Authors: Kay Keppler
Just then the woman he remembered from last night’s card game walked into the room. Last night she’d worn a tight, white dress, short, shimmery, and backless. Practically frontless, too. She’d sat next to him and leaned over one too many times and Tanner’s brains had scrambled a little, but nothing that affected his play. There was something about her he didn’t trust, and he’d wondered then if she was law enforcement.
Today he had his answer. Today she was wearing a suit with a white shirt buttoned high, and her dark hair was twisted up, not down. No danger his brains would scramble today.
“Hey, Darla,” he said. “Or is your name really Darla?”
“It’s Darla.” She smiled at him. “Nice to see you again, Tanner.”
“Just one question. I’ve been thinking about where you could have hidden the camera. Can you help me out?”
Darla’s smile thinned. “Keep dreaming, wiseguy.”
So she didn’t really like him after all. Well, not much of a loss. She had that body, but she didn’t have much conversation.
Keep dreaming, wiseguy?
Who talked like that?
Roy Frelly leaned forward again. “So here’s what we’re gonna do,” he said.
Extreme confidence
, Tanner thought again. It looked like the feds planned to have their way with him.
“We want to get Big Julie Saladino,” Frelly said.
Hell,
Tanner thought.
And they picked me to lead the suicide squadron.
Guilio “Big Julie” Saladino was the biggest crook in New Jersey—a Mafioso with a major influence on most of the traditional Sicilian businesses—and, now that he was on an extended vacation, the richest card player in Vegas. Big Julie played only high stakes, no limit Texas Hold’em in venues where players could be assured that they’d be free of all the pesky surveillance and rules you found in the big gaming houses. That meant that Big Julie played in his suite—the penthouse suite, the five-thousand-square-foot, Polynesian-style, high-roller suite, with the hot tub and view and nothing-is-too-good-for-Mr.-Saladino room service.
Playing Big Julie would be fun, in a weird, once-in-a-lifetime way, but it was an experience Tanner was willing to sacrifice to keep all his body parts. He also had Troy to think of. His daughter, now eighteen, was leaving for college next week. She had realized long ago that the kinds of people the FBI put in her father’s path could be violent as well as bent, and she didn’t like the FBI working requirements one bit.
I’ll go down big time on this gig,
Tanner thought
. Just my luck.
“Big Julie’s wanted on sixteen counts of murder and extortion,” Frelly said now. “But to get Big Julie, we need somebody who can play cards and cheat. That’s you.”
No
.
Not this time.
He didn’t want to set Big Julie up for a fall. He’d be in trouble with the Mob for the rest of his life—his guaranteed
short
life. Next week Troy would be at UCLA, in eight months his probation would finally be over, and he’d have a whole new life to start.
He’d wondered what that new life would look like. He hadn’t made any plans, but dying—even losing a limb—was definitely
not
on his personal menu of choices.
“Why don’t you just arrest Big Julie?” Jack Sievers asked. “He’s staying at the Desert Dunes. You’ve got the sixteen counts. Why does my client have to play cards with him?”
Frelly rubbed the back of head.
Distress.
Tanner looked up. Frelly didn’t like that question. And suddenly Tanner knew the answer.
“There’s no charges against him,” Tanner told Jack. “I bet there’s no arrest warrants out on Big Julie at all. Right, Agent Frelly? You’re just trying to fool me into going along with you. You can’t make an extortion and murder case against Big Julie, so you want to get him on gambling charges.”
Frelly leaned his head into his hand.
Very distressed
.
I was right.
“And you can’t even get him on gambling without outside help,” Tanner added. “So you’re putting the squeeze on me. Not that I’m unwilling to do my patriotic duty, but why not Darla, here? You want somebody to nail him? She seems more than competent.”
And that way the FBI can worry about Mafia dons
. He smiled cheerfully at the female agent, trying to beam confident support.
Darla gave him a thin-lipped sneer. Funny how great legs and big breasts just didn’t compensate for a bad attitude.
“We tried that,” Lee Gauger said from his stance in the corner. “Darla. Last week. Big Julie made her. Last night you, on the other hand, were clueless.”
