by Andrew Gross
Hauck tapped his foot on his desk. “I think I understand it perfectly, sir.”
“So do we have an accord? Anything comes up you think would be a good thing for us to know, I’d appreciate hearing it from you. As, likewise, I promise you will from me. These tribal elders don’t respond well to the long arm of the law, if you know what I mean…”
“I think I do.”
“Nice talking to you, Lieutenant. I wish you best of luck in solving your case.”
As soon as he hung up, Hauck called in Munoz and Chrisafoulis.
“You and Steve keep looking into Sanger. Find out if anyone confirms about his gambling. Check with his case files if Keith Kramer was mentioned in any way on anything he may have been looking into up there.”
“You got it, boss.”
“And look into the Pequot Woods. The two of them were connected. There’s some record of it somewhere. You find out why.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Joe Raines put down the phone and stared out his office window at the brown November day.
He didn’t like where this was heading.
All his life, in the army, on the force, in private life, he’d done people favors. The kind of favors no one wanted to do. That was how a guy like him rose. He got his boots dirty. He protected people and watched their backs.
Now, he wondered, who the hell was watching his?
He got up, buzzed his secretary to say he’d be back in a while, headed out of his office and down the corridor for a smoke. He went past what was known at the company as the Flight Room, behind two secure doors. The room contained sixty large monitors focusing on every gambling venue in the casino—every table, every machine, every restaurant. Every place money changed hands.
And in front of every cluster of screens a trained security specialist sat watching them.
Every action was observed. Every face in the betting room noted. Every known cheat or card counter checked against a profile. Every dealer too—to make sure he or she had not motioned to a player or made some unusual eye contact. That they shuffled the decks properly. Every supervisor was observed too, to make sure the table counts were handled correctly.
The finest security money could buy—tens of millions. To protect who? Raines shook his head. A bunch of fucking Indians…
It was from there, the Flight Room, that he had watched Keith Kramer leave the grounds the week before. From there that he had made the call, switching to an outside camera, watched him open his car.
Caught sight of the black Escalade that pulled out behind him.
Raines slipped through a door to the outside.
The doorway led to the third-floor balcony. It overlooked one of the lakes on the resort’s property. He took out his cell and lit up a smoke. There was a chill in the air. Leaves had changed. He’d never get used to it up here, in New England. He was Southern to the roots. From Georgia. Hell, his great-grandparents fought fucking Indians. Now he was protecting them. He always felt out of place up here in the cold.
He punched in a number, took a deep drag, waited for the line to connect.
When it finally did, Raines knew the person would immediately recognize the number.
“Can you talk?”
“I’m in Hartford,” the voice replied. “Heading into the capitol. Let me pull up on the steps.” He came back on a few seconds later. “Go on.”
“Just letting you know—I just had a call you might find interesting. I think you might know from whom.”
“Hauck?”
“He was asking about Sanger,” Raines said, looking over the new mansions lining the lake. Indians, he was thinking. Billions. Who would have ever guessed?
He flicked his cigarette butt over the edge and watched it disappear. “Seems he’s put together the connection to the Kramer guy.”
CHAPTER FORTY
That night, as Hauck was getting ready to leave, Vern Fitzpatrick knocked on the glass.
“Glad I was able to catch you, Ty…”
The chief had wavy white hair and a long, ruddy face. He had run the Greenwich force for twenty years because he’d always been a calming influence around town, a steady voice when tempers flared, and worked well with the local government. When he started, Greenwich was a sleepy commuter town with a single movie theater and an old-fashioned five-and-dime store on Main Street. He had seen the place go through its share of changes over the years.
He smiled. “Just got a holiday call from some of your favorite people, Ty.”
Hauck looked at him and nodded. Sculley. Taylor. “You don’t have to say it, Vern.”
The chief came over and took a seat. “Maybe I do. Maybe I do have to say it, Ty. Maybe I have to remind you that you’re not the only one who wants to see an outcome on this case. You’re also not the only one feeling pressure here.”
“I realize that, Vern, but you also understand, Morales may have squeezed the trigger, but Nelson Vega was behind it and someone’s got his back. And if it wasn’t Taylor and Sculley, who had access to him in jail, you tell me who? Josephina Ruiz was just a diversion. This whole thing had to do with David Sanger and that other guy up in Madison, something they knew about the Pequot Woods. I’m glad they called to say hello, but that doesn’t change things.”
“That wasn’t why they called, Ty. They were only letting me know…”
“Letting you know what?”
The chief crossed his legs. “That APB we put out on Morales…? He turned up.”
Hauck looked at him, surprised.
“Down in the Dominican Republic—with a bullet between the eyes. Seems he’d picked up some hooker who either robbed him or was trying to tell him he’d gotten a bit too rough. I guess there was quite a stash of drugs and booze around. The locals down there are looking into it…”
“You know as well as I do Morales was only the triggerman, Vern.”
