by James Swain
“These guys scare me,” she whispered.
“They’re really a lot of fun, when you get to know them,” he said.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“Sorry.”
“Tell me you have a plan, just to make me feel better,” she said.
Getting out of tight jams was his specialty. He’d had guns pointed at him before and managed to walk away intact. But this situation was different. His crew was being threatened, and he needed to protect them as well.
“Don’t worry. I’ll think of something,” he said.
FIVE
Misty and Pepper shared a fancy three-bedroom house on a cul-de-sac in the Las Vegas Country Club with a couple of mangy mutts rescued from the Humane Society. The dogs were supposed to be protection in case of a robbery, but after taking one look at the little ones, they retreated to a distant bedroom with their tails between their legs and did not reappear.
Broken Tooth had a look around before settling on the screened lanai as the desired spot to have their chat. Broken Tooth had a mean streak a mile long, no doubt compensating for the fact that his right arm was badly mangled and the two middle fingers did not extend fully. Billy had read that the average life span for a gang boss in China was fifty, which meant that Broken Tooth had a few more years of stealing left before he was sent to meet his maker.
Once everyone was settled in, Broken Tooth found the controls for the swimming pool and made colored lights illuminate the chlorinated water while soft rock played over the speakers hidden in the fake rock sculptures. The Chinese gangster still had his lunch box, which he held protectively by his side with his good hand.
“Tell me your names,” he said to the girls.
“Pepper.”
“I’m Misty.”
“Take off your clothes and get in the pool.”
The girls looked to Billy for help.
“Is this necessary?” Billy asked.
“Very necessary. Now tell them to get in the water. Deep end,” Broken Tooth said.
“You’d better do as he says,” Billy said.
Pepper and Misty got naked and climbed down the ladder into the pool. They swam into the deep end and remained there, treading water. They both sunbathed in the nude every day and sported zero tan lines. Broken Tooth smiled approvingly.
Cory, Morris, Gabe, and Leon stood by helplessly. The little ones were eyeing them like hawks, prepared to draw their guns if one of them made a false move. Billy patted the air, and the four men lowered themselves into the plastic chairs beside the pool.
“Much better,” Broken Tooth said. “I hear you’re one of the sharpest guys in Las Vegas. That you are able to rip off the casinos, and they can’t catch you.”
“I’ve never ripped off a casino in my life,” Billy said.
“That’s not what Tommy Wang says. Tommy says you the slickest crook he’s ever met.”
“Tommy who?”
“You going to play stupid with me? Too late for that. Tommy told me all about you, said you helped him rip off a casino at roulette so he could pay me back the money he owed me. Tommy didn’t know how you rigged game, said you were real smart.”
“So he’s just guessing.”
“I don’t think so. You know what Tommy does for a living? He’s an accountant with a big manufacturing company, manages lots of money. Tommy wrote down all the times he won and then figured out what the odds were. Take a stab.”
One of the ways to catch a cheat was to calculate the cheat’s winnings against the game’s percentages. Billy knew he was trapped and did not reply.
“Four-and-a-half-billion-to-one,” Broken Tooth said.
“So he got lucky. It happens sometimes,” he said.
“You trying to be funny?”
Broken Tooth made a chopping motion with his hand. The little ones drew their guns and took aim at Pepper and Misty. They didn’t seem to care if half the neighborhood heard the shots.
“Stop! I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt them,” he said.
Broken Tooth shot him a murderous look. A long moment passed.
“Are you going to play straight with me?”
Billy nodded. “Yes, sir,” he added for emphasis.
“No more games?”
“No more games. You need help, I’m your man. Just don’t hurt my crew.”
“I’ll be nice this time. But it’s the last time. You mess with me again, and I’ll tell my men to kill your friends.”
“You have my word; it won’t happen again.”
Broken Tooth told the little ones to stand down. Then he went to the screen door that led to the backyard and motioned for Billy to follow. Billy did as told and glanced over his shoulder before going outside. Pepper and Misty had swum over to the edge of the pool and were holding on for dear life. Their breathing was loud and frantic.
The full moon cast a long shadow across the neatly trimmed grass. Broken Tooth placed the lunch box on the ground, then took a pack of squares from his shirt pocket, banged one out, and lit up. He tossed Billy the pack. It was a Chinese brand called Double Happiness. Billy had quit smoking years ago but lit up to be sociable. No sooner had the smoke reached his lungs than he started violently hacking. It had to be the vilest thing he’d ever put in his body.
“You don’t like?” Broken Tooth asked.
Billy spit in the grass. “Must be an acquired taste.”
“I know what you’re thinking. What’s this fucking guy doing in Las Vegas? Why isn’t he in China, where he belongs?” Broken Tooth laughed under his breath and sent ribbons of purple smoke through his nostrils. “I’ll tell you why. There’s only so much money you can make selling drugs or killing people. Big money comes from gambling. Problem is, all the casinos on the island of Macau are controlled by government, so there’s no room for me. That leaves fixing sporting events. That’s where I make my money.”
