“I hear you’re tied.”
Mars sighs. “Yeah.”
“What are you playing for?”
“Twenty five.”
“Hundred?”
“No. Thou.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Take him down, Mars. We need it.”
Mars doesn’t register my pep talk. His focus lies solely on the Russian and the final game in the series.
The Russian gets the four ball off the break. Next he makes the one. Then he knocks the two into the seven into the far corner pocket. After that, he sinks the two ball in the side pocket. But he doesn’t leave himself a good shot on the three. The Russian’s already made four shots, and Mars hasn’t even had a turn yet. But it’s nine ball. Whoever makes the nine wins. Nothing before that even matters.
Mars knocks in the three after the Russian misses it. He takes down the five ball next – the four was already down off the break. Because he doesn’t have a good shot on the six, Mars plays a great safety, leaving the Russian with even fewer options. Cheers erupt from the crowd. A few whines of disappointment from those rooting for the Russian. It’s not hard to see how Mars won over the majority: the way he moves around the table with a rock star’s swagger. Plus, the Russian makes this grotesque grimace even when he sinks a shot.
The Russian can’t hit the six – which in nine ball is considered a scratch. So it’s “ball in hand” for Mars. He aligns the cue ball to easily drop the six. Only two balls left. The eight and the nine. If he sinks them both, he wins. Twenty five thousand dollars.
Mars pauses. He takes a deep breath, then sinks the eight ball in the side pocket with an impressive bank shot. But the cue ball rolls and stops on the rail. He doesn’t have a very good shot on the nine. Makeable, but it’s no cake.
The crowd cheers as their clapping builds in unison. My heart races, and I feel overwhelmed with relief it’s Mars and not me taking the shot. We need this twenty-five grand.
Mars walks to the other side of the table to examine the nine. The Russian is talking to him, but I can’t hear what he’s saying over the cheers. I imagine he’s telling Mars to hurry up and take the shot.
Mars returns to the ball. As he aims the cue, I see he’s trying to bank the nine into the far pocket. Not an easy shot, but the best option. I decide I can’t watch. But at the crack of the cue, my eyes dart back to the table to see white hitting yellow, rolling across green towards the pocket.
The nine appears it’s going to go in, but then it glances off the rails next to the pocket.
The cue ball rolls to the center of the table. Now an easy last shot. The Russian’s turn.
I’m so furious it feels like I’m going to lift right off the ground. His job was to get in the billiard hall and play high stakes games against players he knew he could beat. Not only did he not make $25,000, he just lost $25,000. A $50,000 swing. The rest of us are out there busting our asses making cash that he’s squandering.
The Russian looks at Mars one last time, laughs, then taps in the nine. Goodbye $50,000.
My temper wants to chew Mars out, but maybe I should just cut him off. Maybe we’d have a better chance of pulling together a million without him. I march over to him, debating the pros and cons of sending him home.
But before I can say anything, the Russian speaks up first.
“Give me my money.”
“Here, take your meter money.” Mars turns to me. “Hey, Pi, no dessert for me tonight at dinner, I guess.”
The Russian man catches Mars’s comment.
“What are you saying? Meter money? No pie for dessert tonight? You are trying to tell me something? That this game is no matter to you?”
“However you want to take it, Boris.”
“You want to play for more money, let us go.”
“Nah, I don’t think so.”
At this point, Jesse enters the pool hall carrying a briefcase. He spots us and heads over.
“Twenty five grand is not interesting to you. Let us play for a hundred,” says the Russian. Each time he says “let us,” it sounds like he’s talking about lettuce.
“A hundred?” Mars appears to be contemplating.
A hundred grand? I just watched him choke on twenty-five. I can’t let this happen.
“Mars, we’re out. C’mon.”
“Hold on. This kind, Russian gentleman has just suggested we play for a hundred thousand dollars.”
The smirk on Mars’s face has me ready to kill him. This isn’t about him playing pool or his blistered ego. This is about getting my sister back.
