Jackpot

Valentine shook his head. It would be easy to dismiss the man who’d approached Lucy as a masher, only the slot machine he’d asked Lucy to play had paid off, and Lucy had sensed that something was wrong. The man had somehow rigged the machine, and talked Lucy into being his claimer. Which meant that everything Bronco’s lawyer had told Bill Higgins was true.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

Chapter 6

Gerry Valentine had been gambling since he was ten. Ever since he could remember, placing a bet had gotten his adrenaline pumping, and made him feel good all over.

Until today.

He was sitting at his kitchen table with Yolanda, eating take-out Chinese food from paper cartons. Back when he was a kid, his family had eaten Chinese food this way. Yolanda found it funny but went along with the ritual. Maybe that was why he loved her so much. She put up with his nonsense.

“Why the long face?” she asked, twirling her chicken lo mein with a fork.

He took a deep breath. Along with the three thousand his father had given him, he’d won another six grand by picking the Daily Double at Tampa Bay Downs. Only, the win at the track hadn’t made him feel very good. Through the intercom on the table he listened to Lois talking in her sleep from the bedroom.

“She sounds like you,” Gerry said.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. She whispers in her sleep. You do that.”

“You didn’t answer my question. What’s wrong?”

Gerry couldn’t hide it anymore. He pointed at the money he’d won at the track lying on the table. “This.”

Yolanda continued to eat her food. When it came to gambling, she was as pure as freshly fallen snow, and didn’t understand the odds against picking two horses to come in first in two different races.

“You won,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“I cheated.”

The lo mein noodles on her fork escaped back into the carton, and she put the utensil on her plate. “You did what?”

Normally, Gerry would have lowered his head in shame. This was the classic response to someone getting chewed out; lower your head and beg forgiveness. But, he wasn’t going to do that with Yolanda. She deserved better.

“I cheated the track.”

“Explain yourself.”

“When we got to the track, I grabbed a racing form. On it were the names of two horses that I recognized from my bookmaking days. These horses were excellent runners, only their owner had his jockeys hold them back in races.”

“He made his own horses lose?”

“Yeah. Over time, they became long shots. When I saw them in the first and second races today, I had a hunch he was going to let them really run.”

“Why?”

“Because the Daily Double only happens in the first and second races. If a bettor picks both winning horses, he wins a bundle. Since these two horses were long shots, the odds they paid out were astronomical.” He pointed at the money lying on the table. “I won that on a hundred dollar bet.”

Yolanda stared at the stack of bills. “But there was no guarantee those horses would win, was there?”

“No, but they were sure things.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I used insider-information. Normally, it wouldn’t bother me. But then a funny thing happened. I saw that hustler who nearly scammed me with the silking, and told my father. And we caught him. And you know what?”

“What,” his wife said softly.

“It made me feel better than winning the Daily Double.”

“It did?”

“Yeah. And it made me realize something else. I can’t be a cheater, and also catch cheaters. It had to be one, or the other. So, I’m giving it up.”

“The cheating.”

“Yeah.”

Yolanda reached across the table and placed her hand atop his. In her beautiful brown eyes was a look that was both strange and wonderful. At any other time in their relationship, her look would have disturbed him. It was like she’d been waiting for him, and he’d finally arrived.

“You didn’t tell your father about winning the Daily Double, did you?”

He shook his head. Confessing to his old man would only reinforce every bad image his father had of him.

“But you learned your lesson,” she said.

“I sure did.”

She stared at the money, and Gerry found himself staring as well. Money had never seemed so important as it did once the baby had been born. His wife lifted her eyes to meet his. “Will you give the money back to the track?” she asked.

“Give it back? Are you, nuts?”

“Gerry!”

There was a knock on the back door. He rose, and flicked on the back porch light. Through the glass cut-out he saw his father standing on the stoop. Did he overhear us? He unlocked the back door and opened it.

“Hey, Pop, what’s up?”

“We need to talk,” his father said.

Gerry and his father took a walk into downtown Palm Harbor. As towns went, it wasn’t much, the main street consisting of two family-owned restaurants, a metaphysical bookstore, a real estate office, and a coffee shop. It was Small Pond, U.S.A., but in Gerry’s book that was okay. Palm Harbor’s strict zoning restrictions prohibited fast- food restaurants and strip shopping centers, and he liked knowing the town was going to stay the way it was. They stopped beneath a moth-encrusted street light.

“We have a problem,” his father said.

Gerry sucked in his breath. “We do?”

“Yeah. It has the potential to ruin us.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. You want an ice cream cone?”

Gerry hid the smile forming on his lips. His father had never let anything get in the way of eating.

“Sure. Chocolate swirl if they have it.”

His father walked into a restaurant, and emerged a minute later with a pair of double-scoop ice cream cones. He handed Gerry one, along with a paper napkin. It didn’t look like chocolate swirl, but Gerry didn’t complain. The suspense was killing him, and they walked down the street side by side.

“A Nevada Gaming Control Board agent is stealing jackpots from slot machines,” his father began. “I’ve been asked to take the case, figure out who the agent is, and how he’s doing it.”

“What makes that such a big catastrophe?” Gerry asked, licking his cone. “I mean, you’ve caught slot cheaters before.”