Loaded Dice by James Swain

The bearded man motioned with the gun, silencing her.
    The woman opened a cash drawer and started pulling out bundles of bills, which she slipped through the bars. The man shoved the money into the pockets of his windbreaker, then sprinted away. The woman again put her hands on her head. Then she tripped an alarm, and all hell broke loose inside the casino.
    Bill shut the tape off. “What do you think?”
    “Did they polygraph her?” Valentine asked.
    Bill broke custom again and stared at him. “The woman in the cage?”
    “Yeah. My guess is, they didn’t, considering the trauma she went through.”
    “You think she’s involved?”
    It seemed so obvious that Valentine paused before answering him. “I counted twelve cash drawers where she was standing. She went to the one with the big bills without the robber telling her to. She’s part of it.”
    Bill rewound the tape, watched it again, and laughed out loud. “Now that you mention it, it does look kind of strange, doesn’t it?”
             
    It was nearly three o’clock, and Valentine realized he wasn’t going to find his son by hanging out with Bill. He said good-bye and started to leave, then noticed a large Federal Express box sitting on Bill’s desk. The shipper was a company in Japan, the receiver Chance Newman. The top was sliced open, and he glanced inside.
    “That was intercepted yesterday by our friends at FedEx,” Bill explained. “The shipping instructions say the contents are PalmPilots, only they’re really card-counting computers. I called Chance Newman, asked him what was up. He said he’s giving them to his surveillance people to help track counters.”
    Chance’s explanation to Bill made perfect sense. The easiest way to spot card-counters was by tracking their play with a computer. There were several good ones on the market. Only the devices Chance had bought from Japan weren’t computers. They were Deadlocks.
    It had been a day filled with troubling questions, and now Valentine had another. Why had Chance paid him twenty-five thousand dollars to explain an illegal device that he obviously already knew about? That was a lot of money to blow, even for someone as rich as Chance.
    He waited until Bill’s back was turned. Taking a Deadlock from the box, he slipped it into his pocket and showed himself to the door.
    “Talk to you later,” he said.
    13
    H ey Gerry, you ready to rumble?”
    Gerry lifted his eyes from the men’s magazine he was reading. Pash stood in the doorway that separated their motel rooms. He wore jeans and a football jersey that was so large he was swimming in it. Gerry had told him that they made jerseys in his size, but Pash had laughed at his suggestion.
    “I want to feel like a gladiator,” he said.
    Rising from his chair, Gerry went to the window and shut the blinds, then flipped on the TV and blasted the volume. The hotel wasn’t responsible for theft, so he’d started taking measures.
    “Yeah, I’m ready.”
    He followed Pash into the adjacent bedroom. As usual, it was trashed. The maid came in the morning and made the beds. By late afternoon, it looked like a tornado had visited.
    “Where’s your brother?” Gerry asked.
    “Getting a soda,” Pash said. “We have a new member to our team I want you to meet. Hey Dean, you ready?”
    The bathroom door swung open. Out stepped a guy with a forked beard, glasses, and a baseball cap. He wore jeans and a denim work shirt with multiple food stains. He looked like what gamblers called a scellard, or a scale. A loser.
    “Meet Dean Martin,” Pash said.
    Gerry stared at the disheveled stranger, then at Pash. “Dean Martin? This isn’t Dean Martin. He’s dead!”
    Pash brought his hand to his mouth. “Oh, no!”
    “You idiot,” the stranger said to Pash. “I told you that was a bad name to use!”
    “I didn’t realize he was that popular,” Pash said.
    “Everybody knows Dean Martin,” Gerry said. He got close to the stranger and said,