“Here comes Buster and Little Sheba around the turn, with Corky’s Boy glued to their tails. What a race this is, folks! They’re in the final stretch, and Corky’s Boy is even with the two favorites. Now, Corky’s Boy is pulling away. We’re coming up to the finish line, and it’s Corky’s Boy by three lengths for the win.”
The picture showed the jockey for Corky’s Boy’s waving to the crowd, and directing his mount to the winner’s circle. As he climbed down, an announcement came over the track’s public address system that the race was under review. The jockey made a face and glanced nervously in both directions. Moments later, the winner’s circle was swarming with people. One of them was Gerry, and he was holding a green garden hose. As he walked over to Corky’s Boy, an older man appeared by his side. His father.
“Why’s Gerry giving that horse a bath?” Yolanda asked.
“Beats me,” Mabel confessed.
Gerry sprayed Corky’s Boy with the hose. Before their eyes, the horse’s color changed from burnt orange to dark black, the dye running off its body to the ground. In the corner of the screen, they saw the jockey being forcibly held by a steward.
“It’s a different horse,” Yolanda said. “How did Gerry know that?”
Mabel shook her head. She’d come to the conclusion that there was a lot about Gerry that they probably didn’t know about it.
“I guess we’ll have to ask him,” she said.
Chapter 4
“Are you serious?” Gerry said an hour later when they were on the road. “It’s really all mine?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” his father replied.
“That’s awfully generous, Pop.”
Valentine heard skepticism in his son’s voice. Taking Suzie Brinkman’s check for three thousand bucks out of his shirt pocket, he endorsed it to Gerry while driving one-handed. Normally, the split was sixty-forty, with Valentine getting the lion’s share because his name was on the shingle. But this job was different. Gerry had handled himself like a pro, and deserved a reward.
“Thanks, Pop,” his son said.
Valentine heard a crack of late-afternoon thunder as he drove into Palm Harbor. It was late September, and hot as blazes. In a few weeks, the temperatures would drop, and millions of northerners would descend upon the state like migratory birds. Up north, the leaves changed in the autumn; in Florida, it was the color of the license plates. Soon the skies opened up, and rain began to fall in solid, vertical lines. By the time he reached his house, the street resembled a canal.
“What are you going to do with the money?” he asked, pulling into the driveway.
“Bet it on the ponies,” Gerry replied.
He killed the engine and stared at his son.
“Buy early college tuition for the baby,” Gerry said.
Florida had a great program for purchasing college tuition for kids while they were young. Even though Lois was only a few months old, the price was too cheap to pass by. “You’re starting to sound like a father,” he said.
“Scary, isn’t it?” Gerry popped the glove compartment and pulled out Kleenex which he handed it to his father. “Left cheek.”
Valentine looked in the mirror and saw red lipstick smeared on his face. Suzie Brinkman had planted another kiss on him right after Corky’s Boy’s jockey was hauled away by the police, that same wonderful smile lighting up her face. “How old do you think she is?” he asked, wiping away the evidence.
“You thinking of asking her out?”
He shook his head. After he’d lost his wife, he’d become curious about the age of women who still found him attractive. He’d figured that his son, who’d had more than his share of girlfriends, would know the answer.
“Mid-forties,” Gerry replied.
“Think that’s a good age for me?”
“Perfect.”
The storm soon passed. Going inside, they found Mabel glued to the computer in Valentine’s study.
“Where’s my wife?” Gerry asked.
“She went home to feed the baby.”
“Did you see me on TV?”
“Yes. You were dashing. Both of you. Now, take a look at this.” On the computer was a live-feed from a casino surveillance camera. The game was roulette, the table filled with dashing men in tuxedos and beautiful women in long evening dresses.
“Let me guess,” Valentine said. “This is from Biloxi.”
“Time to get your eyes checked,” Mabel replied.
“One of those parking lot Indian reservation casinos?”
“You’re a stitch. It’s from The Casino in Monte Carlo.”
“We don’t do business with Monte Carlo,” Valentine said.
“We do now,” Mabel said. “The director of surveillance called, and I signed them up. We got their check this afternoon.”
Valentine thought Mabel was joking. The Casino in Monte Carlo was the most elegant casino in the world, with the best surveillance money could buy. The idea that he, a retired Atlantic City detective, might be working for them, didn’t seem real. On his desk he spied a Federal Express package with a certified check lying on top. It was from the Casino in Monte Carlo for five grand.
“I thought my fee was three grand,” he said.
“I raised it. You ever see the chandeliers in that place? They’ve got money.”
If he’d learned anything from Mabel, it was that his services were more valuable than he’d realized. “How much have they lost?” he asked.
“A half-million buckeroos,” Mabel replied. “They conducted their own investigation, but came up with air. The director of surveillance said the money’s being lost on this particular table.”
That was all Valentine needed to know. Going to the kitchen, he grabbed a six-pack of Diet Coke from the refrigerator, then returned to his study and pulled up a chair beside his office manager.
“Ready when you are,” he said.
As a cop, Valentine had done his best work with a cigarette in one hand, a caffeinated beverage in the other. The cigarettes were a thing of the past, but not the caffeine. Sucking on a soda, he had Mabel rattle off her checklist of what wasn’thappening at the Monte Carlo casino’s losing roulette table.
“The wheel is clean, and so is the table and the ball,” she said. “All of the apparatus has been given forensic checks. The casino also polygraphed each of the dealers, and they came out clean. With all of those things ruled out, I figured the cheaters were working from the outside.”
Working from the outside meant the cheaters didn’t have any employees helping them. “Working howfrom the outside?” Valentine asked.
Mabel enjoyed an occasional challenge and said, “My guess is, they’re using an electronic device to predict where the ball might fall.”
“Visual prediction,” he said.
“Yes. You told me about a Serbian roulette cheater who used a cell phone with a laser scanner to track the speed of the ball, and the speed of the wheel, and determine which half of the wheel the ball would fall in. So, I started looking for anyone with a cell phone.”
“Any luck?”
“No cell phones are permitted inside the Casino in Monte Carlo. Which means someone has one hidden.”
Valentine tossed his empty soda can into the trash. Using a hidden cell phone might work once or twice, but wouldn’t win you half a million bucks. “I think something else is going on,” he said.
“Like what?”
Gerry, who was scribbling on a legal pad, said, “Think it’s a payoff scam, Pop?”
Valentine nearly fell out of his chair. His son’s education had yet to include payoff scams, and he wondered how he knew about them. Then he remembered that Gerry had run a bar which had fronted his bookie operation, and was probably familiar with hiding money.
“That would be my guess,” he said.
Mabel looked annoyed. “What’s a payoff scam?”
“It’s a method of stealing chips,” Valentine explained. “Albert Einstein said stealing chips was the only way you could beat roulette, and he was right.”