Mr. Lucky (3 page)

4

T
wo days after the tragic fire at the Riverboat, Bill Higgins, the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board and one of Valentine’s closest friends, called from Tampa International Airport. He had just flown in from Las Vegas and needed to talk.

“You here on business?” Valentine asked him.

“Afraid so,” Bill replied.

A yellow cab deposited Bill on Valentine’s doorstep thirty minutes later. He was dressed in a somber black suit and walking without his cane, the color of good health having returned to his cheeks. Four months before, a gangster had shot him in the leg, and his rehab had been slow but steady. He was a Navajo by birth, and wore his emotions several layers below the surface.

Valentine pumped his hand, then showed him into the living room and got two Diet Cokes from the kitchen. Serving his guest, he said, “So how’s life treating you?”

“Crummy,” Bill said, loosening his tie. He took a long swallow of soda, then said, “You know, you’ve gotten me addicted to this stuff. I’m up to three cans a day.”

“Sorry.”

“Where’s Mabel? You know, we talk all the time, but I’ve never met her.”

“She has the day off,” Valentine said. “She’s been working a lot of weekends, and I figured I’d better give her a vacation before she quit.”

Valentine saw Bill’s eyes scan the living room. Piles of casino surveillance tapes were on every piece of furniture and every table. Attached to each tape was a note from the casino’s head of security, describing the alleged cheating taking place. The notes always came with a check, and Bill whistled through his teeth.

“Business must be good.”

“It’s picking up. How about you?”

Bill drained his can and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Lousy. I’ve gotten myself in a real jam and need to ask you a favor.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t agree just yet. Hear me out.”

Valentine stretched out in his La-Z-Boy. A young kid had tossed him hard at judo class the day before, and he’d woken up that morning feeling like a one-legged man after an ass-kicking contest. “Go ahead.”

“I’m sure you’ve been following the Ricky Smith story in the newspapers.”

He nodded. Ricky Smith was an overnight media sensation. After jumping off the balcony of the burning hotel into a swimming pool, he’d waltzed into a casino across the street called the Mint, borrowed twenty bucks from a retired bookkeeper, and proceeded to win more than two hundred thousand dollars playing blackjack. From there, he’d gone and played roulette, won another quarter million bucks, then went to the craps table and won another three hundred thousand. He capped off the evening by playing poker with a legend named Tex “All In” Snyder and beat the pants off him. It was an amazing streak even by Las Vegas standards, and the newspapers had dubbed him the world’s luckiest man.

“I got a call from the owner of the Mint that night,” Bill said. “He didn’t have enough cash in the cage to pay Ricky off. Ricky agreed to come back the next day for his money. The owner decided to put the time to good use and asked me to check him out.”

“Just in case he was cheating,” Valentine said.

“Exactly.”

“Was he?”

“Ricky Smith is a straight arrow; no criminal record of any kind. I got a credit card company to pull up his files. He lives in a little town in North Carolina called Slippery Rock. This was his fourth trip to Las Vegas since January. Each time he was here, he stayed at the Riverboat. That was all I had to go on. Four trips in the past year.

“I got the Mint to give me the surveillance videotape of him beating them. I watched it for a few hours. Everything appears normal. He sits down, places a bet, and wins. No hanky-panky on anybody’s part. It looks like he got lucky, plain and simple.

“For the heck of it, I decided to call around and see if he’d played at any other casino during his other trips. Come to find out, he did. He played blackjack at the Bellagio two months ago. Guess what? They pegged him a card counter.”

“Did they ban him?”

Bill shook his head. “He was losing, so they let him continue. But they kept a file on him, just in case he decided to come back.”

Valentine tossed his empty soda can into the trash. “Let me guess. You then looked at the tape of him playing at the Mint a little differently.”

“I sure did,” Bill said, leaning forward in his seat. “And I found a discrepancy. When he played blackjack at the Mint, he didn’t card count. Matter of fact, he didn’t adhere to Basic Strategy. He played like a moron, yet won every hand he played.”

“Every hand? No losses?”

“Not a one.”

Basic Strategy had been developed by a mathematician named Edward Thorp and was the optimal way to play blackjack. Card counters knew Basic Strategy like the back of their hand and never deviated from it. For Ricky to have stopped using Basic Strategy was like saying he’d woken up one morning and started brushing his teeth with a different hand.

“I called the owner of the Mint and told him what I’d found,” Bill went on. “I told him I thought it was suspicious, but that there could be an explanation.”

“The jump from the burning hotel,” Valentine said.

“Exactly. Ricky Smith was in shock and therefore deviated from normal behavior.” Bill grew silent and stared at the worn spot in the rug beneath his feet. “This is the rug you had in Atlantic City, isn’t it?”

