The Casino Switcheroo

by Michael P. King

  “And the electrical?”

  “It all tested out as safe.”

  “So if we post employees to keep guests out of the work area, we could reopen the hotel and restaurant now.”

  “That’s your call. We can stage our materials overnight when traffic is slowest.”

  “What about the casino floor?”

  “Sprinklers did a lot of damage. All the carpets, some of the gaming tables and slot machines need to be replaced. I’ve got my materials on rush order, and I’m coordinating with your guy—”

  “Stewart?”

  “Yeah, Stewart. So if we’re all cleaned up when the new carpet gets here, you could open part of the casino by the end of next week. The rest of it depends on when your new equipment arrives.”

  “That’s working twenty-four hours a day?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Okay. Thanks for your help.”

  “You bet.”

  O’Brian’s phone rang. It was Martin, his IT manager. “What’s up?”

  “I found what you need,” he said.

  “I’ll be right down.”

  O’Brian took the elevator down to Martin’s office. Martin was a skinny kid with a short haircut and an Old Testament beard. Four computer servers sat on shelves on one wall of his office and three huge monitors ran across the top of his desk. He pushed an office chair toward O’Brian when he came through the door. “Have a seat, sir.”

  “What have you got?”

  “The two targets were all over the island, which made it challenging to sift through, but I finally got down to two associations that seem strong. They were both with this couple, Kelly Jo and Max Barlow…” He put a picture of them up on the screen. “Lots of hanging in hallways and loitering that you wouldn’t expect, and that’s when I found this.” He played footage of Cassady, Lulu, and Kelly Jo. They started out in the hallway outside Cassady’s office, disappeared into the office, and then reappeared and rushed down the hall to the First Aid office.

  “You don’t have video inside the rooms?”

  “No, sir. But from what we see in the hall, it looks like the sexcapades.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Oh yeah.” He started the footage back up. JB crossed the hall from a closet and went into Cassady’s office. He came out before Cassady left the First Aid office.

  “Has anyone else seen this?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s keep it that way. Play the tape again.”

  Martin rewound the footage and played it again.

  “So it’s Cassady, Lulu, and—who’s the other woman?”

  “Kelly Jo Barlow. She’s a receptionist.”

  “And the other guy connected with Lulu and JB is her husband?”

  “Max Barlow? Yeah. He’s a maintenance tech, just like JB.”

  “Thanks, Martin. Put a copy of the Cassady footage on a memory stick for me.”

  O’Brian walked down the hall to the elevator. Cassady. It made so much sense. That’s where Turner and Osmond got the room safe master passcode. And the Barlows—the other two employees who were unaccounted for—must have been in on it as well. He pictured Cassady the last time he saw him—stupid grin, ingratiating manner, eyes swiveling around at women’s backsides. He had sucker written all over him. It was time to find out exactly what he’d done. O’Brian pressed the elevator button. His luck was finally beginning to turn. He could feel it. Pretty soon he’d have news that Smithson would want to hear. The casino up and running and the traitor found. He’d get out of the dog house and everything could get back to normal.

  Midmorning, Detectives Gower and Johnson sat in Still Waters Psychology Associates in a side office drinking coffee from paper cups and watching the window to the hallway. Myrna Smithson escorted Mikey out of Dr. Wingate’s office, her arm around his shoulder, a tissue balled up in her hand. Gower and Johnson waited for them to turn the corner before they came out into the hall. Dr. Wingate stood outside the door to her office. She was fiftyish. She had a motherly smile and wore a sweater and a loose skirt.

  “Hey, Doc,” Gower said.

  “Hi, Sam, Jamil, come on in.”

  They stepped into her office: dim lights, loveseat, and two soft chairs. “Anything good?” Gower asked.

  “The boy’s going to be all right, I think. I’ll be seeing him individually and doing a few sessions with the family. But so far as clues…” She shook her head.

  “Nothing?”

