by James Swain
Huck got out and stretched his legs. His ass felt like it had melted and become part of the car seat. He walked around the grounds and saw a bunch of signs planted in the grass. One was a welcome from Jeb Bush. Another said a twenty-four-hour guard was on duty. He looked for the guard, didn’t see him, then looked for the guard’s car. The lot was empty. It didn’t feel right.
He walked down a concrete path to the edge of the building, lit up a cigarette, and in the flame’s temporary light stared across the grounds. A police cruiser materialized before his eyes. It was sitting in the shadows beside the exit. Was the cop hiding, or taking a snooze?
Huck got back into his car and tapped his fingers on the wheel. The cop hadn’t put his lights on. Maybe he was asleep. Or hadn’t seen them. Or didn’t care. Arlen came out a few moments later munching on a candy bar and hopped in.
“Put your seat belt on,” Huck said.
Huck pulled out of the rest stop and got on the highway. He put the car up to the speed limit but didn’t go over it. A minute later a car appeared in his mirror. Then another, the two vehicles driving side by side. They’d been spotted.
He floored his accelerator. He watched the two cars disappear from his mirror, then glanced at the dashboard. He was flying at one hundred miles per hour. Arlen clapped his hands like a seal.
Up the road a few miles was a suspension bridge that Huck thought was the prettiest man-made thing he’d ever seen. It hung over a steep valley of trees and rushing water. Passing over it, they would go from the Central time zone into the Eastern. No police would be on it—too risky for a roadblock. The roadblock would be on the other side. Flashing lights appeared in his mirror. In the distance, but gaining.
“You see the bridge that’s coming up ahead?” he said.
Arlen nodded enthusiastically.
“There’s going to be a roadblock on the other side. Cops. I’m going to have to ditch the car. You remember what to do if that happens?”
“Cops?”
“Yeah. You want me to tell you again?”
“No, I remember.”
“You sure?”
Arlen’s head bobbed up and down. Huck steered with one hand and dug out his wallet. He tossed it to Arlen and saw him dig for the money and his credit cards.
“Leave me some,” Huck screamed at him.
“How much you want?”
Damn little shit, already acting like everything in the wallet was his.
“Enough to get by,” Huck said.
The suspension bridge loomed in his windshield. It looked eerie at night. During one of his moonshine runs years ago, he remembered thinking that by crossing it, he was actually going back in time. A lot of crazy thoughts had gone through his head. Like all the things he’d do differently with his life, if he had the chance.
He hit the bridge doing one ten. Halfway across he put his brights on. There was no roadblock on the other side. He felt a momentary sigh of relief and relaxed his foot on the accelerator. Then he saw the faint outline of four cruisers parked sideways on the highway. They were a half mile up the road. He wondered why they’d picked that spot. Maybe they’d been fearful that some redneck would come burning over the bridge and plow right into them. In his mirror the cruisers behind him were gaining. He looked at his brother. “Hold on to something.”
Arlen wrapped his arms around his chest.
“Not yourself, you idiot. Hold on to the car!”
Arlen grabbed the door handle. Up ahead, the cruisers simultaneously turned on their headlights and their bubbles, the highway awash in light. Huck flashed his brights at them. When he was close enough to see their faces, Huck spun the wheel to his left and jumped onto the grass median. It was risky: Parts of the median had deep culverts, but it was a chance he had to take.
He heard the tires grind on the dirt. He flew past the roadblock and saw the flash of a shotgun blast. It missed them. Sons of bitches couldn’t hit an elephant.
His right rear tire exploded, and the car sagged to one side. He jerked the wheel to his right and got back on the highway. In his mirror he could see the cops jumping into their cruisers and giving chase. He guessed he had a minute on them.
“I’m going to ditch the car,” he said. “I’m going to run one way, you run the other. Don’t run after me.”
“I won’t,” Arlen said.
“Do you remember what to say if the cops nab you?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
Arlen tapped his finger on his skull. “I got it burned in my brain.”
