by Paul Bishop
"I wonder if we don't push our luck too often," Fey said.
Arlene smiled. "Hey, they knew we were scorpions when they hired us."
Chuckling, Fey followed Arlene into the elevator.
No Chips, No Bonus
Ben Bolden
Reporter, columnist, novelist, teacher, and history maven, Ben Boulden and I first came to know each other via a shared love of vintage western paperbacks. We quickly found we also admired a number of the same mystery/crime writers, such as Ed Gorman, Garry Disher, Joe Ide, and Ralph Dennis. From this basis, our friendship grew, and I was delighted when Ben began to find publishing success. His short novel Merrick, a hybrid crime-western-heist story, is excellent and I look forward to more of Merrick’s adventures. Ben’s story in this anthology is a prime example of the type of tale he does best…
No Chips, No Bonus
I was awakened by Bobby Helms’ singing Jingle Bell Rock. An ironic ringtone because it was July and the only jingling I’d heard in months was the simulated sound of coins cascading from slots that were programmed tighter than a billionaire’s wallet.
“Ford? You awake?” Jenkins’ voice booming in my ear.
“Sure, I’m awake.” My eyes were still closed.
“We have a problem.” Jenkins was tense. A quaver of anticipation and fear and something else I couldn’t label whisked into a frothy hum I imagined his imported girls heard every time he unzipped his pants.
“We?”
A gulping sound. “Yeah, we. The casino’s been hit.”
I sat up, my eyes opened. The bedsheets tumbled to the floor. Jenkins owned and operated The Desert Diamond. A casino on the Utah-Nevada border. I was his trained dog on retainer as a security consultant and general troubleshooter. A relationship I despised but was dependent on since no one else wanted me.
I said, “When?”
“A couple hours ago. Sixty grand. He—”
“Chips or cash?”
“Chips from the VIP room.”
“You know who did it?”
The fat man coughed, wheezed.
“You going to tell me, or do I guess?”
“His name’s Tyler Watts.” Jenkins’ voice, for once, sounded embarrassed, almost contrite.
“Watts?” I looked at the ceiling, its cottage cheese dirty and gray. “The kid I did the background check on? The junkie? The one I told you not to hire?”
Silence.
“But you hired him anyway?”
Jenkins cleared his throat of what sounded like a game hen. “Shit, Ford, it was drugs. If we don’t hire because they use drugs, who the hell are we going to hire?”
The kid was a felon. Instead of calling Jenkins an idiot, I rubbed my eyes. “You call the cops?”
“No.”
“Why?”
The digital line was quiet as death.
“The kid is my sister’s nephew,” Jenkins finally said. “I was hoping we could work this robbery off-the-books.”
It was my turn for silence. Off-the-books made me nervous. Jenkins made me nervous. The way he operated his gambling empire like J. Edgar Hoover was still sitting in the FBI’s big chair. But Jenkins had ignored my past, and since he was my only client, he paid my rent and bought my groceries.
“A $5,000 bonus if you bring Tyler and the chips to me on the quiet,” Jenkins said, his voice tentative and unsure.
The offer made me more suspicious. Jenkins was a stingy bastard. “I can do this on retainer,” I said. “It’s part of the job.”
“I pay for good service, Ford. If you do this—quietly, you’ll be rewarded.”
“Since when do you pay for anything? You stiff the carpet cleaners every month.” I paused, annoyed because I’d already mentally spent the bonus on a new transmission for my worn-out Impala.
Jenkins didn’t respond.
I finally asked, “Any witnesses?”
The fat man chuckled, sounding like he was back in charge—and he was.
He said, “You know Gina Sanchez?”
“She works the night shift in the VIP room?”
The line went dead.
Thirty minutes later, I was showered and dressed in my regulation navy-blue FBI suit. The same one I’d worn for fifteen years as a Special Agent. A matching white oxford and a blue necktie. I walked into Café Storm, a tropical themed coffee shop in The Diamond’s back corner. It was mostly empty at five am, but Gina, a slim redhead with a bright smile, gave the place more life than it deserved. She waved me over to her table beneath a palm tree. Before I could say good morning to Gina, a tanned twenty-something with long black hair, a bikini top, and a grass skirt appeared and asked if I wanted anything.