“Mars, let’s go.”
The Russian sees I’m keen on talking Mars out of it. “Let the boy decide on his own.”
Now I’m ready to grab a pool cue and hit the Russian with it. I reach out and take a hold of Mars’s arm. Need be, I’ll drag him out of the pool hall.
Just as I dig my heels into the carpet and wrench Mars’s arm, I catch a glimpse of Jesse’s face. The eyes wide, “figure it out” face. And from his wide eyes, I suddenly figure it out.
Mars lost the $25,000 game on purpose. He’s hustling the Russian. Drawing him into a game for more money. Mars must have sent Jesse to go get more cash, hence the briefcase. It’s a genius play. And I’m the only obstacle keeping it from working. If I weren’t this exhausted, I probably would have seen his ploy. But still, that I didn’t see what Mars was doing is a testament to how well he sells it.
I drop Mars’s arm. “Fine, blow a hundred grand if you want, but I ain’t watching.”
I walk out of the pool hall with a rush of energy. I don’t have to bare the burden of getting Sophie back alone. My friends are some of the best con artists in this city.
And they’ve got my back.
***
Three back-to-back jobs deposit 12 grand in my purse. The last one goes down at the Trump, so I figure I should drop off my cash while on the north end of The Strip.
As I weave in between drunk tourists on the sidewalk, a bout of fatigue strikes me like a punch to the gut. My adrenaline had been propelling me up to this point. But now, with all the walking, the pounding feet, that adrenaline has withered away. Am I going to fall asleep while walking? Is that possible? My heavy eyelids flutter, and I have to focus on each individual step.
Kim, Rob, and Mars – they must be exhausted too.
A stumble opens my eyes, and I regain my balance just in time to avoid crashing into two figures. Ironman. And Chewbacca. Am I in some dream where the Star Wars world crossed over to the Marvel universe?
Chewbacca holds out a mug. Not a dream. Just the Las Vegas Strip. I push past the panhandling street performers.
In an attempt to wake myself up, I try to imagine something fun I’ll do with Sophie once I get her back. I know. I’ll take her to a concert.
Last year I conned a guy who was in town to see a sold out Killers show. I ended up taking him for his tickets and backstage passes instead of his cash. I knew The Killers, who are from Las Vegas, were Sophie’s favorite band, so I took her to the show, and she loved it. Of course, that was last year’s favorite band. They were replaced by M83 who were replaced by The Gaslight Anthem. Who were replaced by the Lumineers. Then Arcade Fire. Now it’s Daft Punk.
Sophie adores concerts. It started a year and a half ago when Max got us seven tickets (one for him, Jesse, Mars, Kim, Rob, Sophie, and myself) to go see U2 in concert. Max is the big U2 fan. U2 has been playing music longer than the rest of us have been alive. But Max’s instinct was right that their timeless music could bridge the generation gap. Sophie didn’t even know who U2 was before the concert, but by the end of the show she had fallen in love with live music.
Picturing Sophie and myself at a Daft Punk concert, I start to nod off again. While walking. I shift from thinking about concerts to other possibilities of fun adventures for Sophie and me.
We could take a trip. We’ve never seen the ocean.
I make a mental list of places I’d
like to take Sophie once I get her back. The Grand Canyon. Yosemite. New York. Fiji. By the time I get to ten, I arrive back to TI.
When I get to the penthouse, Jesse stands to greet me.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Is Mars still at the pool hall?” I ask.
“He is. But I don’t know how helpful he’s really going to be. Everybody heard about him taking down that Russian for a hundred so nobody wants any action with him. And Kim got busted.”
“No! What happened?”
“I’m not sure. Just know it was at New York-New York. They threw her and Vivi out.”
Huge setback. Getting kicked out of New York-New York means being banned from pretty much every casino in Nevada.
“Piper, cheer up,” says Jesse. “She made almost ninety grand. They kicked her out, but they couldn’t take the cash.”
