Grift Sense (25 page)

“Suspect number three doesn't have a name. Says he's a Texas oilman,” Wily said, pointing at a man wearing cowboy clothes and a string tie. “He strolled in an hour ago.”

“How much?” Nick bellowed.

“Eighty.”

“You're killing me,” Nick said.

“What do you want me to do? All three of them can't be Fontaine.”

Valentine watched the Texan play. He was the same age as the other two and played the same game, blackjack. He was betting big and winning big, just like the others. Then he noticed something else. The dealers at all three tables were women, all attractive, and all chatting up a storm with the three guys who were beating them silly.

It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful, the kind of scam that bordered on true genius. He knelt next to Nola's wheelchair.

“Listen to me and listen good,” Valentine said quietly. “I'm going to give you a chance to come clean. I know what's going on, and I think you do, too. Help us, and you won't go to jail.”

Nick and Wily were listening intently. Nola looked at them, then back at Valentine. The harsh fluorescent light caught her face at a bad angle, robbing it of all beauty.

“Okay,” she mumbled.

“Martini, Joseph, and the Texan are a team, aren't they?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They're all reading different dealers, just like Fontaine read you. They're girls you know, and you tipped Fontaine off to the things that turn them on, like cowboy clothes and foreign accents.”

“That's right,” she mumbled.

“Fontaine slapped you around and put you in that motel, hoping we'd stay away from the casino. With Sammy out of the way, and us across town, he figured he'd have easy pickings.”

“Go to the head of the class,” she said.

“Which one's Fontaine?”

“The Aussie.”

Valentine was stunned. He would have put his money on the pizza king. Sensing his disbelief, she said, “The overbite is a bridge. He made his nose bigger by sticking a piece of plastic tubing up each nostril.”

Valentine looked at Nick. “Heard enough?”

Nick bent toward Nola, his face twisted by the grief that only lost love can cause. “You don't love me anymore, do you?”

Nola started to cry. “I used to. I really did.”

“But not now?”

“Oh, Nick, don't you get it?” she said. “I'm always going to love you, no matter how much I hate you.”

Truer words had never been spoken. Nick embraced her from a crouch, kissing the top of Nola's head as she wept into his chest. Just then, Nick's cell phone rang. He answered it, then handed Valentine the phone.

“Someone's looking for you.”

Valentine put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Oh, Tony,” he heard Roxanne cry, “I came up to your suite to surprise you, and the phone rang a dozen times so I answered it. It was a woman in New York, Yolanda somebody-or-other.”

Valentine felt his stomach turn upside down. Roxanne began to cry hysterically.

“Tony, something terrible has happened to Gerry.”

“What?” he said.

Roxanne could not stop crying.

“Sweet Jesus,” he said into the phone. “I'll be right up.”

Valentine handed Nick the cell phone. “I've got to go.”

He started to walk across the surveillance control room, his thoughts a thousand miles away.

“Where the hell are you going?”
Nick yelled across the room.

Valentine kept walking. Why hadn't he called the New York police after he'd gotten Gerry's first call? Why hadn't he tried to do something? Why?

“Tony,” Nick called after him, “don't do this to me!”

Valentine stopped at the door. He hesitated, then he put his hand firmly on the doorknob.

“Tony—look at me!”

Valentine jerked open the heavy steel door. Glancing back, his eyes met Nick's and he saw pure hatred.

“You Jersey piece of shit!” Nick shouted as Valentine left the surveillance room.

Valentine rode up to his room in an elevator crammed with drunks. In the corner, a man was having a heated discussion with his wife about their current financial situation.

“Give me the money I told you not to give me,” the man insisted.

“No,” the wife said emphatically.

“Give it to me!”

“No!”

At the sixth floor, the last passenger got off and Valentine rode alone to his suite. His jaw had started throbbing from the punch he'd taken, and he shut his eyes, trying to ignore the pain.

His suite was unlocked, the lights were muted, and vintage Sinatra was playing on the stereo. Two places had been set at the dining-room table. In the table's center, a pair of skinny candles burned seductively.

