by L. J. Martin
“I want to be in on it,” Pax says, and I laugh.
“You wanna wait six weeks. Hell, they’ll likely be out of the country in less than a week. The FBI hit the winery already, and they were long gone back here. I’ve got some help.”
He looks out the window again, staring at nothing, then turns back to me, “Patty Yount was a single mother with a five year old daughter. Rosie has…had…two kids and her disabled mom lived with her. Betty Polkinghorn was the sole support for her niece after her sister OD’d last year. Donald McDowel has…had…a pregnant wife. I want every one of those Albanian pricks to be catfish crap at the bottom of Lake Mead.”
“You know I loved Rosie like a sister...and I know all of them were good folks. I'll get the pricks, but we’d better not wait for you to get well or they'll fly the coop.”
“You're right. Get those assholes. I’ll owe you big time,” Pax says, then coughs until I think he’s about to spit up a lung. I’m about to call for a nurse, when he gets it under control. Then he explains, “I laid in a pile of timber, plaster, roofing, and equipment while the fire started to roar. I breathed some bad crap. I thought I was cooked, then the fire boys knocked it down and jacked some debris up and got me out. I breathed some really, really bad crap. I’m afraid some of my people died hard.”
“You’re too tough to cook. Are they gonna have them take an inch out of that busted good leg of yours so you won’t walk in circles?”
“Fuck you. I’m tired and I can't hear but about half of your bullshit. Get the hell out of here.”
“Just so you know I know…it was my job that brought this down on you, and I’m gonna make it right.”
“Mike, I guess you didn’t hear me. Get the hell out of here.”
“I’m not leaving until we’ve got someone good on your door, twenty-four-seven.”
“Whatever,” he says, and closes his eyes. Then he whispers, barely loud enough to hear. “When the fuck did we start keeping score?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say back, then I wander out in the hall and call Detective Andre Bollenger. “I need someone on the door at Weatherwax’s room. These boys seem to want him pretty bad.”
“Reardon, the Las Vegas Metro Police are not your personal protection agency. I can get someone, off duty, in uniform—”
“Twenty-four-seven.”
“—Twenty-four-seven will mean three guys. That’ll cost you two hun a shift or six hun a day. Cash, to them personally. They need the dough.”
“When can you get someone here? Someone good. And well-armed.”
“An hour or two.”
“Anything new from the scene?”
“The pickup was stolen, of course. We’ve got some video of a guy running past the bank a couple of doors down.”
“When can I see it?”
“Meet me at my office at six and we’ll take a look. And you can tell me who you think is responsible.”
“Six,” I say, without promising.
Someone is trying to call as I’m hanging up and I switch over and answer.
“I got some interesting stuff,” Sol says.
“I’m waiting here for some guys to guard Pax’s room then I’ll come your way. Text me an address. It may be a couple of hours.”
“I’ll keep churning the computer.” I can hear the smile in his voice. "They got toilet paper for firewalls."
I wish I had time to drive to Laughlin, but it’s about ninety miles. Instead I’m stuck here. It’s only forty-five minutes before a square-jawed black officer who looks like he should be playing tackle for the 49ers shows up. I can see he's wearing a vest and has a combat shotgun as well as his sidearm. It seems Andre is taking things seriously, and I relax a little. The cop says he’ll be on the job until twelve thirty, then another off-duty cop will pick up the baton until eight thirty, then a third until four thirty and they’ll start all over.
And I’m off to Sol’s apartment, which is only about six blocks east of the hospital. He doesn’t live fancy, except for the computer and stereo equipment. He’s got a sound system that might just knock the walls down…walls covered with posters of Katy Perry, Shakira, and Jessie James. I’d guess him to be a real music fan but none of the ladies have on enough clothes to cover a pocket size MP3 player. Maybe music is second on the list with Sol.
I have my Mac Air laptop under my arm.
“There’s a beer in the fridge,” he announces after I let myself in.
“Working.” I refuse.
