Loaded Dice (5 page)

The line of retirees ohhed and ahhed. The elderly fan clapped her hands together in delight. Brushing past Valentine, she disappeared into the casino lobby.

“What brings you to town?” Joe asked.

“He just saved our ass again,” Wily piped in.

Joe scratched his chin like a great thinker. “Let me guess. You stopped the jumper.”

Valentine acknowledged that he had. “You like being famous?”

“Beats working,” Joe replied.

The elderly fan returned to the alcove, looking annoyed. “Tony Valentine wasn’t in the lobby,” she said. “Where is he?”

Joe pointed at the real McCoy. She looked Valentine over from head to toe.

“Really?” she asked skeptically.

“People can be cruel,” Wily said as they walked outside. The fountains had just come on, the statues of Nick’s ex-loves getting their midday shower. Wily’s cell phone went off. Ripping it from his pocket, he stared at its face.

“The boss,” he said. Turning it on, he said, “Hey Nick, what’s up?”

Valentine mouthed the words
See you
and started to walk away. Wily motioned with his hand for him to stop. “Yeah, Valentine’s right here,” he said into the phone. “I know he saved the day. You want him to come over?” Wily covered the mouthpiece. “Nick wants to thank you in person.”

“I need to go find my son.”

“Nick’s got spies all over town,” Wily said. “If anyone can track Bart Calhoun down, it’s him. Come on.”

Valentine considered it. Nick had been in Las Vegas forever and knew everybody. He was also usually good for a few laughs.

“For lunch?” he asked.

Wily took his hand away from the phone. “Valentine wants to know if you’re going to feed him.” The head of security covered the phone. “Nick says sure, if you’ll promise to tell the story of how you caught Nola and Frank Fontaine.”

“To who?” Valentine asked.

“Nick’s new wife.”

Nick’s bride was named Wanda Lovesong. According to Wily, the English language did not contain enough adjectives to describe what she looked like. Driving to Nick’s palatial estate on the outskirts of town, Wily explained how she and Nick had met.

“You know how Nick’s a sucker for beautiful women,” Wily said.

“His Achilles’ heel,” Valentine said.

“There you go. Well, he gets a distress call a few months ago from a promoter named Santo Bruno. Seems Santo is staging the Miss Nude World contest, and his venue backed out on him at the last minute.”

“The Miss what?”

“You heard me,” Wily said, grinning as he stared at the highway. “The hundred best strippers and exotic dancers in the country compete for prizes. It’s a real scene.”

“What’s the grand prize? A new wardrobe?”

Wily slapped the wheel. “That’s a good one. Anyway, Santo asked Nick to hold the event at the Acropolis,
and
be a judge. Well, you know Nick’s weakness for naked broads. He said yeah, and we got to host the event. Craziest weekend of my entire life.”

“Did you see the contest?”

“Wouldn’t have missed it if the place was on fire. The talent show was amazing.”

Nick’s place was up ahead, a lush, sprawling estate surrounded by other sprawling estates, all in the middle of nowhere. That was the thing about Las Vegas: Being in the desert,
everything
was in the middle of nowhere.

Wily drove down the elongated driveway without slowing down. Two cars sat beneath the pillared front entrance: Nick’s black Cadillac and a pink Jaguar convertible with a vanity plate that said
LITLMISS
. As they approached the front door, Valentine said, “So how did Nick end up getting hitched?”

Wily pressed the front doorbell. Moments later, the door buzzed, and Wily grabbed the handle then glanced at him. “One hundred of the best strippers in America were at the Acropolis. Wanda stayed.”

They entered the ten-thousand-square-foot monstrosity that Nick had salvaged through six messy divorces. The place had changed, the paintings of nymphs engaged in orgies replaced with classic English landscapes. Gone, too, were the anatomically enhanced statues of the famous Greek gods. Valentine’s favorite piece of furniture—the marble bar shaped like a cock—had been whittled down, and now resembled a lima bean. Grabbing two sodas from the bar, Wily headed down a long hallway toward the back.

“Nick’s in the bedroom. He’s always in the bedroom.”

“One question,” Valentine said.

“Shoot.”

“Did Wanda win the contest?”

