by James Swain
“If you’re not using luminous readers, why did you squint?”
“Allergies. Check the tray if you don’t believe me.”
Every blackjack game had a discard tray that the dealer placed cards into after the hand was over. The trays were made of translucent red plastic, which acted like a filter and let the pit boss look through the rear wall of the tray and spot luminous paint on the backs of cards.
Billy placed a card into the tray and stared through the rear wall. No secret markings popped up. He did this with more than a dozen cards. They were all clean.
Billy took a C-note and gave it to Victor. “You win. I have no clue what you’re doing.”
“That’s high praise coming from you,” Victor said.
They heard the front door slam. “That must be one of my kids,” Victor said.
“Hey, Dad,” a female called from the front of the house.
“Kat? I thought you went to the Tropicana to practice your strong-arming,” Victor said.
“That was the plan,” she called back. “I got made and had to leave.”
“You got made? What happened?”
“I need a drink. Can I get you something?”
“I’m good.”
A moment later, Kat Boswell came into the room holding a can of diet soda. She was barely legal and wore blue and purple streaks in her hair to make herself look older. She said hello to Billy before sitting down beside her father at the blackjack table.
“Who made you?” Victor asked.
“Casino security,” she said. “I was working a blackjack game with a green dealer. He dealt me a twenty-two and I pounded the table and said, ‘Yeah, twenty-one!’ and the dope paid me off. It happened so fast, I didn’t think anyone noticed.”
“Do you think you were being watched?”
“It sure felt that way.”
Strong-arm cheating encompassed the rankest scams imaginable, including lying about your hand and betting late. Cheats practiced these scams to build up their nerve.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Victor said.
Kat took a swallow of soda before putting the can in a cup on the table. “A security goon came to the table and said that I looked like a woman who’d given them trouble last night. He wanted to see some ID, so I gave him my driver’s license.”
Victor’s eyes flashed. Security at the Golden Gate had used the same line on Nico. “Was the goon by himself, or did he have backup?” Victor asked.
“He was working solo. He spent a minute reading my license. Then he handed it back to me and said it was a case of mistaken identity.”
Now Victor looked worried. Nico Boswell had been given the same bullshit line.
“Did he offer to give you a free drink or comp you a meal?” Victor asked.
“Nope. Fucker didn’t offer me anything,” Kat replied.
“This isn’t good, Kat.”
“It gets worse. I decided to leave. On my way out, I glanced over my shoulder, and the goon was tailing me. I went to the valet and got my car—”
“How many times have I told you, never use the valet,” Victor scolded her. “You don’t know where they take your car or what they do to it.”
“I’m sorry, Pop. I wasn’t thinking.”
Victor loved his children more than anything in the world, and he placed his hand on his daughter’s arm and gave it a fatherly pat. “Never again.”
“I promise, never again.”
“Good. Continue your story.”
“As I pulled onto the Strip, I saw a line of yellow cabs at the curb, waiting for fares. One of the cabs started to follow me. At the next intersection, I did a U-turn and lost the asshole.”
“You lost him.”
“That’s right.”
Victor swallowed hard. He was thinking the same thing Billy was thinking. Kat may have lost the tail, but she hadn’t lost the people who were following her. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, did Kat realize that?
“Did you drive straight back here?” Victor asked hesitantly.
“Come on, Pop, I’m not that dumb. I pulled into a strip mall and inspected the car. First I checked the roof to see if there was a silver disc attached. You told me that the cops put them there so police helicopters can follow vehicles in traffic. Well, there wasn’t, so then I climbed underneath, and lo and behold, guess what. I found a GPS tag in a plastic case held to the bottom of the car with a magnet. I opened it up, and it had a miniature transmitter and two AA batteries. They must have put it on while I was inside the casino.”
“It wasn’t hard-wired to an electrical wire in the car,” Victor said.
“No. It was a short-term surveillance.”
“Did you destroy it?”
“I was going to chuck it into the trash, but then I had an idea. There was a Papa John’s in the strip mall, so I climbed underneath one of the delivery cars and reattached the transmitter. A delivery boy came out with some pizzas and took off.”
Kat’s ingenuity made Billy smile. The GPS would send an uninterrupted signal, allowing its holder to track the location of the rental on a laptop map. Whoever had attached the tag would spend the rest of the day chasing a pizza delivery boy and not knowing it.
“Then you drove home,” Victor said.
Kat had a gypsy’s skeptical eyes. She gave her father a look that would have turned most men to stone. “Of course not! I went to McCarran and dumped the rental. Then I took a stroll through the main terminal to make sure I wasn’t being tailed.”
“For how long?” Victor asked.
“Thirty minutes. You’re going to see some charges on my credit card.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “You went shopping?”
“I had to do something to kill the time.”
“How much did you spend?”
“Enough to jump-start the economy. The good news is, no one followed me. I rented a car from another company and drove here.”
Kat’s tale was over. Victor gave her a hug and told her she’d done good. Her father’s words brought a smile to her face, and she bid Billy good-bye before leaving the room.
