Take Down

by James Swain

  “This woman going to work with you?”

  “No. I found out she’s a snitch for the gaming board.”

  “How you know that?”

  “She tripped up. When we first met, I told her how my old man wanted me to go to college. I left after a year, and Mags asked why I quit. I never told anyone that I quit, except the gaming board. When Mags repeated the lie, I knew she was working with them.”

  “This woman no good.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Why you quit college? Something bad happen?”

  He stared at the pool’s still surface. He’d traveled three thousand miles to escape the utter shame of his failure, yet there were times when the distance wasn’t nearly far enough. Ly put her hand on his arm.

  “What you do? Sleep with all the girls and make them cry?”

  “I wish it was that simple.”

  “You not going to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “I tell you my secrets. Why won’t you tell me yours?”

  She was prying, and he gave her a hard look.

  “Why do you care? There’s nothing in it for you.”

  “I just trying to be your friend.”

  “Do you really mean that?”

  She took her hand away and nodded solemnly.

  “All right. Here’s why I left,” he said.

  The beginning of the end of his days at MIT had begun early one Saturday morning with a visit from two big-gutted Boston cops. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he’d stepped into the hallway outside his dorm room to discover the boys in blue banging on doors, looking for him. When he’d asked what the problem was, the one in charge had wagged a finger in his face.

  “You’re the problem. Get dressed. We’re going for a walk.”

  As they crossed the campus and walked down bitterly cold Mass Avenue, Billy wondered what he’d done. He’d tried to keep his nose clean since entering college, but it had been tough. There were too many stuck-up rich kids that needed to be knocked down a peg, and he’d cheated them at weekly poker games for extra spending money. The scores had been chump change, and he couldn’t imagine that it had led to anything serious.

  His attitude changed as they’d entered the office of the dean of undergraduate education. The dean was at his desk, a squirrely fellow wearing a dated striped suit and tie, his face a study in odd tics and twitches. The dean had presented Billy with his award a few weeks ago, and they were on a first-name basis. With him was a lanky detective with a badge pinned to his suit coat. Parked in chairs by the window were two juniors named Brett Wolf and Dan Fleshman. Wolf and Fleshman were his buddies, although judging by their refusal to make eye contact, he sensed they’d just thrown him under the bus.

  “Hello, Billy,” the dean said solemnly.

  “Good morning, Dean,” he replied. “How have you been?”

  “To be honest, I’ve been better. Do you have any idea why you’re here?”

  “Because my friends are assholes,” he nearly said. Instead he said, “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “Brett and Dan have implicated you in a plot to scam the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. They claim you masterminded the operation, and attempted to steal a quarter of a million dollars from the casino.”

  Billy swallowed hard. What had these two clowns done?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “We have proof, Billy. Why don’t you fess up and save us the trouble?”

  “Because there’s nothing to fess up to.”

  “You’re making this hard on yourself, son.”

  “I’m Detective Peret with the Boston Police Department,” interrupted the man with the badge. He had the ruddy complexion that came from too many pints, what the locals called a saloon tan. “As you probably know, the Mohegan Sun is run by the Pequot Indian nation. I’ve been asked by the head of Pequot’s tribal police department to speak with you. The Pequots are very disturbed by what your friends have done. Do you mind if I call you Billy?”

  He wanted to kill Wolf and Fleshman. Instead of ripping off the Pequots for a few grand a week as they’d agreed to, they’d gotten greedy and gone for the big enchilada.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “Good. Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” From the dean’s desk Peret picked up a kid’s video poker game made by Bally Gaming. The game had been a big seller last Christmas and in all the department stores. “Last night, your friends got caught stealing a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar jackpot from a video poker machine at the casino. The video poker machine that got scammed was made by Bally Gaming. According to what your friends have told us, you figured out a way to use this kid’s game, also made by Bally, to scam the casino version. Is this ringing any bells, Billy?”

  “They’re lying,” he said.

  “Really? You created the software program they used to scam the game. We found the original on a computer in your statistics class. Your name was on it.”

  Whoops. So much for covering his tracks.

  “I want to speak to a lawyer,” he said.

  “No, you don’t,” Peret said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m here to cut a deal with you. The Pequots want to know how your friends knew the cards that were going to come up on their video poker machine. If you explain how you did that, they won’t press charges, and I won’t arrest you.”

  Rule number one of cheating was never to explain, because an explanation was an admission of guilt, and once you admitted your guilt, your goose was cooked. But the other option was no fun, either. Arrest, plea bargain, or maybe a trial, and jail time.

  “Detective, you have yourself a deal,” he said.

  Peret’s disposition grew more hospitable. The detective crossed the office and handed Billy the video poker game. “Explain how you did it, and don’t leave anything out.”

