Wild Card, page 4
“None of them,” Valentine said.
“Good call. Any idea who is?”
“The chubby guy standing behind them,” Valentine said. “It’s in the bag he’s holding. He’s punching in the values of the cards as they’re dealt.”
“How did you know it was him?”
“His eyes. He keeps staring at the cards on the table.”
“Right again.” Higgins pointed at the blackboard. “Player #6 poses the biggest threat to the game. The scam he’s doing is called Playing the Anchor, and it involves the dealer.”
“The dealer’s cheating too?” Mickey said in astonishment.
“That’s right. You know him?”
“Shit, I hired him,” Mickey said.
“Dealer/player scams are the worst; they can bleed casinos for huge sums before they’re discovered,” Higgins said. “Playing the Anchor is pretty straightforward. The dealer flashes his hole card to Player #6 each time he slips it under his face card. It’s impossible to see from a surveillance camera. However, the scam does have a tell. Player #6 will sometimes do strange things, like stand on a weak hand, or split a strong pair when the dealer is showing an Ace.”
“You have any idea what he’s talking about,” Doyle whispered.
Valentine had stopped listening to Higgins, and was staring at the screen. Behind the blackjack table, he’d spotted a hooker he’d once arrested, an Hispanic girl with a body that could stop traffic. She was talking to a john, and Valentine watched her take the john’s arm, and walk away. Jack and Jill going up the hill to have a little intercourse, he thought. Then, something strange happened. Out of the john’s back pocket popped a silver flask. The john anxiously shoved the flask back into his pocket. He seemed desperate to hide it, and looked panicked. The hooker didn’t see the flask, and a look of normalcy returned to the john’s face. They disappeared from the picture.
Valentine lifted his eyes from the TV. Higgins had returned to the chalkboard, and was explaining how to detect each of the scams. He put the incident on the tape out of his mind, and focused his attention on their guest.
They wrapped up an hour later. Higgins was leaving for Las Vegas that night, and Valentine walked him downstairs to Resorts valet area to pick up his rental. The line of cars stretched around the block, and Higgins handed the uniformed attendant his stub.
“So, how do we learn this stuff?” Valentine asked.
“You mean the scams and hustles?” Higgins said.
“Yeah. Before Resorts gets robbed blind.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen. You’ve got a unique situation here. Ever hear the expression ‘Why slaughter the cow, when you can milk it?’ That’s true with your casino. Resorts is making so much money that smart cheaters will milk it for as long as they can.”
“That’s encouraging.”
He laughed. “Okay, here’s what I’d suggest. Start with the basics. Learn how the games are played, and the odds. I’ve been in Atlantic City two days, and seen two people win hundred thousand dollar jackpots at slot machines. Know what happens in Las Vegas if two people win back-to-back jackpots?”
“What — you throw a party?”
“Far from it. There would be an investigation, and the jackpots would be withheld from the winners until the investigation was completed.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because of the odds,” Higgins said. “Any idea what they are?”
“Of a person winning a jackpot? I don’t know, a million to one?”
“Try seventeen million to one. The same as a person getting struck by lightning twice in the same day. Odds of that happening two days in a row? Not very likely.”
Valentine found himself nodding. If he was going to police the games, he needed to understand how they worked, no different than working vice or narcotics.
“Got it.”
“Mind if I ask you a question? You got fixated on something on the surveillance tape I showed you earlier. What was it?”
“I saw a john picking up a hooker inside the casino,” Valentine said.
“Is that unusual?”
“He hid something from her. Something about his body language didn’t feel right. We’ve had three women killed on the island in the past month, and every cop is on the lookout. I’ve always had this ability to dissect a crowd, and pick out the scum bag.”
“Grift sense.”
“Is that what it’s called?”
Higgins nodded. “It’s an old hustler’s expression. You have the ability to pick out what’s wrong in a situation. It should help you police Resorts’ casino.”
Valentine wasn’t so sure. He’d been on the job for a week, and hadn’t nabbed a single thief. “Would you mind if I called you if I had any questions?”
“Not at all.” Higgins took out a business card, and wrote a number on the back. “That’s my home number. Call me anytime. Good luck.”
His rental had come up. They shook hands, and Higgins got into his car, and drove out of the crowded valet area. Valentine took out his wallet and stuck the card into the billfold. Something told him be talking to Higgins often, and he didn’t want to lose the gaming agent’s number.
Chapter 6
Lying in bed that night, Valentine used a deck of playing cards to show Lois some of the cheating techniques Bill Higgins had tipped that afternoon. They were like magic tricks, and his wife lay beside him, mesmerized. She wore no clothes, and his heart did the funny thing it always did when she was naked.
He didn’t think there was a more beautiful woman in Atlantic City. Her skin was as fine as porcelain, her soft green eyes as enchanting as emeralds. As a teenager, she’d won every beauty pageant she’d entered — Miss Ventnor, Miss Steel Pier, Miss Mermaid, Miss Atlantic County — while being pursued by every hot-blooded guy on the island. They’d met over a Bunsen burner in an eleventh-grade biology class, and he’d never gotten over the fact that she’d chosen to spend her life with him.
