by James Swain
“Was it this little twerp?” Guido poked Billy in the arm.
“Leave him alone,” Tony G said.
“Wait a minute—I know this guy. I’ve seen him in the clubs around town, picking up all the hot chicks. He’s nothing but a two-bit hustler.”
“That’s great. Now, leave him alone,” Tony G said.
“Fucking piece of shit—you think you can scam us?” Snap jumped in, his chest puffing up like a rooster’s. “Maybe I should teach him a lesson and break his arm.”
“I said leave him alone,” Tony G said, growing irritated with them.
Snap backed off, only he didn’t back off. His eyes held the promise of future mayhem down the road. One day, Guido and Snap were going to hurt Billy. They’d do it in a parking lot or a lavatory or some place where no one was watching, and they’d mess him up real good.
Or not. Billy still held his putter. By extending his arm, he brought the putter’s head into Snap’s face and struck the bridge of his damaged nose. Snap groaned and took a knee with blood pouring out of both nostrils. Guido’s turn. Billy feinted and Guido shielded his head with his arms. The putter found the magic spot between Guido’s legs, and muscles went down in a heap. Billy tossed the putter into the cart and dusted his hands.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Tony G said.
“Yes, I did. You and I need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
Billy drove the cart while Tony G rode shotgun and listened.
“Let’s start out by talking damages,” he said, his eyes glued to the narrow path. “I lost twenty-three thousand five hundred bucks between my first four bets at Santa Anita and the golf, and you lost three hundred and fifty thousand on my last bet at the track, which puts me ahead three hundred and twenty-six thousand, five hundred bucks. Does that sound right to you?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Tony G grabbed the roof as they took a curve. “Look, kid, I know you scammed me. Your reputation will be shot when I’m done with you.”
He jammed on the brakes, nearly throwing his passenger out of the cart.
“Don’t threaten me,” Billy said.
Tony G started to reply, but didn’t, knowing that a display of anger would solve nothing at this stage in the game. He looked at Billy the way a parent looks at a misbehaving kid.
“You’re a tough little fucker,” the bookie said.
He took off down the path. “I have a business proposition for you. You and I have a mutual acquaintance named Gabe Weiss. Gabe is currently into you for three hundred large. I want to wipe away Gabe’s debt with the money I just won. Interested?”
“How do you know Gabe?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
“But I owe you more than that.”
“Keep it.”
The path ended. Billy parked by the pro shop and killed the cart’s engine. Las Vegas was the land of the unforgiving; there were no gimmes, freebies, or torn-up IOUs. Tony G waited to hear what the catch was.
“I don’t want any hard feelings down the road,” he said. “No threats or bad-mouthing. What’s done is done.”
“Trying to buy me off, huh,” the bookie said. “What the hell. I’ll take your deal.”
They shook hands on it. Billy got out and grabbed his clubs from the back. He started to walk away but not before giving Tony G a parting look to make sure things were good.
“Those two kids playing in front of us were part of it, weren’t they?” the bookie said. “They must have lost twenty balls, but they still kept playing. I should have known.”
“Have a nice day,” Billy said.
Cory and Morris were horsing around when he exited the clubhouse into the parking lot. They did that a lot, and he’d decided that they were too cocky for their own good and needed to be knocked down a peg. He tossed Cory the golf bag.
“Tony G made you,” he said.
Their faces crashed. The apprenticeship to become a grifter was filled with tests, and they’d failed this one miserably.
“How bad did we fuck up?” Cory asked.
“Bad enough. Your horse racing scam is weak. Those goons could have messed me up, put me in the hospital. The good news is, it still worked. Gabe’s a free man.”
“Sorry,” they both said.
“Fuck sorry. You need to do better, start thinking things through. Got it?”
They both promised that they’d do better next time. Talk was cheap, and he found himself wondering if they had what it took to make it in a town as tough as this one.
He drove back into town, the fading sunlight creating a blinding sheen on his windshield. At Russell Road he stopped at the light and checked his Droid for messages. He’d gotten five calls from Ike and sensed something was amiss.
“What’s up?” he asked when Ike picked up.
“Doucette’s looking for you. There’s some bad shit going down.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“That would be an understatement,” Ike said solemnly.
FORTY-TWO
Hanging up, Billy wondered if his time had run out.
Doucette had ordered Ike and T-Bird to grab Billy when he came into the hotel and bring him up to room 1444 in the main tower. Room 1444 was where Ricky Boswell had been tortured and killed, the designated torture chamber.
Doucette had decided to snuff him. Billy had spun so many lies in the past two days that it was hard to know which one had finally caught up to him. Or maybe it was an accumulation of lies that had tipped the scales. It really didn’t matter. Doucette wanted him gone.
He considered running. But that meant leaving his crew behind to face the music. Crunchie had promised to turn their names over to the police if he didn’t play ball. His crew would go down, and eventually the gaming board would find him, and he’d go down as well.
He could run, but he couldn’t hide.
