by James Swain
“Like hell you did. Shit bird’s lying,” the old grifter said.
“Ask Ike,” Billy said.
“Did he?” Doucette asked.
“Billy said she wasn’t the one,” Ike said under his breath.
“Then why did you grab her?” Doucette said.
“Because old smelly told us to,” Ike said.
“What did you call me?” the old grifter exploded.
“Old smelly. It’s because you stink. Take a shower,” Ike said.
“Both of you, shut up. We’ll deal with this later,” Doucette said.
Doucette resumed looking through the two-way mirror at his new problem. Dyed-blond hair and a nice face, she sported an ugly purple bruise on her forehead along with the ruined blouse. Standing beside her chair was a smarmy casino host with blow-dried hair and sparkling white teeth. A hidden microphone in the ceiling picked up his spiel. He was offering her a free stay, free meals in the casino’s four-star restaurants, free show tickets, and $10,000 of free credit to gamble with, provided she signed a form releasing the casino from liability for the beating she’d endured. When the host tried to shove a pen into her hands, she defiantly crossed her arms in front of her chest. Nothing doing.
“Any idea who she is?” Billy asked.
“Stay out of this,” Crunchie warned him.
“Hey, old man, I’m just trying to help.”
“You never helped anyone in your life,” the old grifter said.
Doucette slapped his hand into the old grifter’s chest. “Shut your yap. I want to hear what pretty boy has to say. Spit it out, kid. What’s on your mind?”
“You’re trying to make peace with her, and you don’t know who she is?” he asked.
“Tell him,” Doucette said to his bride.
“Her name’s Cecilia Torch, and she lives in Sunnyvale, California.” Shaz read off a xeroxed sheet of the woman’s driver’s license that security had made after pulling her off the floor. “That’s all we know about her. She hasn’t spoken a word.”
“Did she ask for a lawyer?”
“No.”
“How about a husband? Did she want to call him? She’s wearing a wedding band.”
“I didn’t hear her ask. Did you?”
“No,” Doucette said. “You think she’s hiding something from us?”
“It sure seems that way,” he said. “Maybe she’s supposed to be on a girls’ weekend, but came to Vegas to shack up with her boyfriend. Or she told her hubby she was heading downstairs to shop, but blew a few grand on the tables and is too ashamed to tell him. Whatever the reason is, she doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Doucette saw the wisdom of what Billy was saying. He spent a long moment studying the problem on the other side of the glass. “I’m still not letting her walk out of that room until she signs that release. Fuck, she’ll sue me for everything I have, and probably get it.”
“You can’t bargain if you don’t know what her deal is,” he said.
“How can I find out what her deal is if she won’t talk?”
“Can I see her ID?”
“Give it to him,” Doucette said.
Billy spent a moment studying the sheet. The woman’s last name was familiar. He could remember every score he’d ever pulled off, right down to the date, time, and the money he’d made. So where had he seen the name Torch? Then it hit him: the name had been on the welcome board in the lobby. Bradford Allaire and Candace Torch were getting hitched in the hotel’s wedding chapel on Saturday followed by a private reception.
Cecilia Torch was the mother of the bride. The punishers had humiliated her, and she was hesitant to call the cops or get her husband involved, fearful she’d ruin her daughter’s upcoming nuptials. That was why she wasn’t responding to the host’s offers.
“I saw the name Torch on the welcome board in the lobby,” he said. “This woman’s daughter is getting married in your hotel Saturday, and she’s afraid she’s going to spoil the wedding. That’s why she’s not talking.”
“Is that all that’s bothering her?” Doucette looked relieved. “Hell, I can fix that.”
Doucette straightened his necktie and went next door. He was as smooth as a snake charmer, and he apologized to Cecilia Torch for the terrible injustice that had occurred, and began to pile on the goodies. Along with all the free stuff the casino host had offered, he was going to throw in free spa treatments for the ladies in the wedding party, free golf for the men, and, best of all, the surprise appearance at the reception of Grammy Award–winning singer Tony Marx, who was appearing in the casino’s theater and who would serenade the bride and groom.
Everyone had their price. For a mother, it was seeing her daughter happy on the most special day of her life. Rising from her chair, Cecilia Torch gave Doucette a motherly hug before snatching the pen from the casino host and scribbling her name across the release.
Together, Cecilia Torch and Doucette walked out of the room.
Billy stared at the empty chair long after Cecilia Torch was gone. It could just as easily have been Mags sitting in that chair, only Doucette wouldn’t have been bribing her but having Ike and T-Bird beat the living daylights out of her. That would have been hard to watch, and he wondered how he would have dealt with it.
“Billy.”
He turned around. While he’d been daydreaming, the punishers and Shaz had left the room, leaving him and Crunchie alone. The old grifter held his arm at chest height, fist cocked, a set of car keys protruding from his fingers, ready to plunge into Billy’s face.
“Going to poke my eyes out?”
“Yup,” the old grifter said.
“I got it worked out, didn’t I?”
“You made me look bad.”
“You already looked bad. Get over it.”