  “You got it.” He hit the play button on the machine and the game came to life. “I saw this game in a store last Christmas, and it got me to thinking. I knew Bally made casino video poker machines, and I wondered if they’d programmed the game’s internal clock using the same software that they’d used for their casino games. It would save time, and lots of money.”

  “Did they?” Peret asked.

  “Yes, although it took me a while to figure it out. First, I analyzed the game on a computer, and discovered it used a random function to shuffle its internal deck of cards. The random function generates starting values, called seeds, which are randomly changed each time you play. It’s a simple formula. When a player hits the game’s start button, the random function looks at the number of milliseconds which have elapsed since twelve a.m. and uses that number to create the seed. With me so far?”

  “Keep talking, smart-ass,” Peret said.

  “Since there are eighty-six million milliseconds each day, the seeds should be totally random, ensuring a fair game. Because I knew the starting point was twelve a.m., I was able to work my way backward, calculate the seed, and then calculate which cards would come out. I was able to cheat the store game within a few hours.

  “Cheating the casino version of the game came next. Brett, Dan, and I visited the Mohegan Sun, and Brett played a game of video poker while Dan read the cards off the screen to me with his cell phone. I was in our hotel room on my laptop, and I ran the cards through my software program using the twelve a.m. starting point. Sure enough, the internal clock on the casino game was identical to the store game. We started beating the casino game right away.”

  “How much did you win?” Peret asked.

  “Two grand. I told them not to win too much. You know they say hogs get fed, pigs get slaughtered. I guess they didn’t listen.”

  “That would be an understatement,” the detective said.

  Tired of
talking, Billy bought a bottled water from a vending machine, which he split with Ly when he returned to their poolside chairs.

  “You get thrown out?” she asked.

  “Yup. Packed my bags and left that morning. The dean took the award back, gave me a real dressing down. It was humiliating. Then I went home. That was worse.”

  “What happen?”

  “My old man was in the kitchen reading the Saturday paper. I came in through the back door and dropped my suitcases on the floor and told him flat out what had happened. I didn’t even take my coat off. When I was finished, my old man didn’t say a thing. He just took off his reading glasses and wiped the tears from his eyes. I never saw him cry before. Not even when my grandparents died or my mom got thrown in jail. You understand what I’m saying? The man didn’t cry. I broke my father’s fucking heart.”

  “What you do then?”

  “I took a Greyhound bus to Vegas.”

  “You no make up?”

  “It was too late for that.”

  He’d called his old man every week until he’d passed, but it had never been the same between them. Every man worth his salt dreamed of a better life, if not for himself, then for his children, and he’d shattered his father’s dream with the reckless disregard of a drunk shattering an empty beer bottle on the curb. It was a hurt that he could not fix, and he hadn’t even bothered to try.

  “That sad,” she said.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  She rose from her chair and held out her hand.

  “Let’s go back to room. I make you feel better.”

  He looked up into her pretty face. It was tempting, but he wasn’t going there.

  “You go,” he said.

  “But . . .”

  “Just go.”

  “Don’t you want to feel better?”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  She left without a word. She’d gotten to hear his story, and that was all she was getting.

  He stared at the pool’s flat surface for what felt like an eternity. If he had to do it over again, would he have done things differently? For his old man’s sake, he liked to think so. He could have enrolled in a community college and gotten a degree in math or engineering and still made his old man proud. That wouldn’t have been so hard.

  But he hadn’t done that. Instead, he’d headed to Vegas and never looked back. It was the life he’d chosen and he had no regrets, except when his old man’s birthday came around.

  Then he cried like hell.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THE HOT SEAT: SUNDAY, LATE

  “Tell us about Saturday,” LaBadie said. “We want to hear what happened in Galaxy’s casino. Don’t leave anything out.”

  LaBadie, Zander, and Tricaricco were not happy campers. Their all-day deodorants were starting to fade, their chins sprouting five o’clock shadows. Dinnertime had come and gone, along with any hope of spending Sunday night with their families. Billy wasn’t going anywhere, and he took his time drinking a warm can of soda before answering the question.

  “A strange thing happened on Saturday,” he said. “I discovered that another crime was being hatched, right under Doucette’s nose, and he didn’t know a damn thing about it.”

  “Another crime besides the Gypsies?” LaBadie asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Tell us about it.”

  “Doucette had a pair of gay football players on his payroll named Ike and T-Bird. I got to know these guys pretty well. They told me that Doucette’s strip clubs were a front for a drug dealer named Rock, and that Rock had bankrolled Galaxy. Needless to say, I got upset.”

  “You got upset.”

  “That’s right. I know how hard the gaming board tries to keep drug money out of the casinos. I mean, it’s what you guys get paid for, isn’t it? And here I’m being told that a drug dealer pulled the wool over your eyes and actually got a casino built with drug money.”

