by James Swain
“I want to know who I’m dealing with, that’s all.”
“All right, here it is. I got tired of stripping and started moving blow. I dealt with people scarier than anybody you could ever dream of. Mexican cartels, guys that would cut your head off and stick it on a pole if you looked at them cross-eyed. I was good at it. Real good at it.”
“How long were you in the game?”
“Five years. It taught me a lot.”
“Do you miss it?”
“It wasn’t that kind of work.”
Before he could ask another question, she put her finger to his lips, silencing him.
“I dig you and so does Marcus, even if you are a sneaky little shit. We both think there’s a place for you in the organization. Just keep your hand out of the cookie jar, and find the Gypsies before they scam us. When this is over, we’ll talk again. That sound good to you?”
He mouthed the word okay. Ike and T-Bird weren’t paying attention and Crunchie remained on the balcony getting worked over by his long-lost son. The landscape had shifted and they’d missed it. She took her finger away and planted a kiss on his lips, sealing the deal.
NINETEEN
His face repaired, he went downstairs to the main lobby and entered a coffee shop called Brando’s, the walls decorated with movie stills of the famous actor before he’d gone to seed. It was the only restaurant in the hotel that served breakfast all day, and he was craving scrambled eggs. He flipped through the spiral-bound menu until he found the selections.
Ike and T-Bird sat across from him without touching their menus. They’d been quiet as mice in the elevator, and he sensed that there was something on their minds. All the thieves he’d ever known had wanted to elevate their status and make more money. House burglars longed to be bank robbers, while bank robbers imagined themselves jewelry thieves. Each rung on the criminal ladder brought new challenges and greater wealth. It was no different than any other profession, except for the penalty of getting caught.
A waitress took his order. When she left, Ike spoke in a hushed tone. “We want to talk to you later, when we can be alone.”
“Do it here. There aren’t any cameras spying on us,” he said.
“Sure there are. They got cameras everywhere in this joint.”
“Surveillance equipment is expensive, so the casinos don’t put cameras in the restaurants or bars except over the cash registers. Look up at the ceiling if you don’t believe me.”
They lifted their heads to stare at the ceiling and both grinned. The conversation was starting out on the right note.
“How’d you get so fucking smart?” Ike asked.
“I had a good teacher.”
“We want to learn the stuff you know. We’re getting tired of this gig.”
“You guys want to learn how to scam casinos?”
“Yeah,” they said in unison.
Billy nearly busted out laughing. One of the keys to cheating was blending in. A cheater had to be just another face in the crowd, which Ike and T-Bird were incapable of, their massive size impossible to miss. If they were going to cheat, they were going to get caught.
But he wasn’t going to tell them that. He did not have a problem if they got nailed. In fact, he liked the idea. They deserved a nice long jail sentence for what they’d done to him last night. But before he led them down the road to ruin, he was going to get something in return.
“I’ll help you, but I want you to explain some stuff,” he said.
“Name it,” Ike said.
“I want to know what Shaz’s deal is. And Crunchie’s.”
“We’re not allowed to talk about Doucette’s old lady,” Ike said. “The topic, as they say, is off limits. But I can talk about old smelly. Doucette hired him to finger cheaters and then turn them over to us. Our job is to hurt them and send a message to other cheaters to stay away.”
“Not kill them?”
“Naw. We ain’t killers. Are we, T?”
“Never killed nobody in my life,” T-Bird said.
“What about Ricky Boswell?”
“We didn’t kill him—you saw the film,” Ike said.
“But you watched.”
“It was messed up. Shaz spotted Ricky casing the casino and took him upstairs and did all that sick stuff to him. She goes off the deep end sometimes.”
“How did she make Ricky?”
“The hotel operators are told to listen to voice messages on guests’ phones and report anything suspicious. An operator picked up a message on the phone in Ricky’s room from a member of his family, and the message got relayed to Shaz. She started following Ricky around the casino, figured out his deal, and had us grab him. When Ricky refused to rat out his family, she snuffed him. It was a bad scene.”
“She’s a sick puppy,” T-Bird added.
“Shaz got sore at Crunchie for not making Ricky,” Ike went on. “She ordered Crunchie to bring another cheater in to figure out the scam. That’s how you got invited to the party.”
Billy played with the salt dispenser while absorbing what Ike had just said. Crunchie was skating on thin ice with his employer, so he’d blackmailed Billy to make things right.
“Is Shaz still pissed at him?” he asked.
“You bet,” Ike said. “Crunchie’s trying to make good by her and find the Gypsies.”
“I thought that was my job.”
“Not if old smelly finds them first.”
Billy had planned to drag his job out until Saturday night; now, it sounded like he’d have to move quicker, or risk having the old grifter upstage him. If that happened, all bets were off.
It was T-Bird’s turn to work on his vocabulary. The brooding hulk with the shoulder-length dreadlocks glanced furtively over his shoulder before locking eyes with Billy. “Me and Ike want to learn the chip scam. Can you teach us?”
