“Twenty.”
“Miss me?”
“Not for a minute.”
“You were my favorite cop.”
“Why’s that?”
“That partner of yours wanted to beat the daylights out of me. You stopped him.”
Valentine vaguely remember the incident. Atlantic City had been a candy store in the early days, and cheaters were often pummeled before reaching the station house. Saul led him into the living room. It was small and had a view of two apartment buildings across the street. Between them, he could see a tiny sliver of ocean.
“Nice view.”
“Thanks,” Saul said, pointing at a chair as he took the couch. “So when did you retire?”
“Last year. I opened a consulting business. I help casinos nail cheats.”
“I hope you’re charging them through the nose.”
“You bet.”
Saul smiled, and the sunlight reflected brightly off his teeth. They’d been artificially whitened and looked like piano keys. “Good for you,” he said.
“Because I went out on my own?”
“Because you’re making money off the fucking casinos.” He slapped his hands on his knees. “So, how about a drink? I can offer you soda or fruit juice. I’ve got this Indian doctor, Deep Pockets Chokya, who made me swear off the hard stuff.”
“That’s his real name?”
“That’s what I call him. Every time I see him, I leave a little lighter.”
“Diet Coke, if you have it.”
“Diet Coke I can do.”
Saul sprang off the couch and disappeared. While he waited, Valentine appraised Saul’s digs. It wasn’t a great place, but it wasn’t a trailer park, either. Saul’s philosophy toward cheating had obviously paid off. “It’s better to gamble with someone else’s money than your own,” he’d said after Valentine had arrested him. “Much better.”
It had happened at the old Resorts International in Atlantic City. The casino had just opened, and security was a shambles. But the owners had done a smart thing. In the basement was a computer that did daily financial analysis of the different games. And the computer said something was wrong at their roulette table. Resorts’ security had called the police. Valentine had been given the assignment, and set up shop in Resorts’ surveillance control room.
Sitting in front of a video monitor, he’d watched the roulette table through an eye-in-the-sky camera called a pan/tilt/zoom. Roulette tended to attract an eccentric mix of people, and it took a while before he’d spotted Saul and sensed that something was not right.
Saul gambled every day. Like most gamblers, he was superstitious and followed a set routine each time he entered the casino. First he went to the coffee shop and smoked a cigarette. Then he went into the casino and played roulette. He would always place even-money bets—red, black, odd-even—and usually leave after fifteen minutes to play craps or blackjack. He was a smart gambler and sometimes won big. But just as often, he lost his stake.
What Valentine hadn’t liked was the sameness of Saul’s routine. It felt rehearsed, so he decided to videotape Saul for a week, then compare the tapes. After reviewing them, he wrote down the four things Saul did every single day.
(1) He always smoked.
(2) He always bet a hundred-dollar black chip.
(3) He always tossed his hundred-dollar chip on the table and asked a stickman to place his bet for him.
(4) He always asked the same stickman.
Valentine had pulled up the stickman’s record. In the past year, he’d filed several grievances with the casino’s human resources department, unhappy with his vacation time, his hours, and his level of pay. He was one angry individual.
The next day, Valentine had parked himself on a chair at a shoe-shine stand in the casino. In his lap he’d put a newspaper. Underneath the newspaper was a pair of binoculars. He’d talked baseball with the shoe-shine man until Saul had come in.
Saul had followed his usual routine. Valentine had watched with his binoculars, and what he’d seen was a thing of real beauty.
Approaching the roulette table, Saul said hello to the stickman, then tossed a black hundred-dollar chip on the table and asked the stickman to make his bet. Only Saul’s chip never hit the table. It was attached to a piece of monofilament and flew up his sleeve. At the same time, the stickman dropped a black chip that was palmed in his hand onto the table. To help disguise the switch, Saul blew smoke on the table.
Saul and the stickman did their thing three times. The stickman was stealing chips off the table and palming them, letting Saul play with the house’s money.
But what Saul had done next was even better. Instead of leaving with his winnings, he went and played blackjack. He was giving Resorts a chance to win its money back. More than 50 percent of the time, Resorts would. But the rest of the time, Saul would walk away a winner. And he wasn’t risking a dime.
Saul returned with a tray. He served his guest and made the couch sag as he sat down. “So what brings you to Miami?”
“I’m doing a job for the Micanopy casino,” Valentine said, deciding to get to the point. “A friend of yours is a suspect in a murder case.”
Saul put his drink down. Hustlers were a lot of things, but few were murderers. His voice turned serious. “Who?”
“Victor Marks.”
Saul blinked, and then blinked again. “Victor Marks is the gentlest guy I’ve ever known. You know what his nickname was? The Butterfly.”
“You talk to Victor recently?”
“We haven’t spoken in years. You sure Victor’s involved?”
Valentine nodded. “He’s working with a hood named Rico Blanco. The police fingered Rico in a murder at the Micanopy casino.”
Saul drew back in his seat. Valentine sensed that Saul was wrestling with his conscience. Every hustler had one, only it tended to follow a more convoluted path than most. Valentine lowered his voice.
“The victim was running a scam with Rico Blanco. Something went wrong, and Rico killed him. I don’t want the same thing to happen to Victor Marks.”
Valentine heard Saul mumble under his breath. Mabel did that a lot, and Valentine guessed he would one day, too. You grow old, lose your friends, you need someone to talk to. Saul’s filmy eyes rested on Valentine’s face.
“Neither do I,” the elderly con man said.
Valentine played the tape of Rico Blanco and Victor Marks on Saul Hyman’s stereo.
“They’re talking about conning a sucker out of a lot of money,” Saul said when the tape ended. “The raggle is a pretty girl who’s part of the scam. Playing an apple without a store, booster, or props means that Rico is running solo. The rest of it is Victor asking Rico if he’s got the moxie to pull it off. That’s the hard part.”
Valentine ejected the tape from the cassette player. “Why’s that?”
“It’s like fishing for marlin,” Saul said. “Anyone can throw a line in the water and snag one. But then you’ve got to fight the fish and reel it in. That’s the challenge.”
“Why does Victor use a voice-alteration machine?”
“Victor’s always been careful,” Saul said. “I’m probably the only person in the world who’s got a photograph of him.”
“Can I see it?”
There was no hesitation in Saul’s voice. “Yeah, sure.”
A minute later the two men were sitting on the couch leafing through a dusty photo album. Saul had spent his entire life on the wrong side of the law. In the 1930s, he’d worked on Coney Island as a spiritualist and worn a turban and walnut stain on his face. He’d graduated to being a three-card monte man, then a racetrack tout. Later, he’d moved to Palm Springs and played the sophisticate, and sold fake oil stock and rubber plantations.