Funny Money (25 page)

“Jack won't let you down,” Higgins had said.

Running Bear shook his head. Jack Lightfoot
had
let him down. He was a cheat, and a damn good one. Bill Higgins had once bragged to Running Bear that he knew every goddamned cheater in the country. So why hadn't he known about this one?

On the second TV a stretch limo appeared. Running Bear leaned forward to stare. The passenger door opened. Sitting in back was an Italian with wavy hair and a mustache. Running Bear found most white men identical, their faces as bland as pudding. Italians were particularly annoying. The men all wore mustaches, or snot-catchers as Indians called them. This one looked like a gangster.

Running Bear stopped the tapes. Sipping his coffee, he listened to the air conditioner outside his window. His casino had been ripped off by a dealer recommended by the most respected gaming official in the country. And that dealer was working with a mobster.
It doesn't get any worse than this,
he thought.

The door opened. The casino's head of security, Harry Smooth Stone, stepped in. He was out of breath.

“More problems,” Smooth Stone said.

Running Bear pushed himself out of his chair. Thirty years wrestling alligators had put arthritis in every joint in his body, and he grimaced as his bones sang their painful song. Had he disgraced a dead ancestor recently and not realized it? There had to be some reason for this sudden spate of bad luck.

The drove Smooth Stone's Jeep across the casino parking lot. Jumping a concrete median, they went down a narrow dirt road through thick mangroves that led into the heart of the Everglades. For centuries, the Micanopys had lived in harmony with the alligators, panthers, and bears that called this land home, and had been rewarded in ways that few humans could appreciate.

Ten minutes later, Smooth Stone pulled into a clearing and parked beside a large pool of water. Running Bear knew the spot well: in the spring, alligators came here to mate and, later, raise their young. A half-dozen tribe members with fishing poles stood by the water's edge, looking scared.

Running Bear got out of the Jeep. The men stepped aside, revealing a body lying facedown in the water. It was a man, and he'd been shot in the head. His left forearm had been chewed off, as had both his feet. Someone had hooked him by the collar. Running Bear said, “Flip him over.”

The men obeyed. The dead man was covered with mud, and one of the men filled a bucket out of the lake and dumped it on his face. Running Bear knelt down, just to be sure.

         

Back in his trailer, Running Bear thumbed through the stack of business cards he kept in his desk. He had decided to dump Jack Lightfoot's body in nearby Broward County—the men in the limo had been white, so let white men deal with the crime—and Smooth Stone was on the phone making arrangements.

“Done,” his head of security said, hanging up.

Running Bear found the card he was looking for and handed it to Smooth Stone. “Call this guy and hire him. Tell him everything, except our finding the body.”

Smooth Stone stared at the card in his hand.

Grift Sense

International Gaming Consultant

Tony Valentine, President

(727) 591-5115

“He catches people who cheat casinos,” Running Bear explained.

“You think he can help us?”

Running Bear heard the suspicion in Smooth Stone's voice. Bringing in an outsider was a risk, but it was a chance he had to take. Jack Lightfoot had cheated them. If word got out that his dealers were crooked, their business would dry up overnight. The casino was the reservation's main revenue source: It paid for health care, education, and a three-thousand-dollar monthly stipend to every adult. If it fell, so did his people.

“I heard him lecture at a gambling seminar,” Running Bear said.

“Any good?”

Running Bear nodded. He'd learned more about cheating listening to Tony Valentine for a few hours than he'd learned running a casino for ten years.

“The best,” he said.

Funny Money
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Ballantine Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

Copyright © 2002 by James Swain

This book contains an excerpt from
Sucker Bet
by James Swain, published by Ballantine Books. Copyright © 2003 by James Swain

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

This edition published by arrangement with Simon & Schuster, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-46658-7

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