Текст книги "Deadman’s Poker"

Автор книги: James Swain

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

30

Las Vegas sat in a desert basin surrounded by mountains, and nighttime seemed to settle over the town more slowly than anyplace else Valentine had ever been. It was like a big party was about to begin, the house lights slowly being dimmed.

By the time he pulled into Celebrity’s valet stand, the casino’s blazing neon was the only thing visible across the vast desert. He grabbed the bag of insulin off the front seat and got out. Tossing his keys to the valet, he glanced at the tiny TV sitting in the valet’s alcove. It was tuned to the World Poker Showdown, and showed Skip DeMarco playing earlier that day. The kid looked good on TV, and the camera was showing him to the exclusion of the other players at the table. As Valentine went into the hotel, a concierge appeared before him.

“Mr. Valentine?”

“That’s me.”

“There’s a call for you on the house phone.”

He followed the concierge to his desk, and was handed a white house phone. He guessed it was Bill Higgins, spying on him from the surveillance control room.

“Valentine, here.”

“Sammy Mann, at your service,” a man’s voice said.

“Not the Sammy Mann, king of the cooler mobs?”

“In the flesh,” Sammy said. “I’m upstairs in surveillance, doing a job for Bill Higgins.”

“So I heard. Want to get together?”

“Yeah, but don’t bother coming up here,” the retired hustler said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby bar, if that’s okay with you.”

Valentine was tired, and felt like going to his room and taking a nap. Only he’d learned a long time ago that when crooks wanted to talk, he needed to listen.

“Sure. I’ll grab us a table inside.”

“See you in ten minutes,” Sammy said.

Hanging up, Valentine turned to the concierge, and handed him the canvas bag with the insulin. “I need you to put this someplace cold for a little while.”

“Certainly, Mr. Valentine,” the concierge said.

“I took your advice, and started hiring myself out to the casinos,” Sammy said ten minutes later, nursing a ginger ale while untying his necktie. In his day, Sammy had been the epitome of a classy cheat, and had gone back to wearing his trademark clothes—a navy sports jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons, silk tie, and white shirt with French cuffs. He’d once run with a cooler mob, and could take eight decks of prearranged playing cards out of an arm sling he was wearing, and exchange it with eight decks being held by a crooked blackjack dealer, all in three seconds flat.

“They paying you good?” Valentine asked, sipping a decaf.

“Like a king. I went through chemotherapy two years ago, and came out a new man. I decided the best way to stay alive was by working.”

“What did you think of DeMarco?” Valentine asked.

“What do you think of him?”

“I never played poker, so I don’t know,” Valentine said.

Sammy’s coal dark eyes scanned the crowded casino bar. He was Arab, and had the dark good looks of an aging movie star. Valentine was glad to see that he was doing well, but still wouldn’t confide in him. Sammy had been a thief for too long to be fully trusted.

“He’s cheating,” Sammy said quietly.

There were plenty of people inside the bar, many of them associated with the WPS. Valentine raised his glass to his lips. “How?”

Sammy smiled. “My guess is, he’s being fed information.”

“By who?”

“The dealer. The cards are marked. The dealer reads the marks during the deal, and signals DeMarco what his opponents are holding.”

“But the kid is blind.”

Sammy leaned back in his chair. The bar had a plasma-screen TV, and was broadcasting the same rerun of the tournament Valentine had seen at the valet stand. DeMarco was on, and had just knocked another world-class player out of the tournament.

“Doesn’t mean a thing,” Sammy said. “Maybe the signal is verbal—you know, by breathing loudly. Or maybe it’s the way the dealer pitches the cards to DeMarco during the deal. DeMarco has some vision.”

Valentine had already considered those methods, and ruled them out. Breathing loudly—called The Sniff—was too noticeable, and so was The Pitch. He sensed that Sammy was taking stabs in the dark.

“Any other ideas?” Valentine asked.

Sammy stared at him coolly. “You think I’m wrong?”

“Yes.”

Sammy grabbed a passing waitress and bummed a cigarette off her. He could have been the greatest salesman who’d ever lived, so natural were his charms of persuasion. He lit up, and blew a perfect smoke ring into the air. “Tony, that’s the only explanation for what’s going on. The kid is getting outside help. Period.”