Valentine said that it was. Since moving to Palm Harbor, he hadn’t bought a single piece of furniture except a wide-screen TV, and that was because the old one had gotten blown out of the wall during a lightning storm. Spending money had been his wife’s job, not his.

“I think I wore that hole in it,” Bill said, still staring. “Anyway, the owner of the Mint tells his people to delay paying Ricky Smith off. Legally, they’re allowed to conduct an investigation if they suspect any impropriety.”

“That was dumb,” Valentine said.

“Tell me about it. Ricky Smith’s lawyers filed papers against the Mint yesterday afternoon. The casinos in town are freaking out. They think the publicity will be horrible. I got called on the carpet last night.”

“Why you?”

“The owner of the Mint is saying he based his decision on my recommendation. He left out the part about Ricky maybe being in shock.”

“How convenient.”

“I need your help. My gut tells me Ricky Smith’s winning streak isn’t on the square. Ricky told a newspaper that except for blackjack, he’d never played any of the other casino games before, yet he still somehow managed to win.”

“Beginner’s luck? Come on.”

“That’s what I said. I need you to tell me what he’s doing.”

Valentine had known Bill a long time and considered him one of his best friends. He liked to think he’d do just about anything to help Bill out of a jam; only, this was Las Vegas they were talking about, the only city in America where rats wore thousand-dollar silk suits and screwed people because it suited them.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Bill,” he said.

Bill didn’t act mad or particularly surprised. He went outside the house to make a call on his cell phone. Palm Harbor didn’t have many cell towers, and the reception was rarely good. Besides the great weather, Valentine considered the lack of reception one of the area’s greatest attributes. Bill returned to the living room, shaking his head.

“I can’t get a line out. Can I use your office phone?”

“Sure,” Valentine said.

Bill disappeared into the back of the house. Valentine guessed Bill was calling the casino owners to explain the situation. Las Vegas’s casinos routinely alerted other casinos around the country about cheaters and card counters they’d spotted playing in their establishments. Six weeks ago, they’d sent a notice out calling Valentine’s son, Gerry, an undesirable. As a result, Gerry had been forced to quit working for him, and was now unemployed.

Valentine had responded by refusing to do any more work for Las Vegas’s casinos. Gerry was no choir boy, but did not deserve the leper status. To replace the work he’d lost from Las Vegas, Valentine had started taking jobs from casinos in Europe and the Far East. The time difference was a drag, but like his mother used to say, their money was as green as anyone else’s.

Picking up the remote, he got the VCR working, and stared at a surveillance tape of a Japanese gambler playing craps at a posh casino in New Zealand. The Japanese gambler was betting a few hundred dollars a roll. Then, out of the blue, he bet five thousand dollars and won. It looked suspicious as hell.

Valentine found the letter the casino boss had sent him and reread it. According to the boss, the Japanese gambler made a single five-thousand-dollar bet each time he played. He bet this amount only when another player was throwing the dice. And he always won.

Valentine rewound the tape and hit play. This time, he watched how the Japanese gambler placed his bets. Instead of using chips, he was using cold hard cash. As the dice were in the air, he leaned forward over the table to make a Field Bet. This meant if the shooter tossed a 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, or 12, the Japanese gambler won. But the shooter threw the dice too fast and yelled for the Japanese gambler to watch out. The Japanese gambler pulled back, never letting go of his cash. Instead, he looked at the craps dealer running the game. The banker nodded, accepting his bet. Valentine felt a smile cross his face. The scam was as old as the hills. The Japanese gambler had a hidden fold in the bills. The big money was folded in half, giving him two bets. If the shooter won the Field Bet, the Japanese gambler would drop all of his money on the layout. If the shooter lost, the big money was palmed in the Japanese gambler’s left hand, while the visible bills were dropped to the table with his right hand. When Bill came out of the study, Valentine killed the tape.

“That your granddaughter in those pictures on your desk?” Bill asked.

“That’s her. Her name’s Lois.”

“She’s a real beauty.” Bill parked himself on the couch and cleared his throat. “I just had a conference call with the Strip’s major owners. They want to offer you a deal.”

“I hope you told them to go to hell.”

“It’s a good deal.”

“Not interested.”

Bill frowned. It was rare for him to show emotion, and Valentine guessed it hadn’t been a pleasant conversation. “Let me guess. They threatened to fire you if I didn’t play ball.”

Bill nodded solemnly.

“Think they’ll do it?”

“Of course they’ll do it.”

“When you up for retirement?” Valentine asked.

“Next year.”

“Getting fired would kind of spoil that, huh?”

“Just a little.”

Valentine tossed the remote on the table beside his recliner. He missed, and it hit the floor and shattered, the batteries rolling under the couch. It was a well-known fact that the Mafia had been run out of Las Vegas years ago. What wasn’t well known was that the men who’d replaced them were just as ruthless; only, they had MBAs from Harvard Business School.

