“Okay,” he whispered.

Valentine felt his wife’s hand on his knee. He glanced at her, then in the mirror at his son. “You’re going to stop this behavior right now. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One more thing. Where did you get the marked cards and loaded dice?”

“The what?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Gerry. Where did you get that stuff?”

“Some magic shop on Atlantic. Are you going there?”

Valentine said nothing, and drove his family home.

Uncle Al’s Magic & Joke Emporium was located in a dreary shopping center on the corner of Mississippi and Atlantic Avenue. Finding the front door locked, Valentine hit the buzzer, and watched an elfish man wearing a purple fez with a red tassel emerge from behind a curtain. Releasing the dead bolt, he ushered Valentine inside.

Valentine had dabbled with magic as a kid, and the store was a pleasant trip down memory lane. Brightly painted tricks lined the shelves — the Square Circle, Hippity Hop Rabbits, Passe Passe bottles — with smaller mysteries resting in a dusty glass counter. The stuff looked as magical as Uncle Al, who was seventy if he was a day, with extra-thick glasses that made his impish face look child-like. Pumping Valentine’s hand, he said, “Stand up straight, my boy.”

“I saw you on the Steel Pier when I was a kid,” Valentine said.

“Of course you did. They called me the Atlantic City Fakir. Worked the pier for over fifty years. Ask me why I don’t swim.”

Valentine knew a set-up when he heard one. “Why don’t you swim?”

“Because I drowned a hundred and sixty-eight times.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“I was doing my act at Fortescue’s beer garden. Whenever business was slow, I’d jump in the ocean, pretend to drown, and get my rescuers to drag me back to Fortescue’s. There was always a crowd. When I recovered, a shill suggested everyone toast my good fortune.”

“That’s beautiful,” Valentine said.

“Thank you. Now, what can I interest you in? A whoopee cushion? Or would you like to learn a simple trick to fool your kid?”

From his pocket, Valentine removed the marked cards and loaded dice he’d gotten from Gerry’s principal, and handed them to the proprietor. “Recognize these?”

Uncle Al examined the merchandise. “Cards came from here. Not the dice.”

“You don’t sell crooked dice?”

“Didn’t say that. These just happened to come from someplace else. You a cop?”

“Detective. I want you to stop selling this stuff. It’s getting in the wrong hands.”

“You mean kids?”

“I mean my son.”

Uncle Al’s face turned serious. Removing his glasses, he said, “I’m terribly sorry, detective. I’ll get the stuff off my shelves immediately. Now, how about a trick for your son? Something you can fool him with, then teach him.”

Dick Henry had been right about one thing. Valentine needed to spend more time with Gerry, and get to know him better. “Sure. What have you got?”

“What’s your price range?”

“Five bucks.”

“Five bucks it is.” Uncle Al removed a stack of nickels from his pocket, and placed it on the counter. Taking a brass tube from the same pocket, he handed it to Valentine to examine. It was clean, and Uncle Al made him cover the stack of nickels with it. Then, the elderly magician clicked his fingers three times. Lifting the tube, Uncle Al pointed at the stack of dimes now sitting on the counter, and knocked them over with his finger. The nickels had vanished. Valentine picked up the brass tube and examined it. Empty.

“Get’s them every time,” Uncle Al said triumphantly.

Valentine pulled out his wallet. “Show me,” he said.

The trick was called Nickels to Dimes. The stack of nickels was actually a hollow shell with a nickel glued on top, it’s inside painted the same color as the brass tube. A stack of dimes was hidden inside the shell from the start. The brass tube fit so snugly over the shell, it took a special device to pry it free.

Uncle Al went through the trick several times, then let Valentine have a try. To his surprise, Valentine did it perfectly the first time.

“You’re a natural, kid,” Uncle Al said.

Pocketing the trick, Valentine thanked him and went to the door. “Remember, no more crooked gambling equipment.”

“You got it.”

Valentine was sticking the key into the ignition when he had a strange thought. The Nickels to Dimes used the same principle as the chip cup that Banko had shown him. Both were clever magic tricks, designed to fool the brain, and the eye.

He sat in his car and thought about it. He’d been having a hard time catching cheaters inside the casino, and now he knew why. The cheaters were doing magic tricks to rig the games. They were magicians, disguised as ordinary people.

His thoughts drifted to the Budweiser gang Bill Higgins had warned him about. He’d been wracking his brain trying to figure out how to catch them. Why not ask another magician, he thought.

Getting out of his car, he went back inside the magic shop.

Chapter 16

Uncle Al knew a lot about mirrors, and claimed they were part of every serious magician’s repertoire. Houdini, Thurston, Keller and Blackstone had all used mirrors in their stage shows at one time or another. When Valentine pressed him, Uncle Al admitted that they had one serious drawback. They were light sensitive, and often exposed themselves to the audience.

“You really want to catch these cheaters using beer cans with mirrors hidden in them?”the old magician asked.

Valentine nodded enthusiastically. That was exactly what he wanted to do.

“That’s easy,” Uncle Al said.

Valentine drove to work with a smile on his face. Going upstairs to the surveillance control room, he rounded up the technicians on duty, plus Mickey Wright and Doyle, and explained how they were going to catch the Budweiser gang. Then he picked up the house phone, and called downstairs to the casino floor.

“In one minute, I want you to turn up the house lights,” he told the floor manager.

“Why should I do that?” the floor manager asked.

“Because I told you to.”

Valentine hung up the phone, and went to stare at the wall of video monitors that showed the action in the casino. So did everyone else in the room. One minute later, the house lights were raised. On the monitors, all the players looked up.

“I saw a flash!” a tech shouted.

“So did I,” another tech said.

Valentine had seen it as well. A tiny bright light had appeared at Blackjack Table #30. It had come from third base, the last seat at the table. The seat was occupied by a muscular guy drinking a can of Budweiser. The mirror glued to the bottom of the can was so bright, it was impossible notto see.

“Touchdown,” he said.

The scam was simple. The muscle head was using the mirror to read the dealer’s hole card, then signaling its value to the other members of his gang at the table. Valentine called downstairs, and got six security guards off the floor. Then, he called Lois, who was at home supervising his son during his suspension from school.

“Please bring Gerry over here. I want him to see something.”

Twenty minutes later, Lois and Gerry were sitting in front of the wall of video monitors. Behind them stood six burly security guards, ready for action. Doyle and Mickey Wright had already gone downstairs, and were telling the cashiers working the cage not to pay the cheaters off, in case they tried to leave. Valentine stood next to the monitors, and pointed at the center screen.

“See those guys playing blackjack?” he asked his son.

Gerry nodded. His wife had taken him to the barber down the street, and Gerry looked like a baby Marine.