“Where’d you get all this sugar, Baylor?”
“You sent me on a conference drive-by.”
“Which is different than sending you out to rob a bakery.”
“Megan.” His mouth full. “Megan at the conference.”
“Megan with the braces gave you all this?”
“She likes me.”
Don’t they all.
“That place is a ghost town,” he said. “Megan said it’s always this way on the last day and the bankers won’t drag in until it’s time to play the slot tournament. She said they’d show up for Diane Warwick tonight too.”
“Dionne.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
He finally got to the bottom of his white box and pushed it away with a groan.
“So how did you get all this?”
“It was in the conference dining room,” he said, “a million donuts. They had fruit too.”
“How’d you get into the dining room? How’d you get past security?”
“There wasn’t any security,” he said. “The security people were all in the event hall doing something with the game.”
I’d tried to get through the doors seventy-seven times, and Baylor shows a girl his dimple, says he wants a donut, and breezes right in? “What were they doing with the game?”
“I have no idea.”
At which point, finally, I barely cared what Paragon might be doing with their stupid game. I poked his distended stomach. “Look at you.”
His chin dropped. “Why did I eat those last ten donuts?”
“Dopamine.”
“I do get doped up on donuts. I need to stop.”
“That’s not what I meant. Sugar releases a chemical in your brain, Baylor. Dopamine.” A tingle started at my toes. “It makes you keep eating the donuts after you’ve had plenty.” The tingle kept going until it reached the top of my head. “Hop up, Baylor. You’re going back to the conference.”
“You want fruit?”
Twenty
When stimulated, the circuitry in our brains making up the pleasure and reward center receives ten times the normal dose of the neurotransmitter dopamine, the happy hormone. Dopamine, the celebrity, the sexiest of our brain chemicals, rains euphoria on us when nudged—Christmas morning, a romantic wedding, a new car to replace the one we gave our ex-ex-husband. But dopamine can cause problems too, when it sends out happy-camper signals for risky activities, telling us to do them again and again, activities like drinking too much bourbon, eating too many conference donuts, having sex in the packed-out Bellissimo swimming pool at high noon (classy), and playing slot machines.
No one does dopamine better than a casino. We pass it out at the front door.
My first assignment at the Bellissimo three years ago had me wearing a wig in the middle of the casino. I hadn’t been (on the payroll) at a slot machine ten minutes before I was drowning in dopamine—I could hear my own heart beating—and I distinctly remember how I reacted: I wanted more. I chased my initial win all over the place to feel it again. The surprise, the thrill, the bells and whistles, the money—it’s, all of it, spectacular.
I caught on to the dopamine program fast.
Real fast.
At times I still play slots for work, when the job calls for it, or to pass the time, because I live and work in a building with four thousand of them, or just to blow off steam and leave the world behind. I enjoy being lulled by the setting, music, the spiked hot chocolate with whipped cream, the Calgon Take Me Away Triple Jackpot. (Who am I kidding? I play for one reason—because it’s so much fun to win.)
When gamblers are on winning streaks, they lose track of time, place, obligations, their kids and their keys. They don’t eat, sleep, or answer the phone. Find a gambler on a roll, in the win zone, flying high on dopamine, and he can barely tell you his mother’s name. Seasoned gamblers learn to take the wins with the losses, which is to say they learn to deal with the dopamine quietly. If a slot machine has blown up, an envious crowd has gathered, and it takes the floor twenty minutes to verify the player’s $200,000 win, yet the winner doesn’t seem to be celebrating, in fact, he looks like he wants the payout over, so everyone will leave him alone and let him get back to his game—that’s a dopamine pro.
On the other hand, let a casino virgin, a brand new twenty-one-year-old, or a banker at a conference who’s never won a goldfish swimming in a sandwich bag at the carnival, win $200K, and that person is on the floor. We call it Jackpot Party, it comes in many animated versions. It too can be seen in all four corners of the casino, and the player hosting the Jackpot Party is so full of dopamine she has only two words left in her vocabulary: “I won! I won! I won! I won!”
It’s the rare player who takes the money and runs. Most doped up gamblers won’t stop playing until they crash. The real world fades away; it’s just the player, the dopamine, and the game. They will play until they’re emotionally, physically, and financially exhausted, giving every penny back to the casino, and then some.
It’s like my husband, Mr. Sanders, and No Hair had been telling me all week—Paragon Protection meant us no harm. They were busy harming the bankers. Why?
* * *
Fantasy can’t read my mind. She had no way of knowing I needed her. In our years of working together, I couldn’t remember a time either of us, any of us for that matter, completely disabled our phones. Not only did she not answer, I couldn’t ping a location on her. I called Mrs. Hello Kitty’s room, nothing. I called Jay Leno’s place and asked for Miles and the woman who answered held the phone away and called out, “Miles? Anyone here named Miles?”
Nothing.
