by James Swain
Mabel watched the truck drive away, its headlights swallowed up in the darkness. What was that all about? Closing the door, she started to throw the deadbolt when a hand clasped her throat from behind.
Judo meant the gentle way in Japanese. But it wasn’t gentle at all, the moves it taught designed to break bones and destroy joints. Mabel had learned that in the first judo class she’d ever taken, and never forgotten it.
She drove her elbow into her attacker’s solar plexis, and heard a sharp gasp. Then she stomped on her attacker’s instep, and heard another gasp. Throwing herself at the door, she grabbed the handle and attempted to jerk it open. Her attacker grabbed her by the shoulders, and she let out a scream.
“Shut up, old woman,” her attacker said.
That really made Mabel mad. Just because she was a member of AARP didn’t make her easy prey. Spinning around, she poked her attacker in the eye.
“Take that!”
“Ohhh!”
Momentarily blinded, her attacker staggered backward. He was native American, about six-two and heavy, with greasy, shoulder-length black hair and a face scarred by acne. Mabel guessed this was one of the crooked dealer’s relatives that Running Bear had warned her about. She ran to the door, and saw it open on its own.
Running Bear stepped into the house. He was barefoot, and wore a blank expression. He put himself between Mabel, and her attacker, then planted his feet.
“Hello Silver Fox,” he said.
Silver Fox grabbed a vase of flowers off a shelf and came at Running Bear. The chief’s right foot flew into the air, and kicked Silver Fox in the temple. Silver Fox’s head snapped sideways, and he crumbled to the floor in a heap, and did not move.
“Holy cow,” Mabel said.
Running Bear knelt down, and lifted up one of Silver Fox’s eyelids. He was out cold. The chief glanced up at her.
“I saw his car parked at the street’s end,” he explained.
“I’m glad you’re so observant,” Mabel said.
“So am I.”
The chief stood up and let out an exasperated breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your boss is going to kill me when he hears about this,” Running Bear said.
Mabel swallowed the lump rising in her throat. The chief had risked his life to save hers. She could wait her whole life, and not find a man like this. She grabbed the chief by the sleeve, and pulled him close to her. He did not resist as she put his arms around his waist, and brought her face up within a few inches of his.
“Let’s not tell him,” she said.
Chapter 42
Garrow was nearly dead by the time the Reno police broke down his front door.
Garrow lived in a fancy gated community with a guard at the front. His house had the best security system money could buy. Neither of those things had stopped Bronco from getting on the grounds and breaking into the house. He’d tied his attorney to a chair, and beaten him to a pulp.
Garrow was cut free, and laid on the floor with a pillow placed beneath his head. Bill called for EMS on his cell phone.
“I want to talk to him,” Valentine said.
“I don’t think he can talk,” Bill replied.
“He’s a lawyer. He’ll be talking five minutes after he’s dead.”
“Go ahead.”
Valentine got a cold beer from the refrigerator. It was a St. Paul’s Girl. He popped the top and poured some into Garrow’s mouth. The lawyer smiled weakly.
“That tastes good,” Garrow whispered.
“I want you to help me catch Bronco,” Valentine said.
“Give me some more beer.”
Valentine drained half the bottle into his mouth. “You want more, start talking.”
“Prick.”
Valentine took that as a compliment. “Tell me about the Asian. He was supposed to exchange scams with Bronco. A Pai Gow scam for Bronco’s slot machine scam.”
“Right. The Asian robbed me, stole my wallet. The slot machine scam was in it, although I don’t think he knows how it works.”
“What is the scam?”
“It’s an EPROM chip. The chip contains a special code. If you plug it into certain slot machines, they become rigged.”
“How does that work?”
“Beats me. Give me some beer.”
Valentine pulled Garrow’s head up and fed him more beer. Giving him liquor was a dirty trick, not that he cared. Garrow was scum, and scum deserved whatever they got.
“What’s the Pai Gow scam?”
“The Asian showed me a pair of dominos. They looked normal. Then he said ‘Red not black.’ and laughed.”
“You examine them?”
“They were clean. More beer.”
Valentine gave him the rest of the beer. It was easing the pain and loosening his tongue at the same time. “So the Asian doesn’t know how the slot scam works.”
“Right. He needs Bronco to explain it . That’s why Bronco came to see me. He wants to hook up with the Asian, and do the exchange.”
“How they going to do that?”
“Easy. The Asian stole my cell phone. I told Bronco that all he had to do was call my number, and he’d get the Asian.”
“Is that why Bronco didn’t kill you?”
Garrow nodded weakly. Then his eyes rolled up into his head, and he passed out.
