Dead Money Run

by J. Frank James

  “It sounds like a pretty slick deal if you ask me,” I said.

  “Well, it does, except for one thing,” said Reynolds. “It never provided for the eventuality that there might be a real robbery and the company would be out the laundered money. You see Malloy, since the money paid to the Indians was considered dead money, the Outfit couldn’t use it until it was cleaned. The scam was perfect until you and your two partners came along and took the laundered money.”

  “Who said we did,” I said.

  “Come, come, Mister Malloy. We know you did, but that is beside the point.”

  “What is the point, Reynolds?” I asked.

  “You took something else that was not supposed to leave the casino.”

  “And just what was that?” I said.

  For about a ten second beat, Reynolds just looked at me. Finally he said, “That information is classified, Mister Reynolds.”

  “So where did my sister figure into this deal?”

  While I waited for Reynolds’s answer, I watched him pick at his nails and rub his hands, one on top of the other. I knew whatever he said would be a lie.

  “Susan was one of my very best agents. On the day she disappeared I met with her and tried to get her to pull back, but she would have none of it. She had a lead into the company with one of the higher ups. She said that she could break them. I…I just don’t know what happened. Things seemed to be going well, almost too well. When we lost contact, the next thing we knew she was found dead in one of the rooms at the casino in Jacksonville Beach. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “So what do you want from us?”

  Now it was Miles’s turn to talk.

  “We want you to do is what you seem to do best.”

  “And what is that?” I asked.

  “Rob the casino on Cumberland Island again.”

  “You got to be kidding,” said Hilary.

  “Dead serious Miss Kelly,” said Reynolds. “The anniversary of the heist is coming up and what better way to celebrate than pulling off another robbery.”

  Sitting there thinking about it, I actually thought it was a good idea. The Outfit would go nuts and Sonny’s day in the sun would be over. The big question is, why tell us if the deal is so important and what do we get if we decide to do it?” I asked.

  “That’s two questions,” said Reynolds.

  “I’ll take two answers,” I said.

  “Why, keep the money of course,” said Reynolds. “We are only interested in getting rid of Sonny and finding what we think is in your possession that belongs to, let me simply say, another party.”

  Another lie.

  “What is it that we are supposed to have,” I asked.

  “You mean you don’t know?” said Reynolds.

  “Why would I lie to you? If we had it, we would be glad to give it to you,” I said. Now it was my turn to lie.

  Reynolds just looked at me and didn’t answer the question.

  Finally I said, “What do you have in the way of recon on the casino and how much money are you talking about? How many men do they have on security? Has their counting system changed? What about the Outfit, could they thinking along the same lines? It would be cool if we got there at the same time as they did to rob the same casino.”

  I watched Reynolds’s eyes dilate as my observation hit a cord.

  “I’m working on getting that very information as we speak. I should have it in a few days and will be in touch.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll let you know then if we will do it or not. How do I reach you?”

  “We’ll find you,” said Reynolds.

  After the meeting was over, Reynolds and Miles left. Hilary wanted to wait until they were gone before leaving the restaurant.

  “What do you think of that?” said Hilary.

  “I think it’s a set up,” I said, “but not a bad idea. Did you see how Reynolds’s eyes lighted up when I mentioned hitting the casino at the same time as Cap’s boys? All in all, it’s still a setup.”

  “The question is, what are we going to do about it?” Hilary asked.

  “Why, rob the casino, of course,” I said.

  “I knew you would say that.”

  “I forgot to tell you one other little detail from my conversation with Goodman. When I asked for a description of Max Reynolds, he told me that Max Reynolds has the name ‘Lenore’, tattooed on his right wrist. The Reynolds we just met had nothing on his right wrist but a watch.”

  Chapter 51

  “Hey, Zeke, I’m not interested how he died. Anybody know who might have killed him?”

  “No Boss. The only thing that might be of use was some security cameras.”

  As Angel listened, he wrinkled his forehead and drummed his fingers on the top of his desk. Talking to Zeke was like talking to a game show host.

  “Okay, Zeke, I got it. Take some pictures and clean out the security cameras around the place.”

  “You want me to call the cops?”

  “Zeke, we’re the criminals in this gig. What the hell do I want cops for? Just get the stuff and head for home.”

  To get the information you had to first give Zeke the question. After a few more minutes he punched in another call. On the fourth ring a man’s voice picked up and said, “Yeah, Angel. What’s the news?”

  “Nothing good, Sonny. I just got off the telephone with Zeke Leonard and it seems our boy Roseman was found this morning with his brains splattered all over the back wall of his office.”

  “And I’m supposed to care about this because, why?”

  “Well, Roseman’s no loss,” said Angel. “But the file he was keeping on everything, including our operation, is gone.”

  Angel listened as Sonny Cap raised his voice to a whole new level. Holding the telephone away from his ear, Angel fought the urge to hang up.

