Deadman's Bluff (2 page)

2

B
ig Julie, a famous New York gambler, once said that the person who invented gambling was smart, but the person who invented chips was a genius.

Poker had a similar truism. The person who’d invented poker may have been smart, but the person who’d invented the hidden camera that allowed a television audience to see the players’ hands was a genius.

George “the Tuna” Scalzo sat on his hotel suite’s couch with his nephew beside him. It was ten o’clock in the evening, and the big-screen TV was on. They were watching the action from that day’s World Poker Show down, which was generating the highest ratings of any sporting event outside of the Super Bowl. His nephew, Skip DeMarco, was winning the tournament and had become an overnight sensation.

“Tell me what you’re seeing, Uncle George,” DeMarco said.

His nephew faced the TV, his handsome face bathed in the screen’s artificial light. Skipper suffered from a degenerative eye disease that he’d had since birth. He could not see two inches past his nose, and so his uncle described the action.

“They’re showing the different players you knocked out of the tournament today,” Scalzo said. “Treetop Strauss, Mike ‘Mad Dog’ McCoy, Johnny ‘the Wizard’ Wang, and a bunch of other guys. It’s beautiful, especially when you call their bluffs. They don’t know what hit them.”

Bluffing was what made poker exciting. A man could have worthless cards, yet if he bet aggressively, he’d win hand after hand. DeMarco had made a specialty of calling his opponents’ bluffs, and had become the most feared player in the tournament.

“Is the camera showing me a lot?” DeMarco asked.

“All the time. You’re the star.”

“Do I look arrogant?”

Scalzo didn’t know what arrogant meant.
Proud?
That word he understood. He glanced across the suite at Guido, who leaned against the wall. His bodyguard had a zipper scar down the side of his face and never smiled. Guido came from the streets of Newark, New Jersey, as did all the men who worked for Scalzo.

“Guido, how does Skipper look?”

“Calm, cool, and collected,” Guido said, puffing on a cigarette.

“Is he a star?”

“Big star,” Guido said.

“There you go.” Scalzo elbowed his nephew in the ribs.

The show ended, and was followed by the local news. The broadcasters covered the day’s headlines, then a story from the University of Nevada’s football field came on.

“What’s this?” his nephew asked.

Scalzo squinted at the screen. The story was about Rufus Steele challenging a racehorse to the hundred-yard dash. Rufus appeared on the screen dressed in track shorts. Beside him was Tony Valentine, the casino consultant who’d caused them so much trouble. Scalzo grabbed the remote and changed the channel.

“Put it back on, Uncle George,” his nephew said.

“Why? He can’t beat no fucking racehorse,” Scalzo protested.

“I want to see it anyway. This is the old guy who challenged me to play him. I said I’d play him after the tournament was over if he could raise a million bucks.”

The suite fell silent. “You’re not going to play that son-of-a-bitch,” Scalzo declared.

“If he raises the money, I’ll have to, Uncle George,” DeMarco said.

“Why?”

“Because this is poker. If I don’t accept Rufus’s challenge, he wins.”

Scalzo did not like the direction the conversation was taking. He clicked his fingers, and Guido rose from his chair.

“Yes, Mr. Scalzo,” the bodyguard said.

“A glass of cognac for me. What would you like, Skipper?”

“For you not to drink while we have this conversation,” his nephew said.

Scalzo balled his hands into fists and stared at his nephew’s profile. If someone who worked for him had said that, he would have had him killed. “You don’t like when I drink?”

“You get mean. Doesn’t he, Guido?”

Swallowing hard, the bodyguard said nothing. Scalzo made a twirling motion with his finger. Guido walked into the next room, shutting the door behind him.

Scalzo changed the channel with the remote, and watched Rufus beat Greased Lightning in the hundred-yard-dash while explaining it to his nephew. Then he killed the power and the room fell silent.

“This cowboy is the real thing,” his nephew said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Scalzo snapped.