“He just looked down my dress all night,” Darla agreed.
“You made it so easy to do,” Tanner said. “But you notice I passed on the merchandise.”
“The
point
,” Frelly said as Darla opened her mouth in outrage, “is that Darla can’t work Big Julie. He knows she’s FBI.”
Tanner shook his head. “Say what you will, the Mafia is smart. Smarter, evidently, than Darla. Not to mention, the rest of you.”
“
So what we’re gonna do
,” Frelly broke in, “is this.”
Everyone looked at him expectantly.
Frelly leaned forward and jabbed his finger at Tanner.
Committed to plan of action,
Tanner thought.
“
You
are gonna play cards with Big Julie,” Frelly said. “
He
is gonna win big.
You
will tape him.
Then
we got him.”
“Yeah, not so much,” Tanner said. “Even if he cheats, it’s not a federal crime to cheat in a card game. You play anywhere—private game, card room, casino—and somebody cheats, management just throws him out and bars him from coming back. No arrests. No prison time.”
“We’re not talking about
him
cheating,” Gauger said. “We’re talking about
you
cheating—if you have to, to get Big Julie to win. The goal is to get him to win big. However it has to happen.”
“Because?” Tanner asked. “I’m not following.”
Frelly grinned in triumph. “Because if Big Julie plays regularly, which we know he does, he’s operating a gambling establishment without a license.”
“Class B felony,” Darla said.
“Which the casino hates, not that they’re saying,” Frelly said.
Gauger nodded again. “Then, if you’re operating a gambling establishment with earnings over a couple grand—”
“Which Big Julie is,” Frelly said. “He’s playing in the range of one-two
hundred
G’s. So at your licensed gambling establishment, if you win big, you gotta report the winnings to the IRS right up front and withhold the taxes on it.
Which Big Julie ain’t doing. So now he’s looking at
two
felonies. Minimum.”
Tanner looked pained. “That old dodge? You’re going to get him on income tax evasion? Come
on,
Frelly. That is so Al Capone. I expected better from you.”
“Yeah, well, it still works, smartass. We got him for those two felonies for sure, and he’s probably laundering money with the chips, too, if he uses chips. He use chips?” Frelly asked Tanner.
Tanner shrugged. “How would
I
know? Don’t
you
know that?” Tanner would be surprised, though, if Big Julie didn’t launder money by using chips. Many people who acquired large sums of money in legally questionable ways went to the casino and bought chips with the dirty money, and then later cashed in the chips, asking for a check or wire transfer. After the money was washed through the casino’s accounts, it was perfectly clean and legal.
“So we probably got him on money laundering, too,” Frelly said. He leaned forward again, stabbing the air as he spoke. “If I get this guy, Wingate, I can look forward to a big retirement bonus, maybe a reward, even a plaque. I want this guy. And you’re gonna get him for me.”
“On income tax evasion,” Tanner said. “You think that will work?”
Frelly nodded. “You know how much federal income tax Big Julie paid last year? We got his ten-forty from the IRS. One hundred six measly bucks. One-oh-six, total. That’s what he paid. He probably earned millions.”
“Man, that’s incredible,” Jack said. “Who’s his accountant?”
“Two smartasses,” Frelly said, leaning back. “I should arrest you both for being a pain in the behind.”
“Tell him the deal,” Gauger said.
“Please,” Jack Sievers said.
“The deal is that your client snitches for us. On Big Julie,” Frelly said.
“For how long?” Jack asked, at the same time that Tanner said, “No deal.”
“No deal,” Tanner repeated. He turned to the lawyer. “Can’t do it, Jack. If I turned on Big Julie, the Mob would kill me.” He turned and smiled winningly at Frelly. “And if I’m dead, I can’t fulfill the terms of my probation.”
Frelly shrugged. “Wouldn’t happen. You might be doing the Mob a favor if you did help put Big Julie behind bars. The way I hear it, Big Julie’s out here to take a break from the turf wars in Jersey. The Russians are trying to take over his territory. He goes to jail, they’ll be grateful, and you’ll be safe.”
