Sucker bet - James Swain [77]
Tony had spent exactly one minute examining the painting. Based upon the hand positions of the young cheater with the plume in his cap, he had determined that Caravaggio was indeed in the know about his subject matter.
“It’s a copy,” Mabel said.
Slash put his fist through it. Then he entered the closet and started opening boxes and shaking them out on the floor. Mabel wondered how long it would be before Slash got bored and decided to kill her. Tony had said that violent people could not stay focused on a subject for any length of time, and Slash was proving this to be true. Eventually he’d run out of things to rip apart and would take out his frustrations on her.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
“You’ll have to bring it over here so I can see.”
He brought the item over. It was still in its box. Mabel stared for a moment before realizing what he’d discovered. Then had an idea.
“That’s the most amazing cheating device ever made,” she said.
“Cheating at what?”
“Blackjack.”
Slash pulled up the chair and sat in it backwards.
“Do you play?” Mabel asked.
“Used to,” he said.
“Well, the device you’re holding is called the David, as in David vs. Goliath. It’s a blackjack strategy computer. Have you ever heard of card-counting?”
Slash grunted in the affirmative.
“The David does the counting for you. With it, you can beat any casino in the world for thousands of dollars. I’ll take that back. Millions of dollars.”
“Is your boss a cheat?”
“He catches cheaters,” Mabel said.
Slash emptied the box onto the desk. The David was the size of a deck of cards. With it came a battery pack, connector wires, and a special pair of men’s boots with microswitches buried in the toes. There was also a keyboard that was used to “talk” to David while practicing.
“What are the boots for?”
“Each boot has a hidden microswitch,” Mabel said. “You input the cards with your toes.”
He tried the boots on. They fit. A knowing look spread across his face.
“You know how to work this thing?”
Tony had spent twenty minutes showing her. Mabel didn’t think that really constituted knowing. Only, she wasn’t going to tell him that.
“Why, yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”
35
Bill Higgins was reading the last section of the Sunday newspaper when Saul Hyman’s rattling Toyota pulled up alongside his rental. The passenger window on the Toyota came down, and Saul said, “Don’t you ever go home?”
Higgins stared at the elderly con man. He’d stayed outside Saul’s condo because he didn’t feel like staying in his hotel room. It was a pleasant day, and he’d read the newspaper from cover to cover while listening to a baseball game in Spanish on the radio.
“No,” he said.
“Tony asked you to watch me, didn’t he?” Saul asked.
“Tony who?”
“Valentine. I just saw him. I gave him enough evidence to put that scumbag Rico Blanco behind bars.”
Bill put his newspaper down. Maybe hanging around hadn’t been a waste of time. A bus had pulled up behind Saul’s car and blared its horn. Saul shook his fist at the driver in his mirror, then said, “Want to come inside for a drink?”
“You’re on,” Higgins said.
Saul’s condo was about what Higgins had expected. Nothing great. He’d known lots of criminals in his life. Few ended up with much when they got old. He stared at the apartment houses across the street that were blocking Saul’s view of the ocean. Between them, he could see a tiny slit of blue, but just barely. Saul appeared and handed him a glass of ice tea.
“Salud,” he said, clinking glasses.
Higgins took a sip. “Remember when I ran you out of Vegas?”
“Like it was yesterday,” Saul said. “You were very nice about it, as I remember.”
“Don’t think I didn’t consider roughing you up,” Higgins replied.
Saul acted like no cop had ever laid a hand on him. “Why didn’t