by James Swain
Once inside an elevator, Black Cloud activated the control panel with a special key, and we were delivered to the fourth floor where the surveillance control room was located.
“Welcome to the inner sanctum,” he said.
We walked down a short hallway to an unmarked steel door with a surveillance camera perched above it. Black Cloud knocked loudly, then faced me.
“We have a small problem,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“There’s a sting going on inside the casino. Our security team is trying to nab a group of cheaters. You’re going to have to wait until they’re done.”
“Any idea how long?”
“Could be awhile. These people have stolen a lot of money from us. We need to catch them before they do it again.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. I’d already wasted most of the day, and every lost hour increased the chance that I’d never find Sara Long. Before I could reply, the steel door swung in and a short man wearing a black turtleneck greeted us.
“Hey, Chief,” the man in the turtleneck said.
“Hey, Harry,” Black Cloud replied. “Any luck catching those cheaters?”
“Not yet.”
Harry ushered us into the room and shut the door. Dark and chilly, the surveillance control room was crammed with sophisticated surveillance equipment that watched the action in the casino. A gang of technicians sat in front of a row of computers, staring intently at the flickering screens.
“Harry, I want you to meet Jack Carpenter and his dog,” Black Cloud said. “Jack is an ex-Broward detective and a friend of the casino. He’s also part Seminole, so watch what you say around him.”
The man in the turtleneck pumped my hand. Beads of sweat dotted his brow, and I could tell that something was bothering him.
“Nice to meet you,” Harry said.
“Same here,” I replied.
“I need to run,” Black Cloud said. “Good luck in your search.”
“What can I do for you?” Harry asked when Black Cloud had left.
“I’m looking for a missing college girl that was in your casino two nights ago,” I replied. “There was a man stalking her. I’m hoping one of your surveillance cameras took a photo of him.”
“We’re dealing with a situation inside the casino right now,” Harry said. “Once we’re done, I’ll do what I can to help you.”
I followed Harry to the back of the room. Five men were huddled around a high-resolution monitor showing a blackjack game. The game consisted of seven players, a dealer wearing a tuxedo, and some bystanders watching the action.
“This is Jack Carpenter and his dog,” Harry said to the group.
None of the men took their eyes from the monitor.
“You’ll go blind doing that,” I said.
One man turned his head, a thin smile on his face. He was in his early sixties and Italian, with salt and pepper hair and a nose that had been broken a few times but hadn’t lost its character. His face was best described as intense.
“You a cop?” the man asked.
“Ex-detective,” I replied. “I used to run the Missing Persons Unit of the Broward sheriff’s department.”
“My name’s Tony Valentine,” the man said. “I’m a consultant. I help casinos catch cheaters. Do you know what grift sense is?”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s the ability to spot a con or someone who’s a crook. Think you can spot a crook in a crowd of people?”
“Sure,” I replied.
Valentine turned to the others. “Want to give him a shot, guys?”
“Why not?” one of the men replied.
Valentine turned back to me. “Here’s the deal, Jack. The guys on the monitor are a gang of professional cheaters. They’ve been swindling the Hard Rock for a month, and have stolen over three hundred thousand bucks.”
I whistled through my teeth. The seven guys at the table wore baseball caps and colorful T-shirts and were swigging bottles of beer. They looked like a bunch of regular Joes, and did not fit the image that I had of professional cheaters.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“They’re using paper.”
“What’s that?”
“They marked the casino’s cards, and put them back into play.”
“Can I see them?”
Valentine removed a worn deck of playing cards from his pocket and gave it to me. The deck had a red diamond design along with the Hard Rock’s distinctive logo.
“The casino subjects its dealers to polygraph tests every month,” Valentine said. “One of the dealers got tripped up in a lie, and confessed to taking several dozen decks out of the casino, giving them to the gang to be marked, and slipping them back in.”
“Is this one of the decks?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I examined the cards but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“How are they marked?”
“They’ve been stained with drops of water,” Valentine said. “The gang only stained the high value cards, which are the most important cards in blackjack. The stains let the cheaters know the value of the cards the dealer is holding. That knowledge gives the cheaters a fifteen percent edge over the house.”
I removed the ace of spades from the deck, and held it up to the dim overhead light. When viewed from the right angle, the stain on the card was plainly visible.
“Why don’t you arrest them?” I asked.
The men fell silent, as did Valentine.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“The dealer who snitched was found in the trunk of his car with his throat slit,” Valentine said. “Without his testimony, we don’t have a case.”
