Vegas Vengeance (10 page)

“What's that have to do with the Five-Cs?”

Smith hunched forward to make his point. “It's this, Hawk. The mob has slowly been losing control. But the things they have held on to have been solid—either established casinos or a few selected outside businesses. Their outside businesses have nothing to do with gambling, but it gives them a place to wash any illegal money they have. We started the Five-Cs six years ago. We started small. Hell, we
wanted
to be small. That way, the outsiders wouldn't be interested. Why would the mob want to bother with us? But our casinos are like no others in Vegas. They're individualized. Very personal. I've been told they have kind of a hometown flavor. And maybe that's why our success has been three times what we ever hoped it would be.”

“You're making a lot of money?”

Smith nodded quickly, as if he couldn't believe it himself. “Not compared to a really big casino. But we're still making more than I ever dreamed. And maybe the mob found out. I mean, that
has
to be it, doesn't it? Why else would they want a gambling complex? Maybe they decided the Five-Cs is the place to get their foot back in the door. Maybe they're making another run at Vegas so they can get the same kind of control they had in the old days.” He stared out the window. “God knows, their methods are the same as in the old days. Extortion. Threats. Murder.”

“You said the mob still controls some businesses that have nothing to do with gambling. What kind?”

“I don't know for sure, really. It's just talk I've heard. A chain of carpet cleaner outlets. Liquor stores.” He grinned. “A religious supply company.”

“What?”

“You heard me right. Las Vegas has more churches than any city its size in the world, Hawk. And it's not accidental. You see, the good citizens of this state can outlaw gambling anytime they want—at the voting booth. The mob and other casino owners have always been painfully aware of that. So to keep the citizens happy, they give them anything they want. And because most of the antigambling sentiment comes from the churchgoers, people in the business have taken special care to make them happy. Twenty years ago, if a congregation wanted a new church, all they had to do was drop the word to the mob boss. Presto! The money magically arrived. Name any religious sect and I'll guarantee they have a place of worship here. And it probably didn't cost the happy flock a dime.”

“The mob bought off ministers?”

“And rabbis and priests and yogis and everyone else you can think of.” Smith laced his fingers behind his head and rocked back in his chair. “So you see, running a religious supply store is a way for the mob to get some of its money back. Clever, huh?”

“Touching.”

“The mob has always had a heart of gold. Believe me, I know. I've been in Vegas for more than forty years.”

“And that's one thing that bothers me, Kevin. You were a cop here. A damn good cop, from what I've heard. And all good cops make street connections—people who can tell them what the opposition is up to.”

Smith nodded that it was true.

Hawker looked at him pointedly. “So how is it you people don't know who is trying to hit you? Certainly the word is out on the streets. But from what you've said, they came to you out of the blue. Two goons you had never seen before tendering a low-ball offer for your complex. When you refused them, the telephone threats began—just as they threatened Barbara Blaine. And then a couple of them jumped your associate, Charlie Kullenburg, and beat him half to death. And you still don't have a clue who they are.”

Smith's face reddened slightly. “Goddamn it, Hawk, don't you think I've tried? Don't you think we've all tried? I agree, it's confusing as hell. It doesn't make any sense. But who else could it be but the old Vegas mob? Sure, the word should be on the streets—but it's not. People on the in with the old mob families should know why they want the Five-Cs and just how far they're willing to go to get it—but they don't. I can't explain it. It's one hell of a mystery.

“When it first started, I wasn't worried a bit. I was confident there wasn't anything the five of us couldn't handle—we're all cops, for Christ's sake. And we've still got connections downtown.” He made a helpless motion with his hands. “But things have changed more than I thought in Vegas. It used to be I
knew
who the mob bosses were. I could recognize their goons a hundred yards away. But like I said, the big conglomerate money has shifted the center of power. The mob is still here. But they don't run the place anymore, so who keeps up with them?”

“And that includes the Vegas police?”