There was real resentment in Sammy’s voice, and Valentine guessed he’d heard DeMarco call Rufus Steele an old man on TV, and taken exception to it.

“Maybe he’s lucky,” Valentine said.

“Poker isn’t about luck, and it isn’t about the cards you get dealt,” Sammy said. “It’s about playing your opponent, and knowing when he’s strong or weak. That’s the entire formula in a nutshell. This kid is being fed information.”

The smell of Sammy’s cigarette reminded Valentine of every cigarette he’d ever smoked. He tagged the waitress and talked her into giving him a cigarette as well.

“The cards aren’t marked,” he said after he’d lit up.

Sammy turned and gave him a long stare. “Who checked them?”

“The Gaming Control Board and the FBI. Every single card in the tournament has been checked.”

“Like I told you before, that doesn’t mean anything,” Sammy said.

Valentine choked on his cigarette smoke. When he finally got his breath, he saw the old hustler smiling at him. Sammy had gotten his choppers whitened, and they looked like a million bucks.

“Why not?”

“Because there are ways to mark cards that you don’t see,” Sammy said.

“That’s a new one,” Valentine said.

“New to you,” Sammy replied.

Valentine shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He’d recognized long ago that no matter how much he knew about cheating, there would still be things he didn’t know.

“If I admitted I was a sucker, would you smarten me up?”

“Sure,” Sammy said.

“I’m a sucker,” Valentine said.

“It’s like this,” Sammy said, an impossibly long ash dangling from his cigarette. “Twenty years ago, you arrested me for ringing in a cooler in Atlantic City, and assumed that was my speciality. Well, it wasn’t.”

“Switching decks wasn’t your speciality?”

“No,” Sammy said.

“But at the sentencing you told the judge you’d switched decks in casinos over a hundred times,” Valentine said.

“That’s right,” Sammy said. “And remember my sob story? I said I was turned out by my uncle, who was a cheater, and that he started training me when I was six years old.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t have an uncle.”

“No, but I had eight aunts.”

Valentine laughed through a cloud of smoke. The judge at Sammy’s sentencing had been a woman, and she’d gone soft on Sammy, and put him in a work-release program.

“All right, I’m stumped,” Valentine said. “If you weren’t a specialist at switching cards, then what were you a specialist at?”

Sammy gave him a sly look. He was holding back, as if this piece of information would somehow change things. Cheaters wore many layers, and it was rare that they ever pulled them all back at the same time. Only after a long moment had passed did he speak.

“My speciality was marked cards.”

It took a long moment for the words to sink in, and then Valentine felt like someone had hit him in the head with a lead pipe. Marked cards. Sammy was telling him that the decks of cards he’d switched in casinos were stacked and marked, which let the cards be used more than once to rip off the house.

“That’s brilliant,” Valentine said. “You must have made a fortune.”

Sammy gave him the best smile of the night. “We ate steak and lobster a lot.”

“Who marked the cards?”

“I did. I also trained the other members in how to use the information. One player would read the dealer’s hole card in blackjack, and signal its value to the other players at the table. The other players all were small betters, so their wins didn’t look too horrifying to the house. They would leave, and another team would sit down, and do the same thing. It was like taking candy from a baby.”

“The marks must have been spotted later on,” Valentine said. “Every casino checks for them when the cards are taken out of play.”

“They were never spotted,” Sammy said.

“What about by a forensic lab?”

“I imagine it would fool them as well.”

“You’ve lost me,” Valentine said. “If the mark can’t be seen, and can’t be tested for, it doesn’t exist.”

Sammy shot him the You’re-So-Stupid look, and Valentine swallowed hard. There was a paddle for everyone’s ass in this town, and his was getting royally spanked.

“Or does it?” he said.

“I came up with this marking system by accident,” Sammy said. “My crew used it for over twenty years. When we retired, so did the system.”

There was a glass of water sitting on the table in front of them. Sammy stuck his fingertips into it, then sprinkled several drops on the tabletop. After several moments he brushed the drops away with his napkin, and pointed at the tabletop. Valentine stared at the tiny marks left on the table’s finish.

“Water stains,” he said.

“Exactly. They reduce the shine on the back of the card. It’s not uncommon for water to get sprayed on cards in casinos. The casino people who were looking for marks were used to seeing water stains, so they didn’t pay any attention to ours. We used a lot of clever patterns to mark the cards. I used to be able to read them from across the room.”