“Yeah.” The chief sighed. “I know that.” He raised himself up. “You want to take it further, it’s your call. Or you can just say we got the guy, Ty. You saw him yourself, plain as day. However it happened, the sonovabitch got what he deserved. I bet Wendy Sanger might feel about the same if you asked her, without tearing up the floorboards and potentially harming a good man’s reputation to find out more.” Fitz smoothed out his trousers. “Sanger and this other guy were friends; why don’t we just leave it at that. No one’s going to argue about a case of revenge gone wrong. You see what I’m saying, Ty?”
“Even if it’s not?”
“Even if it’s not, yeah.” The chief stepped over to the door. “But you don’t know that, Ty.”
“It doesn’t bother you, Vern, that a guy who tried to gun down a state trooper got the case against him dropped? Or that there’s a Justice Department lawyer who had something going on with a pit boss up at the Pequot Woods and both of them are dead? And now the guy who pulled the trigger is dead too?”
“Just give it a little thought.” Fitz opened the door but turned back. “You’re asking if it bothers me that the person who came into our town and committed this horrible act is dead?” He rapped his knuckles against the glass. “Yeah, it bothers me just fine!”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Morales’s death put things on hold for a while.
The headlines ran that the triggerman in the Greenwich drive-by shooting had been killed. They still didn’t have a connection to DR-17, but the newspaper article found in the truck and the connection to Sunil seemed to tie it up neatly enough.
Steve Chrisafoulis was waiting for Hauck as he came in the next day. “Are we shut down?” the detective asked.
“I don’t know,” Hauck said. “Why?”
Steve tapped together another set of papers. The smile sneaking through his thick mustache suggested he’d found something important. “Just thought I’d show you how I spent the weekend, Ty…”
He followed Hauck into the office and spread out a couple of piles on the conference table across from Hauck’s desk. “This tim
e I went after it a different way. I went back and cross-ran Sanger’s social. I figured you can get credit under any name…” He paged through the first stack. “You see this Amex file…”
“Yeah.”
“Took me all weekend to find it. The damn thing’s made out to a D. Mark Sanger. The sonovabitch had it mailed to the goddamn U.S. attorney’s office in Hartford.”
Hauck paged through the statements. There wasn’t a whole lot of activity on them.
It took maybe a second for Hauck to realize just why.
They were all gambling charges. Online poker sites. Casino cash advances. The whole credit card.
David Sanger had a life he kept secret from his wife and kids.
But that wasn’t what had begun to make Hauck’s temperature rise.
Steve drew his eye to a highlighted item. October 17. Just a few days before Sanger was killed.
A $327.61 charge from the Pequot Woods Resort and Casino.
“Turn the page,” Chrisafoulis said with a slight smile, “there’s more.”
Hauck did, flipping back through statements from September, August, and prior. There were at least eight transactions highlighted. All visits to the Pequot Woods Resort. Some even had corresponding cash advances drawn against the card. Some ran as high as $10,000. Charges for lodging, meals.
It was clear Raines had been lying.
He would have known this. Sanger’s name would have come up. His face would have been well known.
“And that’s not all.” The canny detective flipped a few pages. “I cross-checked the card against Sanger’s bank account at Bank of America that we found up in Hartford. Check it out…” He drew the tip of his pen to a charge. “You see this Amex charge for eight hundred and forty-seven dollars on April fourth?”
Hauck nodded.
“Take a look what happened April fifth. In his bank account.”
Hauck ran his eye down the column.
There was a deposit for $12,500 listed there.
“Here too,” Steve said, pointing. June 10. Sanger had withdrawn $10,000 from his account that night he visited the resort. The next day he put $22,000 back in.
“It’s a whole pattern,” Steve said. “Withdrawals one day and the next day he hits the resort. Then deposits, sometimes spread out over the next few days. We’re talking tens of thousands, Lieutenant. Lucky sonovabitch, wouldn’t you say?”
“Blessed.” Hauck glanced again over the bank statements. It was showing over $400,000. Sanger’s secret life. One he had gone to great lengths to conceal.
Sanger and Kramer clearly had something going on up there together. The two friends, who barely kept up with each other.
Both dead.
“So what’s next, Lieutenant?” Steve Chrisafoulis shut the folder and looked at him. The papers had this thing as solved.
“Maybe it’s time to try my own luck up there,” Hauck replied.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
From the thousands of acres of rolling woods ceded to the Pequot tribe two hundred years ago as their tribal homeland, the Pequot Woods Resort rose like a towering glass teepee, reflecting the sun across the banks of the Thames River.
Back in 1996, the United States Supreme Court, having recognized that Native American tribes, as “sovereign entities,” could open gaming facilities free of state regulation, the tribe, along with two large gaming and real estate conglomerates, TRV and Armbruster International, built the spectacular Pequot Woods, housing the largest gaming facility in the world. Not to be outdone, the Pequots’ natural enemies, the Mohegans, on the other side of the river, did the same. Now, two hundred years later, the two warring tribes were battling all over again for the gambling dollars of New Yorkers and Bostonians with the two largest casinos east of Las Vegas.
The setting sun glinted amber as Hauck wound his Explorer around a bend and onto the casino’s vast grounds.
He left the car at check-in in front of the lobby. A pretty, dark-haired receptionist in a well-tailored uniform came out from behind the reception desk.
