It was his first beer since going to the joint. He savored it, saying nothing.

“Now I remember,” the bartender said. “You came in here awhile back, and stuck your hand in the fire pit.”

The fire pit was the lounge’s gimmick, the bright orange flames erupting from a bubbling pool of green water. Little Hands had stuck his hand into the flames on a dare and burned himself real good. “That was a long time ago,” he said.

She smiled like he’d made a joke, then tapped the screen of the video poker machine in front of him. Every seat at the bar had a video poker machine. It was how the lounge made money.

“Make sure you play Joker’s Wild,” she said.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“It’s paying off real good.”

He drank some more beer. She played this game with every customer who came in. She sold them on the idea of winning, even though no one ever did. He needed to figure out how he was going to kill Valentine, and fished a twenty out of his pocket.

“Thanks,” he said.

The beer went straight to his head, and he could hardly sit upright in his chair. This was how guys who broke out of jail got caught,he thought. The bartender came back. “How you doing?” she asked.

He looked at the video poker screen. “Shitty.”

She watched him play a hand. On the screen five cards appeared. He had a pair of jacks. He discarded the other three cards by pressing on them with his finger. The machine dealt him three more cards. They didn’t help his hand, and he won a dollar. She reached over the bar and touched his wrist.

“Can I give you some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Play the maximum amount of coins each time. That way, if you get a good hand, you’ll win big.”

He’d been betting a quarter a hand, thinking it would let him play longer, which would increase his chances of winning. Only, she was saying that it was a bad strategy, and would deny him the chance to really win. He pushed the button on the screen that said PLAY MAXIMUM AMOUNT.

“There you go,” she said.

Five new cards appeared on the screen. The ace of hearts, king of hearts, three of clubs, nine of hearts, and ten of hearts. He started to discard all the cards but the ace and saw her eyebrows go up.

“Discard the three and nine,” she said. “That way, you might make a royal flush.”

A royal flush was the best hand of all. According to the payout chart on the screen, he’d get two grand for a royal flush.

“Nobody gets those,” he said.

“That’s because they don’t try,” she said.

The day had been filled with surprises. He discarded the three and the nine. Two new cards appeared on the screen, a queen of hearts and a joker. She let out a war whoop. “You won! You won!”

He stared at the screen. “No, I didn’t. That ain’t a royal flush.”

“Yes, it is. Jokers are wild. That’s why they call it Joker’s Wild.”

He realized the screen was flashing. It didn’t feel real, and he touched the PAYOUT button with his finger. A slip of paper spit out of the machine saying he’d won $2,000.

He handed it to her, and she went into the restaurant to get the money from the manager.

He sucked down the beer left in his glass. Living in Vegas, he’d heard countless stories about people winning big in casinos, and how it had changed their lives. He’d always assumed the stories were bullshit.

The bartender returned holding a thick stack of bills. She counted the money onto the bar then pushed it toward him. Lifting her eyes, she looked into his face expectantly.

He hesitated picking up the stack, wondering how many customers heard her spiel each day. Fifty? A hundred? Giving suckers hope was how she made her living. He knew that, yet it didn’t change how she’d made him feel.

He put three hundred on the bar and walked out.

32

Valentine was ready to make a bust.

He’d shown Bill Higgins the surveillance tape of Skins Turner mucking a card. Bill had seen his share of muckers, and he whistled through his teeth when Skins did his switch in plain view of everyone else at the table.

“Guy’s got balls,” Bill said.

“He’s also got tremendous misdirection,” Valentine said.

“How so?”

“Everyone’s watching DeMarco.”

Taking out his cell phone, Bill had put into motion the necessary steps to go into Celebrity’s casino, and arrest Skins Turner. For starters, he alerted the casino’s head of security and explained exactly what Skins was doing. Then he gave a detailed description of what Skins looked like and where he was sitting in the game. More than one cheater had gotten away when a security guard had, in his haste to make a bust, nabbed the wrong person.

Then Bill called the Metro Las Vegas Police Department and went through the same drill with a sheriff. Skins would eventually end up in the Metro LVPD clink, and Bill didn’t want some judge letting him out on a hundred-dollar bail because the arresting officer hadn’t understood the seriousness of the charge.

The next thing Bill did was invite the other techs in the room to look at the tape of Skins and confirm that cheating was taking place. Juries in Nevada hated the casinos and would not convict a cheater without clear and compelling videotape evidence. A cop’s word simply wasn’t good enough.

Once the techs had agreed Skins was cheating, Bill did a background check on Skins. Nothing could be more helpful to prosecuting Skins than him having a prior conviction for cheating. Bill got Skins’s name and address from the hotel’s reservation department, and then called it in to the police, and his own people. If Skins had ever been arrested, either Metro or the Gaming Control Board would have a record of it.

Ten minutes later, both Metro and the GCB called Bill back.

“Damn,” Bill said, hanging up the phone.

“He’s clean?”

“Got a couple of speeding tickets down in Houston, but that’s it. Where the hell is Sammy Mann, anyway? Maybe he knows this guy from the past.”

“Sammy flew the coop,” Valentine said. “He ran right after we grilled him.”

Bill clenched his jaw. “That lousy prick. I gave him a second chance, and this is how he repays us.” He asked the tech to replay the tape of Skins, and they both watched it again. Bill cursed under his breath. “This isn’t good enough to convict.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.” Bill pointed at Skins’s right hand. It hung over the edge of the table and beneath his other arm, hiding the palmed card from his opponents but not entirely from the camera’s eye. A tiny sliver of card showed between Skins’s third and fourth fingers. Cheaters called this “leaking.”

“Our illustrious mayor, who used to be a high-priced defense attorney, was able to get specific laws put on the books in regards to how close a mucker’s hands had to be to the table for a crime to have actually been committed,” Bill said. “Skins’s hands aren’t close enough.”

“But we saw him switch cards,” Valentine protested.

“We saw him cover the cards with his hands,” Bill corrected him. “We didn’t see the actual switch. The only evidence we have of foul play is him leaking the card, and since his hand is off the table, that isn’t technically cheating. I know it sounds stupid, Tony, but it’s the law.”

Valentine felt himself getting angry, and took a walk around the room. Old-time gamblers had a special name for conversations like this. They called them “Who shot John?” They were so ridiculous, there was absolutely nothing to compare them to.

When he came back, Bill was still standing there.

“So what do we do?” Valentine asked.

“We wait, and get another tape of Skins cheating,” Bill replied.

“You’re going to let Skins play some more?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“But that’s crazy. It’s an elimination tournament. Every time Skins cheats, some poor guy is getting knocked out.”

“I want the evidence to stand up in court,” Bill said. “Look, you want to bust DeMarco at the same time, right? Grab the dealer and the equipment and figure out once and for all what the kid’s doing. Well, if we arrest Skins, and it doesn’t hold up, then neither will a case against DeMarco if we find evidence of him cheating. His attorney will be able to say we seized his client under false pretenses.”