Longo looked ready to erupt. 'Shut up, Sammy!'
Had it been Valentine's interrogation, he would have dragged Sammy into the hallway and throttled him. The ex-hustler had just ripped the heart out of the state's case. Because Nick had no recollection of his affair with Nola, whatever Nola said about the relationship had to stick.
'Whatever Sherry Solomon told you is not to be discussed,' Longo said, his cheeks burning. 'I don't want you bringing her up again, okay?'
'Sherry Solomon is a lesbian,' Nola told the room. 'We slept together once, and she's been trying to get me in the sack ever since.'
'You slept with Sherry Solomon?' Longo asked incredulously.
'That's right. A few weeks after I broke up with Nick.'
'Christ Almighty,' Bill Higgins said under his breath.
Valentine glanced at the room's two-way mirror, wondering if Nick and Wily understood what had just happened. Sherry Solomon had slept with too many of the players to be considered a credible witness. The state's case had just flown out the window. Only Nola and her attorney didn't know it.
Longo was sweating. To Nola, he said, 'You said you found Sonny. How?'
Nola stared gloomily at the floor. 'Last February, Wily gave the dealers the Griffin Book. He told us to memorize the faces of the known blackjack hustlers so we wouldn't get cheated. One day I was looking through it and saw Sonny's picture. It brought back a lot of memories. I still had our marriage papers with Sonny's Social Security number on it, so I hired one of those services to track him down. Eventually they found him in Mexico, living in this walled estate inside a country club.'
'And you contacted him?' Longo said.
'I sent him a postcard with my e-mail address,' she explained. 'He e-mailed me a letter; I wrote him back. That went on for a while. I think he wanted to make sure it was really me and not someone else.'
'Were people after him?'
Nola smiled tiredly. 'People have always been chasing Sonny. Anyway, he finally called and we talked for a few hours. It was great. Sonny was always so… I don't know… so easy to be around. Not much to look at, but a real charmer. I hung up feeling like Cinderella at the ball.
'The next day, a FedEx package arrives. One first-class ticket to Mexico City and a dozen roses. I called in sick and took off. I figured, what did I have to lose?'
Nola took a deep breath, suddenly looking about as pissed off as a woman could look. 'Looking back, I guess you could say Sonny set me up. He lived in a swanky estate with more security than the Pentagon. We ate and drank and fucked and hung around the pool and played cards all day long.'
'How is that a setup?' Longo wanted to know.
'We always played for money, and it was always competitive. When Sonny and I were kids, we flipped baseball cards and tossed nickels every day. It was just like old times. We must have played five or six hours a day for the whole week.'
'And?' Longo said, not seeing the significance.
Nola shot a weary glance at Sammy. All the talking was wearing her out. 'You explain it to him,' she said.
'Fontana was looking for tells,' Sammy told the detective. 'Little tics in Nola's personality that would tip him off to the cards she was holding. Until now, it's only been used in poker.'
'So Fontana taught himself to read you,' Longo said.
'Right,' Nola said. 'By the end of the trip, I couldn't beat him at anything. It was amazing.'
'Okay. What happened after you left Mexico?'
'Nothing,' Nola said. 'He put me on a plane and I didn't hear from him. A month later, I overheard Wily saying that some gorilla had beaten Sonny to death in Reno. I went home, had a good cry, and got on with my life.'
'That's it?' Longo asked.
'That's it,' she said.
At two o'clock, they took a break. The basement was a warren of small rooms, and Valentine got lost looking for the john. Stacks of cardboard boxes stood outside the offices, making each doorway identical. Finally, a sympathetic secretary showed him the way.
It was Higgins who took over the questioning when everyone reappeared in the interrogation room ten minutes later.
'Let's jump to Wednesday night,' he began. 'Frank Fontaine sits down at your blackjack table and takes you to the cleaners. You practically couldn't win a hand. He comes back the next night and does the same thing. Didn't you see a connection?'
'No,' Nola said adamantly.
'Come on, Nola,' Higgins said, leaning on the table, getting in her face. 'You're a professional dealer. How many times has a player done this to you?'
'Hey,' she protested, 'it happens.'
'What are you saying?' Higgins said, the edge creeping into his voice. 'You thought this was luck?'
'A blind pig gets an acorn every once in a while.'
'Not like this,' Higgins said forcefully. 'Twenty grand the first day, thirty the second. You must have suspected something.'
'You think I knew it was him? Look at the photos of Fontaine,' she said, a fresh cigarette glowing angrily in her mouth. 'Fontaine's chin's chiseled and his hair's thicker than Sonny's. Even his voice was different. I didn't realize it was Sonny until Mr. Underman told me.'
Higgins frowned. 'Why didn't you tell the police about Sonny before? It's against the law for a dealer to have a relationship with a hustler. You know that, don't you?'
'The law does not require my client to make her relationship with Sonny Fontana known,' Underman said, speaking for the first time.
'What are you talking about?' Higgins said.
'Nola is still technically married to Sonny and has a certificate to prove it,' the defense attorney said. 'By law, spouses are immune from having to implicate their partners.'
'You think that applies here?'
'Well, because they were married before Nola went to work at the Acropolis, yes, I do.'
'Look,' Nola declared, her nostrils flaring angrily. 'I loved the guy, okay? But I didn't know it was him. The only reason I got arrested is because Sammy let Sonny fly out the door.'
Sammy Mann erupted. 'That's a lie!'
'Keep your mouth shut,' Higgins told the head of security. To Nola, he said, 'You're saying the casino is using you as a scapegoat.'
She blew a monster cloud of smoke across the room. 'You're goddamned right I am.'
'You spent a week with him,' Sammy said accusingly, ignoring Higgins's command.
'So?' Nola shot back.
'You were in from the start,' Sammy said. 'You broke the law, and you know it.'
Nola cast an evil eye at Sammy, then the others. When no one corrected him, she jammed her cigarette into the tin ashtray, fighting to control herself. 'Which law is that? The one for being naive? Or maybe there's one for letting your heart be broken by every sweet-talking guy you meet. Yeah, I broke both of those laws. Go ahead, put me in jail and throw away the key. I deserve to be punished.'
'So who you picking?' Wily asked, slurping a Mountain Dew while staring at Nola through the two-way mirror.
'Holyfield,' Nick replied, eating a bag of stale pretzels.
'They're giving two-to-one odds over at the Golden Nugget.'
'They're morons,' Nick snapped.
'You read the paper?' Wily asked. 'Guy who writes sports for the Sun, Joe Taylor, says the Animal is in the best shape of his life. Running five miles a day, knocking out his sparring partners. Joe Taylor says-'
Nick turned around in his seat and cuffed Wily in the head.
'Holyfield! You hear what I'm saying? Holyfield!'
