by James Swain
“This is Ike Spears. Did you call me?”
“Mr. Spears? I didn’t recognize your voice,” the woman said, switching to English.
“I’ve got a cold. What’s up?”
“I sent you an e-mail last night. Did you get it?”
“Afraid not. My cell phone’s been acting up.”
“I’ll resend it. Take a look, see what you think. It’s a wonderful property—perfect for you and your partner. I will tell you up front that the price is firm. It’s a hot market these days.”
“I’ll look for your e-mail.”
“Talk to you soon. Feel better!”
He ended the call. So Ike was talking to a Mexican real estate agent about buying a house. Not a bad idea, only he didn’t understand why Ike had gone to the trouble of scribbling out the woman’s name. Was Ike trying to hide something?
He searched the suite for Ike’s cell phone. Not finding it, he decided to chance it and slipped into the punishers’ bedroom, where he discovered Ike’s cell phone lying on the dresser. It was a newer-model Droid. He left the bedroom and silently shut the door.
He locked himself into the bathroom. The Droid needed a password. He guessed it was something easy, and typed Ike’s name in, no spaces. The phone unlocked itself. The screen was covered with apps. He pressed the e-mail app and went to Ike’s inbox. In it were two e-mails from Amanda Fernandez, one sent moments ago. Its subject matter: “Your house—SMDA.”
He read the e-mail. SMDA stood for San Miguel de Allende, a small colonial town tucked away in the heart of central Mexico. The property Fernandez was trying to sell Ike was called Ranchos de los Olivos. Fernandez claimed it was “perfect for two gentlemen” and that it offered “all the amenities.” Included was a link, which he clicked on. Soon he was taking a virtual tour of the ranch of the olives.
It was opulent by anyone’s standards. Twelve acres of lush landscaping with a kidney-shaped swimming pool, four-stall horse barn, and a magnificent eight-thousand-square-foot ranch house with high-ceilinged rooms, polished wood floors, working fireplaces, and plenty of old-world charm. The asking price was $2,550,000, which Fernandez had said was firm.
The price raised a red flag. Ike and T-Bird’s take from the scam was two million. Not enough to pay for this joint. So where was the rest of the money coming from? It certainly wasn’t going to fall out of the sky.
He hadn’t been born yesterday. Ike and T-Bird were planning to double-cross him and take it all.
He returned Ike’s cell phone to the bedroom without waking them. Soon he was descending in an elevator to the main floor, where he got out and boarded a service elevator. He punched in the code that Ike had used the day before and hit the button for the fourteenth floor.
He started to rise and realized he was trembling. The fourteenth floor was his personal house of horrors, a place that he’d never wanted to return to. But it was also an area of the hotel that only a limited number of people had access to, and that made it valuable to him.
The doors parted and he stepped out. The floor was humming with activity—electricians installing light fixtures in the ceilings, carpenters firing nails, dusty men laying Sheetrock. The last unfinished rooms were coming together. Soon they’d be filled with guests, and the ghost of Ricky Boswell would have someone to keep him company.
He spent a moment checking the ceiling light fixtures in the hall. The covers had not been installed and the security cameras used to monitor guest activity were in plain view. The tiny red light that flashed when the cameras were operating was dark, and he guessed these cameras would not be operational until the floor was finished.
He entered an unfinished suite. The layout was identical to the suite where Ricky had died, and he walked down a hallway to the master bedroom. An electrician wearing dirty blue jeans and sneakers wrestled with ductwork for the room’s AC handler inside the closet. The closet’s back wall had been removed and was propped against the bed. The space behind the wall looked perfect for what he needed.
The electrician stepped out of the closet. “Who are you?”
“I’m in charge of decoration,” he said.
“Where’s your badge?”
“I don’t have one. Is that a problem?”
“Everyone working on the floor is supposed to have a badge. Union rules. I’m going to have to report you, pal.”
The guy had a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. It was the same with most people that worked for the casinos. The casinos made billions while their employees made jack. The imbalance created resentment that carried over into every phase of the employees’ lives.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that. I don’t need the union harassing me,” he said.
The electrician said nothing, unmoved.
“Look, I’ve got a surplus of movie stills that aren’t going to be used. I’ll give them to you if you don’t report me.”
“Movie stills, huh. How many?” the electrician asked.
“Two dozen.”
“What do they run?”
“A couple hundred apiece.”
“No kidding. Anyone I’ve heard of?”
“Clint Eastwood, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicholson. Want them?”
“You bet I want them.” The electrician wiped his hand on his pants leg and stuck it out. “My name’s Buzzy. Nice doing business with you.”
“Same here. I’ll bring them by tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here. We’re working all weekend.”
He left the bedroom convinced the electrician would not call the union and report him. In the hallway he stopped to read the number on the brass door plaque. Room 1412.
