Deadman's Bluff

wants to challenge me, my radar went up.”

“So you left.”

“Naw. If I’d quit every time someone was trying to cheat me, I’d have missed some great opportunities. I threw my money in the pot, and let them deal the cards.

“Now, I’m familiar with most methods of card cheating. I guessed these boys were going to signal each other, what most amateurs do. So I studied them real good.” Rufus stretched his legs and yawned prodigiously. “Come to find out, they weren’t signaling. So, I played.”

“Did you lose?”

“Oh yeah. They bled me real good. Whenever I had good cards, they dropped out like they had a train to catch. When I tried to bluff, one of them would call me, and I’d get beat. Finally, I figured out what was going on.”

“Let me guess,” Valentine said. “There was a hole in the ceiling.”

Rufus pulled his cowboy boots off and massaged the soles of his feet, which were rubbed raw from his footrace with Greased Lightning. “You got it. Someone was using a telescope to spot my cards, then relaying the information to a waiter, who passed the information to my opponents. It was a fancy setup.

“Then I got an idea. I excused myself and went to the coat check. I borrowed an umbrella, and went back to the card room. When I sat down, I opened the umbrella and held it over my head. Then I told them to shuffle up and deal.”

“What did they say?”

“They summoned the club manager. He told me it was against house rules to play with an open umbrella. I told him it was raining outside, and I was afraid I’d get wet being there was a hole in the ceiling. I told him that if their doctors were as bad as their dentists, I’d just as soon not get sick.”

Valentine slapped his hand on his leg. “Is that when the game stopped?”

Rufus shook his head. “That’s when it got started.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s when I really got cheated,” Rufus said.

Rufus took out his wallet. It was a hand-stitched piece of rawhide he’d been carrying in his pocket for decades. From it, he produced a faded snapshot and passed it Valentine’s way. It showed Rufus wearing a snappy brown jacket with suede shoulders, the crown of his Stetson encircled by dead rattlesnake. To round out the bizarre picture, he was holding an umbrella over his head.

“Who took the picture?” Valentine asked.

“One of my opponents. I should have realized I was about to get greased, but I was so full of myself, it just blew right by me.”

He handed the snapshot back. “What happened?”

“I won a few hands, and pulled even. Then I got a monster hand. Pocket kings. The best cards I’d had all night, so I bet twenty grand. Two of the Brits dropped out. The flop comes ace, king, four. I’ve got three kings, a set. I bet fifty grand, and the guy who stayed in leans forward and studies the table. The waiter brings him a drink. I start twirling my umbrella like Mary Poppins, just to piss him off. He puts his drink down, says he’s betting one hundred grand. I figure he’s got two pair. I call him. He flips his cards over, and I see he’s got two aces in the hole. The flop and fifth street are meaningless. His three aces beats my three kings. End of night.”

“Did you figure out how they cheated you?”

“Yeah, after I got home.”

“It must have been real clever.”

“It was,” the old cowboy said.

Valentine sipped his soda. Rufus was not going to tell him how the scam worked unless he begged him. That was how it worked with these old-timers. You had to beg. Only Valentine had never been good at begging, so he gave it some thought. Rufus had said that his opponents knew what cards he was holding. That had led Rufus to conclude there was a hole in the ceiling, and somebody was watching him. But that wasn’t the only use for a hole in the ceiling, and he said, “They were using luminous readers.”

Rufus’s face sagged. “You’re not slowing down, are you?”

“Not so you’ll notice. Want me to explain the rest?”

“Be my guest.”

“The cards were marked with luminous paint,” Valentine said. “The paint is invisible to the naked eye, and can only be read by someone with tinted glasses. Only in this scam, the tinted glass was in the ceiling. The guy upstairs was reading the cards as they were being dealt. He passed the information to the waiter, who told your opponents. When you got dealt kings, and your host aces, and the flop turned ace, king, four, the guy upstairs knew you were in trouble. That’s when they trapped you.”

Rufus stopped rubbing his feet to give him a round of applause. It would have seemed sarcastic coming from anyone else, but from this old codger it meant something.

“That’s damn good,” Rufus said, clapping.

“Here’s my theory about DeMarco,” Rufus said. “I know the cards in the game are being checked every night, and so far nothing’s come up, but maybe DeMarco’s using a special luminous paint that grows invisible after a few hours.”

“No such thing exists,” Valentine said.

“Maybe someone invented it.”

The snapshot of Rufus was lying on the coffee table. Valentine thought over what Rufus had told him about the scam in London.

“You think there’s a hole in the ceiling of the poker room, and someone is reading the cards, and signaling their values to DeMarco,” Valentine said.

“It would make sense, don’t you think?”

“But how many times could they do that without people noticing?” Valentine asked, having seen enough scams to know that what eventually doomed them was repetition. “It would become obvious.”

“Yes, it would.” Rufus stretched his arms and made the bones crack. “But I learned a good lesson in jolly old England. You only have to cheat a man once in a poker game to get his money. I’ve checked the ceiling of every poker room I’ve ever played in since that little episode.” He paused. “Except here.”

“Checked how?”

“With a flashlight.”

“Do you have one with you?”

Rufus flashed his best cowboy smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

7

Casinos never slept. It was the greatest thing they offered people who liked to gamble. At any hour of the day or night, you could enter one and make a wager. Old-timers called it the itch for play.

Casinos’ surveillance departments never slept, either. They watched the floor of the casino every minute of every hour, every day of the year. When President Kennedy was assassinated, one Las Vegas casino had stopped play for an hour in his memory, but the surveillance department had not stopped watching the casino.

Valentine knew he was taking a risk searching Celebrity’s poker room for holes in the ceiling, but it was a risk he was willing to take. Celebrity had surveillance cameras covering the poker room, but that didn’t necessarily mean those cameras were being used. Surveillance technicians were trained to watch the money. Places where money didn’t change hands were often neglected, or ignored.

Celebrity’s poker room was a good example. Tournament play ended at six o’clock each night, with everyone’s chips stored in a safe and the room locked down until the next day. Since the opportunity for theft no longer existed, the technicians stopped watching the room. They might glance in from time to time, but chances were, they probably wouldn’t.

Valentine and Rufus stood in the lobby in front of the poker room. Valentine had decided to pick the door and he eyeballed the lock. He’d used lock picks as a cop, and had kept them after he’d gone to work for himself. His lock pick kit looked like an ordinary car key case, and contained a dozen picks made from tungsten steel. He unzipped the case, and chose the appropriate pick.