  “What the fuck are you telling me, Angel? You saying this fuck, Roseman, had a file on our operation and you knew about it and didn’t do anything about that? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  Right now Angel wanted a drink while he could still swallow. Angel had given Roseman the file.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You miserable shit. I put you in charge of the clubs. I give you carte blanche and this is the way you thank me? Huh?”

  “Sonny, it’s not like that. It’s…”

  “Shut up, Angel. Just shut up. I need to think.”

  Sitting there listening to the bucket of shit Angel was feeding him was driving him crazy, but Sonny was smart enough to know that he had to play things out. The Outfit was not happy. They not only were down thirty million big ones, but the whole casino money laundering gig was at stake. The Outfit could weather the storm, but Sonny would last about as long as dew on a hot day. He didn’t need to do anything rash. It all started when Angel introduced him to that Kandi babe. She was the most exciting thing he had ever seen. He had to have her. His old man always told him he thought with his dick. Well, this time his dick got him in trouble and everyone else along with him. He had to do something. If his father got wind of this news, Sonny knew he would be through. Right now, the only one who knew was Angel. Something had to be done about that.

  “Okay, Angel. Let me think a few things over. I can’t do anything now and I don’t want you to do anything until I get back with you, you hearing me, Angel? Nothing.”

  “Yeah, Boss, I hear you.”

  After hanging up the telephone Angel knew that whenever Sonny got suddenly calm after a blow up, he had better duck. It was time to put his escape route into motion.

  He had told his wife, Marilyn, if the worst ever happened she was to go to her mother’s with the kids. He had given her the number on the secret Nassau account and the banker’s name who she could call to get money wired to her. He told her not to take more than ten thousand at any one time. Otherwise the Feds would pick it up. Once he found a safe place he would send for them.

  Angel had about three million in Nassau. It should be enoug
h for the family to live in comfort for a long time. Marilyn just had to use a few brains which she didn’t have a lot of.

  Walking over to a wall with a picture of him and Maynard Jackson taken during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Angel swung the picture like it was a cabinet door and reached for the dial on the safe in the wall. Spinning the dial quickly, he was concentrating so hard he failed to hear the door to his office open and a figure step into the room. After opening the safe, Angel held a bag in his left hand and started stuffing money into it. He figured he had around two hundred grand in the safe, enough to get him out of the country. Taking the two passports he had in the safe, he put them in the bag as well. Shutting the door to the safe, he spun the dial and swung the picture closed. When he turned around he wasn’t expecting his visitor so soon.

  “Jack…What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jack Bellay alias Four Fingers Jack, was Sonny’s clean up man when all else failed. Jack was the avenue of last resort, as Sonny liked to say. Angel had even used Jack himself a few times.

  “How you doin’, Angel? Long time, no see.”

  “Hi, Jack. What are you doing here?”

  “You asked that already, Angel, but that’s a fair question.”

  Jack Bellay reminded Angel of a coyote in his appearance. He had narrow eyes and a long nose and a mouth the size of a bee’s ass. His father told him to never trust a man with a small mouth.

  Bellay got the name Four Fingers when somebody questioned his word. Bellay issued a challenge and when asked what the bet was, Jack held up his little finger and said it was his finger versus the other guy’s finger. Jack won the bet. When the loser didn’t want to ante up, Jack shot him in the head and cut off the loser’s little finger. He wore it around his neck in a small stainless steel tube.

  “I hear you been talking with Sonny,” said Bellay.

  Angel could feel the heat rise in his face.

  “Look, Jack, I did what I could. How was I to know that fuck, Roseman, was going to keep a file on the Outfit and the casino operation?”

  Waving his hand as if he were swatting a fly, Bellay said, “Hey, Angel, I understand, but you see, in addition to being down Roseman and the file you gave him, we are short one lawyer in town. It seems this Roseman had the file copied and had mailed it to his lawyer to take to the cops in case anything happened to Roseman, but the simple putz of a lawyer called Sonny instead and offered the file to Sonny for a hundred grand. So the lawyer is gone and he took his secretary with him after cleaning out his trust account. What do you think of that Angel?”

  “Town has enough lawyers already,” said Angel.

  “Yeah. Losing a lawyer now and then is not a bad thing as far as I’m concerned, if you know what I mean, Angel.”

  “Sure, Jack. I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do, Angel, but that’s not for me to decide today. What I want to know is who in your family do you want to give us?”

  For a few moments Angel thought he was hearing things. It took a few seconds for him to get his bearings. Walking over to his desk, he set the sack of money down and took a seat. He had a thirty-eight taped to the side of his desk. It was loaded and all he had to do was reach for it and fire it through the desk, but firing from a sitting position would only hit Bellay in his knees. Angel had to clear the gun from under the desk. He would have to move fast.

  “I’m not sure I understand you, Jack?”