“To a certain extent. Hell, that's why I knew we had to bring in an outsider. Even my cop friends can't find out anything. They have to play everything exactly by the book. And until these bastards come out in the open, they can't even hit them with a loitering charge.” Kevin Smith stood suddenly, smiling as if his good humor had returned. “But that's enough talk about those bums for now, Hawk. I haven't even given you a tour of the casino yet.”

“Can you include a visit to your switchboard terminal station in the tour?”

Smith looked at him oddly. “Sure. If you want.”

“I want.”

Even though it was a Thursday afternoon, the casino was crowded.

The noise of a jazzy band from one of the lounge areas mixed with the alto garble of crowd noise. Men in white dinner jackets. Middle-aged women in gowns designed to reveal rather than conceal. Cigarette smoke and wild peals of laughter.

Hawker didn't like crowds. He decided it was to be one of those tours that had to be politely endured.

He was wrong.

Kevin Smith knew the casino business, and Hawker soon found himself fascinated by the intricacies of managing a big-time gambling operation. Smith led him through the rows of slot machines in the lobby, all attended by handle-yanking women, purses on their laps.

“There're more than sixty thousand slots in Nevada,” Smith said, raising his voice above the noise of the crowd. “I think I already told you the kind of revenue they produce. It's because people get addicted to the little bastards. Hell, they're always trying to beat them one way or another. They try foreign coins, wire shims, kicking and punching them—it must have something to do with people hating to lose to machines. We went through a period when ladies were bringing big magnets to throw off the mechanism. They'd carry the magnets in their purses and hold them up to the window to stop the wheels. Christ, one night we caught a lady in here with a magnet that must have weighed forty pounds—carried the damn thing in a purse the size of a suitcase. When we asked her how she'd managed, she told us in absolute seriousness, ‘Practice.' Turns out she'd ripped off just about every casino in Vegas. And the old dame was proud of herself!”

The women at the slot machines did not glance up as the two men pressed by.

The main casino was ballroom-sized. The balcony was right out of a Western movie. The gambling tables were the color of fine putting greens. The roulette wheels took center stage, spinning and clattering as the players watched, mesmerized.

To Hawker, it was a blur of random activity. But Smith began to bring it all into focus.

“Hawk, a casino manager has to win his money three times here. First I have to win it from the players. Then from the dealers. Then from my behind-the-scenes people.”

“Am I supposed to understand that, Kevin?”

The older man laughed. “Stealing, Hawk. Greed. I employ good people here. But it's an awful damn big temptation to handle all those high-stake chips every night without trying to pocket one or two. In Vegas, you see, a casino chip is as good as cash. So to combat that, I use the same system most of the casinos use. For each eight-hour shift, I have a shift boss. He's the overseer. He runs the show. Under him, we have pit bosses. There's a pit boss for the blackjack pit, where all the blackjack tables are; a pit boss for the dice pit, one for the baccarat tables; and so on. The pit bosses are in charge of all the tables in their area—a big responsibility with all the noise and activity going on. So to help them, we have floor men who walk up and down behind the dealers to make sure no one gets lighthanded. At the baccarat tables, we have a ladder man—a guy who sits on a stand and watches from above …”

As Smith talked, all the random activity came into focus for Hawker. The strategic placement of the employees, he realized, was as carefully planned as the location of teller windows at banks.

What Hawker found especially interesting was the way Smith said the casinos dealt with gamblers who owed them money.

“All casinos have a marker system, Hawk. That means we will extend the customer credit if he signs a marker for it. Sometimes customers skip when it comes time to collect. Every year, the Five-Cs complex extends about a million in credit, and we usually fail to collect about two hundred thousand. So we send out our collectors. In the movies, our collectors would be Humphrey Bogart types. You know, tough guys. They'd break legs, threaten wives, whatever it took to get the money.” Smith laughed. “But it's nothing like that. You see, a gambling debt cannot be legally collected. And there isn't a casino manager or stockholder who doesn't want it to stay that way.”