“He’s an old-time hustler, Uncle George. I can’t scam him the way we’re scamming the tournament. It won’t work.”

Skipper had won several dozen poker tournaments on the Internet. Live games were a different matter, with other players ganging up on him because of his handicap. Scalzo had wanted to level the playing field, and found a scammer in Atlantic City named Jack Donovan who’d invented a scam that would let Skipper win. Scalzo had Donovan murdered for the scam, then taught it to his nephew. Although Skipper had never cheated before, he’d gone along, wanting the recognition that winning brought, which he believed he deserved.

“But no one has figured out the scam so far,” Scalzo said.

“Steele will. He’ll feel a breeze.”

“So let him put a sweater on.”

“It’s a gambler’s expression, Uncle George. Steele will know
something
is wrong. Even if he doesn’t know what it is, he’ll figure it out eventually. I have to play him on the square. If I’m as good as I keep telling myself I am, then I should beat him.”

“You want to play the cowboy legitimately?”

“Yes.”

Scalzo scowled. Skipper was letting his mouth overload his ass. He wasn’t going to play Steele head-to-head. The old cowboy knew too many damn tricks. Scalzo dropped the remote in his nephew’s lap. “I’m going to bed,” Scalzo said. “Let’s talk again in the morning.”

His nephew stared absently into space as if disappointed with his uncle.

“Good night, Uncle George,” he said.

Scalzo entered the next room and was greeted by an unexpected guest. Karl Jasper, founder and president of the World Poker Showdown, stood at the bar, talking with Guido while drinking a beer. The face of the WPS, Jasper had black-dyed hair, whitened teeth, and shoulder pads in his jackets that made him look trimmer than he really was.

“Nice place,” Jasper said.

Scalzo and his nephew were staying in a high-roller suite, compliments of the hotel. It had a fully stocked bar, pool table, Jacuzzi, and private theater with reclining leather chairs. It was the best digs in town, and wasn’t costing them a dime. A snifter of cognac awaited Scalzo on the bar. They clinked glasses, and Scalzo raised the drink to his lips and sniffed.

“Did you see Rufus Steele on TV?” Jasper asked.

“The man is becoming a menace.”

Scalzo let the cognac swirl around in his mouth. It felt good and strong and made him wake up. He liked how Jasper addressed things. He was a product of Madison Avenue, and had gone from account executive to founder and president of the World Poker Showdown in the blink of an eye. He was a smart guy who suffered from the same problem that a lot of smart guys suffered from: He didn’t know how to run a business. Within six months of starting the WPS, he’d run out of cash. In desperation he’d gone to the mob, and Scalzo became his partner.

Scalzo could not have envisioned a more perfect setup. The biggest mistake the mob had ever made was letting themselves get pushed out of Las Vegas. No other town in the world had the same kind of action. By partnering with Jasper, Scalzo could run a card game inside a Las Vegas casino without the law breathing down his neck. It didn’t get any better than that.

“Rufus Steele is a clown,” Scalzo said. “The real problem is Tony Valentine. He wants to expose Skipper. He has a grudge with me.”

The beer in Jasper’s glass had disappeared. Guido popped the cap off a bottle and poured him another.

“You’ve dealt with Valentine before?” Jasper asked. Scalzo nodded stiffly.

“Can he be bought off?”

“No,” Scalzo said. “He was a casino cop for twenty years. They called him the squarest guy in Atlantic City.”

“So what should we do?”

Scalzo stared across the suite at the picture window on the other side of the room. The curtains were pulled back, allowing him to see the pulsing neon spectacle that was the strip at night. For years he’d run a successful scam in Atlantic City that had made him a small fortune, but this was different. This was Las Vegas, and for as long as he could remember, he’d wanted a piece of it all for himself.

“We need to get rid of him,” Scalzo said. “Once Valentine’s gone, Steele will fade into the sunset, and we can go back to business.”

“When you say get rid of him,” Jasper said, “do you mean, run him out of town?”

