“Because I told you to.”
Valentine hung up the phone, and went to stare at the wall of video monitors that showed the action in the casino. So did everyone else in the room. One minute later, the house lights were raised. On the monitors, all the players looked up.
“I saw a flash!” a tech shouted.
“So did I,” another tech said.
Valentine had seen it as well. A tiny bright light had appeared at Blackjack Table #30. It had come from third base, the last seat at the table. The seat was occupied by a muscular guy drinking a can of Budweiser. The mirror glued to the bottom of the can was so bright, it was impossible not to see.
“Touchdown,” he said.
The scam was simple. The muscle head was using the mirror to read the dealer’s hole card, then signaling its value to the other members of his gang at the table. Valentine called downstairs, and got six security guards off the floor. Then, he called Lois, who was at home supervising his son during his suspension from school.
“Please bring Gerry over here. I want him to see something.”
Twenty minutes later, Lois and Gerry were sitting in front of the wall of video monitors. Behind them stood six burly security guards, ready for action. Doyle and Mickey Wright had already gone downstairs, and were telling the cashiers working the cage not to pay the cheaters off, in case they tried to leave. Valentine stood next to the monitors, and pointed at the center screen.
“See those guys playing blackjack?” he asked his son.
Gerry nodded. His wife had taken him to the barber down the street, and Gerry looked like a baby Marine.
“They’re cheaters,” Valentine said.
“Really? What are they doing?” his son asked.
“That’s none of your business. I had your mother bring you here because I want you to see what happens to cheaters.”
“Are you going to arrest them?”
“You bet I am.”
Then, Valentine marched out of the room with his posse.
“Pay attention,” Lois said.
Right before coming over, she’d caught Gerry smoking a cigarette behind the garage, and the foul odor was still on his clothes and breath. Like every damn boy that had ever been raised on this island — and this included her own husband — her son was smoking Marlboros, the man’s cigarette.
“I don’t get it,” Gerry said. “Why does Pop want me to see this? I promised him I wouldn’t do it again.”
“This is just in case you get second thoughts,” she said.
“I’m not going to—”
Lois slapped her hand on his knee, and several techs lifted their heads from their monitors. “Your father wasn’t born yesterday,” she said under her breath, “and neither was I. Watch the monitor. It’s for your own good.”
Gerry made a bored face. Lois swallowed the rising lump in her throat. In profile, he was his father’s spitting image.
“Here we go!” one of the tech announced.
Lois and her son stared at the monitor in the center of the video wall which showed the Table #30. The gang had won another round, and were giving each other jubilant high-fives. Suddenly, six security guards swarmed around the table, and knocked the gang’s members off their stools, and onto the floor. For a moment, the cheaters seemed dazed, and struggled helplessly.
Then, the man with the Budweiser can jumped to his feet, and started swinging his arms like billy clubs. Two security guards flew through the air. Soon, more guards were lying on their backs, and Lois watched the melee spread across the casino like wild fire. The cheaters were scattering, the posse doing everything but stopping them.
“Where’s your father?” she asked Gerry.
“Over here,” Gerry said, pointing at a different monitor.
Tony was battling the man with the Budweiser can, his blows bouncing harmlessly off the cheater’s skull. The cheater’s blows were having the opposite effect, and each punch was shrinking her husband an inch. Suddenly, Tony stopped defending himself, and his knees began to buckle.
Lois brought her hands to her mouth. Long ago, she had accepted she might lose Tony one day. That was the price of being a cop’s wife. But she had never expected to see him die before her eyes.
“Somebody do something!” she screamed.
Doyle would later swear that he’d heard Lois’s cry for help all the way down on the casino floor. Her husband’s partner appeared in the monitor, holding his walking cane like a club, and whacked the cheater across the knees. The cheater’s mouth curled into a perfect O, and he crumpled to the floor.
Gerry and the techs erupted into cheers.
Lois continued to stare at the monitor. Tony had fallen backwards on a craps table, and knocked a gigantic tray of chips onto the floor. His body looked broken, and his legs were no longer moving. One eye was open, and it stared directly into the camera. Help me, it begged.
Grabbing Gerry by the arm, she ran from the room.
Chapter 17
Valentine was released from the hospital the next day. Despite the severity of the beating he’d taken — the surveillance tape showed him getting punched in the head a total of nine times — the worst injury he had suffered was when he’d keeled over, and landed on the craps table. He’d torn a ligament in his ankle, and been reduced to hobbling around on crutches.
The doctor told him to stay off his feet for two weeks. Valentine had gone home and collapsed on the couch in the living room. He tried to read a book, and when that didn’t work, he watched an old John Wayne movie on TV. By that night, he was bored to tears, and driving his wife and son crazy.
The next morning, he overheard Lois calling Captain Banko, and asking him to give her husband something to do, even if it was just filling out forms.
“Thanks,” he called across the house to her.
At noon, Banko appeared on his doorstep. With him was a tech from the casino’s surveillance department. Soon a video monitor and VCR were sitting on the coffee table in Valentine’s living room. Next to the table was a cardboard box overflowing with video cassettes the tech had lugged in. As the technician connected the VCR to the monitor, Banko said, “You told Fuller and Romero that you were going to have the surveillance techs look at past surveillance tapes, and see if they might spot the guy who’s killing the hookers. Well, I had an idea.”
“You want me to watch them,” Valentine said.
“Exactly. You can’t watch all the tapes the casino has — it would take a year. So, I selected tapes from ten o’clock on, because that’s when the hookers usually come out.” Banko had put his overcoat on a chair, and he removed an envelope from one of its pockets, and dropped it on the couch. “Those are the pictures of the killer’s victims. It might be easier for you to spot one of them before you spot the killer. I realize this is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but who knows, you might get lucky.”
Valentine grabbed a video tape out of the box, eager for something to do.
“I’ll get right on it.”
Banko picked up his overcoat and slipped it on. He’d arrived covered in snow, and the flakes had melted in the pattern of little men on the coat’s shoulders. He brushed them away, and Valentine retrieved his crutches from the floor, and walked him and the tech to the front door.
“One more thing,” his superior said. “Fuller and Romero would like your help tomorrow afternoon.”
“Doing what?”
“They want to talk to hookers, see if any might have been approached by this sicko. I told them you knew every hooker in town—”
“Thanks.”
Banko flashed a rare grin. “—and that I thought you’d be happy to.”