Текст книги "Deadman’s Poker"

Автор книги: James Swain

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

16

The sucker was waiting for Rufus in one of the tournament side rooms. He was in his mid-twenties, wore his shirt out to hide his round stomach, and had yellow spiked hair. He was extremely loud, and jabbered away like he’d already won the bet. With him were a pair of tanned guys sporting expensive clothes and nice haircuts. Valentine guessed these were the hairy legs backing the sucker’s play.

Hairy legs were a big part of gambling. They were the money men, and often had more capital than common sense. In Valentine’s opinion, they were a major reason why high-stakes poker had exploded around the country. Most had gotten their wealth from the stock market or the high-tech boom, and frittered it away backing egotistical movie projects and professional poker players.

Introductions were made, with Rufus telling the sucker and his backers that Valentine was “an ex-police detective from the fair state of New Jersey who I asked to be here to keep things honest.” The sucker eyed Valentine skeptically, as did the hairy legs.

Valentine nodded politely to them.

“I want to establish some rules before we start,” the sucker said.

“By all means,” Rufus replied.

“First of all, we get to provide the sugar cubes. We’ll put them on the table, then you get to pick which cube you think the fly will land on.”

“How many sugar cubes do you want to put on the table?” Rufus asked.

“Ten,” the sucker said.

“That’s a lot.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it makes it harder. Let’s make the bet twenty thousand,” Rufus said.

The sucker’s mouth dropped down, as did his backers’ mouths.

“You want to bet twenty thousand dollars instead of ten thousand?” the sucker said.

“That’s right,” Rufus replied. “If you put ten sugar cubes on the table, it will be harder for me to persuade the fly to land on a particular one. I’m willing to take the gamble, provided we bet twenty thousand dollars on the outcome. I think that’s fair, don’t you?”

One of the hairy legs let out a laugh. “Sure, why not?”

“There’s one other stipulation,” the sucker said. “We get to provide the fly.”

Rufus tilted his Stetson back like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Excuse me, son, but I figured we’d use one of the flies that was buzzing around the place. It’s never too hard to find a fly inside a casino, you know.”

The sucker shook his head. It was obvious he’d thought this out, and decided that Rufus was somehow going to provide a trained fly to win the wager. They were standing beside a round table with a tablecloth draped over it, and the sucker reached beneath the table, and triumphantly came up with a glass mayonnaise jar. The jar had the lid on, into which were poked several airholes. Buzzing around inside the jar was a large house fly.

“We’ll use this one,” the sucker said.

Rufus extended his hand, and the sucker handed him the jar. The old cowboy stared at the buzzing fly, then held the jar up to the light, and stared some more. After some thoughtful consideration, he handed the jar back to the sucker.

“You’re on,” Rufus said.

Rufus explained to the sucker that he was going to have to hypnotize the fly, and would need at least five minutes in order to do so. The sucker agreed, and placed the mayonnaise jar on the center of the table. Rufus sat down at the table, and stared into the jar while the fly flew around making an angry buzzing sound.

Valentine removed Gloria Curtis’s business card from his wallet and retreated to the corner of the room. He flipped open his cell phone and punched in her number. She answered on the second ring, and sounded like she was in a restaurant.

“I’ve got a neat human interest story for you,” he said.

“That was fast,” she said.

“Come to the first side room next to where the tournament is being played. And bring a cameraman with you.”

“I’m in the restaurant across the lobby, having lunch with my cameraman,” she said. “We’ll be right over.”

Gloria and her cameraman appeared sixty seconds later. Valentine cornered them, and got them out of earshot of the sucker and his backers. Standing in the corner of the room, he explained Rufus’s bet and the sucker’s stipulations, then explained how Rufus was hypnotizing the fly to do his bidding. Gloria looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Excuse me, but you think this is suitable for TV?” she said, sounding more than a little put out. “For Christ’s sake, Tony, we don’t put crazy people on.”

