“And they hung out together.”
“Bosom buddies.”
“Are they still friends now?”
“Stanley went to New York five years ago, became a stockbroker, and made a killing in the market. I’m told he and Ricky are still friends.”
“Did you know Stanley personally?”
“Yes. Stanley was slime. My blindness is caused by a degenerative eye disease that started twenty years ago. The week I lost my vision, Stanley came into this room and stole forty dollars from my purse. I was here.”
There was a harshness in her voice that he hadn’t heard before. Stanley Kessel had stuck an invisible knife in her and probably hadn’t even realized it. Valentine reached across the desk and placed his hand onto hers. She smiled thinly, and he left his hand there.
“Ms. Stoker, we’re done,” a little voice said.
Valentine glanced over his shoulder. The five kids who’d been buried in their books a moment ago were now standing behind them in a row. They had funny smiles on their faces, and he slowly withdrew his hand.
Mary Alice introduced the children to him. “This is Kristen, David, and Annie Buchholz, and Sara and Terry Williams,” she said. “Children, say hello to Mr. Valentine. And, David, if you’re wearing your baseball cap, please take it off.”
The kids stuck out their hands and said hello. They stared at him like he had two heads, and Valentine made them repeat their names as he shook their hands. Each one carried a book, and he recalled how difficult it had been to get Gerry to study back when he was in school. Terry Williams, who looked about thirteen and had a mop of dark hair, stepped forward. “Ms. Stoker, we were wondering if Mr. Valentine could show us something.”
“And what might that be, Terry?” the librarian asked.
“Well, we all went on Mr. Valentine’s Web site yesterday, and there’s all this cool stuff about casino cheating and crooks. On the Web site, it says that Mr. Valentine goes to casinos and gives demonstrations.”
“Yeah,” Annie piped up. “And we want to see some.”
“Cheating?” the librarian said.
“Yeah!” the five kids replied in unison.
“I have a deck of cards,” Terry said brightly, producing a dog-eared deck of Bicycles from his pocket. Handing them to Valentine, he said, “They’re all there. I counted.”
Valentine saw Mary Alice Stoker shift uncomfortably in her chair and guessed she was having visions of five more children being corrupted. He considered showing the kids a simple trick or two, but realized she wouldn’t be able to see. Then he had another idea.
He made the kids pull up chairs so they sat around him in a semicircle. He took the deck from Terry and removed the rubber band encasing the cards. Then he held the cards on his outstretched palm. The five children stared at them.
“I’m not going to show you any cheating. Do you know why?”
Disappointment appeared on their faces, and they shook their heads.
“Because cheating is a crime. It’s no different than stealing. But I know something about these playing cards that few people know. Want to hear it?”
They slowly nodded.
“Okay. No one knows who invented playing cards. Some people believe they were invented by medieval magicians who concealed all sorts of occult symbolism into the different pictures.” Valentine turned the cards faceup and spread them between his hands. “The cards are evenly divided, with twenty-six red cards and twenty- six black. This symbolizes day and night. Then there are the four suits: clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds. What do you think these stand for?”
David, the boy with the baseball cap, said, “The four seasons of the year?”
“That’s right. How did you get so smart?”
The kids were all smiling now. Valentine upjogged all the jacks, queens, and kings and pointed at them. “Okay. There are twelve picture cards in the deck. Do any of you know what they stand for?”
“The twelve months in the year?” Sara said.
“Very good. Now, here’s a tough one. There are thirteen values—ace through the king. What do these stand for?”
The kids acted stumped. Then a lightbulb went off over Terry’s head.
“The thirteen lunar cycles?”
“Right. Now, here’s an easy one. What do the fifty-two cards stand for?”
“The fifty-two weeks in the year,” Kristen said.
“That was an easy one. Okay, here’s the last one, and it’s a doozy.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “If you were to add up the values of all the cards in a full deck, counting the joker as one, what do you think you’ll get?” The kids looked at each other and shook their heads. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mary Alice nodding in approval. He said, “You’ll get exactly three-hundred and sixty-five, the number of days in a year.”
The kids looked at one another. “That’s really cool,” Annie said.
Valentine squared the deck between his palms. He had big hands, and they completely obscured the cards. When he opened his hands a moment later, the deck had disappeared. He removed them from his jacket pocket with a faint smile on his face.
“Show’s over,” he said.
The kids left the library chattering among themselves. Valentine offered to give Mary Alice a lift back to wherever she lived. She declined, saying a friend was coming by later to take her home.
She escorted him down the empty hallway to the entrance of the school. She walked without a cane, and he thought how nice it was that she worked in a place that her memory still remembered. She stopped a foot before the front door.
“I know this might sound strange,” she said, “but you aren’t the man I expected you to be.”
He stared through the glass cutout in the door. His car looked lonely in the empty parking lot. He tried to imagine how a blind person would envision him.
“Did I live up to your expectations?”
A startled look registered across her face. She reached out, groping to find his arm. Her fingers found his wrist and squeezed it. “I thought you would be some kind of brute,” she said. “I was wrong. You’re a caring man beneath the tough exterior. You can help us.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I most certainly do.”
“Help you how?”
“By straightening out this mess.” With her free hand, Mary Alice made a sweeping gesture. “First Ricky wins all that money in Las Vegas, then he comes home and starts winning lotteries and sweepstake drawings. And then the robbery at the bank. That mess.”
“You think they’re connected?”
She released his wrist. “Yes. I just wish I could tell you how.”
Valentine watched her walk away. Her steps reverberated down the hallway, and when she was safely back in the library, he went outside and started up his car.
24
Lamar Biggs sprung Gerry out of the Harrison County jail at 5:00 A.M. He was dressed in jeans and a Mississippi State sweatshirt and had a haggard look on his face. Every cop in the place knew him, confirming Gerry’s earlier suspicions that Lamar was not casino security but in fact involved in some area of law enforcement.
“Explain to me what happened during your drive,” Lamar said.
Gerry stared out the windshield. They were on the major east-west artery of I-10, six lanes of superhighway that shot traffic from Florida to west Texas. It was an industrial wasteland, and white dust jumped up from the road with each passing car. He found himself wishing he was back home with his wife and baby daughter.
“Three good ole boys ran me off Highway 49 near the pine-milling factory,” he said. “They had shotguns and
