“He’s standing next to my desk,” she said.
Longo clenched his teeth. “Send him in,” he said, and took his finger off the button.
Like most people who worked in law enforcement, Bill had a tough side. When he got angry, he tended to throw his considerable weight around. He was doing that now, and Longo was shrinking in his chair.
“How dare you arrest Tony without first calling me,” Bill said, leaning on Longo’s desk like he was going to do a push-up. “I got authorization from the goddamn governor to keep Tony on this job. You’re screwing with my investigation. If you don’t let Tony go right now, I’ll burn your ass so badly you won’t be able to sit down.”
The lowlifes and miscreants in the other detectives’ offices had stopped talking, the only sound coming from the overhead air-conditioning. Longo pointed at the bagged shirt lying on the desk. “What about this?”
“So what?” Bill said, mimicking Valentine perfectly.
“It’s evidence,” Longo protested.
“It corroborates Tony’s story, but it doesn’t corrobo rate
“I already asked the hotel,” Longo said.
“And?”
“They said there isn’t a surveillance camera in the stairwell,” Longo said. “It’s optional under state law to have cameras in stairwells, and they didn’t do it.”
“Who told you that?” Bill asked.
Longo swallowed a rising lump in his throat. “Mark Perrier.”
“Perrier fed you that line of bullshit?”
“How do you know it’s bullshit?” Longo asked.
“Because any door leading off the main lobby of a casino, or its hotel, must have a working surveillance camera according to Nevada state law,” Bill said. “The stairwell where those two scumbags got plugged was right off the lobby. Celebrity couldn’t have gotten a license to operate its casino if there wasn’t a camera in there.”
“But why would Perrier lie?” Longo asked.
Bill finally did his push-up. He worked out religiously, and looked like he could do a hundred of them. “I don’t know, Pete, why don’t you ask him?”
Rubbing his wrist, Valentine walked out of Longo’s office and followed Bill past a warren of detective’s offices to the main reception area. In one office, a black pimp was getting processed by the detective who’d arrested him. The pimp wore flashy clothes and enough gold jewelry to open a pawn shop. Seeing Bill, he threw up his arms.
“I need you, man,” the pimp said.
Bill stopped in the open doorway. “What did you say to me?”
“I said I need you. You know, your services.”
Both of the pimp’s wrists were cuffed to his chair, a sure sign he was a threat. On the desk were his personal belongings, which included an enormous wad of cash and a handful of hundred-dollar black casino chips.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bill asked.
The pimp glanced sideways at the detective who’d busted him, then looked at Bill. “I heard you chewing out that mother down the hall. You sound like you know your stuff. What’s your going rate?”
“You think I’m a lawyer?”
The pimp acted startled. “You’re not?”
Bill marched into the office. Grabbing the chips off the desk, he began peeling back the paper logo on each one. Valentine guessed Bill was looking for the microchip that casinos were required to put in chips over twenty dollars in value. The pimp’s chips didn’t have the microchips, and Bill shoved them into the arresting detective’s face.
“These are counterfeits,” Bill said. “Nail this ass-hole.”
Part III
Deadman’s Hand
25
Lou Preston had struck gold.
The director of surveillance for Bally’s Atlantic City casino had contacted the island’s eleven other casinos, and persuaded them to search their digital databases for any blackjack players who’d recently beaten them and who’d been wearing New York Yankees baseball caps. The search had turned up forty-eight players, all of whom were between the ages of forty and sixty and of Italian descent. Casinos kept records on players who won a thousand dollars or more, and each of these players fell into that category.
As the casinos e-mailed pictures of the players to Preston, Lou projected them onto the wall of video monitors in Bally’s surveillance control room. Gerry, Eddie Davis, and Joey Marconi stood in front of the wall, drinking coffee the color of transmission fluid while watching a montage of sleaze take shape before them.
“These guys give Italians a bad name,” Marconi said.
Gerry sipped his drink, his eyes floating from face to face. The Mafia’s great strength was also its great weakness. The mob didn’t let in outsiders, and consequently there were no women, Asians, blacks, or Hispanics in their ranks. It was all mean-faced, middle-aged Italians with fifties haircuts who tended to stick out like sore thumbs.
He tossed his coffee cup into the trash. His father was always saying that people got what was coming to them. He’d never believed that, especially when it came to crime, but now had a feeling his father was right. George Scalzo was about to get what was coming to him.
He went to the master console where Preston sat. Lou had gotten the directors of surveillance of the other casinos to send him any notes they had on the men whose faces were on the monitors. Surveillance technicians kept copious notes during their shifts, and wrote down anything that was deemed unusual.
“Anything interesting?” Gerry asked.
“All of these guys refused Player’s Cards when they were offered to them,” Preston said. “That’s not normal.”
It was standard practice for casinos to offer gamblers Player’s Cards. The card entitled the person to receive complimentary meals and show tickets and even rooms if their business was strong enough.
“Guess they didn’t want to hand over their identification,” Gerry said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Preston said. “Forty-eight players, all refusing comps. What do you think the odds of that are?”
“Pretty astronomical,” Gerry said.
Preston picked up the gaffed Yankees cap lying on the console. There was a can of soda beside it, which he also picked up. “It’s one more piece of evidence that these players are part of a massive conspiracy to defraud Atlantic City’s casinos.”
“So let’s find out who they are, and arrest them.”
“I wish it was that easy.”
“What do you mean?”
Preston killed the can and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “The police don’t have a digital database like we do. It would take hundreds of hours for them to figure out who these guys are, maybe more.”
“Won’t they do that?”
Preston rubbed his face tiredly. “They would if they had the manpower. The island’s high crime rate isn’t going down anytime soon. The police won’t pull officers off the street to do photo matches.”
Gerry felt his spirits sink. Ruining Scalzo’s Atlantic City operation was the sweetest payback he could think of. He stared at a montage of faces on the video wall.
“I can find out who they are,” Gerry said.
Preston sat up straight in his chair. “You can?”
“Yeah. Ever heard of a guy named Vinny Fountain?”
“Vinny ‘the Sleazy Weasel’ Fountain? Sure.”