“Fixing sporting events takes a lot of nerve.”
“Shut up. I’m not finished.”
“Sorry.”
“Betting on sports is different in Asia. Everyone and their sister does it. People have bank accounts online and bet on gambling sites. Everything’s legal. You know how many sites there are where you can make a bet?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“You’re a smart guy. Guess.”
When it came to online sports betting, the good old US of A was well behind the global curve, with legalized betting on a computer years away from being put into law. Because of this, Billy hadn’t paid much attention to it. The day it became legal, he’d figure out a way to rip it off.
“A hundred?” he guessed.
“Try seven hundred,” Broken Tooth said. “You starting to get the picture?”
It was a big number, and Billy nodded. Seven hundred gambling sites translated into seven hundred deep-pocketed suckers who could be fleeced. “With that many, you can take down a site for a huge score and then go to the next, with no one being the wiser,” he said.
“That’s right. Easiest fucking thing I’ve ever done. We clear a million bucks a week! I used the money to build a beautiful beach resort in Sanya near Hong Kong. Everything going great, then the money dried up. Now work is stopped, and my builder’s yelling to get paid. I’m in deep shit.”
“What happened?”
Broken Tooth had worked himself into a lather. He lit up a fresh cigarette to calm down. Several puffs later, he spoke. “FIFA,” he said.
“You mean the guys running international soccer ruined your deal.”
“Yeah. Greedy assholes killed the duck that laid golden egg.”
“You mean the goose.”
“Shut up.”
“Sorry. Were you paying them off?”
“Fuck, no. You don’t bet on sports; you don’t understand. Three biggest sports in the world for gambling are soccer, horse racing, and tennis. That’s where all the money is if you’re going to fix an event. Everything else chickenshit. You with m
e so far?”
“I’m with you.”
“Used to be lots of fixed tennis matches, mostly small tournaments. People governing the sport wised up, started monitoring gambling sites. If they saw a big swing in odds on a match, they alerted the tournament, and the officials would put heat on the players. That put an end to it. That left horse racing and soccer. You ever fix a horse race?”
“Once.”
“No like?”
“Not my cup of tea. Too many things can go wrong.”
“You’re telling me. Horse breaks leg, you lose a whole bunch of dough. Too risky. That leaves soccer. Hundreds of soccer matches played all over the world every week. Lots of teams in smaller leagues, players don’t get paid on time, they hate owners.”
“They have a grudge.”
“Right. It’s easy to fix those matches and get the favorite team to lose. We would place bets on a few hundred sites and spread the pain around. No one loses too much, while we win big.”
“How did FIFA screw this up for you?”
“Assholes running FIFA live like kings. Stay in fancy hotels, eat gourmet meals, pull down big salaries. Should be enough, only they were greedy and started taking bribes from countries wanting to hold international events. They get caught, and shit hits the fan.”
“You mean the police are scrutinizing soccer now.”
“Interpol, FBI, Scotland Yard, they’re all involved. Too many cops.”
“So you stopped fixing matches, and the money dried up.”
“There you go. Things started to look real bad. I’ve been a gangster since I was fifteen, didn’t know what else to do. I came to Las Vegas to get away from things. Then last week while I was watching the playoffs on TV I had an idea. I’ll fix the biggest sporting event in world and make enough money to finish my resort. That’s where you come in, Cunningham. You’re going to help me get this done.”
The words were slow to sink in. There was only one major sporting event on the horizon, and it would generate more than a billion dollars in wagers, from office pools to illegal bookmakers. The Super Bowl was right around the corner, and this crazy little bastard wanted to fix it.
“It will never work,” he said.
“Why not? Because no one’s had the balls to do it before? That’s the best kind of sporting event to fix. No one sees it coming.”
“How do you plan to pull this off?”
“Easy. We spot fix.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Super Bowl has a hundred different proposition bets gamblers can bet on,” Broken Tooth explained. “No other sporting event has this. Which team wins the coin toss, which team scores first, that sort of thing. We spot fix four prop bets, make a killing.”
“But you need the players to do this.”
“I’ve got inside information on dirty players with the Rebels. You’re going to approach them, talk them into spot fixing. I make the bets; we split the winnings. I’ll make you rich.”
The conference championships had taken place earlier that day, and the Las Vegas Rebels and the Louisville Volunteers had won their games with gritty, come-from-behind victories and were now headed to the Super Bowl in Phoenix in two weeks. Broken Tooth had watched the games and, believing that certain Rebel players could be compromised, had come up with a plan.
“Which prop bets do you have in mind?” Billy asked.
“First injury, first penalty, most penalties, and who wins the coin toss.”
“How do you plan to rig the coin toss?”
“That’s your job. If you can rig a roulette wheel, you can rig a coin toss.”
“Can I think about this?”
“No. I want your answer now.”
