“Does Celebrity know you’re hiring me?”

“No,” Bill said. “They haven’t been very cooperative. Between you and me, I think they’d just like this whole thing to go away.”

Valentine thought back to the threatening phone call he’d received from the suit at Celebrity. Most casinos tried to expose cheating, and get the cheats barred or arrested. Celebrity was taking the opposite approach, and doing everything possible to pretend it didn’t exist. It didn’t smell right, and he stared at the Celebrity playing card on his desk.

“Who’s the suspected cheat?” Valentine asked.

“An amateur named Skip DeMarco.”

Skip DeMarco was the same player that Gerry had said was in Las Vegas using Jack Donovan’s poker scam. Maybe he could nail DeMarco, and give his son something to smile about.

“You want the job or not?” Bill asked.

“I want it,” Valentine said.

A minute later, Bill’s e-mail appeared on his computer screen with the surveillance tapes of Celebrity’s poker room and the footage shot by Gloria Curtis’s cameraman attached.

He watched the poker tape first. Celebrity’s surveillance cameras were digital, and the tape’s resolution was crystal clear. Eight men in their late twenties sat at a table along with a professional female dealer, who wore a red bow tie and starched white shirt.

Skip DeMarco sat in the center of the table. He wore purple shades and stared into space as he played. The game was Texas Hold ’Em, with each player dealt two cards to start. Instead of peeking at his cards like the other players, DeMarco brought his cards up to his nose, and stared at them. He enjoyed belittling his opponents and trumpeting his own wins. Had it been a private game, someone would have silenced him, either through words or a request to step outside. But this was a tournament, where anything was permissible. By the hour’s end, he had everyone’s chips.

Valentine paused the tape and got a diet soda from the rattling fridge in the kitchen. The fridge had come with the house, and he’d been meaning to buy a new one, only it still worked, and he’d never believed in getting rid of things simply because they were old. Back in his study, he resumed watching the tape.

Everything about the game looked on the square. DeMarco played smart, and got good cards when he needed them. Maybe the odds of him beating the other players were six billion to one, but sometimes those things happened. He decided to play Gloria Curtis’s tape, and see if it revealed anything.

Curtis had interviewed DeMarco at the end of the first day of the tournament, right after DeMarco had beaten Rufus Steel. DeMarco was tall and good-looking, and she held the mike up to his face.

“I’m speaking with today’s Cinderella story of the tournament, Skip ‘Dead Money’ DeMarco, an amateur player from New Jersey. Although this is your first tournament, I’m told you’ve played poker for many years.”

“I got my chops in Atlantic City,” he said, holding a beer to his chest.

“Can you tell us where the name Dead Money comes from?”

“It’s what the old-timers call amateurs.”

“Well, it looks like you knocked one of those old-timers out today,” Curtis said. “Rufus ‘the Thin Man’ Steele wasn’t very happy with how you beat him.”

“Too bad,” he said.

“Rufus claims you had an unfair advantage.”

“Try disadvantage. I’m legally blind, and have been my whole life,” he said. “Try playing poker and not being able to see your opponents’ faces.”

“What about Rufus’s claim?”

“Rufus Steele is past his prime. I’m starting a petition to have his name changed.”

“To what?”

“The Old Man.”

“How far do you think you’ll go in the tournament?”

“All the way,” he said.

The camera switched to show DeMarco at the poker table, raking in the chips. Valentine froze the tape and stared at DeMarco’s face. One thing that hadn’t diminished as he’d gotten older was his memory; he’d never seen this guy play poker in Atlantic City.

So why had he lied? DeMarco could have said he’d learned to play on the Internet, just like millions of other people. Only he’d wanted to let Gloria Curtis know that he was experienced, and that his winning wasn’t a fluke. Valentine picked up the phone, and punched in Bill Higgins’s cell number.

“I want to see some more tapes,” he said.

“You think he’s cheating?” Bill asked.

“I sure do.”

It took Bill several hours to get him the additional surveillance tapes from Celebrity. By law, Nevada’s casinos were required to film any area of the casino where money changed hands. The buy-in for a poker tournament was no different, and at noon the tapes appeared on Valentine’s computer.

The tapes were about as inspiring as watching paint dry. Endlessly long lines of men and women stood in front of dozens of tables, waiting to pay the ten thousand–dollar entry fee and get a table assignment.

It took an hour and a half of searching to find Skip DeMarco. He stood in a long line, drinking coffee and talking with several other players. He walked with a cane, his movements out of sync with everything around him.

Valentine scrutinized the players standing with DeMarco. It was the same seven guys who’d played with him the first day. People registering together in poker tournaments were never supposed to be placed at the same table. But the WPS had let DeMarco sit with his pals, and they’d folded to DeMarco, and let him amass a huge stack of chips that later let him beat Rufus Steele. It was cheating, pure and simple.

But what bothered Valentine most was the scope of it. DeMarco was involved, and so were seven of his friends. Someone in tournament registration was also involved. That made nine people. That was a lot of people to push one player into the next round.

“Sounds like a conspiracy,” Bill said, after Valentine explained what he’d discovered.

“It does, except there’s a flaw,” Valentine said.

“What’s that?”

“Eight members of the gang are now useless to DeMarco. His pals are out of the tournament, and whoever helped him in registration can’t do him any good now. DeMarco is on his own, and there’s another seven days to play.”

“Then why did he do it?”

Valentine picked up the Celebrity playing card lying on his desk. He had a sneaking suspicion that there was something else going on, and he wasn’t seeing it.

“I honestly don’t know,” he said.

“Have you ever heard of a blind person cheating at poker before? Or any game?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. I think he’s got something up his sleeve. Maybe he’s doing a special for one of those reality-TV shows, and he’s going to show how he swindled the world’s biggest poker tournament. Stranger things have happened. In the meantime, he might end up ruining the tournament and hurting every casino in town.”

“The guy is a world-class jerk,” Valentine said.

“Meaning my scenario isn’t so far-fetched.”

“Not at all.”

“So here’s what I’d like to offer you,” Bill said. “Come out here for a few days, and scrutinize DeMarco’s play. If you catch him doing anything illegal—bending a card, peeking at another player’s hand, copping a chip—we’ll bust his ass and bar him for life. Say yes, and I’ll fly you out first class, pay your daily fee, and put you up. On top of that, you’ll earn my undying gratitude.”

Valentine’s gut had been telling him that something wasn’t right at this tournament. Now he could find out what it was, and thumb his nose at the threatened lawsuit from Celebrity. It was a sweet deal if he’d ever heard one.

“For you, anything,” Valentine said.

10