by Donn Cortez
“Worm?”
“I’ll get to that in a second. A read-only chip is just that: you can read information off it, but you can’t ever change it. A read/write chip can be altered—that’s definitely not the kind you want in a casino token. The kind you do want is the WORM: Write Once, Read Many. You can add something to it once to make it unique—usually a serial number—and then it becomes read-only.”
“Let’s say you had read/write chips and you wanted to reprogram them. What would you need?”
“A lot more than this scanner. It puts out a magnetic field and reads the radio signal that bounces back—that’s it.”
“If you had the right equipment, could you reprogram them at a distance?”
Archie frowned. “I don’t want to say it’s impossible, but it would be really difficult. The range of a system like this depends on two things: the size of the antenna that’s part of the chip, and the strength of the radio signal being sent. The antenna in a casino token is so small you normally have to be within inches to read it; you could boost the distance with a really powerful radio transmitter, but I don’t know how far you could actually extend the range. Ultra-High Frequency transmitters broadcast at nine hundred fifteen megahertz, and they only operate at a maximum distance of around twenty feet.”
“Twenty feet. Or less if there’s something like a concrete wall in the way.”
“Definitely.”
“Thanks, Arch. So there’s no way this scanner could be feeding me false data?”
“No. And if it’s telling you that the casino chips are WORMs, then that’s what they are.”
Greg sighed. “I really should be able to work with a straight line like that, but it’s been a long day. I’ll see you later.”
“Well?” asked Nick when Greg returned.
“Scanners check out fine. They—and Archie—say the chips we pulled can only be altered once, and that’s already been done when the serial numbers were assigned. You find anything?”
Nick shook his head. “Nada. Near as I can tell, they’re authentic.”
Nick’s cell phone chimed. He answered. “Nick Stokes. Yeah? Is that so? How many? Uh-huh. Okay, we’ll be right over.” He closed his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. “That was Tanner at the Panhandle. They haven’t finished the count yet, but they’ve found some counterfeit tokens in the sample they pulled off the casino floor—all hundreds.”
“So this is about the chips. What I don’t get is how the alternate set is involved.”
“Well, there are two more links in the distribution chain we haven’t taken a close look at. The first and the last.”
Greg nodded. “The manufacturer and the computer database that keeps track of them. Guess we should have a chat with both.”
Nick shrugged out of his lab coat. “Tell you what—you talk to the manufacturer, I’ll have a word with whoever’s managing the database for the casino. I’m headed down there now to pick up some of the bogus chips, see if they match the one we found in the elevator shaft.”
“You got it.”
The Panhandle’s tokens were produced by a company called Chipsdown Inc., based in Henderson. Greg called to make an appointment, then drove out to their offices.
Chipsdown was outside Henderson itself, in a long white clapboard building that could just as easily have housed a parts dealership or a small electronics firm. There was no sign out front; only the directions he’d been given and the address itself told Greg he was in the right place.
He walked up the wooden steps and opened the front door, an electronic chime announcing his arrival. Inside, the nature of the business was immediately obvious; Greg stepped into a showroom, the walls lined with display cases showing off chips of every design, color, and denomination. Customized chip cases made of aluminum, leather, or clear Lucite stood on columns under spotlights. In the middle of the room, a blackjack table had been converted into a receptionist’s desk; a young woman looked up from her computer and smiled at him. “Hello. Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Higgins?”
“You’re Greg Sanders, right? I’ll let him know—he should be out in a minute.” She picked up the phone.
Greg took a look around while he waited. Chipsdown apparently manufactured tokens for more than just casinos; it offered chips to the private market as well. The recent surge of public interest in poker probably had a lot to do with that, though much of that was taking place online. Greg doubted there was much of a market for virtual chips, though it wouldn’t have surprised him if there was. Money itself, after all, was already more or less a virtual commodity by its very nature.
Higgins came bustling out of a door in the back, smiling and striding forward with his hand outstretched. He was a paunchy man in a good suit, with short, slicked-back dark hair and a pair of the narrow, rectangular glasses that were fashionable at the moment.
“Greg Sanders, Vegas Crime Lab,” Greg shook his hand. “We spoke on the phone?”
“Yes, yes. Harvey Higgins. I’m the manager here. What can I do to assist Nevada law enforcement today?” Higgins put his hands behind his back and beamed at Greg.
Greg reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the Panhandle’s chips. “I was wondering what you could tell me about this.”
Higgins took it and held it between thumb and forefinger. “Ah. One of ours, I see. Hundred-dollar denomination, coin-aligned, current. RFID-chipped. Gold hot stamp, red edge insert. No obvious JDLR.”
“JDLR?”
Higgins chuckled. “Sorry, that’s chip-speak: Just Doesn’t Look Right. I meant that if it’s a counterfeit, it’s not an obvious one.”
“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about. I’ve run about every test I can think of on this chip, and it appears to be genuine.”
“But you have reason to believe it isn’t?”
“I do. Or if it isn’t an outright fake, I think the RFID insert might have been tampered with.”