Wily stopped at the double mahogany doors to Nick’s bedroom. Lifting his hand to knock, he said, “You’re kidding, right?” and rapped loudly.

“We’re all friends here,” a voice called from within.

They entered the master bedroom. Nick’s bachelor pad had been transformed into a Laura Ashley showroom, and the little Greek lay propped up on pillows on his gigantic bed. He was dressed in a satin robe, and as he jumped out of bed, his manhood was displayed for all the world to see.

“Tony, how you been?” he said, whacking Valentine on the arm while pulling his robe together. He smelled like cheap perfume, and Valentine gagged on his reply.

“No complaints. I hear you tied the knot.”

“Yeah. They say number seven’s the charm.”

Valentine heard the bathroom door open, and a pair of feet approach. He turned slowly, expecting to be overwhelmed, and was not disappointed when he laid eyes on Nick’s bride. Wanda Lovesong was a shade under six feet, with flaxen blond hair, too much makeup, and a body worth fighting a war over. That she wore a toga like the women in Nick’s casino only added to the allure. Valentine realized his mouth was hanging open, and he snapped it shut. Wanda demurely offered her hand. He took it.

“I saw you on TV earlier,” she said breathlessly. “That took courage to do what you did.”

She flashed a smile, and Valentine smiled back. It was shameless flirting, and it helped erase the sting of the woman at the Acropolis who’d found him too old. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nick grimace, not enjoying being upstaged.

“A real hero, except his pants fell down,” Nick said.

“Airline lost his luggage,” Wily explained.

“You need pants, I’ve got pants,” Nick said. Crossing the room, he flung open the door to his clothes closet and motioned for Valentine to follow him inside. Nick was short, and Valentine didn’t think he’d have anything that fit, but saw no point in rubbing it in. As he entered, Nick said, “What’s your waist size?”

“Thirty-five.”

“Stop bragging.”

Nick nosed around his seemingly endless collection of clothes, then stuck his head through the open closet door. “We may be a few minutes,” he told Wanda. “Why don’t you and Wily go whip something up.”

“You hungry, honey?” his bride asked.

“Just for you, baby.”

“Want a Wanda sandwich?”

Nick said
Heh, heh, heh
under his breath. As they departed and Valentine started to look through the pants, he heard Nick come up behind him.

“Hey,” Nick said.

Valentine turned and found his host standing next to him. The fun had gone out of the little Greek’s eyes. “None of these clothes fit you,” he said.

Valentine nearly said
No kidding
but decided to shelve it.

“You going to tell me what the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Valentine said.

Nick stuck his arm behind a rack of silk jackets and pulled out a baseball bat. It was a Louisville Slugger, and had Mark McGwire’s name on the throat. Nick gripped the bat with both hands, his eyes never leaving Valentine’s face.

“Want me to beat it out of you?”

“You’re serious,” Valentine said.

“Dead serious,” his host replied.

8

A
s a cop, Valentine had never done well with threats. People brandishing weapons particularly annoyed him. Knives, guns, baseball bats, they were all throwbacks to the good old days when people lived in caves and settled their differences through violence and bloodshed.

Stepping forward, he grabbed Nick’s wrists, wrenched the baseball bat from his grasp, and within seconds had him writhing on the closet floor.

“Let me go! Let me go!” Nick begged, gnashing his teeth.

“Promise you won’t threaten me again.”

“I promise I won’t threaten you again!”

Of all the casino owners in Las Vegas, Nick’s word meant something. Valentine released him, and Nick sat on the floor rubbing his wrists. Then he tried to stand, only his balance wasn’t there. Agewise, they were about the same, only Nick hid his through dyed hair, dyed eyebrows, and cosmetic surgery that made his face look like he’d gotten caught in a wind tunnel. Valentine pulled him to his feet.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, still holding the bat.

“It’s a long story,” Nick replied.

“I love long stories.”

They went into the bedroom. Nick pointed at the couch in the room’s main sitting area. Valentine lay the bat on the floor, then sat down and watched his host pull up a chair. When Nick spoke, his tone was somber. “Things have been kind of hairy lately.”

“Is that an apology?”

“Yeah.”

“Mind explaining?”

Nick leaned in close. “I got a call this morning from the FBI. A stripper at the Pink Pony got murdered last night. She used to come into my casino and cash in chips. Claimed guys gave them to her for dances.