Traffic was brutal. As the sunny afternoon turned to dusk, tourists poured out of the hotels and filled the Strip’s sidewalks and traffic crossings, eager for the party to start. By the time he pulled into Galaxy, it was dark. He threw his keys to the valet and went inside. It had been a great ride, and he had no regrets. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t make him suffer.
Ike and T-Bird were in the lobby. They’d ditched the new threads and gone back to basic black. No words were exchanged, just nods of the head. They both looked sad. Their million-dollar paydays had just gotten flushed down the toilet.
They boarded a service elevator. Ike punched a code into the keypad and appeared frustrated when the doors wouldn’t close. He tried the numbers again. This time the code worked, and Ike pressed the call button for the fourteenth floor. The elevator began its ascent.
Billy imagined himself making a run for it before they tried to kill him, and knew that he’d need the service elevator to facilitate his escape. Having watched Ike punch in the code, he said it three times to himself and stored it away in his memory for future use.
The doors parted on the fourteenth floor. He cleared his throat and said, “It’s been a gas, gents,” and heard them grunt in the affirmative. They got out and started their long walk. A lack of progress on finishing the floor was evident—electrical wires popping out of walls, unpainted drywall, piles of dust. Reaching number 1444, Ike paused.
“You scared?” Ike asked.
He shook his head. His old man had set the bar on dying and had demonstrated to his only child how a man was supposed to check out of this world. Three days off life support with no food or water, gasping for breath on rotted lungs, his body finally succumbing when his heart couldn’t take it anymore, fading away in his son’s arms with a satisfied expression on his face, as if to say, See, kid, this is what tough is.
“Bring it on,” he said.
They entered the s
uite. It had not changed since two nights ago—the prerequisite movie stills of iconic dead celebrities on the walls, the flat-screen TV showing the house channel.
“Anybody home?” Ike called out.
“We’re in the bedroom,” came Shaz’s voice from another room.
Billy started down the hall, prepared to face the music. It was how his old man would have handled the situation, and he was his old man’s son. Ike and T-Bird scrambled to catch up. The bedroom door was cracked. Kicking it open, he went in.
“I hear you’re looking for me,” he said.
Doucette, his bride, and Crunchie were having a party and sat in chairs, gorging on BBQ ribs, chicken wings, and other finger food they’d ordered from room service. A low-budget slasher film was playing on the TV, the sound muted. Other things stood out. Lines of coke on the coffee table. Duct tape on the night table. And a body wearing a black hood lying beneath the bedspread, struggling to free itself from crisscrossing ropes holding it down. The first thought that went through Billy’s mind was that he wasn’t going to die. The second thought was that the poor schmuck lying on the bed was going to die.
“What took you so long?” Doucette asked, licking BBQ sauce off his fingers.
“I got stuck in traffic. Who’s this?” he asked.
“Crunchie caught another cheater in the casino this afternoon.”
“Did he trip over him?”
“Fuck you, you little turd,” the old grifter said.
Billy edged up to the bed to get a better look at their prisoner. He was on a first-name basis with most cheaters in town and wondered if the poor bastard was someone he knew.
“Is this necessary?” he asked.
“Rock’s rules,” Doucette said. “Any cheaters we catch, Rock wants snuffed. Except you, of course. You’re special.”
The body on the bed let out a muffled cry. There was nothing Billy could do, and he watched Doucette snort up a line of coke that could have gotten an army on its toes.
“Let’s hear about your golf game. Are these people the Gypsies?”
“It’s them,” he said.
“How can you be sure?”
“I got them apart on the golf course, caught them in a few lies. Stupid stuff, like the name of the high school they went to. It’s definitely them.”
“Good. Now tell me how they’re planning to rip off my casino.”
Billy had been planning to hold on to this piece of information for as long as possible but didn’t think that was prudent anymore. “The scam involves the wedding gown,” he said.
Doucette’s handsome face went blank, not understanding.
“The bride’s gown is part of the scam. She’s wearing a Chinese knockoff made of a synthetic material. I saw her wearing it in the bridal shop, and it occurred to me that a gown made of synthetic material would not tear as easily as one made of silk. That was the tip-off.”
“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Doucette asked Crunchie.
The old grifter nodded. “Billy’s onto something. Keep talking, kid.”
“The gown will be used to bring gaffed equipment into the casino. The bride wears a leather harness around her waist with a strap that hangs down the front, another strap down the back. The gaffed equipment hangs between her legs. She might walk stiffly, but that’s not uncommon with women in gowns. My guess is, she’ll be carrying a gaffed shoe to rip you off.”
“You think there’s a dealer involved,” the old grifter said.
“Yeah, and a pit boss. I noticed a number of high-stakes blackjack tables in the pit. They’ll target one of those.”
“How’s the shoe going to be gaffed?”
“Stacked and marked. Bleed the joint all night long.”
The old grifter flashed a crooked smile. “Like we did at the Mirage, only we used a floppy lady’s handbag to switch the shoe in. How much did we steal that night?”
“Two hundred large.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Doucette said, wiping his runny nose with a cocktail napkin. “Back this conversation up, and give it to me in plain English.”