By the elevators was a utility room. He went in and flipped on the overhead light. The room was a catchall and filled with garbage pails overflowing with debris. One man’s garbage was another man’s treasure, and in one pail he found a pair of painter’s coveralls that reeked of turpentine. More digging revealed a painter’s hat and a used surgical mask. He stuck everything on a shelf behind some equipment where the clothes would not be seen.
He came out of the utility room thinking he’d covered all his bases. If Ike and T-Bird thought they were going to rip him off, he’d let them continue to believe that, right until the bitter end. He was going to pay them back for every punch and every slap, so help him God.
Riding down to the main floor, he started to hum. The day was starting out right, and he had a sneaking feeling it was only going to get better.
FORTY-NINE
Gabe liked a good challenge. That was what separated the men from the boys, the rich from the poor. It was why he enjoyed working for Billy; a week didn’t go by when the young hustler didn’t present him with a new way to rob a casino, and challenge Gabe to manufacture the apparatus necessary to make the scam work.
So far, Gabe was batting a thousand. Not once had he let Billy down. But there was always a first time, and the challenge of counterfeiting fake hundred-thousand-dollar gold chips in his garage had proven harder than he’d anticipated.
Once upon a time, Vegas casinos got counterfeited on a regular basis. Clever thieves took advantage of inexperienced cashiers and lax security and passed off handfuls of bogus chips before sprinting to the exits with their loot.
Casinos hated to get robbed, even for a measly dollar. Over time, they’d devised a series of elaborate tests to stop fake chips from appearing in their cashiers’ trays. These tests had proven highly effective, and today, it was rare to hear of a casino being counterfeited.
It was this hurdle that Gabe was attempting to overcome. He had to beat a series of tests that the industry considered foolproof. If he succeeded, endless days of wine and roses. If he failed, a life of banging out license plates in a prison machine shop.
Eight a.m. Saturday morning, after no sleep, he shuffled from his garage into the kitchen of hi
s house carrying a tin can containing the forged chips that he’d spent the night slaving over. He yawned without covering his mouth.
The rest of the crew huddled around the kitchen table, eating scrambled eggs on paper plates. They’d spent the night bringing him coffee and keeping him company. Gabe had liked that. He missed his wife and kids, and it had been nice to have people in his house again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. The show is about to begin,” the jeweler announced. “Please remove your plates.”
The kitchen table was cleared. Pouring the gold chips from the can, Gabe spread them out so each chip was exposed. Eighty chips in all, they covered a large portion of the table.
“Our first act is called pick the winner. One of these little beauties is the real hundred-thousand-dollar gold chip that Billy gave me to work with. The rest are counterfeits. I defy you to pick the winner. No touching, please. You have to do it by sight alone.”
“How many chances do we get?” Misty asked.
“Three,” Gabe said.
“What do we win if we pick it out?”
“You get to watch a grown man cry. On your marks. Ready, set . . . go!”
While the crew studied the chips, Gabe fixed himself a cup of coffee with the Keurig coffee machine and laced it with enough artificial sweetener to kill a lab rat. His ex-wife hadn’t left much in the way of household furnishings, but the items she had left, like the Keurig, he used every single day. It made him think she still cared about him, if only a little bit.
“Time’s up. Make your selections, please. Ladies first.”
Misty picked three chips from the middle of the pile. Gabe explained that the real chip had been x-ed with a Sharpie on its opposite side. He flipped over Misty’s selections.
“Sorry, you lose,” he said.
“Fuck,” she said.
Pepper went next, followed by Morris, Cory, and Travis. Each failed to find the real chip. Gabe smiled to himself. The color on the fake chips was a match. If it hadn’t been, the real chip would have jumped out like a sore thumb.
“Which chip is real?” Travis asked.
“Beats me.”
Gabe flipped the remaining chips over until he found the ringer. Each member of the crew took it and compared it to the others on the table.
“You’re a genius,” Travis declared.
“You’re only saying that because it’s true. Save your applause until we’re done.”
Billy had given Gabe a gym bag filled with chips from Galaxy’s casino to work with. Gabe removed ten of these chips from his pocket and stacked them. He then made a second stack using ten fake gold chips and placed the two stacks side-by-side.
“New game,” he said. “Who wants to play?”
“I do,” Misty said.
“How good is your vision?”
“Twenty-twenty.”
“Perfect. The chips in Galaxy’s casino weigh eleven point five grams, are thirty-nine millimeters in diameter, and are exactly four millimeters wide. The fake chips I counterfeited should be exactly the same size. If I erred, it will show up in these two stacks. I want you to visually compare the stacks and see if they’re identical.”
Misty placed her chin on the table and eyed the two stacks of chips. Gabe held his breath and waited. If he’d made even the slightest miscalculation in the width, it would be exposed when multiplied by the number of chips in the stack.
“They’re exactly the same. What do I win?” Misty said.
“My never-ending gratitude.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
Gabe had the others check as well. They all agreed that the stacks’ heights were exactly the same. Every race had a finish line; his was now in sight.
Time for the third and last test. He asked Pepper to assist him. He arranged the chips into three stacks of five chips. Two of the stacks were real Galaxy chips, while the third contained five fake gold chips.