“Where is she now?”
“Max told her to go hit these two casinos outside the city. They’re both going through network maintenance, so they won’t upload the new facial recognition database until tonight.”
“Smart.”
“Well, it’s Max.”
His ears burning, Max emerges from the bathroom. I hand him my new take; twelve grand. Max adds the money to the piles of cash on the table.
A glance at my watch reveals 19 hours gone, 17 hours left. I look back at the piles of cash on the table. It’s a ton of cash – more than I’ve ever seen – and I can’t imagine exactly how much.
“We’re getting there,” says Max. “I think we’ve got about $490,000.”
Jesse clenches his fists in celebration, but I worry. That’s not even half what we need, and we’ve used more than half the 36 hours. Plus now, moving forward, we can’t count on as much from Kim or Mars.
“You’re up in 30, Pi.” Max hands me a piece of paper with the info. Description of the mark and a meeting place. “And this is the big one. The prenup.”
“Oh, right.”
Max had told me he got a great tip on a potential mark with a very specific prenuptial agreement. One that entitles his wife to half his fortune if he’s unfaithful.
“Jesse, if you’re not on anything, I could use you for this next one.”
“Whatever you need.”
A high level of pressure comes with this job, and it reassures me to know I have Jesse with me, even if his role is relatively small.
Jesse and I move towards the door. Max looks at me. “Hey, kid. Be careful out there.”
“I can’t be too careful. We’re running out of time.”
“I’m not just talking about with your marks. I’m talking about Ladislav. My contact at the escort service said he called several times. He’s insistent on seeing you again. He offered ten thousand dollars. One of his bodyguards even stopped by the escort service to find out where you lived.”
“This guy is for real.” Jesse looks rattled.
“Just keep an eye out,” says Max.
“I’ll be careful.”
While Jesse and I walk a few hundred yards down The Strip, Jesse keeps talking to me about Ladislav. He lists the various ways Ladislav might go about trying to track me down. It has me again contemplating whether or not Jesse did something to get Ladislav to change rooms and move the jewels to the hotel vault. Blah. I want to ask him to level with me, but that will result in a dramatic conversation – one that will only hinder this quest to reach a million dollars.
I change the subject by telling him what I need him to do. When I’m done, he stares at me in disbelief.
“You’re serious? That’s it? You want me to stand on the sidewalk and look like a dick?”
***
“See that guy down there?” I point out the window of the Mirage hotel room at a figure standing with his arms crossed. It’s Jesse. Looking like a PI. “That’s the guy who hired me.”
Stan peers down at Jesse. Stan pulls on his curly brown hair, nearly pulling himself off the floor. I get the feeling he bought it.
He wipes at his eyes with his sleeve.
I’ve been around hundreds of men paying to cheat on their wives. The deed never upsets them, but when they’re in danger of getting caught, they suddenly wilt. It’s like Tiger Woods. The guy was on his way to being the best golfer of all-time. He could handle playing the best golf in history all the while leading this double life cheating on his wife. But as soon as he got caught? He couldn’t sink a putt.
Stan takes a series of deep breaths that manage to ward off the tears.
“Lucky for you, Stan, I’m for sale.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m tired of the game. I’m tired of working late nights. I applied to UNLV, and I want to enroll this fall. I don’t care two apples about you or your wife or this PI outside. They were going to pay me, but if you’re going to pay me more…”
“Wait what? More? How much?”
“Six figures.”
“A hundred grand?!?! Are you kidding me? You’re crazy if you think –”
“How much will your wife get if she divorces you with evidence you hired an escort?”
His silence tells me that my question put everything into perspective for him.
He stands up, and for a moment, my stomach tightens up. Is he going to hurt me?
I adjust my purse on my shoulder in case I need Smith and Wesson for backup.
Unable to read his glazed look, I have no idea what he’ll do next. Is he going to run? Hit me?
