gaming Control Board routinely busts people you suspect of cheating without any proof. Correct?”
Bill slowly nodded.
“That means that you’re the law, Bill. And since you hired me to investigate this tournament, you have to back me up. My son is helping me solve this case, and I don’t want you to show security the tape. Okay?”
Bill thought it over. “What if Scalzo calls the police?”
“Let him.”
“But the police will ask for the tape.”
“Tell them the camera was taping something else.”
One of the common fallacies of the casino business was that surveillance cameras taped everything on the casino floor. In reality, the cameras were constantly rotating, and missed a great deal of what was going on. Over 50 percent of the casino was not being watched most of the time. It was why casinos lost so much money to cheaters.
Bill went over to the tech and spoke to him. The tech stared up at Bill, his eyes wide. He slowly typed a command into his keyboard. Valentine stared at the frozen picture on the monitor. The picture went into reverse, and stopped just before Gerry and his friends exited the bar.
“You sure you want me to do this?” the tech asked.
“Yes,” Bill said. “Erase the whole thing.”
The screen went blank and stayed that way. Valentine felt the air trapped in his lungs escape, and he went over and slapped Bill on the back.
“I owe you,” he said.
“I need to talk to you about the tournament,” Bill said.
“I’m all ears.”
Bill nodded at one of the offices. A casino’s surveillance control room should have been the safest place in the world, but secrets often escaped from there as well. They went into the office and Bill shut the door. “I’ve been recording DeMarco’s play, and having an old hustler watch the tapes to see if he can spot any hankypanky,” Bill said.
“Which old hustler?”
“Sammy Mann.”
Sammy Mann was an old-time crossroader who’d given up his life of crime and gone to work helping casinos. He was a nice guy, as far as ex-crooks went.
“He find anything?” Valentine asked.
“Sammy says DeMarco is either incredibly good, or he’s cheating.”
“But not lucky.”
“His luck stinks,” Bill said. “He’s gotten the worst draws of any player in the tournament. But, he’s got this knack of knowing when to play his good cards.”
Valentine considered what that meant. If DeMarco knew when to play his good cards, it also meant that he knew that his opponents were weak. Knowing those two things said that DeMarco knew every card on the table. Either the kid was psychic, or he was using marked cards, just like Gerry had been saying all along.
“Did you have today’s cards examined?”
“Yes. We sent them over to the FBI’s forensic lab after today’s round was done. The FBI even gave the cards the burn test.”
The burn test was a clever way to detect if a playing card was marked with a foreign substance. The suspected card was slowly burned while being examined under a microscope. If there was a foreign substance on the card, it would burn differently and reveal itself.
“What did they find?” Valentine asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” Bill said.