Deadman's Bluff - James Swain [15]
“Did you figure out how they cheated you?”
“Yeah, after I got home.”
“It must have been real clever.”
“It was,” the old cowboy said.
Valentine sipped his soda. Rufus was not going to tell him how the scam worked unless he begged him. That was how it worked with these old-timers. You had to beg. Only Valentine had never been good at begging, so he gave it some thought. Rufus had said that his opponents knew what cards he was holding. That had led Rufus to conclude there was a hole in the ceiling, and somebody was watching him. But that wasn’t the only use for a hole in the ceiling, and he said, “They were using luminous readers.”
Rufus’s face sagged. “You’re not slowing down, are you?”
“Not so you’ll notice. Want me to explain the rest?”
“Be my guest.”
“The cards were marked with luminous paint,” Valentine said. “The paint is invisible to the naked eye, and can only be read by someone with tinted glasses. Only in this scam, the tinted glass was in the ceiling. The guy upstairs was reading the cards as they were being dealt. He passed the information to the waiter, who told your opponents. When you got dealt kings, and your host aces, and the flop turned ace, king, four, the guy upstairs knew you were in trouble. That’s when they trapped you.”
Rufus stopped rubbing his feet to give him a round of applause. It would have seemed sarcastic coming from anyone else, but from this old codger it meant something.
“That’s damn good,” Rufus said, clapping.
“Here’s my theory about DeMarco,” Rufus said. “I know the cards in the game are being checked every night, and so far nothing’s come up, but maybe DeMarco’s using a special luminous paint that grows invisible after a few hours.”
“No such thing exists,” Valentine said.
“Maybe someone invented it.”
The snapshot of Rufus was lying on the coffee table. Valentine thought over what Rufus had told him about the scam in London.
“You think there’s a hole in the ceiling of the poker room, and someone is reading the cards, and signaling their values to DeMarco,” Valentine said.
“It would make sense, don’t you think?”
“But how many times could they do that without people noticing?” Valentine asked, having seen enough scams to know that what eventually doomed them was repetition. “It would become obvious.”
“Yes, it would.” Rufus stretched his arms and made the bones crack. “But I learned a good lesson in jolly old England. You only have to cheat a man once in a poker game to get his money. I’ve checked the ceiling of every poker room I’ve ever played in since that little episode.” He paused. “Except here.”
“Checked how?”
“With a flashlight.”
“Do you have one with you?”
Rufus flashed his best cowboy smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”
7
Casinos never slept. It was the greatest thing they offered people who liked to gamble. At any hour of the day or night, you could enter one and make a wager. Old-timers called it the itch for play.
Casinos’ surveillance departments never slept, either. They watched the floor of the casino every minute of every hour, every day of the year. When President Kennedy was assassinated, one Las Vegas casino had stopped play for an hour in his memory, but the surveillance department had not stopped watching the casino.
Valentine knew he was taking a risk searching Celebrity’s poker room for holes in the ceiling, but it was a risk he was willing to take. Celebrity had surveillance cameras covering the poker room, but that didn’t necessarily mean those cameras were being used. Surveillance technicians were trained to watch the money. Places where money didn’t change hands were often neglected, or ignored.
Celebrity’s