It’s hard to stomach the idea of working out a deal with Max, but I can’t let pride stand in the way of what’s best for me and what’s best for my sister. There’s eleven million dollars, and somebody or some combination of bodies are walking away from this night with that money. A score like that could help secure a future for Sophie. Even ten percent of the poker winnings could cover Sophie’s total college tuition ten times over.
“Max, clearly we can’t work with you anymore. I can never work with you again. Not after you did this to my sister. So maybe we just need to split the money up. And then… go our separate ways.”
“Split the money up? You’re not hearing me right, Piper. We’re not splitting anything. You ungrateful youngins have no leverage. I have the Las Vegas mob on my side.”
“Any legal trouble you put me in, Max, I can just take you down with me. You were part of nearly every con I’ve ever pulled.”
“Let me make my threat more clear to you specifically, Piper. It’s jail the rest of these kids are sweating, but I know that’s not what you’re afraid of. If you don’t get me all the money tonight, there’ll be arrest warrants out for Mars and Rob. And for you? I’ll call social services. Sophie’ll be in the system by tomorrow.
“We both know she’d be better off tied up in the Golden Nugget than–”
Max can’t finish his sentence because the back of my hand strikes his face. A burning pain radiates up my arm. I’ve never struck anyone the way I just struck Max. Max just stares at me in shock, the flesh near his right eye red and already swelling.
“By midnight tonight you little bastards had better have brought me that money. I’ll have a room over in the Wynn.”
“Bastards. Nice word choice, Max.” I stare at him with all the hate I have in me.
“How do we know you’re not full of shit?” asks Jesse. “How do we know you’re not making up this shit about Charlie Moses just to scare us?”
“Yeah, Max, you can’t exactly just ask us to trust you,” Mars adds.
“First you want us to believe Charlie Moses kidnapped Sophie,” says Jesse. “Now you say you work for him? It sounds like bullshit to me. The whole thing. You pay Charlie Moses a monthly fee? Bull. Shit. You’re trying to con us one last time, Maxwell.”
“You think I’m lying?” Max asks.
“Yeah, I do,” Jesse responds. “What? Do you just walk over to the mob headquarters and deposit a check into the big mafia piggy bank? It sounds like bullshit.”
“No, you ignorant punk. I drop off cash to the head of his security team at a nightclub he owns on the south side of The Strip.”
Jesse’s boastful sneer fades as his eyes fall to his feet. Defeated.
“By midnight.” And then Max leaves.
Silence. And there’s that ticking clock again.
“What do you guys think,” asks Kim.
“We can’t just give him the money,” says Jesse.
“We can’t exactly just not give him the money either,” Mars adds.
I pace the room, contemplating our situation with every step. Finally I force myself to sit and get off of my fatigued feet and legs.
“We could jet,” says Rob. “We could just take the money. And jet.”
“Jet where?” asks Kim.
“Anywhere, yo. We have over ten million dollars.”
For another twenty minutes we discuss our options, but it’s pretty much pay Max all the money or run. We seriously contemplate taking the money and fleeing Vegas, but this place has become home to us, and we’d have to spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders. Afraid of Max, or worse some mob-hired hitman, paid to hunt us down.
“I don’t mind living off the radar,” I say. “But I wanted something more normal for Sophie. I want her to be able to go to college. If we run, I can’t ever let her go to school. Anywhere. Max might find her that way. She’d be in some database for the school. No one hates that son-of-a-bitch more than I do right now, but I think we should just give Max the money.”
“Well, there is one other option.”
We all look to Jesse, curious what he has in mind.
“I wasn’t just calling bullshit on Max paying off the LV mob because I doubted him.”
I look to see if Rob, Mars, or Kim has any idea what Jesse means, but they appear as bewildered as me.
“Now we know how to get in touch with Charlie Moses,” continues Jesse with a big smile on his face.
***
Jesse and I go alone. We show up at a nightclub called Fever. Charlie Moses’s Fever.
Jesse approaches one of the bouncers. “We need to talk to your head of security.”
“What’s it about?” asks the bouncer. Now that he turns his body to face us, he looks like an MMA fighter.
“Charlie Moses.”
A couple minutes later, a much smaller man emerges. He might be younger than 40, but his weathered face looks like a worn baseball glove, as if he spent his whole youth in the sun and never wore sunblock.
“What can I do for you?”
“Are you the one Max pays every month?”
“I’m Sal.”
“Well, Sal,” I say. “We need to talk to Charlie. It’s about Max and the payments.”
“Who the hell are you guys? His kids? Jesus.”
“We work for Max.”
“Does Max know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Wait here.”
The head of Charlie Moses’s security goes back inside the club.
“Well,” I say.
“Well,” Jesse responds.
Neither of us has any idea if our plan will work.
Fifteen minutes later, Sal comes back outside. “Come with me.”
We follow him inside the nightclub all the way to the back. We enter a private door that leads into a small hallway. In this corridor stands the original security guard we approached. Sal motions to him by slapping his own pant pocket. Security guard sign language for “search them.”
“Spread your legs.” The amateur MMA looking security guard proceeds to search Jesse. Next he turns to me.
