by James Swain
PRAISE FOR JAMES SWAIN
“No one in the world does this stuff better than Jim Swain. No one knows it better or writes it better. Satisfaction guaranteed.”
—Lee Child
“James Swain is one of my favorites. His books never fail to entertain, teach and surprise. Take Down is his best yet, with his knowledge and experience dripping off of every page, and a character like Billy Cunningham to lead the way. Great stuff.”
—Michael Connelly
“James Swain is the best at writing fast-paced thrillers about Las Vegas thugs and conmen.”
—R. L. Stine
“Nobody knows the dazzling reality of cons and capers in Las Vegas better than James Swain, from the luminous illusions of casinos to the dark side of buried bodies in the desert.”
—John Langley, executive producer and creator of COPS
“For all the blinking bright lights, this is a dark, decadent world, and Swain is a master at representing its allure, its thrills and its dead-end danger.”
—Phil Jason, Florida Weekly
ALSO BY JAMES SWAIN
Billy Cunningham Series
Take Down
Bad Action
Jack Carpenter Series
Midnight Rambler
The Night Stalker
The Night Monster
The Program
Tony Valentine Series
Grift Sense
Funny Money
Sucker Bet
Loaded Dice
Mr. Lucky
Deadman’s Poker
Deadman’s Bluff
Wild Card
Jackpot
Peter Warlock Series
Dark Magic
Shadow People
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by James Swain.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542046404
ISBN-10: 1542046408
Blonde Over Blue
Words and Music by Billy Joel
Copyright © 1993 IMPULSIVE MUSIC
All Rights Administered by ALMO MUSIC CORP.
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Cover design by Mike Heath
To Liz
CONTENTS
A FINAL REQUEST
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A FINAL REQUEST
Las Vegas was where people came to make bad decisions, the town carefully constructed to propel visitors toward disaster. Every year, forty million tourists made a variety of bad decisions, including sleeping with people they barely knew, getting drunk enough to pass out in public, and gambling away their hard-earned dough on games they had virtually no chance of winning. That was the town’s origins, and it wasn’t changing anytime soon.
Even the town’s wise guys made bad decisions. Billy Cunningham was such a person, and his bad decision was to return to Vegas knowing a Chinese gangster named Broken Tooth wanted him dead. Broken Tooth had already sent a hit man to kill him and might try it again.
Billy had decided to risk it. People who cheated for a living risked getting hurt. It came with the territory. Cheat in a poker game, and you risked getting your thumbs broken. Cheat a casino, and you risked being hauled into a back room and beaten up. And if you double-crossed your partner when fixing the Super Bowl, you ran the risk of having a contract put out on your life.
Caesars was jumping. The entrance resembled a parking lot, and Billy watched the cab’s meter run while waiting to be dropped off. Soon he was in the main lobby. While guests waited on line to register, there was a bust going down, courtesy of the gaming board. The busted cheat wore silver bracelets and stared dejectedly at the floor. The gaming agents were so focused on their suspect that they didn’t see Billy come in.
He circled around them. The busted cheat’s wardrobe screamed Russian. Run-down Nikes, a threadbare sports jacket, and a sheared haircut more befitting a war refugee. The casinos knew about the Russian gangs and had trained their surveillance teams to be on the lookout. Their scam was called whacking. A Russian cheat would stand next to a particular make of slot machine and record the machine’s play on a cell phone. The machine had a flawed random number generator chip that spit out predictable sequences every few hours. The Russian left and went to a motel, where the information was sent to a foreign server that calculated when the machine would pay a jackpot. Upon returning, the Russian would play the same machine and eventually win.
A great scam, unless you happened to get caught. Nevada had a law that forbade using an electronic device to beat its games, including cell phones. Cheats who got busted using devices went down hard.
“Coming through,” a voice said.
A uniformed bellman pushing a luggage cart bore down on him. His name tag said KENNETH/SAN DIEGO. As Billy moved to let him pass, the bellman stopped and drew a pocket-size Beretta from his pants. He jammed the barrel into Billy’s rib cage.
“Start walking toward the elevators,” the bellman said.
Billy’s eyes darted around the lobby. He counted five gaming agents, only they were too preoccupied with their bust to notice that something bad was going down.
“Let me guess. Your name isn’t Kenneth, and you’re not from San Diego,” he said.
“Hong Kong. Keep walking. I’ll shoot you right here if I have to,” the bellman said.
“With all this heat?”
“I’ll be gone before they know it.”
