Valentine went and had a look. Screen six offered an aerial of a craps table. It was easy to spot the offending party: Her stack of chips dwarfed everyone else's. Someone at the console hit a toggle switch and the camera zoomed in on her. She was eighty if she was a day, and her hands were shaking with arthritis. Valentine could not imagine her palming a chip and secretly adding it to her bet after the dice had been thrown. What was Wily thinking?
'Clean as a whistle,' Valentine announced on his return.
'No fucking way,' Wily said over the box.
'Look, Tony's got something to tell us,' Sammy said. 'Why don't you come up?'
'I'll come up later.'
'This won't wait. And leave the old broad alone. She isn't cheating.'
'I'm tossing her anyway.'
'You're an asshole.'
'I won't deny that.'
'Bad night?' Valentine asked when Wily sauntered in ten minutes later, a butt in one hand, a glass of Johnny Walker in the other, his necktie ringing his collar like a noose.
'Rotten,' the pit boss admitted. Sipping his drink, he eyed Sammy, whose hand nursed an aching gut. 'You okay?'
'To tell you the truth, I've felt better.'
'Stomach acting up again?'
'My stomach, my head, my back,' Sammy complained. 'If it's not one thing, it's the other.'
'Maybe it's cancer,' Wily said, bursting into laughter.
Sammy looked ready to hit him. 'Is that supposed to be a joke? You're sick in the head, you know that?'
'Hey, my kid told me that joke,' Wily said defensively.
'Your kid told you that and you didn't hit her?'
'Hit my kid? Are you nuts? I could go to jail.'
'You've punched enough morons in the casino.'
'That's different,' Wily said.
'Which kid?'
'The youngest, Michelle.'
'She's twelve, right?'
'Eleven.'
'You poor bastard.'
Valentine stood mutely in the corner. During the wait, Sammy had told him about Wily's miserable home life. His kids were the casualties of his wife's first marriage and as mean as junkyard dogs. By working double shifts, Wily saw them only two weekends a month, which made the situation tolerable.
'Tony has some bad news,' Sammy announced.
Wily looked Valentine in the eye. 'You made Fontaine?'
'He sure did,' Sammy said.
Wily continued to stare at him. 'And?'
'It's Sonny Fontana,' Valentine told him.
Wily slammed his drink on the desk. Miraculously, not a single drop escaped. 'What? That's horseshit. Sonny Fontana is dead. Everyone and his brother knows that. We're paying you a thousand clams a day and you turn up a dead guy? Get serious.'
Sammy tossed Wily the DCF profile and said, 'Forget what you know. Tony made the match.'
Valentine watched the blood drain from Wily's head as his eyes absorbed what was on the page. Looking up, he said, 'Didn't some guy in Lake Tahoe crush Fontana's head in a door so hard his brains came out of his ears? That's the story I heard, and the guy who told me swore to God it was true.'
'I heard the same story,' Sammy said.
Valentine had heard the story, too, his source none other than Bill Higgins. Which was why Sonny's file had been retired.
'Then this can't be him,' Wily said.
'I don't want to have an argument about this,' Sammy said, growing annoyed. 'I knew when I heard Fontaine laugh that he was someone I'd run with. This confirms it. We got robbed by the best cheat who's ever lived. Now we gotta make sure it doesn't happen again.'
'Jesus.' Wily took another swallow of his drink, set it on the desk, and then pushed it in Sammy's direction. The head of surveillance raised the whiskey to his lips.
'Salute,' he said, downing it.
'Didn't you once run with Fontana?' Wily asked.
'A long time ago,' Sammy said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. 'Sonny's got no loyalty to me now, if that's what you're thinking.'
Wily looked to Valentine for help. 'Why us?'
That was a good question. Why would Fontana waste a good face-lift to hit a dump like the Acropolis? Fontana would know the casino would sweat a big loss and lean on him.
'I don't know,' Valentine admitted.
'You ever arrest him?' Wily wanted to know.
'No,' Valentine said.
'Tony's got a grudge against Fontana,' Sammy informed him.
'You do?' Wily said.
Valentine nodded that it was so.
'Well,' the pit boss said, 'maybe now you can settle it.'
'So who's going to tell Nick?' Wily asked a few moments later.
'You are,' Sammy said.
'Me? I think Tony should. He made him.'
Sammy shot Valentine a weary look. 'You up to that?'
Normally, Valentine would have declined; being the bearer of bad news was not in his job description. Only, Sammy looked terrible and Wily was a little drunk. 'Okay,' he said.
'I'll toss you for who gets to chauffeur,' Sammy said. He fished a worn Kennedy half-dollar from his pocket and flipped it into the air. The coin rotated lazily above their heads. Catching it, he slapped it against the back of his hand. 'Call it.'
'Heads,' Wily said.
Sammy lifted his hand. 'Tails. You lose.'
'How come I never win with you?' Wily asked.
Valentine nearly laughed. Like seventy percent of the population, Wily probably always called heads. Which was why hustlers carried around double-sided coins.
'Who knows?' Sammy said.
'Looks like Nick's entertaining,' Wily said, pulling his Buick up the driveway of his boss's palatial estate. It was nearly eleven and the manicured property was lit up like a used car lot.
'How can you tell?'
'The driveway's empty. Nick's got a staff of four. He gives them the night off whenever he brings a lady home.'
'Classy guy.'
Wily parked by the front door. Valentine got out, counting eight polished pillars supporting the marble portico. History either praised or ridiculed men who built shrines to themselves, and Nick had set himself up for a lot of abuse-not that Valentine thought the little Greek cared.
Wily rang the bell. A gong sounded dully behind the door. When no one answered, he punched the intercom button.
'Yeah?' Nick barked over the black box.
'It's Wily and Valentine,' Wily said.
'I know who it is. I'm watching you with a camera, you moron. Why aren't you home sleeping?'