“I’ve emailed you a pile of crap. I’ve got reams of stuff on the Albanians and on Rocco’s, including plans and specs and am tapped into their security system. We see what they see, real time.”
“Cool. How many of them are hanging out there?”
“They have two suites, Gashi and Ahmeti, and five rooms with guys doubled up in them…but Gashi and four of their guns are gone. They flew out of McCarran a half hour ago. They got other security guys on the job, but I think they're run-of-the-mill locals.”
“Flew? Where to?”
“I haven’t pegged it yet. I’m trying to get into Burton Aviation’s server now. The Citation they’ve been chartering belongs to Burton. If I don’t get the info there I’ll go after a flight plan.”
“Keep working, I’ll read.”
In minutes while I’m studying the layout for Rocco’s, Sol slams a hand down on his mouse pad.
“Damn, damn, they’re headed out of the country.”
“I’m not surprised.” Maybe I will have to clue in Andre and the FBI, to get them stopped before they reach the border. “Where?” I ask.
“Vera Cruz, Mexico, if it’s a real flight plan, which I doubt...so God knows where.”
“Are they out of the country?”
Sol glances at his watch. “If they’re not, they will be in a few minutes if they’re headed due south. We’re screwed.”
“Then those five are down the list somewhere. I’ll take care of them later, if I have to go to Albania to do it. Who’s left at Rocco’s?”
“What are you going to do?” Sol asks.
“Pardner, you don’t want to know. As soon as we’re done here you’re going on vacation.”
He glares at me. “Bullshit, Mike. They were my friends too. Whatever you’re gonna do, I’m gonna help you do. Final word.”
I can’t help but smile. Then I suggest, “I don’t think you’d do too well in the big house, Sol. You’d be fresh meat for some ugly ol’ boys.”
“Fuck it. I’m in.”
I shrug. “Then let’s go to work.”
22
We work in Sol's apartment for over an hour, doing recon on Rocco's Casino and Resort and the unincorporated town of Laughlin, Nevada, which is on the Colorado River not far from Arizona's Bullhead City on the other side. The town is still on its butt after the recession of 2008, not having recovered like Vegas did. Ten primary resorts and casinos make up by far the biggest employers in Laughlin, with only seven thousand five hundred residents.
Rocco's is nowhere near the largest. The Tropicana has fifteen hundred rooms and a huge casino floor, and employees account for almost ten percent of the population of Laughlin. Rocco's has two hundred rooms and a casino floor of only a little over twelve thousand square feet, eighty feet by one thirty. Where the Trop has a huge showroom Rocco's holds only three hundred, and best we can figure, has only a few over one hundred employees.
Sol has gotten into Rocco's servers with little problem, and we have photos and physical descriptions of all the Albanians living there, even though they are not officially employees—they certainly wouldn't pass roster with the gaming commission—they do have photo ID tags and those photos are still in the server, simply deleted by someone who thinks that removes them from the system. I presume they had badges made so they can move unchallenged throughout the property.
We're able to identify two of the hotel rooms vacated that had been occupied for many months by four of those Albanians. I presume those are four of the five
who've accompanied Gashi out of the country. One guy must have been rooming with someone who didn't go.
That meant that at least five, and maybe six guns remained at Rocco's with Ahmeti, Gashi's partner. They must have figured that since the FBI was after Gashi due to Tammy's kidnapping, and now possibly due to the bombing and murder of the Castiano's and their employees, and soon, likely due to the bombing of Weatherwax Internet Services, it was propitious to get the hell out of Dodge.
It's time for me to meet with Detective Andre Bollenger and take a look at the video of the pickup driver. I pause at the door and ask Sol one more time. "Are you sure you want to be a part of this?"
I wouldn't have believed Sol was capable of a hard look, but he's giving me one. "I said, final word, and I mean just that."
