Take Down (3 page)

FOUR

Billy’s head was spinning as he climbed into the backseat of the limo. Every hustler’s dream was to scam a Vegas casino for a monster score, and he was about to realize that dream.

He wedged himself between Pepper and Misty. Leon pulled out of the space and drove the limo down the garage’s spiral exit with the speed of a carnival ride.

Travis was looking at him funny. Billy chose to ignore it.

“Let’s chop up the money before we eat,” he suggested.

His crew pulled out their winnings and dropped the money in his lap. He sorted through the bills and separated the denominations into neat piles, then counted the money aloud, starting with the smaller denominations and working his way up, just the way Lou Profaci had taught him during his apprenticeship in Providence. The take came to thirty grand on the nose. He paid his crew a straight percentage off the top. Misty and Pepper got two grand apiece, the same for Cory and Morris, while Gabe and Travis got three grand because they did more of the heavy lifting, while the rest went into his pocket.

The hot dice scam was the sweetest operation he’d ever run. On average, they were taking down three casinos a week. Because the casinos ran three shifts—day, swing, and midnight—they’d robbed several casinos multiple times and had never gotten caught.

Travis cleared his throat. He was drinking two-fisted, a Bud Light in one hand, a Johnnie Walker on the rocks in the other. The funny look on his face that Billy had thought was the booze he now recognized as something troubling.

“You got something you want to tell us, Billy?” the big man asked.

“Not particularly,” Billy said.

“You were late.”

“So?”

“You’re never late. It just bothered us.”

“Think I ran out with the money?”

“Did I say that?”

Billy started to steam.

“We were just worried that something happened to you,” Travis said. “When you didn’t show up, we got nervous. We care about you, man.”

Billy didn’t hear a word of what Travis had just said. They worked for him—he didn’t work for them—and he had half a mind to tell Leon to pull over so he could throw Travis out of the limo and let him go find another crew to work with.

But he didn’t do it. He had a temper and he knew that it sometimes got the better of him. Instead, he pulled a Heineken out of the minibar and took a long swig. It calmed him down, and he looked across the seat at Travis and saw the big man cringe. Later in the restaurant he’d corner Travis and straighten him out. If Travis challenged him again, he was history.

No one was smiling anymore, just a bunch of sour faces wondering what to say next. Leon pulled into the Golden Steer parking lot and circled the building. The place was packed, and parking spaces were at a minimum. Misty’s hot breath tickled Billy’s face.

“Don’t be pissed,” she said.

“Who said I was pissed?” he said, hearing the anger in his voice.

“We care about you, Billy.”

“You’re the magic man,” Pepper chimed in, snuggling up next to him. “Did something bad happen? You can tell us.”

Billy looked down at his sweaty beer bottle. He never should have taken Crunchie’s call while he was doing a job. It was the first rule of hustling: no interruptions. Only he’d broken it, and his crew wanted to know why. Trust ran both ways, so he decided to tell them.

“I got a call from an old friend. That’s why I was late. Everybody cool with that?”

“She must be a great fuck for you to take her call,” Pepper said.

He looked at her. “You think I’m pussy-whipped?”

“All men are pussy-whipped.”

“Not me.”

“Bullshit. What’s her name?”

Pepper’s pale green eyes were laughing at him. Pepper had made porno flicks for several years, doing straight fuck films before switching to blow job movies because the pay was better, and she knew everything there was to know about the crazy little brain in a man’s dick.

“Crunchie,” Billy said.

“Her name’s Crunchie?”

“Him. He’s an old grifter I used to run with. They used to call him Captain Crunch because he was always good in a tight spot.”

“Why were you talking to him?”

“Does it matter?” he said, feeling his anger start to rise.

“You told us no interruptions during a job.”

She had him dead to rights. He faced the group.

“Crunchie knows a Strip casino that’s primed to get ripped off. He needs someone to play a whale, so he called me. I’m hooking up with him later tonight to go over the details. I would have told you sooner, but I didn’t want to jinx it. Is everybody cool with that?”

Their heads bobbed in unison.

“Can you tell us which casino?” Gabe asked.

“Galaxy.”

“Have we ever ripped that one off?”

“No. It’s only been open a few months.”

“How’s security?”

He quizzed Cory and Morris with a glance. He’d turned them onto the art of wheel tracking, and they’d visited many of the town’s casinos to analyze their roulette games. Roulette wheels sometimes became biased through faulty construction and could produce amazing winnings to a player willing to track a few hundred spins of the wheel with a hidden computer.

“Have you checked out Galaxy yet?” he asked them.

“We got acquainted with Galaxy last week,” Cory replied.

“And?”

“Staff is pretty green. I got chummy with a cocktail waitress, and she said that they were having trouble with their systems. It’s a candy store.”

Billy nodded. The scam was getting sweeter by the minute.

“Can you tell us what the scam is?” Gabe asked.

“We’re going to take down the high-roller salon at blackjack,” he said.

Misty stiffened, and so did Pepper. The others got real quiet, too.

“Has anyone ever ripped off a high-roller salon?” Gabe asked.

