“Someone from the hotel called you and told you about the shirt, didn’t they?” Valentine asked.
“That’s right,” Longo said.
“They also told you I was in Celebrity’s poker room.”
“Right again.”
The cup was empty, and Valentine stared at grains. Before he’d taken the job, the hotel’s general manager, a stuffed suit named Mark Perrier, had threatened him with a lawsuit if Celebrity’s reputation was smeared by Jack Donovan’s murder investigation.
“Was it Mark Perrier, the general manager?”
Longo put his pencil down, trying not to act surprised. “Who told you that?”
“Believe it or not, I figured it out by myself,” Valentine said.
“You have a history with this guy?”
“He threatened me a week ago. Didn’t want me investigating his tournament. This was before Bill Higgins hired me.”
Longo gave him a thoughtful look. “You’re saying Perrier set you up.”
“I’m investigating a cheating scandal inside his hotel. Of course he set me up. Last night, I had you paraffin me for gunshot residue. I may have changed my shirt, but I hadn’t showered. Do you think I would have told you to give me the test if I’d shot those guys?”
Most cops didn’t like the kind of backward logic he was throwing at Longo. It made them go outside their comfort zones. Longo looked at the bagged shirt.
“I need to wait for the blood test,” he said.
“You mean you’re going to hold me,” Valentine said, exasperated.
“Afraid so.”
A woman’s voice came out of the black squawk box on the desk. Longo pressed a button on the box. “Hey Lydia, what’s up?”
“Bill Higgins, director of the Nevada Gaming—”
“I know who Higgins is,” he snapped. “Is he on the line? Tell him I’m busy and will call him back.”
“He’s standing next to my desk,” she said.
Longo clenched his teeth. “Send him in,” he said, and took his finger off the button.
Like most people who worked in law enforcement, Bill had a tough side. When he got angry, he tended to throw his considerable weight around. He was doing that now, and Longo was shrinking in his chair.
“How dare you arrest Tony without first calling me,” Bill said, leaning on Longo’s desk like he was going to do a push-up. “I got authorization from the goddamn governor to keep Tony on this job. You’re screwing with my investigation. If you don’t let Tony go right now, I’ll burn your ass so badly you won’t be able to sit down.”
The lowlifes and miscreants in the other detectives’ offices had stopped talking, the only sound coming from the overhead air-conditioning. Longo pointed at the bagged shirt lying on the desk. “What about this?”
“So what?” Bill said, mimicking Valentine perfectly.
“It’s evidence,” Longo protested.
“It corroborates Tony’s story, but it doesn’t corrobo rate your story,” Bill said. “Why don’t you ask the hotel to show you the surveillance tapes from the stairwell, if you want to know who shot those two scumbags? There’s your evidence, Pete.”
“I already asked the hotel,” Longo said.
“And?”
“They said there isn’t a surveillance camera in the stairwell,” Longo said. “It’s optional under state law to have cameras in stairwells, and they didn’t do it.”
“Who told you that?” Bill asked.
Longo swallowed a rising lump in his throat. “Mark Perrier.”
“Perrier fed you that line of bullshit?”
“How do you know it’s bullshit?” Longo asked.
“Because any door leading off the main lobby of a casino, or its hotel, must have a working surveillance camera according to Nevada state law,” Bill said. “The stairwell where those two scumbags got plugged was right off the lobby. Celebrity couldn’t have gotten a license to operate its casino if there wasn’t a camera in there.”
“But why would Perrier lie?” Longo asked.
Bill finally did his push-up. He worked out religiously, and looked like he could do a hundred of them. “I don’t know, Pete, why don’t you ask him?”
Rubbing his wrist, Valentine walked out of Longo’s office and followed Bill past a warren of detective’s offices to the main reception area. In one office, a black pimp was getting processed by the detective who’d arrested him. The pimp wore flashy clothes and enough gold jewelry to open a pawn shop. Seeing Bill, he threw up his arms.
“I need you, man,” the pimp said.
Bill stopped in the open doorway. “What did you say to me?”
“I said I need you. You know, your services.”
Both of the pimp’s wrists were cuffed to his chair, a sure sign he was a threat. On the desk were his personal belongings, which included an enormous wad of cash and a handful of hundred-dollar black casino chips.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bill asked.
The pimp glanced sideways at the detective who’d busted him, then looked at Bill. “I heard you chewing out that mother down the hall. You sound like you know your stuff. What’s your going rate?”
“You think I’m a lawyer?”
The pimp acted startled. “You’re not?”
Bill marched into the office. Grabbing the chips off the desk, he began peeling back the paper logo on each one. Valentine guessed Bill was looking for the microchip that casinos were required to put in chips over twenty dollars in value. The pimp’s chips didn’t have the microchips, and Bill shoved them into the arresting detective’s face.
“These are counterfeits,” Bill said. “Nail this ass-hole.”
Part III
Deadman’s Hand
25
Lou Preston had struck gold.
The director of surveillance for Bally’s Atlantic City casino had contacted the island’s eleven other casinos, and persuaded them to search their digital databases for any blackjack players who’d recently beaten them and who’d been wearing New York Yankees baseball caps. The search had turned up forty-eight players, all of whom were between the ages of forty and sixty and of Italian descent. Casinos kept records on players who won a thousand dollars or more, and each of these players fell into that category.
As the casinos e-mailed pictures of the players to Preston, Lou projected them onto the wall of video monitors in Bally’s surveillance control room. Gerry, Eddie Davis, and Joey Marconi stood in front of the wall, drinking coffee the color of transmission fluid while watching a montage of sleaze take shape before them.
“These guys give Italians a bad name,” Marconi said.
Gerry sipped his drink, his eyes floating from face to face. The Mafia’s great strength was also its great weakness. The mob didn’t let in outsiders, and consequently there were no women, Asians, blacks, or Hispanics in their ranks. It was all mean-faced, middle-aged Italians with fifties haircuts who tended to stick out like sore thumbs.
He tossed his coffee cup into the trash. His father was always saying that people got what was coming to them. He’d never believed that, especially when it came to crime, but now had a feeling his father was right. George Scalzo was about to get what was coming to him.
He went to the master console where Preston sat. Lou had gotten the directors of surveillance of the other casinos to send him any notes they had on the men whose faces were on the monitors. Surveillance technicians kept copious notes during their shifts, and wrote down anything that was deemed unusual.
“Anything interesting?” Gerry asked.