Scalzo put his snifter down, and coldly stared at his guest. Jasper’s face and hands were evenly tanned from playing golf three times a week. They’d been partners for over a year, and so far, Jasper had shown no regrets for having jumped in bed with the devil.

“I mean we need to kill the bastard,” Scalzo said.

“You’re serious.”

“Yeah. If you wanna get somethin’ done, you need to do it yourself.”

Jasper blinked, and then he blinked again.
Making a Madison Avenue decision,
Scalzo thought. He placed his hand on Jasper’s arm, and squeezed the younger man’s biceps. “We need to do it right now,” Scalzo added.

3

O
ld age was mean.

Valentine had discovered that a few years ago, the week he’d turned sixty. He’d gotten up one morning, and half the bones in his body felt broken. He’d tried to remember what he’d done to deserve such punishment, and realized his body was paying him back for a judo class he’d taken two days before.

A two-day-old payback. That was just plain mean.

Old age also turned cruel on Rufus right after the football field cleared out. Rufus was putting his winnings into a rented Wells Fargo truck when both legs cramped and his face turned blue. Valentine had thrown the last bag of money into the truck, then gotten his head under Rufus’s armpit, dragged him to his rental, and poured Rufus into the passenger seat.

Gloria and Zack had already left. Valentine got the rental started, and drove across the field to the break in the chain-link fence that led to the parking lot, then on to Las Vegas Boulevard. As the tires hit pavement, Rufus’s eyes snapped open.

“I need whiskey,” the old cowboy muttered.

“You need to see a doctor first.”

“Whiskey’s cheaper and it works faster.” Rufus pointed at a casino up ahead, a run-down joint called the Laughing Jackalope. “That place will do.”

“You sure?” Valentine asked.

“Yessir.”

Valentine found a space in the Jackalope’s dusty parking lot. Killing the engine, he stared at the peeling paint and decay on the building. There were three types of casinos in Las Vegas: carpet joints, sawdust joints, and toilets. The Jackalope was on the low end of the toilet scale. Opening the door, Rufus practically fell out of the car.

“See you inside,” he said.

Valentine watched Rufus lurch across the lot like a drunk on ice skates. At the front door he threw his shoulders back and snapped to attention, then marched inside.

The sound of a shot glass slamming the bar greeted Valentine upon entering the poorly lit, mirrored cocktail lounge. Rufus was at the bar, getting served. The bartender, a cross-eyed albino wearing a faded purple tuxedo shirt, held a bottle of Johnny Walker at the ready.

“Another?” the albino asked.

“I’d sure appreciate it,” Rufus replied.

The albino poured and Rufus drank. The color had returned to his cheeks, and he no longer looked ready to keel over. Wiping his lips, he glanced through an open doorway into the next room where a couple of construction workers wearing coveralls were shooting pool. Rufus pointed at the halfway mark on the shot glass.

“To there, if you don’t mind,” he said.

The albino half-filled the glass. Rufus staggered into the next room, doing his drunk act, and started baiting the construction workers. The albino placed another shot glass on the bar and filled it with whiskey.

“No thanks,” Valentine said.

“Who said it was for you?” the albino snorted.

The albino slammed the drink back, then returned the bottle to its slot on the mirrored display behind him. When he turned around, he gave Valentine a hard look.

“I remember you now,” the albino said. “You came in here a few days ago, asking a lot of questions. Your name’s Gerry, isn’t it?”

Valentine and his thirty-six-year-old son, Gerry, bore a strong physical resemblance, and the crummy bar light was a good equalizer. Gerry had been with him until a few hours ago when Valentine sent him to Atlantic City to chase down a lead. He guessed the albino was one of his son’s local sources, and said, “That’s right. How’s it going?”

“Shitty,” the albino said. “What do you want?”

“You always so warm and fuzzy?”

“Just call me Mister Fucking Sunshine.”

“You must really bring in the customers.”

“You came in, didn’t you?”

There was no use arguing with a guy like this, and Valentine decided to leave. Pulling out his wallet, he asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“Same as before,” the albino said.