“Coffee. Black.”
The grass skirt said, “Sure thing, Mr. Ford.”
To Gina, I said, “You okay?”
“You bet.” A dimple revealed itself in her left cheek when she smiled, and at the moment, she was beaming.
“Okay, Gina, tell me about the robbery.”
Gina waited for the grass skirt to set my coffee on the bamboo table and leave before saying, “Tyler had been acting weird all night.”
“Weird, how?”
Gina frowned, an expression as alluring as her smile. “I thought he was high. All jumpy and wired.”
“Do you think he planned to steal the chips last tonight?”
The green and brown of her eyes danced in the café’s phony tropical light. “Maybe.” She looked down at the table. “But it may have been opportunity.”
“Something happen that gave Tyler an opening to take the chips?”
Gina shook her head and looked at me. “A normal Monday night. Quiet. The last group was gone, and we were closing. The doors were locked, and I was cleaning behind the bar while Tyler vacuumed the main room.”
I nodded and held her eyes with mine. “Okay, tell me what happened.”
She’d gone into the storage room behind the bar to lock up the liquor. When she came back, Tyler was at the main table, the security drawer open, chips in one hand and a black duffel in the other.
Gina said, “What are you doing, Tyler?”
A blood vessel in Tyler’s temple bounced. “I—” The skinny kid then shrugged and dumped the chips into the bag.
“Tyler?”
A small automatic appeared in his right hand. “I’m sorry, Gina. You been real nice to me.”
“You can’t walk out of here, Tyler.” Gina’s breath caught in her chest. “Security will be here any minute for the chips.”
Tyler’s eyes slid to the closed double doors. “I have to, Gina. I’m sorry.”
He pointed the automatic at Gina’s head, dropped the duffel on the floor, and pulled two black plastic cable ties from his pocket. On shaking legs, Tyler took a small step toward Gina. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I have to do this.”
“Why?” Gina said.
Tyler tossed the plastic ties. They landed at Gina’s feet. “Pick them up, please.”
She did.
“Put one through the post on the bar and fasten it around your wrist.”
When Gina was done, Tyler scurried forward and tightened the cable a notch past comfortable. He grabbed Gina’s left wrist and bound it to the same brass pole running beneath the bar.
Gina’s face was weary, her smile gone. “Tyler emptied the drawer and walked out.”
I placed my hand on top of hers. “You’re sure he said, ‘I have to do this?’ He used the phrase ‘have to?’”
A tear glistened in Gina’s eye. I thought I knew why.
“Was the security drawer locked?”
Gina looked down. She was the only employee on duty with access to the drawer. “No.”
“It’s supposed to be locked, right?”
She looked up with wet eyes. “Yes, but I asked Tyler to lock it while I secured the alcohol behind the bar.”
I let go of her hand and leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. “It’s not unusual for you to give Tyler access to the
chip drawer?”
Gina shook her head, her red hair exotic in the warm light. “I do it sometimes when I want to get home in a hurry.”
We both knew she could be fired for breaking security protocols, but her eyes never left mine. “I have to ask, Gina. Are you involved?”
“No.” Her voice was strong.
“Did you know about it?”
“No, Jimmy. I didn’t know anything. I swear.”
I believed her.
“Did Tyler ever tell you about his friends?”
Gina tried to smile, a tear running down her cheek. “Sometimes.”
She gave me two names.
As I stood to leave, she grabbed my hand. “Will I lose my job?”
“That’s Jenkins’ call.”
Gina had a sixteen-year-old and a three-month-old granddaughter at home. As I walked out of the Storm and into the casino’s early morning clatter, I felt Gina watching me. And damned if I didn’t feel a sadness for the woman, and something like responsibility.