“Mr. Raines is expecting you,” she told him. “I’ll have your bag taken up to your room and I’ll escort you to see him now.”
“Sounds fine,” Hauck said, smiling back at her. He tucked his sunglasses into his jacket.
She informed him her name was Katie and led him up a wide, carpeted staircase rising from the lobby, a vast, glass-enclosed atrium with lava-colored rock formations rising spectacularly to the sky. They shared a little small talk on the way, about the casino, whether Hauck had been there before, the new celebrity-chef steak place that had just opened. Hauck couldn’t help but admire her nice, long legs.
On the second floor, she took him down a long hallway to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. “We call it the Flight Room,” Katie said. “Mr. Raines asked if you would meet him here.”
She put an electronic key in the door and opened it. Hauck found himself in a massive, darkened room. The space was filled with hundreds of video monitors, many suspended high above, displaying wide angles of the entire gaming operation. Most were smaller-sized screens in workstations that seemed to be focused on individual betting tables, and observing them were security personnel in headsets.
Dozens and dozens of them.
It almost took Hauck’s breath away.
The hush of low-key voices penetrated the air like an airport flight tower.
“Everybody has the same reaction the first time.” Katie smiled, observing him. “We have the largest security operation in the East.”
A tall, lanky man in a dark sport jacket who had been talking to one of the security personnel came over to Hauck. “Thank you, Katie.”
She smiled and backed out of the room, saying, “Have a good stay.”
“I’m Joe Raines,” the man said. Raines was about fifty, with a pockmarked face, salt-and-pepper hair, sort of a military bearing, like a man who had worked himself up from the ranks.
“Ty Hauck,” Hauck said. His shake was firm but cool.
“Impressive?” the security man remarked.
Hauck took in a wide scan. “Yes, it is.”
“People always stare a bit their first time. Over four thousand slots, six hundred and eighty gaming tables. You know what the average daily take in an operation this size is?”
Hauck shrugged. “No idea.”
Raines pursed his bloodless lips. “Thirty-one point six mil. Not counting food and beverage, of course. Weekends you could double that.”
“I’ll look for that one the next time I’m on Jeopardy.” Hauck chuckled.
Raines gave him a smile. “And you know what the one thing is that holds the whole thing all together, Lieutenant?” He pointed to a large screen focused on a table of blackjack players. “Check out up there…”
On the screen, a man in a cowboy hat and aviators drummed his fingers while he studied his hand. The dealer showed a jack. The man in the hat had what seemed a troubled expression, deciding what to do.
“That,” Joe Raines stated. “That it’s the player who has to bust first—not the house. That the poor bastard has no idea in the world what to do because of that ten card showing there. That’s our edge. Our only edge, Lieutenant. If he knows the dealer’s holding a five, everything switches back against the house. But because he doesn’t, we keep the advantage.”
On the screen, Cowboy Hat tapped the table for a card and the dealer flipped over a king. He busted. The dealer took in the man’s chips. The next player in line stuck with a king and a seven, seventeen, and the dealer flipped over his hole card and revealed a six. Sixteen. He had to hit. He flipped over a ten and busted himself. Raines smiled knowingly. “You see…”
“You mind being a little clearer on what you’re trying to tell me?” Hauck asked, drawing his gaze back from the screen.
“You care for something to drink?” Raines asked. “A beer? Soft drink? Something stronger, perhaps?”
Hauck shook his head. “Thanks. Still on duty.”
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br /> “That’s what I figured. In this job you have to size people up quickly and you look like a man who’s serious about his work.”
“I think we both know why I’m up here, Mr. Raines,” Hauck said, growing impatient at all the dancing around.
“Yes, we do, Lieutenant. Sanger…” Raines nodded. His eyes were hooded and gunmetal gray. “Keith Kramer. Like I said, you upset that balance”—Raines looked at him—“it disrupts everything. You understand what I’m trying to tell you, Lieutenant?” He motioned around. “Everything you see here, all these fancy screens, these trained people, tens of millions of dollars—all of it’s just here to protect that one thing. So that what that dealer has facing down on the table remains in doubt. All it takes is one bad egg on the inside, and this whole big show doesn’t mean shit. Are you understanding?”
“I think I’m starting to see it,” Hauck replied.
Raines had thick eyebrows and a serious conviction in his gaze. “And there are several different ways to upset that perfect balance, Lieutenant.”
“You mean from the inside.”
“Yes. A dealer can execute what in the trade we call a ‘flash.’ Flash a glimpse of his hole card to an accomplice at the table. Doesn’t take a whole lot of skill. That’s what these operators are trained to look for. Or he can simply blink or just twitch his nose. A twitch to signal his accomplice to draw a card. Maybe only a moistening of the lips for him to hold. That’s why we watch tapes of every one of our dealers in action, over and over, observing their mannerisms.”
Hauck started to have a clearer sense of where this was going.
“Then there’s what we call capping, Lieutenant. And pinching. Placing more chips over a winning bet than it deserves. Maybe substituting a black five-hundred-dollar chip for a green. Or taking chips off the table in a loss. We monitor the one-on-one tables most closely. Look to see if the same player shows up with the same dealer on a regular basis…”