“That’s brilliant,” Valentine said.

“Thank you. Over time, we also made the marks fainter. We would record each casino’s lighting with a light sensitivity machine, then learn to read the marks under those conditions. I used to practice for an hour a day reading those marks, and so did the members of my crew.”

Sammy had finished his ginger ale and was looking at his watch. Valentine took out his wallet and settled the bill. It was rare for a hustler to reveal his secrets, especially one that had worked so well, and Valentine guessed there was a motive behind Sammy’s generosity. Leaning forward, he said, “Do you think this is what DeMarco is doing?”

Sammy coughed into his hand. “Or something like it.”

It slowly dawned on him what Sammy was saying. DeMarco had a marking system that wasn’t immediately obvious, just like Sammy’s.

“So what do I do?”

“Keep examining the cards,” the retired hustler said. “You’ll find the marks eventually.”

Sammy’s eyes drifted to the plasma-screen TV showing DeMarco playing poker. DeMarco’s image was larger-than-life, and dwarfed everything else in the bar. Sammy gritted his teeth in displeasure, then took out his business card and handed it to Valentine. They shook hands, and Valentine watched him walk away, then stared at the card.

SAMMY MANN

Casino Cheating Consultant

“It takes one to know one.”

702-616-0279

31

Valentine left the bar shaking his head. Everyone seemed to know that DeMarco was cheating, yet no one could do anything about it. There was an old baseball expression—“It ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught”—and it applied perfectly to this situation. Until they found evidence that proved DeMarco was rigging the game, the tournament had to let him play.

At the concierge’s desk he got the bag of insulin and asked to use the house phone. The concierge obliged him, and after a moment the house operator came on. Valentine asked to be put through to Skip DeMarco’s room.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve been instructed not to put any calls through to Mr. DeMarco,” the operator informed him.

“Tell him I’ve got his bag of insulin, then call me back,” Valentine said.

He hung up, and waited for the callback while tapping his foot to the live music coming from the casino. If Las Vegas had anything in abundance, it was good live music, and he kept time to an old Count Basie tune until the phone rang.

“You found my bag?” a gravelly voice said.

The voice had a lot of years behind it, and Valentine guessed it was the Tuna. He said, “A bag of insulin was found in the parking lot which I believe belongs to you.”

“How much you want?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much money you want for it? That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want your money,” Valentine said. “I just wanted to return the bag to its rightful owner.”

“Who is this?”

“My name’s Tony Valentine.”

A short silence, then, “There was a cop in Atlantic City named Tony Valentine. A real prick, if I remember.”

“That’s me,” Valentine said.

The hallways in casino hotels were the longest hallways in the world, and Valentine beat a path to DeMarco’s room while smothering a yawn. He’d been going nonstop all day, and the three-hour jet lag was starting to wear on him. That was one of the tough things about getting old. You no longer told your body what to do. Your body told you.

DeMarco was staying at the hallway’s end. Valentine rapped on the door, and stepped back so the person on the other side could see him through the peephole. He heard the door being unlatched, then saw a bodyguard dressed in black standing before him.

“You Valentine?” the bodyguard asked.

Hoods had a tendency to ask ridiculously stupid questions, and Valentine had discovered that he couldn’t answer them without insulting someone. He handed the guy his business card. The bodyguard stared at it in a way that suggested his inability to read had driven him from seeking a higher education, and motioned him inside.

DeMarco was staying in a high-roller suite, and Valentine entered a large living area with ornate furniture that looked straight out of Buckingham Palace and with a view of the city that matched anything he’d ever seen. He wondered how DeMarco rated such digs, as he knew that hotels did not normally rent their high-roller pads, preferring to offer them as freebies to their best customers, called whales. In all his years in the business, he’d never heard of a single poker player getting this kind of treatment.

“You must be Valentine,” a voice said.

An older Italian guy with slicked back hair stood by the window, gazing at him through the reflection. Stocky, about five ten, wearing black slacks and a flowing black shirt that hid his paunch, hands festooned with gold jewelry, mouth retracted in permanent distaste. Valentine assumed this was the Tuna and nodded, then placed the bag of insulin on a chair.

“It probably went bad, you know,” the Tuna said.