“Sure. You got chips with you?” Billy asked.
T-Bird fished two chips from Galaxy’s casino from his shirt pocket and slid them across the table. One was a red five-dollar chip, the other a green twenty-five-dollar chip. Billy stuck them together with a dab of saliva and launched into his explanation.
“You need a dealer working with you. You bet with the green chip showing. When you lose, the dealer turns the chip over in her rack, and you buy it back for five bucks. You can make six hundred bucks a night without drawing heat.”
“That’s all?” T-Bird said.
“Any more, and security will start watching you,” he added.
“We ain’t interested in no nickel-and-dime shit. Teach us the good stuff.”
“Yeah, the good stuff,” Ike chimed in.
Teaching Ike and T-Bird the good stuff would have been about as smart as giving power tools to cavemen. They were only going to hurt themselves.
“Tell us how the mirror in the cigarette pack works,” T-Bird said.
“Yeah, that’s a good one,” Ike said.
“You’re not going to get rich off that scam, either,” he said. “Look, you guys can’t just waltz into a casino and rip them off for a monster score without the alarms going off. It doesn’t work that way. You have to build yourself in. It takes time.”
“You nearly did last night,” T-Bird said.
“I have experience, and I know the angles. You guys are rookies. You have to start in the farm system, and work your way up to the big leagues.”
T-Bird glanced at his partner. “Pretty boy thinks we’re amateurs.”
“Pretty boy is going to get his face rearranged so it ain’t pretty no more,” Ike said.
“I want first licks.”
“I’ll flip you for it. Heads or tails?”
They looked ready to hurt him. The waitress served him his meal. Wanting to make peace, he slid the toasted bagel into the center of the table, speared a sausage patty with his
fork, and dropped it on the bagel. “Have some grub,” he said.
Reaching across the table, Ike picked up the glass of orange juice and poured it over Billy’s food, the bagel as well. He slid out of the booth, as did his partner.
“Get your ass up,” Ike said.
Grabbing the soggy bagel, Billy followed the punishers out of the restaurant.
TWENTY
Coming out of Brando’s, Ike handed his cell phone to Billy.
“Guess who wants to bust your balls,” Ike said.
“Who’s this?” Billy said.
“Hey, Billy, did you have a nice meal in Brando’s? What’s that you’ve got in your hand? A wet bagel? You have strange tastes, kid,” Crunchie said, laughing in his face.
Billy scanned the hotel lobby. Thursday was the beginning of the weekend in Vegas, the lobby a mob scene, with snaking lines of tourists wrestling with luggage in the check-in line. Seeing no sign of the old grifter, he said, “Where are you hiding? Under a rock?”
“I’m in the surveillance room watching you on a monitor,” Crunchie said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m going to catch the Gypsies before you do.”
Casino surveillance rooms were filled with the latest electronic spying equipment. Trained techs stared at a matrix of high-def video monitors, hunting for cheaters and thieves on the casino floor. The old grifter had a huge advantage and had called him to rub it in.
“Want to bet on it?” Billy asked, not willing to throw in the towel.
“You’re a cocky little bastard. Ten grand says I find the Gypsies first.”
“You’re on. You know, Crunch, if you’d made Ricky Boswell like you were hired to do, none of this would have been necessary. You blew it, you dumb shit.”
“Who told you that?”
“A little bird. Have a nice day.”
He ended the call and tossed Ike the cell phone. The game was on.
He sifted through the lobby with the punishers on his heels. The hotel was big enough to hold a few thousand guests, and any one of them could have been a member of the Gypsy clan. He needed to narrow down his search if he was going to catch them.
Raised voices snapped his head. At the check-in, a comely blond reservationist was trying to calm down an irate male guest wearing a rumpled suit and a livid expression.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I can’t do that,” the reservationist said.
“I just traveled two thousand miles,” the man protested.
“Sir, the hotel is completely sold out. There are no rooms.”
“Are you telling me there’s not one available room? I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Are you part of a group or convention?”
“No. I’m here by myself.”
“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
The man stormed off. Weekends were a hot ticket in town, with bookings made months in advance. The Gypsies would have needed to book their rooms a long time ago, unless they were part of a convention. The hotels always reserved blocks of rooms for conventions, and those rooms were held open, even when the rest of the hotel was sold out.
It made sense, when he thought about it. Being part of a group was the perfect cover to pull off a scam. Just wear the plastic registration badge around your neck inside the casino, and no one would pay the slightest attention to you. He needed to find out the names of the groups booked into the hotel and whittle down the list. That couldn’t be terribly hard.
Concierges generally knew the hotel guest list inside out. The concierge on duty was tan and pretty and wore a gold uniform with a burgundy vest and a gold necktie with a crisp knot. He was talking on the phone to a guest when Billy slapped the bell on his desk.
“I need to see your welcome board.”
