Loaded Dice (18 page)

“How much security is down there?” Valentine asked.

“Twenty of my best guys.”

“Remember those martial arts creeps Fontaine sprang on you last time?”

Nick called downstairs and doubled security outside the meeting room. Hanging up, he said, “If they start to tango, you want a piece of one?”

Valentine looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Me?”

“Yeah. Weren’t you a judo champion? The TV movie said you were.”

“About a hundred years ago.”

“Come on, you’re not afraid of these young punks, are you?”

Nick was putting on a brave face, and Valentine tried to think of something to say. He almost told Nick the truth, which was that if you lived long enough, all good things in your life came to an end. On the monitor, he saw Wily stick a pen behind his ear. Nick saw it as well, and hurried from the room.

Five minutes later, Nick and forty security guards rushed into the basement meeting room and announced that the new hires were being held on suspicion of cheating the house.

Valentine was the last through the door. He saw several females start to weep. Other employees lay on the floor and covered their heads with their arms, a sure sign they’d been busted before. A small group of male employees decided to put up a fight and cleared away the folding chairs in the room’s center.

Twenty security guards surrounded them, then charged in. They used billy clubs and their hands, and were not gentle. Nick immediately jumped into the melee and began swinging his arms. He was a lousy fighter, but every tenth punch caught an unsuspecting chin and sent someone to the floor. Seeing Valentine, he yelled, “Are we having fun yet?”

It
looked
like fun, only Valentine was in no mood for it. His mind had locked on Gerry. He needed to find him before the FBI made the connection between his son and the gym bag. He wanted to help Gerry decide his best course of action. Maybe it was hiring a good lawyer; or perhaps he needed to turn himself in. Either way, he wanted to be there, and help him decide.

He spied a familiar-looking guy crawling across the floor. It was Albert Moss, the rat in finance who’d cooked the books. He stood in front of the exit, blocking Moss’s escape. Moss rose from the floor.

“Get out of my way, “ the crooked accountant said.

“No.”

Moss tried to take his head off with a punch. Valentine ducked the blow, then grabbed Moss’s arm and in one practiced motion flipped him over his shoulder, then slammed his body onto the concrete floor.

Moss lay on his back without moving. Valentine sat on his chest and saw Moss’s eyes pop open. He looked older than his photo, with thin, purplish lips and short curly hair more appropriate for another part of his body.

“I can’t breathe,” Moss gasped.

“I’ll let you up, if you tell me one thing.”

“What . . .”

“We’ve figured out all the scams you’ve got going, except the slot machines. I want to know how you’re ripping them off.”

Moss’s eyes narrowed. “You’re . . . Valentine.”

“No, I’m Bozo the fucking clown.”

“Frank didn’t tell me everything,” Moss whispered.

“You must have some idea.”

“Frank said the slot scam at the Stardust inspired him.”

The Stardust slot scam had happened in 1980 and was the stuff of legend. Fourteen million in quarters had disappeared from the casino, and no one knew how. Valentine guessed Moss knew more than he was letting on.

“You’re lying.”

“I swear, I don’t know.”

“Where’s Fontaine hiding out? ”

“I’ll tell you,” Moss said. “But you’ve got to let me up.”

Moss’s face was turning blue. Valentine pushed himself off his chest. The rest of the employees were standing against the wall, having their rights explained to them. It wouldn’t be long before they would be cutting deals and ratting each other out.

He watched Moss get up. His head left a pancake-sized bloodstain on the floor, and Valentine winced. He’d never believed in hurting people for the sake of inflicting pain, and wondered if he’d cracked Moss’s skull open.

“You want to know where Fontaine is?” Moss asked.

Valentine lifted his gaze. Moss was standing next to him, and had a small knife gripped in his hand. Drawn from his sock, he guessed.

“Frank’s with your girlfriend,” Moss said, slicing his face open.

28

G
erry watched the sun set from the Red Roost Inn’s parking lot while trying to decide what to do.

The sun had bled through the sky as it dropped behind the mountains. His old man had gotten him in the habit of catching sunsets whenever he could. His father hadn’t used to care about that kind of stuff, but becoming a widower had changed him. He savored things now that he’d never paid attention to before.

