“Is Mister Valentine going to call—”
“Do your cheaters sit beside each other when they play?”
“Why yes, they do,” Beamer said. He sounded like someone who’d had acting lessons, his voice animated. “How did you know that?”
“It’s common among cheaters. Now, does one of your cheaters always drop out of the game, and the other wins?”
Beamer gave it some thought. “No. Sometimes they both stay in.”
Mabel smiled. That ruled out playing Top Hand, which was the signaling between players of who had the strongest hand, with the weaker dropping out. “Next question. Have you seen either player spill a drink on his cards, and replace them with a new deck?”
Another pause. “Not that I can recall. Let me guess. The new deck is stacked so they’ll win.”
“Yes. It’s called a Cold Deck,” she said, reading from the book. “The cards are usually false-shuffled when they’re introduced into the game.”
“I would have noticed that,” Beamer said. “I’m a card player myself.”
“Last question. Have you noticed the cheaters comparing hands after they’ve both dropped out?”
Beamer didn’t hesitate this time. “Yes. They do that a lot. They’ll drop out of a hand and then compare the cards they had. I thought it was harmless.”
“They’re memorizing them,” Mabel said, having flipped to the section on Locating. “The next round, the cards are passed to one of the cheaters. He shuffles but doesn’t disturb the memorized cards. On the last shuffle, he adds twenty cards to the bottom, then offers them to his partner to be cut.
“His partner cuts at the memorized stack and brings the cards to the top. The cheater then deals. He plays a game like Seven Card Stud, where the first two rounds are dealt facedown.”
“The hole cards,” Beamer said.
“That’s right. By looking at their own hole cards, the cheaters work backward in their memorized stack and know the other players’ cards.”
“That’s it!” he exclaimed.
“It is?” Mabel said.
“That’s
“Call me Mabel,” she said.
“You nailed it Mabel,” he said. “Much obliged.”
The line went dead, and Mabel placed the receiver in its cradle. She picked up the Liar’s Club check and gave it a kiss, then remembered that Yolanda was waiting for her.
Mabel locked the door to Tony’s house and walked down the front path. It was a beautiful morning, the air crisp and infused with ocean spirits, and she crossed the street with a smile on her face.
Yolanda and Gerry lived across the street in a 1950s clapboard house. The house had a screened front porch and all the original fixtures and appliances. Having them in spitting distance—Tony’s words—wasn’t easy, but Mabel had come to the conclusion that family relationships rarely were. She pressed the buzzer, and the door opened.
“Hey,” Yolanda said. She wore a pink maternity dress, no makeup, her hair tied in a ponytail. Her brown eyes looked very sad.
“Sorry it took me so long,” Mabel said.
Yolanda ushered her inside, then padded noiselessly down the hallway to the back of the house. Mabel followed, glancing at the silent TV in the living room. It had a cartoon on, and there was a yellow legal pad in front of it. Yolanda had started watching the popular kids’ shows, and was rating them based on the level of violence and the content. She had decided that she was going to determine what her child watched on the boob tube.
Mabel stepped into the kitchen. It was small, with barely room for a breakfast table. She saw Yolanda moving a pile of medical books from the kitchen table.
“Let me help you with those.”
Mabel helped her put the books on the stove. Yolanda had been interning at Tampa General Hospital across the bay until she’d gone out on maternity leave. The hours were long, the pay lousy, and she was loving every minute of it. She pulled out a chair for Mabel, then took the one beside it.
“What did Gerry do now?” Mabel asked, sitting.
Yolanda let out an exasperated sigh while looking at the picture of Gerry on the table. He was dark and handsome, with a smile that could light up a room.
“He sent me an overnight package.”
“Is that bad?”
Yolanda rose from her chair and took a cardboard box off the counter. It had an OVERNIGHT label plastered on its side. She handed it to her.
Mabel peeked inside and felt her heartbeat quicken. She looked at Yolanda, and the younger woman nodded. Mabel removed a stack of bills and held them in her hand. Twenties and fifties, most of them wrinkled. She took out the other stacks. It looked like more than it was, but it was still a lot.
“Did you count it?”
Yolanda nodded. “There’s sixty-five hundred dollars in that box. I may have had a sheltered upbringing in San Juan, but I’m not dumb. Why didn’t Gerry send a check, or wire the money?”
Mabel knew the answer, but refused to say it.
“Because he stole the money, that’s why.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Mabel said. “You should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Yolanda stared into her guest’s face. “Tony sent Gerry to Las Vegas to learn how to card-count. I think it was a test. I think Tony wanted to see if Gerry could resist the temptation. And Gerry failed. He’s stealing from the casinos.”
“Card-counting isn’t stealing,” Mabel said.
“Call it what you want, it’s still wrong, and Gerry’s doing it.”
“But he’s only been in Las Vegas for five days,” Mabel reminded her. “He couldn’t have learned how to card- count that quickly. It’s more difficult than that.”
Yolanda considered it while staring at the stacks of money in Mabel’s lap. Lifting her eyes, she said, “Okay. If my husband isn’t card-counting, then what
It was a good question, and Mabel racked her brain for an intelligent answer.
“Let me know when you think of something,” Yolanda said, and walked out of the kitchen.
18
Valentine was still smarting over Wily’s crack when he walked into his suite a few minutes later. What did getting old have to do with his vision? He knew a crook when he saw one, and the man on the surveillance tape was the biggest crook of all.
An envelope with his initials was propped on the coffee table. He tore it open and saw it was from Nick.
Bart’s cell number was at the bottom of the page. Valentine got a soda and went onto the balcony, his mind wrestling with how to handle this.
He and Bart had a history. In 1980, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission had decided to try an experiment and let card-counters play blackjack at Atlantic City’s casinos. The result had been the immediate loss of millions of dollars. The experiment was halted, and the counters left town.
Except for Bart. Bart liked the little city by the shore, and devised a unique way to keep playing. He sent teams of counters into the casinos and had them sit at different blackjack tables. When a counter determined a table was “ripe,” a signal was given—usually the lighting of a cigarette. Bart would descend, bet heavily, and clean
