Take Down (12 page)

TWENTY-TWO

Billy’s head was spinning. He’d just ripped off a drug dealer and lived to tell about it. Now he had to figure out how to cash in the gold chip resting in his sleeve and not get caught. It wasn’t the big score he’d dreamed about a few nights ago, but it was better than nothing.

Cashing the chip in wouldn’t be easy. Many Vegas casinos embedded their high-value chips with radio-frequency-identification microchips, and he assumed Galaxy did as well. The technology could be beaten; it just took time to figure out how.

He walked through the casino with the punishers. It was hopping, the tables filled with suckers drinking free booze while slot machines rang in the background, every note in the letter
C
because it made people piss away their money faster.

He thought better with a drink, and entered a cocktail lounge. A waitress took their drink order and gave them short pencils and keno tickets before departing. Keno was a game for chumps, but that didn’t stop millions of people from playing it.

He fished the gold chip out of his sleeve. The lounge was dimly lit, and he didn’t think anyone watching via a surveillance camera could make out the gold color. He deliberately placed the chip on the table in front of the punishers.

“Help me cash this in, and I’ll give you a cut,” he said.

“You got a lot of balls, ripping Rock off,” Ike said.

“Without risk, there is no reward.”

The punishers talked it over. “What’s our cut?” Ike asked.

“Ten percent.”

“Make it twenty, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Twenty works for me.”

Ike picked up the chip. “Cool. I’ll get this taken care of.”

“Hold on. We need to figure out how to get around the RFID chip.”

“Galaxy’s chips don’t have those,” Ike said. “Doucette was against it. He was afraid certain customers wouldn’t appreciate them, if you know what I mean.”

He took the gold chip from Ike and peeled back the label. There was no microchip lurking beneath. He guessed the customers Ike was referring to were criminals who didn’t want to be electronically monitored during their stay.

“Better put that away. Here comes Rock,” Ike said.

He sent the chip back up his sleeve just as Rock and his posse passed the cocktail lounge. Rock had slapped on funky shades and a fedora and was lugging two black leather briefcases.

“Is that what I think it is,” Billy said under his breath.

“Yeah,” Ike said. “One of his lieutenants usually comes.”

“This is Rock’s first visit to Galaxy?”

“Uh-huh. He don’t leave LA much.”

Rock’s destination was the cage. The cage manager engaged Rock in conversation, then emerged through a side door and took possession of the briefcases. Back inside the cage, the cage manager removed stacks of money, which he placed in towering piles on the counter. Billy assumed the money had come from an army of drug pushers, the bills tainted by blood, coke, and serial numbers used by the DEA to trace them, which was why Rock had brought them to Galaxy to be laundered.

The cage manager counted the stacks. By law, casinos were required to manually count every dollar passed into the cage, the procedure filmed by the eye-in-the-sky so there was a record of the transaction. Only that wasn’t happening. Instead, the cage manager was counting the stacks and writing down the total on a pad. When the cage manager was done, Rock signed a chit, and the cage manager slid a tray of chips through the bars.

It had to be one of the slickest money-laundering scams Billy had ever seen. There was no way of knowing how much money Rock had given the casino, which was exactly the idea. If a gaming agent reviewed the tapes of the transaction, the discrepancy would pass muster, unless the agent had been tipped off what to look for.

Rock dumped the chips into his pockets. They were all gold and worth millions. Rock would spend a few days enjoying the casino’s lavish accommodations, then return to the cage when he was ready to leave, and exchange the chips for clean bills, with Galaxy having deducted their cut. Vegas had invented money laundering, and this was as good as it got.

Rock and his posse crossed the casino and entered the salon. Rock was a fool to be carrying around that much money, even if it was in chips. Billy had already scammed Rock once and gotten away with it. Why not again?

There were a lot of reasons not to. Doucette had warned him what would happen if he tried to pull a scam inside the casino, and he didn’t think the casino boss was lying. But Doucette was a cokehead, and people who did drugs were easily duped.

Rock’s bodyguards were a different story. Bodyguards in Vegas were a dime a dozen; female bodyguards were not. Billy guessed Rock’s femme fatales were lethal in every way and would cut him down in a New York minute if he looked cross-eyed at their boss.

He didn’t care. He was going to figure out a way to rip off Rock.