An EMS team came into the house and attended to Garrow, and Valentine got out of their way. A code. The slot secret was a code, whatever the hell that meant. Gerry stood in the doorway with a funny look on his face. He pulled his father into the next room.
“What’s the matter?” Valentine asked.
“I just figured out how the gaming agent is stealing jackpots,” his son said.
“Be still my beating heart.”
“Come on, Pop. I do have a brain, you know.”
“I never doubted that. Just your ability to use it.”
“Thanks. Bet you a steak dinner I’m right.”
“You’re on.”
“I’m in my bar in Brooklyn, eating lunch. White-haired guy comes into the bar who services the juke box. He serviced half the juke boxes in Brooklyn, and was always busy. I watched him open up the machine, and I realized that he used a key on his regular key chain, which was pretty small. For some reason, it didn’t feel right, so I stop him and said, ‘Look, I know you service all these different machines, how come your key chain is so small?’ And the guy gives me this sheepish look and says, ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but they all can be opened with the same key.’ And I say, ‘All the locks are the same?’ And he says, ‘Yeah. The manufacturer did it to save money.’”
“What does this have to do with the slot scam?”
Gerry smiled. He seemed to be clearly enjoying the fact that he had his old man over a barrel. “Remember when we were in Bronco’s house, and I asked you about those key rings hanging off the wall in Bronco’s work area? You told me that Bronco had discovered that casinos used skeleton keys to open up slot machines, which is similar to what the juke box company uses.”
“So?”
“Think about it, Pop. Both these things share one thing in common: the manufacturer skimped on cost, and created an exploitable flaw. Well, I think that’s what we have here with the slot machines. Remember what Impoco told us at the Peppermill? He said that each slot machine had a 32-word and number fingerprint, and that a cheater would have to know the fingerprint in order to hack the machine, and gaff the Random Number Generator chip.”
Valentine felt goose bumps rising on his arms. “And you think that a manufacturer didn’t do this, and instead has the same fingerprint on all its machines?”
“Right. The manufacturer didn’t think anyone would notice. Well, the only people who could notice would be the people who check slot machines for the ESD. They look at this stuff everyday. Somebody over there discovered the flaw, but instead of exposing it, he decided to use it to steal jackpots.”
“It
’s a good theory.”
“It’s not a theory. It’s a fact. I can prove it.”
This was scary. His son was starting to sound like him.
“How?”
“It stands to reason that if I’m right, all the machines which have been ripped off where manufactured by the same company. Well, we know of two machines which were ripped off. The first was by Karl Klinghoffer at the Gold Rush. The second by his wife at the Peppermill. So I called the casinos, and asked them to tell me the make of the machines the Klinghoffers played on. Guess what? Both were made by a company called Universal. I Googled them on my cell phone. Universal makes twenty percent of the slots sold around the world. I’ll bet my house they all have the same fingerprint.”
“That’s brilliant Gerry.”
His son grinned. “I want a potato with my steak, and a Caesar Salad.”
“Coming right up.”
A uniformed cop entered the room. He pulled a spiral notebook out of his pocket along with a pen. “Which one of you was the last to speak to the deceased?”
Valentine glanced into the adjacent room. Garrow was lying motionless beneath a white sheet. He’d been so busy talking to his son, he hadn’t heard Garrow croak.
“I was.”
“What did he tell you?” the cop asked.
Valentine hesitated. Did he really want to tell the cop what Garrow had said, or Gerry’s theory? It was the kind of information that could destroy the casino business over night, which was exactly what he’d been hired to prevent.
“Nothing.”
The expression on the cop’s face said he didn’t believe Valentine.
“You sure about that?” the cop asked.
“Positive,” Valentine said. “He didn’t say a thing.”
The cop flipped his notebook shut. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter 43
Bronco drove around the Reno hills on Karl Junior’s dirt bike, the full moon illuminating the paths and keeping him from breaking his neck. Right around midnight, he drove back to the storage facility on the north end of town where he’d left Gerry Valentine that morning, and unlocked the second storage unit he kept there. Keeping two units in Reno had cost him a lot of money over the years, but he’d figured that one day, he’d be glad he had. Like every cheater he’d ever known, he understood the odds of the games, including the one he played with the police.
The car in the second unit was a Lexus coupe. Because the car’s anti-theft device was always on, the car’s battery died when not in use. He’d left a trickle charge attached to the battery which he now unhooked, then closed the hood and got behind the wheel. The engine started up on the first turn of the key.
