Grift

by Jason Mosberg

  ***

  Eight minutes later, my phone lights up. Max. I answer it before the first ring finishes. “Do you have her?!?!”

  “I’m here. They called me and told me to leave the bag at this bench. They said it was the only way to get Sophie back, so I did. I left the bag there and walked up the escalator like they said. They said they would give Sophie back once I was on the next level. Once I got to the next level and got of the escalator, they told me to get an envelope that’s being held at the MGM Signature concierge desk under the name Sophie.”

  “What’s in the envelope?”

  “I don’t know, Piper. They just said to go get the message.”

  “Then I’m going.”

  Max doesn’t argue with me. After I hang up, I rush straight out of the room, my mind already in the MGM Signature. Leaving everyone else in the penthouse wondering what happened. I have to do this last part myself.

  I consider taking a cab because MGM sits two-thirds of the way down The Strip, but rush hour traffic jams Las Vegas Boulevard. It’ll be faster to take the monorail. I run to the closest station between Harrah’s and the Imperial Palace. My feet, knees, and ankles ache from the last two days, but the pain is background noise. Numbness compared to the emotional duress.

  A half second before I arrive, the train pulls away from the stop. A full six minutes for the next one. More waiting.

  While I’m sitting and then pacing and then sitting, an old couple bickers about whether or not they should have put their money on red or black. Red or black? It’s a 50/50 chance. Dumb luck. Nothing else. You can’t get angry at luck. You can’t sit there and wait for life to give you red or black.

  I’m trying to make myself believe I did the right thing. By doing everything possible to get Sophie back. I know if she’s dead, I’ll question every move for the rest of my life. What-ifs will torment me.

  Should have gone to the police.

  Could have sent Sophie to live with foster parents.

  Should have stayed with Madeline.

  Could have moved away from Las Vegas.

  Finally, the train comes, and I hop on. Holding on to the pole, I stare out the window as the green glow of the MGM Grand gets closer and closer.

  When the train brakes to a stop, I dash off in the opposite direction from the MGM Grand. The Signature Towers at MGM Grand are just on the other side of the monorail.

  The pace of my thumping heart peaks as I arrive at the concierge desk. “Hi, you guys are holding a package for me,” I spit out through shallow breaths.

  “Okay, and who is me?” The Asian lady smiles at me, her top teeth white as ivory, but her bottom teeth somehow yellow as sand.

  “Sophie.”

  The lady disappears for a minute. I’m still catching my breath when she comes back. An envelope in her hand.

  “Okay, here you go, Sophie.” Just hearing her call me Sophie sounds eerie. Like Sophie had died and I since started using her name as some kind of sentimental alias.

  I contemplate asking for details about who dropped off the envelope but decide to stick to the instructions rather than fish around for information that probably won’t matter. Besides, questions could jeopardize everything. Suppose I start asking who dropped off the envelope which causes her to correctly suspect I’m not Sophie. Next thing I know, maybe she’d want to check my ID.

  I try to keep myself in check with a simple, “Thank you,” as I accept the envelope. Staggering away, I rip into the paper. Inside: one Golden Nugget hotel key. Such an old hotel and not even on The Strip. Why lead me to Freemont Street?

  Also in the envelope, I find a small scrap of paper. “Room 302,” it says in tiny letters.

  Sophie is in room 302 in the Golden Nugget? Is it as simple as that? Or is this some kind of a trap? Why lure me downtown?

  Even if The Strip is the epicenter of Vegas activity, it’s not actually downtown. Freemont Street is the technical downtown LV.

  No matter how bad the traffic, it’s going to be faster to take a cab to get to downtown Las Vegas.

  The cab driver suspects I have to go to the bathroom as I squirm in the back of the cab. He even offers to pull into a gas station.

  “No. No. I don’t have to use the bathroom. Just keep driving.” Even through the rear view mirror, I catch his look of disapproval. He’s gone from thinking that I have to use the bathroom to thinking I’m on drugs.