The first name on Gina’s list was a junkie with a Utah address. An old aluminum trailer with rust dripping from its roof like stalactites. It was on a narrow lot between Scobie Road and the east-west train tracks. Across the road’s cracked asphalt, a dirt parking lot was jammed with oxidized semi-trailers, and a little farther south, a pink-sided diner huddled at the desert’s edge. Its parking lot was empty.
I navigated the broken glass and blackened knee-high weeds to the front porch. A well-traveled path curled around the back and across the tracks to a casino. The stairs wobbled and creaked. On the small landing, no more than three feet by three feet, I stopped and listened. There was nothing other than the wind and I-80’s rumbling traffic.
I raised my hand to knock but thought better of it. Instead, I eased the .38 from beneath my jacket and with my other hand twisted the doorknob until it clicked. The door swung open. A refrigerator humming. The acrid smell of human waste slapped me. I gagged, my eyes watering. I covered my nose and mouth with a cupped hand and stepped inside.
A humped shadow materialized against the room’s back wall. When my eyes adjusted to the pale darkness, the shadow became a woman. Her head was propped against the tattered couch, and her legs were sprawled wide across the filthy carpet. Her left arm was tied-off with rubber surgical tubing, and an empty syringe discarded next to her on the floor. Her face calm and peaceful, almost beautiful in the trailer’s fuzzy light.
I walked into the small kitchen. The sink and gold-flecked counters were cluttered with dishes and garbage. The smell was worse—acrid and dank. The floor was sticky. A dust-covered painting of Jesus hung crookedly on one wall. At the back, there was an opening half covered with a torn accordion door.
On tip-toes, I moved across the kitchen and eased the door the rest of the way open on its track. I peeked inside. Dust particles floated in the tepid light and filtered through broken blinds. On the bed, a sleeping man was curled into a ball. His long hair was stringy and damp. His left arm tied-off, the same as the girl’s.
In the corner, flies swarmed above a five-gallon bucket. The sides were stained black, and the smell of the sewer reeked from it. I retched, my mouth and throat scorching.
I holstered my gun and walked back to the kitchen, where I found a plastic pitcher, its bottom clogged with a green-black sludge. At the tap, I filled the pitcher, then pushed a pile of garbage onto the floor, and set it on the counter. I checked that the girl was still dreaming and went back to the bedroom.
I wrenched the kid off the bed and his head bounced on the floor with a thud. He whimpered, but his eyes stayed closed. I dragged him onto the kitchen’s gray linoleum and nudged him with my shoe. When he didn’t stir, I poured water on his face.
The kid gagged and coughed. He raised a defensive hand over his face. His eyes popped open. When he saw me, the kid froze. His mouth wide, his pupils jumping.
I smiled.
He said, “What—”
I slapped his face hard enough to let him know I was real and not a drug-induced specter.
He gasped.
“What, man? What do you want?”
I walked to the sink and filled the pitcher again and splashed it over his head.
The kid coughed, water cascading from his open mouth.
I kneeled next to him. My hand balled into a fist. “You awake, Zachery?”
Zachery flinched. “Don’t hurt me, man. Please. Whatever you want, man, please—”
I said, “Have you seen Tyler Watts?”
The kid’s eyes danced, his pupils small and hard. “Who?”
I leaned down and showed him my hand and touched his nose with a finger.
He shuttered, the fear plain on his face.
“This can work easy or hard, Zachery. You’re in control. Anything that happens here is on your head.” I pointed to the girl sleeping in the other room. “What’s her name?”
“Hey, man, don’t hurt her. She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“She’s got nothing to do with what, Zachery?”
He said, “You’re looking for Tyler?”
I pushed a toe into his ribs.
“Holy—”
I touched his nose again. “You need to focus Zachery. That’s what they call you, right? Zachery, not Zach?”
“Sure, man. That’s my name. But listen, I haven’t seen Tyler in a few days. Maybe a week. We’re not friends, really. At least not since his old man sent him away to that clinic in Salt Lake. He’s like, working at a casino. The fancy one, you know, The Desert Diamond.”