  “The kidnappers made sure he didn’t see anything useful. And he’d been taught to cooperate, so he didn’t try to find out anything. Very smart.”

  “It was worth a try,” Gower said.

  “If anything comes up, I’ll let you know.”

  Across town, Kelly Jo was sitting at the kitchen table in the Tulip Street house drinking coffee and reading the news on her smartphone when Max came into the room with his phone up to his ear.

  “Thanks, Billy.” He put his phone in his pocket.

  “So?”

  “Subaru is in the police impound lot. It was stolen from a strip mall on Mission Avenue. Cops found it in the parking lot of Bayside Park. Gas had been poured in it, but for some reason, nobody had thrown the match. Forensics is going to be slow because of the fumes and fire risk.”

  “Sloppy work,” she said.

  “It’s not Koenig’s style.”

  “You think Raymond came up short hiring Bruce?”

  “Might be why Bruce is dead. Any coffee left?”

  “You can finish mine.” She handed him her cup.

  He gulped the lukewarm coffee and set the cup down on the table. “Let’s go down to the strip mall and have a look around.”

  They came off the beltway onto Mission Avenue. Car repair shops, tire stores, sheet metal fabricators, electrical supplies. A few blocks down, they came to a strip mall that bordered a neighborhood of small house and duplexes. Max pulled into the parking lot.

  “So this is where the Subaru was reported stolen?” Kelly Jo asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s a minimarket, a donut shop, a drycleaner, and a liquor store. What would make you think that this was a good place to steal a car?”

  “All short-term traffic.”

  “And I see two surveillance cameras without even looking hard.”

  “Out in the open for deterrence.”

  “Exactly.”

  “This is our guy,” Max said. “This is his thinking: We’re using the car tomorrow, so by the time it’s reported, cops won’t be looking for it until after we’re done. It’ll be sitting nice and safe in the parking garage in the meantime. So there’s no reason for me to go all the way across town to pull a vehicle out of long-term parking.”

  “Bruce, you think?”

  “Yeah. Maybe he was a junky. So who dropped him off to steal this car?” He nodded up at the surveillance camera next to the donut shop sign. “I’d like to get a look at that surveillance footage.”

  “Why? It’ll just be another best friend or another stolen car.”

  “Because Koenig is hiding around here somewhere. That’s the way he works. They’re hiding, waiting for the heat to die down before they make a run for it. Within a week, everyone’s tired of looking, they get lazy, they’ve got work to do, then it’s easy to escape. How far away did these guys go to steal the cars they used? The cars were all taken before the heist. Did any of these guys go all the way across town? Koenig would never make a mistake like that, but he can’t supervise everyone. Where did the Explorer come from?”

  “I’ll call Billy.”

  An hour later they were eating lunch in Buena Suerte, a mom-and-pop Mexican restaurant. The inside still looked like the Burger King that it had originally been, but the dining room was crowded with construction workers and delivery drivers.

  “Great tacos,” Kelly Jo said.

  “Yeah, this place was a great find.” Max pushed his plate away. He’d eaten his burrito and beans, but he’d left th
e rice.

  “You’re done?”

  “Too much food.”

  Her phone rang. All she said was “Hey” and “Thanks.”

  “Billy?”

  “Yeah. The Explorer was taken off the street about six blocks from that strip mall.”

  “Well then. It’s time to find out if Koenig found the transmitters in the ransom duffel bags.”

  Tim and Myrna Smithson were sitting on a glider on their screened-in porch, holding hands and watching the birds fly to and from the bird feeders set up in the backyard. Mikey was up in his room, playing videogames.

  “So we’re going to go for a few sessions,” she said.

  “Mikey going back to school tomorrow?”

  “Yes. He seemed perfectly fine. I was the one who was crying.”

  “It was scary,” Tim said. “The worst nightmare scenario. Hard to get adjusted.”

  “I’m looking over my shoulder.”

