And for that, she’d gotten run out of Las Vegas.
South Beach had seemed a natural place to relocate. Great weather, funky people, and lots of tourists with money. Renting a condo two blocks from the ocean, she worked the hotels at night. The concierges were easy to deal with and took a flat 20 percent. During the day, she taught aerobics to plump Cuban women in Coral Gables, and every other weekend went snorkeling in the Keys. It was as normal as life got, and she’d been happy.
Then she’d met Rico.
A concierge had set them up. She’d gone to his room at the Eden Roc and found him sitting on the balcony, wearing black silk pants and a cream-colored sports jacket. A handsome guy, for a hood. He’d pointed to the empty chair across from his. As she’d sat down, he’d handed her an envelope.
“That’s for talking with me,” he’d said.
She counted ten hundred-dollar bills.
“So talk,” she said.
Rico had a mouth that never quit. He explained how he was a professional con man and needed her to help butter up a sucker. It would require Candy seeing the guy for a week or more. Rico was willing to pay her daily rate, plus expenses. There was only one hitch.
“What’s that?” she’d said.
“You can’t fall for him.”
“You got it backwards,” she’d said. “They fall for me.”
“He’s famous,” Rico explained.
“Right.”
“Nigel Moon.”
Candy had nearly laughed. Fall for one of the world’s biggest assholes? She’d seen pictures in People magazine of Moon dropping his shorts. All the money in the world couldn’t erase that kind of ugly.
“Give me a break,” she said.
“He’s got a lot of dough.”
Nigel Moon was no richer than plenty of guys she’d done in Las Vegas, and she hadn’t fallen for any of them. Her body might be for rent, but her soul wasn’t.
“I don’t care.”
Rico had smiled. “That’s my girl.”
So that was the deal. Candy had been okay with it, until something strange had happened.
After the Davie carnival, they’d gone to Nigel’s bungalow at the Delano on South Beach and burned up the sheets. Candy had clutched a stuffed panda the whole time Nigel had screwed her. Then Nigel had ordered room service.
The hotel had a killer restaurant, and they drank champagne and ate lobsters in their bathrobes, the stereo playing a Joshua Redman CD, the music on loud because Nigel’s eardrums were shot from his drumming days. Normally, Candy hated loud music, but tonight she hadn’t minded, the notes flowing over their overheated bodies like a siren’s song.
Still in their robes, they’d ventured outside. The moon hung a few fingers above the horizon, looking ten times its normal size. A hundred yards away, guests ate on the patio. They walked to the edge of the property, away from the noise. Not many stars were visible, and Candy had to search until she found a constellation whose name she knew.
“There,” she’d said, pointing.
“Where?” Moon said, straining to see.
“Over there.”
“Okay,” he’d said after a few moments. “I see it.”
“Know which one it is?”
“No.”
“The Little Dipper,” she said.
“Let’s not get personal.”
“Huh?” she said.
Turning, he parted his bathrobe and exposed his round English belly and the fleshy little ornament that hung beneath it. Candy had shrieked with laughter.
And that was when the strange thing had happened. Nigel’s dick was small, but so were most guys’ dicks. Only, most guys lied about their dicks. Yet here was Nigel, telling her he didn’t care if she didn’t care. Making a joke out of his little dick.
Only, it wasn’t a joke to Candy. Her whole life, she’d been looking for a guy who would come clean with her. It didn’t matter if he was fat or bald or had a little dick, just so long as he was honest about it. All she was asking for was an honest, down-to-earth guy. What her mother had called the full bucket.
And she’d found the full bucket in Nigel Moon.
10
“You were telling me about Jacques when we got interrupted,” Valentine said to Mabel the next morning, trying to get back on track. It was eight-thirty, and his neighbor was at his office, manning the phones.
“He called yesterday in a tizzy,” Mabel said. “He checked the employee lockers like you suggested, only he didn’t find any of those tools you told him to look for. No sandpaper or drills or fast-drying cement. He thinks you were wrong about one of his employees doctoring the dice on his craps tables.”
He’d ordered room service, and a piece of toast hit the plate. “Is that what Jacques told you, that I was wrong? Why that stupid horse’s ass—”
“Tony! That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“All right, he’s not stupid.”
“Tony!”
“His casino is bleeding money, and he’s got the chutzpah to tell you I’m wrong.”
“He’s just frustrated.”
“Call him back, and have him inventory everything in those lockers. One of his employees is doctoring those dice. And I’m going to find out how.”
“You’re sure about this,” she said.
“One hundred percent sure. And you can tell Jacques that if I’m wrong, I’ll give him his money back.”
His neighbor fell silent. Valentine picked up the toast and bit into it. The end was burned and tasted like soot. He ate it anyway.
“Will you really give him all the money back if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong. One of his employees is doctoring the dice. That’s why his casino lost a half-million bucks.”
“Couldn’t a player have gotten lucky? It happens, you know.”
Had anyone else said that, Valentine would have laughed into the phone. Once in Atlantic City, a computer geek had gotten arrested for scamming a keno game by using a software program to predict the winning numbers. As he was handcuffed, the geek had asked the arresting officer a question. “How did you know I was cheating?”
“Easy,” the officer replied. “No one’s ever won the Keno jackpot before.”
Sometimes players got lucky, and sometimes people got hit by lightning. Not coincidentally, the odds of the two events happening were about the same.
After saying good-bye to his neighbor, Valentine called Bill Higgins.
As director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Bill ran the most powerful gaming enforcement agency in the country. His team of four hundred agents monitored every Nevada casino and gaming establishment. Bill’s voice mail picked up, and Valentine remembered that it was three hours earlier on the West Coast, and left a short message.
He decided to go downstairs and take a walk. On his way out, he glanced at the surveillance tape of Jack Lightfoot lying on the chair. It had been bugging him that Lightfoot had helped a player win eighty-four hands in a row. No one was that good.
He skipped the walk and watched Lightfoot on the room’s VCR. He was a skinny Indian in his late twenties who handled the cards well. At his table sat an old hippie with a pretty redhead hanging on his arm. Lightfoot dealt the round. The hippie played seven hands and won all seven.
“Huh,” Valentine said.
Lightfoot dealt another round. The hippie won every hand. Then he did it ten more times. The ten-dollar limit did not diminish the enormity of the feat, and a crowd gathered, clapping and cheering. The redhead acted like she was going to screw the hippie on the table—there was that much electricity in the room.
Valentine grabbed a Diet Coke from the minibar, a six-ounce bottle for three bucks. His one great addiction was Diet Coke. He rewound the tape and watched it from the beginning. By the time it was over, his drink was gone, and he was scratching his head.