From the trunk he removed a box of disguises and an envelope containing fake ID. The Lexus was registered to Thomas Pico, one of the many aliases he’d adopted over the years. Thomas Pico was fifty-five, the CEO of a film studio in L.A., and a known “player,” with a fifty-thousand line of credit at every casino in Las Vegas. Pico was the casinos’ best customer — a sucker — and welcome wherever he went. Of all his aliases, Pico was the safest.
Bronco slipped into black designer slacks and a black silk shirt — Pico’s trademark colors — then took a pair of electric hair trimmers from the box, and shaved his head. Pico’s bald head was known to every pit boss in Las Vegas, and when he was finished with the trimmers, he covered his head with shaving cream, and ran a razor over his skull. Then, he applied skin toner to his face, and made the wrinkles disappear.
He appraised himself in the Lexus’s mirror. The transformation was complete, and he wondered if maybe this time, he’d leave Bronco for good. He’d make a last big score, and head down to sunny Mexico and buy a place on the beach. He’d meet a decent woman, and start his life over. As dreams went, it was a good one, and he backed the Lexus out of the storage unit feeling good about things. It had been a long time since he’d felt that way.
Glenn, his old teacher, had a theory about ripping off casinos. Glenn believed that a cheater should only target casinos in places with lots of people, like Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Reno. These were tourist towns, and the rules were different in tourist towns. Take the police roadblock just ahead. The cops were glancing into cars, and pulling an occasional driver over, but their hearts weren’t into it. Perhaps they’d heard that he’d gotten a dirt bike, and believed he was long gone. More than likely, they’d been told by their superiors to keep the traffic moving. Catching him was important, but it wasn’t important enough to stop the flow of tourists. Nothing was more important in a tourist town.
He crawled through the roadblock while listening to a news station on the radio. His jail break was no longer the lead story. In a few days, it wouldn’t be a story at all. The perfect swan song if he’d ever heard one. ‘And he escaped from the Reno jail, never to be seen again…’
A highway patrolman shone a flashlight in his face and waved him through. Soon he was on open highway. He called Garrow’s cell phone, which was now in the possession of the Asian. If the Asian was smart, he would have left Garrow’s phone on, in anticipation of his call.
His call was answered by a man with a heavy Asian accent.
“Who is this?” the man asked.
“This is Bronco.”
“Hello, Bronco.”
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“My name is Xing. Are you still in jail?”
Xing was no longer in Reno. If he had been, he’d have heard about Bronco’s escape over the news wires.
“I broke out,” Bronco said. “The police are looking for me. Do we still have a deal?”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean?”
“I have the chip. It was in your lawyer’s wallet.”
“You don’t know how the chip works. No one does but me. Stop fucking around. Do we have a deal?”
There was a pause on the line. Xing was playing it cute, just to see where it got him. Bronco would make him pay for that.
“All right,” Xing said. “But you’ll have to come to me.”
“Are you in Vegas?”
“Who told you that?” Xing asked suspiciously.
Bronco smiled into the phone. Reno and Las Vegas were the only real cities in Nevada. There was no place else for Xing to have gone.
“I guessed. I’ll call you when I reach the outskirts of town, and we can meet up.”
“I’ll be waiting. Don’t bring the lawyer.”
“Don’t worry. I got rid of him.”
“It was about time.”
The line went dead. Xing had gotten in the last word. He was in control of things, which was how most criminals liked to do business.
The highway opened up, and Bronco floored the Lexus’s accelerator. The ragged neon skyline grew smaller in his mirror, and disappeared from view.
Chapter 44
Every casino in Nevada had a steakhouse. The Peppermill’s was called The Bimini Steakhouse, and featured hardwood grilled steaks and prices that would make you swoon. Gerry cut into a sixteen ounce porterhouse as Bill approached the table.
“Sorry I’m late,” Bill said, taking a seat. “What’s the occasion?”
“Gerry solved your crooked agent’s slot scam.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Gerry stopped eating long enough to explain the Universal slot scam to Bill. In conclusion, he said, “Someone in your Electronic Systems Division has programmed your field agents’ notebooks to identify the Universal fingerprint, and add a code that will pay a jackpot. It’s not very difficult. Hackers do it to computers all the time.”
Valentine had brought the files of the seven ESD agents that Gerry had identified as their primary suspects, and spread them across the coffee table. “We’ve narrowed it down to these agents. Do any of them program laptops for ESD?”
Bill glanced at each file. “They all do.”
“So it could be any one of them,” Valentine said.
Bill nodded. He was frowning.
It was rare for him to show any emotion. While waiting for their food, Valentine had read the files again, and seen something disturbing. Each of the seven agents had taken an extended leave three years ago, which Bill had approved. Something tied these agents together, only Bill wasn’t telling him what it was. Valentine said, “How many Universal slot machines are in Nevada?”