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he’d woken up one morning and started brushing his teeth with a different hand.
    “I called the owner of the Mint and told him what I’d found,” Bill went on. “I told him I thought it was suspicious, but that there could be an explanation.”
    “The jump from the burning hotel,” Valentine said.
    “Exactly. Ricky Smith was in shock and therefore deviated from normal behavior.” Bill grew silent and stared at the worn spot in the rug beneath his feet. “This is the rug you had in Atlantic City, isn’t it?”
    Valentine said that it was. Since moving to Palm Harbor, he hadn’t bought a single piece of furniture except a wide-screen TV, and that was because the old one had gotten blown out of the wall during a lightning storm. Spending money had been his wife’s job, not his.
    “I think I wore that hole in it,” Bill said, still staring. “Anyway, the owner of the Mint tells his people to delay paying Ricky Smith off. Legally, they’re allowed to conduct an investigation if they suspect any impropriety.”
    “That was dumb,” Valentine said.
    “Tell me about it. Ricky Smith’s lawyers filed papers against the Mint yesterday afternoon. The casinos in town are freaking out. They think the publicity will be horrible. I got called on the carpet last night.”
    “Why you?”
    “The owner of the Mint is saying he based his decision on my recommendation. He left out the part about Ricky maybe being in shock.”
    “How convenient.”
    “I need your help. My gut tells me Ricky Smith’s winning streak isn’t on the square. Ricky told a newspaper that except for blackjack, he’d never played any of the other casino games before, yet he still somehow managed to win.”
    “Beginner’s luck? Come on.”
    “That’s what I said. I need you to tell me what he’s doing.”
    Valentine had known Bill a long time and considered him one of his best friends. He liked to think he’d do just about anything to help Bill out of a jam; only, this was Las Vegas they were talking about, the only city in America where rats wore thousand-dollar silk suits and screwed people because it suited them.
    “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Bill,” he said.
             
    Bill didn’t act mad or particularly surprised. He went outside the house to make a call on his cell phone. Palm Harbor didn’t have many cell towers, and the reception was rarely good. Besides the great weather, Valentine considered the lack of reception one of the area’s greatest attributes. Bill returned to the living room, shaking his head.
    “I can’t get a line out. Can I use your office phone?”
    “Sure,” Valentine said.
    Bill disappeared into the back of the house. Valentine guessed Bill was calling the casino owners to explain the situation. Las Vegas’s casinos routinely alerted other casinos around the country about cheaters and card counters they’d spotted playing in their establishments. Six weeks ago, they’d sent a notice out calling Valentine’s son, Gerry, an undesirable. As a result, Gerry had been forced to quit working for him, and was now unemployed.
    Valentine had responded by refusing to do any more work for Las Vegas’s casinos. Gerry was no choir boy, but did not deserve the leper status. To replace the work he’d lost from Las Vegas, Valentine had started taking jobs from casinos in Europe and the Far East. The time difference was a drag, but like his mother used to say, their money was as green as anyone else’s.
    Picking up the remote, he got the VCR working, and stared at a surveillance tape of a Japanese gambler playing craps at a posh casino in New Zealand. The Japanese gambler was betting a few hundred dollars a roll. Then, out of the blue, he bet five thousand dollars and won. It looked suspicious as hell.
    Valentine found the letter the casino boss had sent him and reread it. According to the boss, the Japanese gambler made a single five-thousand-dollar bet each time he played. He bet this amount only when