  “You’re not funny, Billy.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Where was I? Oh yeah, Ike and T-Bird told me that Doucette was using check-cashing stores in town to launder the profits from Rock’s drug operation and turn the cash into money orders. They said Doucette was laundering eight million a pop, which I couldn’t believe. Doesn’t the gaming board monitor those stores to make sure stuff like that doesn’t happen?”

  “Make another remark like that, and you’ll pay for it.”

  “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

  “I’m sure you are. Tell us about this crime Ike and T-Bird were planning.”

  “Ike and T-Bird were planning to steal the eight million in money orders from the cage and wanted my help. Of course, I said no.”

  “Those money orders were stolen yesterday afternoon,” LaBadie said, barely able to contain his anger. “Are you saying that you and your crew had nothing to do with the theft?”

  “I already told you, I don’t have a crew.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “My client did not rob Galaxy Casino and does not have a crew,” the attorney said, having not spoken a word for several hours. “Please stop repeating these false allegations.”

  LaBadie retrieved his briefcase from the floor and placed it on the center of the table. From it, he removed a stack of eight-by-ten glossy photographs taken from a casino surveillance camera. Each photo had the date and time stamped in the corner.

  The gaming agent placed the top photo on the table so it faced Billy. It showed Ike standing at the cage, cashing in the fake gold chips. T-Bird was also in the shot, accompanied by Misty and Pepper in their disguises.

  “Admit, it, these two women work for you,” LaBadie said.

  “Never seen them before,” he said.

  “They’re not part of your crew?”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Then explain this.”

  Three more surveillance photos were produced and placed on the table. The cameras had caught his crew doing the pigeon drop and stealing the eight million in money orders from Ike and T-Bird.

  Shit, he thought.

  LaBadie had a smug look on his face, having backed his suspect into a corner.

  “Ready to confess?” the gaming agent asked.

  “To what?” he asked innocently.

  “We’re willing to cut you a deal, provided you give us the names of the people in your crew. And, we want the eight million in money orders returned. Give us those two things, and we’ll go light on you. Think about it, Billy.”

  Even the best cops made mistakes, and LaBadie had just made a major one. The gaming board didn’t know the names of Billy’s crew.

  “I’m not interested in cutting any deals because I didn’t do anything,” Billy said. “Do you want to hear the rest of my story or not?”

  LaBadie left the incriminating photos on the table and returned to his chair.

  “Go ahead with your story,” he said. Then he added, “It’s your funeral.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  THE HEIST

  Saturday morning, 6:00 a.m., the dingy motel room filled with harsh sunlight. It was a rude way to wake up, and Billy crawled off the couch to pull the blinds.

  His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Ly murmured in her sleep, and he looked at her lying in the big bed by herself. He’d stayed up late, come into her room to watch a little TV, and had crashed. He checked his Droid to see if he’d been missed, and saw no messages.

  He took a short walk to the 7-Eleven at the end of the block. The pastries had just come out of the oven, and he bought doughnuts and chocolate cookies. He held the mouth of the bag beneath her nose upon returning to the room.

  “Here’s some yum for your tum,” he said.

  She rolled over and started to snore. He tu
rned on the TV, and checked the weather while munching on a doughnut. It rained less than five inches a year in Vegas. The rest of the time, it was hot and dry. Today would be no different.

  He thought about his old pals Wolf and Fleshman. He’d done a search not long ago and discovered that Fleshman was a personal injury attorney, while Wolf had gone to work for one of the financial institutions that had bankrupted the country. Their gutless betrayal had ruined his life, yet he didn’t think they particularly cared. It had been a good lesson. He chose his partners carefully now and did not tolerate betrayal.

  Time to go. He took half the money from his wallet and left it on the night table.

  He made sure to hang the “DO NOT DISTURB” sign before walking out.

  A cab dropped him off at Galaxy’s entrance. The joint was a tomb, and he heard a lone slot machine being played as he walked through the lobby. He would have bet that the player had blue hair and a Popeye-sized forearm, only there was no one to take his action.

  He went upstairs to his suite. An empty bottle of Jack sat on the bar, the TV showing the porn channel, a pair of hot blonds doing each other while a tattooed dude masturbated. According to Pepper and Misty, the porn shown on hotel channels was shot in an industrial warehouse. It took the fun out of watching it, and he killed the picture.

  The door to the punishers’ bedroom was ajar. He stole a look inside and saw them passed out in each other’s arms. He’d told them to dial back the partying, and they’d gone and gotten shit-faced anyway. He couldn’t wait to lose these two guys.

  He got a bottled water from the fridge. A message pad lay on the bar. The top sheet had been written on, then scribbled over. People only scribbled over things they wanted to hide. He tore away the top sheet and studied the indentations on the sheet below. It was a woman’s name—Amanda Fernandez. And a long phone number that suggested another country.

  It didn’t feel right, and he decided to call the number. A Mexican woman answered in Spanish. Should he pretend to be Ike or T-Bird? He covered the mouthpiece of the phone.