“Does Tony have stock in Subway?” Yolanda asked a few minutes later. Finding several Subway sandwiches in Tony’s refrigerator, she’d cut them up and put them on paper plates. She returned to the floor and took the baby. They started to eat.
“I’ve tried to convince Tony to cook for himself, but it’s a lost cause,” Mabel said. The phone rang and she snatched it up. “Grift Sense.”
“Ms. Struck, I think I’ve got something for you,” Special Agent Romero said.
Mabel scribbled on a legal pad while Romero talked.
When he was done, she had over a page of notes. He reminded her that the information was confidential.
“Of course,” she said. “Thank you for going to all this trouble.”
“No problem. Good evening, Ms. Struck,” he said.
Mabel hung up feeling goose bumps on her arms. Yolanda put down her sandwich and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Something good?”
“Yes.” Mabel squinted at her own handwriting. “On the night of Jack Donovan’s murder, Scalzo’s bodyguard drove Scalzo from his home in Newark to Atlantic City Medical Center. While the bodyguard stayed in the car, Scalzo went into the hospital and stayed for thirty minutes. The FBI agent who was tailing Scalzo went into the hospital and talked to the receptionist at the main greeting area. According to the receptionist, Scalzo said he was seeing a sick friend.”
“So our theory is correct,” Yolanda said. “Scalzo met up with the killer at the hospital, and took Jack Donovan’s secret out with him.”
“It certainly appears that way. Now, here’s the odd part. According to Special Agent Romero, Scalzo also visited the hospital the following morning carrying a bouquet of flowers. The FBI agent thought it was odd and this time followed him inside.
“Scalzo went to the cancer ward and talked to a nurse on duty. The nurse went on break, and they both went downstairs to the cafeteria. He bought her breakfast and gave her the flowers. They talked for about fifteen minutes, then Scalzo left.”
“Did the agent get the nurse’s name?”
“Yes. Susan Gladwell. She’s a senior nurse, worked at the hospital for ten years. The agent checked her out, said her record was clean.”
“Until now,” Yolanda said.
Mabel looked up from her notes. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see? Nurse Gladwell is in cahoots with George Scalzo. That’s how Scalzo was able to sneak Jack Donovan’s secret out of the hospital without being spotted. She covered it up.”
“That would make her an accessory to Jack Donovan’s murder,” Mabel said.
“It most certainly would.”
Mabel chewed reflectively on the eraser end of her pencil. It was a good theory, only it wasn’t logical. Why would a veteran nurse risk her career to help a mobster? And the flowers. Why had Scalzo brought those? There was something else going on here, a thread running beneath the surface that neither of them were seeing.
“You don’t agree?” Yolanda asked.
Mabel shook her head. “I think we’re both missing something.”
“What?”
“The connection between Scalzo and this nurse.”
Yolanda bit her lip. “What should we do?”
“I think I’ll call Gerry and tell him what we’ve found,” Mabel said. “Maybe he can make sense of it.”
38
“God, I must be the most naive person in the world,” Gloria said.
“Second most naive,” Valentine said.
“Who’s the first?”
“Me.”
They sat at a table in Celebrity’s noisy sports bar, Gloria nursing a ten-dollar glass of chardonnay, Valentine a Diet Coke. They’d driven back from Sammy Mann’s condo in a funk, with neither of them uttering more than a few words. Las Vegas had not been built on winners, but Sammy’s explanation of the skullduggery taking place at the World Poker Showdown took that philosophy to a whole new level.
“I’m sorry things turned out this way,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“No? Why is that?”
He’d busted more hustlers than he could remember, and the ones that got away were particularly grating, but he’d never let his work overshadow the things in life that really mattered. He leaned across the table and kissed Gloria on the lips.
“Because I got to meet you,” he said, pulling away.
She lowered her eyes and blushed. It was the first time he’d seen her look the least bit vulnerable. She had a wonderful exterior, but beneath it there was something equally wonderful. He hadn’t done well with the opposite sex since his wife had died, but this relationship was one he wasn’t going to let go. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Rufus Steele lurching past the bar, his Stetson tilted rakishly on his head, a glass of whiskey clutched in his hand like a grenade. Seeing them, Rufus staggered over.
“Just the person I was looking for,” Rufus said, putting his glass on the table. “There’s this rumor floating around that you got banned from the tournament this afternoon.”
“Afraid so,” Valentine said.
“That’s horseshit. You’re one of the good guys.”
“Sometimes good guys finish last,” Valentine said.
“Well, I hope you plan to stick around,” Rufus said. “Once the tournament is over, I’m going to play DeMarco for two million bucks, winner-take-all, and I want you there to make sure he doesn’t cheat me.”
Valentine sat up straight in his chair. He’d forgotten about Rufus’s challenge to DeMarco and now realized it would be the ideal opportunity to figure out what DeMarco was doing and expose him without it affecting the tournament.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
“Good,” Rufus said. “In the meantime, I was hoping I might ask you a favor.”
Rufus suddenly stopped looking drunk, and Valentine realized he was putting on an act, and probably had a sucker he was trying to reel in. Valentine’s eyes canvassed the bar, and saw the Greek sitting on the other side of the crowded room.
“What’s that?” Valentine asked.
“The Greek has been running around the hotel saying I cheated him with my Ping-Pong bet. He’s claiming the reason he didn’t challenge me was because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yessir. The Greek says I hired you to protect me, and that you were an ex-cop with a bad reputation. He’s also saying you’re a suspect in a double homicide, and he was afraid you’d put a bullet in him if he squawked about me using the iron skillets as paddles in the game.”
“Is that so?”
“Yessir. I’ve been fixing to make the Greek eat his words, and figured you might enjoy helping me.”
Valentine considered Rufus’s request. He’d already helped Rufus scam the Greek several times, and each time told himself no more. Scamming people wasn’t right, even if they deserved to be taught a lesson. Then he reminded himself that the Greek had been part of a team that had cheated Rufus in a card game in an effort to make the old cowboy leave town. The Greek was a crook, and crooks needed to be punished. He glanced sideways at Gloria and placed his hand atop her wrist. “Do you mind if I help Rufus?”
“Only if you let me watch,” she said.
“Hot damn,” Rufus said.
The Greek was waiting as they approached his table. He’d finally taken a shower and combed his hair, and no longer resembled a clump of seaweed washed up on the beach. Sitting beside him was a red-haired poker player named Marcy Baldwin, whose departure from the tournament had included loud cursing and flipping the bird to the TV cameras. Marcy believed every male player was out to get her, yet she still competed in men’s events. On her lap was a designer handbag containing a sleeping Persian cat.