It was not uncommon for other hustlers to approach Billy with jobs. If Billy said no, the other hustler went away. But this situation was different. If he said no, Broken Tooth might kill him out of spite. He glanced into the lanai. Pepper and Misty sat on the pool edge wrapped in towels. They were chatting up the little ones, trying to make nice. There was no doubt in his mind that his crew would meet untimely ends as well. He had read enough about the Triad mentality to know that they believed a bullet in the head solved most of life’s problems.
Seen in that light, he didn’t have much choice but to say yes. But that didn’t make him a believer. Fixing a lowly soccer match in some jerkwater country where the local cops spent the day sleeping at their desks was one thing; fixing the biggest sporting event in the world was another, and the odds were slim that he could pull it off. But he could go along to buy himself time so he could figure a way out of this jam.
“Time up. You in or not?”
The orange tip of Broken Tooth’s foul cigarette glowed in the dark. If he answered too quickly, Broken Tooth would know he was being played. He let a moment pass.
“I’m in,” Billy said.
SIX
Going onto the lanai, Broken Tooth chopped the air like he was breaking a board. The little ones rose from their chairs and followed their boss through the slider into the house. Billy had noticed that Broken Tooth avoided using verbal commands with his men, preferring to signal what he wanted done with his hands or facial expressions. That was smart, since no one would ever be able to say that they heard Broken Tooth order his men to commit an illegal act.
Billy’s crew visibly relaxed and turned their attention to him.
“What does the crazy bastard want?” Gabe asked.
“Guess,” Billy said, heading for the slider.
“Don’t tell me he wants to work with us.”
“That’s right. Our reputations precede us.”
“Jesus Christ, what did you tell him?”
“I said yes. I didn’t have much of a choice.”
He followed Broken Tooth through the house and out the front door to the driveway with his crew a few steps behind him. Broken Tooth retrieved from his rental an eight-by-ten manila envelope, which he slapped into Billy’s chest.
“What’s this?” Billy asked.
“Information on the Rebel players who will fix the game,” Broken Tooth said.
“How can you be so sure these guys will do this?”
“Because they did it before, and you’re going to convince them to do it again.”
“That’s a tall order, don’t you think?”
“I’ll give you an incentive.”
Broken Tooth twirled his finger and pointed. The little ones grabbed Leon and dragged him across the front lawn. The rental’s trunk was popped open and Leon thrown inside.
“What the hell are you doing?” Billy said.
“Insurance policy,” Broken Tooth said. “I’ll keep your driver until this is over. That way, you won’t try to double-cross me.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“Wait a minute. I want to talk to him.” Billy crossed the lawn and stuck his head into the trunk, making eye contact with Leon. “I’m really sorry about this.”
Leon’s head rested on the spare tire. He gave Billy a knowing wink. Leon was trying to play it cool, but the fear in his eyes was unmistakable.
“Keep the faith, man. I’m going to get you out of this,” Billy said.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” his driver said.
The trunk was slammed shut. Leon was single and didn’t have any immediate family. If he went missing for a few days, no one was going to file a missing person’s report with the police. The only person who really cared about Leon was Billy, and he cared about Leon a lot.
“Take care of my driver, okay?”
“We’ll treat him like a baby,” Broken Tooth said. “Won’t we?”
The little ones shared a mean laugh. They came across as the type of bastards who’d take pleasure in making Leon’s life miserable while he was in captivity. They climbed into the rental with Broken Tooth at the wheel. The engine roared to life, and the driver’s window came down. “I’ll call you every day for a status report. D
on’t disappoint me, Cunningham.”
“Do you really think we can fix the Super Bowl?” Billy asked.
“You make it sound like a big deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Super Bowl will be easy for a smart guy like you. Remember, I don’t like being disappointed. Call you tomorrow.”
“Got it.”
Broken Tooth drove around the cul-de-sac several times. Each time he passed Pepper and Misty’s house, he stuck his head out the window and glared menacingly at Billy and his crew like they were his worst enemies. The little bastard had written the book on intimidation. The game got tired, and the rental finally drove away. Billy started to go inside when he had a thought that left a taste in his mouth as foul as one of Broken Tooth’s cigarettes.
“Who gave you my phone number?” he said angrily.
“Let’s take this inside,” Billy said.
His crew followed him into the foyer. He shut the door and turned around to face them. His crew didn’t scare easily, but this was one of those special times. “Okay, class, today’s assignment is to figure out how we’re going to fix the coin toss at the Super Bowl so I can get some players on the Rebels’ defense to fix a handful of plays. Any ideas?”
“I don’t know about this, Billy,” Cory said. “Plenty of gamblers have tried to fix the Super Bowl, and they all got caught red-handed and went to jail. There’s too much security surrounding the game for it to be compromised.”
“Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything,” he said.
“What’s in the envelope?” Gabe asked.
“Information on the Rebel players who Broken Tooth says are dirty.”
Gabe’s passion was betting on sports, and he let out a whistle. “There are dirty players on the Rebels team? Jesus, Billy, if you can get to them, then this just might work.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. A fix is nothing more than a conversation. If there are players who have done this before, then you’re halfway home.”