“Let’s hear their deal,” Valentine said.

5

W
atch out!”

Valentine jammed the brake pedal to avoid a barefoot man in ragged jeans picking his way between cars. It was late afternoon, and the single lane of traffic crawling along Key West’s famous Duval Street had halted. The tops of cars gleamed with bright, shadowless light as a storm rumbled in the distance. Newsboys danced in the road along with women hawking flowers and an enterprising guy with lottery tickets trailing from a roll like toilet paper.

The barefoot man stopped in front of Valentine’s rental. Clenched in his fist was a soda bottle. Valentine tensed, guessing it was about to come through his windshield. Instead the man took a swig and, holding his body erect, ignited his breath with a lighter. An orange balloon of flame burst from his mouth. As he started to do it again, Valentine pulled his wallet out and motioned the man over to his window.

“Here,” he exclaimed, stuffing five dollars into the man’s hands. “Now, get out of here before you blow us all up!”

The man sauntered away, barely avoiding a motorcycle weaving in and out of traffic. Valentine shifted into drive and the rental rolled forward a few yards, and then traffic stopped again. He’d killed an entire day traveling from Palm Harbor to Key West, and now watched the sun balance on a cluster of palm trees.

A flower seller tapped on his window. She was Cuban, and in broken English hawked flowers for any occasion: birthdays, young mistresses, even suspicious wives. He smiled for the first time that day. “I’m looking for the Coral House. It’s supposed to be right off Duval.”

She pointed to the next block. The street sign had been covered by a banner announcing a festival that started tomorrow. A dented Volkswagen bus cut in front of him, its rear panel removed to help cool the engine. Raising her voice, the flower seller said, “At the end of that street, hidden behind a big hibiscus hedge, is the Coral House.”

“Gracias, señorita.”

“You want to buy flowers?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe there is a woman you secretly care about,” she insisted, trying to get him to take a handful.

Traffic had finally started to move, and Valentine frowned and drove away.

Valentine had given Gerry and his wife a week’s stay at the Coral House as a present. They had both taken the ban by the Las Vegas casinos hard. Until Yolanda could get back to work, they were existing solely on Gerry’s income. Losing that had put Gerry in a real bind. He was thirty-six years old and, except for running a bar that had fronted a bookmaking operation, had never held down a legitimate job in his life.

Walking up the path, Valentine was happy to see the place wasn’t a dump. The old Victorian two-story had a wraparound porch and rockers that looked like they got plenty of use. The reception area was right inside the front door. A prim little man sat at a desk, drinking herbal tea while balancing his checkbook. Looking up, he said, “Good afternoon.”

“Hello,” Valentine said.

“Are you…Mr. Valentine?”

The guy didn’t look like anyone he’d ever busted. “That’s right. How did you know?”

“The resemblance to your son is remarkable. They’re upstairs, room 7.”

Valentine thanked him and climbed up a winding staircase to the second floor, stopping halfway to admire the black-and-whites of old Key West hanging on the walls, Ernest Hemingway’s grizzled, sunburned face shining out from several. He’d toured Hemingway’s home during an earlier trip and come away impressed. A nice place, but nothing lavish.

Room 7 was at the hallway’s end. He tapped lightly and heard his son say, “It’s unlocked.” He opened the door and went in. Gerry was standing over the bed, attempting to change his two-month-old daughter’s diaper. He looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, his daughter kicking and screaming her displeasure.

“Let me show you how to do that,” Valentine said.

It had been Yolanda’s idea to name the baby after Valentine’s late wife. Gerry liked to say Yolanda was psychic, and in this case, she was. The baby had his late wife’s genes: china-delicate features, black hair, and beestung lips. Holding her in his arms, Valentine often found himself feeling incredibly happy and immensely sad at the same time. He tickled his granddaughter’s toes and got her to stop crying, then changed her diaper. When he was done, Gerry lifted her into the air and said, “Grandpa’s a star, isn’t he?”

“I changed her diaper, I get to hold her,” Valentine said.

“Sure. Just promise you won’t bite her.”

“Very funny.”

Handing the baby to his father, Gerry said, “So what’s going on? The way you sounded on the phone earlier, I thought you’d won the lottery until I remembered you don’t gamble.”

Valentine cradled the baby against his chest. He’d decided that grandkids were the greatest thing ever invented. All the fun, and none of the hassle. “I had a unique opportunity presented to me yesterday. It includes you.”

“I’m all ears,” his son said.

Yolanda came out of the bathroom and kissed her father-in-law on the cheek. She wore white shorts and a man’s white cotton shirt and looked stunning. His son had married a wonderful young woman who was a doctor. She also put up with Gerry’s nonsense, which qualified her for sainthood in Valentine’s book.

“Thank you again for giving us this vacation,” she said.

“Yeah, Pop,” Gerry said. “Thanks.”

