“Here we go,” Saul said, finding the picture.
Valentine stared at two couples at a table in a nightclub. Saul with a pretty lady, Victor Marks with a frowning woman. Marks had his hand in front of his face. There wasn’t much to see except a thick head of hair and bushy eyebrows.
“That’s Vic and his date, and me and Sadie at the Copacabana in New York,” Saul said. “We were there to see Count Basie. Vic nearly punched the photographer for taking a photo. I paid the guy and made him destroy the negative.” Saul stared longingly at the photograph. His finger touched the picture and drew an outline around Sadie’s head.
“Your wife?”
“Yeah. Died last January.”
Valentine felt a fist tighten in his chest. Lois had died in her sleep two years ago January. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“Me, too,” Saul said, swiping at his eyes. “I didn’t get where I am by sitting on my ass. Sadie was always there supporting me. When I was in the slammer, she came every week and brought me pies and cookies.” He spread his arms to indicate the room’s modest furnishings. “This was my way of paying her back.”
Loss. It was supposed to mean something was missing. But it was really a monster, ready at any moment to leap out of the shadows and snatch someone away. And when it did, nothing on this earth could replace the loss.
“And now it doesn’t mean shit,” the elderly con man said.
17
Candy Hart was taking a bubble bath when the phone rang. She ignored it, preferring to lie in the tub with her head partially submerged, blowing bubbles through her nose. It was a little kid’s trick and, like her collection of stuffed animals, something she never wanted to let go of.
The phone rang again while she was toweling off. She glanced at her watch on the sink. Nearly two. Nigel was a poor golfer, and she imagined him on the ninth hole of the Blue Monster, staring at a dozen balls in the drink. Picking up the receiver, she said, “Hi.”
“Ms. Hart?”
“Yes?”
“This is Carlos at the front desk. I’ve got a limo driver here who says Mr. Moon called his company and asked that you be picked up.”
“Did he say why?”
“I’ll ask him.” Candy heard Carlos say something to the driver, then come back on the line. “Mr. Moon says he wants you to meet him someplace special.”
Candy smiled. “Tell him to wait.”
Twenty minutes later she walked out of the hotel. The Delano was in a downtrodden neighborhood, and the owners had erected an impenetrable evergreen hedge around the front entrance. Next to the hedge, smoking a cigarette, was a skinny Cuban in a black driver’s uniform. He smiled, revealing a mouthful of gold, then opened the limo’s back door. It was filled with dozens of red roses. Candy got in and stuck her face in the flowers. The scent was intoxicating, and she felt the car pull away.
Leaving Saul Hyman’s condo, Valentine called Bill Higgins on his cell phone. Ten minutes later, they were sitting in a corner of the Loews restaurant, sharing a pot of coffee. Valentine spelled out what Saul had told him, then said, “I think Saul knows more than he’s letting on. I want you to tail him for a few days. You still remember what he looks like?”
“I sure do,” Bill said. “I arrested him after he fleeced a Texas oil tycoon in a bridge game. The Texan was a world-class player, too.”
“Let me guess,” Valentine said. “Saul had inside help.”
Bill nodded. “Saul played the Texan at a table by the hotel pool. At the next table was Saul’s plant. The plant was reading a newspaper with a slit in it. He looked at the Texan’s cards, and by breathing through his nose, he signaled to Saul how to bet.”
“The whiff,” Valentine said.
“You’ve heard of it?”
Valentine said yes. He’d seen his grandmother and one of her friends do it at a card game in the Catskills over fifty years ago.
“I didn’t have enough evidence for a conviction,” Bill said. “But I took what I had to the state gaming board, and they barred Saul from ever returning to Nevada.” He picked up the pot and refilled their mugs. “So, why do you think he’s involved?”
The coffee was unusually good, maybe the best cup Valentine had tasted in Miami. He’d be back here again. “I’m pretty good at knowing when people are lying to me. I didn’t think Saul was, but then I got to thinking. Saul says he hasn’t seen Victor Marks in years. That’s bull. He and Victor were friends for forty years. You ever have a buddy like that?”
“Sure,” Bill said.
“I bet you talk to him every few weeks.”
“At least.”
“So Saul’s lying. He should have said, ‘I haven’t heard from him since Thanksgiving.’ That I would have bought. But not in years.”
Valentine wrote down Saul’s address on a napkin, then described the condo building right down to the height of the hedges. “There’s a wall around the property. If Saul tries to leave, he’ll have to go out through the front entrance. I saw his car keys sitting on a table. He drives a Toyota.”
Bill paid for the coffee, and they rose from the table. Everything had seemed fine until that moment, then the facade on Bill’s face cracked and the deep worry lines broke through. Valentine said, “Something wrong?”
“I got a call from the Broward police. A body was found in a Fort Lauderdale Dumpster. They think it’s Jack Lightfoot. They want me at the morgue to make an ID.”
Valentine could tell that Bill was hurting inside. That was where they were different. He hardly ever felt bad for crooks. They walked outside to the valet stand.
“You want company?” Valentine asked.
“If you’re up to it,” his friend said.
Whoever had dumped Jack Lightfoot’s body was not very smart. He had seaweed in his hair and swamp water in his lungs, and both arms and one of his legs had been chewed off. It was obvious that he’d died in a swamp.
Enough of his face remained to make a positive identification, and Bill’s hand had shaken as he signed the coroner’s statement. An hour later, Valentine dropped him off at the Loews, then went back to his hotel. He felt dog-tired, and the king-size bed in his room was calling to him. Walking into the Fontainebleau’s lobby, he spotted an Indian woman in a dark business suit by the elevators. Late twenties, short black hair, flat face, a little stocky. She approached him with an expectant look on her face.
“Mr. Valentine?”
He nodded, and she handed him her card. Gladys Soft Wings. Her title was legal representative for the Micanopy nation. It was a deceiving name. There didn’t appear to be anything soft about her.
“I’m here on behalf of my client, Chief Running Bear.”
“Your client?”
“The chief was involved in an altercation with five other tribe members. One of them died.”
“I hope it was Harry Smooth Stone.”
“Excuse me?”
“He put an alligator in my car. Nearly bit my hand off.”
Gladys took a square of paper from her pocket. Unfolding it, she handed it to him. “This is the only evidence I have against Smooth Stone. Running Bear found it in his trailer.”
Valentine studied the equations written on the ledger paper, then handed it back to her. “The equations are the hold for five blackjack dealers at your casino.”
“What’s that?”
“The hold is the equation a casino uses to determine how much money it’s making at its games. If these numbers are accurate, these dealers are cheating.”
“How can you be certain?”
“The average hold for a blackjack table is twenty percent. Your dealers are showing a hold of forty-four percent. They’re pocketing twenty-four percent and letting the casino keep the other twenty.”