Two thousand miles away, Helen Ledbetter climbed out of bed and threw her bathrobe on. For thirty years, she’d risen every morning at six-thirty and gone to work. Being retired, she’d expected her inner clock to start letting her sleep in. So far, it wasn’t cooperating.
She ate a bowl of sugar-coated cereal. A couple of times she glanced at the phone on the counter. The little red light was blinking, indicating she had a message. She muted the ringer when she slept, and sometimes forgot to turn it back on. She’d put her name on the National Do Not Call Registry, but sneaky telemarketers found clever ways to call her. “We’re conducting a survey,” was the usual opening line. Or the company was one she “did business with” and wanted to let her know about a “special offer.”
When she was finished eating, she put her dishes in the sink, then punched the play button on the phone.
“Aunt Helen, this is Ricky calling,” her nephew said. “I’ve got some bad news. A detective the casinos hired is onto us. He’s here in Slippery Rock. It’s only a matter of time before he figures out the blackjack scam.”
Her rump hit her chair hard. “No,” she said aloud.
“You have to run,” her nephew went on.
“No,” she shouted at the phone.
“I’m going to wire you five thousand dollars. It’s the last of my money. You need to get out of Las Vegas. I’m sorry to be telling you this.”
Helen Ledbetter’s vision went blurry. Five thousand dollars? Ricky had promised her more than two hundred thousand dollars. She’d gotten brochures for everything she wanted to buy and spread them across the living-room floor. One night, she’d even danced in front of them.
“Call me when you get this. Please.”
She felt paralyzed and stared at the answering machine. Ricky had said it couldn’t go wrong. And what was the harm of taking money from a casino? They swindled their patrons all the time with false promotions.
Finally she found her legs and walked into the living room. The brochures were stacked in a neat pile on the coffee table. She’d put Post-its on the pages that contained the things she wanted to buy. Taking the brochures into the kitchen, she threw them into the trash compactor while cursing silently to herself.
She was packing a suitcase when she heard a car’s wheels on the driveway. She went to the window and parted the curtains with her fingers. Light streamed out, and she saw two middle-aged men in a black Impala. The one behind the wheel was familiar-looking. As he got out, she realized it was Bill Higgins, the director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board who’d interviewed her.
She ran to the hall closet and pulled out the purse with the miniature camera she’d used to scam the Mint. The camera was sewn into the purse, so it couldn’t accidentally fall out if dropped. Ricky had told her to throw the purse off the Hoover Dam. Helen had agreed but hadn’t done it.
She ran into the kitchen and shoved the purse into the trash compactor. The front doorbell chimed. She hit the button and went to the back door. The second man was standing on the stoop.
“No, no, no,” she shouted at him.
His cold eyes met hers. He put his silver badge to the glass. “Please let us in,” he said politely.
Helen ran back into her bedroom and locked the door behind her. Ran around the room with her hands on her head. She knew what they did to cheaters in Nevada; she’d seen it countless times in the casinos she’d worked in. They dragged them into court in ha
ndcuffs, convicted them, and put them in prisons like Ely, which were living hell. Cheating a casino was a felony because you were also stealing from the state. The average sentence was four and a half years.
She heard her back door being kicked in. Sat on her bed and cried.
“Ms. Ledbetter,” Bill Higgins said through the door.
“Go away!”
“Ms. Ledbetter, please open the door.”
She was going to federal penitentiary. She would live in a cell and do what other people told her to. She was seventy-three years old and was going to lose her freedom. She could not imagine a more horrible fate.
She went to the room’s rear window. It faced west and looked out onto the desert. Every day she took a long walk in the desert, even when it was hot as an oven. It cleared her head and gave her thoughts a special clarity. And now she was going to lose that.
“Please, Ms. Ledbetter,” Bill Higgins said.
There was a shelf above the window. She took the revolver from it and pressed the barrel to her temple. Squeezing the trigger was not nearly as hard as she’d imagined.