“You learned all that in one day,” she said.
He nodded and put the cards away. He could tell Lois liked his new job. He was learning things, and he wasn’t getting shot at. And, he was home at night at a decent hour. Like every other woman in Atlantic City, the recent killings had put a healthy dose of fear into her. He turned off the light and they lay in the dark, sharing the silence.
“Are the police any closer to catching this killer?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know. I don’t hear about that stuff anymore. The casino is its own little world.”
“You sound resentful.”
“I think I could catch this guy, if Banko would give me a chance.”
“Did you ask him?”
“About a dozen times. He keeps telling me no.”
“Do they have any leads?”
His wife knew him too well. Valentine had talked to the lead investigator on the case and asked the same question. So far, the police had hit a stone wall.
“Not yet. They think someone local is responsible.”
“Why do they think that? Couldn’t a tourist be behind it?”
“Tourists stay around the casino. The killings are taking place around the island. The fact that there haven’t been any witnesses means the killer is probably someone we all know. We’re seeing him, but we’re not making the connection.”
“Oh.”
They fell silent and watched a gibbous moon cut a sphere through the window. Valentine started to drift off when a noise snapped him awake. The music coming out of their son’s bedroom had gone up several decibels, and he got out of bed to investigate.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He tapped lightly on his son’s bedroom door, then entered. The lights were on, and Gerry lay in bed with a copy of The Catcher in the Rye propped on his chest. The room’s walls were covered in posters of rock bands, and his son’s clothes were scattered across the floor along with the other items that made up a thirteen year old’s world.
“You having a Beatles’s reunion in here?”
“It’s the Bee Gees, Pop.”
Valentine killed the stereo. His son was listening to the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. He and Lois had seen the movie at a drive-in, and thought it gave working-class Italians a real black eye. He parked himself on his son’s bed.
“Lights out.”
“I was doing homework, you know.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Gerry slid the book onto the night table. So far, puberty had been kind to him. He was growing like a weed, and his skin was unblemished.
“Your mother said you got your report card today.”
“It wasn’t so hot. I left it downstairs on the kitchen table. You have to sign it.”
“How bad?”
“Three Cs, two Bs and an A in gym.”
“That the only class you showing up for?”
A hurt look crossed his son’s face. “I’m trying, okay?”
“You still getting headaches?”
“Every day.”
Since entering junior high school, Gerry’s grades had taken a precipitous nosedive. He claimed that all the reading was giving him headaches, so they’d taken him to an eye specialist. A hundred bucks worth of tests had revealed his son’s eyesight to be 20/20. Valentine tucked him in, then tousled his son’s hair. “It will get better.”
“That’s what mom said. Are things okay with you and her?”
Valentine felt a knot tighten in his stomach. “Everything’s fine.”
“You seem really uptight. And you’re smoking cigarettes again.”
“Are those bad signs?”
“Yeah. It means something’s bothering you. I don’t want to be one of those kids who gets shuttled around on weekends.”
Valentine’s own parents had broken up when he was a teenager, and his life had never been the same. He lay his hand on his son’s stomach. Nature had only let them have one child, and he loved his boy more than anything in the world.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “Now, go to sleep.”
He switched off the light on the night table. Outside his son’s window he could see the spot in the backyard where he’d buried the Prince’s address book. By hiding it, he’d figured he’d stop thinking about it, but so far it hadn’t worked.
“You sure everything’s okay?” Gerry asked.
Valentine kissed his son’s forehead in the dark. “Positive.”
Chapter 7
The telephone call came at seven the next morning.
Gerry had left to catch the bus. He was a drummer in the marching band, and went to practice at the high school three mornings a week. Valentine sat at the kitchen table, staring at his son’s dismal report card while munching on a piece of toast.
Lois answered the phone on the third ring. She was at the kitchen counter, preparing her husband’s lunch. Money was tight, and he bagged it whenever he could.
“Can I tell him who’s calling?” She stuck the receiver into her shoulder, and lowered her voice. “It’s some guy pretending to be Nucky Balducci.”
“Tell him to get stuffed and hang up.”
“It sort of sounds like him.”
Enoch “Nucky” Balducci had run Atlantic City’s rackets for forty years. As a kid, Valentine’s mother had told him that if he didn’t behave, Nucky would climb through his bedroom window, and slit his throat. “You think it’s Doyle?” he asked.
“Could be,” Lois said.
Valentine took the phone from his wife. “Hey buddy, what’s up?”
“We need to talk,” a gruff voice said.
“Who’s this?”
“Your wife fucking deaf? This is Nucky Balducci.”
He saw Lois staring at him. Had his adolescent fear of Nucky registered on his face? “How do I know this is Nucky Balducci?” he asked.
“Your father has a tattoo with your mother’s name stenciled on his ass,” the man growled. “That good enough for you?”
They agreed to meet at the foot of Lucy the Elephant in thirty minutes.
