The waitress walked away with a bemused look on her face that made him think of his son’s crack about him playing cops and robbers. She delivered the note. Scalzo read it, then crumbled the napkin into a ball. He motioned to his bodyguard, and they marched out of the poker room.

It was the opportunity Valentine had been waiting for. He edged up to the feature table, and pushed his way through the crowd until he was in front. A new hand was about to begin, and he stared intently at the table. The tournament had gotten nailed several days ago for employing dealers with criminal records, and he watched the dealer at the table shuffle the cards. The shuffle looked fair, as did the cut that followed it, but something about the dealer’s body language wasn’t right. The dealer, who had a walrus moustache and a square jaw, looked apprehensive. It could have been the presence of the TV cameras, but Valentine’s gut told him otherwise.

Each player got two face-down cards, and the dealer sailed them around the table in a slow, deliberate manner. It was slower than any deal Valentine had ever seen, and he found himself staring at the dealer’s hands. The dealer’s right hand, his dealing hand, was completely stiff. That wasn’t normal.

Finished, the dealer placed the deck on the table. Dealers who used sleight-of-hand to cheat were always conscious of their manipulations. No matter how good they were, they knew that a trained observer could nail them. As a result, there was always a moment of truth after the cheating was done.

The dealer looked up. There was hesitation in his eyes. He glanced into the crowd of spectators and saw Valentine. He swallowed hard.

Gotcha,Valentine thought.

Valentine had always liked movies when the cavalry showed up to save the day, and felt an adrenaline rush seeing Pete Longo and three uniformed cops come barging into the poker room. They were moving fast, the uniforms having unsnapped the harness on their revolvers. He wondered if they were going to nail DeMarco, or the dealer, or both of them. It was about time.

The crowd was slow to get out of their way, and Longo flashed his silver detective’s badge to hurry them along. Valentine stared at the dealer, and saw a look of panic distorting his face.

Longo came up to the tournament director, and the two men had a talk. Part of the director’s job was to act as an MC, and announce when players had won hands. To do this, he used a hand-held microphone, which he now raised to his face. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to have a five-minute recess. Dealers, please stop your games and reshuffle. Thank you.”

Longo and the three uniforms had broken away from the tournament director, and were coming around the table. The dealer had pushed his chair back and placed both his hands palms down on the felt, a sure sign that he’d been arrested before. Longo walked past the dealer and directly toward Valentine while barking an order to the uniforms. Reaching into his jacket, Longo removed a pair of handcuffs from the clip on his belt.

“Tony, you’re under arrest,” Longo said.

“For what?” Valentine said incredulously.

“Two counts of second-degree murder.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Valentine said.

“Like hell I am. Lift your arms into the air.”

The crowd was giving the police plenty of room now, and Valentine felt their hostile stares. He’d arrested hundreds of people in his life, and had always wondered what it felt like. Now, he was going to find out.

He lifted his arms into the air, and a uniform frisked him. Then his wrists were handcuffed behind his back. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but that didn’t matter; he feltlike he’d done something wrong, and his face was burning.

As Longo led him out of the poker room and into the lobby, Gloria and Rufus stood off to the side, watching with horrified faces. Valentine wanted to tell them that he was innocent, but instead stared down at the ugly carpet as he walked past.

23

Skip DeMarco sat frozen in his chair. There were cops in the room—he could feel the tension in the air—but he couldn’t hear what was being said. Had they figured out the scam, and were they about to arrest him? He tried to act nonchalant, and shuffled a stack of chips with one hand. What was his uncle’s expression? Never run if you’re not being chased. The chips fell out of his hand and spilled across the table. He felt himself shudder uncontrollably.

“Here you go,” the dealer said, pushing the chips back.

“What’s going on?”

“The cops just arrested some guy in the crowd,” the dealer said.

The dealer’s voice was strained, like he was afraid of something. Although his uncle had not explained how the scam worked, DeMarco knew someone in the room was reading his opponents’ cards and signaling them to him. He’d ruled out the dealer, simply because the dealer had a job to do. But now he sensed the dealer was involved. DeMarco felt a hand on his shoulder, and nearly jumped out of his chair.

“Sorry to startle you,” the tournament director said. “We’re taking a break. You’re free to get up.”

DeMarco rose from the table. He waited for Guido and his uncle to appear. When they didn’t, he grew nervous. Where had they gone? And why hadn’t they told him they were leaving? The guy sitting next to him announced he was going to the bathroom. His name was Bruce Ballas, and when he wasn’t playing cards, he was strumming a guitar in a band. DeMarco asked if he could walk with him.

“Sure,” Ballas said.

They walked together to the lavatory. The joke of the tournament was that the men’s lavatory had a dozen stalls, the women’s only three. Ballas led DeMarco to an empty stall at the end of the row, and he locked himself in.

Sitting, he buried his face in his hands. When his uncle had come to him with a way to scam the World Poker Showdown, he hadn’t hesitated to say yes. The scam would let him cheat the people who’d cheated him, and claim what was rightfully his. But he’d never considered that he might get caught. How stupid was that?

His chest was heaving up and down. He took several deep breaths, and told himself to calm down.

Ballas was waiting when DeMarco came out a minute later. “There’s a woman wants to talk to you,” Ballas said. “Said she was a big fan, wanted to say hi.”

“Nice looking?” DeMarco asked.

“A major league speed bump,” Ballas said.

DeMarco had promised his uncle not to talk to strangers. Only he’d heard the other players talking about the women they’d seen hanging around the tournament. Women beautiful beyond compare. He’d gone to bed thinking about them every night.

“Lead the way,” he said.

Ballas led him to a table in the corner of the room. DeMarco heard the woman rise from a chair, felt her hand clasp his. Her perfume was strong and lilac scented. He envisioned a long-legged, dark-haired beauty, and waited to hear what she had to say.

“Hello, Skipper,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

He felt something catch in his throat. Her voice was vaguely familiar, but he could not place from where. “I don’t know if I remember you or not,” he said.

“You were little. It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“Twenty years. You were a child.”

“You worked for my uncle as a nanny, right?”

“No, I was before your uncle,” she said.

The tournament director’s voice came over the public address system. Play would resume in one minute, and players needed to return to their seats. Ballas touched DeMarco’s sleeve, said he was going back to the game.

“I’ll get back on my own,” DeMarco said.

“You sure?” Ballas asked.

DeMarco said yes. Ballas walked away, and DeMarco asked, “What do you mean, before my uncle?”

“You had a life before you went to live with George Scalzo,” she said. “I was a part of it.”

“What are you talking about?”