“FBI says they want to come in and review all my surveillance tapes, which means closing down my surveillance control room for a few days. They specifically want to see if this stripper ever cashed in a chocolate chip.”

“A five-thousand-dollar chip?”

“Yeah. The Acropolis doesn’t hand many of those out. I told the FBI that. Know what they said? If I didn’t cooperate, they’d take my gaming license away.”

“Can they do that?”

Nick threw his arms in the air. “That’s a good fucking question. FBI says that the U.S. Patriot Act gives them the right to shut me down if I don’t cooperate.”

“You going to do it?”

“I don’t have any other choice,” Nick said. “I talked them into waiting until Monday, so I don’t lose my weekend business.”

“You the only casino in town they called?”

“They’re threatening a bunch of us. And all over the same thing. Chocolate chips.”

“So she was laundering them.”

“That would be my guess,” Nick said.

Valentine looked at the baseball bat lying on the floor. Then he looked at Nick. “Why did you threaten me, anyway?”

“You once told me you were tight with the FBI. I figured they sent you to check up on me.”

It was funny how people interpreted things. Valentine had never been tight with the FBI. He’d known Peter Fuller, the bureau’s director, since his early days in Atlantic City. He couldn’t utter Fuller’s name without cursing, and he guessed Nick had misconstrued that to mean they were tight.

“I’d never spy on you,” Valentine said.

Nick leaned back in his chair. “Want to do a job for me?”

“Not really.” His host grimaced, and Valentine said, “I need to find my son.”

“Where is he?”

“Bart Calhoun’s card-counting school. Wherever that is.”

Nick scratched his chin. “Calhoun is a hard man to pin down. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll find Calhoun if you figure out how Lucy Price ripped me off.”

“You think she’s a cheater?”

“She’s a slot queen and has a history of losing. This is the first time she’s played blackjack, and she won twenty-five grand. Those don’t go together.”

Valentine thought back to his encounter with Lucy Price. He would not have pegged her a cheater. He said, “I’ll look at the surveillance tapes, if you think it will do any good.”

“So we have a deal?”

He nodded, then said, “I could also use a room in your hotel.”

“Done,” Nick said.

They sealed the deal with a handshake. There was a light tapping on the bedroom door. Nick said, “Do you mind, we’re having sex?” and a giggling Wanda entered balancing a tray of food on her upturned palm.

“Here you go, Nicky,” she said proudly. “Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, and baloney sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Your favorite lunch.”

She placed the tray on the coffee table, and Valentine noticed that her breasts, which were barely contained by her low-slung top, had several bread crumbs sprinkled on them. Nick pointed at the crumbs and said, “Is that dessert, baby?”

A harsh look clouded Wanda’s face. Leaning over, she gave him a resounding slap in the puss, then marched out. Nick blushed as he picked up one of the soup bowls.

“She doesn’t like it when I talk crude around company. Pass the salt, will you?”

9

A
t one o’clock that afternoon, Pete Longo was released under his own recognizance by the Metro Las Vegas Police Department, having been suspended without pay from the force, and having been advised that he was considered a prime suspect in the murder of Kris Blake, the stripper he’d been having an affair with.

Being named a suspect didn’t surprise Longo. His alibi from the previous night had yet to check out. It would, since it involved two other cops he’d been drinking with. They would corroborate that he hadn’t been at Kris’s townhouse at the time of her killing. And then he’d be clean.

Only clean was a relative term. The shame would be still there. From that, he knew there was no escape.

He lived halfway between Las Vegas and Henderson, in a new development a stone’s throw off the Boulder Highway. It was a decent neighborhood, with monthly block parties and friendly dogs that didn’t need to be tied to chains. And the schools were good. Both his daughters had seen their grades go up.

He lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Pulling up the driveway, he felt his face go flush. He’d called Cindi from the station house and spilled his guts to her. Better for him to tell her than some newspaper reporter, he’d thought at the time.

Now he wasn’t so sure. His clothes were piled in the middle of the front yard. Next to them was an open suitcase. The message was clear.
Leave.

He got out and started to pack his things. At the bottom of the pile he found his one good suit all balled up. Cindi was really pissed.