Deadman's Bluff - James Swain [26]
“I don’t want to talk to you about his death,” Gerry said. “I want to talk to you about his therapy.”
She pushed her chair back a foot from the desk. “What about it?”
“Jack invented a way to cheat at poker during his therapy. So far, it’s got all the experts fooled.”
“How do you cheat at poker?”
“In this case, marked cards.”
“Marked how?”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”
From his wallet, Gerry removed the playing card that Jack had given him before he’d died. It was an ace of spades from Celebrity’s casino in Las Vegas. The card had been scrutinized by an FBI forensic lab and found to be clean. Yet it was marked, and could be read if you knew the secret. She examined the card and handed it back.
“So you think Jack Donovan devised some special way to mark cards while getting treatment in this hospital,” she said.
“That’s right,” Gerry said.
Her face changed, and so did her tone. “What do you want me to do, Gerry Valentine, vice president of Grift Sense, let you search the place? Get real.”
This was a real Jersey girl, filled with piss and vinegar and capable of intimidating a three-hundred-pound NFL lineman.
“Of course not,” he replied.
“Then what do you want?”
“Jack Donovan stole something from this hospital,” Gerry said.
“He did?”
“Yes. It was in a metal strongbox in a bag under his bed. I saw it. Whatever was in that strongbox can be used to mark cards, but also happens to be dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you be looking for something if you don’t know what it is?”
“I’m guessing there has to be a record of the theft. If I know what was taken, I’ll know what the scam is.”
“It’s that easy?” she asked.
Gerry nodded. He would take the mystery substance and coat a few dozen playing cards with it, and the rest would explain itself. To his surprise, she picked up his business card, and slipped it into her breast pocket.
“And it will go no further than that?” she asked.
“That’s right. No one will ever hear about it.”
She pulled out her lower lip and let it snap back, deep in thought. “I liked Jack. He was always cracking jokes, even when he knew what his situation was. I’ll look through the computer, let you know what turns up.”
“Thanks a lot,” Gerry said.
The phone on her desk had several buttons. The red one lit up and rang at the same time. She picked it up and said, “Cancer ward nurses’ station, Gladwell here.”
She listened for a moment, then looked at Gerry a little differently than before. “There are some homicide detectives in ER searching the hospital for you. They want to question you about a dead guy they think you sent through the windshield of a car.”
It was not the way Gerry had hoped to end their conversation.
“Tell them I’ll be right down,” he said.
Part II
George and Tom
13
Skip DeMarco stood naked at the bedroom window in his suite, imagining the world he could not see. Although his vision was limited to a few inches in front of his face, DeMarco had a keen sense of light and dark, and imagined the sun climbing over the tall, bluish mountains that ringed Las Vegas, a city his uncle had described to him in great detail. His uncle made the casino-lined streets sound like something out of The Wizard of Oz, but DeMarco didn’t picture them that way. Vegas was a cutthroat town, designed to separate suckers from their money. That was why his uncle liked it here so much.
The room’s air-conditioning rose with the intrusion of natural light. Shutting the blinds, he walked to the closet and went through the slow, painstaking process of picking out today’s outfit, holding each garment in front of his face to determine its color. He decided on a flowing black silk shirt, black linen pants, two gold necklaces, and shades. The tiny inner-canal earpiece he’d worn each day of the tournament lay on his bureau. As he fitted it into his ear, he heard