“So you’re letting the cheaters play in the hopes of catching them,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“How can I help?”
“One member of the gang is reading the marks, and signaling the information to the others,” Valentine said. “That’s how marked card scams work. We need to figure out who the reader is, arrest him, and make him talk. That’s our best chance of nailing the gang.”
It was common when the police were stymied in a case to bring in a fresh pair of eyes to examine the evidence. I didn’t know anything about gambling or cheating, but I was good at picking slime-bags out of a crowd.
“I’d be happy to give it a try,” I said.
Standing in front of the wall-sized monitor, I tried to pick out the reader.
Cheating at blackjack wasn’t hard. Each player at the table received two cards, as did the dealer. The object was to get close to twenty-one, without going over. The dealer went last, and had the advantage of receiving one card facedown, the other face up. If the cheaters could learn the value of the dealer’s facedown card, they would know if the dealer was weak or strong, and play accordingly.
At first, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. The gang was drinking and smoking and having a swell time. So was the crowd standing around them. It was like one big party, and had Valentine not tipped me to the scam, I would have been clueless.
After twenty minutes of watching, something strange happened.
The dealer flipped over his facedown card, revealing an eight. His other card was a three, making his total eleven. The dealer dealt himself another card. It was a ten, giving him twenty-one, a winning hand. As the dealer raked in the losing bets, the seven men at the table frowned disapprovingly.
“Somebody screwed up,” I said.
Valentine put down the can of diet soda he was drinking. He shouldered up next to me, and stared at the monitor.
“You think so?” he asked.
“Yeah. I want to see this again.”
Valentine crossed the room, and two-finger typed a command into the keyboard that was wired to the monitor. The film was rewound. Again I watched the dealer pull twenty-one, and the cheaters’ reaction.
“See their faces?” I said. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
<
br /> “You’re right,” Valentine said. “So who’s the reader?”
“I’m not sure. Can we watch it in slow motion?”
“Sure.”
Valentine typed another command into the keyboard. This time, the clip ran in slow motion. Behind the cheaters I noticed a tall, menacing-looking Hispanic wearing a glittering array of gold jewelry. As the dealer raked in the losing bets, the Hispanic brought his hands up to his eye as if to replace a fallen contact lens.
“The tall Hispanic standing behind the players is your reader,” I said. “His contact lens fell out, which caused him to screw up.”
Valentine picked up a house telephone and called downstairs to the floor. “Put an RF tracking device on Table Sixteen.”
Hanging up, he smiled at me and resumed drinking his soda.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“The Hispanic is standing too far behind the table to be using signals,” Valentine explained. “I’m guessing he’s got an electronic transmitter in his pocket that he’s using to signal the others. Cheaters call these transmitters thumpers. A radio frequency tracking device should pick up the signal, and we’ll have our proof.”
“Are thumpers illegal inside a casino?”
“They sure are.”
A few minutes later the house phone rang and Valentine took the call.
“So they are using a thumper,” he said. “Go ahead and arrest them, but be careful. One of these guys slit our dealer’s throat.”
Valentine dropped the phone into the receiver. He looked tired but satisfied. All his hard work had paid off, and now he was going to get his reward. He called the other men over, and explained that the bust was about to go down.
I continued to watch the lanky Hispanic on the monitor. He had a menacing quality that the other members of the gang didn’t have. Then I spotted something that I hadn’t seen before. Beneath the Hispanic’s right eye was a small tattoo. I edged up to the monitor for a better look. It was a tear drop. Criminals often had tear drops tattooed beneath their eyes after they murdered someone. In a loud voice I said, “The Hispanic is your killer. Tell your guys on the floor to be careful when they arrest him. He’s probably carrying a weapon.”
Valentine grabbed the house phone and relayed the information to the men downstairs. “Put the heavy on these guys,” he said.
“That’s a new one,” I said.
“Just watch,” he said.
Sixty seconds later, an army of security guards appeared on the monitor, and swooped down on the table where the cheaters were sitting. Working in tandem, the guards upended the table, and wrestled the gang and the Hispanic to the floor. It was lightning fast, with the cheaters never knowing what hit them.
The Hispanic was handcuffed and frisked. From his pockets the guards removed the thumper, along with a thick wad of cash. Strapped to his leg was a stiletto, which was held up to the camera for us to see.
“You were right,” Valentine said. “Sure you’ve never done this before?”
“Beginners luck,” I said.
