Deadman's Bluff - James Swain [60]
“We will?”
“Yes. I watched DeMarco play earlier, and I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the dealer at his table is involved in the scam.”
“Which dealer are you talking about?”
“Heavyset guy with a walrus moustache. He’s doing something fishy when he deals. His movements are too slow.”
“Is he reading the cards and somehow signaling DeMarco?”
The air-conditioning never stopped blowing in a surveillance control room, and Valentine shivered and said, “No. The dealer hardly looked at the deck when he dealt. But I’m certain he’s involved.”
“So the mucker is an excuse to raid the game,” Bill said.
Valentine nodded. He had been studying DeMarco’s scam for a week, and was no closer to the solution than the day he’d started. The proverbial sand was slipping from the hourglass. If he didn’t solve this puzzle soon, DeMarco would be crowned the champion, and he and Bill would look like chumps.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Bill said.
28
Mabel was on the computer when she heard the front door slam. Not long ago a man had entered the house under false pretenses, and held her hostage. She’d learned a valuable lesson from the experience, and reaching across the desk, she grabbed a copy of Crime and Punishment nestled between a pair of bookends, and removed a loaded Sig Sauer that Tony kept in the hollowed-out interior. She rose from her chair.
“I’m armed,” she called out.
“Don’t shoot,” a familiar woman’s voice called back.
“Yolanda, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get here so fast?”
“I flew Southwest.”
Mabel returned the gun to its hiding place and went to the foyer. Tony and his late wife had bought the house to retire to, and it was a charming relic that represented the way Florida houses used to be made, with hardwood floors, crown molding, and jalousie windows. Yolanda stood by the front door, the baby cradled in her arms.
“I’ve missed you,” Mabel said, hugging her.
“I missed you, too,” Yolanda said. “The baby’s diaper needs changing. Talk to me in the kitchen.”
The kitchen was in the back of the house, and faced a postage-stamp-size backyard. Yolanda put the baby on the kitchen table and said, “So tell me why Tony and Gerry are in trouble.”
“Right before we spoke, I got a phone call from Special Agent Romero of the FBI,” Mabel explained. “He told me that Tony and Gerry have gotten on the wrong side of a notorious mobster, and are in danger.”
“So they could end up dead, like in my dream,” Yolanda said.
“Yes.”
Yolanda tickled the baby’s stomach and made her giggle. The baby was named Lois, and resembled Tony’s late wife, whom she’d been named after. As a result, Yolanda had Tony and Gerry wrapped around her little finger, yet rarely took advantage of it. Lifting the baby to her shoulder, she said, “I suppose I should call them, and ask them to come home, but somehow I have a feeling that they’d both tell me they’re okay, and not to worry. Am I right?”
Mabel sunk down into a chair. Yolanda was right. Tony and Gerry weren’t going to be forced out of a case by anyone.
“Besides, think of the long-term consequences if I ask them to come home,” Yolanda said, patting the baby’s behind.
“What long-term consequences?”
“I’d be drawing a line in the sand,” Yolanda said, “and telling Tony and Gerry that I’m not willing to let them work under certain situations. If I did that, they might as well close Grift Sense, and go into some other line of work.”
Mabel swallowed hard. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “I see your point.”
“Good. I suggest we take another tack.”
“Which is?”
“Maybe we can help them solve this case, ” Yolanda said.
“How are we going to do that? We don’t know anything about it.”
Yolanda handed her the baby,