“I hope you guys aren’t easily offended,” Valentine said.

“Depends whose doing the offending,” Fuller said.

“Your victims are all hookers,” Valentine said. “These girls came here because the casino is drawing hookers from all over the northeast. The Dresser is after hookers.”

For a long moment, neither agent acknowledged him.

“How can you know that?” Romero asked.

“All three victims recently moved here,” Valentine said. “ I’m assuming you got their occupations from their parents. Well, they lied to their parents. Atlantic City has a thirty percent unemployment rate, the highest in the nation. There are no jobs for models or beauticians. The only jobs are in the casinos, or working the street.”

“That’s a pretty big leap,” Fuller said.

Valentine hesitated, then told them what he was really thinking. “I think I saw the Dresser pick up a hooker.”

The agents practically jumped out of their chairs. Valentine held up his hands like he was stopping traffic. “Let me explain. Last week, an agent of the Nevada Gaming Control Board was here talking to us about casino cheating. While we were watching a surveillance tape, I saw a strange thing. A john standing behind the table was negotiating with a Puerto Rican hooker I recognized. It felt contrived.”

“How so?” Fuller asked.

“As a rule, johns don’t come into Resorts to pick up hookers. They pick them up on the street. Hookers inside the casino charge more than street walkers. They do it because the guys have gambling money they’re willing to burn.”

“You’re saying the john on the tape came inside Resorts specifically to pick up a hooker?”

“Yes. There was something else. As they started to leave, the john fumbled with a flask in his back pocket. I thought it was liquor, and he was going to take a pull to get his courage up. But now I think it was something else.”

The agents waited expectantly. So did Banko, who leaned against the wall.

“I think it was chloroform,” Valentine said.

Fuller and Romero exchanged long glances. They appeared to be communicating by telepathy, their eyes doing all the talking. Fuller looked at Valentine again.

“We think that’s how he’s knocking them out,” the agent said.

“So I’m right.”

“Perhaps. You said there was a surveillance tape,” Fuller said.

“Mickey Wright has it. He runs Resorts’ surveillance department.”

Fuller rose from his chair. “I’d like to see him immediately,” he told Banko. He approached Valentine, and stuck his hand out.

“You’re a hell of a detective,” the FBI agent said.

Valentine shook his hand while looking at Banko. His superior snarled at him before leaving the room.

Valentine started to leave the station house, then realized he hadn’t picked up his messages in several days. He went to his desk, and found a message from Bill Higgins thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. Bill had left his home number, said it was urgent. He checked the time. It was nearly ten, which made it seven in Las Vegas. He picked up the phone, and punched in the number. A man that was not Bill answered.

“This is Tony Valentine. Is Bill around?”

The man put the phone down. When Higgins came on, he was out of breath.

“I was in the garage working out. I wanted to alert you to a gang of blackjack cheaters that are ripping off your casino.”

Valentine grabbed a pen and pad off the desk. “I’m all ears.”

“We have a wiretap on a group of cheaters working the Sands. We caught a conversation that leads us to believe half the gang is working here, the other half in Atlantic City.”

“Any idea what they’re doing?”

“Yeah, and it’s pretty clever. They’ve constructed beer cans to hold mirrors in the base. If a player sits at one end of the table and puts his can down, he can glimpse the dealer’s hole card during the deal. He signals the card to another player at the table, the BP. The BP then plays his hand accordingly.”

BP was casino slang for Big Player. Hustlers had learned that casinos were more inclined to pay off a BP than an average player. And, BPs got complimentary suites and free meals and a lot of other free stuff. They lived large, and when they were part of a gang of cheaters, they lived even larger.

“Anything else I should look for?”

“The guy with the beer can signals the BP by blowing cigarette smoke through his nostrils,” Higgins said. “One puff means the hole card is a ten. Two puffs, an ace. If he breathes through his mouth, the dealer has a stiff. One more thing. They always use Budweiser cans.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s their favorite drink.”

“I really appreciate your giving me the heads-up,” Valentine said.

“Any time,” Higgins said.

Valentine heard someone cough and glanced up from his writing. Banko was standing a few yards away from his cubicle along with Fuller and Romero. The three men did not look happy.

“I’ve got to beat it. Thanks again.”

He hung up the phone, then looked expectantly into the three men’s faces.

“Mickey Wright erased the tape,” Banko said dejectedly.

Chapter 11

Valentine had inherited two things from his father. The first was his mouth, which had gotten him into more trouble than anything he’d ever done. The second was his photographic memory.

His father’s memory was phenomenal. Dominic Valentine could remember just about anything that had ever been said to him, or anything significant he’d ever seen. It was a gift wasted on a drunk, but that was how life went sometimes. Valentine’s memory was just as good, and it hadn’t gone to waste.

Banko made a phone call. Twenty minutes later, an artist from the Camden Union Register was setting up an easel in Banko’s office. The artist’s name was Ernie Roe, and he had a goatee and wore his stringy blond hair on his shoulders. Valentine knew him from the court house, where Ernie often covered important trials. Ernie removed a charcoal pencil from his breast pocket.

“Ready when you are,” Ernie said.

Valentine leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and described the john he’d seen inside Resorts picking up the beautiful Puerto Rican hooker the week before. He saw the john clearly: Five-eight, one hundred and sixty-pounds, with a paunch, stooped shoulders and thinning hair that he parted on the left side of his head. The face was hard to remember, but that was only because the video tape had been poor. Had he seen the john in person, he was sure he’d remember him perfectly.

Valentine opened his eyes when he was done. Ernie was facing him, and he guessed by the wide motions of Ernie’s hand that he was doing the john’s hair. Finished, Ernie turned the easel around.

“What do you think?”

The face in the drawing looked a lot like the one stored in his memory. The nose, which Valentine had struggled to remember, was thick, the nostrils slightly flared. It wasn’t perfect, but renditions never were.

“That’s him,” Valentine said.

Banko called his secretary into the office, and got her to take the sketch to the Xerox machine downstairs to make copies. While they waited, Romero said, “You said you recognized the Puerto Rican hooker the john picked up. Can you describe her?”

Valentine started to do, then had a thought. Banko had been running sweeps of hookers every week. As a result, hundreds of girls had been booked in the past few months.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said.

He led the FBI agents downstairs to the basement where the records were stored, and had the clerk on duty pull out the files of every hooker that had been arrested on the island in the past two months. There were over two hundred. Each girl’s mug shot was stapled to her record, and Valentine put them on a desk, and began sorting through them. Within minutes he was holding the Puerto Rican hooker’s record in his hand.