  Dodging tourists and gamblers, I run to the elevator inside the Golden Nugget. Two old women in unnecessarily large hats wave for me to hold the elevator. Instead, I hit floor three. Twenty seconds later I’m sliding the key card above a “Do Not Disturb” sign into the slot for room #302. The light on the door flashes the same shade of green as the glowing MGM Grand, and I throw open the door.

  The moment I rush inside, I don’t notice the walls, the furniture, or the view. All my eyes see: a body on the ground on the other side of the bed. Blond hair fanned out on the ground. Sophie’s blond hair.

  Her hands bound behind her back. Her feet bound together. Her legs tied to a chair. Her bound hands tied to the bed. Her mouth gagged and her eyes hidden by a blindfold.

  She’s here! But is she already dead?!?!

  I scramble over to her, shouting all the way across the room. “Sophie! Sophie!”

  She moves.

  Alive. She’s alive!

  At the sound of my voice, muffled wails echo through the room.

  “You’re okay,” I tell her. “You’re okay.” First I untie the rag around her eyes so she can see it’s really me. Her pupils dilate and she chokes in a breath before I can remove the gag. “Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?”

  “Piper…” Her voice quivers and trails off into a moan that sounds like a wounded animal.

  “Please tell me you’re okay,” I plead.

  As she nods, I notice she looks pale and malnourished. Her eyelids hug her green eyes, but her gaze is longer, colder. She looks… mature.

  I untie her hands and legs, then help her to her feet. “Let’s get you out of here.” My own words wake me up to the urgency. “We have to go.” I rush Sophie out of the hotel room. In the lobby, I cling to her arm hard enough that I realize I’m actually hurting her. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Neither of us speaks again until we’re snuggled together in the back of a cab returning to The Strip.

  In a calm whisper, I ask her to tell me what happened.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “The last thing I remembered was being in the penthouse. I was watching TV. From there, everything’s hazy.”

  “You were drugged,” I explain.

  “When I woke up, I was inside that hotel room. How long was I there?

  “Almost five days.”

  “It felt like two weeks. I never knew when it was day or night.”

  Countless questions roll off my tongue.

  It’s the biggest relief in the world to hear her say she wasn’t beaten or sexually abused. She says one man came in each day and gave her a meal and let her use the bathroom.

  “Did you get a look at him?” I ask.

  A shake of her head followed by, “I never did. The guy… he kept a rag around my eyes.”

  “Well… what about when they took that picture?”

  “He had a mask on then.”

  “What kind of a mask?”

  “A ski mask. How did you find me?”

  I tell her about Max and the ransom.

  “A million dollars?” she asks, amazed.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you won the poker tournament?”

  “Yeah. I wore your lucky shirt.”

  She smiles a good “pre-teenage Sophie” smile, and I don’t bother explaining exactly how the shirt helped me win.

  Halfway back to The Strip, I get a 911 text from Max urging us all to rendezvous back at Treasure Island. Rendezvous? Emergency? What could it be? The only certainty is that I’m not bringing Sophie with me.

>   “Pull over here.”

  The driver pulls over, and I slip him a wad of cash.

  “What are we doing?” Sophie asks.

  “Making sure you’re safe,” is all I say.

  We get out of the cab. Right in front of the Luxor. I look up. The bright light shoots up into the night sky. You can see the shadows of what looks like birds at the base of the light. Flying around.

  The light attracts moths. Bats come in to feed on the moths. And owls come in to feed on the bats. The light at the Luxor has its own cycle of life.

  Not all that different from our own situation.

  The tourists are like moths, drawn to the bright lights of Las Vegas. Max and the rest of us con artists, we’re like the bats who come in to feed on the tourists.

  And Charlie Moses sits at the top of the food chain. The owl that feeds on the bats.

  Lowering my eyes from the bright light, I usher Sophie into the Luxor, ask for a room, pay in cash, and walk Sophie upstairs.

  “Take a shower. Order room service. Get some sleep. Whatever you do, do not leave the room. Okay?”

  “You’re leaving?”