45
We lost our witness,” Bill Higgins said.
Valentine closed his eyes and felt his spirits sink. It was eight in the morning, and he was sitting in the kitchen of his house with Gaylord, sucking down coffee. They’d stayed up and traded war stories while waiting for Bill to call. “Don’t tell me she got away,” he said.
“She put a gun to her head.”
Valentine felt his stomach roll over. That made nine dead people in three days. And for what? A million bucks that Ricky Smith hadn’t even collected.
“We searched her house,” Bill said. “She’s Ricky’s aunt on his mother’s side. I found some letters in a desk and an album with Ricky’s picture in it.”
“Any evidence we can use in court?”
“No. She put her purse into the trash compactor before we could get to her. It crushed the miniature camera she used in the scam into a thousand pieces.”
Bill sounded like he was hurting. No cop wanted to cause a suicide. Helen Ledbetter taking her own life would eat at Bill, just as the three men Valentine had killed would eat at him. Opening his eyes, he said, “I’m sorry this happened.”
There was a pause. Then Bill said, “What are you going to do now?”
Valentine removed Ricky Smith’s winning OTB slip from his pocket. He’d been praying that Bill would haul in Helen Ledbetter, and she’d crack and turn evidence on the rest of the gang. Then he’d be able to leave Slippery Rock and go home. Only, life didn’t always work out the way you wanted it to. “I’m going to ask the sergeant who runs this town to arrest everyone who’s involved,” he said.
“Do you have enough evidence to do that?” Bill asked.
Valentine stared at the slip. Every crime had at least one flaw. The slip was Ricky’s, and it was going to put a whole bunch of people in jail for a long time. “Yes. But first I need you to do something for me.”
“Name it,” Bill said.
Gaylord drove Valentine to the police station in his car. It was a four-door Volvo, and Valentine found himself appraising the vehicle. It had a powerful engine and plenty of amenities, but something felt wrong. Then he realized what it was. The car was meant for a family, which meant that if he bought one, Gerry would abscond with it.
They went inside and found the deputy at the front desk flirting with the cleaning lady. Valentine wanted to ask him where he was a few hours ago, but decided he’d already stirred up the pot. They went into Gaylord’s office, and the sergeant shut the door. Paper was coming out of the fax machine, and Gaylord pulled the cover page from the tray and read it. “It’s from your friend in Las Vegas.”
“How many pages is he sending?”
“Twenty-seven, including the cover.”
Valentine removed the five sheets already in the fax tray. Each was a bill from a Las Vegas hotel with a person’s name on it, along with how many days they’d stayed in the hotel, what they’d spent, etc. Bill was faxing the names of everyone from Slippery Rock who’d been in Las Vegas when Ricky scammed the Mint.
Valentine handed the sheets to Gaylord. As more sheets came through, Valentine passed them to him. By the time the machine had spit out twenty, the sergeant was sitting in a chair and the blood had drained from his face.
“I know these people,” he said, sounding shaken. “I go to church with them and my kids attend the same schools and my wife’s in the PTA with…aw, shit, what am I saying?”
“You’re saying they’re your friends.”
The sheets were clutched in the sergeant’s hand. “My best friends.”
Valentine went into the next room and got another chair. He came back and shut the door, then sat next to the sergeant. “I can leave you out of this. It will take me longer, but I can. I don’t want to ruin your life.”
The last of the sheets had come through. Gaylord pulled them out of the tray. His eyes fell on one, and he groaned. “My kid’s pediatrician.” He put the sheets on his desk and tiredly rubbed his face with his hands. “Let me ask you something. How much time are these folks looking at? A year, maybe two?”
“Try four and a half in the federal pen,” Valentine said.
“What?”
“They all committed felonies.”
“But Ricky didn’t collect the money.”
Valentine saw the pleading look in Gaylord’s eyes. Nevada had the harshest laws in the country when it came to cheaters, with conspiracy to steal from a casino as bad as the act itself. Those twenty-six names sitting on Gaylord’s desk—along with perhaps their spouses and friends—were guilty of conspiracy to defraud. They were toast.
