James Swain - Gift sense

"You get to see Hagler train?"

"I went one day at lunch. The gym was like an oven. I lasted twenty minutes."

"How long was Hagler there?"

"Three weeks."

Their coffee came, a witch's brew that Higgins tempered with two packets of cream and plenty of sugar. Valentine drank his black.

"Any luck finding Nola?" Higgins asked, blowing on his cup.

"Not yet. How about you?"

"Nothing. We're kind of strapped right now with all the big hitters rolling into town for the Holyfield fight."

"Wouldn't be too hard for Fontaine to go out to the airport and come back in as a tourist, would it?"

Higgins put his cup down. "That's an interesting idea. You really think he'd try something as brazen as that?"

"He did it in Atlantic City once," Valentine said. "We missed him completely."

"You think Nola's with him?"

"I do. In disguise, of course."

"Where's he staying?"

"Hard to say. Someplace large and impersonal that's in walking distance to the Acropolis. He's probably checking out the new security measures as we speak."

"What's his identity this time?"

"Something ordinary, like a lightbulb salesman from Minnesota with two-point-four kids and a doting wife. His hair is a different color and he's wearing elevators in his shoes. He probably has some new facial hair and a really ugly wardrobe."

"You know this guy pretty well."

"Not well enough to catch him."

"When's he going to take another stab at Nick's?"

"Soon. He'll wait until the casino is packed. The day after the fight might be an opportune time. Lots of noise and adrenaline."

"Any idea how he'll do it?"

"No. But I think someone inside the casino will be helping him."

Higgins winced like he'd been kicked in the solar plexus. Inventory was impossible to track on a casino floor, and if an employee was involved in a scam, millions of dollars could walk out the front door.

"You're giving me an ulcer, you know that?"

"There's still time," Valentine said.

"To do what? Update my resume? Look Tony, every time a casino gets whacked in this town, I get my tit put in a wringer. I'm going to be out of work if this thing comes down."

"I can stop him."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I'm not a cop anymore. I don't have to stay within the letter of the law, if you know what I mean." Valentine leaned back from the table as their waitress rudely slapped down a check. Only when she was out of earshot did he speak again. "Give me the information you have, including the wiretaps of Nola's phone."

"No," Higgins said.

"Why not?"

"Let's say you hunt Fontana down and you end up killing him. That makes me an accessory to murder."

Valentine saw where he was going. "So I won't kill him."

"Is that a promise?"

Valentine nodded.

"Come again?"

"Yes, it's a promise."

Higgins finished his coffee, grimacing until the very last drop. He tossed a few dollars on the table and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. "I'm off at six. I'll come by the Acropolis and drop off what I have. I'll bring a tape recorder so you can listen to the wiretaps."

"I really appreciate it, Bill."

"Hey, look," Higgins said.

Valentine followed Higgins's gaze out the window. Across the street, four black gladiators in skimpy gym clothes emerged, their sinewy bodies dripping perspiration. A playful exchange of punches quickly escalated into warfare. A hooded figure, taller and broader in the shoulders, came out of the stairwell and began to mix it up with them, slapping the combatants with his open palms, sending them reeling into parked cars until they begged uncle.

"Is that who I think it is?" Valentine asked.

"The People's Champ," Higgins said. "I got two hundred bucks riding on his winning. How about you?"

Valentine shrugged. Holyfield's opponent was a foul-mouthed tattoo-covered ex-con who exemplified everything wrong with sports in America. Valentine wanted to see him lose, but the desire was not great enough to overcome the even greater aversion he had for wagering on sporting events.

"You should," Higgins said.

Valentine shrugged again.

"I'm serious."

"Give me one good reason why."

"Because it's good versus evil, that's why."

"And betting on Holyfield is good?"

"It most certainly is."

Valentine had never looked at it that way. Betting tended to bring out the worst in people, and it had never occurred to him that by putting a few bucks down, he'd be striking a blow for the sake of humanity. He slid out of the booth.

"I'll have to think about it," Valentine said.

Twenty minutes later, Valentine found himself stuck in traffic on the Strip. Thousands of newly arrived tourists had hit the streets and transformed the city's main thoroughfare into a pedestrian walkway. Horns blared, engines overheated, and cabbies stood on the hoods of their cars and shouted in murderous rage.

Where's a cop when you need one? he wondered. He'd promised to call Roxanne and like an idiot had left her home number on his night table. It hadn't helped that he didn't know her last name and couldn't look her up. He glanced at his watch-nearly five. Flipping the turn indicator on, he maneuvered the Cadillac Nick had loaned him into the front entrance of the Desert Inn. Tossing the valet a twenty, he threw his sports jacket over his shoulder and hit the pavement, the Acropolis shimmering miragelike in the distance.

Florida was never this hot. You could go out at night, walk around, and not be afraid of bursting into flames. He crossed the street in slow motion and caught his breath in the welcome shade of a bus stop. It wasn't any cooler.

By the next block, the heat had risen through his loafers and his feet were burning up. Hundreds of people streamed around him, oblivious to his condition. He looked hopelessly up and down the street. In any other city, there would be someone hawking ice-cold drinks and umbrellas. Not Las Vegas-the only free enterprise here was located inside the casinos.

He heard voices. Women singing, the melodious words floating above his head. No one else seemed to notice. What the hell was going on? Crossing at the light, the voices grew stronger, and he shaded his eyes and stared straight ahead. A block away, he saw Nick's harem of ex-wives standing in the fountains, serenading him.

He was hallucinating, the heat doing tricks with his head. It didn't matter. He'd heard women singing the day before Lois died. God talked to people in strange ways, and there was no doubt in his mind that God was talking to him right now. He started to run.

He was sopping wet by the time he reached Nick's joint, his heart racing out of control. The check-in line was twenty deep, T-shirts flapping over Day-Glo Bermudas, and he went straight to the elevators and bullied his way onto the first available car.

The message light on his bedside phone was flashing. Tearing his shirt off, he placed the receiver to his ear and punched in the code for voice mail.

There was only one message. Mabel.

"Oh, Tony, you were right," his neighbor said, her voice trembling. "The ad ran this morning and I got a call from the postmaster. The police had called him, asked who owned the box. The next thing I know, one of Palm Harbor's finest is standing on my porch. Oh, Tony, it was so embarrassing. He arrested me."

Valentine sat on the bed. Gerry's brilliant idea had gotten Mabel thrown in the pokey. His son was a bad-news buffet.

"They gave me one phone call. Thank God for my MCI calling card. The judge told me I'd better hire an attorney. Who do I call? I've never broken the law. You think F. Lee Bailey would be interested?"

Mabel's voice was drowned out by a drunk woman mutilating an old Carole King song. She'd called him from a payphone in a holding cell.