Sucker Bet

“Why will you do that?”

“Nobody pays me to assign the blame.”

The head of security took a deep breath. He had no choice, and he knew it.

“All right,” he said.

They walked out the back exit and across the macadam lot. The casino was a ramshackle structure, with parts tacked on as the business had grown, and in the dark it resembled a winding snake with several meals in its belly. There was a science to the architecture of casinos, a method to the madness of the moron catchers of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. There was no science to the Micanopy casino, yet it still made money.

Running Bear’s trailer looked like something you’d find on a construction site, with tacky aluminum siding and a window air conditioner. Walking up the ramp to the front door, Valentine said, “Have you talked to Jack Lightfoot recently?”

“He vanished the day before yesterday.”

“Any idea where he went?”

They stood beneath a moth-encrusted light next to the trailer door. Smooth Stone jerked the door open. “I haven’t a clue,” he said.

The interior had the unadorned clutter of a college dorm, the furniture worn and plain. Running Bear was at his desk, looking older than Valentine remembered. The chief offered his guest a chair, then something to drink.

“A soda would be great,” Valentine said.

He watched Running Bear rummage through a mini-refrigerator and wondered what he’d gotten himself into. A lot of people were losing sleep over a lousy 840 bucks. The chief placed a soda on the desk along with a plastic cup.

“Tony has some things he wants to tell us,” Smooth Stone said.

Valentine took his time pouring his drink. Being tactful had never been a strong suit. He admired the Micanopys for making good with what they had, and didn’t see any reason to hurt anyone’s feelings.

“A long time ago,” he said, “two New York doctors named Hartshorne and May conducted a study of eleven thousand school kids. The goal was to find a way to measure the kids’ honesty. They came to a lot of interesting conclusions. There are two you should be aware of. The first was that eighty percent of the kids tried to cheat at least once. That’s a high number, but they swore by it. The second was why.

“Hartshorne and May said that whether or not kids cheat depends upon the environment you put them into. If you give kids a test, then leave them alone, most will look at another kid’s answers. Which means if you let it happen, it will happen.”

Running Bear frowned. He glanced at Smooth Stone, who leaned against the wall with his arms folded. “This making any sense to you?”

The head of security nodded. “He’s saying that we’ve created a situation in which cheaters will prosper. He thinks there are more Jack Lightfoots out there. He wants us to change some procedures.”

Running Bear stared at Valentine. “More Jack Lightfoots?”

Valentine nodded.

While the chief pondered what that meant, Valentine glanced at Smooth Stone. The head of security dipped his head. Valentine guessed he was saying thanks, and dipped his head in return.

“Okay,” Running Bear said, “how do we prevent this from happening again?”

“First,” Valentine said, “make your dealers deal out of plastic shoes. Letting them handle the cards during the deal is an invitation for trouble. Second, change the way your dealers are dressed. I realize Western garb is in keeping with your casino’s theme—”

“It’s Indian garb,” Running Bear said stiffly.

“Well, it’s all wrong,” Valentine said. “Crooked dealers will create spots on their clothing to hide stolen chips. Like behind wide cuffs and down their pants. Your dealers need to start wearing cummerbunds.”

“But they look stupid,” the chief said.

“Maybe so, but they prevent theft. You ever hear of a pants sub?” Neither man had, so he explained. “The dealer takes two pairs of underwear, puts one inside the other and sews the bottoms together. Stolen chips are dropped behind the waistband and released. They’ve got nowhere to go but the pants sub. Years ago, a gang of croupiers in Nice got caught using pants subs. They’d stolen fourteen million bucks.”

Running Bear frowned. “You getting this down, Harry?”

Smooth Stone picked up a pad and pen off the desk and started scribbling. Valentine suddenly felt warm, and tugged at his collar. There no longer seemed to be enough air in the cramped trailer. Then he realized what was happening.

He was having an epiphany.

He’d been having epiphanies most of his life. Long ago, he had accepted that a part of his brain worked on its own, filtering information. And what this part was telling him was that Jack Lightfoot was dead, and Running Bear and Smooth Stone knew it. If not, they would have been out in the Everglades with bloodhounds searching for him. That was the smart thing to do. In fact, it was the only thing to do.

A man was missing. Find him.

Only, they weren’t looking. Instead, they were concentrating on trying to figure out how Lightfoot had cheated them. They knew Jack Lightfoot was dead, but were they his murderers?

“So what you are saying,” Running Bear said, “is that it’s a miracle we haven’t had more cheating before now.”

Valentine blinked awake. Lois had told him he looked like a zombie when he had these episodes. Then he’d hit sixty, and people had stopped commenting about them.

“That’s right,” he said.

Running Bear opened his desk drawer and removed a videotape. Scotch-taped to it was a check. The chief’s long arm reached across the desk. “This is the surveillance video of Jack Lightfoot cheating us. We need to know what he was doing, so we can prevent it from happening again.”

Valentine slipped the video under his arm. He planned to overnight the video to Bill Higgins first thing tomorrow. Running Bear and Smooth Stone were either murderers or accomplices to murder, and he wanted nothing to do with them. Standing, he felt a bead of sweat roll down his face. He hoped the men did not see it.

“Call you in a few days,” he said.

6

The first thing Valentine did after he got into his Honda was to tear up Running Bear’s check. He was a man of principles. Principle No. 1 said that he didn’t work for crooks. It meant turning away business, as certain casinos all over the world routinely swindled their customers. Mabel didn’t agree, and felt he should take the money and give it to charity, but Valentine stuck to his guns and felt a hell of a lot better for it.

A gibbous moon gave his car a purple sheen, and he found himself thinking about Donny and his purple suit. Donny wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was always entertaining, and Valentine realized how much he missed the big lunk. Then he thought about Vixen and her vegetarian cooking. No meat, no bones, yet most of it had tasted pretty good. Then he thought about Zoe and her barrage of annoying pubescent questions. One day, they would stop, he was sure of it.

And finally, he thought about Kat.

He’d planned to take her out to dinner tonight and give her the diamond pin while telling her how much she meant to him. He wasn’t good at expressing himself, so he’d composed a little speech and memorized it. Sitting there in the dark, the words came back to him. I go to bed at night thinking about you. You make me happy every day. I hope I do the same for you. You’ve made me look past who I am and try new things.

He gripped the wheel and stared across the parking lot. The wrestling had been fun, until Kat’s ex-husband