  “I’ve hired a security team just like we talked about. They’ll start tomorrow. Twenty-four seven. I don’t think we’ve got anything to worry about, but it’s worth the peace of mind. At least until the police finish investigating.”

  “I can’t help thinking that Mikey is blocking his emotions.”

  “That’s why we’re taking him to Wingate. I’ve checked up on her. Everyone says she’s the best.”

  “What’s your dad doing about all this?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. That would be getting into his business.”

  “But you’re not the least bit tempted?”

  “Would I like to find those assholes and make them suffer for what they did? Yes, I would. God help me, I want it so bad. But you can’t stop knowing whatever you find out, and then you have to live with that. Going with Pop to get Mikey is one thing—there was no way I wasn’t going to go. But the rest of it—that’s not our life. That’s not the life we’re making for Mikey.”

  Detectives Gower and Johnson parked on the street behind Daniels’s Ford Focus. The neighbors on the other side of the duplex—a woman and a grade-school boy—were carrying groceries into their house.

  “Okay, so Daniels—” Gower started.

  “Or Daniels’s car,” Johnson said.

  “—picked up the guy from the parking deck who left the Subaru for the guys who dumped the shot-up Explorer.”

  “That’s what the parking deck surveillance showed,” Johnson said. “This is definitely the car. But the house looks empty.”

  “We’ll see,” Gower said. “I’ll take the back.”

  Johnson banged on Daniels’s front door. The woman next door, bags in her arms, stopped to watch. Johnson held up the badge that was hanging from a chain around his neck. “Have you seen Mr. Daniels, ma’am?”

  She shook her head. “Not today. He should still be at work. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “We just need to talk to him. Is that his car?” He pointed back at the Ford parked on the street.

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he usually drive to work?”

  “Always.”

  The boy was holding their front door open. “Mom,” he said.

  “Got to go.” The woman disappeared into her side of the duplex.

  Johnson tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open. Daniels was sitting on the sofa in the dark, his head angled down as if he were asleep. “Mr. Daniels.” He didn’t move. “Mr. Daniels. Police.”

  Johnson peered into the room, but he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “Mr. Daniels.”

  He crossed to Daniels and checked his neck for a pulse. He was lizard cold. Johnson flipped the light switch with his elbow and walked through the kitchen to the back door. Gower was on the back steps. “He’s dead,” Johnson said.

  Gower took out his phone and called it in. They stood out in the front yard and waited for CSI. “We’re a little too slow,” Gower said. “We might have saved his life if we got to him first.”

  “But we didn’t get him involved in this mess,” Johnson replied. “He did that all by himself. Look at the bright side. The kidnappers are still around here, cleaning up loose ends.”

  “You sure about that? Maybe it’s Smithson’s guys tracking down their money.”

  “We’ve got the Subaru. They didn’t have a chance to burn it. It’s going to tell us something.”

  “Maybe too late to help.”

  “Sam, these stumblebums have already made two mistakes. They didn’t take the surveillance footage at the parking deck, and they didn’t burn the car.”

  “You’re right. They’re sloppy. They’ll make more mistakes. We’ve just got to find them faster,” Gower said.

  “We’re going to catch up. We always do.”

  “You wanted to see me, Mr. O’Brian?” Johnny Cassady stood in the doorway of O’Brian’s office. O’Brian sat behind his desk. Joe Brinkley, the hotel general manager, sat in one of the chairs facing him.

  “Johnny, I’m glad you could come in on such short notice. Shut the door and have a seat next to Joe.”

  “Hello Mr. Brinkley,” Cassady said. He sat down.

  “Let’s get right to the point.” O’Brian took the memory stick he’d received from Martin, plugged it into his laptop and queued up the hallway video. He pushed the laptop around so that Cassady could see the screen. Brinkley clicked on the arrow to start the video. Cassady watched Lulu and Kelly Jo move him into his office; then a few minutes later, all three of them, locked together, rushed down to the First Aid office.