“The only gun I have is in my purse, but you’re welcome to hold onto that one.”
Surprised, the security guard takes the gun out of my purse and pockets it.
“In fact, you can keep it,” I add. “I don’t need it anymore.”
The security guard doesn’t say anything. Just stares at me with a baffled expression while holding my/his gun.
“Come on,” says Sal.
We follow him back into an office.
“Have a seat. Charlie will be with you in a few.”
After a few minutes, Charlie Moses walks in, taking long – almost awkwardly long – steps. I recognize him from the day that Max pointed him out. That sighting occurred a few years ago, and I only saw him from a distance. Now that we stand a body length away from each other, I can’t tell whether he’s older or younger than Max. He’s a big man, wider than he is tall and stronger than he is fat. To compensate for his receding hairline, he lets a quasi-mullet inch down his neck. He sports a few days’ worth of facial hair, maybe for the look, maybe out of negligence.
That day that I saw him, I didn’t get a good look at his face, and the two of us most definitely did not make eye contact. Now, as we look into each other’s eyes, I’m struck by one thing. The lack of fear. Strange to notice the lack of fear, rather than the presence of confidence or courage. But that’s what I notice when I look into his eyes. The lack of fear.
As soon as he gets within a leg-length of the chair, he plots down hard. Normally, if someone sits down, they either plan to be there for a while or they’re tired. I sense from Charlie that it’s the latter: he’s had a long day.
“How do you kids know Max?” His deep voice bellows. For the moment anyway, it’s hard to imagine him laughing.
“We used to work for him.”
“Used to work for him?”
“As of today,” I reply.<
br />
“So you’re not con artists anymore?”
“We didn’t say that.”
“Are you here to con me?”
“You don’t look like a mark.”
“Well, ain’t that a relief. So you must have an offer for me?”
“We do,” I say.
“And what’s that?”
Jesse chimes in next. “We understand Max has been paying you a fee over the years.”
“I don’t call ‘em fees. Many people donate money to me. Out of respect.”
“And Max,” I say, “He was paying you $10,000 a month.”
“Donating. Yeah.”
“We want to donate 50,000 a month.” Jesse nods in agreement as the words come out of my mouth.
“Okay. You’re volunteering to give more. I submit.” He huffs at us like we’re stupid, young, naïve kids. “You guys are terrible at business.”
“There’s a catch,” I reply. “Well, two catches really. The first has to do with Dennis Cane. You know about his poker games?”
Charlie stares at me for a moment before he answers. “I know he runs poker games out of the basement of his restaurant. So what?”
“Well, I played in his game.”
“Today?!?!” Charlie looks surprised that I would have played in the million-dollar-entry-fee game.
“Yes.”
“No… You’re the broad who beat Dennis Cane?”
“I know it surprises you that I won because I bet you know the same thing that I knew when I sat down to play today. The game is rigged. In fact, I used that knowledge to beat Dennis at his own game. And I need to make sure he doesn’t come after me. I want you to make sure he knows I’m cool. He can trust that I won’t spill the beans to anybody about his cameras in that table, but I need to know he’s not going to come after me.”
“Alone, that catch can be caught. But you said there were two.”
“You have to get Max out of Las Vegas and keep him out. For that we’ll give you fifty grand per month.”
“You insinuating a hit?”
Hit? The moment he says the word, I feel on fire. Max gone? Forever? I won’t lie: it sounds enticing. But as much as I feel betrayed by Max, I don’t know if I can stomach having him killed. And from Charlie’s tone, it seems unclear whether he’d even agree to it.
Jesse and I lock eyes. We’re on the same page.
“No,” Jesse says.
“Just exiled,” I add.
“Does he know where you are right now?”
“No. But we’re supposed to meet him at his hotel room in the Wynn tonight before midnight.”
“Maybe you could meet him instead,” Jesse adds.
Charlie looks pleased to know that finding Max won’t be difficult. After all, we’ve already done half the job for him.
“Interesting,” he says. Then he takes out a cigarette and lights it. “Why? Why do you want Max gone so badly?”
“Does that matter?” I ask.
“Does it matter?!?! Hell yes, it matters. You’re kids. When you get older, you’ll quickly learn the who, what, when, and where don’t matter for shit. It’s the why that matters.”
“He betrayed us,” says Jesse.
“The con artist betrayed you?”
What can we say to that?
After a few moments of silence, Charlie puts out the barely smoked cigarette. “I’m trying to quit,” he defends. “A million up front and it’s a deal.”
A million dollars seems like a lot to demand. We’re not asking for that much. But given the amount of money we just came into, it falls well within our budget. That has to be why Charlie felt confident asking for this much. After all, I did just tell him I won the poker game today. He knows we have millions.
“Five hundred thousand,” responds Jesse.
“You’re not in a position to negotiate, kid. Right now, I have no business arrangement with you guys. My business arrangement is with Max. So if we don’t come to a new business arrangement now, then my prior arrangement with Max is still in play. And then I’ll be forced to tell Max about this. About how you came into my office offering to pay to have him exiled from Vegas. A million up front, and we have a deal.”
