Sucker bet - James Swain [55]
Riding up in the elevator, he’d thought about the surveillance tape of Karl Blackhorn he’d watched earlier. Blackhorn was cheating, yet nothing on the tape looked suspicious, except for the one time he’d turned over the wrong card in his hand.
“Ready,” she said.
“Type in this address: www.blackjackedge.com.”
“Done. It says I need a password.”
“Griftsense,” he said.
“How clever. Is this a site for people who cheat at blackjack?”
Valentine acknowledged that it was. The site’s members were card-counters, mathematicians, and some of the smartest BJ hustlers in the world. “I want you to post a message for the discussion group.”
“Go ahead.”
He shut his eyes. “Dear group. I have a question regarding the change in house advantage on a two-deck game of blackjack when the following occurs. During the deal, the dealer’s cards are dealt facedown. Normally, the dealer would turn over his first card and expose it to the players at the table. Instead, the dealer turns over his second card. Does this switch alter the house advantage, assuming the players are using Basic Strategy? Thanks for your help.”
“What’s Basic Strategy?”
“It’s the best way to play blackjack without cheating. A mathematician named Thorp developed it. It shrinks the house edge.”
Mabel read the message back to him. It sounded fine, and he told her to send it, then heard a knock on the door. Putting the phone down, he crossed the room and put his eye to the peephole. Kat stood in the hallway, dressed in a leather miniskirt and a red silk blouse. Attached to the blouse was the diamond pin he’d planned to give her. His heart did a little pitter-pat.
Picking up the phone, he said, “I need to run.”
Up until Kat, he’d slept with only two women in his life, and the effect she had on him as they sat on the bed was remarkable. His heart started to race, and his eyes started to see things better than they had in years. Even his voice sounded different.
“I missed you,” she said, then explained the whole sorry episode with Ralph. When she was done, she said, “Zoe’s downstairs playing video games near the pool. I slipped a lifeguard ten bucks to keep an eye on her.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“No,” she said.
Her lips parted ever so slightly, and Valentine realized she wanted him to kiss her. Traveling with Zoe, they’d gotten good at finding moments to slip away, the sex always better on the sly. The clothes started to come off, then Valentine felt a stab of pain in his arm and pulled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I banged up my elbow the other night wrestling an alligator,” he explained.
“Jesus. Wait till I tell Donny.”
Pain, he’d learned from judo, was good at clearing a person’s head, and he took her hands and squeezed them gently. “I’m sorry about everything that happened in Orlando. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that things happen for a reason.”
“They do?” she said.
“Yeah, they do. I needed to leave you for a while and help out a friend of mine.”
“Is that why you’re here?” she said.
“Yes.”
“What about our show in Memphis next week?”
“I won’t be there.”
“This job?”
“I’ve decided to hang up the banana suit and retire the hair gel.”
“Why . . .”
“Three days ago in Orlando, I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw.”
“Which was what?”
“A sixty-two-year-old guy dressing up like a cartoon character so he could impress a woman twenty years his junior.”
Valentine heard the scraping sound of a plastic key being put into the door. Kat jumped off the bed and buttoned her blouse. Gerry came in with a greasy bag of Chinese takeout clutched to his chest. He looked at Kat, then his father, said “Whoa,” and started to back out the door. Kat said, “I was just leaving,” and brushed past him with Valentine following her down the hall with his shirt hanging out of his pants.
At the elevator she said, “And I thought we had something wonderful between us.”
A tray of food sat outside one of the rooms. The meal looked the same way he was starting to feel—devoured but not finished.
“We did,” he admitted.
“Then why are you doing this?”