by James Swain
The reels spun, then stopped. Two cherries and two lemons. A loser. From out of the machine came Drew Carey’s unmistakable voice.
“Step right up— we need another sucker!”
The woman playing the machine beside Rebecca started laughing. Rebecca didn’t think it was funny at all. It was more like a slap in the face. She put two coins into the machine and repeated the process. This time, three strawberries and an orange came up. Another loser.
“Don’t give up,” Drew Carey’s voice proclaimed. “We want to build another wing on the casino!”
Rebecca glanced at her son, and saw him pigging out on his cone, wearing it on his chin and shirt. She hated when he did that, but right now it seemed the most wonderful thing in the world. She deposited a single coin, and pulled the handle. Another loser. “Ohhh, I’m so sorry, I guess that means another walk to the A.T.M.!”
Rebecca wanted to kick the machine. Drew Carey’s sarcastic comments had gotten her so mad that she no longer felt bad about ripping the Peppermill off. The machine had injured her, and she was about to injure it right back. What did it say in the Bible? An eye for an eye. And then some, she thought, putting five coins in and pulling the handle.
Within thirty seconds of winning a jackpot, a team of security people were swarming around her. Rebecca remained seated, and said nothing. The woman who’d been laughing at her a minute ago had become her new best friend, and whacked Rebecca enthusiastically on the back while calling to others in the casino to come over, and see what Rebecca had done.
What Rebecca had done was to win a ninety-six hundred dollar jackpot and shut Drew Carey up, the comedian not offering a single word of praise. Slot machines were evil things that preyed upon human weakness, and Rebecca promised herself that she’d never play another one for as long as she lived.
She glanced over at her son. Karl Jr. had finished his cone, and was clapping his hands enthusiastically, the man from the casino standing behind him, his hand on Karl Jr.’s shoulder. In church, Rebecca had heard stories about parents who lifted cars off their children in order to save their lives. The minister had attributed these incredible feats to God, but Rebecca knew better. They were acts of desperation, fueled by fear.
She had not wanted Karl, Jr. to go to a foster home. Anything but that.
She blew a kiss to her son, and saw him smile.
Chapter 35
Valentine was on the balcony of his suite on the eleventh floor of the Peppermill, watching the neon gradually replace the fading sun, when his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, and stared at its face. It was Bill.
“Hey.”
“How you feeling?” Bill asked.
Valentine frowned into the phone. He’d been assaulted, shot at, and believed he’d lost his son, all in the space of a few short hours. How did Bill think he was feeling?
“Never been better. What’s up?”
“Something just came up I think you should be aware of,” Bill said. “Are you in your room at the Peppermill?”
“Sure am.”
“Good. One of my field agents just called me from the Peppermill. A woman just won a jackpot on a slot machine. My agent was in the surveillance control room, and watched the woman play the machine. The agent said the woman didn’t get excited or show any real emotion.”
“Maybe she was looped,” Valentine said.
“That’s what I thought. My agent did some digging, and discovered two things that make me think he’s on to something. The woman is the wife of the guard who Bronco attacked at the police station this morning.”
“I thought the guard nearly died. What’s she doing playing the slots?”
“That’s why my agent was wondering. The second thing is, the slot machine she played is the same one that my agent inspected this morning. He gave it a full diagnostic test with his laptop computer.”
“Was the machine clean?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “My agent said that the woman went to the machine, sat down, and won the jackpot in less than a minute.”
Valentine walked onto the balcony with the cordless phone. Down below, the Peppermill’s entrance was lined with cars, the real day for the casino about to begin. Gambling was like sex; people seemed to enjoy it most at night.
He went back inside. Something was staring him right in the face and he wasn’t seeing it. Lying on the bed were the files of the seven agents from the Electronic Systems Division that Gerry suspected of being their slot cheater.
“You still there?” Bill asked.
“I’m here,” Valentine said. “Let me ask you a question. The laptop computer that was used for the diagnostic test. Is your agent responsible for programming it?”
“No, that’s done in Las Vegas.”
“By who?”
“The Electronic Systems Division. They’re responsible for programming all the laptop computers we use.”
Bingo, he thought. “You just figured out the scam.”
“I did?”
“Yes. Your cheating agent is programming the laptops to scam slot machines all over the state. He’s letting your field agents do the dirty work for him.”
“For the love of Christ.”
“Where’s your field agent right now?”
“He’s still in the Peppermill’s surveillance control room,” Bill said. “It’s on the third floor of the casino.”
“Call him, and tell him I’ll be right down.”