  I can’t look directly in her eyes as the words come out. After everything she’s been through, I hate to leave her. And I can’t believe I am, but the crew just did everything to help me get Sophie back. If they’re in trouble, I have to help them. It’s either bring Sophie with me or leave her here. Leaving her here seems like the less terrible choice.

  That’s how the last few days have been. There are no good choices. Only less terrible choices.

  “I’ll be right back. You’re safe here. Do you hear me? Sophie. You’re safe now.” As I squeeze her, I kiss the top of her head.

  “I knew you’d come for me.”

  ***

  “Is she okay?” Kim blurts out before the door is fully open. Mars, Kim, and Rob are already there.

  “Yeah, she’s okay.” We pile into an enormous group hug. The last few days have seen many hugs of hope and terror. Finally hugs of relief. Of celebration.

  Before I can give any more details, Max stomps out of his room and sees that I’ve arrived.

  He doesn’t ask about Sophie. Instead, he points an accusing finger right at me.

  “Did you have anything to do with this?!” There’s no other way to describe him. Max looks livid. Take his anger with Rob or Kim for simple slacking and multiply it by googol.

  “To do with what?” I ask.

  “You risked not just Sophie’s life but all of our lives. This is Charlie Moses. This isn’t some tourist schmuck you can con over.”

  Before I can tell Max I have no idea what he’s talking about, the door to our suite flies open. It’s Jesse. Where was he?

  “Was it you?!” Max stares at Jesse menacingly.

  “Was it I who what, Max?” Jesse wears a fat smile on his smug face. I don’t understand what the hell is going on, and neither do Rob, Mars, or Kim, but Jesse clearly does. Jesse has that look of satisfaction on his face. The twinkle in his eye that he gets from only one action: deceiving someone.

  “Don’t you screw around with me, you little shit. We’re dealing with Charlie Moses. You switched the money out. You jeopardized Sophie’s life.”

  “I jeopardized Sophie’s life. Me?”

  Jesse lets out another laugh. Now Max stops. The two stare at each other. Like two boxers about to square off.

  “You want to talk about who jeopardized Sophie’s life, Max?” Jesse says, the sneer still on his face.

  “What’s going on, Jesse?” I ask. “Did you do something with the money?”

  We were in the other room while he was separating the extra million from the ten we needed for Sophie. But whatever happened between us, there’s no way that Jesse would have done anything to jeopardize getting my sister back.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  Okay, maybe there is a way?

  “What?!?!”

  “While Max was on the phone, I switched out the money from the duffel bag.”

  Stunned, I spout off a garbled list of questions. “What? Why? Jesse, this is Charlie Moses. What were you thinking?” My emotions are split between anger at Jesse for jeopardizing the plan and relief that Charlie Moses gave up Sophie before he realized he’d been duped.

  “So, they still gave Sophie back even without getting the money?” asks Kim, mostly directing the question at Max who still hasn’t taken his demon eyes off Jesse.

  “Jesse, what if Charlie Moses had checked the bag?” I ask. “It was Sophie’s life! Sophie.”

  Jesse doesn’t answer any of the questions. Instead, he launches into a long story.

  “Piper, while you were playing poker, we all tried to get some sleep. But I was just sitting in the hotel. First I’m pacing. Then I’m lying on the floor. I’m lying there thinking about the last time I saw Sophie. She was playing Guitar Hero with Rob. I was thinking about how she wouldn’t let Rob drink that last Orange Crush.

  “Thinking on that Orange Crush, I went to the fridge. And you know what, it wasn’t there. So I thought, well, maybe Sophie drank it. But she had just told Rob she was saving it for later. Being how Sophie’s such a religious recycler, I checked the recycling bin, which of course no one’s bothered to empty since she went missing. And you know what? No empty bottle of Orange Crush.

  “Next, I go to the trashcan. I dig to the bottom. Sure enough, there’s the empty glass bottle of Orange Crush. Why would Sophie not have recycled the bottle? She’s always hounding us anytime we throw a bottle in the trash.

  “So maybe Rob went and drank her last Orange Crush, which is unlikely since Sophie had been kidnapped. I doubt Rob’s going to go drink her soda. But I ask him anyway. Hey Rob, did you drink the last Orange Crush? No he says. I left it for Sophie. So then I start to thinking some more. Why, if Sophie drank the Orange Crush, wouldn’t she have put it in the recycling?”

