Jackpot

Chapter 48

Valentine drove to the Jean Correctional Facility with the snapshot of Lucy Price that he kept in his wallet stuck on the steering wheel. She reminded him a lot of his late wife. Same height, same hair color, and a killer smile.

During the drive, he called the warden on his cell phone, and requested that Lucy be brought to the visiting area in the main administration building. The warden had agreed, having remembered him from a few days ago. Valentine appreciated that. Just about every other law enforcement officer in Nevada had challenged him in the past few days, and it was nice not to run into another wall.

He checked in with the receptionist, then passed through a metal detector and made his way to the visiting area. Walking down a hallway, he stared through a window onto a yard, and saw several hundred women inmates talking and puffing on cigarettes. Three months ago, he’d talked Lucy into throwing herself upon the mercy of the court, and now tried to imagine her surviving here, with drug addicts and prostitutes and who knew what else. Had he made a mistake? He sure hoped not.

He sat in the visitor’s room and waited. The room smelled like a tobacco factory, and he found himself craving a smoke. He didn’t think he’d ever really kick the habit until they threw dirt on his face. After a few minutes, a bearded man wearing a navy sports jacket entered the room. His name tag said Dr. R. Bob Smith, III.

“I’m Dr. Bob Smith, the prison psychologist,” he said.

“Where’s Lucy?”

“She asked me to come instead.”

“Is that so. Where’s the warden?”

“Why do you want to see the warden?”

“Because I’m not talking to you.”

The good doctor acted surprised. He was a gentle-looking man, the kind of thoughtful person that Valentine had hoped the prison system would provide to help Lucy get her gambling problem sorted out. Smith said, “Can we first go to the employee cafeteria, and discuss this over a cup of coffee?”

“I didn’t come here to drink coffee. I’m conducting a criminal investigation. Were you aware of that?”

Smith brought his hand up and tugged nervously at his beard. “No, I wasn’t. Is Lucy in some kind of trouble?”

“She could be. She helped a cheater steal a slot machine jackpot a few years ago. She wrote me a letter about it. I need her to identify the cheater from a group of photos so we can apprehend him. If she refuses to help, I might have to haul her in.”

“You can haul her in for that?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because there are dozens of women in here who’ve done the same thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They help cheaters,” Smith said. “I hear about it regularly during my counseling sessions. It’s goes on all the time. ”

Valentine stared into Smith’s eyes. It sounded like a bunch of crap, only there was sincerity in Smith’s voice. Was this how Bronco lured innocent people into being claimers for him?

“I’ll take you up on that cup of coffee.”

The employee cafeteria was a rectangular room with six tables, a refrigerator and a Mr. Coffee machine with a glass jar for donations. Valentine poured two cups and dropped two dollars into the jar. They sat at a corner table, and shared a short silence.

“Have you ever studied the work of Charles Darwin?” Smith asked.

Valentine’s proper education had ended when he’d graduated from highschool.

“I think I was out sick that day.”

Smith blew the steam off his cup. “Darwin said that evolution relentlessly encouraged the survival of the fittest. If that’s true, human beings should be naturally selfish, and only care for themselves. Yet, the fact is, we are not a selfish species, per se. We interact with scores of individuals, sometimes hundreds or even thousands, and we cooperate with them.”

“We do?” Valentine said.

“Of course. We tip waiters in restaurants, give blood, drive on the correct side of the street, obey rules, and cooperate with people we’ll never see again. And we do it for a purely selfish reason. We want to survive.”

“You’ve lost me. How does that lead to survival?”

Smith put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Throughout human history, groups of cooperators have been more successful than groups of selfish individuals, and have driven the selfish individuals into extinction. Darwin believed that the desire for survival led to humans’ mutual aid and trust. He called it the evolution of cooperation.”

The coffee tasted like rocket fuel, and Valentine felt it kick his brain into another gear. “Let me see if I can guess where you’re taking this. You think Darwin’s evolution of cooperation is happening inside casinos. People like Lucy Price cooperate with cheaters because they want to beat the casinos, just like every other player. Lucy helps, even though she knows it’s wrong.”

“Wrong in a legal sense, but not in a cooperative one,” the doctor said. “Inside a casino, it’s us vs. them, and them is the casino.”

“If that were the case, lots of people would be helping cheaters.”

“They are. Lucy told me you work with the casinos. How often do players turn in other players for cheating, or stealing, or not playing by the rules?”

“Hardly ever,” Valentine conceded.

“But those things go on. The casino is the oppressor. The casino never loses. The players know this, and they hate it. As a result, players who see cheating either turn a blind eye, or become accomplices. Make sense?”

Valentine’s coffee suddenly didn’t taste so good. He’d assumed that people like Bo and Karen Farmer had been talked into becoming thieves by promises of lots of money. But Smith was saying that money was only a part of it. The Farmers had turned bad because it was human nature to fight something that was beating you silly.

“You still haven’t told me why Lucy won’t speak to me,” Valentine said.

“Lucy is afraid that by talking to you, she’ll regress,” Smith said. “She believes that by seeing you again, she’ll undo all therapy.”

“I need her help. Doesn’t she know that?”

“She knows, but she has to think about herself.”

Valentine drummed the table. Where was the evolution of cooperation that Smith had just spoken about? Valentine had helped Lucy plenty of times, even given her money when her situation had seemed hopeless. How could she now be so unwilling to help him? He didn’t like it. In fact, it made him mad as hell.

He’d been walking around with an envelope tucked under his arm since he’d entered the prison. Opening it, he laid the photographs of the seven suspected gaming agents on the table. Five men, two women. He removed the photos of the five men, and handed them to Smith.

“One of these five guys is the ringleader of a major casino scam. In the spirit of cooperation that you’re so fond of talking about, I want you to show these photographs to Lucy. Tell her it would be therapeutic for her to turn in a cheater.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Do it anyway.”

“You can’t order me around.”

“I can’t?”

“No. I don’t work for you.”