Read Sucker Bet for Free Online Page A

started to clear, he realized how difficult it must have been for her to watch him behave so foolishly. He kissed his neighbor on the cheek, then walked back to his house and climbed into his Honda.

    He crossed the Sunshine Skyway forty minutes later, the ocean shimmering like a sea of brand-new coins. Interstate 275 took him to 75, and he headed south and put his foot to the floor. If there was one thing he liked about the folks on Florida’s west coast, it was the speed at which they drove, and he did eighty for the next hundred miles.
    In Fort Myers he got off and filled the tank. Buying a bottled water, he got behind the wheel and powered up his cell phone. A blinking light indicated the phone’s battery was nearly dead. He considered cell phones one of the greatest intrusions in recent memory, and he thought how wonderful it would be to toss it out the window. A great idea, only it wasn’t practical. In the casino business, the store never closed. If he wanted his consulting to stay alive, he needed to be able to retrieve messages. He plugged the phone’s jack into his cigarette lighter, and the tiny green light came on.
    A half hour later, he was sitting in line at a toll booth, waiting to get on Alligator Alley. The Alley bisected the lower half of the Everglades and was one of the last pristine roads in Florida. No strip centers or rows of ugly tract houses; just one rest stop and a gas station for eighty miles. Paying the toll, he slipped a collection of Sinatra’s greatest hits into his tape deck and turned on the cruise control.

    Singing a duet with Old Blue Eyes, he spotted a tour bus parked on the grassy shoulder and pulled over.
    A group of Asians was huddled up to a chain-link fence. He got out and joined them. Down in the swamp, an alligator covered in duckweed was sunning itself. He’d read that Florida was one of the few places in North America where dinosaurs had flourished, and he guessed that alligators were the leftovers.
    A tourist said something. Valentine turned, thinking the man wanted him to snap a picture. The man pointed at his car. His cell phone was ringing. Getting in, Valentine looked at the phone’s face. It was Bill Higgins, the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
    “Hey, Bill,” he said.
    “Did you get my message?”
    “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t call you back, but I’ve been in a bad way.”
    “That’s what the lady who answers your phone said. Feeling any better?”
    “A little,” Valentine admitted.
    “Remember those roulette cheats you helped me bust? They were convicted this morning. They got three years, counting the time they’ve already done. And they have to give the money back.”
    “Nice going.”
    “Couldn’t have done it without you.”
    It had been one of Valentine’s better busts. The cheaters, all Venice Beach bodybuilders, had come up with a unique scam. By pressing on the railing of the table on which the roulette wheel sat, they had used their combined strength to bend the table and cause the wheel to become biased. The bodybuilders’ girlfriends had then bet a particular group of numbers, called a chevron, and taken the casino for a ride during several visits. Higgins had been unable to make the scam, and had flown Valentine in. He had nailed them by discreetly placing a carpenter’s level on the table just as they had started to do their thing.
    “I need your help,” Higgins said.
    “Something wrong?”
    “There sure is,” his friend said.

    Valentine drove to a rest stop and parked his car. Inside, he purchased a soda from a vending machine. Sitting on a picnic bench in the shade, he called Higgins back.
    “I’m in a real bind,” Higgins said. “A blackjack dealer I recommended for a job at the Micanopy Indian reservation casino has disappeared. I’ve known this kid a long time, and I’m worried about him.”
    “And you’d like me to pop down there and see what I can do,” Valentine said.
    “I sure would.”
    “What’s his