Gaylord leaned forward in his chair. His beard had come out, and he looked like he was about to become a werewolf. “I read in the paper a few weeks back about a casino in Las Vegas that had rigged a promotion. They had a raffle and gave away a Mercedes-Benz, a ten-thousand-dollar chip, and a five-thousand-dollar chip. They rigged the raffle so that some high rollers who’d lost a lot of money won the prizes. You hear about that?”
Valentine nodded, wondering where this was going.
“The Nevada Gaming Control Board fined the casino a million bucks, which is a chunk of change. Only, this casino is making a quarter-billion dollars a year. Two of the upper management guys who rigged the game went on to other jobs. The third got promoted.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” Valentine asked.
“You work for these people.”
Valentine nearly said no. But it was true. He was here in the casinos’ employ, even though he hated every last one of them.
“That’s right.”
“Well, how about we do something similar here?” Gaylord suggested. “We make the people who were involved pay a fine, or do some other kind of community service, provided they give you enough evidence to nail Stanley Kessel and Ricky Smith. Those are the two you want.”
Valentine thought it over. Gaylord was asking him not to rip the guts out of Slippery Rock. For every person he put behind bars, a great many more would suffer. And all because they’d let some fast-talking scumbags talk them into scamming a casino.
“You’re on,” Valentine said.
They shook hands on it. Valentine picked up the stack of faxes from the desk and handed them to him. “Pick out the person in this group who you can talk into helping us.”
Gaylord pulled out the pediatrician. His name was Dr. Russell McFarland. “Russ has too much to lose. He’ll do whatever you want.”
“Let’s go see him,” Valentine said.
Gaylord could be a world-class prick when he wanted to be, just like most good cops. He put the screws to Russ McFarland the moment they were behind the closed doors of McFarland’s office. The doctor worked out of a renovated house a quarter mile from town. It had polished wood floors and was filled with expensive furniture.
McFarland was about what Valentine had expected. Mid-forties, n
ice clothes, expensive haircut, living high on the hog. Maybe the HMOs had taken a bite out of his income and he’d decided to join Ricky’s gang. Valentine was sorry it was Gaylord putting the screws to him. He hated rich people who cheated. They had the best that life had to offer, yet somehow it was never enough.
“I’ll do whatever you want,” the doctor said, his voice trembling.
“Even rat out your friends?” Gaylord said.
“Yes. Just don’t tell my wife. She thinks I was at my high school reunion.”
Gaylord dropped the stack of faxes on McFarland’s lap. Then he told the doctor what he wanted done.
“You want me to call all of them?” McFarland said.
Gaylord slammed his fist on the desk. The doctor jumped an inch out of his chair, then reached for a phone book on the shelf.
“You learn fast,” Gaylord told him.
46
It took McFarland an hour and ten minutes to call every person in the stack of faxes. When he was done, he was sweating through his clothes. In between calls, he’d admitted he had a twenty-two-year-old mistress in L.A. who visited him in Las Vegas twice a year.
Valentine was sitting on the edge of the desk. Once, he’d gone to the door and glanced into the waiting room at the gang of little tykes and their mothers waiting to be seen. It had made him that much angrier at the guy. Long ago, he’d accepted that there were people in the world who were rotten to the core. He just didn’t want them to be people who dealt with children. He saw McFarland hang up the phone.
“That’s the last one,” the doctor said.
Valentine remained where he was. McFarland looked around the room. A frightened look crossed his face when he realized Gaylord had left to take a leak.
“Stop looking at me like that,” McFarland said, tugging on his collar.
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like I was something you scraped off your shoe.”
“I want you to tell me something.”
“I did what you asked. Get out of my office.”
Valentine came around the desk and put his hand on the back of McFarland’s chair. Before the doctor could protest, Valentine spilled him onto the floor, then put his foot to the small of his back.