Mr. Lucky by James Swain Read Free Book Online Page B

be here somewhere.
    On the La-Z-Boy was a yellow legal pad and the remote, Tony’s two main work tools. It occurred to her that the tape might still be in the VCR, and she powered up the TV, then hit play on the VCR. A grainy surveillance of a balding man with bare feet filled the TV screen. It was Ricky Smith at the Mint. She had read about Ricky’s exploits in the newspaper, but wasn’t prepared for what she now saw.
    Ricky played like a man possessed. With one hand he bet; with the other, he rolled the dice or flipped over his cards. No movement was wasted.
Bam bam bam!
What made it so amazing was that he didn’t lose. Not once. That wasn’t possible, and Mabel slowly lowered her posterior onto the La-Z-Boy, her eyes fixed on the screen.
             
    According to MapQuest, the town of Slippery Rock, North Carolina, was six hundred and sixty miles from where Valentine lived in Florida, and nowhere near a public airport. So he’d gotten the oil changed in his ’92 Honda and taken to the highway.
    He drove in the right lane most of the way, and caught the drivers of passing cars giving him the eye. The Honda was definitely showing its age, the navy blue paint job fading to a less vibrant color. He kept thinking of trading it in; only, the engine still turned over every time he fired it up. What more did he want in a car?
    Crossing into North Carolina, he felt his ears pop, and he grabbed MapQuest’s directions off the passenger seat. He’d been a flatlander all his life and hadn’t bothered to check the town’s elevation when he’d printed the instructions off his computer. Slippery Rock was twenty-nine hundred feet above sea level and in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. No wonder it was taking him so long to get there.
    He kept his eyes peeled for a gas station. He’d run out of nicotine gum an hour ago, and the craving for a cigarette was killing him. He fiddled with the radio and found local news and Billy Graham saving souls. A Sinatra CD was in the player, but he saved that for special occasions, leaving silence as his traveling companion.
    His cell phone rang, jolting him out of a daydream. The caller ID said HOME .
    “Sick of driving yet?” his neighbor asked.
    “Just about,” he admitted.
    “Not to say I told you so, but flying to Atlanta would have been much easier.”
    “If I didn’t hate airports so much, I’d agree with you.”
    “I know, they remind you of medium-security prisons,” Mabel said. “Look, I just had a look at this tape of Ricky Smith, and I’d have to agree with your friend Bill Higgins. Something is definitely not on the square, to use your favorite expression.”
    Valentine sat up in his seat. “You think so?”
    “I’d bet my hat on it.”
    Mabel rarely disagreed with him, especially when it came to his work. This sounded more like a scolding, and before he could answer, she continued.
    “I think you need to take a fresh approach to this case, Tony.”
    “You do?”
    “Yes. You’re still angry at the casino owners in Las Vegas for what they did to Gerry. You have to forget about that.”
    He swallowed hard. “Okay.”
    “You also have to forget that Ricky Smith jumped out of a burning building,” Mabel said. “You’re letting that cloud what happened inside the casino. The man won eighty separate bets at blackjack, craps, and roulette. He didn’t lose once.”
    “People get lucky,” he heard himself say.
    Mabel laughed. “Not like this.”
    He suddenly felt like an idiot. Mabel had obviously spotted something on the tape. He’d watched the tape again late last night after getting home from Key West. He’d been sleepy and dozed off near the end. “What did you see?”
    “The surveillance tape in your VCR of Ricky Smith is actually four tapes spliced together,” his neighbor said. “There’s a time posted on each segment. Did you bother to check them?”
    “No.”
    “The times are continuous. He was running from game to game in his