Deadman's Bluff by James Swain Read Free Book Online Page B

raised his hand.
    “I clean,” the man said haltingly.
    Rufus asked him to open the bag on his vacuum. The man obliged, and Valentine handed him a twenty-dollar bill. The man’s face lit up.
    Rufus glanced into the bag, then stuck his hand in up to the elbow, and twirled his long fingers around. Moments later he pulled out an object, and held it up to the light. It was a paper clip painted black. Mucking cards during play was the hardest cheating known to man. No matter how good a mucker was, he never drew attention to himself, and played under the radar. This wasn’t Skip DeMarco’s scam; it was somebody else’s.
    “Looks like we’ve got another cheater working the tournament,” Valentine said.

8
    H anging out with Eddie Davis was a step back in time. Outside of being an undercover detective, Davis was like a lot of guys Gerry had grown up with. He was single, liked to frequent clubs and singles bars, and drove a souped-up car. He was an eighteen-year-old kid in a forty-year-old body, and enjoying every minute of it.
    Davis was also a night owl, and they did a loop of the island, eventually returning to the Atlantic City Expressway entrance. Gerry found himself remembering the housing development that once stood there, and the park with a statue of Christopher Columbus. The park had been one of his father’s favorite places; his mother’s, too.
    Davis’s cell phone began to play the theme song from the TV show
Cops. Bad boys, bad boys, what’cha gonna do, what’cha gonna do when they come for you?
He ripped the phone from the Velcro pad on the dash.
    “Davis here.”
    “Eddie, it’s Joey,” his caller said. “I need help. I’m at Bally’s with our friends.”
    Davis’s brow knotted. “You got them pinned down?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ll be right over.” Davis closed the phone. His tires ripped the macadam as they took off.
    “Trouble?” Gerry asked.
    “There’s a gang of blackjack cheaters we’ve been trying to nail for a month. Two men, one woman. My partner spotted them at Bally’s.”
    “Is the woman nicking cards?”
    Davis’s head jerked in his direction. “How did you know that?”
    Nail-nicking cards in blackjack was a speciality among female cheaters. The woman would put in the work with her fingernails while no one was looking, then her partner would read the cards before they were dealt from the shoe, and signal them to the gang’s third member, who did the heavy betting—organized cheating at its best.
    “Lucky guess,” Gerry said.
    Davis got onto Atlantic Avenue, put his foot to the floor, and sped south.
    “Not that it’s any of my business,” Gerry said, “but why haven’t you arrested them before now? It sounds like you know them pretty well.”
    “We’ve tried to arrest them,” Davis said. “They always seem to know when we’re coming, and which door we’re coming through.”
    “Psychic cheaters?”
    “It’s starting to feel that way,” Davis said.
     
    Gerry’s mind raced. The hardest part about cheating a casino was avoiding the police, who were always present on the casino floor. It occurred to him that Davis’s blackjack cheaters weren’t psychic, they were just smart.
    Bally’s neon sign blinked gloomily in the pale night sky. The front entrance was jammed with stretch limousines, and Davis pulled down a side street and parked his car. He grabbed his cell phone off the dash, then turned to Gerry. “Sorry, but I need to leave you here.”
    Gerry pointed at the cell phone in Davis’s hand. “You going to call your partner and tell him you’re coming?”
    “Sure am,” Davis said, his hand on the door.
    “That’s how the cheaters know you’re coming,” Gerry said.
    Davis took his hand off the door. “Say what?”
    “The cheaters are picking up your calls. That’s why you can’t catch them.”
    The look on Davis’s face was pained, but he didn’t let it slow him down. “How are they doing that?”
    “They’re using a police