Higgins smile vanished. “Well, we take that sort of thing very seriously. Both the Casino Control Commission and the Division of Game Enforcement examine our facilities on a regular basis; I can assure you, we keep very careful track of every chip we make and exactly where it goes. In fact, to even examine this chip, we’re going to have to do some paperwork.”
Greg sighed. “Well, I’m no stranger to that. If it can help me figure out what the deal is with these chips, bring it on.”
Higgins nodded and walked over to the receptionist. “Ms. Parsons? We’re going to need the 15-C139, the TX-17, and the standard Privacy and Nondisclosure forms.”
Greg did his best not to sigh again.
Nick met Tanner in the security chief’s own office, a small, windowless room with a framed picture of dogs playing poker on one wall. Someone had Photoshopped an image of Tanner peering through a window into the background.
Nick examined one of the tokens Tanner had just tossed him. “How many have you found so far?”
“Only five. But we’ve only gone through about a tenth of what we’ve pulled.”
“So that’s what, point five percent of all the chips you have in circulation? Which works out to roughly a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of phony clay.”
“Yeah. Mr. Dell is pretty upset. He wants us to yank the whole set and replace it, but I told him to hold off until you guys verify the alternates are okay. How’s that going?”
Nick shook his head. “Greg’s talking to the manufacturer, seeing if they could have been tampered with on that end. I need to talk to whoever handles the database for the alternate chips to make sure that’s on the up-and-up. So far, though, everything’s we’ve found points to them being the real, unaltered deal.”
“Good. The sooner we can swap them, the sooner Dell calms down. If I get out of this with my job intact, I’ll be amazed.”
“So whom do I talk to about the database?”
“That’d be Bernie Ellington. He’s the head of our IT department, handles all
the tech upgrades and online services. He’s just down the hall.”
Nick thanked him and followed his directions to another office with “B. ELLINGTON” on the door. A knock produced a loud “Come in!”
Ellington’s office was considerably larger than Tanner’s. No fewer than five flat-screen monitors crowded the top of Ellington’s desk, behind which sat a broad-shouldered black man with a mustache straight out of a 1970s kung fu movie. He wore a pink long-sleeved shirt with suspenders, no tie, his shirt open at the collar. “Yes?”
“Nick Stokes, Vegas Crime Lab. I understand you manage the IT department for the casino?”
“That I do,” Ellington said with a smile. “And for the hotel. Everything from online booking to making sure the security feeds don’t crash. You’re here about the alternate chips, right?” He motioned for Nick to take a seat.
“You know what’s going on?” asked Nick as he sat.
“Information is what I do, Mr. Stokes. Be pretty poor at my job if I didn’t pay attention to what was happening around me.”
“True enough. What can you tell me about the security—”
Ellington held up a hand. “Hold up. I know where you’re going with this—you want to know if someone could have hacked into our system, maybe changed a few digits around, and made it so the alternate chips would be—what? Worth more? Maybe even add nonexistent chips to the system so they could be cashed out without being bought in the first place?”
Nick shrugged. “You tell me.”
Ellington leaned back and crossed his arms. “Yes, I will tell you. What you’re suggesting is as impossible as waltzing into a bank vault and changing all the one-dollar bills into hundreds with a magic marker. I personally supervised the entry of every single chip into our database—all two hundred thousand of them—and I signed off on every single one. I also oversaw the installation of the security protocols into that database, and there is absolutely no way that anyone—not even a fully digitized version of Keanu Reeves himself—could break into it. Now, is that clear enough, or would you like me to go into the technical details?” There was steel behind the man’s gentle smile.
Nick shook his head. “I’m sure your security is excellent. But yes, I’m afraid I am going to need the technical details.”
“Fine. I hope your programming skills are up to date, because mine certainly are. And you might want to grab some coffee before we start; we’re going to be here a while.”
Nick forced a smile. “Can’t wait to get started . . .”
* * *
Greg yawned as he walked into the lab. “Man. If sheer bureaucracy is any indication, then the people who make casino chips are more secure than the employees of Fort Knox.”
Nick looked over from where he was sprawled in one of the lab’s rolling chairs. “Yeah? Well, try listening to someone speaking in binary for a few hours. I think I caught about a tenth of what he was explaining.”
“Which was?”
“Essentially? Computer security good. Chip security good. CSI tech, stupid.”
“I know how you feel. The manufacturer insists there was nothing wrong with the chips when they left the factory, and both the CCC and the DGE signed off on them. Any good news on your front?”
“I don’t know if it’s good or not, but the counterfeits they found on the casino floor match the one we found in the elevator shaft.”
Greg groaned. “That makes no sense. What we seem to have discovered is an elaborate plot to introduce counterfeit markers to a casino—chips that anyone could have just walked in the front door and started playing with. You don’t need bears and exploding zeppelins and human cannonballs to plant fake tokens.”
“No, you don’t.” Nick straightened up. “Maybe we’re thinking about this all wrong. What do all the things you just mentioned have in common?”
Greg thought about it. “They all make the casino look bad?”
“Exactly. Maybe this isn’t about making a profit—maybe it’s about making sure somebody else doesn’t.”
“Andolph Dell?”
“I think we need to talk to him again—and this time, let’s do it here.”