Valentine ended the call and went to the door that joined his room to Gerry’s. He rapped loudly, and his son appeared a moment later wearing nothing but his briefs.
“Put your clothes on,” Valentine said. “I need you to help me catch a cheater.”
The Peppermill’s surveillance control room was a chilly, windowless space filled with some of the most sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment money could buy. The five technicians on duty were required to watch four rotating video monitors, while fielding phone calls from the floor below. Valentine had once heard the job likened to air traffic control. Long hours of boredom punctuated by random moments of stark terror.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board field agent who’d called Bill Higgins was waiting for them. His name was Jim Impoco. Tan, early forties and with an athletic build, he wore a blue blazer and a blazing red tie. GCB agents could go anywhere they wanted inside a casino, and Impoco had commandeered a corner of the surveillance control room for himself.
“That was fast,” Impoco said, shaking their hands.
“We’re known for our service,” Valentine said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Impoco sat down at a computer, and typed a command into the keyboard. A tape of a young woman playing a Drew Carey slot machine appeared on the screen.
“That’s Rebecca Klinghoffer, the lady who won the jackpot,” Impoco said.
Valentine brought his face up to the screen. As Rebecca Klinghoffer played, she kept glancing nervously off to her right. Valentine had watched thousands of people play slots, maybe more. She wasn’t acting right.
“Where is she now?”
“Still downstairs on the main floor,” Impoco said. “The casino is stalling her, having her sign some meaningless papers.”
“That your idea?”
Impoco nodded.
“I want to see the tape of what she was looking at,” Valentine said.
Impoco called a technician over, and told him what he needed. The technician looked like a kid that had grown up wearing a cap with a little propellor on top. The technician noted the date and time on the tape of Rebecca Klinghoffer, then said, “This is going to take a few minutes, gentlemen.” and walked away before either of them could respond. Gerry, who hadn’t spoken a word since getting off the elevator, pointed at Impoco’s briefcase lying on the floor.
“Is your laptop in there?” his son asked.
Impoco nodded.
“Would you mind showing us how you use it to run the diagnostic test?”
There was a str
ained look on Impoco’s face, as if he knew that his running the inspection test and Rebecca Klinghoffer winning the jackpot were somehow linked. He put his briefcase on the desk, removed a Mac and powered it up. Within seconds they were hovering around the small but powerful computer.
“My laptop has a computer chip called a DEPROM, which can talk to the slot machine’s computer chip, called an EPROM,” Impoco explained. “With the DEPROM, I’m able to run tests on the slot machine’s computer, specifically its Random Number Generator chip.”
“Can someone inspect a slot machine without a DEPROM chip?” Valentine asked.
“No,” Impoco said. He played with the mouse on his laptop, and opened up the software used to run the inspection. “Each test lasts about fifteen minutes, with the slot machine running billions of numbers, which the laptop periodically analyzes to see if they’re truly random. The results are stored in the laptop, and sent back wirelessly to our headquarters.”
“So headquarters knows which machines are being inspected,” Valentine said.
“Yes. Our bosses read printouts every day. One bad machine can cost a casino a lot of money. We also collect information on the machine’s hold, which is sent to headquarters as well.”
The hold was the amount of profit the slot machine was making. Impoco played with the mouse some more, and brought up a sheet of information. “This is what I took off the machine after I did the inspection. Everything looks normal. But my gut tells me that I did something to alter that machine.”
Valentine understood exactly what Impoco was saying. Human beings had been listening to their guts since the beginning of time, and it was still the best barometer when dealing with crime.
“So what you’re saying is, if someone could gaff the DEPROM chip in your computer, they could corrupt any slot machine in the state,” Valentine said.
“Right,” Impoco said. “Only, there’s one problem. The software program would be huge, and take up a large portion of my hard drive.”
“Which you’d notice,” Gerry said.
“I sure would,” Impoco said. “I scanned the hard drive earlier. There are no hidden programs.”
Valentine felt like they were talking Greek. He knew how to start his computer, how to send and receive e-mail, and that was about it.
“Why would the program have to be large?” he asked.
“Because each slot machine has its own source code,” Impoco explained, “which is essentially the machine’s internal blueprint. The source code is protected by an electronic fingerprint, which is a string of thirty-two numbers and letters. Since there are over one hundred thousand slot machines in the state, and my testing is purely random, my laptop would have to have all electronic fingerprints in order to crack the machines.”
“And that would take up a lot of space,” Valentine said.
“Enough for me to notice,” Impoco replied.
“Here’s the surveillance tape you requested,” the tech called out from the other side of the room. “Hope you find what you’re looking for.”