“He’s crazy like a fox,” Valentine said. “Rufus will win, trust me.”

“But how?”

“I have no idea, but he will.”

Gloria pointed at the sucker standing on the other side of the room. “That’s Benjamin Gannon. He’s a graduate of MIT, and a bona fide mathematical genius. I’m sure he’s looked at every angle there is with this bet, and knows he can’t lose. Rufus Steele is going to look like a fool. I’m not going to televise that.”

She was really annoyed, and her cameraman seemed to mirror her feelings. He was a young guy, and wore a gold earring in each ear like a pirate. Valentine guessed they had never heard the Damon Runyon tale about the gambler betting the farmer that he had a deck of cards where the jack of spades would spit cider in your ear, and the farmer taking the bet, and proceeding to get an earful of cider. He made them both sit down, and explained what was going on.

“Rufus is pulling the hook, line, and sinker. Rufus met Gannon during the first day of the tournament. My guess is, there was a fly buzzing around, and Rufus made some offhand remark about flies being able to be trained. That’s the hook. Then, Rufus wondered whether flies really could be trained. He tells Gannon he might have found a way. He knows Gannon is a genius, and will think he’s crazy. That’s the line, and Gannon bit on it. Now Rufus is performing the sinker. He’s gotten Gannon’s backers to double the bet, and if any more suckers come into the room, he’ll get them to make wagers as well. That’s how the game is played, and Rufus is a master at it.”

“But you’re leaving the most crucial part out,” Gloria said. “How does Rufus make the fly land on the sugar cube?”

Rufus had risen from his chair, and was looking around the room for him. The fly was still buzzing around the mayo jar, looking no more hypnotized than when Rufus started staring at him. Valentine saw a smile crease the old cowboy’s lips.

“I think we’re about to find out,” Valentine said.

“Okay cowboys and cowgirls, I’m ready,” Rufus declared.

By now there were fifty-plus people in the room. Gloria got them to bunch up behind Rufus, which made the group look much bigger. She stuck her microphone into Rufus’s face, and tried to get him to say a few words.

“Sorry, ma’am, but this takes a lot of concentration,” he said.

The sucker tore open a box of sugar cubes. He removed ten, and laid them across the table in a line. Rufus took a plastic coffee stirrer from his shirt pocket. It had been resting there all along, and Valentine had not paid any attention to it. Rufus said, “Okay, now here’s the deal. Everyone has to be clear on which sugar cube you want the fly to land on before the fly is released from the jar. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” the sucker replied.

“Good. Now, which one do you want? And you can’t change your mind, and confuse things. Whichever cube you pick, that’s the one the fly lands on. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Then let’s go. Which cube do you want, son?”

“Third from the left,” the sucker said.

“Your left, or my left?”

“My left.”

Rufus brought the tip of the coffee stirrer directly above the sugar cube that was third from the sucker’s left. “You mean this one, son?”

“That one,” the sucker said.

Gloria stood between them, moving her microphone back and forth as they spoke. She was cool under pressure, and reminded Valentine of a referee at a boxing match. You knew they were there, yet paid no attention to them. Rufus put the stirrer back into his shirt pocket. Then he picked up the mayo jar from the table. Staring into it, he said, “Third from his left, pardner.”

He handed the mayo jar to the sucker.

“You open it, son. Good luck.”

The sucker carefully unscrewed the jar, and allowed the inmate to escape. The fly flew around their heads like an angry kamikaze, causing several gamblers to duck. The fly flew straight up, and did several circles above their heads. Finally, its wings lost their steam, and it descended upon the table, where it landed upon the sugar cube third from the sucker’s left. Gloria was filming the table when it happened, and got a shot for the ages. The sucker’s mouth dropped open and his pink tongue fell out. One earful of cider, coming right up!

Valentine was watching Rufus, and saw the old cowboy wearily shake his head. All the talking had plumb worn him out, and he sat back down at the table, threw his cowboy boots onto a chair, and tilted back his Stetson.