"Sol, these guys cost Pax lots of dough and damn near killed the best friend I've ever had. They killed a good friend, Rosie, and created a bunch of orphans and dependents. I'm gonna take these guys down, but I'm also going to take every dime of theirs I can get my hands on. You'll make some dough as will every guy who takes the risk with me, but by far the most of it will go to a few kids, a disabled grandma, and whoever got screwed by these guys. Is that agreeable?"
"Pax pays me good. Whatever the deal is, I'm in."
I like the kid because he's good at what he does and works his dick in the dirt, and now I like him even more.
Andre’s office is on the second floor, and I’m not in a mood to wait for an elevator. He’s at his desk in an end of hall office and sees me coming, and is up and out the door, waving me to follow. He turns into a conference room with a screen and one of those small digital projectors on the table, and without so much as a hello, starts the video.
I flop down in a chair and watch a couple of housewives tap the ATM, then a guy who looks like Tom Cruise except he’s way too tall makes a deposit, then flattens himself next to the ATM as a guy hauls ass by at a dead run.
“Can you stop this thing?” I ask, and Andre jumps the disk backwards, runs it a second, and stops it.
I can clearly see it’s the guy called Fitor, with the dirty blonde hair and pockmarked face, but I shrug. “Can’t be positive.”
Andre looks disgusted. “How about a guess?”
“You know how these IDs are, particularly on video—“
“You said you have an idea who might have done this.”
“Andre, I said an idea. I’m not sure.”
“Reardon, you’re dicking me around. You don’t want us to get in the way of whatever you’ve got in your black little heart. I don’t want you shooting up the town…again. So spit it up. Who do you think pulled this off?”
“Andre, if I were even half sure, I’d speak up, but I’m not.”
“I saw your jaw knot when you got a good look at this runner. You know who he is.”
“When I know for sure, I’ll call.”
“Get the fuck out of here. Friend or not, I’m gonna bust your ass if you do your cowboy crap again.”
“When I know for sure, I’ll call.”
He points to the door, and I head out, calling behind me, “Thanks for the show.”
“Yeah, and we got flat screens in the jail now. Why do I get the feeling that’s where you’re headed?”
I wave over my shoulder, and am gone. I’m halfway back to Sol’s apartment when my iPhone jingles out an unknown caller ring, and I answer, “Reardon.”
“I got some good stuff,” Sol reports.
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“It’s supper time. You buying the pizza and beer?”
“You got some good stuff and I’m buying a steak.”
“How about where some guys are meeting up to split up eight figures of cash tomorrow night?”
“Foreign guys.”
“Hell, I can’t say half their names.”
“Be out in front and I’ll pick you up.”
As soon as I hang up, I call Skip.
“Hey, man,” he answers, “How’s the Paxman?”
“Healing. Killer Carlos and Tobin show?”
“They did, and they know their stuff. But you’re on the shitlist.”
“With Tammy…how soon they forget.”
“She called you a few names and said she wished you were here so she could fire you in person.”
“I’ll be a while, and she’ll probably fire us both because I need you here tomorrow.”
“There goes my new head of security job.”
“Shit happens.”
“I got no wheels.”
“Cab it to Burbank, get the first flight out and I’ll pick you up, either McCarran or Laughlin. Whichever you can get to the quickest.”
“10-4. I’ll call when I got a seat. I’ll have to leave the duffle bag with these boys.”
“Good. And tell Killer I’m depending upon him.”
“10-4.”
Now to see just what good ol’, or should I say, good young Sol has pried out of hyperspace.
23
Sol, who’s a bit of a health nut, has talked me into P.F. Chang’s rather than a steak house, which suits me fine. He’s halfway through a whole rock cod on a bed of braised vegetables and I’m well into some delicious Peking duck by the time he’s told me the whole story. He pulled a series of emails, none more than hours old, between Edvin Gashi and Armand Ahmeti. They were encrypted and in code so he spent two hours making sense of them.