He still hadn’t turned around, preferring to let Valentine see the back of his head.

“What went bad?” Valentine asked.

“My nephew’s insulin.”

“I kept it cold for you,” Valentine said.

Valentine could see the Tuna’s face in the reflection. He look surprised.

“I appreciate that,” the Tuna said. “You like something to drink?”

“A glass of water would be fine.”

“You on duty?”

Valentine realized the Tuna thought he was still a cop.

“I’m retired. I don’t drink the hard stuff.”

The Tuna nodded that this was acceptable, then snapped his fingers. The bodyguard went to the bar, which was filled with bottles of top shelf brands. He poured a Scotch for his boss and a glass of tap water for his guest, then delivered them to the two men. The Tuna turned around but remained by the window, as if getting too close to a cop, even a retired one, was not anything he planned on doing in this lifetime.

“Salute,” he said, raising his glass.

Valentine raised his glass and took a sip. He could hear someone in the next room, and glanced over his shoulder through an open door. Skip DeMarco was standing in the next room with his shirt off. He was built like a martial artist, his body lean and sinewy, and he practiced his exercises in slow motion, his movements quick and fluid. Valentine stared at the ugly red scars that marred his arms and chest and spoiled his otherwise perfect physique. He’d seen scars like that before, when he’d been an undercover cop assigned to narcotics in Atlantic City. He’d seen them on little kids whose parents were crackheads. They were cigarette burns. He shifted his gaze to the Tuna, and lowered his glass.

“You once threw me out of a casino in Atlantic City,” the Tuna said.

“When was this?”

“June 7, 1987.”

Valentine tried to remember the incident, but came up blank. The Tuna was good at reading faces, and said, “You said I was an undesirable. You let the niggers and Spics into the casinos, but not me. I always resented that.”

Valentine had heard a lot of hoods use this argument, as if blacks and Hispanics were some social yardstick by which acceptance should be measured, instead of who you were, and what you’d done.

“Just doing my job,” Valentine said.

The Tuna twirled the ice cubes in his drink. “I had you checked out after that. You know, we’re alike in a lot of ways.”

Valentine didn’t think the Tuna could have insulted him any worse than he just had. Nothing about them was alike; not one damn thing.

“How so?”

“We’re Sicilian. Both our fathers were immigrants; both came through Ellis Island. You had a tough upbringing, so did I. You know anything about Sicily’s history?”

Valentine decided to indulge him and nodded.

“For hundreds of years, the Italians treated us like dogs. The island was lawless, people were poor, there was no electricity, no running water, and no one in Rome gave a rat’s ass. Only one thing kept Sicily from falling apart. The dons. They were the law, and everyone respected them.”

“Do you see yourself like a don?” Valentine asked.

The Tuna downed his drink. “Yeah, I do.”

As a child, Valentine’s father had told him about the Sicilian dons who’d traveled to Rome during the early 1900s, and convinced Italy’s leaders to give Sicily food and money to keep its people alive. For the Tuna to liken himself to those men was like comparing the Sistine Chapel to an outhouse.

“Afraid I don’t see it that way,” Valentine said.

“You don’t?”

“No. Those dons saved lives. You destroyed them.”

An ice cube spilled out of his host’s drink. He came forward very quickly, halving the distance between them. But that was as far as he came. Valentine held his ground.

“This isn’t Atlantic City,” the Tuna said. “You watch yourself, Valentine, you hear me?”

Valentine realized he was being threatened, and again found himself looking at the ornate furnishings. DeMarco was getting the royal treatment, which meant that either he, or his uncle, had juice with someone.

“Thanks for the drink and the fun conversation,” Valentine said.

The Tuna turned to the bodyguard. “Guido.”

The bodyguard was standing behind the bar with a bored look on his face.

“Yes, Mr. Scalzo,” he said.

“Throw this asshole out of here.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Scalzo.”

Guido came around from behind the minibar and dropped a massive paw on Valentine’s shoulder. Valentine guessed it was his gray hair, or maybe that he’d said he was retired, that had gotten Guido to drop his guard. He kicked Guido in the instep, a spot that people who practiced judo called a vital point. Guido grunted and began to hop around on one leg. Valentine kicked him again, this time in the ass. He put a lot behind the kick, and Guido hurtled across the room, his arms flapping like he was trying to fly.