“I win,” he declared.

17

The fly remained on the sugar cube for half a minute, oblivious to the gamblers gawking at it, or the TV camera, or the pulsating sounds of the casino filtering in every time someone opened the door. It was just a fly, small and harmless, yet for those thirty seconds, it was the most important thing in the room. Finally it flew away, and Gannon’s backers paid up and the gamblers drifted off and everything returned to normal.

“Rufus, would you mind doing a wrap-up interview?” Gloria asked.

“My pleasure,” Rufus said, getting to his feet and straightening his string tie. Gloria stuck the microphone up to his face, and he flashed his best smile.

“This is Gloria Curtis, talking with world-famous poker player Rufus Steele, who just hypnotized a fly into landing on a sugar cube. Rufus, that was quite a performance. What are you going to do with the money you won?”

Rufus was a good foot taller than Gloria, and the microphone hung a few inches below his chin. He paused, then said, “Challenge that boy who beat me.”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“I’m going to challenge that boy who beat me two days ago,” Rufus declared.

“Skip DeMarco?”

“Yes. I’d like to play him again, heads-up, winner-take-all.”

“This is the same man who you accused of cheating in the tournament,” Gloria said. “Now, you’re saying you’d like to play him again.”

Rufus glanced briefly at Valentine, who was standing behind the cameraman, then back at Gloria. “I’ll let the authorities decide whether anything inappropriate happened on Thursday. In the meantime, I’d like to play that boy again, see if he really knows anything about cards. My guess is, he doesn’t.”

“You do realize that DeMarco is currently the chip leader in the World Poker Showdown, and has won over a half-million dollars in just two days,” Gloria said.

“Not to be impolite, but that doesn’t mean much,” Rufus said.

“Would you care to explain to our viewers?”

“This is a tournament, and you play for these little plastic coins called chips. I’m talking about playing for cold hard cash, the way we play down in Texas.”

“Do you think that would give you an advantage?”

“Ma’am, that young man would be like a missionary with a bunch of hungry cannibals. I’d eat him alive.”

Gloria knew an ending when she heard it, and faced the camera. “This is Gloria Curtis, reporting from the World Poker Showdown in Las Vegas. Back to you.”

“I owe you a steak and an ice-cold beer,” Gloria said a few minutes later. “That was really wonderful.”

The room had emptied, leaving Gloria and Valentine and the empty mayonnaise jar. Gloria’s cameraman stood off to the side, breaking down his equipment.

“I’ll take you up on the steak,” Valentine said.

“You don’t drink?”

He shook his head. She looked surprised, like all cops were supposed to drink.

“My father was a drunk. I swore off the stuff before it ever touched my lips.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to settle for a steak. Maybe over dinner I can bribe you into telling me how Rufus pulled that little stunt.”

Valentine was not about to tell Gloria that he didn’t have the slightest idea. She went to speak with her cameraman, giving him the opportunity to pick up the ten sugar cubes on the table. Most animals were attracted to sugar’s sweet smell, and he wondered why the fly hadn’t hopped around from cube to cube, instead of landing on the cube third from the left. He remembered his office manager once predicting where a fly would land on a table, and had the sneaking suspicion that the scam was older than he was. He went over to where Gloria stood with her cameraman.

“Would you do me a favor?” he asked.

“Name it,” she said.

“Would you consider interviewing DeMarco, and informing him of Rufus’s challenge? I’d like to see his expression when you break the news to him.”

Her eyes sparked. “Think you’ll see something in his face?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

“What do gamblers call those?”

“Tells.”

“Ooh,” she said. “This is fun. If DeMarco really is a cheater, you think he’ll cringe at the idea of playing Rufus again.”

“I sure do.”

“Will that help your investigation?”

“Let’s just say it will put me one step closer to the truth.”

