dial tone. It was a trick, and he stared at the small bread knife clutched in Xing’s other hand.
Valentine blew past the bouncer of the Pink Pony with Bill on his heels. Traffic had been heavy, and it had taken ten minutes to drive to the club. His eyes canvassed the darkened interior. A lone figure sat at a table in the VIP lounge.
“Is that Garrow?” Valentine asked.
“That’s him,” Bill said.
“Where’s the Asian?”
“I don’t see him.”
“Where your guy?”
“I don’t see him, either.”
They crossed the noisy club and entered the VIP lounge. Bill had clipped his badge to his lapel, and patrons were getting out of their way as fast as they could. Valentine stiffened as they reached the lawyer’s table. Garrow was trying to remove a small knife stuck in his shoulder, and was a bloody mess.
“Help me,” the lawyer gasped.
Valentine pulled out the knife, and Garrow screamed. Folding a napkin, he made the lawyer hold it against the gaping wound.
“What happened? Where’s the Asian?” Valentine asked.
“Who told you—”
“Answer the damn question.”
“The Asian double-crossed me.”
“Did he get the slot secret from you?”
“Yeah.”
Valentine checked Garrow’s pockets, just to be sure. His wallet and cell phone were gone. The Asian had stabbed and robbed him, and no one inside the club had bothered to jump in. A waitress appeared, and tapped Valentine on the shoulder.
“His tab’s still open. You going to settle for him?”
“In your dreams,” Valentine said.
He looked around the lounge for Bill. His friend stood in the corner, shaking his head. Hurrying over, he saw a man lying on the floor next to a broken Heineken bottle. His throat was slit from ear-to-ear.
“That your guy?” Valentine asked.
“Afraid so,” Bill replied.
Chapter 19
Mabel could not believe her ears. She was at Tony’s desk, talking on the phone to Joe Silverfoot, head of surveillance for the Micanopy casino in Tampa. Joe had caught the cheating dealer that Mabel had spotted —and videotaped it too boot — yet was telling Mabel he wasn’t going to do anything. It was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.
“But he dealt off the bottom of the deck,” Mabel said.
“You’re right, he did,” Silverfoot said. “But, it was an honest mistake.”
Mabel shook her head. There were no such things as honest mistakes when it came to gambling. “The man’s a thief. You need to fire him, and alert the police.”
“We don’t have a case,” Silverfoot said.
“But —
“Hear me out. The player who got the bottom card was not involved. We pulled him into a back room, and grilled him. He’s in town for a convention, and this was his first visit to the casino. He’s never met the dealer. He agreed to take a polygraph in case we didn’t believe him.”
“Did you?” Mabel asked.
“Yes,” Silverfoot said. “I was a tribal policeman for twenty-five years, and I know when someone’s lying to me. This gentleman wasn’t lying. He wasn’t working with the dealer in any way. He was in the casino having a good time.”
“The dealer was still cheating,” Mabel said.
“Afraid not. I personally grilled the dealer, and told him we had a tape of him dealing off the bottom. He said the humidity inside the casino made the cards stick, and that he probably pulled one off the bottom by mistake.”
It was the worst alibi Mabel had ever heard, and she closed her eyes.
“And you believed him?”
“What choice did I have?” Silverfoot said. “There was no crime. How can I arrest someone if there’s no crime?”
Mabel shook her head. Dealing off the bottom was the card cheater’s most prized skill, and took hundreds of hours of practice. It didn’t happen by accident, despite what Silverfoot wanted to believe, and Mabel said goodbye and hung up the phone before she had a chance to tell him what a nincompoop he was.
She took a walk around the block to cool down. When that didn’t work, she returned to Tony’s study and watched the tape of the crooked dealer that she’d made on Tony’s computer. The dealer was big and tough-looking, and not someone she’d want to meet in a dark alley. His nose was crooked, and looked like it had been broken a few times. If that wasn’t the profile of a crook, she didn’t know what was. The idea that he still had his job irritated her to no end.
She didn’t like it. The man was obviously a thief. She remembered Tony’s comments about casinos that let crooked dealers work for them. Tony called these casinos bust-out joints, and said that they were popping up everywhere — on cruises ships, dishonest Indian reservations, and little towns that weren’t properly regulated by local or state government. Some bust-out joints used shaved dice on their craps tables, slot machines that didn’t pay out, and blackjack shoes missing high cards. Others employed crooked dealers adept in sleight-of-hand. The end result was always the same. The customers got skinned alive.
She decided she had to do something. She composed an email to Joe Silverfoot, and spelled out her feelings in plain English.
She positioned the mouse on the Send button, then realized what she was doing. This was her only account. If she ran the Micanopys off, she would lose all the fun she’d been having, and also lose the firm money. She didn’t like either of those options, and stared at the computer screen.
Chapter 20
Bronco lay on the cot in his cell, staring at the three crosses on the walls that the shadows had made from the bars. He’d heard about criminals who’d found Jesus in the slammer, and wondered if this optical illusion had anything to do with it.
He heard stirring above him. Johnny Norton, his cell mate, had turned downright friendly when he realized Bronco was serious about escaping. Johnny had switched cots, taking the less desirable upper bunk and letting