  “Okay, I can understand that. Let me try this on you. The Outfit had two choices to make as the result of your perceived incompetence. Choice one was to kill Sonny, but he really didn’t have a dog in this hunt. Next choice was you. You gave the file to Roseman and now they want it back. That, they gave to me to do. They can’t let someone in the organization fuck up and not pay the piper. So the decision was made that you, as the result of this fuck up, have to pay us a bounty. Now, who do you want to give up? The choice for you is really very simple. I either kill you or someone in your family. Now who do you think that should be? The choice is yours.”

  Suddenly Angel stood up and holding the thirty-eight in his right hand. “You no good dirty bastard…I’m going to …”

  Angel never cleared the thirty-eight to a firing position before a hole appeared in his forehead blowing everything out the back of his head. Slumping back in his chair his fingers continued twitching as they held the gun.

  Getting up like he was walking to get a drink of water, Bellay put the end of a small twenty-two to the side of Angel’s head and pulled the trigger. He then took out his cellphone and took a picture of Angel sitting in his chair. Placing both the pistols back in their respective holsters, Jack said, “I think you made a good decision Angel. I would have hated to kill your old lady.”

  Chapter 52

  By the time Hilary and I finally made it back to our hotel, it was almost midnight and I was dead on my feet. What I had just heard was hard to believe. I wanted Hilary to say something, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Finally she said, “What do you think?”

  “What about? There are so many things to think about that I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Or, who to believe,” she added.

  “There’s that.”

  “Okay, let’s say these two are on the level, which, we are agreed, they’re not. How many Indian-backed casinos do you think there are in the U.S. today operating under the auspices of various Indian treaties and such?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “maybe five hundred?”

  “Well,” said Hilary. “Let’s assume you are right and say the average take annually at each one is a hundred million and Consolidated is taking in five percent as a premium from each one. That’s five million dollars per location or for a grand total of two and half billion dollars per year. Then factor in the robberies and say the average is five million. Sonny and his band of clowns could be clearing over five billion dollars a year in money from the robberies of casinos they already own. What a deal. It’s sort of like getting paid to rob from yourself.”

  “That still doesn’t explain Susan’s death and why they need their fifteen million dollars that is long gone under the bridge.”

  “I thought about that Lou. What if the Outfit or Syndicate or whatever they want to call themselves, has divided up the country into operating units and each unit has to pay the top dogs a percentage of the projected profits each year whether the money is there or not. Sort of like what some churches do. They send out projected funding quotas and the units have to send in that amount or else. How they get the money is each unit’s problem.”

  I had to hand it to Hilary, she might have something.

  “If you are right about that,” I said, “and Sonny can’t get this money back now, he basically will be out of runway. If he drops another fifteen million in another robbery, the Outfit will be down another fifteen, plus what they have to pay the Indians for the loss, adds up to an additional thirty million dollars in losses. Add that to the thirty million they already have in the pot that adds up to over sixty million dollars in losses. Even for them, that is a lot of money.

  “This could be the start of a whole new cottage industry if word gets out that these casinos are vulnerable to being knocked off. So, maybe hitting the casino on Cumberland again might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

  “One question,” said Hilary. “What does the government get out of breaking Sonny?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Well that is not exactly right. They stop the money laundering operation, but they could have already have done that if they wanted to. They have to be waiting for something else. Something that is part of a larger deal.”

  “Exactly,” said Hilary. “So why do it? There must be something else.”

  “Maybe that’s column ‘B’,” I said.

  We both started laughing. The thought of robbing the Golden Slipper Casino was starting to take hold. I wondered if they could be that stupid and keep the same type of systems that allowed u
s to get to the money the last time.

  “There are some hurdles,” I said.

  “No kidding,” said Hilary.

  “What about your buddy, Silvio?”

  “What about him?”

  “Maybe he would be willing to part with some information that would be helpful?”

  “I doubt it. He’s one of them.”

  “Maybe we have to ask the right questions,” I said.

  When we finally made it to our room, Crusher was asleep on the couch. Empty plates, with the remains of chicken wings, two pizza boxes and two empty six packs of beer were scattered on top of the coffee table.

  “Must have been a good match,” said Hilary. “Should we wake him up and tell him what we have so far? He might not want to get involved in a repeat performance at the Cumberland Island Casino?”

  “No, let him sleep. Can I make you a drink?” I said.

  “I’ll have what you’re having.”

  “You want a double vodka martini?”

  “In that case, make mine white wine.”

  We sat out on the balcony overlooking Peachtree Street. Our room was on the sixteenth floor and there was very little traffic that early in the morning. The air was cool and we could sit and talk. I could tell from the way Hilary was looking at me that she had something to say.

  “Lou, it seems a little preposterous that some government agency is going to let us rob a legitimate business and walk away with the money.”

  “I thought about that too, but you said the magic word, ‘legitimate’.”

  “If they suspect there is illegal activity, why fake a robbery. Why not just get a court order and shut the place down?”