“Ooh,” she said. “I love it.”

They went into the lobby, and found DeMarco standing outside the card room being interviewed by a Japanese TV crew. He was a shade under six feet, and looked like he worked out, his shoulders tapering down to a thin waist. He held a long metal cane in his hand, and was wearing thick dark glasses. Valentine had seen plenty of blind people in casinos—most liked to play the slot machines—and he’d seen people pretend to be blind as cover for a scam. DeMarco’s body language said he was the real thing.

DeMarco’s handlers stood behind him. One was big and looked like a bodyguard, the other an old man carrying a canvas bag. The old man was dressed in black, and had silver hair slicked back on both sides and lizard eyes. He was the epitome of an old-time gangster, and Valentine guessed this was George “the Tuna” Scalzo.

“Someone’s done a marketing makeover on DeMarco,” Gloria said under her breath. “New haircut, new wardrobe. Very smart.”

“Think he’s being groomed?”

“Sure looks that way.” To her cameraman she said, “Zack, ready to rock?”

“Uh-huh,” Zack said, hoisting the camera onto his shoulder.

DeMarco was wrapping up his interview as they approached him. Hearing them, he turned his head and offered the thinnest of smiles.

“Gloria Curtis, WSPN Sports Television,” Gloria said, sticking the microphone in his face. “Congratulations on being the tournament money leader the second day in a row.”

“Nice perfume,” he said.

“Do you still feel confidant that you’ll win the tournament?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“There are over two thousand players left in the field.”

“And they’re all chasing me,” he said.

“Rufus Steele, an old-timer who accused you of cheating the other day, has issued a challenge. Are you aware of it?”

DeMarco froze, the bluster leaving his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and then he squared his shoulders and shrugged it off. A nice recovery, Valentine thought.

“Rufus is challenging me?” he said.

“Yes,” Gloria said. “He wants to play you heads up for cash.”

“If I played every person I beat in this tournament, I’d never leave,” he said. “No thanks. I’ve got more important things to do.”

“Would you play him after the tournament was over?”

“You mean, after I win the tournament?” he said.

“Very well. After you win the tournament.”

“Sure, I’d play him. A million bucks, heads up. Neither of us leaves the table until the other guy has all the money.”

Gloria turned to the camera. “And there you have it. A pair of gamblers, one old, the other young, ready to lock horns and play poker for two million dollars, cash. It doesn’t get any better than that. Back to you.”

“That was great,” Zack said, lowering his camera.

“We done?” DeMarco asked.

“Yes,” Gloria said. “Thank you.”

DeMarco lowered his cane and walked away. He was either blind as a bat, or up for serious Academy Award consideration for Best Actor. He entered one of the casino’s noisy bars with his handlers behind him. Valentine felt a hand on his arm, and turned to find Gloria standing beside him.

“Did you ever think of being a producer?” she asked.

“No, should I?”

“Yes. You’re filled with good ideas.”

Gloria needed to review and edit the film before Zack sent it to the network. Still holding Valentine’s sleeve, she said, “How about dinner tonight? The hotel has a steak house. I’ll buy you a New York Strip, and you can explain how the sugar trick works.”

“You’ve got a deal,” he said.

“Eight o’clock at Bogart’s,” she said. “I’ll make the reservations.”

He watched her walk away. Then he crossed the casino, and found a bank of phone booths. He entered one, shut the door, and pulled out his cell. Mabel, his office manager, was coming home from her cruise today. He wanted to say hi, hear how it had gone, and find out how the damn sugar trick worked. He finished punching in her number when the white courtesy phone in the booth rang. Out of curiosity, he answered it.

“Tony, this is Bill Higgins,” the caller said.

Valentine nearly dropped his cell phone on the floor. “How did you find me?”

“I’m in the Celebrity surveillance control room, watching the casino floor on the monitors,” Bill said. “I saw you enter the phone booth, and called you.”

