4
Valentine ate lunch, then called Smooth Stone and took the job. Smooth Stone sounded relieved. He explained to Valentine how a blackjack dealer named Jack Lightfoot had rigged a game and dealt a player eighty- four winning hands in a row. Smooth Stone wasn’t above admitting that he had no idea what had gone down.
“What was he trying to do, get into the
“It was damn stupid,” Smooth Stone said.
“How much did he take you for?”
“Eight hundred and forty dollars. We have a ten-dollar limit on blackjack.”
“You have problems with this Lightfoot character before?”
“No, but he’s new.”
Valentine found none of this surprising. Indian hustlers had been popping up all over the country. Because Indian casinos were not regulated by government agencies, many of these dealers were exceedingly bold. Valentine had heard plenty of stories, but dealing eighty-four winning hands was a record. The Micanopys needed to address it before another dealer “in the know” tried to rip them off again. He got instructions to the reservation, then set a time to meet Smooth Stone. They agreed on seven that night.
Taking his suitcase to his car, Valentine remembered something. Florida law limited the Micanopys to running Class II games, like bingo and slot machines. Table games like blackjack were forbidden, which meant the Micanopys were breaking the law.
Again.
Eight weeks earlier, Florida’s baby-faced governor had sent shotgun-toting federal agents onto the Micanopy reservation with orders to remove a hundred video poker machines. While not a table game, video poker fell into a gray area in terms of classification.
Eventually, the Micanopys won out, and the federal agents left. Like every other Indian tribe, the Micanopys were a sovereign nation. The governor had violated that sovereignty, and Valentine guessed that had spurred the Micanopys to put in blackjack tables, just to rub his face in it.
He went to Mabel’s house to say good-bye. When she wasn’t working for him, his neighbor wrote inspired classifieds for the local papers. He found her composing on her front porch and pulled up a chair. She handed him her notepad.
“It’s going to run in the Help Wanted section,” she said.
Taking out his bifocals, Valentine read the meticulously printed page.
“Whose fax number?”
“The police department’s,” she said. “I figured I’m doing them a favor.”
“Mabel, you can’t do that.”
“This town is filled with sleaze, Tony. Strip joints, lap dances, massage parlors, hookers trolling on Alternate 19, warming their cans in every hotel bar. It’s disgusting.”
“You still can’t print the police department’s fax number.”
“Spoilsport.”
“By the way, I took the job with the Micanopys.”
She hesitated. “I guess you didn’t hear from Kat.”
“No.”
Together, they walked down her front path. If his situation had one silver lining, it was that Mabel had shown little resentment toward his romance with Kat. She’d stuck by him, and now that his head had started to clear, he realized how difficult it must have been for her to watch him behave so foolishly. He kissed his neighbor on the cheek, then walked back to his house and climbed into his Honda.
He crossed the Sunshine Skyway forty minutes later, the ocean shimmering like a sea of brand-new coins. Interstate 275 took him to 75, and he headed south and put his foot to the floor. If there was one thing he liked about the folks on Florida’s west coast, it was the speed at which they drove, and he did eighty for the next hundred miles.
In Fort Myers he got off and filled the tank. Buying a bottled water, he got behind the wheel and powered up his cell phone. A blinking light indicated the phone’s battery was nearly dead. He considered cell phones one of the greatest intrusions in recent memory, and he thought how wonderful it would be to toss it out the window. A great idea, only it wasn’t practical. In the casino business, the store never closed. If he wanted his consulting to stay alive, he needed to be able to retrieve messages. He plugged the phone’s jack into his cigarette lighter, and the tiny green light came on.
A half hour later, he was sitting in line at a toll booth, waiting to get on Alligator Alley. The Alley bisected the lower half of the Everglades and was one of the last pristine roads in Florida. No strip centers or rows of ugly tract houses; just one rest stop and a gas station for eighty miles. Paying the toll, he slipped a collection of Sinatra’s greatest hits into his tape deck and turned on the cruise control.
Singing a duet with Old Blue Eyes, he spotted a tour bus parked on the grassy shoulder and pulled over.
A group of Asians was huddled up to a chain-link fence. He got out and joined them. Down in the swamp, an alligator covered in duckweed was sunning itself. He’d read that Florida was one of the few places in North America where dinosaurs had flourished, and he guessed that alligators were the leftovers.
A tourist said something. Valentine turned, thinking the man wanted him to snap a picture. The man pointed at his car. His cell phone was ringing. Getting in, Valentine looked at the phone’s face. It was Bill Higgins, the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
“Hey, Bill,” he said.
“Did you get my message?”
“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t call you back, but I’ve been in a bad way.”
“That’s what the lady who answers your phone said. Feeling any better?”
“A little,” Valentine admitted.
“Remember those roulette cheats you helped me bust? They were convicted this morning. They got three years, counting the time they’ve already done. And they have to give the money back.”
“Nice going.”
“Couldn’t have done it without you.”
It had been one of Valentine’s better busts. The cheaters, all Venice Beach bodybuilders, had come up with a unique scam. By pressing on the railing of the table on which the roulette wheel sat, they had used their combined strength to bend the table and cause the wheel to become biased. The bodybuilders’ girlfriends had then bet a particular group of numbers, called a chevron, and taken the casino for a ride during several visits. Higgins had been unable to make the scam, and had flown Valentine in. He had nailed them by discreetly placing a carpenter’s level on the table just as they had started to do their thing.
“I need your help,” Higgins said.
“Something wrong?”
“There sure is,” his friend said.
Valentine drove to a rest stop and parked his car. Inside, he purchased a soda from a vending machine. Sitting on a picnic bench in the shade, he called Higgins back.
“I’m in a real bind,” Higgins said. “A blackjack dealer I recommended for a job at the Micanopy Indian reservation casino has disappeared. I’ve known this kid a long time, and I’m worried about him.”
“And you’d like me to pop down there and see what I can do,” Valentine said.
“I sure would.”
“What’s his name?”