Once Zachery started talking, he couldn’t shut up. He told me everything. “There’s these two guys. They wanted Tyler to do something, something big. It had to do with the fat guy who runs the place. You know him, the fat guy, right?”
The fat guy was my boss, Jenkins.
“You know him, right?”
“Sure, the guy who runs The Diamond. But we seem to be stuck here, Zachery. What does the fat guy have to do with Tyler?”
Zachery squirmed. His eyes closed. “They had some pictures, man.”
“What pictures?”
Zachery looked over at the girl on the floor. “The fat guy and Jess.”
I pulled his face back to me. “The pictures.”
“The fat guy and Jess.”
“Doing what, Zachery?”
“You know, man. They were...” He paused to look at the girl still dreaming on the floor. A silver tear on his cheek. “The fat guy, he trades dope for sex, man. He has a thing for Jess. A few weeks ago, Brands followed Jess and the fat dude to a cabin in the Silver Islands. You know them, right?”
I knew the Silver Islands were a bleak mountain range shadowing the salt flats east of town, but I didn’t know Jenkins had a cabin anywhere near them.
Zachery rushed forward to fill the silence. “The rich asshole takes Jess there.” He points at the girl on the floor. “And Brand hides and takes some snaps of Jess and the guy, you know, man—”
Zachery whinnied like a horse. It took me a few seconds to realize he was crying. The girl meant something to him. For the first time, I saw him as a person instead of a junkie.
I said, “How old is Jess?”
“Nineteen, man.”
“Jess is nineteen, and she trades sex for heroin with the guy from The Desert Diamond, that right?”
“Right,” Zachery said. “Right, man.”
“And Brands—he took pictures to blackmail the fat guy?”
“What else would it be?”
“Is Brands a first or a last name?”
“Wallace, man. Brandon Wallace.”
Brandon Wallace, the other name on Gina’s list.
“What happened when Wallace approached the fat guy and showed him the photos?”
Zachery smiled, all blood and decaying teeth. “The guy said fuck off, man, I don’t care.”
It sounded like Jenkins.
I said, “What did Brandon do?”
The kid look
ed at me with pleading eyes. “I ain’t a snitch, man. I never—”
I pushed my toe into his ribs. He squirmed, yelping.
“What did Brandon do?”
“Man, he came up with this crazy idea. But he needed Tyler’s help for it to work. The high-roller room’s like a club. Not much security, you know? The chips are just sitting in a drawer.”
“This plan. Was it before or after Tyler got the casino job?”
Zachery looked confused. “After, man. After he got the job.”
“Anybody else know about the plan?”
“Yeah, man. Tyler and Brandon and another guy named Story. Ryan Story.”
“You part of this plan, Zachery?”
He shook his head from side to side. “No way, man. I’m a junkie, I’m not an armed robber.”
“Where do I find Tyler?”
“You know the ghost town off I-80, Black Mountain?”
I did.
“They’re hiding in the old motel.”
I stood. “You tell anybody else about this, Zachery?”
The kid hesitated and said, “No, man. No way.”
I believed him.
“This stays between you and me, right, Zachery?”
The kid nodded with enough zeal to bounce his head off the floor.
I pulled my wallet from an inside jacket pocket, counted a handful of bills and dropped them on his chest. “I’d think hard about moving on, Zachery. Take Jess and go somewhere else.” I paused, then asked, “You have family who can help you get clean?”
The kid stared at me with wide eyes.
I said, “I don’t want to see you around here again.”
Zachery sobbed.
When I walked past Jess, she was still dreaming. Whatever she was seeing, I hoped it was better than what she had.
I eased the sedan from the road and down a mild depression—tires crunching through shattered rock. I stopped next to a small juniper stand and stepped out into the uncertain afternoon. Quickly, I moved into the juniper trees and away from the corrugated dirt road. Black Mountain’s emptiness beckoned from the hill’s far side. The alkaline dust, pale as chalk, rose in a diaphanous shimmer with each step I took.