“You think his organization won’t be upset if Big Julie got killed or went to jail?”
Frelly sat back and fiddled with his pencil. “You can break your probation and go to prison,” he said finally. “Or you can play cards. Like you always do. Only now, you wear a camera and report back to us. Take your pick.”
Tanner didn’t like it. He didn’t like getting face-to-face with the Mob. All of his assignments for the last nineteen years had been surveillance jobs from security offices, showing the FBI agents how someone was cheating or how a dealer was dirty. Nobody he’d ever turned over to law enforcement had known who he was. No suspect had ever seen him.
This situation was different. Now he’d have to play cards with and snitch on someone who’d be more than happy to do him serious bodily harm.
What were his choices? If he said no, he’d go to prison for twenty years. He didn’t want to go to prison. He’d just have to take his chances that he could outwit the Mafia. If Big Julie was anything like Roy Frelly, maybe that wouldn’t be so hard.
“Any money I win, I keep,” he said.
“If you win it legitimately,” Frelly said. “And pay taxes on it. Sure.”
Tanner sat another minute, trying to think of a different way, a better way to get out of the FBI’s deal. But he couldn’t see it. He looked at Sievers, raising an eyebrow. Jack looked back, pursing his lips.
Pacification maneuver
.
“For how long?” Sievers asked.
“Until we get the evidence against Big Julie,” Frelly said. “Or until we say.”
“Until you get the evidence, or one month,” Jack said.
“Until we get the evidence, or three months,” Frelly said.
Jack looked at Tanner, turning palms up.
Acceptance.
“Okay,” Tanner said, feeling the noose tighten. “It’s a deal.”
Chapter 4
Big Julie Saladino, wearing a white terry-cloth robe with the hotel’s name stitched in blue over the chest pocket, sat at the dining room table in his penthouse suite at the Desert Dunes Casino and Resort and shoveled in his eggs. The table was set for two, but he was alone in the five-thousand-square-foot apartment except for a bodyguard, who lounged on a sofa, checking the stock market quotes in the newspaper.
Big Julie was in a bad mood. So far nothing had gone right today, and it wasn’t even noon yet. He’d been woken up by his number-two lieutenant back in Jersey, who reported that one of the soldiers had a new girlfriend. That was the good news. The bad news was, she was the daughter of the Russian mob boss who was after Big Julie’s business. To get Big Julie’s turf, the Russians wanted to outfit Big Julie in a custom pair of cement shoes and take him for a long walk at the bottom of a deep ocean. Which was why Big Julie was in Vegas. Plenty of cement, sure, but no oceans.
The soldier was dazzled by the Russian girl’s big bouncing boobies, which turned one part of his anatomy to steel but turned his brain to oatmeal. The lieutenant told Big Julie how it happened: the soldier’s there enjoying an afterglow with the Russian girl and he asks her about her accent, and she says she’s from Georgia, so of course oatmeal brain thought she meant Atlanta, but she meant Tbilisi. The soldier couldn’t tell the difference between an effing southern accent and an effing Russian accent. That was the kind of help you got these days, where the oatmeal and the steel exchanged places when they shouldn’t, and that was the other reason Big Julie was staying in Vegas. Better help.
So that was the first thing.
Then when he hung up the phone with the number-two lieutenant, Big Julie realized that Baby wasn’t in bed and she wasn’t in the shower, either. So that meant that she could be, one, out shopping, two, getting her hair done, three, getting her nails done, four, out shopping. And sure enough, the phone rings and it’s the front desk asking him to approve a charge limit. And Big Julie wanted to know: what’s the point of bringing a hot piece like Baby to share a love nest in Vegas if she don’t want to stay in bed in the mornings and tempt him with her silicone-enhanced tits, her Brazilian-waxed legs, her organic rosemary peeled face, and her lipo-suctioned tummy? If he’d wanted to be sitting here alone approving credit charges like an effing Wall Street tycoon, he could’ve stayed in Jersey with his wife.