desk. It was empty; he went into the casino looking for someone who wasn't sleepwalking.
The casino was empty except for an old lady with liver-spotted forearms as big as two-by-fours pumping the slots. Desperate, he ducked into the alcove that housed One-Armed Billy and grabbed Joe Smith by the arm.
'Come here,' Valentine said, pulling Joe toward the front door as the medics loaded the corpse into a waiting ambulance. 'I want you to be a witness to something.'
'I'm not supposed to leave my post,' Joe said without conviction, eager for something to do. 'What's up?'
'I want you to look at this guy.'
'What guy?'
'This dead guy.'
Outside, Valentine stopped the medics and drew the sheet back. Joe put his giant hand on the dead guy's chest and felt for a heartbeat.
'He's mighty cold,' Joe said, crossing himself.
'Does he appear to be breathing?' Valentine asked.
The dead guy broke wind, cracking up the medics. Holding a smile, Joe said, 'No, sir.'
'Any signs of life?'
'Not that I can see.'
'So you'd agree that he's dead?'
Joe shook his head in the negative.
'What is that supposed to mean?'
'Man's not dead,' Joe muttered.
The medics slapped their sides and laughed some more. Thinking the whole world crazy, Valentine ran back inside, hoping Roxanne was in the back room doing the books, only to hear the ambulance turn on its siren and peel out. Joe came inside, and Valentine followed him into the alcove.
'You just broke the law, you know that,' Valentine said, steaming.
'Law's different here,' Joe said, sitting on his stool.
'Care to fill me in?'
'Nobody dies in the Acropolis,' Joe replied.
'Excuse me?'
'Nick's rule.'
'Well, it didn't work with that guy. He was as dead as roadkill.'
Joe flashed a toothy grin. 'Yes, he was. But it don't get reported until they reach the hospital.'
'You're saying that Nick pays the coroner's office to say that every stiff that gets wheeled out of here still has a pulse.'
'You catch on fast.'
'Any other rules of King Nick that I should be aware of?'
Joe rubbed his chin, his pose reminiscent of a great thinker. 'Well, there's the rule about me and this chair. I'm supposed to keep my butt glued to it.'
'All the time?'
'Uh-huh. Ain't supposed to leave Billy.'
'You mean what I just did could have gotten you fired?'
'Yes, sir. Nick's afraid of getting ripped off.'
'Doesn't want to make that twenty-six million payoff unless he has to, huh?'
'You got that.'
'Mind if I examine your bride?'
'Be my guest.'
One-Armed Billy was made of cast iron and had six reels and a single pay line-line up the cherries and win the jackpot. It was an antique, its popularity probably the only thing keeping it from the scrap heap. Today's slots were computer driven, with microprocessors controlling the reels and sophisticated silicon chips to deter tampering. Slots like Billy were easily ripped off, but Valentine didn't think Nick had anything to worry about. By law, all gaming areas in a casino had to be under the watchful eye of a surveillance camera. Slots came under the heaviest scrutiny, and Billy's alcove had two ceiling-mounted pan/tilt/zoom cameras, commonly called PTZs.
'Why's Nick so paranoid?' Valentine asked.
Joe shrugged his broad shoulders. 'Beats me. I just do what I'm told, you know?'
'Sure. I'd better run.'
'Don't go turning up any more dead guys.'
'I'll try not to,' Valentine promised.
'I figured you'd be back in Florida counting your money,' Sammy Mann said from behind a gauzy white curtain.
Valentine stood in an otherwise empty hospital room, a plastic bag from the gift shop dangling between his hands. Shadows played on the curtain's hot fabric, and he watched a nurse stick a needle in Sammy's arm.
'Ouch,' Sammy yelped. 'Take it easy, will you, honey?' To Valentine, he said, 'So how's the joint holding up without me?'
'Nick's got Wily running security.'
Sammy emitted a deathly groan, its timbre sending a shiver down Valentine's spine. He whisked away the curtain to see the nurse frantically shaking her patient. Sammy looked like he'd just checked out and the poor nurse looked ready to join him. Valentine caught the nurse's eye, then grabbed the black onyx ring on Sammy's third finger and tugged. Sammy's eyes snapped open.
'That's not funny,' the patient said.
'You know what they say. You can't take it with you.'
The nurse got out of their hair. Valentine tossed the gift-shop bag onto Sammy's chest and pulled up a chair. Sammy was in traction, his left leg dangling from a Rube Goldberg contraption hanging from the ceiling. He wore a loose-fitting cotton gown that exposed the tired, ropy flesh of his neck and spindly arms. On the night table sat the TV remote, a buzzer for the nurse, water, and a stack of crossword puzzle books. Sammy beamed as two decks of Bees, one red, the other blue, fell from the bag.
'You remembered,' he mumbled.
'I figured you still practiced,' Valentine said.
'Every day.'
Tearing away the plastic, Sammy removed the red deck from its cardboard box. Tossing away the junk cards and jokers, he began to expertly riffle-shuffle and cut the cards on the sheet, which lay flat across his stomach, the pasteboards moving with such unerring precision that even to Valentine's trained eye there did not appear to be a hint of subterfuge. Squaring the deck, Sammy turned the cards face up and ribbon-spread them in a wide arc. Not a single card was out of the deck's original order.
Valentine let out a whistle. Back in the fifties, a New Jersey certified public accountant named Herb Zarrow had devised a revolutionary way to false-shuffle a deck, the mechanics perfectly miming a real mix. Sammy's rendition was pure poetry, and Valentine guessed he had a game on the side he was working; probably a bunch of old geezers he squeezed for pocket change.
'I need your help,' Valentine said.
'You still on the case?'
'Nick's got me on a new assignment. He wants me to find Nola.'
'Has Cupid's bow struck again?'
'Afraid so.'
'I think Nola's dead,' Sammy said.
'I don't,' Valentine replied. 'But I'd like to hear your theory.'
Gathering the cards, Sammy spoke as if he'd already given the matter serious thought. 'I think Nola went to Mexico with some cockamamie notion that she could rip off Nick and pay him back for humiliating her. Sonny played along until he realized she was the perfect patsy.'
'Learned how to read her and sent her home?'
'Exactly. There's no law against reading a dealer. He's done nothing illegal, and neither has she.'