“Jesus Christ, this isn’t good,” Victor said.
Billy felt the same way. Two different casinos had made Kat and Nico. It could have been a coincidence, only Billy didn’t believe in those. More than likely, the gaming board had Kat and Nico on their radar and had distributed their photographs to the casinos.
“This smells like the gaming board,” Billy said. “Did Kat and Nico get caught together in a casino recently?”
“Not that I know of,” Victor said.
“Would they tell you if they’d screwed up?
“Absolutely. My children are trustworthy.” Victor paused. “Do you still want to go through with this? I won’t be pissed if you pull out.”
“Are you pulling out?” Billy asked.
“I can’t. The super con has a shelf life. If I don’t pull it off soon, it will never happen.”
A shelf life. Now Billy was really confused. If he didn’t hang around, he’d never find out Victor’s secret, and that would bother him, along with not cashing in.
“I’m not going anywhere. We’ll give Kat a makeover along with Nico,” Billy said.
“Works for me,” Victor said. “Now, let’s iron out the details.”
ELEVEN
Billy and Victor spent the next hour working out the super con. Their plan called for five teams to descend upon five different Strip casinos next Saturday evening with the purpose of scamming a high-stakes blackjack game. If successful, each team would steal two million bucks of their respective casino’s money.
Ten million bucks in a single night. In the old days, stealing that much would set off alarms. But times had changed, and it was not uncommon for high rollers to win millions of dollars during a single outing. The unlucky casino had no choice but to accept the loss.
The five teams would be evenly split. One member of Billy’s crew paired up with a Boswell. B
illy, Travis, and Victor would act as monitors to deal with emergencies and make sure no one screwed up.
The five casinos they planned to hit were the Mirage, Aria, Mandalay Bay, Luxor, and the MGM Grand. Because of his limited mobility, Victor would cover a single casino, the Mirage, while Billy would cover Mandalay Bay and Luxor, leaving Travis the MGM Grand and Aria.
“Hungry?” Victor asked when they were done.
“Thanks, but there’s a poker game at Caesars that I’ve got a seat in.”
“What scam are you pulling?”
“The gift shop play.”
“That usually gets the money. Good luck.”
Whenever time permitted, Billy took the Strip. The casinos lined it like fortresses filled with gold and treasures, and the sight of them never failed to get his heart racing. Like a kid in a candy store, he just couldn’t get enough of them.
He got a call from Gabe on his cell phone. He’d tasked his crew with figuring out how to fix the Super Bowl and guessed they’d stayed up all night devising a plan.
“Good morning,” he answered. “Or should I say good afternoon. How’s it going?”
“It’s going great. I’m here with Cory and Morris and the girls,” Gabe said on a speakerphone. “I’ve created a gaffed coin that will let us rig the coin toss at the Super Bowl.”
“And not get caught,” Cory chimed in.
“You’re going to love this,” Morris added. “It’s spotless.”
“They tried it out on Misty and me. It really works,” Pepper said.
“The scam uses a transmitter hidden inside a cell phone that works up to a hundred yards away,” Gabe said. “If we have one of our crew sitting in the front row near the fifty-yard line, it will work. All we have to do is get the head referee to play along, and we’re home free.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Billy asked.
“Morris and I are having breakfast with the head referee in Phoenix tomorrow morning,” Cory said. “He seems amenable to talking with us.”
“Think he can be bought off?” Billy asked.
“Yes. Word is, he has gambling debts, so we’re taking lots of cash with us.”
Billy smiled into the phone. His crew had done their job; now it was his turn to get Night Train and his teammates on board. The turn for Caesars was up ahead, and he flipped on his indicator. “I’m going to meet the football players. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck,” his crew chorused.
He pulled into the valet area and popped the trunk before getting out. He kept a strongbox next to the spare tire filled with money, and he removed two ten-thousand-dollar stacks of hundreds and slipped them into the pockets of his sports jacket.
Entering Caesars was always a thrill. The joint was a testimonial to excess, the design overblown and over the top. In a winding, centralized hallway was a life-size replica of Michelangelo’s David. A shop called Emperor’s Essentials sold booze and overpriced branded accessories, the manager a young woman with a gorgeous smile. Her name tag said ELLE/DALLAS. “See something you like?” she asked playfully.
“Just window shopping,” he said.
“There’s no charge for looking. What’s your name?”
“Billy. You’re new here, aren’t you?”
She feigned surprise. “I am. How did you know?”
Caesars was a favorite target for Billy’s scams. Management gave dealers a loose rein and left them more susceptible to being compromised by cheats. As a result, he knew the joint like the back of his hand, including the stores and restaurants.
“I come here a lot. How long have you worked here?” he asked.
“I just started part-time. I’m enrolled at UNLV’s hospitality management program.”
“I hear that’s a good school. Do you sell playing cards?”
“It’s one of our biggest items. How many decks do you need?”
“Four.”
Elle opened a glittering display case containing decks of Caesars playing cards. These cards had their corners rounded to prevent cheats from reintroducing them into games.
