Upon arriving at the ranch, we gave our pass to a security guard dressed as a butler. He smiled and said, “Have fun.”
Ridiculous undersells the party. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. I suppose there was more I could have seen had I not averted my eyes as we walked through hallways with half opened doors to various bedrooms.
It wasn’t difficult to find Gabriella. She was playing strip poker with her husband and seven others in the sunroom. She looked younger than 50, but she also looked like she’d had some work done. The wrinkles on her hand exposed her true age. Her husband had a sophisticated greying beard and a cane, which I figured was for decorative purposes. He looked like a human version of Mr. Peanut.
Jesse and I asked if we could join midgame. “The more the merrier,” said some creepy guy wearing tighty whities. Note that he had chosen to take off his pants before his socks or his shirt.
Jesse felt uneasy about bringing me to this house. About putting me in a game of strip poker with these weirdoes. “You going to be okay with this?” he whispered to me. I had no interest in taking off my clothes in front of these strangers, but Jesse hadn’t connected the dots on what game they were playing. This was strip poker.
At the end of the game, not only had I kept all of my clothes on, but I’d also acquired an extra shirt, five socks, and a Kangol hat – the “more-the-merrier” guy had tried to give me his underwear when I landed a straight on my second hand, but I insisted he take off his hat instead. Poor Jesse was clinging to his last item of clothing – his boxer briefs – when the game finished. In fact, he would’ve been completely naked if I hadn’t folded a full house in the second to last hand to spare him.
Naked or not, Jesse wasn’t aiming to win a poker game, rather to strike up a conversation about tennis with Gabriella. While stretching between hands, Jesse grimaced in pain. One of the ladies asked what was wrong, and Jesse explained that he had strained his back playing tennis.
Ecstatic to hear the sport mentioned, Gabriella went on to praise the game of tennis. That praise eventually digressed to a rant about how depressed she’d been since her husband was no longer able to play because of his knee. So the cane, I realized, wasn’t just for looks.
Jesse and Gabriella set a match for early next week. It might raise eyebrows for a wife to set a date with a young bachelor, but considering her husband was okay with her sleeping with other men, tennis was no thing.
Jesse and I left the swingers’ party with my contribution to the con complete.
Jesse played tennis with her the next week. And the week after. On the third week, when Gabriella talked about having gone to the Venetian the night before, Jesse mentioned he had one thousand dollars in Venetian casino chips he was selling for 80 cents on the dollar. The chips, as Jesse explained, were stolen. When Gabriella asked why Jesse wouldn’t trade them in, he lied that he was in trouble with the IRS and couldn’t risk trading in that many chips.
Gabriella offered to buy the chips and brought $800 cash to a rendezvous point: a gas station just North of Sahara Avenue. Jesse counted out $1,000 in chips from a small box in the trunk. Jesse made sure that Gabriella caught a glimpse of a huge bag full of chips – what looked like another $50,000. Gabriella asked if she could have more than $1,000, perhaps $2,000 instead, but Jesse told her he had already agreed to sell the $50,000 to someone else. This $1,000 was his last available batch.
The next week, Gabriella and Jesse played tennis. Jesse asked if she had any trouble changing in the chips. She hadn’t. And with the taste of easy money lingering in her mouth, she was desperate to make another trade. But Jesse apologized. He didn’t have any more to sell.
The following week, when they played tennis, Jesse told Gabriella his friend had lost the money he was going to use to buy the $50,000 in chips. Elated, Gabriella asked if she could buy the chips, and Jesse agreed. She and Jesse met that night. She gave Jesse $40,000 cash, and Jesse gave her the gym bag full of chips.
The initial $1,000 in chips that Gabriella received were real. Max had acquired them at the Venetian. So when Gabriella bought those chips from Jesse, she had no trouble using them. But the second batch of chips – the $50,000 – was fake. The short con would have been to play Gabriella for the initial $1,000, and that probably would have worked. But the long con played the first exchange straight up, all to gain her trust to get more from her later.