Lucy resided in a park in Margate not far from Valentine’s house. Once, she had been one of Atlantic City’s most famous attractions. Made of timber and sheet metal, she stood sixty-five feet from head-to-toe. For twenty cents, a visitor could climb the spiral staircase in her hind leg, and sit in the basket on her back, called a howdah. These days, Lucy sat unused, the weeds around her long and ragged.
Crossing the park, Valentine spotted Nucky standing beneath Lucy’s tail. The old gangster wore a long winter coat and a black fedora. He was carrying an umbrella, even though it hadn’t rained in days. A scruffy park attendant unlocked Lucy’s hollow leg, then shuffled away.
“You come alone?” Nucky asked.
“Yeah. How about you?”
“Don’t be a wise ass.”
They climbed the spiral staircase and got settled in Lucy’s howdah. A veil of bluish fog hung over the nearby rooftops. Nucky started the conversation.
“Zelda asked about you the other day,” the old gangster said.
“How’s she doing?”
Nucky removed his fedora. He had a shaved head and bulbous, bloodshot eyes. If he wasn’t the ugliest man in Atlantic City, he was in the running.
“Terrible,” he said.
“Still won’t come out of her room?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You should come by. It would cheer her up.”
Zelda Balducci had lost her marbles the day Elvis Presley had died. Locked herself in her bedroom, and kissed the world goodbye. Two years later, she was still in her room. “She likes you,” Nucky added.
Valentine gave him a hard look. His relationship with Nucky was a thin one. His father had saved Nucky’s life before Valentine had been born. Stopped a man from braining Nucky with a shovel, was how the story went. As Nucky had risen up in the ranks of Atlantic City’s underworld, he’d looked out for Dominic Valentine. Valentine had taken Zelda to a high school dance as a favor to his old man, and recalled Zelda stepping on his toes all night long.
“I hear you got promoted,” Nucky said. “Catching cheaters in the casino.”
“That’s right.”
“My first job as a kid was inside this elephant. Lucy was a speakeasy. There was also a blackjack game.”
“What did you do?”
“Cleaned out the spittoons, ran errands.”
“Sounds like a blast.”
Nucky elbowed him in the ribs. “You inherited your old man’s mouth, you know that?”
“Excuse me for asking, but what do you want? ” Valentine said, “If people see me hanging out with you, they might get the wrong idea.”
Nucky stared off into space, then punched his hat with his fist. “There’s bad stuff going down at Resorts. Stuff that could get you hurt.”
He paused, and Valentine realized he was expecting an answer. To act uninformed around Nucky was a mistake, so he said, “I know.”
“I ain’t talking about the stuff you think I’m talking about,” Nucky said.
“What stuff are you talking about?”
“Other stuff.”
“What stuff is that?”
Nucky opened the umbrella and covered them with it. To stop anyone watching with binoculars who knew how to read lips, Valentine guessed.
“I’m talking about stuff you don’t know about,” Nucky said. “Maybe never will know about it. Which is probably for the better.”
“It is?”
Nucky nodded vigorously. “For you, and your family.”
Valentine stared at him. Why was Nucky dragging his family into this? He watched the fog start to lift, the sunlight bleeding through as the day began.
“How much did the Prince tell you before he croaked?” Nucky asked.
So that was why Nucky had asked him here. The Prince.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
Valentine shook his head.
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“You check his pockets?”
There was no love in Nucky’s eyes now. The old gangster wanted to know what had happened to the address book with the names of the New York mafia soldiers.
“No. I don’t roll dead men,” Valentine replied.
Nucky owned two identical Cadillac Eldorados. One was for driving around, the other for parking in front of his plumbing supply store so people would think he was working. Luther, his ex-football player bodyguard and chauffeur, had parked the driving car on the street, and now opened the back door as they came out of the park.
“You ever patch things up with your old man?” Nucky asked.
The question caught Valentine by surprise. “No.”
“I saw him the other day on the street. I took him to a diner, and we talked over coffee. Your father still has a lot upstairs. He hasn’t killed all his brain cells.”
“Glad to hear it,” Valentine said.
“You need to smoke the peace pipe. Make peace.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying you should do it.”
Valentine watched Nucky climb into the backseat. There was a delicate balance in Atlantic City between the crooks, the Jews, the blacks, and the Republican machine, and at the center of it was this man. The passenger window came down, and Nucky peered out at him from inside the car. Valentine realized he was expecting an answer.
“I’ve tried a hundred times.”
“Try a hundred more,” the old gangster said.
Chapter 8
Doyle drove to the beach that morning while it was still dark. It killed his leg to drive, but he gutted it out. He had circled today’s date in his calendar two months ago, right after seeing an article in the newspaper which said a company called Bally’s had gotten the go-ahead to demolish the Marlborough-Blenheim hotel, and build a new casino on the Boardwalk.
The Marlborough-Blenheim had once defined everything that was wonderful about Atlantic City, it’s reinforced concrete towers rising up like a cathedral at the edge of the sea. Doyle had played in its lobby as a kid, and had his wedding reception in one of its ballrooms. And now it was coming down.
