“Never!” Scalzo screamed at him.

“Come on,” Jasper begged.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Do it for the tournament. For me.”

Scalzo grabbed Jasper by the throat and thrust his weight against him, and for a moment it had felt like they were both going over the railing. “For you? You think I care about you or your fucking tournament?”

Jasper pushed him away. Other hotel guests were watching from their balconies, and he straightened his jacket and tie. “If you won’t do it for me, then do it for your nephew. If they arrest you, the police will want to talk to Skip as well. He’ll have to withdraw from the tournament.”

“So what?” Scalzo bellowed at him.

“You don’t care if your nephew goes down?”

“He’s not going down,” Scalzo said. “He’s leaving with me and Guido. We’re getting out of Las Vegas, is what we’re doing.”

“Have you talked with him about this?”

“Why should I?”

“What if he doesn’t want to go? He’s the tournament leader.”

Scalzo pounded his chest with both fists like a cave man. “Skipper does what I tell him. He’s leaving with me. Understand?”

Jasper nodded stiffly. There was no use arguing with a maniac.

“In two hours, I want you to drive me, Skipper, and Guido to a little airport on the outskirts of town,” Scalzo said. “We’re going to take a charter plane to Los Angeles, and from there, a private yacht to Central America. Just give me two hours to make the necessary arrangements. You drive us to the airport, and we’ll disappear.”

“At least let your nephew play before you leave,” Jasper said.

“Why should I?”

“Because he’s a goddamn celebrity, that’s why,” Jasper said. “The more air time he has, the better the tournament does.”

Scalzo stuck his chin out defiantly. “Okay.”

Jasper looked at his watch. “I need to run. I’ll see you downstairs.”

Jasper turned to open the slider. Scalzo’s hand came down hard on his shoulder, and he felt the old mobster’s breath on his ear.

“You’d better not mess this up,” Scalzo said.

Jasper felt himself stiffen. A shift had occurred, and he hadn’t even realized it. He was in charge now, with Scalzo’s fate in his hands.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Jasper said.

At twenty minutes to nine, Skip DeMarco came out of his bedroom. Normally his uncle came to his room before he went downstairs to play, and they went through their little routine. But today his uncle hadn’t shown, leaving DeMarco to dress without his uncle appraising his selection of clothes.

“Hey Skipper,” he heard a voice say.

“That you, Guido?”

His uncle’s bodyguard grunted in the affirmative.

“It doesn’t sound like you,” DeMarco said. “What happened to your voice?”

Guido’s big feet scuffed the carpet as he crossed the suite. “I hurt my nose,” he explained.

Guido had been his uncle’s bodyguard for twenty years; a more loyal employee you’d never find. But that loyalty came with a price. When his uncle lost his temper and flew into a rage, Guido’s role changed, and he became a whipping boy.

“He smack you in the face again?” DeMarco asked.

“Couple of times,” Guido grunted.

“What did you do this time?”

“I woke him up with bad news.”

“It must have been real bad.”

“The Atlantic City operation got busted last night. Everyone went down.”

DeMarco had never heard the full details of the Atlantic City operation from his uncle; all he knew was that it was his uncle’s primary source of income, and paid for his house and vacation house and full-time staff and brand-new cars every year.

“Where’s my uncle now?” DeMarco asked.

“He’s on the phone in his bedroom, talking to somebody,” Guido said.

DeMarco asked, “Do you think he can hear us right now?”

“No, the door’s shut.”

“I want to ask you a question, Guido, and I want you to be honest with me.”

“Sure, Skipper.”

DeMarco reached out and touched Guido’s arm. The muscle beneath the silk shirt was rock-hard. “There’s an attorney in Philadelphia named Christopher Russo. He’s tried to contact me a bunch of times over the years. My uncle made you keep him away, didn’t he?”

“That’s right,” Guido said proudly. “That guy claimed to be your father. He was nothing but trouble.”

“Who told you that?”

“Your uncle. He said Russo was trying to blackmail you. I took care of him.”

“What did you do to him?”

“You know, the usual stuff.”

“Did you threaten him?”

“Oh yeah,” Guido said, getting his bluster back. “I drove to Philly one weekend in the limo and cornered him in the covered parking lot of the building where he worked. I slapped him around a bunch, told him I’d introduce him to pain if he kept trying to see you. I made that bastard promise to leave you alone.”

DeMarco felt himself well up and swiped at his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Guido said. “Did he try to contact you again?”

“Yeah,” DeMarco said. “He’s my father.”

44

Valentine was explaining to Bill Higgins and a homicide detective with the Metro Las Vegas Police Department how he’d sent Little Hands to the big craps game in the sky when the cell phone in his pocket vibrated. Pulling it out, he saw it was his son.

“Would you gentlemen excuse me for a minute?” he asked.

Bill and the detective both nodded solemnly. Before being sent away to prison, Little Hands had earned himself a reputation as the most vicious killer in Nevada, and Bill and the detective seemed to be having a hard time accepting that Valentine had managed to beat him in a fight, even though Little Hands was lying beneath a sheet only a dozen feet away. Stepping into the shade of a palm tree, Valentine answered the call.

“Hey, Pop, it’s me,” his son said.

“You still in Atlantic City?” Valentine asked.

“No, I took a plane out last night and just landed in Las Vegas. I made DeMarco’s scam, and figured I’d better fly out and help you put this to bed.”

Valentine didn’t know what to say. Gerry had beaten him to the finish line. He’d never felt more proud of his son in his entire life.

“You’re a star,” he told his son.

“Yolanda helped, and so did Mabel. And you put me on the scent, so you get credit, too,” Gerry said. “That’s the good news. Now here’s the bad. I think DeMarco is being played for a sucker by his uncle. He’s being used, Pop, and in a real bad way.”

“Used how?”

“This scam is dangerous. Scalzo is putting his nephew’s health in jeopardy, and I don’t think DeMarco knows it. Matter of fact, I’m sure he doesn’t.”

Gerry was jumping to conclusions, a bad thing to do in detective work. The facts were the facts and everything else was air. “How can you be sure, Gerry?”

“Because DeMarco could get sterile,” his son said.

Valentine had investigated plenty of scams where a member of the gang hadn’t been given a complete script of the play. In the end, that person usually got the raw end of the deal, and became a victim.

“Explain this to me,” Valentine said.

Gerry explained what he’d learned from the nurse who’d been having an affair with Jack Donovan. As scams went, it was one of the most ingenious Valentine had ever come across, but did contain a significant health risk. It wasn’t meant to be used in a tournament, where long-term exposure could be dangerous. Gerry was right. DeMarco probably didn’t know the risks he faced.

“That’s one heck of a piece of detective work,” Valentine said when his son was finished. “Maybe I should go to work for you.”

“That would be the day,” Gerry said. “So what do you think we should do?”

That was a good question. Valentine had been thinking about his conversation with Sammy Mann the day before, when Sammy told him that everyone in Vegas knew DeMarco was cheating, but weren’t going to do anything until after the tournament was over. He didn’t agree with that rationale, and now realized that he and his son were in a position to fix things.