“I don’t know.”

“How can you be looking for something if you don’t know what it is?”

“I’m guessing there has to be a record of the theft. If I know what was taken, I’ll know what the scam is.”

“It’s that easy?” she asked.

Gerry nodded. He would take the mystery substance and coat a few dozen playing cards with it, and the rest would explain itself. To his surprise, she picked up his business card, and slipped it into her breast pocket.

“And it will go no further than that?” she asked.

“That’s right. No one will ever hear about it.”

She pulled out her lower lip and let it snap back, deep in thought. “I liked Jack. He was always cracking jokes, even when he knew what his situation was. I’ll look through the computer, let you know what turns up.”

“Thanks a lot,” Gerry said.

The phone on her desk had several buttons. The red one lit up and rang at the same time. She picked it up and said, “Cancer ward nurses’ station, Gladwell here.”

She listened for a moment, then looked at Gerry a little differently than before. “There are some homicide detectives in ER searching the hospital for you. They want to question you about a dead guy they think you sent through the windshield of a car.”

It was not the way Gerry had hoped to end their conversation.

“Tell them I’ll be right down,” he said.

Part II

George and Tom

13

Skip DeMarco stood naked at the bedroom window in his suite, imagining the world he could not see. Although his vision was limited to a few inches in front of his face, DeMarco had a keen sense of light and dark, and imagined the sun climbing over the tall, bluish mountains that ringed Las Vegas, a city his uncle had described to him in great detail. His uncle made the casino-lined streets sound like something out of The Wizard of Oz,but DeMarco didn’t picture them that way. Vegas was a cutthroat town, designed to separate suckers from their money. That was why his uncle liked it here so much.

The room’s air-conditioning rose with the intrusion of natural light. Shutting the blinds, he walked to the closet and went through the slow, painstaking process of picking out today’s outfit, holding each garment in front of his face to determine its color. He decided on a flowing black silk shirt, black linen pants, two gold necklaces, and shades. The tiny inner-canal earpiece he’d worn each day of the tournament lay on his bureau. As he fitted it into his ear, he heard his uncle’s soft tapping on the door.

“Come in, Uncle George.”

His uncle entered, shutting the door behind him.

“You sleep good?” the older man asked.

“Like a rock. How about you?”

“Fine. Show me what you’re wearing.”

DeMarco stood in the center of the bedroom, and let his uncle appraise his selection of clothes. It was a routine they’d followed since he’d gone to live with Scalzo as a little boy.

“You look great, kid,” his uncle said.

“The black isn’t too ominous?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Foreboding. Scary.”

“You look like a man,” his uncle bristled.

DeMarco pointed at the dresser. A radio transmitter lay on it, which was used to test the earpiece and make sure it was functioning properly. “Do the test, Uncle George.”

His uncle picked up the transmitter and flipped the power on. Then he pressed the transmitter’s main button. DeMarco heard a short click in his ear.

“Do it again,” DeMarco said.

His uncle pushed the button twice. DeMarco heard two clicks.

“Perfect,” he said.

“You’re not leaving this out for the maid to see, are you?” his uncle asked.

“It goes in the wall safe,” DeMarco said. “Put it away for me, Uncle George, would you?”

His uncle shuffled across the room and put the transmitter into the wall safe. A diabetic, he suffered from swollen feet. “It’s like walking on marshmallows all the time,” he often said. His uncle carried insulin with him, yet told everyone the insulin was for his nephew, not himself. DeMarco believed that little deception said a lot about his uncle.

“Now, look in my ear,” DeMarco said.

“You clean it real good?” his uncle asked. DeMarco smiled. Another standard line.

“Yes, I cleaned it real good.”

His uncle examined his nephew’s ear. When properly fitted, the earpiece was impossible to see. Earpieces had been used to cheat card games for years, with someone on the outside secretly reading everyone’s hands, and passing the information to the cheater via a radio transmitter. But that scam was easy to detect. If an RF detector was pointed at the table during the transmission, the detector would pick up the radio frequency, and the cheater would be exposed. Nearly every casino and poker room in the world used RF detectors for this purpose.

But the scam his uncle had given DeMarco to cheat the World Poker Showdown was different. For starters, there was no outside person reading the other players’ cards. And, if an RF detector was pointed at the table, the machine would hardly register, and the operator would think it was someone’s cell phone. But the best part was that there was no evidence. The cards were clean, and so was everything else.

There was only one bad part about the scam. DeMarco didn’t know how his opponent’s cards were being read. It was a creepy feeling to hear clicks in his ear, and not know who was sending them, and several times he’d asked his uncle to explain the secret. Each time, his uncle had placed his hand on his nephew’s shoulder and promised to tell him after he won the tournament.

Scalzo watched his nephew finish getting dressed, then looked at his watch. “Let’s go downstairs. They’re going to start playing soon.”

“I need to brush my teeth and comb my hair,” his nephew replied, heading toward the bathroom.

“Your hair looks fine, and no one’s going to smell your breath.”

“Come on, Uncle George. Appearances are important.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? You look fine.”

“It won’t take two minutes. Is that so much to ask?”

The bathroom door closed before Scalzo could reply. His nephew was letting all the attention go to his head. Scalzo had adopted Skipper twenty years ago, expecting the boy to grow up to be like him. Instead, Skipper had turned into a big peacock.

Scalzo went into the next room, slamming the door behind him. He spied Karl Jasper standing in the center of the living room, talking with Guido. It was the second time in two days that Jasper had come to Scalzo’s suite without being asked.

Guido hurried over to his boss.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Scalzo asked under his breath.

“He demanded that I let him in,” Guido said.

“He demanded?”

“Yeah. I figured it was important. You want, I’ll throw him out.”

Guido’s job didn’t involve making decisions. Going to the boss was the onlyright decision for Guido to make. Reaching down, Scalzo grabbed his bodyguard by the balls, and gave them a healthy squeeze. Guido’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“Don’t ever do something without asking me first,” Scalzo said.

“Yes, sir.”

“ Neverdo something without asking me first,” he said, as if clarification were needed.

“Yes, sir.”

Scalzo released his death grip, and Guido slunk away. Then he walked up to Jasper. Jasper had been watching them, and his face had turned a sickly white.

“What the fuck do you want?” Scalzo said.

“We need to talk,” Jasper said.

“About what?”

“About what happened last night with Valentine.”

Scalzo pointed at the glass slider that led to a narrow balcony with a view of the desert. Only high-roller suites had windows that actually opened in Las Vegas hotels; everyone else was a prisoner of their room.

“Out there,” Scalzo said.

Jasper opened the slider and let Scalzo go first. Showing some respect,Scalzo thought. They both went outside.