Jesse and I exchange a look, him calm, me collected. This is the option, and we both know we have to take it.
I reach out my hand for him to shake, but Charlie doesn’t shake it. I slowly retract my arm.
Charlie Moses smiles. “One more thing.”
Oh no. I’m waiting for whatever sick request he has. Some favor for the mob. Does he want to pimp me out as some kind of mafia sex slave? Does he want to send Jesse on some dangerous drug run to Mexico City? I’m terrified to hear what it is. Jesse and I make eye contact again, no more calm, no more collected.
But then Charlie quietly says, “You have to teach me a con.”
Jesse chuckles as I stifle a laugh that comes out more like a grunt. But Charlie Moses stares at us with his same fearless, stony expression.
“I was always curious how Max made so much money. I’m serious. We have a deal if you teach me a con.” Charlie sits back in his chair and crosses his legs. Earlier in the conversation, it seemed like he was the busiest man in the world and only had a couple minutes to converse with us. Now, he’s sitting back as if he has all the time in the world.
Jesse glances at me. Deferring to me. For a moment, my mind shuffles through my Rolodex of cons. I could tell him about a clip joint, which would be applicable since he owns a nightclub. Or I could describe the fiddle game. Although that one is easy to explain, it’s not quite as relatable since no one really walks around with a fiddle anymore. I’ve seen street performers pull off a three card monte, but that one’s much more entertaining to see than to hear about.
Or I could explain any of the dozens of cons I’ve pulled with Max.
Then I suppress a sly smile from forming on my lips. I know just what to teach him.
“Okay I’ll teach you something about conning.” I pick up my purse and dig through it. I pull out my wallet where I keep my cash but then realize I don’t have any cash on me. So I look to Charlie Moses. “Do you have twenty bucks?”
Charlie pulls out his wallet. “No. I have a fifty, though.”
“That will work.” I reach out my hand, and Charlie hands me the fifty-dollar bill, anxious for me to show him a con using the paper money.
That’s when I stick the money in my purse, cross my arms, and let that sly smile arch. He stares back, waiting for the trick. Waiting for something.
But all I say is, “The first thing you have to know about conning someone is this: If someone’s willing to give you their money, you have to be willing to take it.”
“You bitch.” For a second I’m sure Charlie’s going to call in one of his bodyguards and have us beaten or killed, but then he breaks into laughter. He laughs like giants laugh in cartoons. “You little bitch.”
All I do is smile back. Charlie laughs for a good thirty seconds. Still nervous I offended the head of the Las Vegas mob, Jesse looks at us and the door, as if calculating the distances of attack and escape.
“So we’re all good?” Jesse asks.
“We’re all good. Consider Max out of your hair. Talk to my pal Sal on the way out about where donations can be made. You keep up with the donations, I’ll keep Max away from glitter gulch and do whatever I can to protect your… operations. You ever end up in a bind with the police, call this number.” Charlie hands me a business card.
I take the card from him. “Thank you.” The card says Saul Levy, Attorney at Law.
Jesse reaches out his hand, and the two men shake. Then Jesse and I head for the door. Just before we leave, Charlie tells us to stop.
“Can I have my fifty dollars back?”
I smile but then shake my head. “No.”
Darkness. There’s darkness in him. That darkness seeps into his desires and even his decisions. I guess I’ve always known that. But with all the highs and lows, and everything
we’ve just been through together, I can’t believe he would con me. I can’t believe he would take everything and run. I thought I knew him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – He’ll come back
After pulling the old switch-er-roo on Max, Jesse had left the real bag of money next door at the Mirage coat-check.
“I wasn’t sure what Max would do when he realized I switched out the money,” Jesse explains. “It felt like the safest place to put it.”
“With a bunch of coats?” I chuckle.
After we leave our Charlie Moses negotiations, Jesse and I go to retrieve the money.
Walking over, the sight of a homeless man passed out below a bench renews a previous curiosity.
“Did you hear any more about Ladislav?”
“He’s still out.”
Jesse’s answer sends a jolt of disappointment to my gut. Am I disappointed because I was hoping he had woken up? Or maybe it’s because I was hoping he had died.
When we arrive to the coat check, the twenty something clerk looks up from an Idiot’s Guide to Poker book. Embarrassed, he slips the book under some files. “How may I help you?”
Jesse doesn’t say anything, just hands the clerk the ticket. The clerk brings over the bag a minute later. I hold back a smile; the aspiring rounder has no idea how much money he holds. Ten million dollars won from a poker game. He won’t read about that in his book.
Unlike the coat check clerk, we know exactly what’s in the bag, and we’re nervous about holding such a heap of cash, so we get a room in the Mirage as a safe haven to count out the million we owe Charlie. The sooner we get him his promised cash, the sooner Charlie banishes Max from Vegas. The more desert between him and me the better.
As the elevator climbs, neither of us speaks. I look up and catch Jesse smiling at me. That contagious smile has me ear to ear. Ding: the elevator comes to a stop at our floor.
When we walk into the hotel room, I can’t suppress my celebration any longer.
Grift Page 22