He found Roxanne on the couch bawling like a baby. She wore a red silk blouse and a leather mini and looked like a supermodel. She'd teased her hair, and a lazy curl formed a question mark on her forehead.
Do you dare?
it seemed to ask.

“I was going to surprise you,” she said with a sniffle as Valentine sat down.

“What happened to my son,” he asked quietly.

Roxanne put her hand on his knee and dug her fingernails into his skin. “You need to call Yolanda.”

“Tell me.”

“Call her, Tony. She's hysterical.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yolanda said—”

“Is he alive?”
Valentine put his hand on Roxanne's chin and made her look at him. “Is he?”

“Please . . . call her.”

Valentine buried his head in his hands. Sinatra's melancholy “Only the Lonely” filled the suite and he began to weep. The cell phone in Roxanne's lap warbled. She answered it, then pressed the receiver against her chest. “It's Nick. He says he's giving you one more chance.”

“Tell him to go to hell.”

Roxanne did as she was asked, and Tony could hear Nick screaming through the phone. Valentine got up and went to the picture window and stared down onto the neon Strip. He tried to imagine his son the last time he'd seen him. It had been at the saloon, Valentine whipping him with his belt. Would that be last image he would have?

“You stupid bastard,” he said to himself.

Then he cried some more.

“Good-bye,” Roxanne said curtly, and hung up.

“What did he say?” Valentine asked her.

“He's going to shoot you.”

It sounded like the perfect antidote for the way he was feeling. Valentine took a deep breath, then said, “Give me the phone.”

Roxanne crossed the room and handed him the phone. Then she gave him a hug. Valentine held her tight, his heart about to break.

Then he went into the bedroom and shut the door.

Sitting on the bed, Valentine suddenly felt like an old man. No wife, no son, nothing left. His eyes fell on a long-stemmed yellow rose lying on the pillow. He picked it up and smelled it. Roxanne had thought of everything.

He dialed Gerry's cell phone and heard the call go through.

“Hello,” a woman said hoarsely.

“Yolanda, it's Tony Valentine.”

“Oh God, Mr. Valentine.”
She let out a sob, and Valentine joined her.

“The goons caught up with you,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Holland Tunnel. Traffic was so bad, we couldn't move.”

“Did they hurt him?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you run?”

Another sob.

“It's okay,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she said, “I ran like hell.”

“It's okay,” he said.

“No, it's not,” she said.

“You call the police?”

“Yeah. They looked around. No Gerry.”

Which meant they hadn't really looked at all. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Maybe we could go look for him together.”

“Okay,” Yolanda whispered.

“I'll call you when I get in.”

“Okay.”

He started to hang up, but she said, “Mr. Valentine?”

“Yes, Yolanda?”

“I really loved him.”

“Me, too,” Valentine said.

He killed the power and tossed the phone on the bed. Then he went into the bathroom and looked at his puffy face in the mirror. Would he spend the rest of his days cursing himself for not getting Gerry out of New York? Yeah, he probably would.

The numbness from the punch had worn off and his jaw was throbbing. Hearing Roxanne enter the bedroom, he went out to face her.

“Got any aspirin handy?” he asked, coming out of the bathroom.

Only it wasn't Roxanne standing before him. The closet door was wide open and the cowboy who'd aimed a .350 Magnum in his face a couple of days ago was standing in his bedroom. Now he was holding a three-foot steel pipe, ready to begin the final act in the drama of Nola Briggs and Frank Fontaine.

“Didn't I tell you to get out of town?” the cowboy said.

Valentine took a step back and nearly fell down. His balance was gone, his body having forgotten how to defend itself. The cowboy flashed him a crooked smile.

The cowboy's movements were swift and deliberate, and Valentine lifted his arms helplessly as the steel pipe came down forcefully on his skull.

26

T
hat low-life fucking Jersey bastard,” Nick roared, feeling as forsaken as the day he'd buried his father and kissed his childhood good-bye. “How dare he run out on me!”

Nick paced the surveillance control room and swore some more. Wily stood by the master console, watching his boss with one eye while keeping the other on the monitors. “Boss! They're into us for four hundred grand.”