It was only because I contributed to this long con that Max and Jesse kept me in the loop.
This time, Jesse’s been gone two weeks. The moment he walks in the penthouse, we drop everything and say hello. Usually, you have to pry the paddles from Kim and Mars, not to mention Sophie’s television tunnel vision when it comes to the CW, but as soon as everyone sees it’s Jesse, we all meet him at the doorway. High fives to Mars and Rob. Hugs for Sophie, Kim, and me. Sophie blushes when Jesse hugs him. She’s obsessed with him.
But that’s nothing compared to how I feel.
After everyone updates Jesse on their last couple weeks (knowing he won’t return the favor), they return to their evening. Sophie unpauses her TV show. Mars and Kim go back to their everlasting ping-pong match. Rob flips on a video game.
Jesse has received updates from everyone except me. “How you been?” he asks.
Should I say good? Or maybe great? How have I been? I want to tell him that question has a whole other meaning when he’s not here. That I have a whole other scale for measuring life when he’s not around. I want to tell him all kinds of things. I end up nodding. Which makes no sense. Nodding means, “Yes.” “Yes” doesn’t answer how have you been. So then I give my head some lateral movement to accompany the nod, as if to imply so-so.
Why is it that I can walk up to a 40-year-old brain-surgeon’s hotel room and charm him (and the dollars out of his wallet), but I can’t even talk to my best friend?
He starts walking towards his bedroom, before he stops and looks back at me. “I’m exhausted. I’m gonna crash, but do you want to grab dinner tomorrow?”
“Sure.” He could have asked me if I wanted to go outside and stare at a dumpster and I probably would have agreed.
--How is this happening? One minute, I’m living this dream in Las Vegas, caught in a hyperreal, fantastic version of reality. The next, I’m facing down my worst fear.--
CHAPTER THREE – Thirty Briefcases
The first thing I notice when I come out for breakfast is the smell of burnt bagels, no doubt courtesy of Rob’s inability to toast properly. The second is the sight of thirty aluminum briefcases piled in one corner of the living area. Each is black with silver trim.
The topic of chitchat at breakfast revolves around a missing woman, someone Max knows. The story’s all over the local papers. Abigail Murphy has been MIA for two days. Apparently, Abby worked as a dancer until she was promoted to trophy wife of Michael “Murph” Murphy. Murph owns a bunch of real estate surrounding The Strip.
“Three to one it was Charlie Moses,” says Max.
Charlie Moses heads the Las Vegas mob.
“Why?” asks Rob.
“’Cause. Charlie’s been trying to buy one of Murph’s motels north of The Strip. He wants to build a nightclub and casino. But Murph won’t sell.”
“So you think Charlie Moses kidnapped his wife to force him?” asks Kim.
Max shrugs. His way of saying it’s just a theory.
“Doesn’t that seem a little high profile for him?” I ask.
“Six, seven years ago, Charlie Moses wouldn’t have risked a stunt like that. But he lost most of his fortune trying to build a hotel downtown. Wasn’t really his fault, more to do with the timing of the bubble bursting. Regardless, now he’s desperate.”
“This article says she used to dance at the Crazy Horse,” Kim says.
“That wasn’t all she used to do,” responds Max.
“Whaddaya mean?” asks Rob.
“Well I don’t think Murph knows it, but dancing wasn’t paying her mortgage.”
; “She was a hooker?” Rob asks.
“Escort,” I correct Rob sarcastically, earning grins.
“Yeah. She was a pro,” replies Max.
“How do you know?”
“When a girl gets around, word gets around too.”
Just then, Mars joins us in the kitchen. A dash of anxiety puts a glitch in his usual swagger. He struggles for a place to put his hands before finally linking them behind his back.
“Hey, Max, I was thinking about the glim dropper. I’ve gotten in a nice rhythm playing pool, and I don’t think I want to go back to these other cons.”
Max glares. The electricity in his eyes is the lightning before the thunder: “Come in my room, and we’ll talk about it.”
We’ll talk about it means Max will yell at Mars and tell him he’s going to do the job.