Billy had never heard a casino owner admit he didn’t understand. Doucette’s days were numbered if he kept broadcasting how stupid he was.
“The bride will be carrying a dealing shoe beneath her gown,” he explained. “The shoe contains eight decks removed from your casino by a pit boss. These decks are stacked and also marked. The Gypsy wedding party will enter your casino and stand in front of a particular table. This table will be locked up: the dealer, pit boss, and players will be involved. The wedding party will create a distraction, and the shoe will be switched with the one on the table. The normal shoe will be stashed in the gown, and the wedding party will leave.
“The players at the table will win every hand because the cards are stacked. When the shoe is exhausted, the dealer will shuffle up, and a new round will be dealt. The players will read the backs of the cards and keep ripping you off. You’ll lose a fortune.”
“But the shoes are chained down,” Doucette said. “They can’t be switched, can they?”
Every time Doucette opened his mouth, he weakened the nation. Billy glanced at Crunchie, giving the old grifter the floor.
“The chain will be cut with a battery-powered saw hidden in the pit boss’s jacket,” Crunchie explained, “and the gaffed shoe will be secured to the table with a duplicate chain.”
“You’ve done this before,” Doucette said.
“In my previous life, yeah,” the old grifter said.
“So this is how we’re going to get ripped off? Pretty boy isn’t lying to me?”
“Billy’s telling the truth. This is the real work.”
The body on the bed begged for mercy. It was pitiful to hear, and the room’s occupants pretended not to. The last gasp of a dying man, Billy thought.
His education complete, Doucette crossed the bedroom and jabbed Billy in the chest. “You still rub me the wrong way. That’s a problem, because I’m depending on you to catch these fuckers. If this breaks bad, Rock will go off the reservation. You understand what I’m saying? The man takes no prisoners.”
“You can trust me. I won’t let you down,” Billy said.
“That’s the point, kid—I don’t trust you, and never will. In my world, trust has to be earned. So I’m going to make you earn my trust.”
Billy almost said “How?” but bit his tongue. He knew what was coming; it was as clear as the nose on his face. Doucette moved to the side of the bed and grabbed the black hood covering the prisoner’s head.
“I want you to put a bullet in our friend here,” Doucette said. “Do that, and you’ll earn my trust. Think you’re up to it?”
Billy weighed his options. The poor son of a bitch on the bed was a goner, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. But he could save himself. Viewed in that light, he really didn’t have any other choice.
“Sure,” he said, swallowing the lump in his throat.
“Say it, you slimy little snake,” Doucette said.
“I’ll shoot him.”
“Very good.”
The body torqued beneath the covers. Maybe the poor bastard will suffocate and save me the trouble, he thought.
Doucette jerked away the hood. A large piece of duct tape covered the prisoner’s mouth. Recognition was like a splinter in the chest, and Billy thought he might get sick.
It was Mags, crying her heart out.
FORTY-THREE
“Crunchie tells me this little lady is a friend of yours,” Doucette said.
The words hung in the air. The old grifter had been waiting for a chance to get back at him, and Billy hoped there was more than one bullet in the gun they gave him to shoot Mags.
“She’s no friend,” he lied.
“But you know her,�
� the casino boss said.
“I caught her painting cards at blackjack in your casino and had a cocktail waitress give her the brush. She left her chips on the table and ran. End of story.”
“Why help her out? What was in it for you?”
“I felt bad for her. I knew what you were going to do to her.”
“That’s it? You felt bad for her? Give me a fucking break.”
“She also has a great ass.”
“That’s more like it. Were you going to hook up with her, and get it on?”
“That was the plan. Wouldn’t you?”
Doucette’s eyes did a little dance. Every guy in Vegas was a pussy hound; Doucette had checked Mags out while she was being tied up, and liked the merchandise. Talking about her ass was crude—especially after having agreed to kill her—but sometimes crude worked, and Billy wasn’t surprised when the casino boss slapped him on the shoulder.
“I could learn to like you,” Doucette said.
They waited another hour before moving her. Now tied to a wheelchair with the duct tape still in place, Mags was taken by service elevator to the basement garage, where Ike and T-Bird placed her struggling body into the cramped trunk of a limited-edition Mercedes-Benz AMG Black Series, a racecar capable of devouring any track in the world. She wasn’t the first cheater to take her last ride in the trunk of a car, and probably wouldn’t be the last.
“Be careful,” Doucette said. “The last time, you scratched the paint.”
“Can she breathe?” Billy asked.
The casino owner shrugged indifference and slammed the trunk. To Ike he said, “Meet us in the usual place. Thirty minutes. Don’t be late.”
“Got it, boss,” Ike said.
With Doucette at the wheel, Shaz riding shotgun, Crunchie in back, the Mercedes hurtled up the exit ramp, the roar of its engine echoing in the garage long after it was gone. Ike and T-Bird trotted toward a stairwell with Billy on their heels. He had agreed to kill someone to save his own skin. There was no doubt in his mind that he was capable of pulling the trigger. What he didn’t know was if he was capable of living with himself in the days and weeks that followed. His conscience would eat at him, and he was afraid it might eat him alive.