James Swain: Gift sense

"Who told you that?"

"Candy," Rico said. "She called me a little while ago."

"It went great."

"Let me ask you something. You think she's in love with him?"

Jack nodded.

"Damn hookers," Rico said. "They smell money, their brains melt. Every time I use one, know what I tell them?"

Jack had no idea what Rico told them. But Rico had a line for everybody, and if you hung around him long enough, you got to hear it. Jack opened the minibar and helped himself to a beer. "No, what do you tell them?"

"I tell them, honey, you know it's time to quit the business when you start coming with the customers. Think any of them listen?"

"No," Jack said.

"Fucking-a they don't," Rico said. Taking his hand away from the mouthpiece, he said, "Yeah, Victor, I'm still here. No, Victor, I'm not driving while I'm talking on the phone; I've got someone to drive for me." Rico looked at Jack and rolled his eyes. Victor was the senior partner in the operation and often treated Rico like a kid. "Yeah, Victor. I'll see you tomorrow. Nine sharp. Brunch at the Breakers. Bye." He killed the power. "So where were we?"

"Hookers," Jack said.

"Speaking of which, I've got some girls lined up you're going to love."

"They like Indians?"

"They like who I tell them to like," Rico said. He took a Heineken out of a holder and clinked it against Jack's bottle. "To the best blackjack cheat in the world."

Only one road led back to civilization, and it was long and very dark. The limo jumped into the air as it hit a bump in the road, then bounced hard on the macadam.

"What the hell you doing?" Rico yelled.

"Sorry," Splinters said, not sounding sorry at all.

Jack looked at his shirt. Beer had jumped out of the bottle and soaked it. He swore under his breath. Rico laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.

"Jack's all wet," Rico said with mock indignation. "Apologize."

"Sorry," Splinters said.

Jack swallowed hard. "No problem."

"You got a towel up there?" Rico said. "I got some on me, too, for Christ's sake."

A handkerchief flew into the backseat. Rico plucked it out of the air and balled it up. He pressed it against the wet spot on his knee, then leaned forward and pressed the handkerchief against Jack's shirt. Jack pulled back, and Rico's eyes grew wide. Then his hand turned into a rock-hard fist.

"You fucking bastard!" Rico roared.

At seven the next morning, Chief Running Bear, leader of the Micanopy nation, sat in his double-wide trailer a hundred yards behind the casino, staring at a pair of identical TV sets. Two hours earlier, a phone call had awoken him from a deep sleep, and now he rubbed his eyes tiredly while staring at the dueling images.

On one TV, a casino surveillance film showed an employee named Jack Lightfoot dealing blackjack. A player at Lightfoot's table had won eighty-four hands in a row, a feat that Running Bear knew was statistically impossible. The player had never touched the cards, ruling out sleight of hand. There was only one logical explanation: Lightfoot had rigged the game.

On the other TV, a second surveillance film showed Lightfoot standing in the casino parking lot, smoking a cigarette.

Before running the tapes, Running Bear had gone through Lightfoot's personnel file. He was a Navajo and had come to work for the Micanopys with a glowing reference from Bill Higgins, another Navajo, who happened to run the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Indians did not lie to other Indians, and Running Bear could remember Higgins's words as if it were yesterday.

"Jack won't let you down," Higgins had said.

Running Bear shook his head. Jack Lightfoot had let him down. He was a cheat, and a damn good one. Bill Higgins had once bragged to Running Bear that he knew every goddamned cheater in the country. So why hadn't he known about this one?

On the second TV a stretch limo appeared. Running Bear leaned forward to stare. The passenger door opened. Sitting in back was an Italian with wavy hair and a mustache. Running Bear found most white men identical, their faces as bland as pudding. Italians were particularly annoying. The men all wore mustaches, or snot-catchers as Indians called them. This one looked like a gangster.

Running Bear stopped the tapes. Sipping his coffee, he listened to the air conditioner outside his window. His casino had been ripped off by a dealer recommended by the most respected gaming official in the country. And that dealer was working with a mobster. It doesn't get any worse than this, he thought.

The door opened. The casino's head of security, Harry Smooth Stone, stepped in. He was out of breath.

"More problems," Smooth Stone said.

Running Bear pushed himself out of his chair. Thirty years wrestling alligators had put arthritis in every joint in his body, and he grimaced as his bones sang their painful song. Had he disgraced a dead ancestor recently and not realized it? There had to be some reason for this sudden spate of bad luck.

They drove Smooth Stone's Jeep across the casino parking lot. Jumping a concrete median, they went down a narrow dirt road through thick mangroves that led into the heart of the Everglades. For centuries, the Micanopys had lived in harmony with the alligators, panthers, and bears that called this land home, and had been rewarded in ways that few humans could appreciate.

Ten minutes later, Smooth Stone pulled into a clearing and parked beside a large pool of water. Running Bear knew the spot well; in the spring, alligators came here to mate and, later, raise their young. A half-dozen tribe members with fishing poles stood by the water's edge, looking scared.

Running Bear got out of the Jeep. The men stepped aside, revealing a body lying facedown in the water. It was a man, and he'd been shot once in the head. His left forearm had been chewed off, as had both his feet. Someone had hooked him by the collar. Running Bear said, "Flip him over."

The men obeyed. The dead man was covered with mud, and one of the men filled a bucket out of the lake and dumped it on his face. Running Bear knelt down, just to be sure.

Back in his trailer, Running Bear thumbed through the stack of business cards he kept in his desk. He had decided to dump Jack Lightfoot's body in nearby Broward County-the men in the limo had been white, so let white men deal with the crime-and Smooth Stone was on the phone making arrangements.

"Done," his head of security said, hanging up.

Running Bear found the card he was looking for and handed it to Smooth Stone. "Call this guy and hire him. Tell him everything, except our finding the body."

Smooth Stone stared at the card in his hand. Grift Sense International Gaming Consultant Tony Valentine, President (727) 591-5115

"He catches people who cheat casinos," Running Bear explained.

"You think he can help us?"

Running Bear heard the suspicion in Smooth Stone's voice. Bringing in an outsider was a risk, but it was a chance he had to take. Jack Lightfoot had cheated them. If word got out that his dealers were crooked, their business would dry up overnight. The casino was the reservation's main revenue source: It paid for health care, education, and a three-thousand-dollar monthly stipend to every adult. If it fell, so did his people.

"I heard him lecture at a gambling seminar," Running Bear said.

"Any good?"

Running Bear nodded. He'd learned more about cheating listening to Tony Valentine for a few hours than he'd learned running a casino for ten years.

"The best," he said.