Valentine stared at the domed ornamental light in the ceiling of the booth. If there was a hidden camera in the light, he couldn’t see it.

“I know this is going to sound strange,” Bill went on, “but I was just watching you in the bar.”

“But I wasn’t in the bar,” Valentine said.

“Well, I saw you in the bar, drinking a beer. Then on another camera, I saw you duck into the phone booth. And I asked myself, how can he be in two places at once?”

It took a moment for what Bill was saying to register. His son was in the bar. Bill had never met Gerry, which explained the confusion. “This guy in the bar who looks like me,” Valentine said. “Is he sitting with three Italian guys?”

“Yeah,” Bill said. “They’re at a table in the corner.”

“Does one of them look like a boxer who went too many rounds?”

“Right again.”

Valentine was still burned that Gerry had lied to him, and come to Las Vegas on the sly. A little payback was in order so he said, “I want you to backroom them.”

“On what grounds?”

“The guy in the bar is my son. He needs to be humbled.”

“Got it,” Bill said.

Backrooming was a casino’s way of dealing with undesirable people. The person or persons would be led by security to a windowless room, where they were read the riot act by someone who worked for the casino. It was about as much fun as getting arrested, and a perfect reality check for his son.

“You coming upstairs?” Bill asked.

“Of course I’m coming upstairs,” Valentine said, opening his cell phone. “But first I’d like to make a phone call, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sorry,” his friend said.

18

Mabel Struck had returned from her cruise ready to go back to work. It wasn’t that cruising wasn’t fun—seven days in the Caribbean was most people’s idea of a dream vacation—and she’d enjoyed the food and nonstop activities. But after a couple of days it had become predictable, and by the week’s end she’d been downright bored. Going away on vacation had convinced her that she had the best job in the world, and she’d come home eager to get back to it.

She unlocked the front door to Tony’s house and punched the code into the security system, then took off her shoes and walked to Tony’s office in the back. Tony had gotten her in the habit of taking her shoes off, and the house was usually so quiet she could hear a pin drop. Better to hear yourself think, her boss had explained.

She found a note from Tony Scotch-taped to the computer. Gerry and Yolanda were in San Juan, while Tony was in Las Vegas investigating a poker tournament. Her boss had left a stack of letters on the desk that needed to be addressed, plus a few dozen unopened e-mail messages. He ended by telling Mabel he hoped she’d had a good time, and hadn’t gotten too sunburned.

Mabel found herself smiling. That was the thing she liked about Tony. He always cared about the personal things. As she started to go through the letters, she glanced at the clock in the shape of a roulette wheel on the desk. It was three P.M. Right about now, the square dancing lessons would be starting on the ship, and the midafternoon tea. It was fine if you liked prepackaged fun, only Mabel had decided that there was only so much of that kind of thing she could take. The nitty-gritty of the real world was more to her liking, and she was happy to be home.

The phone rang as she was scrolling through Tony’s e-mails. Normally the afternoons were quiet around the office, no doubt because most casinos were quiet in the afternoon as well, and she answered the phone with a cheerful, “Grift Sense.”

“Are you a shopping service for crooks?” a familiar voice said.

“Only if they have a sense of humor,” she replied.

“Sign me up,” Tony said. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”

The fun part about working for Tony was that he never took the job too seriously. As he was fond of saying, no one had ever cried when a casino lost money.

“Yours too. How is sunny Lost Wages?”

“Hasn’t changed a bit. I read in the paper that they’d built a brand-new elementary school within five hundred feet of a brothel, so they’re going to have to move it.”

“The brothel?”

“No, the elementary school. Can’t keep those girls out of work. So, how was your cruise? Did the unlimited buffet live up to your expectations?”

“The food was incredible,” she said. “But there was one thing which happened on board that bothered me.”

“Let me guess. You had to beat off all the eligible men who wanted to dance with you.”

