Sucker bet - James Swain [9]
Then he checked each with a calibrator. In the old days, dice were dropped in a glass of water to see if they were loaded. The calibrator was a little more scientific. He spun each die on its axis. To his surprise, they were clean.
He rolled them across his desk. The fact that they were normal didn’t mean that crooked dice weren’t being used. The cheater, or cheaters, might be switching crooked dice in and out of the game, without anyone being the wiser.
“So call him up,” Mabel said when he returned to the kitchen.
He sat at the kitchen table. “I don’t want to.”
She split the last of the coffee between two mugs and sat down.
“But he’s desperate.”
“They usually are when they’re losing money.”
“Tony . . .”
He sipped his coffee. “The guy’s such a jerk.”
“How do you know him?”
“He ran one of Trump’s joints in Atlantic City for about sixty minutes. Everybody hated his guts.”
“Would you like me to call him?”
Mabel was great at finding solutions. It would be fun to let Jacques think that he didn’t rate an audience with the boss. “Sure,” he said.
Jacques’s phone number was in the letter. Mabel dialed it and awoke him from a deep sleep. She stuck her hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s cursing in French.”
“Tell him French wine tastes like urine and hang up.”
She waved him off. To Jacques she said, “We just received your Federal Express package. Tony examined the dice—”
“Zee dice,” Valentine corrected.
“—and found nothing wrong with them. He believes the cheater must have switched out the crooked dice for clean ones.” Mabel listened for a minute, then stuck her hand over the mouthpiece. “Jacques says that the casino searches its employees before their shift starts and after it’s over. That way, the dealers can’t bring crooked dice in or take them out.”
“Ask Jacques where the craps dealers go on their break.”
She asked. “To the employee lounge.”
“Are there lockers where they change into their uniforms?”
She asked. “Jacques said yes.”
“Tell Jacques one of his dealers is taking normal dice to the lounge and altering them. He needs to search the dealers’ lockers and be on the lookout for the following items. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“A file, a drill, a vise, a burr for hollowing, celluloid rope, fast-drying cement, ink, a bottle of mercury, some kind of polishing compound, and sandpaper. If any of those items turn up, that’s their man.”
Mabel relayed it all to Jacques. When she hung up, she was smiling. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but when she found reason to smile, Valentine didn’t think there was a prettier face on the planet. “Jacques says you are a genius,” she said.
“He’s still a pain in the ass,” Valentine replied.
He spent the morning sifting through his mail. Over a dozen casino surveillance videotapes of suspected cheaters sat on his desk. Beside them was a stack of mail-order catalogues that had come addressed to U. R. Dead, and he guessed someone he’d put in prison had decided to get creative.
For a while he pushed papers around his desk. Three times the business line on his phone lit up. Mabel was still in the kitchen, and he heard her answer each call. Yesterday he’d been on top of the world. Now, he felt like he’d stepped off a cliff and was falling through space. Going to the kitchen, he found her working on the St. Petersburg Times crossword puzzle and pulled up a chair.
“I’m stumped,” she said. “The clue reads ‘Floored Ali.’ The answer is six letters. I was going to write Foreman, only it doesn’t fit. George Foreman floored Ali, didn’t he?”
“No. Ali floored Foreman.”
“Frazier. Joe Frazier floored Ali.”
“He sure did. But his name’s got seven letters.”
Mabel frowned. “Then who is it?”
“Wepner,” Valentine said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“A strapping can of Ragu named Chuck Wepner. One of the worst fighters to ever grace the heavyweight ranks. He floored Ali.”
“Where, in a bar?”
“No, in the ring. Chuck was from Bayonne. Ali fought him because he thought Chuck was a patsy. Chuck