“So why did you decide to wear blue today?” she asked.
The buttered roll still hadn’t made it into his mouth. He hadn’t wanted his shirt to become the main topic of their conversation, and said, “My closet is filled with white shirts. When I look at them, I see the past. I guess I felt it was time for a change.”
Gloria stabbed another shrimp out of her cocktail. Las Vegas sold more shrimp than anywhere else in the world, and the ones swimming in cocktail sauce in Gloria’s glass were of the monster variety. She chewed her food contemplatively.
“I have this bad habit of wondering about things until they start driving me crazy,” she said. “I guess it’s why I became a journalist. When I was talking to Rufus Steele the other day, I mentioned to him that the Nevada Gaming Control Board had hired you to investigate the tournament, and he made a comment that’s been bothering me.”
“What did he say?”
“Rufus said that the first time he played poker in Atlantic City, you saved his life, but also ruined his life. When I pressed him for an explanation, we got interrupted, and I never got my answer. Can you explain what he meant?”
A waiter appeared with their meals. He was a different guy from the one who’d taken their dinner order, who’d been a different guy from the one who’d taken their drink and appetizer order. The restaurant touted itself as the best in Las Vegas, only its service was nothing but asses and elbows. The waiter tried to take Gloria’s shrimp cocktail away so he could set her plate down, and she grabbed it from his hand.
“I’m not finished with that,” she said.
The waiter looked at her blankly. Normally Valentine would have given him a lesson in table etiquette, but instead told him to bring the plates back in five minutes.
“And make sure they’re hot,” he said as the waiter walked away.
“So, where were we?” Gloria said.
“Rufus’s comment about my saving and ruining his life.”
“Right. What did he mean?”
He decided his roll was not meant to be eaten, and put it down on his bread plate. He spent a few moments dredging his memory. He’d dealt with many situations during his years in Atlantic City, and Rufus Steele was buried deep in the past.
“If I remember correctly, this was in early 1980,” he said. “Atlantic City had opened it’s first casino a year and a half before, and we were attracting gamblers from all over the country, including a lot of poker players. Now, we didn’t have any legal poker rooms in our casinos, so these guys were playing in private homes on the island, or in rooms in the casino.”
“Was that legal?”
“No, but that never stopped a poker player from playing in a game. Especially Rufus. It’s a risky proposition, too, when you consider how often these games get hijacked.”
“Hijacked?”
“It’s what poker players say when a game gets robbed. Did you happen to notice the thick rubber band Rufus wears around his wrist? A lot of the old-time poker players wear them.”
Gloria thought about it while devouring another shrimp. “Come to mention it, I did see a rubber band around his wrist. I assumed it had some meaning.”
“It does. A poker player’s best friend is a rubber band. If a guy comes out of a game, and thinks he’s about to get hijacked, he’ll pull his bankroll out of his pocket, and encircle it with a rubber band. Then he’ll toss the bankroll under a car, or over a wall, and recover it later.”
“That sounds awfully dangerous.”
“They say playing poker is the most dangerous way to make an easy living.”
“Okay, back to your story,” Gloria said.
“Right. Rufus comes to Atlantic City to play poker in a private game in a casino hotel. Rufus looks me up, knowing I’m the head law enforcement officer, and introduces himself. He doesn’t come out and say he’s there to play poker, but I figured it out. He was famous even back then, and I realized he was asking me to look out for him. You know, make sure he doesn’t get hijacked.”
“Why would you do that? You knew the game was illegal.”
“A lot of reasons. For one thing, if the game got hijacked, it would bring bad publicity to the casino. Another is that if people gamble inside a casino, it’s hard to stop them from going up to their rooms, and playing cards. The third is, I liked the guy.”
“The third reason is the best,” she said.
“The next morning, I get to work, and call Rufus’s hotel room, just to see how he’s doing. The phone rings and rings, but he doesn’t answer. I call the hotel’s housekeeping, and ask them to send a maid up, and have her knock on the door. I get a call back, saying there’s no answer. Now, either Rufus is a heavy sleeper or he’s in trouble, so I called hotel security and alerted them. Then I ran over there.”
“Ran?”
“Yes. My office was in one of the casinos. At the time, there were three casinos in Atlantic City, and they were all connected by the Boardwalk, so it was easier to run between them than taking my car. It was also a good way to stay in shape.”
Gloria broke into a big smile. “That’s a wonderful image.”
He felt himself blush, not entirely sure what she meant. She reached across the table and placed her hand on his wrist.
“Please tell me the rest.”
“Right. I reach the hotel, and go up to Rufus’s room. Hotel security is standing outside, not knowing what to do. I kicked down the door, and ran in. Rufus was lying in the bathtub with a gag in his mouth. His wrists were tied behind his back with piano wire, and his ankles were tied as well. The piano wire had cut through the skin, and he was slowly bleeding to death.”
“How horrible.”
“I untied him, and he told me that he’d won fifty thousand bucks playing poker the night before, then come back to the room. Two guys had lock-picked the door, and jumped him at three o’clock in the morning. They had stockings over their faces, only one of the guys started coughing, and had to pull the stocking off. Rufus saw his face, so the guys decided to give him the piano wire treatment, and leave him.”
“You mean they meant to kill him?”
“They sure did.”
“Did Rufus know the man?”
“No, but he saw his face, and the guy was scared of Rufus fingering him. I rushed Rufus to the hospital, then tracked down the guys who’d robbed him, and hauled them in.”
“But how did you do that, if Rufus didn’t know them?”
“Piano wire isn’t something most crooks carry around with them. Atlantic City is a small island, and there’s only one piano store. I called it, and asked them if two guys had been in the day before, and purchased any wire. Turns out, they had. They’d paid for the wire with a credit card, so it was easy to track them down.”
“Did you retrieve all of Rufus’s money?”
“Every last cent. That was how I ruined him, so to speak.”
“What do you mean?”
“The law required that I inform the Internal Revenue Service about the money Rufus had won, since it was income. I ran into Rufus about ten years later, and he told me that the IRS had been auditing him every year since.”
“Couldn’t you have prevented that?”
“You mean not tell the IRS?”
“Yes.”
Valentine shook his head. “It would have meant breaking the law.”
A look crept across Gloria’s face that was neither a smile nor a frown. The shrimp had vanished from her shrimp cocktail, and the sun had dropped low enough in the horizon for dusk to have settled in. The real day for Las Vegas was about to start.