Gerry smoked his cigarette down to the filter. His father. So many things he’d done in his life had been to defy him, he could see that now. Back when he was a teenager and had started getting in trouble, his father had always rescued him. He’d been his safety net, shielding him from the consequences of his deeds.

He threw his stub onto the pile on the ground. He knew he had to leave Las Vegas. The fact that he hadn’t broken any laws in the past few days didn’t matter. He’d been in the company of two guys who’d broken plenty of laws, and his association with them was going to kill him. Nevada was different that way. If you took money from the casinos, you were guilty until proven innocent.

Taking out his wallet, he removed his American Express card. He’d lent Amin his card several days ago for some stupid reason, and there was no telling what he’d bought with it. He folded the card until it broke in half. He would call Amex, tell them the card was missing. Then, if any of Amin’s purchases came back to haunt him, he could claim his card was stolen. End of story.

Getting photographed with Amin at the MGM’s blackjack tables was going to be more difficult to disassociate himself from. He wasn’t sure what the solution was, except to ask his father to step in. The MGM was a client, and that would probably help.

He rubbed his arms and felt himself shiver. The desert didn’t hold the heat; once the sun went down, the air got really chilly. He considered getting into his car and finding some food, then told himself no. He needed to finish this process and come to grips with things. He needed to purge himself.

Going home to Florida and confessing to Yolanda was a start. He’d hidden a lot of things from her, and he was going to have to come clean or risk her leaving him. She was a doctor, and wouldn’t need him to pay the bills and put food on the table. He felt himself start to choke up. God, did he love her.

Then he had to swallow his pride and confess to his father. There was so much on his slate, he wasn’t sure where to begin. Maybe the first time he’d ever stolen money from his mother’s purse was a good place to start.

And then, when he was finished spilling his guts to Yolanda and his father, he was going to fly to Atlantic City and look up Father Tom, the family priest. He hadn’t taken confession since . . . he couldn’t remember the last time. But he needed to do it soon, and open up his soul. He needed to sit in a confessional and, for however long it took, tell his creator all the things he’d done wrong. Being a Catholic, he had an out. He could accept God and ask to be spared from his crimes.

“Or risk eternal damnation,” he whispered.

Taking out his cell phone, he got the toll-free number for several airlines. He started calling them, determined to find which one had the first flight out.

While he was on hold with American, he thought about his father again and began to choke up. He wondered how his father had found the strength to put up with him for all these years. It was a strength he knew he didn’t possess.

American came through. They had a nonstop flight to Tampa at seven
AM
with two seats left in coach. He and his father could leave Las Vegas together.

Pash came out of the motel and stood beside him while he gave his Visa number to the booking agent. He offered Gerry a cigarette. Gerry took it, and a light, while the booking agent read his confirmation number back to him. He’d inherited his old man’s memory, and burned the number into his head, then hung up.

“You’re not cold?” Pash asked.

Gerry shrugged. “I grew up in New Jersey, on the ocean.”

“It gets cold there?”

“We used to sing songs about how cold it was. It’s colder than a nipple on a witch’s tit, it’s colder than a bucket of penguin shit, it’s colder than an icicle on a polar bear’s ass, it’s colder than the frost on a champagne glass.”

Pash slapped his hands and laughed. Up until that afternoon, Gerry had liked Pash about as much as he could like anyone he’d known for five days. But the shootout at the deserted gas station had changed that. Beneath the Jim Carrey personality, there was a bad person hiding. Trusting him was out of the question, and Gerry stared at the headlights of cars coming down the highway next to the motel.

“I guess you’re disappointed in me and my brother,” Pash said.

“Yeah, I’m disappointed,” Gerry said, blowing a monster cloud of smoke. “I came to you with a legitimate business proposition, and you played me for a chump.”

Pash cocked his head and stared at him. “You came to us with a way to make money. We showed you another way to make money. Is that so bad?”

The afternoon had disappeared, and the fractured light reflecting off the motel’s neon sign gave Pash a ghoulish quality. Gerry wagged a finger in his face. “Right. Next we’ll be robbing banks and shooting guards. No thanks.”