I don’t have to hear to know what’s said on the other side of the door. I’ve heard Max in these arguments before, and he always makes the same points. Something to the effect of, “I let you live here. I let you go where you want. And do what you want with your free time. But you are not going to live here and be part of this group if you’re not going to do the jobs I assign.”
Then, he’ll give an ultimatum. Something like, “Of course, you don’t have to do the job. It’s your choice. But if you aren’t going to work as part of the group, you’re not welcome to live here as part of the group.”
Mars used to pull various short cons for Max, but as he perfected his skills as a pool hustler, his enthusiasm for other jobs has faded.
Mars never planned to move to Vegas. He had never planned to move around at all. But by the time he had turned 15, he couldn’t find a person in his Dallas suburb who’d play him for money. He started taking the bus into the city to find cash games.
Six months later, he couldn’t find a high stakes game in Dallas. Not after he beat Dallas’s premier hustler, Husky Williams, for ten G’s. After Dallas, Mars bounced around a few other cities. Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta. But wherever he went, the locals had him tagged as a hustler within a few weeks. Mars needed a place with a higher tourist-to-local ratio. A place where there’s always a new chump tomorrow.
When he got here, Max taught him new tricks. Not pool tricks. Hustler tricks. For instance, Max taught him to tip the pool hall owners so they wouldn’t warn tourists about him.
Mars, unlike the Roman god he’s named after, isn’t one for argument, so I can’t imagine he’ll fight. Max will give him the ultimatum, and Mars will either leave or stay. I hope he stays. Mars’s calm energy helps center the penthouse.
Thirty seconds later, when Mars walks out of the room, I can tell by his face that he decided to stay.
***
After breakfast, I get Sophie started on today’s schoolwork. The assignment relates to grammar. An easy morning’s work since grammar is one of my strong suits. Maybe my best other than math. Numbers were something I could just see, and statistics were always very logical to me (probably part of the appeal of poker).
Grammar was not quite as intuitive. In fact, I used to have terrible grammar, which I picked up from my mother (thank ya for nuttin’, moms). But when Max was training me to masquerade as one of Vegas’s elite call girls, we spent hundreds of hours on vocabulary and grammar. “Beyond how you look, how you speak is the easiest way to appear like a lady,” he would say.
Sophie and I go over various grammar principles. Like how not to use fragments.
I circle a dozen different exercises in the workbook for her to complete.
“I’m going to be gone for most of the day.”
“Okay. Whatever.” Followed by exaggerated teenage eye-roll.
“So I’m not going to be here to check on you every five seconds. I want you to focus. Get your work done, then you can watch TV.”
“I said okay, Piper.”
There’s been tension between us the last few weeks.
Which is my fault.
About a month ago, Jesse, Rob, and I got home from running some errands with Max. “Errands” in this case is not a euphemism. We were actually running errands. When we returned, Sophie was lounging in the penthouse hot tub with an 18-year-old guy she’d met down in the hotel pool. (Reminder: my sister Sophie is 14.)
“Who the hell is this?” My temper wasted no time getting lost.
“Hey, I’m Zach.” His overconfident I don’t give a shit about anything voice matched his I don’t give a shit about anything posture.
“Piper, we’re just swimming,” Sophie said.
“Just swimming? How old are you, Zach?”
“I’m 18. What’s up?”
“What’s up? What’s up is that 18’s majorly older than my sister’s minor age.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” Zach said.
“Didn’t do nothing? What’s that called, Sophie?”
“Piper, we were just swimming.” Tears started forming in Sophie’s eyes.
“Double negative. Another example: don’t not go wait in your room.”
“No.”
I give up on Sophie for a moment and turn to Zach. “You’re going to leave now, and you’re going to stay away from her.”
“I’ll leave, but if she wants to hang out, she’ll find me. I got your number, Soph.”
His arrogance annoyed me. But his trying to hook up with a 14-year-old girl? That wasn’t annoying. That was unforgivable.