“No. We’re going to make history.”

Travis leaned forward in his seat, wanting to get back on good footing with the boss. “Billy, this sounds really great. How much do you think we can take them for?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ll jinx it if I tell you.”

Travis swallowed hard. He’d just bought a four-bedroom, three-bath money pit and needed every spare dime he could get his hands on. “Can you give us a range?”

“Try the stratosphere,” he said.

Leon continued to circle the restaurant. All Billy could hear was the fluttering sound of Gabe breathing through his nose. He knew what each one of them was thinking. Was this the big score that would forever change their lives? It was Gabe who braved the silence.

“For the love of Christ, Billy, tell us, before we wet our pants,” the jeweler said.

“All right. If this goes as planned, we’ll walk away with a few million bucks, maybe more.” He paused to let the words sink in, then said, “You’ll each get your usual cut.”

Everyone got crazy all at once. The girls crawled into Billy’s lap and started to unbutton his shirt. He tried to fight them off and ended up kissing Misty instead, wanting more than just a taste of her sweet breath. The slider came down and Leon stuck his head into the back.

“Hey. No orgies in my limo, you hear?”

FIVE

They ran up a two-thousand-dollar tab in one of the Golden Steer’s private dining rooms, the booze and champagne flowing like water. Billy sucked down several cups of coffee before taking his crew home, dropping them at their front doors with a promise to call tomorrow and fill them in on the details of Crunchie’s big score. Last stop was his pad at Turnberry Towers. He passed $500 to Leon through the open slider.

“I need to ask you a question,” his driver said. “Does this score include me?”

“If you want to be in, yeah, it includes you,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t I want to be in?”

“If we go down, you go down as well. You won’t be able to say you didn’t know what was going on, you were just hired to drive.”

“You’re saying I could end up doing time.”

“Yeah. You got any priors?”

“A couple.”

“Any felonies?”

“A couple.”

“Then you’ll do hard time if we get caught. Still want in?”

Leon scratched his chin and weighed the risk against the reward. “What’s my cut?”

“How does twenty-five grand sound?”

“Are you serious? Just for driving you around?”

“I’m going to be impersonating a whale, and will need a full-time driver at my beck and call. You’ll need to get your tuxedo dry-cleaned and wear the hat and do the step-and-fetch-it. You up for that?”

“Shit, I’ll wiggle through a pipe for twenty-five grand.”

Billy would have enjoyed seeing that. Climbing out, he banged his hand on the roof. The limo pulled away and slowly faded into the night.

Home sweet home was a luxury penthouse condo that he’d won in a rigged poker game from a Dallas oilman. The game had been arranged by the host at a Strip casino with whom Billy had split his winnings and who technically owned half the condo. They talked once a month, the host checking to make sure Billy hadn’t pulled a fast one and sold the place. Maybe he’d take his cut from Crunchie’s score and pay the host off. It would be nice to get him off his back.

Standing in his bedroom, he peeled off his clothes and tossed them in the trash. Losing your clothes after a heist was an old hustler’s trick, designed to keep casino security from remembering you the next time you ripped the place off.

He wanted to look sharp for his meeting, and he entered the closet and picked through the racks. He settled on black Armani slacks and a Louis Vuitton black silk shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons that he’d been saving for a special occasion. When he finished dressing, he appraised himself in the mirror hanging on the closet door. He looked like a player.

What a life. He’d just celebrated his thirtieth birthday, and had made more money and accumulated more sexy stuff than he’d ever dreamed possible. And there was more where that came from. He’d once taken a helicopter ride over Las Vegas. The gaudy casinos and hotels had reminded him of an upturned pirate’s treasure chest, just waiting to be plundered.

He called downstairs to the valet and requested that his car be brought up.

For years, the local hustlers had met at the Denny’s on Tropicana Avenue to talk shop. Then several regulars got busted, and word leaked out that the booths were bugged by the gaming board. It had made the Grand Slam special a lot less attractive.

By default, the Peppermill had become the new hangout, so it was natural that Crunchie wanted to meet there. From the street it resembled a retro diner, but in fact was two businesses. The front was a tourist-trap restaurant that served twelve-dollar burgers, the back a cocktail lounge with a circular fireplace and no security cameras. As Billy eased his metallic black Maserati GranTurismo into the narrow parking space in front, his Droid vibrated. Crunchie calling.

“I’m running behind,” the old grifter said by way of greeting.

“You’re not here?”

“My Vet won’t start. I’ll call you when I’m on my way.”

Billy tapped his fingers on the wheel. Crunchie had called this meeting, and now he wasn’t here. This was getting off to a bad start. “How soon will that be?”

“Don’t get your diapers in a wad. I’ll be over as fast as I can.”

“That’s not very fast the way you move.”

“Fuck you, you little asshole. Sixty minutes. Feel better now?”

“Remember to bring your hearing aid.”

There were plenty of ways to kill an hour in Vegas, and he took a stroll up the block to a joint called Slots A Fun. A former crew member named Sal was doing time for sticking a strobe light up a slot machine’s coin chute to make it overpay, and Billy had promised to keep tabs on Sal’s girlfriend, a Vietnamese blackjack dealer named Ly.