The elevators were at the far end of the lobby. He began walking, praying that an opportunity would present itself to alert the g
aming agents. The bellman hung close to his side.
“You don’t look Chinese,” he said.
“Plastic surgery. It took three operations.”
“Your English is good, too. No accent.”
“Rosetta Stone.”
“I’ll double your fee if you let me go.”
The gun’s barrel was suddenly in his ass. It made him jump a little. They came to the bank of elevators, and the bellman summoned a car. Billy stole a glance at the mirrors that lined the wall. None of the gaming agents had followed them. Was this the end? It sure felt like it.
“How did you know I’d be here?” he asked.
“Broken Tooth said you’d come back to Caesars to talk to the football players, iron out the details. Broken Tooth is smart that way,” the bellman said.
“How long you been waiting?”
“Two days.”
“And the hotel didn’t notice?”
The bellman laughed under his breath. “I took a job. They’re shorthanded, so I agreed to work double shifts. It was only a matter of time before you came in, and I spotted you.”
“You got lucky, admit it.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.”
An elevator car landed and its doors parted. The car was empty and they boarded. He spun around and watched the bellman slip the gun into his pocket, then draw a gilded knife with a pearl handle from a sheath hidden by his vest. The tip of the knife was dripping a substance the color of gold, and he guessed it was some kind of exotic poison. Elevators had surveillance cameras, only no one in the casino ever watched them. The doors began to close.
“Any final requests?” the bellman asked.
“Just don’t make me suffer,” he said.
ONE
Sunday, two weeks before the Super Bowl
Fremont Street was the armpit of Las Vegas, with more derelicts and hookers than you could shake a policeman’s nightstick at. It was also home to a dozen no-frills casinos with two-buck beers and penny slot machines.
Tonight’s target was the Golden Gate, the oldest joint in town. Billy’s crew was working the scam along with a crew called the Gypsies. Six members of Billy’s crew and six members of the Gypsy clan made a dozen cheats ripping off one poor casino. The Golden Gate didn’t have a prayer.
Billy had never worked a scam with another crew, but this was a special occasion. In two short weeks during Super Bowl weekend, the combined crews would pull a heist with a potential payday in the millions of dollars. It was called a super con and worth the extra effort.
Super cons were different from regular cons. A regular con could be pulled many times, a super con only once. Once a casino determined how it had been ripped off by a super con, the other joints in town were notified in order to stop it from happening again.
Before the super con went down, the two crews needed to get acquainted. As a test run, Billy had decided they should pull a scam called playing the lights on the Golden Gate, which required plenty of cooperation. If the crews could pull this off, the super con would be easy.
Billy was the captain of his crew. Because the casinos knew him, he wore disguises during jobs. Tonight’s getup consisted of a baseball cap, nonprescription glasses called zeros, and a rubber tire beneath his shirt. As another precaution, he entered a casino twenty minutes after his crew. To kill time now, he decided to try out the zip line on Fremont Street. It looked like a pure adrenaline rush, and right up his alley.
“Sure you don’t want to join me?” he asked.
Leon, his African American limo driver, shook his head. Billy had recently started giving Leon a cut from each job to ensure Leon’s silence if they got busted. Leon was living large and loving it.
“No thanks, boss. I’m afraid of heights.”
Billy’s cell phone rang. He was hoping the caller was an old flame named Maggie Flynn. He liked to think Mags still cared about him, but maybe he was kidding himself. When it came to love, he was a sucker, just like everyone else. He answered with a cheery “Hello.”
The caller was male and spoke with an Asian accent. “Cunningham? My name Wan Kuok-koi. People call me Broken Tooth. You know who I am?”
Some names rang bells. Others set off fire alarms. Broken Tooth was a Chinese gangster who ran a gang of Triads. Prostitution, loan-sharking, and contract killing paid the bills, but the big profits came from gambling. Billy wondered what had brought him to this side of the pond. “Sure do. I’m busy right now. Let’s talk some other time.”
“We talk now,” Broken Tooth insisted. “I got a job for you, make us both rich.”
“What kind of job?”
“No discuss over phone. We meet up, and I explain the deal.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll call you back in the morning.”
“No good. We meet tonight.”
There was desperation in Broken Tooth’s voice, and Billy guessed the guy was broke. Normally, he had a soft spot for hustlers down on their luck, only this joker was out of line. “Listen, pal. I’m working right now. We’ll get together tomorrow, and I’ll buy you lunch.”