“Don’t play cute with me. I saw what you did in the casino. You paid that cocktail waitress to give Lady Picasso the brush, and she bolted from the table and ran. That one’s working with you, isn’t she? Another of your hot numbers.”
“You think I’d let one of my friends work this place, after what you did to me last night? Get real. I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy.”
Crunchie’s face softened, if only a little. The story added up.
“Then why did you have the waitress give her the brush?” the old grifter asked.
“I wasn’t sure she was marking the cards, so I had the cocktail waitress brush her to see how she’d react. When she jumped from her chair, I knew she was a cheater.”
“How clever. You still let her go.”
“What was I supposed to do, tackle her? That was Ike and T-Bird’s job, and they blew it. When they grabbed the wrong woman coming out of the restroom, I told them to let her go, but did they listen? Did you listen? Hell, no. Stop blaming me for your fuckups.”
“You’re a slick son of a bitch.”
“It’s the truth. Believe what you want.”
The old grifter lowered his fist and pocketed his keys. “Maybe it is the truth, but know this. This little stunt doesn’t change a fucking thing. You still have a job to do, and that’s to find the Gypsies before they scam us Saturday afternoon. If you don’t come up with the goods, your crew is going down, and so are you.”
“You’d really hurt my crew?”
“Damn straight I will. And don’t give me that bullshit about the code saying you can’t rat out another cheater. Nobody believes that anymore.”
“I do.”
“Like hell you do.”
“We live by the code. The rules when it comes to other thieves are clear. Don’t expose another thief’s identity. Never rat out another thief to the law. Help another thief whenever you can. Those are the rules, man.”
“Do you really believe that, Billy? With all your heart, and all your soul?”
“Damn s
traight I do.”
“Then why’d you agree to rat out the Gypsies? Wait, I’ll tell you why. Because you want to keep your crew from going to jail. They mean more to you than the fucking code, don’t they?”
The real answer was right there, but Crunchie was too blind to see it.
“You’re no different than me, kid. You just don’t want to admit it.”
Crunchie walked out of the room thinking he’d won the argument. Billy followed him into the hall knowing otherwise. The deal he’d struck with Doucette had been nothing more than a bold-faced lie, born out of necessity to save his friends. By lying, he’d bought himself time to work his way out of his jam. If he put his mind to it, he’d find a way to make sure no harm came to the Gypsies, while continuing to abide by a strict set of rules that he’d lived by for most of his life. He may have been a criminal, but he wasn’t an animal. There was a difference, despite what the old grifter believed.
TWENTY-SIX
Mags awoke with a start and spent a moment collecting her thoughts. She hated screwing in hotel rooms, but that was the price you paid for sleeping with a married man.
She slipped naked out of bed. From the closet she grabbed a fluffy white bathrobe several sizes too big, then fixed herself a stiff drink at the minibar.
“You want something?”
Special Agent Frank Grimes stood on the balcony in his striped boxers, gazing down at the Strip. After picking her up outside Galaxy, they’d come to Harrah’s for a good screw and a nice room-service meal. She hadn’t been in the mood, but there was no arguing when Frank wanted it. His wife had cut him off years ago, and he was hornier than a pack of Cub Scouts.
She’d known a few cops in her time. Most hated their jobs and longed for different careers. Gaming agents were a different breed. The state gave them unlimited power to police casinos, and they spent their days running down cheaters and collecting tax revenue. Crooks feared them, and casinos hated them. For Frank, that was just fine.
“How about a cold beer?”
No response. Normally, Frank jumped at the sound of her voice. Her purse lay on the dresser, the contents pulled out, including the metal tin containing the daub she used to mark cards. The breath caught in her throat.
When she’d become an informant for the gaming board, she’d promised Frank she’d stop cheating, and had gone right on doing it, thinking he was too infatuated with her to figure it out.
Stupid her.
The room had matching leather chairs. Drink in hand, she parked herself in one and let her bathrobe part. She wanted Frank to see her pussy when he came inside. It was crude, but what the hell else could she do? Her body was all she had left.
Her death spiral had started four years ago. She’d been in Atlantic City painting cards at one of Trump’s carpet joints when a square john at her table had alerted security, who’d looked at the surveillance tapes and arrested her. Instead of copping a plea and doing time in a country club prison, she’d skipped bail and moved to Sin City and set up shop.
It had worked for a while. She’d cheated the casinos and flown under the radar and life had been good. She’d gotten set up in a condo, had a closet filled with nice clothes, and took an occasional vacation to the warm beaches of Cancún.
Her undoing had come two years later. Her daughter was graduating high school and Mags had decided to call her. Her grandparents had raised Amber, and she hardly knew her own kid. She’d let the call drag on, never guessing Amber’s phone was tapped. An hour after hanging up, two Metro LVPD cruisers had invaded her drive, and her life on the lam had ended.
Right before trial, Frank had paid her a visit in the county lockup and offered her an undercover job with the gaming board in return for dropping the charges. Frank was comic-book ugly and had no class. She couldn’t see herself doing it, and said no.