“Refresh my memory.”

The albino reached into Valentine’s wallet and gingerly removed a C-note. He put his elbows on the bar in a friendly fashion and said, “You want to see the notebook? I just got the updates last night. Lots of new dealers.”

Valentine played back everything that had just happened. The albino knew his son, and had just taken a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. “Sure,” he said.

The albino removed a plastic three-ring notebook from beneath the bar. Valentine flipped it open and scanned the neatly typed pages. After a few moments, he realized what he was looking at. The notebook contained the names and physical descriptions of several dozen blackjack dealers in Las Vegas, their work hours, and how many times per hour they mistakenly “flashed” their hole card to the players. Reading a flashed card was called front-loading, and a perfectly legal way to beat the house.

Valentine shut the notebook. “Actually there was something else I wanted to ask you. What’s the story with the World Poker Showdown?”

“I hear it’s rigged for the blind guy to win,” the albino said.

“Any idea how?”

“Rumor is, they’re using touch cards.”

Touch cards were a popular way among cheaters to mark cards. The cheater would use a sharp device called a punch to create an indentation in the card that could be felt by the thumb during the deal. This indentation let the dealer know when certain cards were coming off the top. Other variations used sandpaper and nail polish to scuff the back of the card.

“Thanks,” Valentine said, rising from his stool.

“You know, you’ve aged a lot since the last time I saw you,” the albino said.

Valentine was twenty-seven years older than his son. He wanted to tell the albino to get his eyes checked, but had a feeling the comment might be taken the wrong way. He said good night, and walked into the next room to watch Rufus shoot pool.

They left the bar with Rufus holding a handful of the construction workers’ money. As Valentine drove away, Rufus took several hundred-dollar bills and shoved them into Valentine’s shirt pocket.

“What’s that for?” Valentine asked.

“Saving me from getting whacked over the head with a pool cue,” Rufus said.

“You tell those guys I was a cop?”

“I sure did. That and those broad shoulders of yours kept those boys honest.”

“Were they hustlers?”

Rufus nodded. “Their hands gave them away. They were wearing dirty construction clothes, but didn’t have any calluses and their fingernails were clean.”

Valentine took Las Vegas Boulevard to the freeway, then headed north toward their hotel. The Celebrity, two exits away, was hosting the World Poker Showdown. A giant billboard in front of the hotel resembled a movie marquee, on which a video clip was being shown.

“Is that who I
think
it is?” Rufus asked.

Skip DeMarco’s handsome face had appeared on the marquee. DeMarco had knocked several famous players out of the tournament that day, just as he had since the beginning of the tournament four days ago, each time by calling their bluffs. DeMarco had “read” his opponents’ hands, even though he could not see their faces.

“That boy’s getting famous,” Rufus said. “Too bad he’s a cheat.”

“The bartender at the Jackalope said DeMarco is in collusion with the dealer,” Valentine said.

“Doing what?”

“Touch cards.”

Rufus shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a tell with touch cards. The thumb of the dealer’s hand scrapes across the top card. It wouldn’t fly.”

The traffic started to move and Valentine goosed the accelerator. On the marquee, DeMarco was dragging his opponent’s chips across the table with a gleeful look on his face. Rufus let out a disapproving snort.

“I can’t wait to play that boy once the tournament’s over,” Rufus said.

“You really dislike him, don’t you?”

“Kid’s got no class. You can tell he’s never driven the white line.”

“What’s that?”

“Looking for action. You drive a couple hundred miles to a game you’ve heard about. Sometimes the town isn’t even on a map. If the game looks beatable, you play. You do this forty weeks a year, and spend the rest of the time at home, getting reacquainted with your wife and kids. It’s a hard way to make a living. And the hardest part is driving the white line, not knowing what lays in store for you.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Valentine said.

