The Mirror Thief(97)

But—

Just listen. That was the agreement we had with Damon. Get it? We’d make the Point our last stop, we’d go in, and we’d get cut off at the knees. Damon would show up to work earlier in the day with screen-capture photos of all of us, he’d give a we-happy-few-we-band-of-brothers speech to his security detail, and he’d be a hero. Immediate induction into the casino-management hall of fame. The Spectacular: The One They Couldn’t Break! You see the picture? Remember, Stanley and I were the only ones who knew Damon was in on the deal. The rest of the team was bouncing around the tables with steam coming out of their ears, trying to figure out how we got burned so fast. Not a lot of acting was required.

Veronica, Curtis says, the Spectacular got slaughtered at the tables that night.

Not by us.

Well, then what the hell happened?

She shrugs theatrically. Last I heard from AC, she says, management at the Point’s brought in the cops. You know as well as I do how casinos like to avoid doing that, so they must be pretty sure they’ve got a serious problem on the inside. How is Damon explaining all this?

I couldn’t tell you. Whatever he’s saying, he’s not saying it to me.

When the last time you talked to him?

Not since I left Philly. Damon’s not real big on using the phone. He likes to keep in touch by fax. Which is funny, because he’s about as dyslexic as they come. Can’t spell worth a damn.

Curtis’s forehead is starting to ache from furrowing his brow. He pushes his glasses down his nose to massage his temples, trying to loosen himself up. Even if it was an inside job, he says, somebody on your team had to have known about it. It must’ve been coordinated. You said your team was in the Point for an hour before you gave up. Can you account for everybody during that time? Do you know where everybody was?

She takes a long while to answer. He’s given up on her, is trying to come up with another way of asking the question, when she finally speaks.

The team was divided into two groups, she says. I led one. The other group was led by a guy who calls himself Graham Argos. He isn’t somebody I knew beforehand, and I don’t think Stanley knew him well, either. But he was good, really good. One of these MIT hotshots, or so he said. Excellent counter, great actor. Totally nondescript. I had five or six conversations with him—long conversations, one on one—and I’m still not sure I could pick him out of a lineup. He looked a little different each time I saw him.

Veronica glances at Curtis’s face, but her eyes don’t quite focus, and he can tell she’s seeing somebody else, remembering. Maybe fifteen minutes after we walked into the Point, she says, Graham disappeared. We didn’t see him again until we got back to our suite at Resorts to split the take. He met us there. He told us some story about how Spectacular security was up in his face, making threats, and how he got scared and left. I didn’t believe it at the time. I just figured he’d given up early on making any money and didn’t feel like waiting around for the rest of us. Now I’m not so sure.

Are you still in touch with him? Have you talked to him lately?

No, she says. I haven’t. But you have.

The Whistler. The guy with the teeth.

Veronica nods. He’s got some caps that he wears sometimes, she says. Dental veneers, I guess they’re called. So don’t lean too hard on the gap as a way to spot him.

Curtis’s mind is clicking, rolling over like the board at 30th Street Station, sorting through everything the guy—Argos—said on the phone last night. The same phrases keep shuffling to the top: I know what happened in AC. Lay the f*ck off me. I’m the guy you’re really looking for. Veronica, Curtis asks, if you and Stanley didn’t know Argos beforehand, how did you get partnered up with him?

She’s smiling as she replies, but her voice is angry, brittle. Damon spotted Graham at the Point maybe six months ago, she says. Graham was working with a weak partner. That’s the only reason Damon burned him. He could tell Graham was good. Instead of running him out, Damon put him on the payroll as a position player. And then one night, a few months later, Damon asked Stanley if he’d be into putting together a blackjack team. For old times’ sake. Because he’d met this kid—you can guess the rest.

Fuck, Curtis says.

He’s reaching way back now, through years of memories. Damon at Leonard Wood, at Twentynine Palms. Things he did and said coming back in snatches. The expression on his face at certain moments. The way he always seemed to stand a little apart, winding everybody up, watching them run themselves down. Patterns are forming that Curtis has never noticed before, or never wanted to.

Curtis, Veronica says. Seriously. You should go home.

And at this point that’s pretty much what Curtis wants to do. His nose tickles, his face grows hot, and he’s blindsided by a memory, something he hasn’t thought of in twenty years or more: a trip he took to the shore with his dad and Stanley and some gambler friends. Curtis couldn’t have been more than six or seven. Somebody told him a story about pirate treasure; he found a corroded can, picked out a spot on the beach, and spent the afternoon slinging sand while everyone else horsed around in the surf. When his hole got hip-deep he ran to show Stanley, but by the time they made it back, it had filled with seawater. Knock it off with the whining, kid. This is no good. You gotta find a map. Take it from me, kid: a story is not the same as a map. Curtis has no map. After all these years, he still hasn’t learned. Tell him the right story and he’ll start digging.