“What?”

“I'm serious. Making gambling debts legally collectible would be the beginning of the end of our business. Think about it. A day wouldn't go by that a newspaper didn't carry the story of how some local family man had lost everything to a Vegas gambling casino. Very bad for the image, and the voters don't like that sort of thing. Plus, ruining an avid gambler is strictly a stupid thing to do. Even if he does owe you money, he's going to keep working and keep gambling as long as he's not in prison—which he would be, if we had to take our debtors to court. You see, Hawk, a casino owner looks upon each avid gambler as an annuity. A gambler pays steady dividends over the years. And we'll go way out of our way to make sure he doesn't get hurt too badly on a trip to one of our casinos. We want to keep him healthy. We want to keep him working.”

“But why would you have to collect? Even if the debt was legally collectible, why would you have to pursue it?”

“Because the IRS would make us. The IRS is the only one that wants to make gambling debts legally collectible. That way they can tax the money twice. You see, when a debtor welches on us, we don't have to pay taxes on it because it's money we never received. It goes down as a business loss. So the IRS says we have to make a ‘reasonable' effort to collect. So we send out collectors. If the gambler tells the collector to get the hell off his property, the collector gets in his car and comes home. We've made our reasonable effort. And our gambler is still healthy and working. When he's feeling lucky, he'll return to our casinos and place a few bets. Of course, the IRS is pissed off, but what else is new?”

Kevin Smith spent another hour showing Hawker the casino. The terminology was new but interesting. Hawker learned about shills, drop boxes, croupiers and crossroaders.

It was while he was at the roulette table that the key to Jason Stratton's code finally came to Hawker.

Kevin Smith was explaining how the random probabilities aren't always so random in roulette.

“Big-time gamblers have hired scientists to make studies,” Smith was saying. “See, all the numbers on the wheel are either red or black. These scientists discovered that red paint and black paint have different chemical properties. Black paint tends to make the wooden fibers of the wheel harder, and thus helps the ball to bounce out. But red paint eats into the wooden fibers of the slot and helps the ball stick. The difference in the percentages is small, but I've read there is some truth to it …”

Hawker didn't hear the rest of what he was saying. Something he had said kept echoing in his head. “… the random probabilities aren't always so random.”

Now excited about finally getting into Stratton's journal, Hawker cut the tour short. Kevin Smith insisted on going with him to the switchboard terminal. It was downstairs in the guts of the building, amid boxes of musty show costumes, retired slot machines, roulette wheels.

The terminal station had a room all its own. On each wall was a closet-size beige terminal box. Inside each box was a vein-work of candy-colored wires running to rows of clattering switching stations.

Hawker brought out the VL-34 and drew out the antenna. With all the electrical equipment around, the audio alert went off immediately. But it wasn't until he pointed the antenna at the second bank of switches that the flashing yellow light told him there was an in-house tap.

It took Hawker all of thirty seconds to find the mouse-size bug.

Captain Kevin Smith looked on, beaming his approval as Hawker held up his find.

But then the door to the terminal flew open, and a man dressed in coveralls stepped in.

The stocking knotted over his head contorted his face into a fleshy mass.

The .45 automatic in his right hand was up and firing before Hawker could react.

There were two deafening explosions, and Kevin Smith was smacked back against the wall.

Hawker was already in mid-stride as the .45's muzzle vectored toward him.

thirteen

Hawker stepped under the gun, then locked both hands on the man's arm. He slammed downward, as if trying to break firewood over his knee.

The man in the stocking mask screamed in agony as the gun fell to the cement floor.

There was an explosion. For a crazy moment, Hawker thought Kevin Smith had somehow found a weapon and fired. The man in the stocking mask jolted backward, blood spouting from beneath his chin.

It took Hawker a second to realize what had happened.

The impact of the .45 hitting the cement had triggered it.

The man had been killed by his own weapon.