A tape appeared on the monitor. Impoco, Valentine and his son leaned forward to stare. It showed the area of the casino which Rebecca Klinghoffer had been staring at. An elderly man with stooped shoulders stood in the picture. Beside him, a boy eating an ice cream cone . Valentine stared at the boy’s face. The apple hadn’t fallen very far from the tree. It was Rebecca’s son.
Valentine shifted his attention to the elderly man. He looked like he was developing a humpback, which happened to older people with arthritis. His face was a road map of the hard life, with more wrinkles than you could count. The elderly man didn’t look familiar, yet there was something about him which was familiar. Not his face or his appearance but something about the image he was projecting.
Valentine stepped back from the monitor. Sometimes the best way to look at a puzzle was from afar, and he kept stepping back until it hit him what was familiar.
It was the elderly man’s pants. They were his pants.
“Did Bronco steal my clothes out of the trunk of the car?” Valentine asked his son.
Gerry had seen it as well, and was practically jumping up and down.
“It’s him, Pop. The son-of-a-bitch is in the casino.”
Chapter 36
They took the elevator down to the casino. The doors parted, and Valentine and his son followed Impoco across the casino floor. The Peppermill was filled with elderly gamblers, maybe the most fervent gamblers known to man. Running through them was out of the question, and they elbowed their way toward the slot machines.
Valentine did a visual sweep of the floor. Rebecca Klinghoffer, her son and Bronco were nowhere to be seen, and he saw Impoco making a bee line toward the cage, where Rebecca would have collected her money. Impoco got the attention of the main cashier and asked where Rebecca had gone.
“She took her money and left,” the cashier said.
Impoco’s face went red, and he grabbed the bars of the cage. “I called down from upstairs, and specifically told you not to pay that woman off until I cleared it.”
“That’s right,” the cashier said.
“Then why did you?” Impoco asked.
“Because you called me back, and told me the woman was okay.”
“No, I didn’t.”
The phone in the cashier’s cage rang. Valentine heard Gerry calling him. He spun around, and saw his son standing twenty feet away, holding a house phone. Gerry hung up, and the phone in the cashier’s cage stopped ringing.
“It was Bronco,” Valentine told James. “He called and cleared it.” To the cashier, he said, “How long ago did they leave?”
“Couple of minutes,” the cashier said. “You might still catch them at the valet.”
The Peppermill’s valet stand resembled a car lot, with junkers and expensive sports cars parked side-by-side. Valentine went to the front of the line, his son and Impoco to the rear, determined to check every car before it left.
The valets had put up orange traffic cones to keep everyone driving at a safe speed. Valentine grabbed several, and used them to block off the exit. Hearing the screech of burning rubber, he lifted his head.
A white SUV had jumped onto a concrete median. It side-swiped a mini-van filled with people, then returned to the macadam. A valet ran toward it, waving frantically at the driver. The SUV sped up, and the valet dove out of its path.
Valentine froze in his tracks. The SUV was coming straight for him. Bronco was manning the wheel, Rebecca Klinghoffer riding shot, the kid strapped in back. He dropped the cones in his hands, and looked for someplace to hide.
There was none. He was a goner. He looked right at Bronco, and their eyes locked. He’d been chasing Bronco for as long as he could remember, making the guy’s life miserable every step of the way. Not the kind of thing to build a friendship over. When the SUV was on top of him, he dove instinctively to the ground.
The wheels passed inches from his head. Hugging the ground felt good, and he heard the SUV hit its brakes. It started to back up, and Valentine tried to roll away. Only, there wasn’t anyplace to roll away too.
From the car, he heard Rebecca Klinghoffer’s son screaming. The kid had Pavoratti’s lungs. It reminded Valentine of his granddaughter, who could scream so loud it set your hair on end. He braced himself to be run over, then heard Gerry’s voice.
“Don’t move, Pop!”
He lifted his head. A Cadillac Escalade leapt out of the line. It drove directly over Valentine, its wheels missing his body on both sides, then braked. It prevented the SUV from backing up onto him. Bronco hit the gas, and roared out of the valet stand.
Valentine crawled out from beneath the sports car. His son helped him to his feet, and brushed his father off.
“You okay, Pop?”
His son had been hell to raise, but was starting to make up for it.
“Never been better,” he said.
Chapter 37
Mabel’s cell phone rang as she was passing
through downtown Tampa. It was Running Bear, and he was pouting. She hated when men did that.
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel safe in that room,” she said.
“I would trust the elders with my life,” he said. “They are honest men.”
