“A little. You know, Tony, you need to think about people besides yourself every once in a while.”
The truth be known, he
“I will,” he promised. “Scout’s honor.”
“Good. Did you watch Jacques’s film?”
“Yes. The cheater is the change man at the table. He’s using a double drop box.”
“What’s that?”
“The box has a second box hidden in one of its walls. He uses a plunger to push the money down a chute into the box. By pushing the plunger sideways, the money goes into the hidden box. It’s based on an old magic principle. Tell Jacques the man who empties the drop box is also involved in the scam.”
“He’ll be so happy,” she said.
“I know it’s late, but I need you to go on the Internet.”
“I’m in your study,” his neighbor said. “Give me a minute.”
Riding up in the elevator, he’d thought about the surveillance tape of Karl Blackhorn he’d watched earlier. Blackhorn was cheating, yet nothing on the tape looked suspicious, except for the one time he’d turned over the wrong card in his hand.
“Ready,” she said.
“Type in this address: www.blackjackedge.com.”
“Done. It says I need a password.”
“Griftsense,” he said.
“How clever. Is this a site for people who cheat at blackjack?”
Valentine acknowledged that it was. The site’s members were card-counters, mathematicians, and some of the smartest BJ hustlers in the world. “I want you to post a message for the discussion group.”
“Go ahead.”
He shut his eyes. “Dear group. I have a question regarding the change in house advantage on a two-deck game of blackjack when the following occurs. During the deal, the dealer’s cards are dealt facedown. Normally, the dealer would turn over his first card and expose it to the players at the table. Instead, the dealer turns over his second card. Does this switch alter the house advantage, assuming the players are using Basic Strategy? Thanks for your help.”
“What’s Basic Strategy?”
“It’s the best way to play blackjack without cheating. A mathematician named Thorp developed it. It shrinks the house edge.”
Mabel read the message back to him. It sounded fine, and he told her to send it, then heard a knock on the door. Putting the phone down, he crossed the room and put his eye to the peephole. Kat stood in the hallway, dressed in a leather miniskirt and a red silk blouse. Attached to the blouse was the diamond pin he’d planned to give her. His heart did a little pitter-pat.
Picking up the phone, he said, “I need to run.”
Up until Kat, he’d slept with only two women in his life, and the effect she had on him as they sat on the bed was remarkable. His heart started to race, and his eyes started to see things better than they had in years. Even his voice sounded different.
“I missed you,” she said, then explained the whole sorry episode with Ralph. When she was done, she said, “Zoe’s downstairs playing video games near the pool. I slipped a lifeguard ten bucks to keep an eye on her.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“No,” she said.
Her lips parted ever so slightly, and Valentine realized she wanted him to kiss her. Traveling with Zoe, they’d gotten good at finding moments to slip away, the sex always better on the sly. The clothes started to come off, then Valentine felt a stab of pain in his arm and pulled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I banged up my elbow the other night wrestling an alligator,” he explained.
“Jesus. Wait till I tell Donny.”
Pain, he’d learned from judo, was good at clearing a person’s head, and he took her hands and squeezed them gently. “I’m sorry about everything that happened in Orlando. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that things happen for a reason.”
“They do?” she said.
“Yeah, they do. I needed to leave you for a while and help out a friend of mine.”
“Is that why you’re here?” she said.
“Yes.”
“What about our show in Memphis next week?”
“I won’t be there.”
“This job?”
“I’ve decided to hang up the banana suit and retire the hair gel.”
“Why . . .”
“Three days ago in Orlando, I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw.”
“Which was what?”
“A sixty-two-year-old guy dressing up like a cartoon character so he could impress a woman twenty years his junior.”
Valentine heard the scraping sound of a plastic key being put into the door. Kat jumped off the bed and buttoned her blouse. Gerry came in with a greasy bag of Chinese takeout clutched to his chest. He looked at Kat, then his father, said “Whoa,” and started to back out the door. Kat said, “I was just leaving,” and brushed past him with Valentine following her down the hall with his shirt hanging out of his pants.
At the elevator she said, “And I thought we had something wonderful between us.”
A tray of food sat outside one of the rooms. The meal looked the same way he was starting to feel— devoured but not finished.
“We did,” he admitted.
“Then why are you doing this?”
“It’s Memphis or forget it,” she told him.
Then she was gone.
24
Saturday morning found Billy Tiger sitting on an upturned orange crate in Harry Smooth Stone’s cell. Smooth Stone, Tiger’s uncle on his mother’s side, sat on a metal cot, his back to the concrete wall. In the room’s muted light he looked a hundred years old, the bars’ shadows forming a checkerboard on his sunken chest.
“This isn’t good,” Smooth Stone said.
Tiger had just come from the employee lounge. Gladys Soft Wings had obtained the elders’ permission to clean out the lockers of the four dealers accused of cheating. Tiger had seen what was in the lockers, and didn’t think there was anything that could incriminate the dealers. Then again, he didn’t know how the men were cheating.
“It’s not?” he said.
“If Valentine sees what’s in the lockers, we’re screwed.”
Tiger cursed. He knew that Smooth Stone had been rigging the casino’s games for a long time. The slot machines shorted players on jackpots (“Who ever counts the coins?” Smooth Stone said), while others didn’t pay out at all, the EPROM chips that generated the machine’s random numbers having been gaffed. At bingo, when the
