Deadman's Bluff

island?” Gerry asked.

“I don’t see why not.”

“How can we check?”

“Easy,” Preston said. “Atlantic City’s casinos are connected through a system called SIN. Stands for Secure Internal Network. We use it primarily to alert each other about teams of card counters. I’ll use SIN to alert them about the Yankees caps, and ask the casinos to run the same check that I ran. Who knows? We might hit gold.”

Lou was smiling, and Gerry realized why. Lou knew the outcome of what that check would be. They were going to find mobsters with Yankees caps in other casinos.

“Just one second,” Gerry said.

Going into the hall, Gerry went to where Davis and Marconi waited by the elevators. They looked ready to call it a day, and Gerry put a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Sorry, guys, but we’re not done yet,” he said.

22

Within sixty seconds of Takarama being dragged out of Celebrity’s casino, the mess around the roulette table was cleaned up and the croupier was back spinning the little white ball while happily exhorting the crowd to “Place your bets! Place your bets!”

Flush with cash, Rufus Steele threw a fan of hundred-dollar bills on the layout. He had collected his winnings from the Greek and the other suckers who’d bet against him, and his pockets were overflowing with money. “Five thousand on the black,” he said.

The ball rolled around the wheel and dropped on a black number. A number of bystanders broke into wild applause and Rufus bowed to them.

“Is he always so lucky?” Gloria Curtis asked.

Valentine stood off to the side with Gloria and Zack.

He wanted to tell her that up until a few days ago, Rufus had been flat broke, but he bit his tongue. He had never liked hustlers, yet hanging around Rufus, his sense of fair play had become curiously elastic.

“He’s got the magic touch,” he said.

Rufus joined them and smiled at Gloria. “I owe you, Ms. Curtis,” he said.

“You do?” she asked.

“Moon balls.”

“How about an interview?” she asked.

“You know me,” Rufus said. “I love to talk.”

They walked out of the casino and across the lobby to the entrance of Celebrity’s poker room. A leader board had been erected by the front doors. Skip DeMarco was still in a commanding position, with everyone else far behind. Rufus read the board, then made a disparaging noise that originated deep in his throat.

Gloria’s cameraman did a sound check, then held his hand up in the air.

“Five…four…three…two…one. We’re rolling.”

“This is Gloria Curtis, coming to you from the World Poker Showdown in Las Vegas,” Gloria said into her mike. “Standing beside me is legendary gambler Rufus Steele, who just beat a former world champion Ping-Pong champion in a winner-take-all match for half a million dollars. Rufus, you’ve beaten a race horse in the hundred-yard dash, and now you’ve beaten a world champion athlete. What’s next?”

“Once this tournament is over, Skip DeMarco and I are going to sit down and play poker for two million dollars, winner-take-all,” Rufus said.

“DeMarco is the tournament’s chip leader, and considers himself the best poker player in the world,” Gloria said. “How do you rate your chances against him?”

“Being the chip leader doesn’t mean much,” Rufus said. “Neither does playing in a tournament. People who play in tournaments for a living are what gamblers call fun players. When they’re not playing, they’re singing in the church choir or playing volleyball at the YMCA.”

“Are you saying that DeMarco is not the best player in the world?”

A smile spread across Rufus’s leathery face. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but every time that boy gets on television and says he’s the best, a few dozen guys around the country jump out of their chairs and run to the toilet before they ruin the rug.”

“How would you rate him?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“But he’s the tournament chip leader. Surely that means something.”

Rufus’s smile spread. “Afraid not.”

“Could you explain?”

“A tournament is several days long, and luck plays a big part in determining the winner. When DeMarco and I play, luck won’t have anything to do with the out come.”

“If DeMarco does win the tournament, will that change your opinion of him?”

The friendly expression vanished from Rufus’s face and he scowled at the camera. “Giving DeMarco a trophy and calling him the best player in the world is like putting whip cream on a hot dog. No, it wouldn’t change my opinion of him one bit.”

Beating Takarama at Ping-Pong had gotten Rufus’s competitive juices flowing, and once again he denounced DeMarco, as though the sheer volume of his angry words would expose the younger man as a fraud. It gave Valentine an idea, and he slipped inside the poker room.

The World Poker Showdown had started with over five thousand players, and probably just as many dreams. Less than a hundred remained, and they sat at a dozen felt tables in the room’s center, bathed in bright TV lights and surrounded by fans. At the feature table was DeMarco with seven other players.

Standing on his tiptoes, Valentine watched DeMarco play. He was a handsome kid, and seemed to be enjoying himself. Tournament poker was different from your friendly neighborhood game because of the elimination process. If you played a couple of bad hands in tournament poker, you were gone. As a result, most people played tight, and bet only when they had good cards.

But DeMarco didn’t play this way. Because of his blindness, he held his two cards up to his face, then placed them on the table, and did not look at them again. Instead, he focused his attention on his opponents’ bets and calls. When the bet came to him, he inevitably made the right decision, and either threw away a losing hand—which he flashed to the table—or stayed in with winning cards. The crowd was in his corner, and each decision was met with thunderous applause.

Backing away from the table, Valentine shook his head. The whole thing smelled like three-day-old fish. DeMarco wasn’t playing cards—he was acting like someone playing cards. Had he any common sense, he would have purposely lost a hand, just to keep things looking normal. Only he liked to showboat.

Valentine’s eyes scanned the room. DeMarco didn’t go anywhere without his handlers, and George Scalzo and his bodyguard stood by the bar, watching their boy. Nevada did not let mobsters into its casinos, and Valentine still did not understand how Scalzo had managed to be at the tournament and not get arrested. A cocktail waitress walked by, and he touched her arm.

“I need a favor,” Valentine said.

“I’m busy,” she said curtly.

He dug out his wallet and stuffed a twenty into the tip glass on her tray.

“Name it,” she said.

He borrowed her pen and a frilly cocktail napkin. On the napkin he wrote:

HEY GEORGIE, YOUR BOY IS GETTING TRASHED IN THE LOBBY

He handed it back to her. “See the guy that looks like Don Corleone?” He pointed across the room at Scalzo. “I want you to give him this.”

The waitress walked away with a bemused look on her face that made him think of his son’s crack about him playing cops and robbers. She delivered the note. Scalzo read it, then crumbled the napkin into a ball. He motioned