“What’s going on?” a voice said.

DeMarco appeared in the open doorway separating the rooms, a towel draped across his glistening torso, his walking cane clutched in his right hand. The two men collided with a bang of heads, and DeMarco hit the floor hard.

“Skipper!”

The Tuna ran across the room to his nephew’s aid. Kneeling, he cradled DeMarco’s head in his arms. When he looked up at Valentine, there were tears in his eyes.

“You’ll pay for this,” he said.

32

It was late, and Mabel was still in the office when Tony’s phone rang. One week of mindless inactivity aboard the Love Boat had turned her brain to mush, and when Tony’s computer had frozen right before quitting time, she’d found herself on the phone with a polite but utterly worthless support technician in New Delhi trying to fix it. She’d wanted Tony to get rid of his desktop in favor of a notebook computer, but was now grateful for the bulkier model. It was less tempting to throw out the window.

“Grift Sense,” she answered.

“Is this a rare coin shop?” her boss’s voice rang out.

“Sometimes I wish it was,” she said, staring at the blank screen.

“What are you doing there so late? It’s eleven thirty.”

“I froze your computer, and have been talking on the telephone with a young man named Vijay trying to get it straightened out.”

“Any luck?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Try whacking it. That always works for me.”

Whacking things was Tony’s answer to a number of problems that demanded more concrete solutions. Still, it was the one thing Mabel hadn’t tried, and in frustration she whacked the PC with the palm of her hand, and saw a lightning bolt flash across the screen. Moments later, Tony’s screen saver appeared She let out a heavy sigh.

“Oh my,” she said.

“Let me guess,” he said. “It worked.”

“Yes, it did. How’s Las Vegas?”

“Still the fun capital of the United States. I have a job for you. I was going to leave a message. If you want to go home, I can call back, and leave it on voice mail.”

Mabel picked up a pen and notepad lying on the desk. She’d downed several cups of coffee while talking with Vijay, and felt like she had toothpicks holding her eyelids apart. “Fire away.”

“I want you to do a background check on two individuals. One is a mobster out of Newark named George Scalzo, aka the Tuna. The second is Scalzo’s blind nephew named Chris ‘Skip’ DeMarco. I’m interested in finding out what Scalzo’s relationship is with DeMarco. Scalzo might have adopted him, or is the kid’s legal guardian. See what you can find. I’d suggest you start with the FBI first.”

“But they’re always such brats,” Mabel said.

“They are. But the FBI has extensive files on every Mafia boss in the country. The files include a lot of personal information. Some of these guys are followed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If Scalzo did adopt DeMarco, the bureau would know about it.”

“Not to be a pill, but just exactly how do I convince the FBI to give me this information?” she said, having scribbled down the names. “The last time I checked, the FBI didn’t have a help line you could call.”

“Easy,” Tony said. “On my desk is an overnight envelope from Special Agent Romero of the FBI. He wants my opinion on a cheating case he’s handling. Tell Romero I won’t charge him, provided he lets us see Scalzo’s file.”

“A horse trade?”

“Exactly. If Romero agrees, you’ll need to look at his cheating case, and see what you think. If you can’t figure out what’s going on, send me an e-mail, and I’ll have a crack at it.”

Mabel felt the color in her face change. A few weeks ago, she’d spotted a woman using her coffee cup to filch chips inside a casino. There was a piece of adhesive on the bottom of her cup, allowing her to steal chips from other players while casually chatting with them. Ever since the bust, Tony had been letting her look at cases.

“Do you have any idea what Special Agent Romero’s case is about?” she asked.

“Craps cheating in the basement of a guy’s house. The guy’s attorney claims he had the table there for fun. Romero believes the guy is cheating people, only the victims are too embarrassed to testify, and Romero doesn’t have any solid evidence. He said the craps table’s position in the basement bothered him, and asked me to study some pictures.”

“And by looking at some pictures, you’ll know how this guy was cheating at dice?”

Her boss laughed. “I already think I do.”

Mabel felt the tingle of excitement that came whenever Tony challenged her. Her boss was saying the mystery could be solved by looking at how the craps table was positioned in the basement. Those were all the clues she needed.

“Talk to you later,” she said.

