“It’s a copy,” Mabel said.
Slash put his fist through it. Then he entered the closet and started opening boxes and shaking them out on the floor. Mabel wondered how long it would be before Slash got bored and decided to kill her. Tony had said that violent people could not stay focused on a subject for any length of time, and Slash was proving this to be true. Eventually he’d run out of things to rip apart and would take out his frustrations on her.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
“You’ll have to bring it over here so I can see.”
He brought the item over. It was still in its box. Mabel stared for a moment before realizing what he’d discovered. Then had an idea.
“That’s the most amazing cheating device ever made,” she said.
“Cheating at what?”
“Blackjack.”
Slash pulled up the chair and sat in it backwards.
“Do you play?” Mabel asked.
“Used to,” he said.
“Well, the device you’re holding is called the David, as in David vs. Goliath. It’s a blackjack strategy computer. Have you ever heard of card-counting?”
Slash grunted in the affirmative.
“The David does the counting for you. With it, you can beat any casino in the world for thousands of dollars. I’ll take that back. Millions of dollars.”
“Is your boss a cheat?”
“He catches cheaters,” Mabel said.
Slash emptied the box onto the desk. The David was the size of a deck of cards. With it came a battery pack, connector wires, and a special pair of men’s boots with microswitches buried in the toes. There was also a keyboard that was used to “talk” to David while practicing.
“What are the boots for?”
“Each boot has a hidden microswitch,” Mabel said. “You input the cards with your toes.”
He tried the boots on. They fit. A knowing look spread across his face.
“You know how to work this thing?”
Tony had spent twenty minutes showing her. Mabel didn’t think that really constituted knowing. Only, she wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Why, yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”
35
Bill Higgins was reading the last section of the Sunday newspaper when Saul Hyman’s rattling Toyota pulled up alongside his rental. The passenger window on the Toyota came down, and Saul said, “Don’t you ever go home?”
Higgins stared at the elderly con man. He’d stayed outside Saul’s condo because he didn’t feel like staying in his hotel room. It was a pleasant day, and he’d read the newspaper from cover to cover while listening to a baseball game in Spanish on the radio.
“No,” he said.
“Tony asked you to watch me, didn’t he?” Saul asked.
“Tony who?”
“Valentine. I just saw him. I gave him enough evidence to put that scumbag Rico Blanco behind bars.”
Bill put his newspaper down. Maybe hanging around hadn’t been a waste of time. A bus had pulled up behind Saul’s car and blared its horn. Saul shook his fist at the driver in his mirror, then said, “Want to come inside for a drink?”
“You’re on,” Higgins said.
Saul’s condo was about what Higgins had expected. Nothing great. He’d known lots of criminals in his life. Few ended up with much when they got old. He stared at the apartment houses across the street that were blocking Saul’s view of the ocean. Between them, he could see a tiny slit of blue, but just barely. Saul appeared and handed him a glass of ice tea.
“Salud,” he said, clinking glasses.
Higgins took a sip. “Remember when I ran you out of Vegas?”
“Like it was yesterday,” Saul said. “You were very nice about it, as I remember.”
“Don’t think I didn’t consider roughing you up,” Higgins replied.
Saul acted like no cop had ever laid a hand on him. “Why didn’t you?” His guest shrugged, and he said, “Because of my size? I avoided a lot of beatings because I was small.”
“That had nothing to do with it,” Higgins said.
The phone rang. Saul picked it up, listened, then said, “Who sends packages on a Sunday?” He listened some more. “It’s from Tony Valentine? Okay, send the guy up.” He hung up, then said, “Indulge an old man. Why didn’t you?”
“The guy you ripped off had been caught cheating at poker at one of the casinos,” Higgins explained. “The casino looked the other way because he was a high roller. I never liked it, and figured he got his due when you fleeced him.”
Saul smiled. “The arm of justice is long, huh?”
“Something like that,” Higgins said.
“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing in Miami with Tony Valentine?”
“None of your business,” Higgins said.
The doorbell buzzed. Saul said, “Excuse me,” and left the room.
Higgins raised his glass to his lips. Sunlight flooded the room, exposing the old and faded furniture, and he guessed Saul was living on Social Security, with maybe a little something stashed away. Not a lot, but enough to get by. Higgins would be up for retirement himself in a few years. The thought did not thrill him.
He heard the angry retort of a gun being fired, then Saul’s scream. He jumped off the couch, the drink’s ice cubes hit the floor, and his hand reached for a pistol that wasn’t there. Saul came into the living room with blood pouring down his face.
“Run,” he said.
Higgins didn’t know which way to run. Saul bolted past him, followed by a man with a stocking over his face. He was holding a .45 Smith & Wesson and pointed it at Higgins. The next moment, Higgins was lying on the floor, clutching his thigh.
From the rear of the condo he heard the shattering of glass. Then the stockinged man returned. Kneeling, he went through Higgins’s pockets. He rose, holding Higgins’s cell phone, and left the condo.
Higgins examined the wound in his leg. Blood was spitting out like a geyser. Taking off his socks, he tied them together, then crawled into the kitchen and found a wooden serving spoon in a drawer. With the socks and the spoon he made a tourniquet, tied it an inch above his wound, and twisted it until the bleeding stopped.
He found the phone and dialed 911. He told the operator he’d been shot, and stumbled with the address.
“Just hang on,” the operator reassured him.
He limped through the condo, looking for his host. In the back was a guest bedroom, and Higgins peered through the open doorway. Blood was on the floor and bedspread, and the wind blew stiffly through a busted window. The room began to spin, and he realized he was about to pass out.
He took several deep breaths, then forced himself over to the broken window and looked down. Four floors below, Saul Hyman floated in the condo’s rectangular swimming pool, the water clouded with blood.
Laughing, Rico Blanco sped south on I-95. The look on the old man’s face as he’d jumped through the window had been a real keeper. Terrified, but also ashamed, like he’d known deep down that this was what happened to rats. They got drowned.
He turned on the radio. The three o’clock news came on. The day was still young. That had been one of John Gotti’s favorite expressions. They would steal something—a truckload of furs, or a container out of a plane at Kennedy airport, or something off the docks—and the Teflon Don would say, “The day is still young,” and they’d go out and steal something else. A real taskmaster.
His cell phone rang. Rico picked it up, then realized it was the cell phone he’d just stolen. He answered it anyway. The line was filled with static.
“Hey, Bill, it’s Tony Valentine,” the voice said.