Then there was the man himself. Rock was as nasty as a heavy in a James Bond flick, not to mention the stick with the skull-crushing handle. It would be a major hurdle for
anyone
to take Reverend T. Rock down and live to tell about it.

Fuck it, he was still going to do it. He just needed to let the idea rattle around in his head for a little while, and take form. Anything was possible when he put his mind to it.

The waitress brought their drinks. Ike and T-Bird handed over their keno tickets along with their two-dollar payments. As the waitress walked away, Ike passed his phone to Billy.

“Her Highness,” Ike said under his breath.

“Billy Cunningham, at your service,” he said into the phone.

“I’ve got some bad news for you, lover boy,” Shaz said. “Crunchie just made one of the Gypsies cheating at blackjack. We’re going to pull her off the floor and put the screws to her, find out where the rest of her family is. I’m afraid you lose.”

The Gypsies had avoided the law for decades, and Billy didn’t buy that Crunchie had spotted a member of their clan so quickly, even with the help of surveillance cameras. A more likely scenario was that Crunchie had spotted another cheater doing business in the casino and had decided to rat them out, hoping it would get him back in his boss’s good graces. Billy needed to plant the seed of doubt in Shaz’s mind, and he needed to do it quickly.

“Crunchie’s been wrong before,” he said. “That’s why you brought me on board.”

“He’s not wrong this time,” she said. “This woman’s marking cards with a secret substance. I watched her on the cameras and saw her digging into her pocketbook to get it. Crunchie called her a Lady Picasso.”

“Maybe she was getting her lipstick.”

“Admit it, you’re beaten.”

“The fact that she stuck her hand into her purse doesn’t mean she’s one of the Gypsies, or that she’s cheating. Crunchie will say anything to keep his job. If you bust this woman and she’s clean, she’s going to sue your ass off. You don’t want that, do you?”

“But she’s beating us silly.”

“How much are you into her for?”

“Ten grand.”

“That happens sometimes. Let me take a look and tell you if she’s cheating or not.”

“Why do I feel you’re playing me?”

“I’m not playing you. What table is she sitting at?”

“She’s at the second-to-last table in the blackjack pit, sitting at third base.”

“I’m going right now.”

“Call me after you’ve had a look. I don’t want to lose any more money to this bitch.”

He tossed Ike the phone. Lady Picassos were skilled female cheaters who secretly marked the backs of playing cards with special substances during blackjack, allowing them to know the dealer’s total before the dealer did. These substances ranged from daub to luminous paint that could be seen through special rose-tinted glasses to Vaseline jelly. Women were especially adept at this type of cheating and used their pocketbooks to hide the substance. He was acquainted with several female cheaters in Vegas who made their living this way, and he felt reasonably certain that one of them had had the misfortune of getting caught in Crunchie’s crosshairs.

Rising from the table, he threw down money for the drinks.

“Let’s go check this woman out,” he said.

The winning keno numbers were flashing across a digital screen, and the punishers paused to stare. Keno was a carnival game, the chance of winning so poor that it was rare that anyone ever did. But Ike and T-Bird didn’t know that. They didn’t know the odds, and in this town, that was usually the kiss of death.

They watched long enough to find out they were losers. Throwing their receipts to the floor, they followed Billy out of the cocktail lounge.

TWENTY-THREE

Blackjack had always been a popular game, more so after the movie
21
depicted a crew of fun-loving math whizzes taking down Vegas. The movie was typical Hollywood horseshit, but that hadn’t stopped scores of people from teaching themselves how to count cards and descending upon Sin City believing they could beat the house.

Billy spotted several counters in the blackjack pit. Their body language gave them away. Hunched over, never drinking anything stronger than a Coke, they stared at their cards with the intensity of accountants doing an audit. The casinos had developed measures to send them home broke, only they were usually too busy counting to notice all their chips were gone.

He came to the second-to-last table in the pit. The dealer was a woman with perfect posture who slid the cards out of the plastic dealing shoe at a rapid pace. The faster the game was dealt, the more money the house made.

He passed the table without slowing down. The woman at third base was a major speed bump. Mid-thirties, with a great face hidden behind librarian glasses and a blond wig, and a body that looked just right. He couldn’t remember seeing her around before. A newbie.