Mabel felt herself blush. Her late husband had been fond of calling her beautiful, but that was her husband. Hearing Tony say she was attractive made her wonder if there was something to it. “No, it was in the ship’s casino. They shut it down one night, right when everyone was winning. When they reopened the next night, they’d lowered the limits on the table games to twenty-five dollars. Do you know why they did that?”

“I sure do,” he said. “If I tell you, will you answer a question for me?”

“What is it?”

“How do you get a fly to land on a sugar cube?”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, Tony, my great-grandmother taught me that trick. Don’t tell me someone pulled it on you?”

“Actually, he pulled it on a roomful of guys, and won twenty thousand bucks in the process. It kind of had me baffled.”

“He’s a fly whisperer.”

“A what?”

“Just kidding,” Mabel said. “You go first, then I’ll explain.”

“Here’s the deal,” Valentine said. “Cruise ship casinos have a problem. They’re only open at night. As a result, they only have a limited amount of time to win money. Most casino games grind you down. A player’s chances of winning are much greater in a casino the less amount of time they stay there.”

“Really?” Mabel said.

“Yes. You lose in a casino, but only gradually. That’s what keeps you playing. However, in the first few hours, you also have the best chance of winning some money, because you have your entire bankroll. Make sense?”

“Yes,” Mabel said. “The cruise ship casinos are only open during the evening, and are susceptible to more losses than a casino that stays open longer.”

“That’s right. Because of this situation, some cruise ship casinos have been known to cheat their customers. They short the decks in blackjack and don’t pay jackpots on slot machines. Since they operate in international waters, there isn’t much the authorities can do about them.”

“Is that why they call them ‘cruises to nowhere’?”

“No, but it should be.”

“Do you think the ship I was on was cheating?”

“No,” Valentine said. “They closed down early because they were getting beaten. That’s standard procedure. When the casino starts losing money, management stops the hemorrhaging.”

“That hardly seems fair,” Mabel said.

“Casinos don’t gamble. Your turn.”

Knowing a con or scam that Tony didn’t know was rare, and Mabel could not help but savor the moment. Excusing herself, she went to the kitchen and poured herself an iced tea, then returned to the study and sat down in Tony’s big comfortable chair. Only after she’d taken a gulp of her drink did she pick the phone back up.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” he said.

“To the max. You’re so hard to pull the wool over, I consider it a special occasion.”

“It’s really something stupid, isn’t it?”

“Simple, but not stupid. Let’s use your famous Logical Backward Progression, and analyze what happened,” she said. “Explain to me what you saw.”

“A sucker put ten sugar cubes on the table, and picked one. Rufus waved a coffee stirrer over it. A fly was let out of a mayonnaise jar, and it flew around, then landed on the sugar cube the sucker picked.”

“What didn’t the fly do?”

“You’ve lost me,” he said.

“The fly didn’t land on the other nine cubes,” she said. “Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because those cubes have no smell. Flies are attracted by smell. Sugar in its pure form doesn’t have an odor. But, if you add moisture to sugar, it will release a powerful odor. That’s what attracted the fly to the cube.”

“So Rufus used the stirrer to drop moisture onto the cube.”

“Yes,” Mabel said. “It doesn’t have to be very much for the fly to smell it.”

“Well, I guess you learn something new every day,” he said. “ I’ve got to run. Gerry is being held in the back room of a casino, and I need to have a talk with him.”

“I thought Gerry was in San Juan with Yolanda,” Mabel said.

“He came out here on the sly. I’m about to go read the riot act to him.”

“What should I tell Yolanda if she calls?” Mabel asked.

There was a long pause on the line.

“Tell her Gerry’s doing a job with me,” Valentine said.

Mabel smiled into the receiver. No matter what Gerry’s transgressions might be, Tony always stuck up for his son. It was Tony’s biggest flaw, and a constant reminder to Mabel that no matter how much Tony fought with Gerry, he placed parenthood above all else.

“I will,” she said.