"Are you still mad he's a bookie?"
"Of course I'm mad. He's breaking the law. He's been breaking the law most of his life. And I gave him the dough to open the bar. He-" Valentine bit his tongue. "I just want to give him time to think about it."
"So you won't talk to him."
"That's right. I won't talk to him. But I do need to talk to you."
Roxanne brightened. "You do?"
"The hotel has hired me to conduct a little investigation."
"You a dick?"
"Ex-cop. I run a consulting business."
The news seemed to relax her. Taking a swallow of her drink she said, "No kidding. Wily said your company was called Grift Sense. What does that mean?"
"It's an old gambling expression," he explained. "A grifter was a cross-roader, a hustler. Having grift sense was the highest compliment a hustler could pay another hustler. It meant that you not only knew how to do the moves, you also knew when to do them. Sometimes that's the most important thing."
"And you have that."
"I can feel when a hustle's going down, even if I don't know exactly what it is."
"Grift sense."
"Right. Anyway, I need to talk to you about Frank Fontaine."
"Okay."
As Valentine fiddled with his pen, she said, "I knew there was a reason I liked you."
He raised an expectant eyebrow.
"My old man was a cop," she explained.
There was a lot more to Roxanne than met the eye. She was working on her MBA at UNLV's night school while holding down two part-time jobs, her days split between managing the front desk and balancing the hotel books. She was a savvy young woman with a boatload of ambition, and Valentine found himself liking her more than he probably should.
Early on, Roxanne had recognized the threat Fontaine posed to the Acropolis. A player who never lost could quickly put the casino out of business. She had been working the front desk the morning of Fontaine's third visit and remembered the encounter in vivid detail.
"Frank Fontaine may be the greatest blackjack player who's ever lived," she said, working on her second drink, "but when it comes to having class, he was a mutt trying to act like a poodle. My father always said, 'You want to see if a guy has class, look at his shoes. No polish, no class.' Fontaine didn't polish his shoes."
Valentine scribbled furiously. "What kind of shoes?"
"They looked like Ferragamos."
"Anything else?"
"His vision isn't very good."
"How could you tell?"
"He popped a contact lens and came up to the desk begging for some drops so he could put it back in. When he brought his hand to his face to put the lens in, he nearly poked his eye out."
He added far-sighted to his list of notes. He already had enough information to run another check on his database. Ten to one, it was someone they all knew.
"Did you get a good look at his eye?"
"Yeah. It was the same color as the contact."
Good girl. "Anything else?"
"No, I think that's it."
He put his pen away. The bartender brought another round without being asked. The guy was beginning to grow on him. Valentine drank the water in one long swallow. There was something about the desert heat that made his thirst unquenchable.
"You sure know how to pack them away," Roxanne said, wiping her lips with a frilly cocktail napkin.
"It's water," he said.
She took the glass out of his hand.
"Well, excuse me," she said, licking her finger. "It is water. You don't look like the type."
"And what type is that?"
"People who drink water are either alcoholics or Mormons."
Every interview came with a price. This one was getting a little costly, so he said, "There's a third category you're forgetting. It's called children of alcoholics. My father was a rummy. I saw what it did to my mother."
"So you don't drink."
"That's right," he said. "End of story."
"Hey. Sorry if I stepped out of bounds."
"Don't mention it."
He walked her out to her car. The employees parked in a giant macadam lot behind the casino, their cars baking in the desert inferno. Roxanne wrapped her hand in a handkerchief before daring to touch the handle of her gleaming white Grand Prix.
"Well," she said, "I guess this is good-bye. I'm sorry for butting into your personal life. But your son just seems like a nice kid."
"Sometimes he is a nice kid."
"Then why all the hostility?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I spent my life putting people like him behind bars."
"Oh. Well, I'm sure you'll settle things one day. I can't have kids, so I tend to mother people. I know it's a pain, but that's just me. See you."
Her lips pecked his cheek and then she slid behind the wheel of her car. Valentine stepped back as she fired up the engine. Being childless was no fun, especially when you wanted them. Had he known her a little better, he would have told Roxanne about the two-year struggle he and Lois had gone through to conceive his beloved Gerry.
The midday sun jumped out from behind the clouds, so he shielded his eyes with his hand to get a good look at Roxanne's license plate as she drove away. She seemed to be a wonderful woman, but who really knew these days? Taking out his pen, he jotted the license plate number down on the palm of his hand, then went back inside before he passed out from the heat.
His suite had been cleaned, and Valentine lay down on the circular bed and shut his eyes. Jet lag had suddenly caught up with him-he was dog-tired. He swam around in the sheets for a while, struggling to get comfortable.
It didn't work, his brain overloaded with all the things he'd learned that morning. The enigma of Frank Fontaine was slowly unraveling, one piece at a time. Opening his eyes, he stared at his reflection in the mirrored ceiling. He was a large man, a shade over six-one, yet he looked puny in comparison to the bed. Lifting his head, he noticed how inordinately large everything was in his suite. Big bed, big bathroom, big murals on the walls, big brass knobs on the doors, a big concrete balcony off the living room. It reminded him of old Miami Beach and its expansive Jackie Gleason architecture. A real time warp.
Rising, he went to the living room and got his notebook computer from its bag and booted it up. The dining-room table had been decorated with fresh-cut flowers and a bowl of fruit. He parked himself at its head and went to work.
During his twenty years working the casinos in Atlantic City, he had kept a profile of every hustler he'd ever come into contact with, jotting down their patterns, habits, vices, and idiosyncracies. A hustler might change his appearance, he reasoned, but he could never change who he was.
By the time he'd retired, he had amassed profiles of over five thousand hustlers, enough to fill up the hard drive on his ancient PC. The same information easily fit onto a Compaq notebook PC, which now accompanied him on every out-of-town job. The profiles, which he collectively referred to as the Creep File, were actually part of a program created by Gerry's first wife, a lovely computer expert named Lucille. Lucille had modeled Creep File after software called ACT, which was a basic database management program.
Booting up Creep File, Valentine hit Search and a blank profile filled the screen. Reading from his notes, he typed in what he'd learned about Frank Fontaine. Name: Fontaine, Frank Sex: Male Height: 5'7"-5'10" Weight: 150-160 Age: 40-45 Heritage: Italian Hair color: black, weave Facial hair: none Identifying marks/tattoos: none observed Disguises: none observed Right- or left-handed: right Smoke: expensive cigars, cigarettes Drink: club soda Nervous habits: none observed Dress: designer, expensive Attitude: cool, relaxed Game(s) played: blackjack Is dealer involved in scam? yes Are other players involved? none observed Player's betting habits: erratic Range of player's bets: $100.00-$1,000.00 Does player conform to basic rules of game being played? no How is player cheating (list all possible methods)? NA Other known information: far-sighted; likes basketball