Mr. Lucky

and a bunch of people in the crowd laughed. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “let me introduce my helpers. Come on out, kids.”

Five kids who couldn’t have been more than ten came trotting out and got a huge round of applause. The boys wore ties and jackets, the girls Sunday dresses, their hair done up in bows. Standing in line, they smiled nervously at the audience as video cameras whirred.

“Ready, kids?” Vernon said. “Okay, here’s the first number.”

Sticking his hand into the bag, Vernon shut his eyes and swished his hand around for a moment, then pulled a Ping-Pong ball out and handed it to his first helper. The little boy stared at the Ping-Pong ball.

“Tell them the number,” Vernon whispered to him.

“It’s a number six,” the boy said loudly.

The kid’s parents burst into applause. Ricky, who’d been swigging his soda and laughing at everything Vernon had said, pulled his ticket from his pocket and shoved it a foot away from Valentine’s face.

“One down, four to go,” he said.

Valentine stared at the six in the center of the five numbers. He looked back at Vernon and saw him pull a second Ping-Pong ball from the bag. Valentine’s eyes were still pretty good when it came to distances, and he saw the number on the Ping-Pong ball clearly. It was a twelve. Valentine stared at the twelve on Ricky’s ticket.

“I’m so hot I’m steaming,” Ricky said.

The next number was twenty-three. It was also on Ricky’s ticket. By the time the fourth and fifth numbers were drawn, Valentine had already accepted that Ricky was going to win. It was obvious he and his friend had rigged the game, and the locals were too naive to realize it.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Valentine said when Ricky raised his hand to acknowledge he had won the jackpot.

Ricky’s face turned bright red. He lowered his arm stiffly, the winning ticket clutched between his fingers.

“Are you accusing me of cheating?” he said loudly, drawing stares.

“Tone it down.”

“Are you?”

“I sure am,” Valentine said through clenched teeth. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“No, you were born five hundred years ago,” Ricky shouted at him. “The people in Las Vegas sent you, because they don’t believe I won my money legitimately. They think I’m a cheater. They don’t believe in luck. And when someone comes along who is lucky, they try to destroy him.”

People were staring and acting uncomfortable. Ricky pointed at the stage. “We’ve been holding that drawing since before I was born. No one cheats. You think there’s something smelly going on, come up and prove it.”

The crowd parted, and Ricky marched up to the stage. Valentine felt angry stares rain down as he followed him. They climbed the stage together, and Ricky addressed the five little kids. One at a time, they came over and handed Valentine the Ping-Pong balls they were holding.

“Here you go, mister,” the last little kid said.

Valentine examined the five balls. They appeared normal. He went over to the librarian and peered down inside the bag. Easily a hundred Ping-Pong balls were inside of it, and he pulled out a handful and stared at the numbers printed on them. Each number was different. He compared them to the five winning balls in his hands. They were the same size and had the same smooth texture, ruling out Vernon somehow being able to pull them out by touch from the bag. That was how the scam had to be done; only, no evidence supported it. The five winning balls were exactly the same as the others. He glanced at the librarian, wanting to ask her a question, and saw her stare right through him. He felt a catch in his throat. She was blind.

“So, what do you say?” Ricky asked, standing next to the barker on the other side of the stage. “Is the game clean, Mr. Valentine?”

“Yes,” Valentine said.

“Could you say that a little louder? I don’t think everyone could hear you.”

Valentine shifted his gaze to the audience. He was ready to swallow his pride and tell the hometown crowd that he’d spoken out of turn and that the game wasn’t rigged. But then his eyes fell on the camera crew standing in the front. The crew consisted of a cameraman, a soundman, and a breathless female reporter with her hair tied in a bun. He hadn’t seen them from the back, and saw the soundman point a large mike in his direction.

Valentine exited stage left and within seconds was behind the safety of a curtain. He heard Ricky exhort the crowd into another raucous Slippery Rock cheer. They clapped and stomped their feet, mocking Valentine all the way to the parking lot, where he stood in the cold, wondering how he was going to get back home.

13

Lamar had rented the basement of a restaurant for Gerry’s meeting with the Dixie Magic’s surveillance team. The team consisted of twenty-one employees, who split three eight-hour shifts among them. The casino had shut down for an hour, to allow the TV crew filming the poker tournament to do a number of shots and interviews inside the casino. Heavily armed security guards followed the crew’s every move, giving Lamar the freedom to pull his staff for a quick off-site meeting.

“Okay, listen up,” Lamar said, standing at the front of the room. “As you all know, the casino is getting ripped off. The gentleman standing to my left is Gerry Valentine, a partner in the firm Grift Sense, whose specialty is catching casino cheaters. Gerry has come to the conclusion that the stealing is taking place at the tables in the form of chip scams. He’s going to give us a demonstration of this unusual art, and then take questions.”

Lamar relinquished the floor, and Gerry stepped up to a table in the room’s center. On it was a piece of green felt and a tray of chips similar to those used by dealers inside the casino. As he stepped up to the tray, he glanced at the faces in the crowd. Two women, the rest men, all in their thirties, all giving him hard looks, like they resented him waltzing in and telling them how dumb they were. His father had warned him about this. Casino surveillance people were territorial, just like cops. Be humble, his father had said.

He had inherited two things from his father. The first were his dark Italian looks, which he hadn’t liked as a kid but liked as he’d grown older. The second was his memory, which was close to photographic. Working off the script his father had given him, he said, “Good morning. Thanks for having me. There’s an old expression: Everything that’s old is new again. Chip scams have been around a long time. But they get the money, and that’s all cheaters care about.”

A man in the back row smothered a yawn. A joke, Gerry thought. He should have gone against his father’s advice and opened with a joke.

“There are three basic chip scams. Each involves the dealer in cahoots with a player. I’m sure you all know what that means.”

Now he was getting mean looks. Of course they knew what cahoots meant.

“I should also explain something. These scams are difficult to detect using surveillance cameras. Bosses on the floor can see them, but they’re usually looking the other way when they happen. Know why?”

His audience had turned to stone. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lamar staring at him like he’d grown two heads.

“The reason is because the dealer’s accomplice uses a prearranged set of signals to tell the dealer if the boss is watching the table or if he isn’t. Cheaters call this giving the office. The accomplice uses two signals: stop and go. Smart teams change signals every hour, making it impossible to read them.”

Gerry kept his eyes moving as he spoke. He’d read in an airline magazine that this was the best way to address a crowd. He saw Lamar look at his watch, and felt sweat start to trickle down his spine. Dump the script, he thought.

Taking four green twenty-five-dollar chips from the tray, he placed them into his left hand. He crumbled his fingers and showed the chips were gone. He’d been heavy into magic as a kid, and saw every face in the room light up. He showed them the four chips finger-palmed in his right hand. Then he placed them in a stack on the felt.

“Let’s pretend this is my accomplice’s bet. He wins his hand, and I move to pay him off. But before I pay him off, I size his bet.”