by James Swain
“You little piece of shit. Why did you have to go and do that? Why?”
Gerry was watching his life pass before his eyes and regretting all the dumb things he’d done. Opening his eyes, he turned his head and stared into the shotgun’s barrel.
“Do what?” he said.
Bronco grabbed Gerry by the back of the head, and smashed his face into the steering wheel. “That!”
Gerry looked straight down. His crotch was wet. He’d pissed in his pants, just like the night on the Boardwalk twenty years ago when his bowels had betrayed him. “Why did you do that?” Bronco yelled at him.
“Because I’m scared,” Gerry whispered.
Bronco cursed him some more. Gerry didn’t know what was worse. Dying, or being humiliated right before he died. He waited for what seemed like an eternity, then turned his head. Bronco was staring at him, his face twisted and confused.
“God damn you,” he said.
Walking outside the storage unit, Bronco punched a command into the keypad by the door. Moments later, the sliding door came down, and Gerry was enveloped in darkness.
Gerry listened to the Taurus drive away, and took several deep breaths. He cracked open his door, and the car’s interior light came on. In the mirror he saw the purple-black bruise on the bridge of his nose. He touched it and winced.
He pressed the button that released the trunk. He needed to call his father on his cell phone and tell him he was okay, but first he was going to change his clothes.
He walked around to the trunk, and from his suitcase removed a pair of slacks and clean underwear. His heart was beating a hundred miles an hour and his head was spinning. Growing up Catholic, he liked to think there was a reason for everything. Maybe someday, he’d know the reason why Bronco hadn’t shot him.
He changed in the light of the open trunk, then balled up his dirty clothes and threw them in the corner. He’d had some humiliating things happen to him in his life, and he’d always pretended later that they hadn’t happened. It had seemed like the easiest way to deal with them.
But he couldn’t run away from this one. His father was going to want to know what had happened, and Gerry would tell him how he’d saved himself by pissing in his pants.
And that was the only person he was going to tell.
Chapter 30
Valentine was standing on the side of the highway when his cell phone rang. The caller ID said GERRY. He fumbled hitting the Receive button.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Pop, it’s me.”
Hearing his son’s voice brought a flood of emotions over him that Valentine couldn’t control, and he sat down on the shoulder and began to weep. He hadn’t done that since his wife’s funeral, and the tears burned his eyes.
“You still there, Pop?”
“Yeah,” he choked. “I’m here. Where are you?”
“In a storage facility on the north side of town,” his son said. “I banged on the door, but no one came out. I didn’t see any people when we drove in, so I’m guessing the place is self-serve. I’m going to leave the cell phone on so you can find me.”
A trailer truck appeared on the highway. The driver didn’t slow down, and Valentine guessed it was common to see grown men sitting on the side of the road, bawling their heads off. Rising, he dusted himself off.
“How am I going to do that?”
“Call my cell phone company,” Gerry said. “They’ll know which tower my phone’s signal is originating from. It will be within a five mile radius. Once you know that, the Reno cops can look at all the self-serve storage facilities within that radius.”
Valentine saw another car coming up the road, the driver behind the wheel looking like Bill Higgins. Waving, he said, “How do you know that?”
“I saw it on a cop-show on TV,” his son said.
Valentine said goodbye to his son and killed the connection. Climbing into the passenger seat of Bill’s car, he told him that Gerry was still alive. Then, he explained his son’s clever solution to finding him in the storage facility.
Bill called the Reno police on his cell, and asked them to call Gerry’s cell phone company. Hanging up, he said, “You realize Bronco did this to stall us.”
The same thought had occurred to him. While they were finding Gerry, Bronco would be running away. Bill did a U-turn on the highway, and headed back to Reno. He drove way over the speed limit, the desolate scrub landscape going by in a blur. After a few minutes had passed, Valentine said, “Have I ever told you how smart my son is?”
Bill shook his head.
“Yesterday, when we were at Bronco’s house, Gerry said that he thought your bad agent was stealing jackpots using computers. Well, since there’s no physical way to rig modern slot machines, Gerry must be right. Which led me to realize something. Your bad agent works for Fred Friendly in the Electronic Systems Division.”
Bill looked stunned. “You think the bad agent is in ESD? That’s a stretch, Tony.”
“No, it isn’t. Bronco said this bad agent stole hundreds of jackpots. A field agent couldn’t do that, simply because hundreds of stolen jackpots — even small ones — would be noticed if they occurred in the same part of the state. But, they wouldn’t be noticed if they were spread out across the entire state. Somebody working for ESD could do that.”
Bill’s mouth worked up and down in silent thought.
“You’re right,” he said.
Another minute passed. They could see Reno ahead in the distance, the city a black dot on the brown landscape.
“How many agents work for ESD?” Valentine asked.
