James Swain - Gift sense

Back in the Caddy, Valentine tossed Nick his fifty grand.

"Merry Christmas," he said.

Nola didn't say much during the ride back to the Acropolis. Laying her head on Nick's lap, she cried softly most of the way, the perfect image of the damsel in distress. She was pretty in a way that none of Nick's other wives were pretty, her looks pure and clean. Valentine wanted to ask her which of the three guys beating the Acropolis was Fontaine, but he decided to wait until they got inside, where he could get her under a bright light and look into her eyes while she answered his questions.

Valentine pulled up to the Acropolis's entrance and a valet ran out to assist them. Nick made him get a wheelchair, and they rolled Nola inside.

The casino was jammed, the action at the tables out of control. Guys in T-shirts and rundown Nikes were betting like high rollers. Tens of thousands of dollars were flowing back and forth on every roll of the dice. It was pure madness, and every single player was involved. Holyfield beat the odds, the collective reasoning seemed to be saying, so why can't we?

They took the service elevator to the surveillance control room, where a different brand of insanity was going on. Five men were working the master console, each talking frantically into a walkie-talkie in an effort to track the frantic play below.

They found Wily standing in front of the wall of monitors. He'd removed his tie and was nervously gulping coffee.

"Hey, boss," he muttered.

"Who's ripping me off?" Nick demanded.

Wily pointed at a screen to his left. "Suspect number one. Australian named Martini. Was staying at the Mirage. He somehow got thirty hookers into his suite. He made them strip and do a lineup, three hundred apiece. The ones he liked, he asked to stay. Management tossed him."

"And you took him in," Nick said.

"His money's as green as anyone else's."

Valentine stared at the black-and-white monitor. Martini had a shaved head and rings in each ear. He also had a big nose and an overbite. He was playing blackjack and winning big.

"How much we into him for?" Nick asked.

"Sixty grand." Wily pointed at a screen to his right. "Suspect number two, Joey Joseph, calls himself the pizza king of L.A. He demanded we lift the table limit and then started beating us into the ground."

Grimacing, Nick said, "How much?"

"He just hit a hundred grand," Wily said. "He's a wild man. I tried to talk to him, and he told me to get lost."

Valentine went and stared at Joey Joseph. The pizza king wore Coke-bottle glasses and a cheap wig. He had a cleft in his chin like Fontaine, and there was something familiar about the way he banged his fist on the table.

"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?"