Mr. Lucky

“It’s obvious no one used the front much.”

Gaylord mumbled under his breath and walked off the porch. He was packing the weight but could put it into high gear when he needed to. As they came around the house, a motion-detector light went off, the bright orange light shining directly in their faces.

It took a moment for Valentine’s eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw that the lawn behind the house was littered with broken refrigerators. Gaylord shook his head.

“The town will pick this stuff up, free of charge.”

Valentine got close to the machines and realized his eyes were playing tricks on him. They were slot and video-poker machines with their guts ripped out. The gang wanted to steal a jackpot but couldn’t figure out how, he thought.

Gaylord tested the back door and found it locked. He punched out a pane of glass with the butt of his automatic and stuck his hand through.

“Hold on,” Valentine said.

“You think there’s something behind the door?”

“You said Kessel was a weasel. You want to put your life in a weasel’s hands?”

Gaylord stepped away from the door. “No.”

Valentine went into the garage behind the house and came out with a piece of rope. He tied the rope around the doorknob, then walked into the yard. He handed Gaylord the end, and the sergeant gave it a sharp tug. The door banged open, followed by a loud thwap! An arrow flew through the back door. Its path took it directly between where Valentine and Gaylord were standing. Both men heard its whistle as it flew by their heads.

The arrow went into an oak tree in the backyard with such force that Valentine could not pull it out without snapping it in two. Drawing his sidearm, Gaylord said, “Thanks for saving my life,” and marched into the house. Valentine saw a light come on and followed him into the kitchen. It was a square room with a yellowing linoleum floor. Sitting in the room’s center was a crossbow strapped to a metal chair. Tied to the trigger was a bungee cord, which was also tied to the back door.

Valentine had never seen a crossbow except in the movies. It was a fierce-looking weapon. He decided he’d be happy if he never saw one again.

He cased the downstairs. The rooms were sparsely furnished and covered with a coat of dust. The upstairs was the same, with box springs lying on the bedroom floors. Returning to the kitchen, he said, “I didn’t find anything. Does this place have a basement?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I live in Florida. We don’t have basements.”

“I’m sure it’s got one.”

“Then it must be hidden, because I can’t find it.”

Gaylord banged on the walls. Inside the pantry he found a hollow wall and pried it open with his fingernails. Cold air blasted their faces. He stuck his head into the space, then found a light string and tugged on it. A naked bulb came on. Valentine peeked over his shoulder and saw a stairway descending into the basement. Gaylord started to go down, and Valentine touched the sergeant’s shoulder.

“Can I go first?”

“Let me guess. You don’t want me touching anything.”

“If you don’t mind.”

Gaylord let him go first. The air in the basement was extremely cold, and Valentine felt a chill go through his body that went straight to his toes. At the bottom of the steps, he paused to stare and felt the sergeant bump into him.

“Pay dirt,” he said under his breath.

The basement resembled a small casino. On one wall was a blackjack table with two chairs; in the room’s center, a roulette table and betting layout; on the far wall, a regulation-size craps table. On the floors around each of the tables were dozens of chalk Xs. Gaylord pointed at them and said, “Looks like a dance recital.”

Valentine went to the blackjack table. It had been bugging the hell out of him that he couldn’t figure out how Ricky had won every single hand of blackjack he’d played at the Mint. He’d never met a scam he couldn’t figure out, and he’d decided that it was because it was a tape.

So he stood a few feet away from the blackjack table and just stared. There were only two chairs, one for Ricky and one for someone else. He remembered back to the tape. An elderly woman with white hair was at the table. She had fronted Ricky his initial stake. Was she also involved?

He stared at the table for a full minute. Everything looked normal, except the pack of Lucky Strikes sitting on the right side of the table. If he remembered correctly, the elderly woman had smoked like a chimney. He stared at the position of the cigarette pack. It was directly beneath the shuffle machine. The Mint used shuffle machines at their blackjack tables, as did many Las Vegas casinos. Shuffle machines sped the games up and made them more profitable.

Valentine had never liked shuffle machines for the simple reason that cheaters could also get their hands on them. The one on the table was called a Shuffle Master. It could shuffle eight decks of cards at once. It also had a unique feature. After the decks were shuffled, the Shuffle Master inverted their entire order, one card at a time. The machine did it at lightning speed, but the inversion was still visible if you stuck your nose to the face of the machine. Or if you stuck a camera beneath the machine.

He picked up the pack of Lucky Strikes. It looked normal, but felt heavy. He popped the lid and stared at the miniature camera inside. Then he examined the top of the box. The camera’s eye was part of the bull’s-eye pattern on the front.

Hanging from one of the chairs was a lady’s handbag. He opened it and found a receiving device inside. He heard Gaylord come up from behind him.

“What did you find?”

Valentine handed him the pack of Lucky Strikes. “The camera inside the cigarette box recorded the order of the cards inside the shuffle machine. The information was sent to a computer. The computer had a software program that calculated how to play the cards so that the house would lose every hand.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Ricky constantly switched the number of hands he played. One round, he played one hand; the next he played three. The software program told him to do that.”

“How did he get the information?”

Valentine tapped the chair with the woman’s handbag. “The lady sitting next to him received the information. All she had to do was stare into her handbag. She communicated to Ricky with some kind of code.”

“Is the dealer involved?”

“The dealer doesn’t have a clue,” Valentine said.

“And they practiced it all right here in Slippery Rock,” the sergeant said. “Well, this should be enough to convict Ricky of cheating.”

“It won’t convict Ricky of anything. There’s nothing illegal about owning crooked gambling equipment. The crime is bringing the equipment into a casino.”

Gaylord shot him an exasperated look. “So what do we do?”

“Find something that will convict him.”

Valentine crossed the basement to the roulette table. He spun the wheels and set the ivory ball in motion. The most common way to beat roulette was by gaffing the wheel. This was done by creating a bias in the wheel that would favor one side over another. The other method was to gaff the pocket walls, called frets. Some frets would be gaffed so they’d be more likely to reject the ball, while others would accept the ball more easily. On the betting layout he saw a stack of yellow legal pads. Picking one up, he stared at the rows of figures and mathematical calculations covering the page. In exasperation he dropped the pad on the table.

“Not good?” Gaylord asked.

“They’re using visual prediction.”