  None of us know what’s going on. When I glance at Max, I see he’s seething with rage. And his threatening eyes lock into Jesse. Does he know more than the rest of us? Does he know where Jesse heads with this ridiculous anecdote about orange soda?

  Jesse finally finishes his explanation. “So all this leads me to wonder if someone else threw out the bottle because they didn’t want us to see it. Why? ‘Cause maybe somebody drugged her drink and threw it out to destroy the evidence.”

  “What? Jesse, what the hell are you talking about?” He’s gone on and on, but I don’t see where he’s gone with it.

  “It took me a while to put it together, Max. You knew you couldn’t convince us to do the jewel heist, so you gave us a little motivation.”

  And now I see where Jesse’s gone with it. Now I see the whole picture. It was Max. It was Max! Max. He conned us. Angry that we wouldn’t steal the jewels, he thought he could force us to take the job.

  Max.

  The massive epiphany triggers a domino effect of smaller realizations. Max staged the whole scene in the penthouse. The thrown-about furniture. The empty safe. The pre-paid phone. He even injured himself to make it look like he’d been beaten by Charlie Moses’s thugs. And he must have intentionally sent me on a grift at the Stratosphere so I’d be gone for a couple hours. All devious little details in Max’s ultimate long con.

  I whip around, and my index finger zeroes in on Max’s chest. “You took my sister?!?!”

  “I never hurt her.” The two steps Max takes backwards match his defensive tone. “Piper, I never hurt–”

  “You took my sister?” First I find out Max entered me in a poker game he knew I’d lose, then I find out he was using our profits to buy himself prostitutes, and now this.

  “She was never in danger. I was just giving everybody the push they needed for us to make some money.”

  “The push? The push? Max, you took my sister from me… you put me through all of this to give us a push?”

  “I did everything for you guys. None of you appreciated it. You were going to leave me eventually. I’m g
etting older. I needed some insurance money.”

  “Money for what, Max? Money for you to buy your whores? Yeah, Paige told me all about your habits.”

  “What habits?” Kim asks.

  “You know Max’s little walks he takes every night? A walk a day to keep the demons at bay. He was going to young, expensive prostitutes every night… More like a lay a day to keep the demons at bay.”

  All eyes stay locked on our mentor. Max looks to the floor, resigned to the truth. There’s no talking his way out of this. There are too many questions piled atop too many betrayals.

  “I could stand here and try to convince you that I care about you, but I know it’s not worth it. So let’s call a spade a spade. You little shits have the money, and I need you to bring me that money.”

  “Why should we cough it up to you?” Rob asks.

  “’Cause of Charlie Moses,” Max responds.

  “Charlie Moses?” Jesse says. “Did you not hear my whole Orange Crush monologue? We already know it was you, not Charlie.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m not connected to the Las Vegas mob.”

  We all eye him skeptically. Is he?

  “I’ve protected you guys over the years. Most of you have gotten in trouble with the police at some point. How do you think I got you out of it? You think I personally have great connections with the LVPD? I pay Charlie Moses a monthly fee, and in addition to letting me operate in his town, every once in a while, when I get in a bind, he gets me out of it.”

  “The hell are you talking about?” Mars asks.

  “When I first took Rob in, the police had video footage of him ripping wallets in Paris. I paid Charlie Moses to pay the cops to get that footage. But Charlie kept the tape. That’s what mobsters do. They keep the tape. That’s how they get leverage. You see? I have shit on all of you.”

  Max had always been somewhat secretive about his connections to the police. And he never mentioned how he got those connections.

  “I never did anything illegal,” Kim defends.

  “You’re right, princess, he doesn’t have anything on you specifically. But I’ll tell you this, Kimmy. Charlie Moses has ties with the companies that run casino security. He can get you removed from the database so you can go back to counting. You guys make nice and give me the money, and I’ll make sure Charlie frees you up to do what you do best.”