He followed the direction of the concierge’s finger. A digital welcome board the size of a movie poster hung by the elevators, with names of groups booked into the hotel crawling down the iridescent blue screen. The American Society of Podiatric Surgeons, Esurance, the CAR Group, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, plus a slot tournament, the MacGregor family reunion, and nine weddings. Eenie meeny miney mo. Which group were the Gypsies with?
“What you looking at?” Ike said into his ear.
“Be quiet. I’m working,” he said.
On the board, a calendar of Friday’s events appeared, listing the conference rooms each group was meeting in. The podiatrists were in the Clark Gable lecture hall from nine until four, the car salesmen in the Humphrey Bogart room from eight until noon, followed by a golf tourney on the casino’s Golden Bear course, and so on, every group on the list accounted for. Each group had their days planned out for them, morning, noon, and night. Now he was getting somewhere. Returning to the concierge’s desk, he slapped the bell again, this time much louder.
“What do you want?” the concierge asked.
“Pico,” Billy said, not liking the concierge’s attitude.
“Excuse me?” the concierge said.
“Thomas Pico. I’m a guest in your hotel.”
“You and two thousand other people.”
“Are they all comped in a high-roller suite?”
Tap, tap, tap across the keyboard went the concierge’s fingers. His eyes looked at the screen and grew embarrassingly wide. “Mr. Pico, my apologies. How may I help you?”
“I need to see Saturday’s calendar of events.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to give out that information. House rules.”
“Does the GM have that information?”
“I’m sure he does.”
Billy turned from the concierge desk. “Call Doucette, and ask him to put a call into the GM,” he said to Ike. “I need to see the events calendar for Saturday. The Gypsies are going to be attending a function in the hotel. If I can see the calendar, I should be able to narrow down which group they’re with.”
“You just figured that out staring at that stupid board?” Ike said.
Inanimate objects weren’t stupid. People were stupid.
“That’s right,” he replied.
Ike made the call to Doucette.
A minute later, Shaz emerged from an elevator and crossed the lobby to the concierge desk, snapping heads in a black leather mini, sensuous black leggings, and a black leather jacket zippered to her neck bomber-pilot style. Her outlandish outfits seemed to change by the hour.
“Marcus said you’re onto them,” she said.
“I need to see Saturday’s events calendar,” Billy said. “The Gypsies are booked into the hotel with a group, and I want to see which groups are holding events in the hotel Saturday afternoon. The concierge said the GM has the information.”
“Piece of cake,” she said.
At the registration desk she got a reservationist’s attention by snapping her fingers. A door beside the desk sprung open. Soon they were walking past a warren of sales cubicles to the GM’s corner office. As was her custom, she entered without bothering to knock.
“Surprise,” she said, as if jumping out of a cake.
The GM was on the phone putting out a fire. With the weary expression of a man who spent his day making tough decisions, he said, “I’ll call you right back,” and rose with a pained expression on his face, as if Shaz was the bane of his existence.
“Hello, Ms. Doucette, what can I do for you?” the GM asked.
“Hello, Jerry. We need to see Saturday’s events calendar,” she said.
The nameplate on the desk said his name was Jack, not Jerry. The GM tapped a command into his computer and pivoted the monitor so Saturday’s events calendar faced them.
“That’s the whole list. Anything else I can do, Ms. Doucette?” the GM asked.
“Disappear for a few minutes,” she said.
The GM left the office with the attitude of a man
who just might not come back. Billy brought his face up to the monitor to read the calendar. The foot doctors were attending a lecture from 2:00 until 4:00 p.m., as were the insurance agents. The MacGregor clan was also gathering in the hotel during that time period.
“The Gypsies are part of one of these three groups,” he said.
“How can you know that looking at a screen?” she asked.
“That’s what I asked him,” Ike said.
“Shut the fuck up.” To Billy she said, “Explain yourself.”
“The timing is right. At four o’clock, a shift change will be taking place inside your casino. The day shift will be leaving, and the swing shift will be coming in. At the same time, these groups will be coming out of their conference rooms and flooding the casino floor. You can’t buy a better distraction than that. You’re going to get royally fucked.”
“We’ll post guards on the floor and catch them.”
“Good luck.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We know when they’re coming.”
“Doesn’t matter. You still won’t see them.”
A dark cloud passed over her face. Ike and T-Bird had inched up behind Billy’s chair, hanging on every word. She took her anger out on Ike and dug her elbow into the big man’s gut, making him yelp.
“Out of here, both of you,” she snapped.
The punishers bolted. Shaz was throwing off some seriously bad vibes, and Billy felt himself getting nervous. Lying on the desk was a sterling-silver letter opener shaped like a dagger. If she made a move for it, he was going to knock her down.
“Explain what you just said to me,” she said.
“This isn’t a heist. The Gypsies are cleverer than that,” he said.
“If it’s not a heist, then what is it?”
“It’s a scam. Around four on Saturday afternoon, the Gypsies will enter your casino and rig one of your games right under your nose. Then they’ll split. Later, other members of their family will play that rigged game and win a ton of money. You’ll have to pay them because it will look legit. Only it won’t be. Not by a long shot.”