Broken Tooth cursed him. Billy had heard enough and said, “Lose my number,” and hung up. To the tattooed attendant running the zip line he said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Which did you pay for, the zip or the zoom?” the attendant asked.
“The zoom. I heard that was the way to go.”
“Only if you want to be a superhero. Put on this uniform.”
He climbed into the flight uniform and zipped up the front. “This feels tight.”
“It’s supposed to feel tight,” the attendant said. “If it were loose, you’d fall out and plunge to your death. Lie down on the table so I can strap you in.”
He lay on his stomach on the table in the room’s center. The attendant attached hooks on the back of the uniform to a thick metal cable that ran the length of Fremont Street, which let riders exceed forty miles per hour while dangling in the air like Peter Pan.
“Has anyone ever fallen?” he asked.
“Not recently,” the attendant said.
“You sure about this, boss?” Leon asked.
“Damn straight,” he said. “See you back at the limo.”
The attendant flipped a switch. The wall in front of the table lowered, and a blast of cold air invaded the room. He felt like he was about to be shot out of a cannon, and he took a deep breath. The attendant gave him a gentle push, and he slid off the table and flew headfirst down Fremont while dangling from the cable. His heart was racing, and down below he spied the break-dancers and half-naked women hustling tourists for tips. It was as sleazy as a carnival sideshow, and he wouldn’t have traded it for any city in the world.
At the ride’s end was a landing platform. A female attendant unstrapped him, and he stepped out of his uniform, his skin tingling from the adrenaline rush. If he ever hooked up with Mags again, he’d make sure to bring her here.
Taking the elevator to the street, he encountered his first problem. The Shriners were in town for a convention, the sidewalks teeming with drunks wearing maroon fezzes. Instead of blending in, he was going to stand out like a sore thumb in his disguise.
He ducked into a shop called Hats R Us. When he emerged, he was wearing a fez with a tassel and looked like the rest of the gang. Except he needed a drink. Inside a dive called Mermaids, he purchased a strawberry daiquiri. Fremont Street had the market cornered on bad food, and the bartender tried to talk him into an order of deep-fried Twinkies, but he took a pass.
Drink in hand, he entered the Golden Gate. It was a low-ceilinged joint and very loud. He found Victor Boswell, the leader of the Gypsy clan, in the back playing a slot machine, a carved walking stick propped against his chair. He took the chair beside the older man.
“I won a hundred-dollar jackpot earlier,” Victor said with a laugh.
“Dinner’s on you,” he said.
“That won’t pay for appetizers. Whatever happened to the endless buffet
s the casinos used to serve? I used to take my family to them all the time. Saved me a fortune.”
“Gone but not forgotten.”
“I’ve been watching your crew. You’ve schooled them well. The big guy’s got it down pat. What’s his deal?”
“Travis dealt blackjack at Palace Station and was cheating on the side. He was about to get promoted to pit boss when I recruited him.”
“You’ve got to be sharp to be a pit boss.”
“Travis has eyes in the back of his head. He’s also good under fire.”
“I like him.” Victor fished some coins out of his bucket and fed them into the machine. “The girls are also good. So’s the fat guy. The two punks, I’m not so sure about.”
Victor was talking about Cory and Morris, the screwup kings. Cory and Morris were reformed potheads, or so they’d led Billy to believe.
“What did they do?” Billy asked.
“Nothing. They know how to move.”
“Then what’s bothering you?”
“Their appearance.”
Cory and Morris had to be two of the most innocent-looking cheats in town; it was one of the reasons Billy had recruited them into his crew. “What’s wrong with their appearance?”
“They barely look legal,” Victor explained. “Caesars got in trouble for letting underage kids play in their poker room, so the casinos are carding anyone who doesn’t look old enough. I should know; it happened to my daughter Kat.”
Cheats had to look unspectacular when doing business inside a casino. A cheat needed to blend in and avoid scrutiny. To be remembered often spelled disaster down the road.
“I’ll give them a makeover,” Billy said.
His cell phone vibrated. Travis had texted him.
We have a problem
“Something’s up. Let me go check on the troops.”
“Look at that, I hit another jackpot,” Victor said.
TWO
Billy headed over to the blackjack pit to see what the trouble was. The Golden Gate’s blackjack tables had maximum bets of a hundred dollars, which was puny for Vegas. Fremont Street attracted a blue-collar crowd, and it was all the traffic would bear.
Travis stood inside the pit, clutching a bottle of Bud. Travis’s job was to watch the action and signal the crew if security swooped in. Billy edged up beside the big man.