Picking up a house phone, Nick called the people working the cage and instructed them not to pay Fontaine's gang if they tried to cash out. Then he went and stuck his head into Sammy Mann's corner office. Nola lay on the busted couch, facing the wall. He could not wait to get her out of his life, and he said, “You gonna live?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I'm sorry about ten years ago. Sorry I blew it.”

“Sure you are.”

“You want a drink or something?”

Nola shook her head stiffly. Nick thought he understood. She didn't want
anything
from him. Wily tapped him on the shoulder and Nick followed the pit boss out into the hall.

Hoss, Tiny, and four other security guards stood at the ready. They all power-lifted together and were behemoths. Nick walked the line, appraising each man. “Wily says you're ready. That true?”

The guards nodded their heads in unison.

“I didn't hear you,” he said.

“Yes, sir!”

“This is the plan,” Nick told them. “Hoss and Tiny get the Aussie at table six. John and Brett, the Texan at eleven; Karl and Leroy, the pizza king at fifteen. I'll back you up if you have to break bones. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!”

Wily made them synchronize their watches. It was 10:05. He said, “Go downstairs and get near your assigned table without being conspicuous. At 10:08, grab your man. Any questions?”

This was not a talkative group. Hoss, their leader, said, “That doesn't sound too hard.”

The guards disappeared into the stairwell, their footsteps as loud as jackhammers. Nick and Wily returned to the surveillance control room and stood before the wall of monitors.

“Think we should call the cops?” Wily asked.

“Fuck the cops,” Nick said.

The door to Sammy Mann's office opened. Nola emerged, her hair standing on end like Frankenstein's bride. Pointing a finger at Nick, she emptied her lungs out.

“What the hell is she doing here?”

Nick didn't understand. “Who?”

“Her, you idiot!”

Nick glanced over his shoulder. Sherry Solomon had found her way into the surveillance control room, and was still wearing the same sooty clothes she'd worn when she set fire to Nick's mansion.

“Beats me,” he confessed.

Then it was Sherry's turn to start screaming.

“You told me you and Nola were finished!”

Nick shrugged like it was no big deal. “Hey, baby, I mean, stuff happens. You know?”

Sherry grabbed a wastepaper basket and threw it at him. A lamp followed, coming from Nola's side of the room.

“Don't tell me you fucked her,”
Nola screamed.

“Only in the biblical sense,” Nick said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means it was a fling, no big deal,” he said. “I didn't ask her to marry me or anything.”

“You two-timing, good-for-nothing prick!”

“Get away from him!” Sherry screamed at Nola.

“Make me, bitch!”

The two women met in the middle of the room, scattering everyone working at the master console. Sherry was in better shape and threw punches like she'd had lessons, while Nola was more of a scratch-and-pull kind of fighter. Within seconds, they were rolling around on the floor, tangled in each other's arms. Nick grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused them both with white foam.

“Don't just stand there,” he told Wily. “Do something!”

Wily did. He grabbed Nick by the shoulders and spun him around. There were a hundred eighty-four monitors on the wall and each showed absolute bedlam downstairs. The Texan and pizza king were whupping their security boys good, the hustlers as skilled in the martial arts as they were in cheating at cards.

“Are we recording this?” Nick bellowed.

“I think so,” Wily said.

“You think so?” Nick stuck his head into the adjacent room, which housed the VCRs the monitors were hooked up to. Each machine had a red light on, indicating it was recording. Fontaine's gang was going to jail for a long time. He shut the door and locked it.

“Come on,” Nick said.

“What about the girls?” Wily asked.

Lying beneath the console, Sherry had gotten Nola in a half nelson and was systematically pulling out clumps of her hair, while Nola retaliated by biting her nemesis savagely in the bosom. That Sherry didn't feel it did not come as a surprise. Standing in the room's open doorway, Nick shrugged his shoulders.

Then he ran out.

Nick had never seen anything like it. Guys fighting guys, women fighting women, his employees trying to break up one fight while others erupted all around them. Chips and glasses and chairs were flying through the air; people were ruining his joint just for the hell of it. Nick had never understood the impulse, but he recognized it in others: the appetite for destruction.