If nothing else, Frank was persistent. He showed her a letter from a female inmate incarcerated in a notorious prison called Ely. In the letter, the woman stated that rotting in hell was better than her situation and that by the time her family read this, she’d be dead. Then Frank showed Mags a photograph of the woman hanging from a bedsheet. Mags caved, and a snitch was born.
Frank came inside. He glanced guiltily between her legs before sitting down.
“Ready to go another round, big boy?” she asked playfully.
“You’re in real trouble,” he said.
“How about a blow job?”
“Stop talking like that.”
“It never bothered you before. You want it—I can see it in your face.”
She crawled across the carpet on her knees, ready to go down on him. She looked into his eyes for compliance, and he pushed her away.
“You promised me you’d keep your nose clean,” he said.
She returned to her chair. “I must have forgotten.”
“I’m paying you five grand a month—isn’t that enough?”
“I can always use a little more.”
“I sent you into Galaxy’s casino to find a drug dealer named Reverend Rock. You weren’t supposed to scam the joint, you stupid bitch.”
His voice was turning harsh. If she wasn’t careful, he’d start slapping her around if the answers she gave him didn’t ring true. She closed her bathrobe. “You told me Rock’s game was blackjack, so I sat down at a game, thinking he might show his face. I started cheating without realizing it. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s just habit. Then a cocktail waitress asks me if I want a drink. I say no, and she gives me the brush.”
“A cocktail waitress made you?”
“Another hustler paid her to do it.”
“You ran into another hustler?”
“That’s right. Name’s Billy Cunningham. I knew him when he was a kid.”
“Billy Cunningham saved your ass?”
“You know him?”
“I nearly nailed that little fucker at the Hard Rock, and he turned the tables on me. If I ever catch him, I’ll put him away for the rest of his life.”
Mags grew quiet. She was joining Billy’s crew, to hell with her deal with Frank. Billy had offered her a fresh start, something she’d been trying to do since the quarterback of the high school football team had knocked her up in his car, and she’d quit school to have Amber, and her life had become one long slippery slope of failure and brushes with the law. She hadn’t thought there was a way to climb out of the hole she’d dug for herself, and then Billy had said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” and it had all changed.
“Okay, finish your story,” Frank said.
“The cocktail waitress gives me the brush, so I ditched my disguise in the restroom and ran. I’m outside waiting for you when Cunningham comes out. We went inside to a bar and had a drink. He told me the people running Galaxy were bad news, and that they’d kill me if they caught me. He told me never to come back.”
“Think he was protecting you?”
“I guess.”
“Does he have the hots for you?”
“Probably. I turned on his love light a long time ago.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“For Christ’s sake, he was fifteen years old.”
“What was he doing in Galaxy? Running a scam?”
“He didn’t say. I got the impression he was doing a job for them.”
“He wouldn’t be the first criminal on Doucette’s payroll.”
Frank stared absently into space, processing the things she’d said. In a moment of weakness after sex, he’d told her that millions in drug money was being laundered through Galaxy’s casino by a dealer out of LA named Rock, and that the gaming board had gathered enough evidence to raid the place, and that they wanted Rock on the premises to make the case stick. How Billy’s working for Doucette played into this was anyone’s guess, although she felt certain that Frank would figure it out. Frank always did.
It just took a little time.
She went to the minibar and fixed a Jack and Coke extra strong. Kneeling beside his chair, she served him, and his cop mask melted away. If she didn’t ask him now, she’d never find out.
“Tell me what Cunningham did to you at the Hard Rock,” she said.
Frank had been chasing Billy for a while. Whenever Billy was in a casino, money flew out the door, a sure sign that cheating was taking place.
Gaming agents were rated by the number of busts they made. To accomplish this task, agents could freeze games in casinos, enter restricted areas, and tap phone lines of employees and guests. They had unlimited authority and did not hesitate to use it.
Frank had gone around town and given Billy’s head shot to several casinos and asked them to videotape Billy if the young hustler showed his face.
Eventually, Billy appeared in one of the casinos and was taped. Frank studied the tape and determined that Billy and his crew were bringing gaffed dice onto the craps table. Billy’s crew was slicker than snot on a brass doorknob, and no jury would convict them based upon the fuzzy images on the tape. To make an arrest stick, Frank would have to catch them red-handed.
Frank did some more digging and learned that Billy lived in a luxury condo at Turnberry Towers, even though the condo was in someone else’s name. He got a warrant from a judge to tap Billy’s phone and for several weeks listened to Billy’s calls.
Everyone slipped up, even the smart ones. One day while talking to a friend, Billy mentioned wanting to check out the Rehab pool, which was part of the Hard Rock. The remark made Frank believe that Billy had the Hard Rock in his sights and was planning to rip it off.
Frank decided to set a trap and camped out in the Hard Rock’s surveillance room, living on sandwiches and black coffee. His intuition paid off. Two days later, Billy and his crew appeared in the Hard Rock’s craps pit and started scamming. Frank alerted casino security and went downstairs. He was determined to catch Billy with the gaffed dice, and parked himself directly outside the front entrance.