It seems the conclusion is that Gashi has to stay on the run and he was only able to scrape a little over two million off the count tables at Rocco’s, and wants twelve million more…what he says is a fair figure to buy him out of his half of Rocco’s. Which means at least twelve million bucks will be transported tomorrow, from Rocco’s in Laughlin to the meeting place at a small airport in Quartzsite, Arizona. It seems Gashi doesn’t want to be seen anywhere near Vegas or even Laughlin, which I hope means he’s coming personally.
The boys have traded some harsh words, even threats, via email as it seems Ahmeti was against making the loan to Castiano in the first place even though he did want to own Castiano’s road construction company, then against kidnapping Tammy to try and extort the dough out of her, then adamantly against both bombings—which makes me reconsider turning Ahmeti toes up. However, as part of settling with Gashi for the price he did, I learn Ahmeti’s promised to finish off a couple of guys by the name of Weatherwax and Reardon, and some big blonde guy who they’ve yet to ID.
One should never telegraph one’s punches, even via email. Ahmeti’s back to number two on my dance card.
The good news is my plan was to hit Rocco’s and clean out the count room, and I had a pretty good idea how to do it after studying the plans and seeing that a six-foot by eight-foot pipe tunnel runs under the count room, but now all I have to do is knock over a vehicle transporting a pile of money…and if a few Albanian guys meet their maker in the process, all the better.
But my first course of action is to see that Pax and his people are made as right as can be made by money.
We don’t have a lot of time to come up with a plan. And I don’t have nearly enough in the way of troops. One, in fact, who knows how to wield the weapons that will undoubtedly be necessary.
It’s the Viking and me, and probably at least a half-dozen guns on their side.
Now if Gashi only shows up to pick up his dough, and if Ahmeti himself delivers.
I look up the Quartzsite airport on my iPhone while we’re eating and see it’s only eight hundred feet elevation but only two thousand feet in length. I also look up the requirements for a Cessna Citation CJ4, which is the aircraft they’ve been chartering. The airstrip can’t handle the Citation, so now the question is, will Gashi risk a trip back into the states in some small prop plane? Or will he trust one of his crumb-bums to transport millions? I’ve already made up my mind that I’ll follow him to hell and back, should he not show up.
He’s a dead man so long as I have a breath.
Driving directio
ns tells me it’s ninety miles to Laughlin and another one twenty-five to Quartzrite. So we've got two hundred and fifteen miles to figure out where to take down the boys and their dough.
And I've got a couple of ideas about how to get it done. While Sol is ruining his health with some gooey dessert—after claiming to be a healthnut—I give an old friend a call. Hector Bohannan was a master sergeant and served in Desert Storm, his last duty station, when Pax and I did. Like both of us, he ended up in Vegas and as he was a ground supply expert he took a job with a large equipment rental concern. The owner, Bobby Howard Beuford, BoHo to his friends, was an Alabama boy and an ex-member of the KKK, and Bohannan, Bojangles as he was called by those of us who served with him, is big, black—however, in the Corps, we're all green—and like most Corps master sergeants, takes no shit from no one. For some unknown reason the two of them bonded, and when Beuford died of a heart attack, sans heirs, Hector found himself in his will and owning BHB Equipment, a couple of million bucks worth of rental business.
And even at eight PM, Bojangles answers his business line—I heard it click over to call forwarding—on the second ring.
"You can't afford a secretary, or what?" I ask without bothering with hello.
"I do believe I recognize this po' old broken down voice as that of drummed out of the Corps candy ass Mike Reardon. Wha's up, easy money?"
"I'll go for all of that except candy ass. I can still take you two out of three falls."
"You and the rest of your squad maybe."
"How the hell are you, Bojangles?"
"Still shakin' it. You ain't calling me to check on my health, bro, so what's up?"
"I need a flat bed, a dozen of those big old orange and yellow barrels they use on the highway to divert traffic, a trailer behind the truck with a skip loader aboard—if that's the way you haul 'em—a dump truck, and one of those programmable signs to tell traffic what's up down the road."
"Oh, shit. Who's day are you gonna ruin now...and do you have a driver's license so's we can execute a legitimate rental agreement?"