had shown up. Seeing Ralph and Kat and Zoe together, he’d been reminded of what his own previous life had been like, and how much he still missed it.
He powered up his cell phone and called Mabel.
“You still down in the dumps?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I’ll get over it. Anything going on?”
“Our old pal Jacques called earlier.”
“What did he want?”
“He searched his employees’ lockers like you suggested. Well, you’re not going to believe this, but—”
Valentine felt something heavy bump his car. The parking lot backed up onto a swamp, and he was the only living soul out here. “Let me call you back,” he said.
He hung up, then heard the noise again, a sharp rustling sound like sandpaper rubbing against a blackboard. A sudden flickering movement caught his eye. Turning his headlights on, he saw an alligator lying beside his car, its tail whacking his door.
“For the love of Christ.”
He beeped his horn, and a second gator appeared. It was a monster, and his stomach churned as he saw the bleeding hunk of raw meat between its jaws. He watched the two reptiles fight over dinner.
He thought about starting the car and driving over them, then decided against it. They were just stupid beasts, doing what God created them to do. If he waited a few minutes, they’d probably return to the swamp.
It wasn’t unusual for him to get threatened while on a job. Casino personnel stole from their employers at a rate far higher than the national average. When he was called in, the thieves sometimes tried to scare him off. Usually it came in the form of threatening phone calls or a broken windshield. Once, someone had taken a shot at him. But no one had ever used alligators. That was new.
His eyes drifted to the floor of the passenger side of his car. Something was lying there, and he flicked on the interior light. It looked like a steak. Taking out his pocket handkerchief, he picked it up.
It was an inch-thick porterhouse, the meat starting to go bad. He started to toss it out the window when the Honda’s folding backseat came down with a loud
He heard himself yell, then looked to see if he still had his fingers. All there. The alligator munched on the steak while staring menacingly at him with its giant green eye.
Valentine jammed his elbow into the gator’s face, and an electrifying jolt of pain shot through his arm. The gator shook its head, acting more pissed off than hurt. And he thought,
Except one. With a strength he didn’t know he possessed, he pulled himself through his open window and climbed onto the roof of his car. He’d seen Charles Bronson do this in a movie once and hadn’t thought it was possible. He crawled to the roof’s center and saw the gator in his car stick its head out the driver’s window, looking for him. The other gators circled the car, trapping him.
Valentine lifted his head. Multiple surveillance cameras were perched atop the casino, and he felt certain that whoever was on duty in the casino’s surveillance control room had seen him and called for help.
He stared down at the gators, his heart racing out of control. Were they agile enough to climb onto the car? He didn’t think so, but didn’t want to be surprised, either. He waved at one of the rooftop cameras.
“Hurry!” he yelled.
7
It had started out as a friendly game of poker, the hands being played for quarters and laugh rights. Then Rico had broken out the booze, and after everyone had a few belts the game had turned serious. With each hand the pots had grown, and now over four thousand dollars in chips was sitting on the table.
“I’m going to shoot the pickle,” Rico announced.
The other four men at the table fell silent. To Rico’s left sat Barney Swing, a retired New York mobster with kidney stones; next to Barney, another retired hood named Joey Clams; next to him, the ultrasmooth card mechanic Rico had hired from Las Vegas named Sporty. Next to Sporty, in the hot seat, sat Nigel Moon. He’d been knocking back Johnnie Walker straight, and his accent no longer had a nice ring to it.
“Shoot the pickle?” Moon declared loudly. “What in bloody hell does that mean?”
“It means Rico’s going to shoot his wad,” Sporty explained, having intervened several times when Moon’s bad manners had threatened to ruin the evening.
“That’s phallic, isn’t it,” Moon said. “You Americans are filled with the strangest bloody expressions. And all center around sex. All right, Rico, you have everyone’s permission—shoot the pickle.”
Rico pushed his chips into the center of the table. Rico had spent weeks planning this night, getting the right guys, hiring Sporty to work his magic, and the hardest part, teaching Candy how to talk Moon into playing cards with “some old friends of mine” without making it look as suspicious as hell. She’d done her job, and Moon had come to the Eden Roc Hotel on Miami Beach without a fuss.
Moon called his raise, then turned over his hand. He had a full house, kings over eights.
Rico did his best double take.
“You win,” he told the rude Englishman.
Moon raked the pot in. “What you got?”
“Does it matter?”
“To me it does,” he said drunkenly.
Rico revealed his hand. He had the straight that Sporty had dealt him off the bottom of the deck. Moon’s hand had also come off the bottom. Hustlers called it dealing a plank, and Sporty was the best in the business. An unassuming guy, except for his hands. They were as delicate as butterfly wings, and just as quick.
“Shoot the pickle, my ass,” Moon said.
Had it been anyone else, Rico would have shot him.
“I say we take a break,” Sporty suggested.
The others agreed and rose from the table.
They went onto the balcony and stared at the glittering lights on the cruise ships anchored off Miami Beach. Down below, girls in string bikinis and muscular boys were playing volleyball under the lights. Rico could remember when no one would have been caught dead in this crummy town. Then the clubs in South Beach had sprung up, and overnight it had become Party Central, with nose candy in every bar and enough gorgeous women to have a heart attack over. He’d come down for a weekend and never left.
He went inside and refreshed everyone’s drinks. Moon’s he made extra stiff, everyone else’s water with a splash of vodka, in case Moon got a whiff. Victor Marks, his mentor, had tipped this little trick. Rico had liked it, but then he’d liked everything Victor had taught him. He served his guests.
Barney Swing offered a toast. “Well, boys, here’s to not working.”
The others said, “Hear, hear,” and lifted their glasses. Barney was smiling. He was the only player besides Moon to win any money. Glancing at his watch, Barney said, “I’m flying to Newark tomorrow to see my new granddaughter.” He stared directly at Moon. “What do you say we play one more hand, head-to-head?”
Out of anyone else’s mouth, the line would have died. But Barney knew how to act. Moon agreed, and they went inside.
Moon and Barney took opposing seats at the card table. Barney picked up the deck and gave it a shuffle. His hands betrayed his advancing years, and cards flew around the table.
“Let me do that,” Sporty said. He was sitting to Barney’s left. He picked up the scattered cards, squared them, then shuffled.
Standing against the wall, Rico saw what really happened. Sporty had secretly taken another deck out of his jacket and placed it in his lap. This deck was in a prearranged order, what hustlers called a cooler. In the act of shuffling the cards, Sporty tossed them into his lap, then brought the cooler into view.
Moon saw none of it.
