Angelo Fountain had come to the United States on a boat from Italy, and had brought with him manners and class. He killed the TV with a remote, stood up, and graciously stuck out his hand. “Of course I remember. Tony Valentine’s boy.”

Gerry shook his hand. “It’s good to see you, sir.”

“And you as well. Are you still running an illegal bookmaking operation?” Angelo Fountain asked.

There was an edge to his voice that made Gerry hesitate. He took out a business card, and handed it to the older man. “I gave up the rackets, Mr. Fountain. I’m working with my father now.”

Angelo Fountain removed his bifocals to study the card. In his late seventies, he wore a navy blue suit overlaid with a faint windowpane check. His spread-collar shirt was light blue, his necktie a soft red, as was his matching pocket foulard. He’d always dressed like a head of state, even though he rarely left the neighborhood.

“I thought your father retired,” Angelo said.

“He did,” Gerry said. “My mom passed away, and he went back to work as a consultant.”

“How long you work for him?”

“It’s going on six months.”

The older man’s face softened. “You like it?”

That was a loaded question if Gerry had ever heard one. His father could be a bear, and sometimes drove Gerry nuts. But it was an honest business, and he could tuck his daughter in at night knowing he wasn’t doing things she might someday be ashamed of.

“Love it,” Gerry said.

Angelo Fountain brewed a fresh pot of coffee and served his guests. Gerry had the foresight to ask him to make two extra cups, and took them outside to the two detectives parked by the curb.

“Service’s improving,” Marconi said.

Gerry grabbed the Yankees cap off the backseat. He hadn’t wanted to bring the cap into the house and just stick it under Mr. Fountain’s nose. Going back inside, he found Vinny and his father practically at blows.

“You’re a bum,” his father said.

“Says who?” Vinny replied.

“Every single person on this island.”

“I’ve never been convicted of a single crime,” his son protested.

“You and O.J. Simpson,” his father said.

Gerry made Vinny squinch over and sat down between father and son on the couch. They stopped arguing, with Angelo glaring at his son.

“Mr. Fountain, I need your help,” Gerry said, handing him the cap. “This baseball cap turned up during a case. Vinny thinks you might be able to tell me who stitched it.”

Angelo Fountain examined the receiver and LEDs sewn into the cap’s rim. His hands were small and fine-boned, the skin almost translucent. A minute passed. He was taking too long, and Gerry guessed it was someone he knew and didn’t want to snitch on. The locals were famous for closing ranks when it came to protecting one another.

“I wouldn’t have come here, and put this imposition on you, if there wasn’t a good reason,” Gerry said.

Angelo Fountain looked into his visitor’s face. “And what might that be?”

“The man who had this cap made has a contract on my father’s life.”

“Ahh,” Angelo Fountain said.

Another minute went by. The older man put his hand on Gerry’s knee, gave it a friendly squeeze. “I like your father. He’s a good man. I’ll help you out.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fountain.”

“A tailor on the island made this baseball cap. I recognize the stitching,” Angelo Fountain said. “This tailor was in prison, made friends with some bad people. When he got out of prison, he started taking jobs from these people.”

“What kind of jobs?” Gerry asked.

“Tailoring jobs. To help them steal from the casinos.”

“Steal how?”

“I’ll show you.” Angelo Fountain went to the other side of the living room, pulled open a drawer on a cabinet, and returned holding a paper bag that he dropped on Gerry’s lap. “This tailor gets a lot of work from these people. Sometimes, he asks me to help out. I always say no, but he still comes by.”

Gerry removed the bag’s contents. There were several cloth bags made of dark material, and a metal contraption tied up with wire that looked like a kid’s toy. Gerry untied the wire, and realized he was holding a Kepplinger holdout, a device used by card cheaters to invisibly switch cards during a game. The Kepplinger was worn beneath a sports jacket, and secretly delivered cards into a cheater’s hand through his sleeve, the mechanism powered by a wire stretched between the cheater’s knees. In order for the Kepplinger to work properly, it had to be fitted to the jacket, and Gerry remembered his father saying that only a handful of people in the country knew how to do this.

Gerry examined the cloth bags. They were subs, a device used by crooked employees to steal chips. The mouth of each sub had a flexible steel blade sewn into it, with an elastic strap attached to both ends. The sub was worn in the pants, between the underwear and belt line. The crooked employee would palm a chip off the table, and by sucking in his gut, drop the chip into the mouth of the sub. The move took a second, and was invisible if done properly.

Gerry put the Kepplinger and the subs back into the paper bag. Angelo Fountain had just told him some thing important. This tailor had so much work, he couldn’t handle it all. A one-man factory.

“The police would like to talk to this tailor,” Gerry said.

“They going to send him back to prison?” Angelo Fountain asked.

Gerry shook his head. “Making cheating equipment isn’t against the law. They just want to ask him who ordered the baseball cap.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, Mr. Fountain. They just want the name.”

Angelo Fountain got a pad of paper and a pencil from the kitchen. He wrote the tailor’s name and address on the pad, his handwriting painstakingly slow. Then he tore off the slip and gave it to Gerry. They shook hands in the foyer.

“Tell your father I said hello,” Angelo Fountain said.

Gerry and Vinny stood on the front porch buttoning their jackets, the wind blowing hard and cold off the nearby ocean. Davis and Marconi were at the curb, the car’s windows steamed up. Gerry guessed they would drive straight to the tailor’s address, and pressure him. That would put them one step closer to stopping George Scalzo’s operation in Atlantic City, and putting a bunch of hoodlums in prison.

“You need to take your father away for a while,” Gerry said.

“Why?”

“Just to be safe.”

Vinny looked back at the house and shuddered from something besides the cold. “My father and I don’t happen to get along, in case you didn’t notice.”

“He still talks to you, doesn’t he?”

“Meaning what? You and your father didn’t talk?”

“Not for a long time,” Gerry admitted.

Vinny lit up a cigarette, blew a cloud that hung over their heads. “So what changed?”

That was a good question. Up until six months ago, his relationship with his father had been no better than Vinny’s and his father’s. But it had done a one-eighty since he’d gone to work with his father. Now they talked in civil tones and ate meals together and even shared a few laughs. It wasn’t perfect, but if he’d learned anything in his thirty-six years on this earth, few things in life ever were.

“Me,” Gerry said. “I changed.”

35

Valentine folded his cell phone and dropped it in his pocket. He’d been barred from the tournament. It didn’t seem possible, and he tried to guess how many millions of dollars he’d saved Nevada’s casinos since be coming a consultant. Fifty million, and that was a low estimate. And this was how they repaid him. The leper treatment.

“The news wasn’t good, was it?” Gloria asked.

“You’re a mind reader,” he said.

They were still standing beside the cage of noisy parrots in the lobby. Gloria put her hand on his wrist. She was a toucher, something he’d always found attractive in a woman. The lobby noise made it hard to talk, but she tried anyway.