His business card, his gym bag.
He picked up the phone and redialed his house. The phone lines had been restored, and he heard Mabel’s cheery voice say, “Grift Sense. Can I help you?”
“Just calling to see how you and Yolanda are doing.”
“Oh, how thoughtful of you. We’re making out fine. Those two FBI agents turned out to be real gentlemen. They apologized up a storm and actually took the garbage out when they left. It was quite a shock.”
“Glad you didn’t shoot them, huh?”
“Listen to you!”
“Look, I need a favor.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“Go into my bedroom and open up my closet.”
Mabel put him on hold. When she picked up a few moments later, she was talking to him on the speaker phone in the bedroom. “All right, I’m opening up your closet. Oh my, would you look at this mess.”
Valentine had never left a mess a day in his adult life. “What are you talking about?”
“Dirty clothes. They’re shoved in the corner in a pile. There’s a dirty jock strap, a dirty judo uniform, and a T-shirt with holes in the armpits that you must throw away.”
“Is my gym bag there?”
He heard Mabel shuffle some things around.
“Why no,” she said. “It’s gone.”
He sat back down and for a long moment stared at the phone. Only one person would throw his dirty clothes on the floor and take his gym bag without asking.
Gerry.
He glanced up. Nick was standing in the doorway, ready to go downstairs and bang some heads.
“I need to run,” he said. “I’ll call you later.”
26
When Pash and Gerry returned from Pahrump, they found a much different-looking Amin waiting for them at the motel. His beard and mustache were gone, and he’d trimmed his hair. It was short and choppy, and looked like the punk kids you saw walking around. He’d also changed his wardrobe, and now wore chinos and a striped rugby shirt.
“You get laid?” Amin asked his brother.
Pash took off his windbreaker and sat on the bed. “Yes. It was wonderful.”
“I hope you wore a rubber.”
“I did not have a choice. The woman put it on me.”
Amin made a face like he couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting. He was a handsome guy, and Gerry guessed he had no problem getting action when he wanted to. Pash, on the other hand, was always going to have to pay for it.
“They also wash you down,” Pash threw in for good measure.
“You let a strange woman wash your penis?”
Pash flashed a smile. “Oh, yes. With antibacterial scrub. When it starts to tingle, it actually feels quite good. There is one drawback, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Whenever I smell Betadine, I get an erection.”
Amin let out a rare laugh. Pash had promised to soften him up so Gerry could sell his idea of card-counting in “easy” casinos. Seeing his opportunity, Gerry pulled up a chair and launched into his sales pitch.
First, he explained the concept of how he planned to use his father’s information to target casinos, and saw Amin nod in agreement. Then he went into the numbers. Three hundred grand apiece was his first year’s estimate.
“These casinos you describe are small,” Amin said. “Surely they’ll notice such large losses.”
“My father has access to the daily financial sheets of every casino he works for,” Gerry said. “He examines them to see fluctuations in the holds of the various games.”
“How does this help us?”
“Certain times of the day the action is heavy, others it’s not. You’ll only play when the action is heavy and there’s money flying around. That way, your winnings won’t be noticed the way they would if the place was dead.”
Amin steepled his fingers in front of his chin, deep in thought. Then he spoke to Pash in their native tongue. Gerry hated when he did that, and planned to mention it when their relationship got farther along. Amin ended the conversation by standing, and slapping Gerry on the shoulder. “I think we should become partners.”
Gerry looked into his eyes. Amin bought the pitch.
“You’re in?”
Amin nodded approvingly.
Gerry nearly let out a shout. “How about I buy you and Pash a steak? I think this is cause for celebration.”
Amin glanced at his watch. “We can eat later. There are some friends of mine I want you to meet. Do you mind driving?”
Gerry tried not to laugh. Did he mind driving? Amin was about to make him rich. He’d drive Amin wherever he wanted, and even wear a chauffeur’s cap.
“Ready when you are,” he said.
Amin sat in the passenger’s seat and had Gerry drive through Henderson, then get on Highway 93 and head east. The road was long and ruler-straight. Ten miles outside of town, Amin pointed to an unpaved road sitting off the highway.
“Take that,” he said.
Gerry drove down the road in a cloud of dust. Soon a gas station came into view. The building was abandoned and sagged drunkenly to one side. Nailed to its rusted tin roof was a crude, hand-painted sign. BOULDER AUTO RESTORERS. NO JOB TOO SMALL.
Behind the gas station was another tin-roofed structure. Pointing at it, Amin said, “I’m meeting my friends there.”
Gerry spun the wheel, no longer feeling good about things. Friends met at bars and restaurants, not behind abandoned buildings in the desert. Something bad was going down. He drove around back to an auto graveyard filled with car skeletons and pyramids of empty lacquer cans. The air was chemically ripe, and he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray.
A beat-up station wagon was parked in the lot’s center. Two stern-faced Mexican men stood beside it. In their thirties, with jet-black hair and complexions the color of pencil erasers. Gerry glanced sideways at Amin. “These your friends?”
“Yes,” Amin said.
He parked a hundred feet from where the Mexicans stood. Then glanced at the paper bag sitting on the floor between Amin’s feet. He’d assumed it was food that Amin had brought for the trip. Now he knew otherwise.
“You packing?” Gerry asked him.
Amin ignored the remark. Grabbing the paper bag, he climbed out of the car. He started walking toward the two Mexicans and waved. The Mexicans waved back.
Pash leaned between the two front seats. “Is something wrong?”
“You bet there is.”
Pash’s face begged for an explanation.
“They’re border rats. Smugglers. Your brother set me up.”
“Set you up how?”
“He asked me to come as backup. In case these guys got any funny ideas.”
“You do not trust these men?”
Gerry shook his head. Back when he’d run a bookmaking operation in Brooklyn, a local hoodlum had brought two Mexicans by and tried to talk him into bankrolling a cocaine run out of Mexico. Gerry had listened because he was interested in how these things worked, then said no thanks.
What he’d learned was that border rats had become popular in the smuggling world since 9/11. Bribing border guards to ignore a truckload of cocaine was a thing of the past. Contraband was having to take different routes, and border rats were cheap alternatives. They carried the drugs on their backs, entering the country with illegal immigrants in southern New Mexico’s boot heel.
Amin’s friends looked menacing. Short and broad-shouldered, with steely glints for eyes and sweatshirts that hung over their belts. Gerry guessed they were packing heat. The Mexicans he’d met in Brooklyn had been.
“How well does Amin know them?” he asked.
“They’ve met once before,” Pash replied.
Gerry spun around in his seat and stared at him. “And Amin is about to give them a bag of money? Is he crazy?”