Then it occurred to him what was wrong.
Cheating equipment was expensive. Several underground companies sold devices to rip off games, and the equipment often cost several thousand dollars. The markup was incredible, the reasoning being that a cheater would make the money back in one night. Gerry tried to imagine how much the baseball cap would cost from one of these companies. They charged through the nose for anything electronic, and he guessed the cap would cost ten grand. He handed the cap back to Marconi.
“Can I ask you a couple of questions?” Gerry asked.
“Go ahead.”
“The gang you were chasing inside Bally’s, how many members were there?”
Marconi stuck the cap on his head. It was several sizes too large, and made him look like a little kid. He counted on the fingers of one hand. “One woman was nicking the cards. A second guy was reading the nicks and transmitting the information. And there was the guy wearing the cap and doing the betting. Three members.”
“Don’t forget Abruzzi,” Davis said.
“Correction. Four members.”
“Okay,” Gerry said. “Four members, but only one is actually stealing.”
“That’s right.”
“How much was the gang winning?”
“Around fifteen hundred a night,” Marconi said.
Gerry stared at the cap on Marconi’s head. Now he knew what was bothering him.
“That’s not enough money,” Gerry said.
Marconi shot him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the overhead the gang has,” Gerry explained. “Four members, plus the cost of the cap and a police scanner. Oh, and there’s George Scalzo’s take to consider, since he’s bankrolling this operation. Fifteen hundred a night hardly covers the cost of doing business.”
“You’ve lost me,” Marconi said. “If fifteen hundred isn’t enough money, then why were they cheating Bally’s? For laughs?”
Gerry asked to see the cap again, and turned it over. The expert tailoring job was the clue. A pro had stitched this cap, and if his hunch was correct, many more just like it.
“If my hunch is right, there are more members of this gang cheating Bally’s, not just the ones you were after,” Gerry said.
Marconi and Davis snapped to attention.
“Can you prove that?” Davis asked him.
“I sure can,” Gerry said.
Marconi drove them to Bally’s with the gaffed baseball cap on his head. During the drive, he broke the news to Davis that his prized Mustang had been totaled from Gerry ramming it into Abruzzi’s car. Davis stared out the window and sulked.
“You’ll find another one,” Marconi said.
“Like hell I will,” Davis replied.
Bally’s entrance was jammed with tour buses. Marconi maneuvered around them and parked by the valet stand. As they got out, he said, “Boat people.”
Boat people was casino slang for senior citizens. Like every other casino in Atlantic City, Bally’s relied on seniors to make its nut. They were easy customers, staying long enough to squander their social security checks in slot and video poker machines. Inside they found a sea of white hair and polyester. They walked to the cashier’s cage where Marconi cornered the casino’s floor manager, a red-faced man wearing a purple sports jacket. Marconi explained why they were there.
“You want to do what?” the floor manager said.
“Go up to your surveillance control room and take a look at some tapes,” Marconi said.
“Gaining entrance to that room takes a fricking act of Congress,” the floor manager said. “I need to tell the people upstairs what this is about.”
Marconi took off the cap, and showed the floor manager the rim. “This cap was used to scam your blackjack tables. We want to watch the tapes of the guy who was wearing it. Think you can arrange that?”
The floor manager muttered something unpleasant and left. Casino people were fiercely territorial, and tended to bang heads with cops as a matter of principle. They went into a coffee shop to wait.
“Do senior citizens rip off casinos?” Marconi asked a few minutes later.
Gerry had ordered coffee and was gulping it down to stay awake. “Seniors can be as bad as anyone else. My father nailed a gang who were stealing six figures a year.”
“What were they doing, putting slugs in slot machines?” Marconi asked.
Gerry shook his head.
“Fudging their Keno cards?” Davis asked.
Gerry shook his head again. “It was a bus scam. The tour operator was in cahoots with them.”
Cops liked to think they knew everything when it came to crime. Davis and Marconi traded looks, then stared Gerry down.
“What the hell’s a bus scam?” Davis asked.
Gerry put down his coffee. “The casino was paying a tour operator ten dollars a head to bus seniors in twice a week. The seniors had a larcenous streak, and told the tour operator they’d inflate the count if he’d split the money with them.”
“They stole six figures doing this?” Marconi asked incredulously.
“Yeah. The tour operator was bringing in ten buses, twice a week. The count on each bus was being inflated by ten heads. That’s two grand a week.”
Marconi and Davis dealt with bad people every day, but this seemed to bother them. If Gerry had learned anything working for his father, it was that gambling made people do things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do. He finished his drink.
“How did your father nail them?” Davis asked.
“My father was working the casino on another case,” Gerry said. “He happened to walk outside, and saw the tour operator throwing unopened box lunches into a Dumpster. He mentioned it to management, and was told the casino gave each senior a boxed lunch as part of the deal. My father went outside, and counted all the boxes in the Dumpster. That’s when he figured out what they were doing.”
“Did the seniors go to jail?” Davis asked.
“No one went to jail,” Gerry said. “The tour operator gave his share back, and did community service. The seniors had spent theirs, so they worked it off at the casino.”
“That your father’s idea?” Davis asked.
Gerry nodded. His father believed in giving first-time offenders a pass, provided they were truly repentant. Everyone involved in this case had been. The floor manager appeared at the entrance to the restaurant, and motioned to them impatiently. They settled the bill, then came out to where the floor manager waited.
“You’ve got clearance,” the floor manager said.
Bally’s surveillance control room was the heart and soul of its security operation. Housed on the third floor, it was a windowless, claustrophobic room filled with the finest snooping equipment money could buy. The room was kept at a chilly sixty degrees, and each technician wore several layers of clothing. The floor manager led them past a wall of video monitors to a master console in the rear of the room, where a short, bespectacled man wearing a gray turtleneck sat with his fingers clutched around a joystick.
“They’re all yours,” the floor manager said.
The floor manager left, and Marconi introduced himself, Davis, and Gerry. The man at the console removed his glasses and quizzed Gerry with a glance.
“You Tony Valentine’s son?”
“Sure am,” Gerry said.
“Your father taught me the ropes,” the man said. “We used to say your father could see a gnat’s ass and hear a mouse piss. How’s he doing?”