“Sorry, but I need regular cards,” he said.
Elle closed the case. From a drawer, she removed four decks of Bicycle playing cards, two red, two blue, and placed them on the counter. The Bicycle cards weren’t big movers, which was why they lived in the drawer.
“Do you have any glue?” he asked.
“All we carry is Super Glue,” she said.
“That will work.”
Elle rang up the sale. Each deck cost $9.99, while the glue ran eight bucks. Out in the real world, the same items cost a third. Shopping in Vegas had once been a bargain; now it was like getting your pocket picked. She handed him his change along with his purchase in a plastic bag.
“Don’t be a stranger.”
“I won’t,” he said.
The men’s room had more tile than a quarry. He locked himself in a stall and placed the plastic bag at his feet. Taking out his Swiss Army knife, he flicked open the blade. There were a variety of different Swiss Army knives on the market. His was called Swisslite and was the smallest model the company sold with just a single blade.
From the bag, he removed a blue deck of Bicycles and held it up to eye level. With the precision of a surgeon, he made a perfect cut in the plastic at the bottom of the box. Done, he slid the box out of the plastic and placed the plastic in the bag for safekeeping.
Using the blade, he worked away the stamp that sealed the box’s flap. Bicycles had a stamp that guaranteed they’d been manufactured with the highest standards. Most players wouldn’t play with a deck without a stamp, fearful the cards had been tampered with.
Taking the deck from the case, he removed the jacks, queens, kings, and aces. He was going to turn them into what hustlers called “touch cards” so he could secretly know their value when they came off the top of the deck.
The rest of the cards were put in the bag along with the box. The jacks, queens, kings, and aces went into his lap. He opened the nail file on his knife and scuffed up the short end of each card. Jacks got one scuff, queens got two, kings three. For the aces, he ran the file down the entire end.
Done, he retrieved the cards from the bag and returned the touch cards to their spots in the order. The reassembled deck went into the box and was resealed. Then the box was slid into its plastic case, and the Super Glue made the casing whole again.
He repeated the procedure with the other three decks. By the time he was finished, it was two forty. He left the restroom with the bag and headed back to Emperor’s Essentials.
Elle acted happy to see him. “Back so soon?”
He placed the bag on the counter and removed the four doctored decks. “I’m sorry, but my friends have decided that they want to play with casino cards. Can I exchange these?”
“I don’t see why not. Same number?”
“Please.”
She took the four doctored decks out of the bag and returned them to the drawer. He hid a smile. A legendary hustler named Titanic Thompson had invented this hustle a century ago, and it hadn’t gotten old. Four decks of casino cards were removed from the cabinet and placed in the bag. She rang up the exchange.
“Anything else I can help you with?” she asked.
The exchange couldn’t have gone better. Only it wasn’t time to walk. He needed to create a moment that would distract Elle from what had just happened.
“May I call you sometime?” he asked.
“Depends what you have in mind.”
If the number of women he’d dated was any indication, he was a good judge of the female disposition. Elle impressed him as being a wild child and willing to take a dare.
“Rooftop rides on the Stratosphere.”
“Been there, done that.”
“Zip line down the Fremont Street Experience.”
“You talking about SlotZilla? I was there the day it opened.”
She was a toughie. He put his hands on the counter and leaned in. “H
ow about if I take you swimming with the sharks at the Shark Reef Aquarium at Mandalay Bay? Just you, me, and thirty whitetip reef sharks. It’s the most fun you can have with your clothes on.”
“But that’s just for special guests of the hotel.”
“I’ve got juice. What do you say?”
“You’re on, hotshot.”
Elle recited her number, and Billy entered it into his cell phone’s directory, then read it back to her. She nodded enthusiastically. He’d taken her thoughts to another place, the exchange of the cards fading into the recesses of her memory.
“I’ll call you in a few days,” he said.
She was all smiles as he left the store.
TWELVE
Billy went to the front desk and identified himself to a receptionist as a friend of Night Train. Soon he was walking down a marble hallway with a female manager who’d been taught to smile whenever in the company of wealthy guests and their friends.
“Are you with the NFL?” his escort asked.
“Do I look like a football player?” he replied.
“I meant with the commissioner’s office.”
“No, I’m just a friend.”
They entered the lobby of the Octavius Tower and stepped onto a waiting elevator. His escort had just shared an interesting piece of information. The NFL commissioner’s office knew that Night Train was hanging out at Caesars right before the Super Bowl. Athletes prepared for major sporting events by practicing, getting plenty of sleep, and eating well-balanced meals. None of those things were going to happen while staying in a Vegas casino.
They got off on the second floor, their final destination a polished wood door. His escort knocked, and the door opened to reveal a giant Samoan wearing workout shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. For reasons unexplained, the Polynesian island of Samoa had produced more professional football players than any other foreign country. Billy had to think the place was dull as sin, and the young men were desperate to get off.
“Hello, Sammy,” the escort said pleasantly. “This is Mr. William Cunningham. I believe you’re expecting him.”
Sammy gazed at Billy. “You the real-estate guy?”