“Are you right-handed or left-handed?” he asked.
“I’m a rightie,” Pepper replied.
“I want you to pick up one of the stacks of real chips and let them fall to the table. Do it slowly, and let each chip brush past your fingertips.”
“What for?”
“I want you to get a feel for them. Casino chips are made from sand, chalk, and the same clay they use in kitty litter. It’s what gives them that special feel.”
“Cat litter? Come on, be serious.”
“I am being serious. Now try it.”
Pepper picked up a stack of real Galaxy chips and let them fall from her fingertips to the table. She repeated this several times.
“You’re right. They do have a special feel,” she said.
“Okay. Now close your eyes,” Gabe said.
“Ohhh, this sounds like it’s going to be fun.”
Pepper shut her eyes. Gabe moved the stacks around the table as if playing the three-shell game. Then he guided Pepper’s hand toward the stacks and had her repeat the process with each stack. All of the human senses could be tricked, except for human touch. If the stack of fake chips felt different than the others, her fingers would sense it.
“Which stack is the fakes?” Gabe asked.
“I’m not sure. Can I feel the stacks again?”
“Be my guest.”
The process was repeated. Pepper seemed intent on picking out the phonies, and Gabe felt himself getting nervous. A female bank teller in Hong Kong had broken up a major counterfeiting ring while counting a stack of fake hundreds at work. The fake hundreds had beaten all the bank’s detection devices but not the teller’s acute sense of touch.
“Time’s up. Please make your selection,” he said.
“They all feel the same. I can’t tell the difference,” Pepper said.
“Pick one anyway.”
Pepper picked up the center stack and opened her eyes. “Whoops, you got me.”
She’d chosen a stack of real chips. Gabe walked around the kitchen collecting high fives from the rest of the crew. His work was done; now it was their turn to shine.
He took a place at the kitchen table and let them serve him breakfast. As the food was being prepared, Travis pulled up a chair. Picking up one of the fake gold chips, Travis rolled it across his hairy knuckles in dexterous fashion.
“What happens if we get caught with these babies?” Travis asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Gabe said.
“Got to. I’ve got a family now.”
For the crime of dropping a slug in a slot machine, the state would put a person away for three years. For more sophisticated counterfeiting crimes, the penalties were more severe.
“You’ll do five to seven for trying to pass the fake chips, and I’ll do life for manufacturing them. I’m sure Billy’s taken all of that into consideration.”
“How so?”
“He’ll get a sucker to cash in the fake chips. That’s how major counterfeiting scams work. A sucker takes the risk, while the cheater gets the lion’s share of the reward.”
“What’s the risk to us?”
“Inside the casino? None.”
“How about outside the casino?”
“Just the equipment in my garage. If that gets found, we’re screwed.”
“Have you thought about dumping it?”
“I’ve already reserved a moving truck. On Sunday morning, I’ll load up the equipment and make a trip to the landfill in Boulder City. You’re welcome to come along.”
“Boulder City’s a haul. Why not dump it in a landfill nearby?”
“Vegas landfills use transfer stations, so the employees see what you’re dumping. Boulder City doesn’t have a transfer station. Once we dump the equipment, it’s gone.”
“You’ve thought this all out, haven’t you?�
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Gabe nodded and sipped his coffee. He was a stickler for cleaning up after a job. The more you cleaned, the less chance of getting caught. It had become so ingrained in Gabe’s head that he thought about how he was going to clean up before every job he did.
“I’ve got a wife and kids, too, you know,” Gabe added.
FIFTY
Mags awoke in the middle of the night with her ear on fire and chugged down a pain pill along with a glass of scotch to make the burning sensation go away. It had done a number on her, and at ten o’clock the next morning, she could not get out of bed. That would have been okay, only some jackass was pounding on her front door.
“Go away,” she said.
The pounding grew frantic, the sound busting up the protective coating around her poor brain. It wasn’t going to stop until she made it stop. Still wearing last night’s clothes, she cleaned her teeth, brushed down her Bride of Frankenstein hair, and when she’d taken possession of herself, went into the living room and parted the curtains to the window that faced the street.
Frank was on the stoop, banging on the door. His SUV idled in the driveway, the black exhaust belching warning signals into the air. He was the last person she wanted to talk to, and she went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of juice.
The pounding continued. If need be, Frank would break the door down. She got her courage up and ventured into the front of the house.
“Leave me alone,” she said through the door. “I had a bad night. Go away.”
“Open the door, Mags. You know what I want,” he said.
“What if I say no?”
“You can’t say no.”
She opened the door and sunshine flooded the foyer. Frank brushed past her on his way to the living room. His hair was neatly parted and he’d trimmed the bushes from his ears. He only groomed himself when he was going to make a bust and thought he might get his picture taken. She didn’t like it when he came to her place unannounced.
“You left your car on. Someone might steal it,” she said.
“My boss is with me,” he said.