“It is. One time down in Austin, I was playing in a tent on this rich guy’s cattle ranch. It was Saturday night, and there’s a hundred guys playing poker. Not just ordinary guys, either. There were billionaire oilmen, richer-than-God cattle barons, the crème de la crème of high society, if Texas has such a thing.

“A car pulled up, and four hooded guys with machine guns jumped out. They shot up the tent and made everyone lie down, then robbed us. They were slick, and everyone knew not to mess with them. I was the last person they got to. One of the robbers stared at me. Then he winked.”

“A friend?” Valentine asked.

“Yup. We’d run together for a year. I’d heard he’d fallen on hard times.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing. I didn’t want anyone in that tent knowing we were acquainted. I gave him everything I had, including my late father’s watch.”

“That must have been hard.”

“I got it all back in the mail a week later. He hadn’t even touched my bankroll.”

They reached their exit. A minute later, Valentine was pulling up a winding front entrance lined with palm trees.

“That was awful nice of him,” Valentine said.

Rufus frowned, as though being nice had nothing to do with it. “He wasn’t going to rob me, even if I was the last person on the face of the earth. We drove the white line together.”

People who gambled for a living lived on a roller-coaster: one day they were up, the next day they were hurtling down. When Valentine had first gotten together with Rufus four days ago, the old cowboy, one of the first victims of Skip DeMarco, had been poorer than a church mouse, and Valentine had offered the couch in his suite for Rufus to sleep on. Even though Rufus’s for tunes had changed dramatically since then, he’d not asked Rufus to leave. He enjoyed the old cowboy’s company.

They walked through the hotel’s main lobby, which had a jungle motif. It reminded Valentine of an old Tarzan movie, and at any moment he half-expected a guy wearing a loincloth to come swinging through the lobby.

They got on an elevator, Valentine hitting the button for the fourth floor. As the doors closed, two guys hopped on. Late thirties, one black, the other white, they argued over who was the best golfer of all time—Nicklaus or Woods—neither man willing to back down.

Everyone got out on the fourth floor. Still arguing, the men went in one direction, Valentine and Rufus in the other. “I happened to personally know the best golfer in the world, and it wasn’t Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods,” Rufus said. “It was Titanic Thompson.”

Valentine had heard of Thompson. He was a famous hustler who the character Nathan Detroit in
Guys and Dolls
was based on. “I thought Thompson’s games were cards and dice.”

“And golf,” Rufus said. “Ti was the best. He taught me all the angles. I can beat any golfer in the world, if the money’s right.”

They reached the suite and Valentine stuck his plastic key into the door. He rarely stayed up late, and the long hours he’d been keeping were taking their toll. The security light flashed green, and he pushed the door open.

“Home sweet home,” Rufus said, sailing his Stetson into the room as he went in. “I’ll tell you a little secret about Ti. He always practiced his golf shots in the shade. That way, when suckers played him, they assumed he didn’t get out much.”

As Valentine turned to shut the door, it slammed open in his face. Pools of black appeared before his eyes and he staggered backward into a wall.

The men from the elevator rushed into the suite. The white guy was holding a nylon rope stretched between his hands, the black guy a pipe. The black guy ran across the suite and tried to smack Rufus over the head. Rufus fell on the couch.

“Don’t hurt me,” the old cowboy said. “Please don’t hurt me.”

The white guy wrapped his rope around Valentine’s neck, then spun him around and put his knee into Valentine’s back. Valentine tried to wiggle his fingers between the rope and his windpipe. It was no good.

“I’ll pay you twenty grand, cash,” Rufus said to his attacker.

“You got that much?” his attacker asked.

“Yeah, in the wall safe.”

The black guy looked at his partner, then back at Rufus. “Double it, and I won’t kill you.”

“Deal,” Rufus said.

“What about your friend?”

“What about him?” Rufus asked.

The black guy laughed harshly.

Valentine felt the fight leave his body and his legs begin to buckle. From across the room, Celebrity’s garish neon flashed through the partially open blinds. Las Vegas was built on losers, and he realized he was about to become one of them.