“Can't beat the weather.”
Benny made Valentine hold up his hand and compared his own against it. His skin was zombie-white, Valentine's tan and healthy.
“My wife wants to buy a condo in St. Pete. That's near you, isn't it?”
“Twenty minutes. Why don't you?”
“Because it costs money.” Inhaling deeply on his cigarette, Benny struck a defiant pose, like the world owed him something. He was lucky he'd gotten as far as he had, but didn't see it that way.
“Why were you talking to Doyle?” Valentine asked.
“That's a good question.” Benny glanced nervously at two deliverymen who'd walked up, then lowered his voice. “I know you and Doyle were buddies. Doyle and I weren't tight, but I owed him a huge favor, something I won't get into. Anyway, Doyle calls about a month ago, tells me he needs help. I say sure.
“He wanted to know if the Wild Wild West had been ripped off by a European at blackjack. I said, yeah, we had, and I told him the dates and so on. We lost fifty grand to that bastard and I lost my bonus
“No.”
“It started about a year ago.”
“Must have been after I retired,” Valentine said.
“Right,” Benny said. “Time marches on, huh?”
“It sure does.”
“Anyway, all the casinos are connected by the Internet. If a casino thinks its been cheated, it spreads the word about the suspect or situation at lightning speed, before the suspect can rip off another casino. The computers let us send pictures of suspects taken directly off the surveillance cameras, plus descriptions of what went down. It's called S.I.N.”
“Sin?” Valentine said.
“No, no, that's what people on the outside call it. Casino people call it S.I.N., stands for Secure Internal Network.”
“And Doyle didn't know about S.I.N.”
“Not until I told him,” Benny said. “When Doyle said, ‘What is sin?' it told me he
Benny tossed his dying cigarette over the loading dock, nearly beaning a worker below. He took out a fresh pack of Marlboros and fired one up. “Want one?”
Valentine started to reach for the pack, his lungs begging for another rush of nicotine. Then found the willpower to stop himself. “No thanks. Is The Bombay part of S.I.N.?”
“It sure is.”
“So they let the European play on purpose.”
“You're positive about this.”
“Tony, look, I sent up a red flag. I even made the fucking van.”
“What van?”
“The van the European was driving,” Benny said. “I caught it on a surveillance camera that watches our parking lot. It was a real piece of junk. I sent that picture out along with pictures of him.”
Valentine found himself wishing he'd taken Benny up on his offer of a cigarette. Benny glanced at his watch.
“Gotta get back to the salt mines. Been nice catching up.”
They went back inside. Standing in the stairwell, Valentine took out a business card and handed it to him. Benny stared at the card, then him, not understanding.
“You want me to be an expert witness, right?”
“What if you're back in Florida?”
“Then I'll fly up.”
“Whose nickel?”
“Mine.”
“That's awful nice of you,” Benny said, pocketing the card.
“I gave you my word,” Valentine said, “didn't I?”
He drove away from the Wild Wild West trying to sort out everything Benny had told him. The Bombay had known about Juraj, yet still let him play. He could pass that off to a lot of things, but the one that seemed most logical was revenge. Archie Tanner's employees were mad at him, and letting a known cheat play was a great way to screw the boss. But that didn't explain the missing money. Doyle had said six million bucks had been stolen, and Porter had confirmed it. If the Croatians had only stolen a million, where was the rest?
There were a lot of possibilities. Archie was one. Casino owners skimmed money off the top all the time. Another was that someone else had stolen it. And the third was, he just didn't know.
A fire truck came down the street, its siren wailing. An ambulance accompanied it, then a screaming police cruiser. All three vehicles were headed south on Atlantic Avenue, toward motel row. Punching the accelerator, he followed them.
29
Epiphany
The Mollo brothers had set Gerry's BMW on fire.
His knucklehead son had not bothered to move his car off Atlantic Avenue like his father had told him. So the Mollos had stuck a gas-soaked rag in the tank and lit a match. A fire truck was hosing the BMW down when Valentine got to the scene, the air thick with black smoke.
“No, I didn't actually see them,” his son was telling the uniform writing up the report. “We were inside, watching TV.”
“Did anyone see them?” the uniform wanted to know.
Gerry glanced at the Blue Dolphin's manager, who stood nearby, shivering without his coat. The manager looked at the ground, then off in the distance.
“No,” his son said.
“I can't help you, then,” the cop said. “Your insurance should cover this, if that's any consolation.”
“I don't have insurance,” Gerry replied.
Back inside their motel room, it was all Valentine could do to not strangle his son. Gerry was a gambler— horses, sports, cards—but when it came to intelligent gambling, like having insurance, he was out to lunch.
“They're gonna kill us,” Gerry said, sitting on the bed. He looked up at his father. “Aren't they?”
Yolanda sat beside him, stroking his hair. “No, they're not.”
Valentine sat on the bed and put his hand on Gerry's knee. “How would you two kids like to take a trip? Go away for a while, until this thing blows over?”
His son and fiancee looked up at him expectantly.
“You're serious?” his son said.
Valentine nodded. Yolanda squealed with delight and hugged his son. Gerry was not so sure, and kept looking at his father.
“On me,” Valentine reassured him.
Outside, the last of the emergency vehicles peeled away, leaving an eerie silence. For a brief moment no one spoke.
“I hear Mexico's great this time of year,” his son said.
“I had someplace else in mind,” Valentine said.
“Where's that?”
“Croatia.”
If there was one thing that impressed Valentine about living in the modern world, it was what you could do