Andolph Dell looked more irritated than intimidated in the interview room. “I don’t understand why you had to drag me all the way down here—what, I don’t have enough on my plate without jumping through hoops for the police? Just tell me whether or not my alternates are okay so I can put them into use and stop hemorrhaging money.”
Jim Brass nodded. Nick and Greg sat on either side of him; they’d asked Brass to join the interview to give it a little more weight. Andolph Dell seemed to believe he could just steamroll over lowly CSI techs, and they thought a police detective might at least slow him down.
“We’re still looking into that,” said Brass. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can get back to your business. Okay?”
“Whatever. Start asking.”
“Who would have the most to gain from the Panhandle losing money?”
“Every other casino on the Strip. Next question.”
“I think you can do a little better than that, Mr. Dell.”
Dell glowered at him. “You want to know who’d like me brought down? The list is too long to recite. This is a cutthroat business in a cutthroat town, Detective Brass. When I said every other casino on the Strip, I wasn’t exaggerating.”
“Let’s leave business out of it, then. How about something more personal? Somebody who might get their jollies from kicking you where it’ll hurt the most?”
Dell’s eyes flickered. Up and to the right, an indicator that he was accessing a visual memory. “I’ve made a few enemies, sure. But nobody—they wouldn’t go this far.”
Brass caught the qualification. “You obviously have someone in mind. Someone you’d rather not name, which suggests an ongoing relationship you’re not sure about. A woman?”
Dell didn’t say anything.
“Look,” said Nick. “We understand if you’re trying to be discreet. But our investigation is going to turn this person up sooner or later, and by that time, we’ll have asked a lot of people a lot of very personal questions. If you’re trying to minimize this information getting around, it’s better to tell us now.”
“Besides,” said Greg, “if this person does turn out to be responsible, wouldn’t you rather know than have lingering doubts?”
Dell’s glower lost a little of its ferocity. “I suppose,” he said grudgingly. “I’ve been seeing a woman, from a very wealthy family. The relationship has been. . . intense. On again, off again. The last time we broke up, she actually bought the property next to me and told me she was going to put up her own casino and put me out of business. But that all blew over.”
“The property next to the Panhandle?” asked Nick. “The one that’s under construction right now?”
“It was,” said Dell. “Financing fell through after she changed her mind and pulled out. Now it’s just a gigantic steel skeleton blocking my view.”
“What’s this woman’s name?” asked Greg.
“Emma Fynell.”
22
CATHERINE FOUND RAY in his tiny office off the morgue. “Hey, Professor,” she said.
“Catherine,” he said, looking up. “I was just going over the case histories of John Bannister and Theria Kostapolis again. Thought I might have missed something the first time.”
“Any luck?”
“Possibly. I have an idea, but it’s somewhat—experimental. How about you?”
She pulled up a chair and sat down. “I was doing pretty well for a while. Tracked them from the Orpheus to the Lincoln to the Silver Spire. That’s where the trail went cold.” She sighed. “The only clue I have to where Theria ultimately wound up is something they said to a clerk at a booth selling raffle tickets. Something about ‘following the signs.’ In their state, that could mean anything.”
“True. I’ve tried talking to Bannister, but he refuses to cooperate. I can counteract the ef
fects of the BZ with drugs, but his CBDS is too advanced; even without the coterminous hallucinations, he remains convinced he’s in hell.”
“So what do we do?” She shook her head. “You know what really gets me? Everything Bannister’s done has been out of compassion. He’s literally braved the horrors of the underworld to try to bring this woman some peace, and if we don’t find her soon, his actions could wind up being what kills her.”
“The irony isn’t lost on me. But I may have a way to accomplish the reverse and turn a negative into a positive.”
“How? Slap on a pair of wings and convince him this is actually heaven?”
Ray smiled. “No. I was thinking about turning one of the symptoms of his condition to our advantage. How much do you know about anarchic hand syndrome?”
“Just what you told me—one of his hands will act of its own volition, as if it has a mind of its own.”
Ray nodded. “That’s not strictly true, though early studies of the condition were cited as proof that more than a single consciousness could inhabit one mind. But even though the hand of a patient with AHS will demonstrate what seems to be a separate, intelligent agenda—performing complex tasks, for example—what it’s actually doing is quite different.”
“So what is it doing?”
“Essentially, it’s performing what’s known as environmentally stimulated actions. These are things the limb is used to doing—a prerehearsed routine, if you will—that are triggered by a stimulus in the environment, usually by something visual. For instance, let’s say the patient has a cup of coffee every morning. He’s performed the action of lifting the mug to his lips many thousands of times. A patient with AHS will, upon simply seeing the mug, grab it and lift it to his lips without making the decision to do so.”
“An automatic reflex taken to the nth degree.”
“Yes. In certain cases, the hand can even become hostile—attempting to hit or throttle its owner—but even aggressive behavior can be reflexive.”
“Absolutely. Martial-arts training relies on repetition.”
“Exactly. Now, John Bannister was in the Army, which means many of his reflexive actions could be related to his military training—but I was hoping to tap into something a little deeper. Something he’s been doing all his life, in fact.”