He looks out the window. As if considering jumping. He’ll have trouble. The window of this Mirage room doesn’t open. The city that causes Nevada to have the highest suicide rate of any state in the country isn’t Reno. Most windows in Vegas high-rise hotel rooms can’t be opened: if you’re dead, you can’t keep losing your money to the casino.
He back-steps from the window. Curses under his breath a few times.
At first, I assume his muttering is self-directed anger. But then I realize his nasty words are for escorts. His anger grows by the second.
I must say something to calm him down.
“Stan, this doesn’t have to be a big deal. You pay the money, she doesn’t ever have to know.”
“Just shut the hell up. Shut. Up.”
Okay, maybe I can’t calm him down.
His arms are shaking like there’s an earthquake isolated to the square foot where he stands.
I reach my hand inside my purse. My fingers wrap around the gun. Maybe I should just pull it out now.
But I don’t want to resort to that. Given his current state of shaking rage, who knows what he’ll do? What if he wants me to shoot him? Or comes at me in some semi-suicidal rage?
If I shoot him in this room, it’ll mean cops. It’ll mean my arrest. It’ll mean coming up short.
He moves towards me. My bicep tightens as I start to pull the gun out of my purse.
But then Stan sighs.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll give you the hundred.”
My heart thumps like the beat of a fast paced hip-hop song. I’ve done some big jobs, and I’ve hauled in some big scores. But a hundred grand in one con? I’ve never pulled off something this big. Never even imagined it.
He walks towards me with the money. I reach out to accept it, but he doesn’t hand it to me. “But since I’m paying you not to tell my wife, then I still want to get my money’s worth.”
I hadn’t even considered this possibility. That this asshole would still want to sleep with me after I blackmail him for 100K. After he knows his wife suspects his adultery.
For a long moment, I contemplate it. Of course, I’ll do anything to get Sophie back. Even if it means losing my virginity to this sick-prick-asshole. My stomach tightens up again – this time in a painful nausea. Thinking about it. Wondering how it will go. Hating that I’m in this position.
Like a slideshow, my mind clicks to the next image. Jesse. I always wondered if he’d be my first. Jesse’s the only one
I really ever saw myself with. Like that.
I force myself to reverse the slideshow back to an image of Sophie. It doesn’t matter if I wanted Jesse to be my first or my only. If necessary, I’ll go through with it. For Sophie.
He puts one hand on my lower back, his fingertips gripping my left ass cheek.
My other cheeks tighten around my eyes, keeping the tears in. I want to lie down, curl up into a ball, and cry. But I can’t. I have to do everything possible to get her back. Even this.
Just as he reaches his hand up my dress, I take a step back. Maybe there’s another way.
“I lied to you before.”
“What do you mean?”
“About wanting to get out of the game. About saving up for school. That’s not what I need the money for.”
“What do you need the money for?”
“Drugs.”
“You look too put together to be a junkie.”
“No, not that kind of drugs. I need medicine.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t have health insurance.”
“Doesn’t seem like a job that comes with benefits.”
I look to the ground and slightly to his left. Refuse to make eye contact. Put on my best face of shame. “And I’m sick. I have the bug.”
“The bug?”
“I have HIV, goddammit.”
“What?!?!”
“I mean, we can use a condom and I’m sure you’ll probably be fine…”
He doesn’t want to sleep with me anymore. He feels sorry for me now. But more than that I can tell he’s naturally scared of contracting HIV.
This town is packed with weirdoes. Men with foot fetishes, cheerleader fetishes, clown fetishes. One guy I conned about six months ago wanted me to dress up as a UPS driver and deliver cheesy lines like, “let me show you what brown can do for you.”
Of all the bizarre fantasies and fetishes I’ve seen or heard about, I can’t imagine anyone specifically being attracted to someone with an STD.
He avoids touching my hands as he gives me the money. I leave having worked this guy over twice in one con. Actually, three times. Because 15 minutes later Jesse pawns my mark’s watch – which I stole – for a little over five grand.
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