They went inside. Mabel had been bringing him meals since Lois had died, nothing fancy, always hot and good. He set two places at the kitchen table, then fixed a pot of coffee while she stuck the container of scrambled eggs, sausage, and home fries in the microwave. The phone rang and he answered it.
“Go to hell,” he said, then hung up.
“Tony, that’s rude,” Mabel said.
“It was a salesman.”
“Salesperson.”
“This one was a guy.”
“You’re being obtuse.”
“I’m sick of the intrusions. I don’t want to change my long-distance carrier, get my carpets cleaned, or buy penny stocks. If I’m abusive long enough, they’ll go away.”
Mabel doled out the steaming food. Valentine sprinkled everything with Tabasco sauce and dug in. He was big on sauces, and guessed it came from years of eating crummy diner food.
“You going to tell me about it?” Mabel asked when they were done.
“What’s that?”
“What happened between you and Kat. I may be losing my vision, but I’m not
He cleaned his plate with a biscuit while giving her the
Mabel reached across the table and touched his wrist. “Did you call her?”
“I left a message on her cell phone and at her hotel.”
“She didn’t call back?”
“No.”
“What about the diamond pin you bought for her at Avant Gold?”
“What about it?”
“Did you give it to her?”
“I threw it out of the window of my car.”
“Oh, Tony . . .”
“Zoe picked it up.”
“Do you think she gave it to her mother?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Get on with my life, I suppose.”
They heard a car pull up the driveway, and Mabel went to the front door. She returned with a thick Federal Express envelope. “It’s from Jacques. You remember. He sent the five-thousand-dollar check. Luminous readers.”
“Right. The jerk from South Africa.”
“Tony, that’s no way to talk about a client.”
“You’re right. Open up the envelope. Maybe there’s more money.”
She did, and to both their surprise, there was. Another check, this one for two grand, his usual fee. Inside the envelope was a leather pouch filled with casino dice and a note. Mabel read aloud. “Dear Tony Valentine. I realize you are a busy man, but I need your help again. We have arrested the gambler for marking the cards, and he gave a full confession. He was once an employee, and has offered to turn in another employee, who he claims is stealing more money than he was.
“The gambler says the scam is happening at our craps tables, but won’t say who is involved. Last week, we lost five hundred thousand dollars at craps, so the gambler may be telling the truth. I have sent several dice, in the hopes you will examine them. Sincerely, Jacques Dugay.” Mabel looked up. “Wow, a half-million bucks.”
“Wow is right.”
“You think he got ripped off?”
“You bet. What a dope.”
Mabel waved the check in front of his face. “A dope with money.”
He heard it in her voice.
“Okay,” he said.
In early 1981, a pewter canister had been found by scavengers in the muddy banks of the Thames near London Bridge. Instead of coins or jewelry, the canister had contained twenty-four ornate dice dating back five hundred years. Close examination of the dice had revealed that eighteen were loaded with quicksilver, while the remaining six were misspotted, and marked only with three numbers on each die.
During the same year, a team of archaeologists on a dig in Pompeii had found similar gaffed dice, only their heritage was several thousand years earlier.
Valentine had heard about both discoveries and hadn’t been terribly surprised. While there were hundreds of different ways to cheat at cards, there were only three surefire ways to cheat at dice: loading them, misspotting them, or shaving them.
Sitting at his desk, he used a micrometer to measure the dice Jacques had sent him. Each was a perfect one-inch square. Had one of the sides been short—even by as little as fifteen one-hundredths of an inch—the die would have favored certain combinations and destroyed the house edge.
Then he checked each with a calibrator. In the old days, dice were dropped in a glass of water to see if they were loaded. The calibrator was a little more scientific. He spun each die on its axis. To his surprise, they were clean.
He rolled them across his desk. The fact that they were normal didn’t mean that crooked dice weren’t being used. The cheater, or cheaters, might be switching crooked dice in and out of the game, without anyone being the wiser.
“So call him up,” Mabel said when he returned to the kitchen.
He sat at the kitchen table. “I don’t want to.”
She split the last of the coffee between two mugs and sat down.
“But he’s desperate.”
“They usually are when they’re losing money.”
“Tony . . .”
He sipped his coffee. “The guy’s such a jerk.”
“How do you know him?”
“He ran one of Trump’s joints in Atlantic City for about sixty minutes. Everybody hated his guts.”
“Would you like me to call him?”
Mabel was great at finding solutions. It would be fun to let Jacques think that he didn’t rate an audience with the boss. “Sure,” he said.
Jacques’s phone number was in the letter. Mabel dialed it and awoke him from a deep sleep. She stuck her hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s cursing in French.”
“Tell him French wine tastes like urine and hang up.”
She waved him off. To Jacques she said, “We just received your Federal Express package. Tony examined the dice—”
“Zee dice,” Valentine corrected.
“—and found nothing wrong with them. He believes the cheater must have switched out the crooked dice for clean ones.” Mabel listened for a minute, then stuck her hand over the mouthpiece. “Jacques says that the casino searches its employees before their shift starts and after it’s over. That way, the dealers can’t bring crooked dice in or take them out.”
“Ask Jacques where the craps dealers go on their break.”
She asked. “To the employee lounge.”