What happened next was not my finest moment, and as I suspected, nor did it prove Zach’s finest moment.
“What are you going to do, try to sleep with my sister? With what? With this thing?” And then I pulled down Zach’s swim trunks. In front of everyone. Me. Max. Mars. Rob. Jesse. And Sophie.
Given that he’d been swimming in the pool and was now standing here cold and wet combined with something I learned from an episode of Max’s favorite sitcom, I figured it wouldn’t be Zach’s grandest hour.
I was scared that this 18-year-old punk would find some way to try to see Sophie again so I needed to do something. Something to embarrass him.
“What the hell…” It was all he had muttered before he pulled up his trunks and darted out of the penthouse.
Jesse, Rob, and Mars all stood there with their mouths wide open like surprised statues. Sophie ran to her room and slammed the door. Max said nothing. Just released a long sigh, then walked away.
Rob finally broke the silence. “Yo, that was messed up.” But then he started laughing, with Jesse and Mars following suit.
Zach must’ve been too embarrassed because he never called Sophie again. Although it had worked, the stunt pushed Sophie further away from me. Chalk it up to experimental parenting.
At least I didn’t leave cocaine lying around the house. Like Madeline.
***
A heavy UNLV sweatshirt dampens my underarms. My face itches from the excessive makeup, which is intentionally a few shades lighter than my natural skin color. And a strawberry blond wig prickles my scalp.
I won’t get any sympathy from Mars about being sweaty. Padding under his clothes makes him look a good 80 pounds heavier. On top of his fat suit rests his grey Banana Republic suit. But the sweat will play right into the desperation he’ll be faking.
As I wait outside the gift shop at Casino Royale, Mars enters and approaches the twenty-something clerk.
“Have you by chance seen a black briefcase?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Where?”
“It was my father’s. It’s black with silver trim. I have to find it. Inside is… it’s very important to my father.” With the desperation in his eyes, anyone would buy his panic.
“I’ll keep my eyes out for it.”
“I have to get it back. I’ll pay a reward. To anyone. A $1,000 reward.”
“A thousand dollars?”
“Yes! I’m going to go look outside. But I’ll come back. Soon. Please, please, please keep your eye out for it!”
A couple moments later, Mars jogs out of the gift shop. I meet him around the
corner.
“We’re good to go.”
“Yeah, I heard. You have the list?”
Mars pulls out a copied list of gift shops.
“Okay, great. I’ll be 15 minutes behind you. Text me if anything goes sour.”
Fifteen minutes later, just as Mars likely walks into the Venetian, I enter the Casino Royale gift shop holding a black and silver aluminum briefcase. I try to control my breathing. Relax, I tell myself.
The clerk barely glances at me before she fixates on the briefcase.
“I found this outside.”
“You did?” she asks, eyebrows arched.
“Yeah. You know if anyone’s looking for it?”
For a second, doubt fills my mind. She’s gonna know. I didn’t sell it well enough. My question wasn’t subtle enough. She knows it’s a con. What will she do? Is she going to call security? The police?
I take a deep breath. Let the doubt trickle out of my mind as I exhale. Calm your ass down, Pi. The con will work.
The clerk hesitates. But now I gather she’s not hesitating over whether or not I’m lying. She’s choosing her next move. I can see the little angel and devil boxers duking out the morality match on her shoulders. K.O.
“Actually, yeah. A guy came by earlier looking for it. You can leave it with me, and I’ll make sure he gets it.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’d rather give it to him myself.”
The clerk starts to get desperate. “He said he’d pay a reward. Two hundred dollars.”
“Really? Two hundred dollars? Whoa! When’s he going to be back though?” I ask, now glancing at my watch.
Then the clerk opens the register. “Not for a while. Here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you the two hundred now for the briefcase, and then I’ll get the cash back when he returns.”
This exchange demonstrates an essential component of any con, and one that Max taught me very early on in my education. Whenever possible, let the mark come up with the solution. If I had waltzed into the store asking for money, this clerk would have been more likely to suspect a con.
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