Valentine handed the baby to her mother and said, “I need to talk to my son. I hope you don’t mind if we disappear for a little while.”

Yolanda gave Gerry the eye. The vacation had obviously agreed with them, and a mischievous look crossed his son’s face.

“Just don’t make it too long,” she said.

His son had always liked scenes, so Valentine was not surprised when they ended up on the pier at the end of Duval Street, watching street performers while the sun set. There were jugglers and buskers and a female contortionist covered with biblical tattoos, but the act attracting all the eyeballs was an emaciated guy with four trained house cats. The cats, all marmalade colored, were as skinny as their owner, and jumped through hoops and rang bells in return for tiny scraps of meat. The animals looked a few breaths away from expiring, and Valentine wanted to buy them a good meal but instead threw ten bucks into the guy’s hat.

“You’re such a soft touch,” his son said as they walked away.

“You think so?”

“That guy drives a Mercedes.”

“Then why is he so thin?”

“That’s his gimmick. People feel sorry for him and the cats. He makes a bundle.”

As daylight faded, the crowd dispersed, leaving Valentine and his son standing at the end of the pier, eating chocolate ice cream cones they’d bought from a vendor. Gerry bit off the end of his cone and sucked the ice cream out of the bottom.

“How would you like to come back and work for me?” Valentine asked.

His son’s head snapped, and melted ice cream ran down his chin. “You serious?”

“No, I just killed a day traveling here to pull your leg.”

Gerry wiped his face with a napkin. “You fix it with the guys out in Las Vegas?”

Valentine nodded. Bill Higgins had offered him a simple deal. Take the Ricky Smith job, and the casino owners would wipe the slate clean with his son, while paying him the biggest fee he’d ever earned. He had a lot of pride, but not enough to turn down a deal like the one Bill had offered him. Gerry tossed his cone into the ocean and threw his arms around him.

“Oh, man, Pop, you’re a lifesaver.”

The dying sun had turned the horizon pink, and long ragged strips of orange clouds were torn across the sky like a poster ripped in half. They left the pier and walked back to the Coral House. Key West had informally seceded from the Union years ago, and colorful Conch Republic banners hung from every tree and storefront.

Streetlights flickered a block from the guesthouse. Valentine stopped at the corner to watch a bicycle rickshaw with two drunk tourists. When it was gone, he said, “Here’s the deal. I need you to go to Gulfport, Mississippi, and talk to a poker player named Tex Snyder.”

“Tex ‘All In’ Snyder?”

“That’s right. You know him?”

“Just from the TV. Won the World Series of Poker twice, considered one of the best Texas Hold ’Em players alive. How’s he involved in this?”

Valentine took a pack of nicotine gum from his pocket and popped a piece into his mouth. Forty-five days without a cigarette and he still hadn’t killed anyone. As the nicotine entered his bloodstream, he felt himself relax. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the guy who won a million bucks at the Mint last week.”

“Ricky Smith, the guy they’re calling Mr. Lucky?”

“That’s him. Bill Higgins of the Nevada Gaming Control Board thinks he might have cheated.”

“You’re kidding. How?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you don’t think he’s cheating.”

Valentine shrugged. “I’ve watched the tape of him playing at the Mint a dozen times. I’m not seeing any cheating. Granted, his play is irregular—he makes some wild bets and seems oblivious to the odds against him—but he jumped out of a burning building, so you can’t expect his play to be normal.”

“How’s Tex Snyder involved in this?”

“Ricky Smith beat Snyder silly. Snyder’s had plenty of time to think about it. I want you to feel him out and see if he thinks he was swindled.”

“What’s Snyder doing in Gulfport? Playing in a poker tournament?”

“You’re psychic.”

“How am I going to get him to talk to me?”

“Charm him.”

A mosquito as big as a bird flew by. Gerry said, “Excuse me for sounding rude, but what are you going to be doing while I’m in Gulfport?”

Valentine popped another piece of the foul-tasting gum into his mouth.
Excuse me for sounding rude
. That was definitely a new addition to Gerry’s lexicon. Was Yolanda putting him through finishing school and getting him to clean up his manners? Valentine looked his son over. Gerry had lost the annoying earring, and his shirt was recently pressed. Yeah, she sure was.

“I’ll be in a little burg called Slippery Rock, North Carolina,” Valentine said. “It’s Ricky’s hometown. I’m going to do a little digging, see what I turn up.”

“I hope you don’t find anything.”

“No?”

“I’d hate to find out Ricky Smith was a cheater.”

Valentine chewed his gum vigorously. He knew exactly what Gerry meant. Ricky Smith had cheated death, and then he’d gone and cheated the odds. It was the kind of story that people never got tired of hearing, and Valentine hoped he didn’t go to Slippery Rock and discover that Ricky’s halo was really a pair of horns.