It was easy for Fantasy to assume, platinum secured, we had an easy day, it being Friday and all. It’s her two weeks of no laundry, blah blah. I knew good and well what she was doing and she could have at least run it by me. She could have shot me an email, text, or left a message. Her going totally off the grid was something we would have a serious chat about. Given the amount of time I didn’t have, I couldn’t put my cyber hunting dog skills to work; I’d have to worry about her later.
“It’s me and you, Baylor.”
We fist bumped.
“Work your magic and get past Megan.” His back pockets were full of coiled fiber optic cable and the front pockets of his jeans each held a receiver, both about the size of cell phones and loaded with fresh lithium button batteries. “You have to get in the air ducts, Baylor. Start as close to the event hall as you can. Try the rooms on either side. If they’re empty, get to the air ducts there. If that doesn’t work, go to the dining hall. Hop up through a vent, scoot down the ducts till you’re over the event hall, then place the cameras.”
“You say that like I didn’t just eat forty donuts.”
I patted his cheek. “You can do it.” I checked my watch. “Get going.”
Then I got going. The conference attendees would rally for the semifinal round of the slot tournament soon and we needed the video in place before it started. I wanted a bird’s eye view of the Mint Condition slot machines. And the winners.
Baylor on his way, I stepped into Control Central and woke everyone up—Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo—and got busy with a chore I would have tackled days ago had I not been keeping a cat company, in and out of central booking, hunting Magnolia, chasing Fantasy, giving my car away, trying to protect the Bellissimo’s and my own better-half assets, and consulting with Bianca’s gyno.
I hoped I wasn’t too late.
* * *
“Hey, you.”
“Wife.”
I clicked across the keyboards as I returned the two calls from my husband I’d missed while stuffing Baylor’s pockets with electronics.
“Are you busy?” he asked.
“So-so
. Human Resources sent a stack of applicants for the Special Events Coordinator job.” (True.) “They want me to run backgrounds.” (Also true.) “You?”
“I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
I had Paragon Protection’s website up on three screens.
“Richard called. This weekend is Jolie’s soft opening,” he said. “He and Jeremy are swamped with VIPs.”
“Am I supposed to be there?” Panic shot through me. It’d be just like Bianca to schedule me to be the face of Jolie, to rub elbows with the Vegas big shots who’d flown in to see the new casino, plus Tunica’s mayor, dog catcher, and Corncob Queen, then not mention it.
“No,” Bradley said, “but he did say Bianca hasn’t left her bedroom in two days. Would you look in on her?”
My hands slid from the keyboards to my lap. The last thing I wanted to do. “Yes,” I said. “I will.”
“One more thing,” he said. “Did you withdraw five thousand dollars from our checking account in Louisiana on Wednesday?”
Uh-oh.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Bail money.”
Awkward silence.
“We’ll talk about it later, Davis.”
* * *
Control Central’s three computers were full of Paragon Protection, so I dug my laptop from my spy bag and said hello, then connected to the video feed from Event Hall B. I plugged into five different camera angles, one wobbly, so Baylor was still placing them. The cables were spaghetti thin with pinpoint cameras on the tips, very cool. (Amazon.) He may have seriously screwed up the car deal and let me drive around with counterfeit money, but he’d busted us out of jail, he’d shown up for work this morning, and he was doing a fine job of crawling around the air ducts, giving me an aerial view of what our valued business partner was up to.
“Baylor.” Earpiece to earpiece. “Can you hear me?”
“Hold on.”
He could hear me.
“Yes.”
“How long have you been up there?”
“Forever.”
Forever might be, on the outside, fifteen minutes.
“Is anyone in the room?”
“The guards,” Baylor whispered. “But they’re half asleep.”
“You have every one of the cameras pointed at a blank wall or the floor,” I whispered back. “Can you adjust them?”
“What do you want to see?”
“Point four of the cameras on the Mint Condition machines and the other one on the door.”
“Which door?”
“There’s only one set of doors.”
All five feeds wiggled, giving me serious vertigo.
“Baylor. Be still.”
The five feeds settled down on my laptop screen.
“I can’t breathe up here,” he whispered.
“You’re fine.”
I turned down the volume on my earpiece. The soundtrack of Baylor navigating the air duct was atrocious. “The camera you have on the door, scoot it left. More left.” I don’t know why I was whispering. “A little more left. Okay, zoom out.”
“Can I go now?”
“In a minute.”
Before I could ask him to adjust any of the other camera views, the front doors opened and Conner Hughes walked in. His three convicted criminal companions followed him into Event Hall B.
This again.
I tapped out a message on my phone: Baylor, stop breathing. Stay where you are. Don’t even blink.
Baylor: I think there’s a mouse up here.
Me:
Baylor: Davis?
Me:
Baylor: Davis?