He quickly marshaled his troops. First he commandeered a dozen dishwashers and his front desk staff, then the dealers who were on break or hiding. Each was given something solid to hold—golf clubs from the pro shop for the ladies, brooms and pool cues for the gents—and then sent into battle with these simple instructions: “If they put up a fight, beat them into the ground.”

Nick's employees streamed into the casino. The craps table had been turned on its side by two dealers attempting to protect a rack of chips from a mob's greedy hands. With a handful of dishwashers backing him up, Wily descended on the mob, their war whoops sending shock waves through the casino.

It was Nick's distinction to have nothing but ladies in his gang. There was Betty, the sixty-year-old chip girl, and Louise, who ran Housekeeping and who claimed to have changed more of Nick's dirty sheets than his own mother. Over the years, he'd pissed off every single one of these women, yet every single one had stayed. They were
his people,
and as he led them toward the blackjack pit, a chant went up.

Nick, Nick, Nick.

At table fifteen the pizza king was kicking Karl and Leroy senseless. Clutching a Big Bertha, Nick moved in, swinging the driver around his head like a bolo. He hated guys who fought with their feet. You want to kick, take up tap dancing. He slammed the driver into the pizza king's back and sent him sprawling.

Nick, Nick, Nick.

“I'm just getting warmed up,” Nick told the crowd, charging to the other end of the pit. Several tables had been overturned, and the Texan was dancing around and karate-chopping his security men silly. He was Chuck Norris and
Lethal Weapon
rolled into one, and Nick wisely steered clear. Two tables away, he saw Wily pounding the daylights out of someone and he went to investigate.

It was Fontaine. Wily had pinned him to the table and was driving his right fist repeatedly into the hustler's face.

“Call the Texan off,” Wily said, drawing his fist back. “Make him stop before he kills someone.”

“Fuck you,” Fontaine said.

“Get off him,” Nick said.

Wily did, and Nick grabbed Fontaine's ear and twisted until the skin turned a violent purple. The hustler fell to his knees in agony.

“You want me to tear it off?” Nick asked, being polite about it. “I can do that. It's your call.”

“I
can't
call him off,” Fontaine cried, writhing beneath Nick's hand. “He's an ex-con. Swears he won't go back to the joint. You're going to have to kill him.”

“That can be arranged,” Nick said. He released Fontaine's ear, then kicked him in the nuts for good measure. To Wily, he said, “Sit on him!”

The pit boss complied. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to get Joe,” Nick said.

His employees had gotten the mob under control, so Nick ran across his ravaged casino and ducked into One-Armed Billy's alcove. Just as he was paid to do, Joe Smith sat on his stool, looking bored out of his mind.

“How'd you like to get in on this action?” Nick asked.

Joe brightened. He was still young and in great shape, all seven feet and three hundred pounds of him, and he jumped off his stool like a sprinter coming out of the blocks.

“You mean that, Mr. Nicocropolis?” he said. “You gonna let me break the rules?”

“I sure am. Come on.”

Joe was so conditioned to staying with Billy that Nick had to drag him out of the alcove. Once outside, he stiffened, his eyes traveling the length of the casino and coming to rest on the Texan, who was hopping around on one foot, like a crane.

“Who's that dude?” Joe snarled.

“The enemy. Think you can handle him?”

“Looks like a bird. Maybe I'd better pluck his feathers.”

Nick smiled gleefully. This was going to be great. Too bad Valentine was going to miss it, that dumb Jersey greaseball.

Mike Turkowski, ex-hockey player and bartender at Brother's Lounge, had been standing beside the Acropolis's notorious fountain for twenty minutes, staring into the casino with a pair of infrared binoculars no bigger than a cigarette pack. Over the years, he'd been involved in a dozen casino rip-offs, all of them successful, and one thing had been true with each. The last people the casinos called were the cops. No one trusted them, especially when large sums of money were lying around. Which made his job that much easier.

Mike brought his wristwatch to his face, noting the time with one eye: 10:14. Fontaine told him to wait until 10:20, and if the ruse didn't work, run. His car was parked across the street, a one-way ticket to Seattle in the glove box, a suitcase in the trunk. Leaving town without telling his friends didn't thrill him, but that was part of the business.

