figure out who it is.”
“It will come to you eventually,” Lois said.
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
It was nearly ten o’clock and raining cats and dogs outside. That was the crummy thing about living in Atlantic City during the winter; one day it snowed, the next it rained. Gerry came downstairs in his pajamas, and kissed his mother on the forehead. Then, he put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “I hope you feel better, Pop.”
Valentine looked up at his son and smiled. He’d been teaching Gerry magic tricks he’d bought from Uncle Al’s shop, and his son seemed eager to learn more. They’d also received a note from school that said Gerry was showing improvement in his math and English classes. It had thrilled them to no end.
“I will,” Valentine said. “Sleep tight.”
They listened to their son go upstairs to bed. Then Valentine said, “I have a meeting tomorrow morning with the Casino Control Commission. I caught Louis Galloway cheating at blackjack the other day and busted him.”
“
“Yeah. Galloway is tight with the commission’s chairperson, Nancy Pulaski. She’s going to put my feet to the fire.”
“What are you going to do?”
Valentine stared at the ceiling some more. He’d never backed down from a case before, and had no intention of starting now. “Stand up for myself.”
“That doesn’t sound like the words of a crazy man to me.”
He had a feeling that his wife would support him even if he started running naked down the street with a tomahawk in his hand, and he looked lovingly into her face. “I need you to help me pick out what to wear. Banko wants me in a suit.”
Lois giggled. “Well, you only have one suit, so that should be easy.”
He pushed himself off the couch, then offered his hand to her.
“Yeah, but I have three neckties,” he said.
Banko picked him up the next morning at seven-thirty sharp, and drove to the three-story brick building on Tropicana Avenue where the Casino Control Commission was headquartered “Nice tie,” he said, looking him over.
Like most buildings on the island, the CCC’s headquarters had been a thing of beauty once, but had fallen on hard times, and was badly in need of refurbishing. They identified themselves to a stern-faced female receptionist, then stood in drab lobby while waiting to be called upstairs. Banko eyed the envelope in Valentine’s hand.
“What’s that?”
“I spliced together some surveillance tapes I wanted the commission to see.”
His superior grinned. “A little show-and-tell, eh?”
“I think they’ll like it.”
At seven-fifty-nine, they were summoned upstairs.
The commission’s five members worked in a boardroom with fraying carpet and rattling pipes. They sat at a faded mahogany table with pitchers of ice water in front of each member. Behind them, through a bank of windows, Resorts’ towering casino shone on the otherwise depressing skyline.
Nancy Pulaski, the commission’s chairperson, gave Valentine a no-nonsense stare as Banko introduced him to the group. Pulaski was pushing fifty, with lots of gray hair and wrinkles, yet dressed like a woman twenty years younger. Her haircut was particularly unnerving: A page boy. Picking up some papers from the table, she said, “Detective Valentine, do you know what this is?”
“No, ma’am,” he replied.
“I’m holding in my hand Louis Galloway’s arrest report. It says that you arrested him for spilling a drink on his cards. How can that be a crime?”
“Louis Galloway was exploiting a weakness in one of the casino’s procedures, so I had him arrested,” Valentine said.
“Please explain yourself.”
“ A player can gain an edge by spilling his drinks on low-valued cards, and getting them taken out of play. Louis Galloway did this three times. The last time, we caught it on video tape.”
Two of the commission members were attorneys. One said, “How big an edge?”
“Two percent,” Valentine said.
“That’s huge, isn’t it?”
“Yes sir, it is.”
“If enough players did this, we’d lose money at blackjack, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes, sir, we would.”
Nancy Pulaski wasn’t buying it, and stared at him like he’d made the whole thing up. “I’m sorry, detective, but your logic escapes me. Players spill drinks on cards all the time. Why does this make Louis Galloway guilty of a crime, when others aren’t?”
“Louis Galloway purposely exploited a weakness in the casino’s procedures,” Valentine said.
