Loaded Dice

He ate his dinner while sitting on the balcony. He’d left his cell phone on, and now the battery was running down. Every time it beeped, he thought it was his son calling. He stared down at the thousands of people milling on the sidewalks. Gerry was down there; he could feel it in his bones.

He finished his dinner, then went into the suite and popped the tape into the VCR. Going into the kitchen, he grabbed a Diet Coke from the mini fridge and drained half the bottle. He’d read somewhere that artificial sweetener was bad for you, and he imagined that after he died, a doctor was going to cut him open and discover that every artery in his body was clogged with the stuff.

Then he sat a foot away from the giant-screen TV and stared at Lucy Price.

The pang of recognition he’d felt on the balcony that morning returned. Like being stabbed with a beautiful memory. The tape was black and white, and showed Lucy and two men sitting at a table playing blackjack. Lucy was winning, and the look on her face was pure joy.

He took another swig of soda. Caffeine had a way of making him think clearly, and he watched the cards fly around the table. Lucy acted like she’d never played before, consulting a laminated Basic Strategy card each time she needed to make a decision. Valentine found himself smiling. She really was a beginner.

Basic Strategy for blackjack had been developed by a mathematician named Ed Thorp. It was the optimal way to play every hand, based upon the dealer’s “up” card. Lucy would stare intently at the dealer’s “up” card, then consult her Basic Strategy card.

It was comical to watch. Every time Lucy had to make a decision, the game came to a screeching halt. Casinos let players use Basic Strategy cards because the house still held a minimum 1.5 percent edge. It was enough to beat the daylights out of anyone.

Except Lucy.

After ten minutes, her pile of chips had grown by several thousand dollars. Only Lucy wasn’t on a hot streak. She was just winning a few more hands than normal. Since she was betting five hundred dollars a hand, her winnings were adding up. Just a few hands was making a big difference.

What the hell, he thought.

Fifty minutes later, Lucy was up five grand.

Wily had said that Lucy had won a total of twenty-five grand, which meant she’d beaten them for five hours straight. Valentine found himself shaking his head. Somehow Lucy had changed the game’s odds to be in her favor, and she was cleaning them out.

He killed the power on the VCR. Then he went onto the balcony and stared down on the neon city. The Strip had kicked into high gear, and he tried to guess how many people were down there. Five thousand? Ten? It was like trying to guess the number of ants in an anthill. Inside, he heard someone knocking on his door.

He crossed the suite and stuck his eye to the peephole. Wily stood outside, an empty cocktail glass in his hand. He looked three sheets to the wind.

Valentine hated drunks. His father had been one, and slapped him around when he was a kid. Then he’d grown up and paid his father back. In people who drank he saw weakness, and little else.

He let Wily in and offered him a chair. The head of security reeked of scotch, and he tried to keep the contempt out of his voice.

“What’s up?”

“Look at the tape yet?” Wily asked, smothering a belch.

“Yeah. I’m surprised you let her play so long.”

“You think she’s cheating?”

Valentine thought back to the tape and chose his words carefully. “It’s definitely not on the square. She always wins the big hands. Did you notice that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Whenever Lucy Price doubled down, she won. Whenever she split pairs, she won. That’s why she beat you silly. She won the important hands.”

A pained expression crossed Wily’s face. “You tell Nick that?”

“I haven’t told Nick anything. My guess is, you saw her reading the Basic Strategy card and pegged her a sucker. When she won a few grand, you credited it to beginner’s luck. When she got way up, you figured she was on a hot streak and would eventually fall back to earth. Am I right?”

Wily stared into his glass. He seemed surprised that it was empty.

“You should have been a mind reader,” he said.

Valentine found himself feeling sorry for him. Bad losses often cost security heads their jobs. He said, “Forty-nine out of fifty pit bosses would have done the same thing you did, and let Lucy Price continue to play.”

Wily brightened. “Is that what you’re going to tell Nick?”

“Yes. Tell me something. Did you interrogate the dealers who worked Lucy’s table during her streak?”

“I did better than that,” Wily said. “I had them polygraphed.”

“And?”

“They came out clean.”

Valentine leaned back and stared at the drunken head of security. Novice blackjack players did not win twenty-five grand placing five-hundred-dollar bets. The odds just weren’t there for it to happen. He hated to be stumped, and this had him stumped.

“I need to talk to this woman,” he said.

Wily gave him a scornful look. “How you going to do that?”

Valentine thought about the little dance on the balcony that morning. He couldn’t deny the magnetism he’d felt when he’d held her in his arms. But that wasn’t going to stop him from figuring out what she was doing. If Lucy was cheating, he would make her pay.

“Easy,” he said. “I’ll call her.”

He had no trouble getting Lucy’s phone number. She was a slot queen, and played in slot tournaments held by the large casinos. That meant her name, address, phone number, and preferences were stored in their databases. Calling around, he’d gotten a casino he did work for to give him Lucy’s number. It had been easy.

She had three numbers: work, home, and cell. He nestled the cordless phone into the crook of his neck and debated which to call. There was a chance she was in a local hospital under psychiatric observation, but more than likely she’d been released and was home. Las Vegas was bad that way. It had the highest suicide rate in the country, yet the treatment that everyone subscribed to was to ignore the problem.

He decided to call her house. An answering machine picked up, her voice bright and cheery. “Well, hi there. You caught me at a bad time. Wait for the beep, and don’t forget to leave your number. Bye.”

The beep came a few seconds later. Clearing his throat, he said, “This is Tony Valentine calling for Lucy Price. We met this morning at the Acropolis. I was hoping—”

His words were interrupted by a piercing sound.

“This is Lucy Price,” a woman’s voice said.

“Hello,” he said stiffly.

“Do you believe in kismet, Mister Valentine?”

“It’s Tony. No, not really.”

“I do. I’m sitting in front of my computer, staring at your Web site.”

He didn’t know what to say. Putting up a Web site had been Mabel’s idea. Good for business, she’d assured him, and cheap. Only it made him uncomfortable as hell when he was on the phone with someone and she told him she was staring at his Web site. Trying to trip me up? he wanted to ask.

“So what do you think of my Web site?” he asked when they met for breakfast at ten o’clock the next morning.

“The graphics are cool. And the articles you wrote about casino cheating for Gambling Times were interesting, too,” she said. “I never realized that there was so much cheating going on.”

He was finding it hard to take his eyes off her. He’d woken up mad as hell that he hadn’t heard from Gerry. But those feelings had disappeared when he’d set eyes on Lucy. She was a symphony in blue—a powder-blue pantsuit, a blue bow in her hair, and light blue eyeliner. Had the Web site mentioned blue was his favorite color? If not for the dark circles beneath her eyes, he would have found her beautiful.