At 10:16, he saw Nick duck into One-Armed Billy's alcove. Only one guy in the whole world could move Joe Smith off his stool, and that was Nick Nicocropolis. Fontaine had called it perfectly.

Mike tossed the binoculars into the fountain and started walking toward the front entrance. He saw Nick and Joe Smith leave the alcove and run across the casino, just like Fontaine said they would. Pushing open the front doors, Mike slipped into Billy's empty alcove.

Taking five silver dollars from his pocket, Mike quickly fed them into the machine. Then he pulled the giant arm.

The reels flashed by, stopping on two watermelons and four lemons. Which was where the expression “a lemon” came from. Taking a tennis ball from his pocket, Mike wedged it into the base of the arm so it could not spring back. From the sleeve of his jacket, he removed a pair of coat hangers and fitted them together in an L, then he bent a fishhook into one end. Kneeling, he inserted the hook into Billy's coin tray and shoved the hangers into the machine, his eyes fixed on Billy's twenty-six-million-dollar jackpot. Billy was insured by Lloyd's of London, and Fontaine had done his homework; he knew the policy was paid up. It was the little details that screwed you up, he'd once told Mike.

Billy had six reels, which made it harder to manipulate than hand-cranked slots, and Mike was probably the last guy in Vegas who knew how to manipulate an old-time machine, having learned on a pair of cast-iron Ballys in Brother's backroom. He had expected to put this talent to work on cruise ships, where old machines were still common. The payoffs weren't so hot, but it was easy work for the mentally challenged, a club of which Mike had considered himself a lifetime member until now.

From the alcove, he could hear the Texan hollering. Poor bastard. Fontaine had not given each member of the team a complete script. For the Texan and pizza king, this meant a beating and jail time; for everyone else, a life of wine and roses. Mike felt bad for the two ex-cons, but he wouldn't lose any sleep over them.

Twenty seconds later, he was done. Snapping the hangers back to their original shape, he slipped them up his sleeve. He found himself laughing. Instead of cherries, Nick's six ex-wives made up Billy's jackpot, their titties exaggerated to comic proportions.

“Beautiful,” he said, kissing the glass they stood behind.

Then he ran out of the casino as fast as his legs would carry him.

Not everyone who worked at the Acropolis was taking part in the battle royale on the casino floor. People were getting
hurt
out there, and many of Nick's less courageous employees chose not to participate. These included the waitresses and bartender at Nick's Place, a group of Mexican dishwashers and chambermaids, and several bookkeepers. Together they cowered in the employee lounge, waiting for the bedlam to subside.

Roxanne sat among them, biting her nails. She'd stepped out of the elevator five minutes earlier and had nearly been hit by a flying chair. Running to the lounge, she'd bummed a cigarette off a slow-witted chambermaid named Dolores and waited it out with the rest of them.

“I thought you had a date?” Dolores said, always the snoop. “What happened?”

“It didn't work out,” Roxanne said coolly.

Dolores cackled. Earlier, she'd caught Roxanne in the bathroom preening, her perfume heavy enough to choke a horse.

“Didn't work out,” Dolores squawked like a parrot. “Honey, you were gone only forty-five minutes.”

“It sure seemed longer,” Roxanne said, trying to make light of it.

“What happened?”

“You heard what I said—it didn't work out,” Roxanne snapped. “It happens, okay?”

“Was he that bad?”

Roxanne stomped her foot and the kitchen help looked up in alarm. Not a one had a green card, and they were all scared as hell.

“Stop it,” she told Dolores.

Dolores cackled again. “My, my. Aren't we sensitive tonight.”

“Must I tell you the gory details?” Roxanne said.

“Yeah!” Dolores said.

Roxanne lowered her voice to a whisper. “I went to his room, had room service bring up two surf and turfs, then set the table, and put on some music. Then I got a call. His son's missing and presumed dead. I call around the casino and find him and he comes upstairs. It was so sad; I figured the least I could do was console him.”