“My brother has never shot his gun before. It was just . . .”

“One of those things?”

“Yes.”

Gerry inched closer to Pash and breathed on him. An old mobster trick, and a great way to get another guy’s attention. Pash shrank a few inches.

“I killed a guy this afternoon saving your brother’s ass,” Gerry said. “He may have had it coming, but that doesn’t matter.
I killed him
.”

“I know,” Pash said.

“Some guys will tell you that killing someone is liberating. It wasn’t for me.”

Pash swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m not?”

“You’re happy I killed that guy. I saved your brother’s life. You understand what I’m saying?”

Pash shook his head. He didn’t understand at all.

“It’s like this,” Gerry said. “You can never feel the way I feel about what happened this afternoon. You’re going to go on with your life, and eventually you’ll forget about it. Me, I’m going to live with it. It’s going to hang heavy on my soul for a long, long time.”

“Your soul,” Pash whispered.

“That’s right.”

Pash could no longer look him in the eye, and used the fading ember of his cigarette to light another. He gestured weakly with the pack, offering him one. That was all that was left between them, Gerry thought, a fucking cigarette and the thread of a friendship.

“Think about that when you unload those drugs,” Gerry said. Then he went into his motel room and slammed the door behind him.

29

N
ick jumped up and down in the nurse’s office while Valentine sat on the examining table, getting his face stitched up.

“That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Nick told the nurse, an older woman with the patience of Job. “First Tony uses these judo moves to take the knife away from Moss—
Pow! Bam! Boom!
—and then he takes him on, mano a mano, and beats the living daylights out of him.” He threw an imaginary uppercut in the air. “It was great!”

Valentine winced as the nurse tied the stitches together. Moss had sliced the side of his face pretty good; he was going to need a plastic surgeon to make his puss look normal. He lifted his hand out of a bowl of ice cubes and stared at his badly bruised knuckles. Moss was going to need a plastic surgeon, too.

He watched Nick prance around the room, still throwing punches. For a guy about to lose everything, he was having a great time, and Valentine remembered why he’d always liked him. Nick knew how to live.

The nurse finished stitching him up, then applied a bandage to his wound. “You’re going to need to change this dressing twice a day. I’m also going to give you some penicillin. Make sure you take the entire dose, okay?”

She said the words like she knew Valentine probably wouldn’t do it. He took the little vial of pills and thanked her. Nick stood a few feet away, delivering a knockout punch to an imaginary foe. Valentine said, “Got anything for our friend?”

“I wish,” the nurse said.

Valentine went into the hallway and powered up his cell phone. The pain in his face was making his entire head hurt. He called Gerry’s cell, got voice mail, and left a message. He tried to make his voice sound gentle, and saw Nick grimace as he hung up.

“Be a tough guy,” Nick said, “and tell him to get his ass over here.”

“You obviously never had kids,” Valentine said.

“What do you mean?”

“That approach doesn’t work anymore.”

The nurse’s office was on the first floor of the casino, behind the registration area. They walked out of her office and into the gaming area. At Valentine’s suggestion, Nick had closed the casino down and put a call into the Gaming Control Bureau. At any moment, a team of GCB agents would swarm through the front doors, throw up yellow tape, and turn the place into a crime scene. In Las Vegas, getting cheated was bad, but not telling the authorities about it was worse. Nick let out an exasperated breath.

“Looks like a tomb, doesn’t it? Here lies Nick Nicocropolis. He never gave in.”

“You want that on your tombstone?”

“It’s the only thing I want on it.”

They walked around the empty casino. There was something sad about the hollow feeling the space gave off, and Valentine was reminded of the time he’d seen a half-sunken ship in a harbor as a kid, and how it had made him cry. He saw Nick stop and pick up a piece of trash from the floor.

“Old habits die hard,” he explained.

Valentine wasn’t listening. His eyes had locked on the cage sitting in the center of the casino floor. The cage was where customers turned their chips into cash. Normally, the cage was on the far end of the casino, the thinking being that a customer might stop along the way and place a wager.