“Seventy-five,” Bill said.
“Those are our suspects,” Valentine said.
Gerry had discovered that being a father had its drawbacks. He couldn’t listen to loud music anytime he wanted to, like he had when he was single. So, he’d bought an Ipod, and plugged himself in whenever he got the chance. He was tapping his foot to Arethra Franklin’s soulful singing when his cell phone lit up. He’d turned the car’s interior light off, fearful of the battery dying, and stared at the cell phone’s illuminated face. It was his father.
“Feel up to doing a job?” his father asked.
“I don’t know, I’m kind of busy right now.”
He paused, hoping to hear his father laugh. When he didn’t, Gerry said, “Of course I’ll do a job, Pop.”
“In the trunk are the files of the nine hundred Nevada Gaming Control Board agents,” his father said. “I’ve winnowed the field down to seventy-five.”
“Let me guess,” Gerry said. “You want me to pull those seventy-five out, and find the bad agent.”
“That’s right. Sure you’re up for it?”
Sure you’re up for it? That didn’t sound like his father at all. Maybe saving his old man’s life had erased some of the horrendous crap he’d put his father through over the years. Through the IPOD’s earplugs lying on the seat he could faintly hear Aretha singing about respect, and found himself smiling.
“I’m up for it,” Gerry said.
He hung up, then got the stack of files out of the trunk and returned to the front seat of the car. Leaving the door ajar, he grabbed a handful of files, and began sorting through them. He pulled out every agent who worked for the ESD, and placed those files into a separate stack. When the larger stack was exhausted, he picked up the smaller stack and counted it. Seventy-five files, just like his father had said.
The IPOD was still playing, and he considered plugging himself back in, then decided against it. This was work, and he needed to start acting serious.
He heard the storage unit’s air conditioner come on, and felt the manufactured air cool the car’s interior. His father had once told him that to catch a criminal, you needed to know his motivation. He tried to imagine what the motivation was for a gaming agent to rip off the people he worked for. He’d once had a woman who worked for him as a bartender, and had discovered her stealing money out of the till. When he’d confronted her, he’d
discovered that she’d been carrying a grudge because he’d never asked her out. The stealing had nothing to do with money. It was spite. The woman had also taken a lot of sick and vacation days, and worked all the angles.
He thumbed through the stack, and pulled out the file of every agent who’d taken a high number of days off in the past few years. There were seven in all.
He worked through the seven files. Two women and five men. Each had been out of work well above the norm. Maybe they’d been sick, or had to deal with a sick family member. He began to think he was barking up the wrong tree, when a thought occurred to him. If a bad agent was running around Nevada stealing jackpots, that agent needed to be taking time off to engineer those thefts. There was no way around it.
He felt the tingle of excitement. One of these seven agents was their thief. His father was going to be proud of him.
Another first, he thought.
Chapter 31
A few miles outside of Reno, Valentine had an epiphany. He’d been having them since childhood, and he asked Bill to pull the car into a roadside gas station. Bill took his eyes off the highway, and gave him a funny look.
“What’s up?”
“Just pull over,” Valentine said.
Bill pulled into a gas station and parked the car by the air pumps. Killing the transmission, he turned to look at him.
“I want to know why you’re holding out on me,” Valentine said after the engine’s fan had stopped whirring. Bill shot him a guilty look, and Valentine knew he had him. “Last night at the strip club, you knew Garrow was going to exchange secrets with the Asian. Who the hell told you that? I certainly didn’t, and neither did my son.”
Bill stared through the windshield at the desolate empty field behind the gas station. There was a lot of pretty geography in Nevada, but mostly it was a desolate place, and Valentine couldn’t imagine himself taking a nature walk and finding anything but snakes and scorpions and maybe a coyote or two. He waited for Bill to defend himself, and when he didn’t, resumed.
“You know something about this case that I don’t. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me. You’re the head of the largest law enforcement agency in the state, and it’s your business to know things other people don’t. Only, there’s a problem. I’m supposed to be running this investigation. So, tell me what’s going on, okay?”
Bill went inside the convenience store that was attached to the gas station, emerging a minute later with two cups of coffee. Bill liked his coffee black and strong, just like Valentine. Handing him a cup, Bill said, “Maybe I should start from the beginning.”
“That’s usually the best place,” Valentine said.
“How much do you know about what’s going on inside China?” Bill asked.
“Just what I read in the papers. The country is booming.”
“Their economy is growing at an annual rate of ten percent, while the rest of the world’s is stagnant. Any idea why?”
Valentine shook his head.
“The underlying factor is the Chinese government. They will stop at nothing to dominate any business that will make money. Right now, they’re the world’s number one manufacturer of electronic equipment, clothing, sporting equipment, and household appliances. They’re also trying to dominate other markets.”
