“No thanks,” Valentine said.

“Who said it was for you?” the albino snorted.

The albino slammed the drink back, then returned the bottle to its slot on the mirrored display behind him. When he turned around, he gave Valentine a hard look.

“I remember you now,” the albino said. “You came in here a few days ago, asking a lot of questions. Your name’s Gerry, isn’t it?”

Valentine and his thirty-six-year-old son, Gerry, bore a strong physical resemblance, and the crummy bar light was a good equalizer. Gerry had been with him until a few hours ago when Valentine sent him to Atlantic City to chase down a lead. He guessed the albino was one of his son’s local sources, and said, “That’s right. How’s it going?”

“Shitty,” the albino said. “What do you want?”

“You always so warm and fuzzy?”

“Just call me Mister Fucking Sunshine.”

“You must really bring in the customers.”

“You came in, didn’t you?”

There was no use arguing with a guy like this, and Valentine decided to leave. Pulling out his wallet, he asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“Same as before,” the albino said.

“Refresh my memory.”

The albino reached into Valentine’s wallet and gingerly removed a C-note. He put his elbows on the bar in a friendly fashion and said, “You want to see the notebook? I just got the updates last night. Lots of new dealers.”

Valentine played back everything that had just happened. The albino knew his son, and had just taken a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. “Sure,” he said.

The albino removed a plastic three-ring notebook from beneath the bar. Valentine flipped it open and scanned the neatly typed pages. After a few moments, he realized what he was looking at. The notebook contained the names and physical descriptions of several dozen blackjack dealers in Las Vegas, their work hours, and how many times per hour they mistakenly “flashed” their hole card to the players. Reading a flashed card was called front-loading, and a perfectly legal way to beat the house.

Valentine shut the notebook. “Actually there was something else I wanted to ask you. What’s the story with the World Poker Showdown?”

“I hear it’s rigged for the blind guy to win,” the albino said.

“Any idea how?”

“Rumor is, they’re using touch cards.”

Touch cards were a popular way among cheaters to mark cards. The cheater would use a sharp device called a punch to create an indentation in the card that could be felt by the thumb during the deal. This indentation let the dealer know when certain cards were coming off the top. Other variations used sandpaper and nail polish to scuff the back of the card.

“Thanks,” Valentine said, rising from his stool.

“You know, you’ve aged a lot since the last time I saw you,” the albino said.

Valentine was twenty-seven years older than his son. He wanted to tell the albino to get his eyes checked, but had a feeling the comment might be taken the wrong way. He said good night, and walked into the next room to watch Rufus shoot pool.

They left the bar with Rufus holding a handful of the construction workers’ money. As Valentine drove away, Rufus took several hundred-dollar bills and shoved them into Valentine’s shirt pocket.

“What’s that for?” Valentine asked.

“Saving me from getting whacked over the head with a pool cue,” Rufus said.

“You tell those guys I was a cop?”

“I sure did. That and those broad shoulders of yours kept those boys honest.”

“Were they hustlers?”

Rufus nodded. “Their hands gave them away. They were wearing dirty construction clothes, but didn’t have any calluses and their fingernails were clean.”

Valentine took Las Vegas Boulevard to the freeway, then headed north toward their hotel. The Celebrity, two exits away, was hosting the World Poker Showdown. A giant billboard in front of the hotel resembled a movie marquee, on which a video clip was being shown.

“Is that who I thinkit is?” Rufus asked.

Skip DeMarco’s handsome face had appeared on the marquee. DeMarco had knocked several famous players out of the tournament that day, just as he had since the beginning of the tournament four days ago, each time by calling their bluffs. DeMarco had “read” his opponents’ hands, even though he could not see their faces.

“That boy’s getting famous,” Rufus said. “Too bad he’s a cheat.”

“The bartender at the Jackalope said DeMarco is in collusion with the dealer,” Valentine said.

“Doing what?”

“Touch cards.”

Rufus shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a tell with touch cards. The thumb of the dealer’s hand scrapes across the top card. It wouldn’t fly.”

The traffic started to move and Valentine goosed the accelerator. On the marquee, DeMarco was dragging his opponent’s chips across the table with a gleeful look on his face. Rufus let out a disapproving snort.

“I can’t wait to play that boy once the tournament’s over,” Rufus said.

“You really dislike him, don’t you?”

“Kid’s got no class. You can tell he’s never driven the white line.”

“What’s that?”

“Looking for action. You drive a couple hundred miles to a game you’ve heard about. Sometimes the town isn’t even on a map. If the game looks beatable, you play. You do this forty weeks a year, and spend the rest of the time at home, getting reacquainted with your wife and kids. It’s a hard way to make a living. And the hardest part is driving the white line, not knowing what lays in store for you.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Valentine said.

“It is. One time down in Austin, I was playing in a tent on this rich guy’s cattle ranch. It was Saturday night, and there’s a hundred guys playing poker. Not just ordinary guys, either. There were billionaire oilmen, richer-than-God cattle barons, the crème de la crème of high society, if Texas has such a thing.

“A car pulled up, and four hooded guys with machine guns jumped out. They shot up the tent and made everyone lie down, then robbed us. They were slick, and everyone knew not to mess with them. I was the last person they got to. One of the robbers stared at me. Then he winked.”

“A friend?” Valentine asked.

“Yup. We’d run together for a year. I’d heard he’d fallen on hard times.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing. I didn’t want anyone in that tent knowing we were acquainted. I gave him everything I had, including my late father’s watch.”

“That must have been hard.”

“I got it all back in the mail a week later. He hadn’t even touched my bankroll.”

They reached their exit. A minute later, Valentine was pulling up a winding front entrance lined with palm trees.

“That was awful nice of him,” Valentine said.

Rufus frowned, as though being nice had nothing to do with it. “He wasn’t going to rob me, even if I was the last person on the face of the earth. We drove the white line together.”

People who gambled for a living lived on a roller-coaster: one day they were up, the next day they were hurtling down. When Valentine had first gotten together with Rufus four days ago, the old cowboy, one of the first victims of Skip DeMarco, had been poorer than a church mouse, and Valentine had offered the couch in his suite for Rufus to sleep on. Even though Rufus’s for tunes had changed dramatically since then, he’d not asked Rufus to leave. He enjoyed the old cowboy’s company.

They walked through the hotel’s main lobby, which had a jungle motif. It reminded Valentine of an old Tarzan movie, and at any moment he half-expected a guy wearing a loincloth to come swinging through the lobby.

They got on an elevator, Valentine hitting the button for the fourth floor. As the doors closed, two guys hopped on. Late thirties, one black, the other white, they argued over who was the best golfer of all time—Nicklaus or Woods—neither man willing to back down.