He parked himself twenty feet past the table to watch her play. To determine if she was cheating, he counted the number of hands the dealer dealt, divided by the number of times she won. She was winning more than 50 percent of the time, which was what marked cards gave you. Crunchie had called it right. She was a Lady Picasso.

He kept watching, hoping to catch her go into her purse and get the substance. Every painter had a little quirk that was unique. Some only marked aces, while others marked ten-value cards. The amount of substance they applied to the card was also unique. Some painters used small marks, while others preferred the larger variety.

Lady Picasso unclasped her purse. Out came a lipstick, which she applied generously to her lips. As she returned the lipstick, her hand stayed a little too long.

Busted.

When her hand came out, her fingers were spread wide and looked frozen. She’d put the substance on all four fingers so she could mark four cards in succession without going back to her purse. It was a nice touch, something he hadn’t seen before.

During the next two rounds, she marked four ten-valued cards that were dealt to her. To the eye-in-the-sky it had to look above suspicion, her fingertips lightly brushing the back of the cards she wished to mark. In reality, she was turning the deck into an open book.

“Guess who,” Ike said, handing Billy the cell phone.

“Is the bitch cheating or not?” Shaz asked.

“I’m not sure. Are you filming her?” he asked.

“Of course we’re filming her. The video’s inconclusive.”

Billy’s appreciation of Lady Picasso grew. She’d honed her cheating to the degree where the surveillance camera could not discern exactly what she was doing. That kind of skill was a rarity, and he found himself wanting to get to know this woman.

“Let me watch her some more,” he said.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Shaz said. “I’m going to tell Ike and T-Bird to pull her in the back and frisk her. If she’s got a substance in her purse, she’s going down.”

“You’re going to kill her?”

“That’s right. It’s how we deal with people that steal from us. Put Ike back on.”

He returned the phone to Ike. Lady Picasso was about to join Ricky Boswell in the closet unless he intervened. He wasn’t sure how to do that without getting himself killed as well, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

A slinky cocktail waitress balancing a tray walked past. Liking what she saw, she gave Billy a flirtatious wink. He stuffed a hundred-dollar bill into the tip glass on her tray, then whispered in her ear. She acted mildly disappointed, as if hoping he was in the mood for something else.

“Which seat?” the cocktail waitress asked.

“Third base, second-to-last table,” Billy said.

“Will you call me sometime?”

He said yes, and she gave him her number.

“I’ll take care of it,” the cocktail waitress said.

The cocktail waitress walked up to the table and stood behind Lady Picasso’s chair. She asked if anyone needed a drink. Several players said yes and gave her their orders. As she finished writing the orders down, she glanced Billy’s way. He mouthed the words
do it.

The cocktail waitress was right-handed. She transferred her drink tray to her left hand, then deliberately ran her right thumb down Lady Picasso’s back, her thumb following the line of the spine. Gamblers called this the brush. Back in the old days, pit bosses would give players they suspected of cheating the brush as a courtesy. Move on, or else.

Lady Picasso sat up straight in her chair. Four-alarm sirens were sounding in her head, telling her to run. Standing abruptly, she left her winnings on the table and made a beeline for the lady’s restroom located behind the blackjack pit. Billy was impressed. Most cheaters would have stuffed their chips into their pockets before departing and wasted valuable time.

“Hey—where’d she go?” Ike said, just off the phone.

“I have no idea,” he lied.

Ike stood on his tiptoes, his height letting him look over the crowd. “I see her. Come on, T, let’s nail her ass.”

The punishers crossed the pit with the swagger of NFL bounty hunters preparing to cripple a quarterback. Billy followed, keeping his distance. Lady Picasso had run to the john for a reason other than her bladder being full. It was transformation time. She would lose the wig and the glasses, turn the top she was wearing inside out, and throw away her pumps for a pair of flats in her handbag, where she also kept a much smaller purse, the handbag getting stuffed in the trash. Everything about her would look different when she stepped on the casino floor again.

Only two things were capable of ruining her escape. The first was if Ike and T-Bird managed to recognize her. Perhaps she had a distinct mole on her face, or a tattoo on her neck. Those things couldn’t be erased and had done in more than one cheater.

The second would be her reaction to seeing Ike and T-Bird when she came out. They were scary looking even in their new clothes. If she stopped in her tracks, brought her hand to her mouth, or displayed any of the telltale signs that guilty people showed, she’d be history. He’d done what he could; now, it was up to the gods.

