envelope out of his pocket. Handed it to Stanton. “Your half — two hundred and twenty-two thousand.”
Stanton didn’t bother to count it. He put the cash away.
“This was a good one,” the cop said.
“That it was,” Stanton agreed.
He and the vice cop ran one of these scams every year when Stanton was up from Florida. Stanton’d work his way into somebody’s confidence, losing money in a couple of private games and then, on high-stakes night, tip the cops off ahead of time. Fanelli’d blame the bust on some anonymous snitch, take the bank as a bribe and release everybody; poker players were so happy to be able to stay out of jail and keep playing that they never complained.
As for Stanton, the gaff like this had always suited him better than gambling.
“Hey, Larry,” one of the cops called to Stanton. “Didn’t mean to be an asshole when I collared you. Just thought it’d be more, you know, realistic.”
“Handled it just right, Moscawitz. You’re a born actor.”
Stanton and the detective walked past the unmarked squad car and continued down the dirty sidewalk. They’d known each other for years, ever since Stanton had worked as head of security at Midwest Metal Products.
“You okay?” Fanelli glanced down at Stanton’s limp.
“I was racing somebody on a Jet Ski up at Lake Geneva. Hit a wake. It’s nothing.”
“So when’re you going back to Tampa?”
“Tomorrow.”
“You flying down?”
“Nope. Driving.” He pulled keys out of his pocket and opened the door of a new BMW sports car.
Fanelli looked it over admiringly. “Sold the Lexus?”
“Decided to keep it.” A nod toward the sleek silver wheels. “I just wanted something sexier, you know. The ladies in my golf club love a man in a sports car. Even if he’s got knobby knees.”
Fanelli shook his head. “Felt bad about that kid. Where’d he get the money to sit in on a high-stakes game?”
“Tuition money or something. He inherited it from his folks.”
“You mean we just dipped an orphan? I’ll be in confession for a month.”
“He’s an orphan who cheated the pants off Keller and everybody else.”
“What?”
Stanton laughed. “Took me a while to tip to it. Finally figured it out. He must’ve had some kind of electronic shiner or camera or something in his coffee cup lid. He was always playing with it on the table, moving it close to the cards when he dealt — and the only time he won big was on the deal. Then after the bust I checked out his car — there was a computer and some kind of antenna in the backseat.”
“Damn,” Fanelli said. “That was stupid. He’ll end up dead, he’s not careful. I’m surprised Keller didn’t spot it.”
“Keller was too busy running his own scam, trying to take the kid.” Stanton told him about the pro’s setup of Tony.
The detective laughed. “He tried to take the boy, the boy tried to take the table, and it was us old guys who took ’em both. There’s a lesson there someplace.” The men shook hands in farewell. “See you next spring, my friend. Let’s try Greenpoint. I hear they’ve got some good high-stakes games over there.”
“We’ll do that.” Stanton nodded and fired up the sports car. He drove to the intersection, carefully checked for cross traffic and turned onto the main street that would take him to the expressway.
NINETY-EIGHT POINT SIX
Suit jacket slung over his shoulder, the man trudged up the long walk to the bungalow, his lungs aching, breathless in the astonishing heat, which had persisted well after sundown.
Pausing on the sidewalk in front of the house, trying to catch his breath, he believed he heard troubled voices from inside. Still, he’d had no choice but to come here. This was the only house he’d seen along the highway.
He climbed the stairs to the unwelcomingly dark porch and rang the bell.
The voices ceased immediately.
There was a shuffle. Two or three words spoken.
He rang the bell again and finally the door opened.
Sloan observed that the three people inside gazed at him with different expressions on their faces.
The woman on the couch, in her fifties, wearing an over-washed sleeveless house dress, appeared relieved. The man sitting beside her — about the same age, rounding and bald — was wary.
And the man who’d opened the door and stood closest to Sloan had a grin on his face — a thick-lipped grin that really meant, What the hell do you want? He was about Sloan’s own age — late thirties — and his tattooed arms were long. He gripped the side of the door defensively with a massive hand. His clothes were gray, stained dungarees and a torn work shirt. His shaved scalp glistened.
“Help you?” the tattooed man asked.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Sloan said. “My car broke down — it overheated. I need to call Triple A. You mind if I use your phone?”
“Phone company’s having problems, I heard,” the tattooed man replied. Nodding toward the dense, still night sky. “With the heat — those rolling brownouts or blackouts, whatever.”
He didn’t move out of the doorway.
But the woman said quickly, “No, please come in,” with curious eagerness. “Our phone just rang a bit ago. I’m sure it’s working fine.”
“Please,” echoed the older man, who was holding her hand.
The tattooed man looked Sloan over cautiously, as people often did. Unsmiling by nature, Sloan was a big man, and muscular — he’d worked out every day for the past three years — and at the moment he was a mess; tonight he’d trekked through the brush to take a shortcut to the lights of this house. And like anyone walking around on this overwhelmingly humid and hot night, every inch of his skin was slick with sweat.
Finally the tattooed man gestured him inside. Sloan noticed a bad scar across the back of his hand. It looked like a knife wound and it was recent.
The house was overly bright and painfully hot. A tiny air conditioner moaned but did nothing to cool the still air. He glanced at the walls, taking in fast vignettes of lives spent in a small bubble of the world. He deduced careers with Allstate Insurance and a high school library and nebulous involvement in the Rotary Club, church groups and parent-teacher organizations. Busmen’s holidays of fishing trips to Saginaw or Minnesota. A vacation to Chicago memorialized in framed, yellowing snapshots.
Introductions were made. “I’m Dave Sloan.”
Agnes and Bill Willis were the couple. Sloan observed immediately that they shared an ambiguous similarity of manner that characterized people long married. The tattooed man said nothing about himself. He tinkered with the air conditioner, turning the compressor knob up and down.
“I’m not interrupting supper, I hope.”
There was a moment of silence. It was eight p.m. and Sloan could see no dirty dishes from the night’s meal.
“No” was Agnes’s soft reply.
“Nope, no food here,” the tattooed man said with a cryptic edge to the comment. He looked angrily at the air conditioner as if he were going to kick it out the window but he controlled himself and walked back to the place he’d staked out for himself — an over-stuffed Naugahyde armchair that still glistened with the sweat that’d leached from his skin before he stood to answer the door.
“Phone’s in there,” Bill pointed.