A week after Sal got sent away, Billy had called Ly to see how she was holding up. She’d sounded depressed and had talked him into meeting her at a fleabag motel on North Seventh Street. Pulling into the motel’s parking lot, he’d spied Ly’s junker parked outside a room. He’d knocked on the door, found it open, and gone in. Burning candles everywhere, and on the bedside table, a bottle of red wine, two glasses, and a pack of Trojans.

Ly stood beside the bed wearing a red satin kimono and a spray of flowers in her hair. As if by magic, the kimono slipped to the floor, revealing erect nipples rubbed with ice cubes, and no pubic hair. The sight of her took his breath away.

“Get in here, and shut the door behind you,” she’d said.

Ly meant
lion
in Vietnamese. Billy had started backing up.

“You no like?” she said.

“I don’t sleep with my friend’s girlfriends,” he explained.

“I need money. You gotta help me.”

“I’ll help you, but I’m not going to fuck you.”

“Suit yourself,” she said.

Slots A Fun offered an arcade-like atmosphere created by rows of noisy slot machines. In the back were five purple-felted blackjack tables that were hard on the eyes. Ly’s table was empty, and Billy tossed down a wad of cash and sat down. She was as pretty as a doll and wore a tight-fitting purple vest over her uniform. She counted the money with the precision of a bank teller.

“Three hundred,” she called out.

A pit boss came over to inspect the money.

“Go ahead,” the pit boss declared.

Ly shoved the bills down the cash slot in the table. From her tray, she removed a stack of ten green chips and a stack of ten red chips, which she pushed toward Billy. The greens were worth twenty-five dollars apiece, the reds five dollars.

“You look familiar,” the pit boss said. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

Billy didn’t think there was a pit boss in town he hadn’t ripped off at least once.

“
America’s Most Wanted
,” he replied.

“Hah. That’s a good one. Ly will take good care of you.”

The pit boss walked over to another table.

“I’m broke,” Ly said under her breath.

“You’re always broke.”

“Come on, help me.”

Billy reached into his pocket and finger-palmed a gaffed chip that Gabe had manufactured for him. The gaffed chip had a green Slots A Fun chip on one side, a red Slots A Fun on the other, its edge painted half-red, half-green. He placed his hand on the table edge.

“Good boy,” Ly said.

He feigned plucking a green chip from the stack in front of him. In actuality, he pushed the gaffed chip into view. He took a red chip from another stack and placed the two chips into the betting circle. To anyone watching, he’d just bet thirty dollars.

“Good luck,” Ly said.

She dealt the round. Billy won, and she paid him thirty dollars. He left his original bet in the betting circle and added the winning chips to his stacks.

She dealt another round. This time, he lost the hand.

“You lose, too bad,” she said.

She scooped the losing bet off the felt and flipped the gaffed chip over, pretending to deposit it into her tray with the green chips. In reality, the gaffed chip remained in her hand. As she deposited the red chip into her tray, she left the gaffed chip with it.

To anyone watching, nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Change, please.” Billy tossed a green chip toward her.

Ly removed the gaffed chip and four normal red chips from her tray and slid them toward him. Billy took the gaffed chip and under cover of his hand, flipped it over. Soon, the gaffed chip was lying in the betting circle with a red chip.

It was one of the sweetest scams ever devised. When he won a hand, the casino paid him thirty dollars; when he lost, the casino made only ten dollars because of the shortchange. On an average night, he could steal $600 without suspicion. Ly’s cut was half.

“Where you taking me to dinner?” she asked.

It was how every session with her ended.

“Not tonight,” he said.

“You got some other girl you like more than me?”

He knocked over one of his stacks of chips, signaling that she needed to watch her mouth. She continued to talk recklessly, and he rose from his chair. Fear flashed through her eyes.

“Don’t go. My rent due,” she said.

“That’s not my problem.”

“I thought you care about me.”

She was pushing it. He decided to mess with her and pushed all of his chips into the betting circle. If he lost, Ly lost as well.

“What you doing?” she asked.

“Shut up and deal,” he said.

He walked out of Slots A Fun with twelve hundred bucks of the casino’s money. It was more than he normally would have stolen from a joint so small, and he would have to avoid coming here for a while. Ly was becoming a liability. If he wasn’t careful, they’d end up getting busted.

Ly parked her junker in the elevated self-park garage across the street at the Riviera. On the fourth floor he found her car and used the spare key she’d given him to pop the trunk. He dropped her cut onto the spare tire and told himself it was time to end the arrangement.

Some things were easier said than done. If he called and broke the bad news, she’d scream at him. If he went and saw her, she’d attack him. He decided to do it subtly and let her figure it out. He placed his cut on top of hers, then took the spare key from his key chain and placed it atop the money, then shut the trunk. Ly wasn’t stupid and would understand that they were done.

It was nearly eleven. Time to see the captain and talk business. Stealing a few cool million was at the top of his bucket list, and he hurried from the garage.