One of the men in black raised an arm and made a big finger circle in the air. The guards, who knew the drill well at the end of the week, filed out. The same man pointed to a chair. Conner Hughes walked to it and collapsed. As if he was being told where to sit. As if he wasn’t in charge of his team. The criminals he trusts. And doesn’t make a move without.
Two of the men in black held back, one took a step in Conner Hughes’s direction, placing himself between our valued business partner and the doors, while the one directing traffic toured the Mint Condition machines.
Can you point a camera at the man in the chair?
The banker man?
There are four men in the room, Baylor. How many are in chairs? Yes. The banker man.
I’d seen Conner Hughes in this very room on Tuesday when he walked in with Bradley, but at the time I hadn’t paid attention, because I’d been busy dropping my phone. I’d seen him on surveillance video, but mostly his slumped shoulders. Or his knees. This was the first time I’d gotten a good look at him. Conner Hughes was one color from head to toe, a dull yellow, the color of straw. He had a thick flat nose under wide-set eyes. His sandy suit swallowed him, and he had the demeanor of a death-row inmate waiting his turn. His long yellow fingers clawed at the arms of the chair and he stared at the double doors as if he wanted to dart through them. The expression on his face mirrored the one I’d been wearing all week, that of confusion, frustration, and exhaustion.
Something about his uneasy mannerisms struck a familiar chord, but before I could put my finger on it, act two of the rigged slot machine show started.
The men in black sat down at three chosen slot machines, opened the cabinets, and dove in. With a much better view today, I could clearly see one of the techs remove, then replace, the computer chip in the machine.
Baylor: Davis?
Me: Baylor, shut up and be still.
Baylor: I’m not talking. I’m texting.
Me: Shut up anyway.
Why were they going to all this trouble? Because they assigned seats at the Mint Condition tournament, a common tournament practice. They switched out the software so the players wouldn’t know the game was rigged.
If the same winners were assigned the same seats for every round of play, and kept winning, there’d be mutiny. Like Treasure Island. So they moved the winners around. To move the winners around, they had to move the winning machines around by changing the internal programming from a slot machine with a normal payout to a super payout slot machine. What was so special about the three bankers who would sit at the winning Mint Condition machines? It was the stone left unturned that I’d tripped over all week. What was the endgame of handpicking the winners?
Dopamine.
Paragon wanted the three winning bankers’ minds on this game and off everything else. Distracted. Sidetracked. Not thinking clearly. With dopamine levels through the Bellissimo roof and money, money, money, falling into their laps.
Conner Hughes wasn’t part of the problem.
He was a pawn.
* * *
Minimizing the Event Hall B video feed, cloaked under the privacy of a severely scrambled IP address, I turned back to my computers and hacked Paragon Protection’s website. I slipped into their internal server via a loose security patch, where I was asked to login. A bit tricky, since I didn’t want to take the time to make myself a potential client and log in legitimately after they approved me and gave me a password sometime next month.
What I should do is shut down the computers, let Baylor crawl out of the ceiling, then tell my husband his valued business partner was in trouble and let him take it from there. Or I could nose around Paragon one more minute.
Click.
When I bullied past the login, I was met with millions of lines of virtually impenetrable code. I stared at it, astounded by the exceptional programming behind this website. The FBI’s website wasn’t nearly as secure as Paragon Protection’s.
Here’s where they kept the secrets; I’d better take a peek. I wiggled my fingers above the keyboard—let the magic begin—and for the next
twenty minutes, I tried to get in the front door of Paragon’s system, my phone going nuts the whole time.
I’d forgotten Baylor.
Him: I’m going to pass out. I’m thirsty.
Me: Has the room cleared yet?
Him: No.
Me: Wait.
Him: How long?
Me: Ten more minutes, you big baby.
Him: I’m hot.
Me:
Him: Davis?
Then Bradley.
Him: Davis? Someone just walked into the bank and cashed a $5,000 check drawn off our personal account. Did you write it?
Me: Yes.
Him: Why?
Me: I bought a Cadillac.
Him: A $5,000 Cadillac? Where is it?
Me: Impound in Covington, Louisiana.
Him: We’ll talk about this when I get home.
Baylor: I’m getting hungry.
Me: You could not possibly be hungry.
Baylor: I am.
Me:
Baylor: Davis?
When it was obvious there was no sneaking into Paragon’s website, I changed my strategy and shot my way in. I injected a rogue code in the form of SQL (Structured Query Language) (you can keep this from happening by always using parameterized queries, so hackers can’t ask your system random questions and get direct answers) and asked the software for a list of conference clients.
It looked like this:
“SELECT * FROM table CLIENT LIST = ALABAMA
+ conference + column = LIST ‘’ OR ‘1’=’1’;”
Boom. It answered me with a list of Paragon’s Alabama clients.
Next and last query, because alarms were surely sounding all over Paragon’s system that the website had been breached:
DOUBLE MINT Page 19