  “I can explain,” Cassady said.

  “Medical emergency?” O’Brian replied.

  Brinkley clicked on the stop button. “The truth is the only thing that can save your job.”

  Cassady sucked in a breath as if he’d just come up out of the water. “I know I shouldn’t have done it. But look at the time stamp. I was off duty. It wasn’t sexual harassment. I didn’t intimidate them or offer them anything.”

  “How many times have you done this?” O’Brian asked.

  Cassady looked from O’Brian to Brinkley and back. “On the island? This is the only time, I swear. I’ve met women in town, after work, but not here.”

  O’Brian looked at Brinkley.

  “Sounds about right,” Brinkley said.

  O’Brian nodded. Brinkley restarted the video. Cassady watched JB go into his office and then come out before he left the First Aid office.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Cassady said.

  “You left your office unlocked,” O’Brian said.

  “It was a mistake.”

  “That guy and Lulu Osmond are in police custody.”

  “They were involved with the robbery?”

  “You let your little head tell your big head what to do and look what happened.”

  Brinkley closed the laptop. “I pulled the personnel files for these employees. JB Turner. Lulu Osmond. Kelly Jo Barlow. And her husband Max. Guess who hired them?”

  Cassady looked down at his hands. “I did.”

  “An amazing coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “We were shorthanded. They had excellent work records. I called the references.”

  “How much did they pay you?” Brinkley asked.

  O’Brian picked up his desk phone. “Why bother to listen to this liar? I’m calling the police.”

  “Please don’t call the police,” Cassady said.

  “How much did they pay you?” Brinkley repeated.

  “One thousand apiece.”

  O’Brian hung up the phone. “I hope it was worth it. You’re fired. Security will escort you off the island.”

  “Please, please, please, give me one more chance. I didn’t know.”

  “Exactly.” O’Brian buzzed his secretary in the outer office. A uniformed security officer opened the office door. O’Brian looked hard at Cassady. “Get out.”

  Cassady opened his mouth as if he were going to speak, but said nothing. He slunk out of his chair.
>
  The security officer shut the door behind them.

  “What an idiot,” O’Brian said.

  Brinkley pushed the laptop back toward O’Brian. “As I’ve already said, sir, I hired him. I take full responsibility. I thought he had potential, that we’d shave off the rough edges, but I was wrong.”

  “I want a personnel review of all the management and supervisory staff.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Up until now, your work here has been excellent, Joe. Get these reviews right, and we’ll be able to move forward.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Brinkley got up.

  “Leave the door open.”

  O’Brian pulled the memory stick from the laptop and put it in his top desk drawer. He hadn’t been hands-on enough. He’d given Brinkley too much latitude. Never again. He was going to get out from under this problem. He was going to eat as much crow as he had to eat to get back into Mr. Smithson’s good graces. He was going to save his job and protect his family. He opened his laptop and found Cassady’s personnel file—address, phone, email, next of kin—and selected Print from the menu. Mr. Smithson would definitely want a copy.

  At the Charming Cove condo, Raymond, Hernandez, and three other men sat at the kitchen table playing rummy. Koenig was in the living room, tapping away on his laptop computer. His phone rang. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Koenig? It’s Zeb.”

  “I know who it is.”

  “Max and Kelly Jo are still tracking you.”

  “I know.”

  “And the cops are following them.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “Based on his cellphone? Yeah.” Zeb gave him the Tulip Street address. He wrote it down.

  “Thanks. I won’t forget your help.”

  “You’re continued business is all the thanks I need.”

  Koenig ended the call. He hollered into the kitchen. “Raymond?”

  Raymond scooted his chair back from the table and took a sip of coffee before he went into the living room. “What do you need, boss?”

  “You took care of the guy who provided the Subaru?”

  “Tied off tight. A complete dead end.”

  “Max and Kelly Jo are still nosing around.”

  “They won’t find anything there.”