Deadman's Bluff - James Swain [87]
“I saw Jack on the sly for three months,” she went on.
“He confided in me, told me about scams he pulled on the casinos. There was one I’ll never forget. He had a tiny mirror glued to the bottom of a beer can. He could hold the can on a blackjack table, and see the face of the cards as they were dealt out of the plastic shoe. He’d know what the dealer had before the dealer did. Jack said he only had to see the dealer’s hand once an hour to clean up. I never figured out what he meant.”
“Jack was a card counter,” Gerry said. “He played with an edge to begin with. By cheating once an hour, the edge increased, and guaranteed him a winning night.”
“Did you show him that scam? Jack said he learned a lot from you when you were growing up.”
Gerry thought back, smiled. “Come to mention it, I did show that to him.”
“I thought so.” She gulped her coffee, grimaced.
“Jack also told me about the poker scam. At first, he wouldn’t explain how it worked, just said that a player could know his opponents’ cards and never lose.
“Jack told me he was going to sell the scam to a mobster named George Scalzo, and that Scalzo was going to give Jack’s mother a hundred thousand dollars for it. I’d met Jack’s mom, knew she was living on federal assistance, so I didn’t say anything.”
“Would you have otherwise?”
Her head snapped, eyes flaming. “Just because I loved Jack doesn’t mean I approved of what he did. I normally don’t hang out with people like you and Jack.”
Gerry’s face reddened. “Sorry.”
“One afternoon at Jack’s apartment, he sat down at the kitchen table and showed me the poker scam,” she said. “First he gave me an earpiece, which he said was a modified children’s hearing aid, and made me put it in my ear. Then he gave me a deck of cards and had me shuffle them. He took the cards, dealt us a hand. Each time one of the cards came off the deck, I heard a series of clicks. The clicks were in Morse code. Jack had a Morse code chart, and he let me read it while listening to the clicks. The clicks were always right.
“It was pretty amazing. Jack let me examine the cards. I couldn’t find anything wrong with them. The clicks just seemed to come out of thin air.”
Ever since Jack had died, Gerry had wondered how the poker scam worked, and he put his elbows on the table and knocked his drink over. Gladwell grabbed the cup before too much of the liquid spilled out and righted it.
“Down, boy,” she said.
She wiped up the spill with a paper napkin. Gerry could see her and Jack hitting it off. Jack had liked strong women.
“Did he show you the secret?”
“I eventually pried it out of him,” she said, smiling at the memory. “There was a cigarette lighter sitting on the table. The lighter had a dosimeter hidden inside that Jack had stolen from the hospital.”
“What’s a dosimeter?”
“It’s a device used to detect X-rays or radiation. You see them in dentists’ offices. When Jack passed the cards over the lighter, the dosimeter picked up a signal from the card and sent it to a computer strapped around his waist. The computer read the signal then told me the card’s value in Morse code. Jack said he’d borrowed the technology from some Japanese company that used it in kids’ toys.”
A group of female nurses came up to the table and spoke to Gladwell while checking out Gerry. Gerry rose, and introduced himself as Gladwell’s old high school friend. The nurses chatted for another minute and left.
“You didn’t have to do that, but thanks anyway,” Gladwell said.
Gerry returned to his chair. “You’re leaving out the important part. How was the dosimeter reading the cards?”
Gladwell’s eyes fell to the dull tabletop. She seemed to be wrestling with her conscience, and a long moment passed before she spoke again. “That was the secret that Jack sold to George Scalzo. You could examine the cards, but nothing would show up. Jack made me promise not to tell. And so did Scalzo.”
Gerry thought back to what Yolanda had said over the phone earlier. The FBI had tailed Scalzo coming to the hospital. They’d seen him bring