“I thought only amateurs used these,” Gerry said.
“Slugs cost casinos ten million dollars a year in lost revenue,” Valentine said.
“Can’t the machines detect them?
“Not if they’re well made. That’s why casino personnel are trained to watch slot players. If they see someone feed a coin into a machine that isn’t shiny, they arrest the player on the spot.”
“Tony, come here for a minute,” Bill called out.
He found Bill in the master bedroom. It had nice furniture, with drapes that matched the bedspread, and felt like a room in a model home compared to the rest of the house. Bill stood by an open closet, staring at the collection of women’s clothes hanging from the racks, the dresses and outfits still in their dry-clean bags.
“Strange, don’t you think?” Bill said.
“Looks like she lives here,” Valentine said. “Any makeup in the bathroom?”
“Just a razor and some shampoo.”
Valentine examined one of the outfits. It reminded him of clothes his late wife used to wear. “These clothes are old,” he said.
“Maybe she split on him,” Bill said.
Valentine searched the room. On the dresser he found a framed photograph of a couple taken on a beach. It was Bronco and the woman Valentine had seen on the surveillance tape. Marie.
He stared at the photograph. What he’d seen on the surveillance tape hadn’t been staged. Bronco had cheated at the craps table, and Marie had reacted in shock. She hadn’t known him. But now here was evidence that she had known him. He put the picture down and looked at Bill. His friend was staring at him.
“Does this make any sense to you?” Bill asked.
“None whatsoever,” he said.
Valentine went outside the house to the backyard. It backed up onto the desert, the baked earth flat and unforgiving. He found Gerry by the pool, torturing his lungs with a cigarette. His son started to throw the butt away, and Valentine stopped him.
“Let me have a hit.”
“I thought you were trying to quit.”
“One hit won’t kill me.”
His son passed the butt with a grin on his face. “Thanks for saving my ass.”
“And your testicles.”
“Those, too.”
Valentine took a drag off his son’s cigarette. It was a Marlboro, the same brand he’d smoked and his father had smoked. He handed it back, and Gerry flicked the butt into the pool’s sickly green water. It floated lazily across the surface, trailing a thin line of smoke.
“Give me your impressions of what you saw in there,” Valentine said.
“My impressions?”
“Yeah. What do you think is going on?”
Gerry fired up another cigarette. The dogs had scared the daylights out of him, but his father asking his opinion scared him even more. When he answered, his voice was subdued. “Based on the condition of the house, I’d say Bronco is on a downward slide. He sits at home at night, chain-smokes and gets blistered. Except for cheating slot machines, he doesn’t have a life.”
“Anything else?”
“One thing did surprise me. Based upon what you told me about him, I expected his place to be filled with high-tech computers and stuff. He doesn’t even own a computer.”
“So?”
Gerry faced him. “Think about it, Pop. Bronco is claiming that a Nevada Gaming Control Board agent is stealing jackpots from new machines, right? Well, there’s no way to corrupt those machines unless you use computers. You agree?”
Think about it. It was the kind of language Valentine had been using with Gerry since he was a kid.
“Okay,” he said.
“Bronco doesn’t have a computer in his house. Which tells me that either Bronco doesn’t know what this agent is doing, or the information is worthless to him.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because he’d be trying to duplicate it, Pop,” his son said. “There’s no honor among thieves. Whatever the secret is, Bronco isn’t using it.”
“Otherwise, we’d have found it.”
“You got it.”
Valentine took the cigarette from his son’s hand. Gerry had nailed the incongruity on the head. He took a drag, this one deeper than the first, and knew he was hooked again. He handed the cigarette back to his son.
“Sure you don’t want one of your own?” Gerry asked him.
“I’d rather smoke yours,” Valentine said.
Chapter 11
Mabel was eating a tuna fish sandwich while trying to catch a cheater.
Sitting at Tony’s computer, she was watching a live feed from the poker room at the Micanopy Indian reservation casino. The Micanopys ran a casino in Tampa where the highway interchanges met. State law let them offer poker, 21, and slot machines. There wasn’t much cheating, and Tony had turned the account over to her. Mabel regularly watched live feeds from the casino’s surveillance cameras.
She bit into her sandwich while staring at the screen. To help her learn about poker cheating, Tony had video-taped himself doing the moves, like dealing seconds and bottoms, doing the hop, and ringing in a cooler. On the tape, Tony had explained the various “tells” Mabel needed to look for. By watching the tape every day, her eyes had become trained.
On the screen, the dealer was starting to deal. He was a native American and heavyset. As he sailed cards around the table, Mabel began to record him. On the third round, he snapped a card off the bottom, and dealt it to the player on his right.
“Gotcha,” she said.
He dealt a bottom on the fourth round as well. Then, Mabel noticed something strange. On the back of his hand was a tattoo. She brought her nose up close to the screen. It looked like a small bird.
“Huh,” she said.
Mabel leaned back in her chair. Normally, she would copy the tape, and e-mail it to the Micanopys. What they did to the dealer was their business. Only she had no way of knowing who at the casino might open the e-mail. What if it was a friend of the dealer, or a relative? That could be trouble. She supposed she could ask Tony, only that seemed like a cop-out. It was her account, and she needed to come up with a solution. She was still thinking about it when the phone rang. She minimalized the computer screen, then picked up the receiver.
“Grift Sense. Can I help you?”
“Is Tony there?” a man with a deep voice asked.
The caller sounded familiar, and Mabel glanced at caller ID. It was Darren Crawford, a likeable FBI agent out of the bureau’s Reno office.
“I’m afraid not. Can I help you?”
“Will you be speaking to him, soon?”
“Perhaps.”
“This is urgent. Please tell him to check his e-mail. I’ve just sent him something that’s for his eyes only.”
“Tony’s out of town, and won’t be checking his e-mail right way,” she said. “Would you please tell me what this is about, so I may relay a message?”
“Do you work for him?”
“Yes. This is Mabel. We’ve spoken before.”
“Hello, Mabel. Can you tell me where Tony is?”
“He’s in Nevada on a case.”
She heard the sharp intake of Crawford’s breath. “What’s wrong?”
“You need to get a hold of him, and tell him to open my email. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Life and death?’