He stopped by a bank of slot machines and watched the scene unfold. He put Lady Picasso’s odds of making it out of the casino unscathed at fifty-fifty. There weren’t many games in this town where you could get even money, and he liked her chances.

Lady Picasso left the restroom a much different person than the one who’d gone in. Her blond hair was now brunette and done up in a bun, the glasses were history, her shoes had turned into a pair of embroidered slip-ons, and her blouse had changed color. The only thing the same were her pants, a pair of stylish black capris. The punishers hardly gave her a glance.

Her escape was textbook. Not too fast, not too slow, don’t run if you’re not being chased, eyes straight ahead, a dead cell phone pressed to her ear as she sailed through the casino. Once outside, she’d either hit the street running or grab a cab, never to be seen again.

You rock, girl, he thought.

A scream snapped his head. A scuffle was taking place outside the lady’s restroom. Ike and T-Bird had grabbed a middle-aged blond who bore a passing resemblance to Lady Picasso and were holding her down. The blond’s blouse was torn, and she’d lost her shoes.

“Security! Security!” the blond shouted.

“We are security. Shut your yap,” Ike said.

The blond gave Ike a swift kick in the shins. She was spitting mad, and Billy could only guess the size of the lawsuit she’d end up filing against the casino. There was no reason to let this poor woman take a beating that she didn’t deserve, and he hurried over.

“She’s not the one,” he said.

“Say what?” Ike said.

“I’m positive. You’d better let her go.”

Ike made a call on his cell phone. The blond continued to struggle. T-Bird twisted her arm and she doubled over in agony.

“Cunningham doesn’t think it’s her,” Ike said into the phone. To Billy he said, “Crunchie says mind your own fucking business.”

So Crunchie was directing the action now. That was a different story, and Billy raised his arms in mock surrender and backed off.

“Get your dirty hands off me,” the blond yelled as the punishers dragged her away.

He was suddenly alone. He didn’t think anyone was watching him through the eye-in-the-sky, too preoccupied with the mistaken cheater to care about him right now. He decided to try to run Lady Picasso down. He wanted to meet this woman and get to know her. She had the chops and the moxie and hadn’t panicked when the ceiling was caving in. Those were admirable qualities in his line of work. Best of all, she was hot, and to the casinos that made her a dumb broad, which was the best disguise of all.

He followed her trail and headed outside to the valet stand. The cool night air was a jolt to his senses, and he shivered from the sudden drop in temperature. Stretch limos and a cluster of yellow cabs were letting passengers out, the drivers dragging luggage out of the trunks. The valet captain blew his shrill whistle while imploring the drivers to hurry up.

No sign. Had she hit the Strip and run? That was a definite possibility, only there were a lot of tourists walking the Strip tonight, which meant a lot of uniformed cops as well, a pair on every corner. Billy avoided contact with the police whenever possible, even chance meetings on the street, and he didn’t think Lady Picasso was any different in this regard.

Which meant she was still here. He decided to check out the line of people waiting to take cabs out of the casino. He counted seven couples, all dressed for a night on the town, the men looking impatiently at their watches, asking themselves if it would be faster if they walked. He approached a distinguished white-haired man at the front of the line.

“Sorry to bother you, but I’ve lost my girlfriend. She has dark hair tied in a bun and is wearing black capris. Have you seen her?”

The key to lying was to give the lie a ring of truth. The man bought the story and consulted with his wife, who was draped on her husband’s arm. The wife pointed a manicured finger at a concrete pillar behind the valet stand.

“She’s over there,” the wife said. “I thought she looked a little upset.”

“Thanks,” he said.

He cautiously approached the pillar. He could see a haze of cigarette smoke and figured Lady Picasso was on the other side, trying to calm down. He knew it would be awkward at first, but he was going to speak with her regardless. He wanted to do business with this woman.

He took out his cell phone and held it the way people did while texting, and walked around the pillar. And there she was, sucking on a menthol cigarette. The smell did a number on his head, and the euphoric recall of that first encounter came back in a flood of memories that sped up his heart. He lowered the phone and stared, just to be sure.

Mags stared right back at him. The years had been kind, and she was still as pretty as a magazine cover. She knew she’d been made, yet didn’t seem to be terribly upset. It made him dig her that much more.