He plunged a fork into his egg and watched the yolk burst. He had suggested breakfast, having remembered an advice column in a newspaper saying that it was a neutral meal. Lucy had agreed, and now they were sitting in the recently opened breakfast shop at Caesars Palace. She poured skim milk over a bowl of granola, then raised a spoon to her lips.
“How much is Nick paying you to check up on me?” she asked.
He blinked. Her voice hadn’t changed, but her eyes had.
“Nothing. I’m doing it as a favor.” Her eyes were burning a hole into his face, but she was still eating. He bit into his toast and said, “It’s an interesting case. You believe Nick robbed you, and Nick thinks you cheated him. Nick’s a square guy—I’ll vouch for his honesty. So that would mean you’re a cheater. Only I watched a surveillance tape of you playing blackjack, and I don’t think you are. Which means both of you are wrong.”
Lucy’s spoon hit her bowl with a
“Someone else is involved. What’s the expression? Playing both sides for the middle? I think that’s what is going on here.”
“Which makes me a dopey dame who got suckered and didn’t see it coming,” she said, standing and throwing her napkin into her bowl. “Thanks a lot, Tony.”
Embarrassed, he stood up. Only his pants didn’t come with him. He grabbed them by the waist and tugged. She smirked inconsiderately.
“Airline lost my luggage,” he said stupidly.
“So buy yourself another pair. It’s called shopping. Ask your wife.”
His mouth went dry. “Who told you I was married?”
“Your Web site has your name, and your son’s.”
“My wife died of a heart attack two years ago.” He saw something in her face change. A chink in the armor. He said, “She used to buy my clothes, pick out the colors. I don’t think I own anything that she didn’t buy me.”
“Except those pants,” Lucy said. “You an odd size?” He nodded and she said, “So was my ex. Look, Tony, I don’t know where this conversation is headed, but all I really care about is getting my twenty-five thousand dollars back. If you can’t help me, then shove off.”
Her voice had turned harsh. This was Lucy the gambler, and he didn’t like it.
“That’s pretty inconsiderate,” he said.
“Just because you talked me off that balcony doesn’t mean I owe you anything.”
“I wasn’t helping Nick when I met you,” he replied.
She had to think about what that meant. His breakfast was getting cold, and he sat back down, picked up his fork, and resumed eating. To his surprise, so did she.
The best thing about getting old was you appreciated how precious time was. They decided to start over. Lucy went first.
She’d grown up in Cincinnati. At seventeen, she drove to Las Vegas with her belongings tied to her car, became a dental hygienist, got hitched, had two kids, got divorced, and lost custody to her ex. She’d played slot machines for relaxation. She called her current financial situation “a setback.”
Then it was his turn. His life was no movie—he’d been a doting husband, a good cop, and a so-so father, according to his son—and she stopped him when he’d said he was retired. “I know this is none of my business, but how old are you?”
“Sixty-three.”
“I would have guessed fifty-three. I’m fifty-two.”
He saw her smiling. It was starting to feel like a date, and he decided to put the conversation back on track. “After my wife died, I started consulting. Back when I was a cop in Atlantic City, I had this knack for catching cheaters. I could pick one off the floor, even if I didn’t know what he was doing. Hustlers call it grift sense.”
“How can you spot a cheater, if you don’t know what he’s doing?”
“Cheaters are actors. They know the outcome, so they have to fake their emotions. That’s the hardest part of the scam.”
“You can tell the difference between a realie and a phony?”
“That’s right.”
“So what am I?”
“A realie,” he said.
He saw her smile again, and motioned to the waitress for their check.
They left the coffee shop. Of all the joints in Vegas, he had a soft spot for Caesars. There was live entertainment everywhere you looked, plus beautiful statues, Olympian wall art, and a staff that made visitors feel special.
They stopped at the Forum Shops. A sign for the TALKING ROMAN GOD SHOW said the next performance was in ten minutes. He’d seen the show before. Animatronic statues of Roman gods narrated a wacky story to the accompaniment of lasers and booming sound effects. It was brainless, yet lots of fun.
They found an empty bench. Lucy sat sideways, her knee almost touching his. It was hard to believe she was the same woman he’d met yesterday. She’d bounced back quickly from the edge of despair.
“How can you tell I’m a realie?”
“I don’t think Sharon Stone could fake the emotion I saw on the tape of you winning at blackjack,” he replied.
For some reason, this made her laugh. “Okay. If you could tell by the tape that I’m not a cheater, then why did you want to talk to me?”
She was grinning like a cat, and he wondered if she was trying to trap him into admitting there was an ulterior motive in him inviting her to breakfast. There wasn’t, so he answered her honestly.
“Because there are two things bothering me.”
Her smile faded. “Oh. What are they?”
“The first is the simple fact that you started with ten thousand dollars, and you ended up with twenty-five thousand of the casino’s money.”
“So? Aren’t people allowed to win sometimes?”
“They are, but not like that.”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated. Lucy was a gambler. Most gamblers thought they understood the games. They did, when it came to the rules and strategy. But few understood the math, especially when it came to winning and losing. In that department, just about everyone who gambled was a sucker. He stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
He bought stationery in the gift shop. When he returned to the bench, a guy with a bad dye job and lots of gold chains was putting the moves on Lucy. Seeing him approach, the guy shrugged and left. Valentine sat down and tore the plastic off the paper.
“All right,” Lucy said, “show me why I’m not supposed to win.”
He drew a chart on a piece of paper. It was the same chart he used when he gave talks at Gamblers Anonymous. Finished, he turned the paper upside down. Her eyes locked onto the page.
She lifted her eyes from the page. “Is this for real?”
“Afraid so,” he said.
“But how can the casino’s edge increase? Doesn’t it always stay the same?”
“For each hand, yes.”
“So the edge doesn’t change.”
“No, but it eats into your bankroll. The edge gives the casino one-point-four cents of every bet you make. You