“Including gambling?”
“Including gambling. The casino gambling on the island of Macau is booming. The government is helping build a number of lavish casinos there. The plan is to attract the high-rolling Asian gamblers who are coming to Las Vegas, and get them to gamble in Macau instead.”
It made sense. Every week, American Airlines flew five luxury jumbo jets from Hong Kong to Las Vegas. These jets were filled with high-rolling Asian gamblers, or what the industry called whales, and were the single most profitable group of gamblers in the world. Of course the Chinese government wanted them to stay at home and gamble. They were worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.
“How does the Pai Gow scam fit into this?” Valentine asked.
“Rumor is, the Chinese government struck a deal with the Triads to gaff every Pai Gow game in Las Vegas,” Bill said. “Since the equipment is manufactured in China, the story makes sense. The Chinese are hoping that if Las Vegas starts losing money at Pai Gow, the casinos will close the games down.”
“And the Asian gamblers will stay home and play Pai Gow in Macau.”
Bill blew on his coffee. “That’s right.”
“And Bronco was the cheater who was going to rip off the casinos with the Pai Gow scam.”
“Right again. Now, there’s a problem with this story, and it’s this. Once I heard the rumor, I had every casino in Las Vegas pull their Pai Gow equipment off the tables, and send it to a forensic lab. They tested for marks, luminous paint and hidden gaffs. Nothing showed up.”
“What about ultra-violet inhibitors?
“They were tested for those, as well. The dominos are clean.”
“No, they’re not,” Valentine said. “Think about what you just told me. The Chinese government is intent on shutting down every Pai Gow game in Las Vegas. That means every Pai Gow game in Las Vegas can be scammed. There’s something wrong with those dominos. You just don’t know what to look for.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
Bill’s cell phone went off. He took the call, then hung up and started the car’s engine. “That was O’Sullivan. The cops got a reading on your son’s cell phone. It’s coming from a storage facility on the south side of town. They’re waiting for us.”
The cars wheels spun pulling out of the parking lot.
Ten minutes later, Bill pulled into the self-storage facility where the Reno police had determined that Gerry was being held. The front gate was open, and Bill drove around back and parked. As a cop, Valentine had always hated industrial parks. Every car thief and drug smuggler he’d ever busted had worked out of one, and he considered them a haven for crooks and scum bags.
Eight uniformed Reno cops were standing outside a unit with a sliding metal door. They were all big and tan, wore bulletproof vests and clutched shotguns protectively to their chests. One had a large mallet, and Valentine guessed his job was to break the lock on the sliding door. O’Sullivan stood beside the building, staying cool in the shade.
“I spoke to your son through the door,” the sergeant said. “He thinks his nose is busted, but otherwise he’s okay.”
Valentine felt something drop in his stomach. Gerry hadn’t said anything about his nose when they’d talked earlier. “What happened to his nose?”
“Bronco roughed him up.”
“Did you ask my son if he thought the unit was booby-trapped?”
“Come to mention it, I did. Your son said the interior was clean, but I had my men drill some holes through the door to let some light in. I had your son check the unit visually, and also run his hands up and down the door to check for wires and vibration tape. He didn’t find anything.”
Valentine didn’t like it. It would be a long time before he forgot the hatred he’d seen in Bronco’s face earlier that day. Walking onto the grass, he looked at the line of hills overlooking the facility. They were a half-mile away, and covered with scrub brush. He tried to imagine what kind of animals he’d find if he hiked through them. He guessed snakes and squirrels and maybe a man with a high-powered hunting rifle. He got O’Sullivan’s attention and pointed at them. “I want you to send a pair of men up there, and make sure Bronco isn’t waiting to ambush us.”
“A police helicopter did a sweep fifteen minutes ago. The area is clean.”
Valentine looked back at the hills. Even though he didn’t gamble, he’d learned how to play the odds a long time ago. Bill was standing nearby talking with a couple of cops, and he walked over to him and said, “Do me a favor, and explain to Sergeant O’Sullivan that I’m in charge, and that he needs to do whatever I tell him, even if it means standing on his head and spitting nickels. Okay?”
“Whatever you
say, Tony.”
Bill explained the situation to O’Sullivan. The sergeant grew red in the face, then sent two men up the hill. He came over to where Valentine was standing.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“No problem,” Valentine said.
A few minutes later, one of the cops radioed O’Sullivan, and said the hills were clean. Valentine still didn’t like it, but told the sergeant to break down the door anyway.
The cop with the mallet opened the sliding door with several well-placed whacks. As the door was pushed up, Valentine found himself thanking God, something he didn’t do nearly as much as he should. He’d already had a piece of his heart torn out by losing his wife, and could not stand having another piece torn out losing Gerry.