If there was anything about police work that Mabel enjoyed, it was the sense of immediacy the work demanded. It wasn’t like the real world, where people promised to get back to you, and never did. Law enforcement people understood the importance of time when solving a case. Like grains of sand slipping through an hourglass, every minute meant something.

She found Special Agent Romero’s overnight envelope within a stack of mail on Tony’s desk. The envelope contained a typed letter, and a manila file folder stuffed with crime scene photographs. She read the letter first, and learned the suspect had also been transporting illegal gambling equipment across state lines, which was against federal law and probably why the FBI had gotten involved. Romero also mentioned finding a great deal of money in the house, several hundred thousand dollars.

Finishing the letter, she opened the file folder, and stared at the eight-by-ten glossy on top. The suspect’s basement was decorated like a nightclub, and she immediately found herself disliking the suspect’s defense attorney. Any dimwit could see that his client had pumped a small fortune into turning his basement into a gambling den.

She focused her attention on the craps table in the photograph. It was shaped like a tub, and positioned in the rear of the room, backed up to the wall. The basement was good-sized, and there was no reason the craps table should be in such tight quarters. She flipped through several other photographs. The table was definitely in a strange spot.

Tony had taught her a thing or two about craps cheating. When the house cheated, it was with crooked dice, called bust outs. Bust outs were either shaved dice, which rolled more unfavorable combinations than normal, or loaded dice, which had mercury loads hidden in the numbers, and were controlled by electromagnets in the table. Shaved dice beat the unsuspecting players gradually; loaded dice took their money right away.

She closed the folder and leaned back in her chair. The last time she’d spoken to Tony, he’d explained why casinos on cruise ships were more susceptible to losses because their hours were limited. She guessed the same time restraints applied to casinos that cheated. The fewer hours you were open, the more blatant the cheating had to be. If the cheating wasn’t blatant, you still might lose money. Which led to her next conclusion. The casino in his basement was using loaded dice.

She found herself smiling. Tony was fond of saying that the toughest scams often had the simplest solutions. She picked up the photograph, and instantly understood why the craps table had been positioned near the wall. It was the only way the loaded dice would work.

She picked up Romero’s letter, and looked to see if it had an e-mail address. It didn’t, but Romero had included his phone number. Mabel decided to call it, and leave a message. She punched the number in, and was surprised when a person answered her call.

“Hello,” a man said.

“I’m sorry,” Mabel said. “I was calling to leave a message.”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Mabel Struck and I’m with Grift Sense. Are you the cleaning man?”

“This is Special Agent Romero of the FBI,” the voice said curtly.

Mabel brought her hand up to her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize the FBI worked so late.”

“We do when it’s an emergency,” Romero said. “I hope you’re calling about the case I wrote to your boss about.”

“Why yes, I am.”

“Good, because a judge is going to let our suspect walk if we can’t come up with any evidence, and six months of work will go down the drain.”

“The FBI spent six months investigating a man running a casino in his basement?”

“He runs two dozen of these operations around the country,” Romero said. “His net worth is in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars a year.”

“You’re saying this man’s a public menace.”

“That’s a polite term for him.”

“I think I can help you,” Mabel said. “Do you have any agents near the suspect’s house?”

“There are a team of agents there right now,” Romero said. “They’re combing the basement for clues we may have missed. We had the craps table taken out, and examined by our forensics lab. The table was absolutely clean.”

“That doesn’t mean a magnet wasn’t in play,” Mabel said.

“It doesn’t?”

“No. Would your agents by chance have a mallet handy?”

“You mean to break down a door?”

“A wall, actually. They’ll need something with a little heft.”

“They have a battering ram in the trunk of their car,” Romero said. “It’s standard equipment. I’d like to put you on speakerphone with Special Agent Darling who’s in charge at the house. I want him to hear this directly from you.”

“Certainly.”

Romero put her on hold. Mabel took the top glossy off the stack, and stared at it once again. The electromagnet used to control the loaded dice was hidden behind the wall the craps table had been so auspiciously shoved up against. Somewhere in the room was a switch that activated the magnet. With a simple flip, the dice could be made to roll losers. That was how the suspect was making twenty million dollars a year.

Romero came back on the line, and introduced Special Agent Darling. Holding the glossy up to her face, Mabel told Darling which wall in the basement needed to be knocked down.