A bottle of champagne was broken out, opened, and poured. I had not had champagne since my wedding, and forced a glass down.
“So what can I do for you?” Valentine asked.
“Help me find a missing girl,” I said.
CHAPTER 15
gave Valentine the details of Sara Long’s visit to the Hard Rock. He was frowning by the time I finished filling him in.
“I’ve got some bad news for you,” Valentine said. “We may not have this guy on any of our surveillance tapes.”
“But I thought the surveillance cameras were on twenty-four/seven,” I said.
“They are, but they don’t catch everyone.”
My knowledge of how casino surveillance worked was limited to what I’d seen on TV and at the movies, where bad guys inside casinos always seemed to get caught on film. I shook my head, not understanding.
“The Hard Rock’s casino is the size of three football fields,” Valentine explained. “At any given time, the eye-in-the-sky cameras are watching half the floor, leaving the other half unwatched. That means that one hundred percent of the time, fifty percent of the casino isn’t being watched. A bad guy can come in, pull a scam, and walk out, and the cameras may never spot him.”
“So your systems aren’t foolproof.”
“If they were, I’d be out of a job. Now let me ask you a question. This young woman who was abducted, was she pretty?”
“Very pretty.”
“That’s in our favor. Most of the technicians working surveillance are men, and they usually film the pretty girls that come in. It’s against the rules, but they do it anyway.”
“So there may be a tape of Sara.”
“Yes. And hopefully, a tape of your suspect. Let’s go find a tech.”
I followed Valentine across the surveillance control room to where a tech sat staring at a computer screen while eating his lunch. The tech had wild, unkempt hair, and two-day stubble sprouting from his chin. His work station was littered with fast-food wrappers and Post-it Notes stuck to every available space. He glanced at Buster, who had not made a sound since entering the room, and tossed him a french fry.
“What kind of dog is that?” the tech asked.
“Australian Shepherd,” I replied.
“He’s cool. I want one.”
“Joey Riddle, this is Jack Carpenter,” Valentine said. “He’s an ex-cop.”
Riddle looked me up and down.
“You could have fooled me,” Riddle said.
“I need a favor,” Valentine said. “A pretty college girl was on the casino floor two nights ago, and I want to see if one of the hot-blooded males on duty filmed her.”
“What time was she here?” Riddle asked.
“Around eleven p.m.,” I replied.
“Did she gamble?”
“No. She was with two of her friends. They just people-watched.”
“Then they probably hung around the Tower of Power Center Bar,” Riddle said. “It’s a real popular spot with the ladies.”
“We’d like to see the film from the Tower of Power two nights ago,” Valentine said.
“Your wish is my command.”
Riddle’s bony fingers danced across his computer’s keyboard. A surveillance film of the Center Bar appeared on his computer screen. The bar was circular, and situated in the middle of the bustling casino floor. Stamped in the corner of the film was the date and time the film had been taken. It was from two nights ago at 11:00 p.m.
My eyes scanned the bar. Sara Long, Amber Woodward, and Holly Masterson were sitting together, sipping Cokes. I pointed at Sara.
“That’s her,” I said.
“Beau-ti-ful,” Riddle declared.
“Do you see the stalker?” Valentine asked.
I edged closer to the screen. The strange little man who called himself Mouse was not in the picture.
“No,” I said.
“Maybe he’ll show up later on,” Valentine said.
We watched Sara, Amber, and Holly mingle at the bar, then take a stroll through the casino, stopping to watch the different games or when someone hit a jackpot on a slot machine. The three young women were all pretty, and the camera never left them. It didn’t help my cause, because I couldn’t see if anyone was following them.
“Damn,” I said. “I can’t see who’s around her.”
“Joey, can you check the database to see if we have any other surveillance footage of these girls?” Valentine asked.
“Sure thing,” Riddle said.
Freezing the images on the screen, Riddle typed a command into the computer while tossing pieces of bread from his unfinished sandwich to my dog.
“Our system stores all the films taken inside the casino over a thirty-day period,” Riddle explained. “I just fed the images of these ladies into the hard drive, and asked the system to find identical images that might be stored in its memory banks.”
A new film appeare
d on his computer screen. On it, Sara and her friends were standing at the Hard Rock’s entrance, and Amber was wagging her finger in the face of a small man wearing khaki shorts, a faded T-shirt, and a baseball cap. It was Mouse.
“That’s the stalker,” I said.
I placed my face a few inches from the screen and lip-read. Amber was telling Mouse to leave them the hell alone. Mouse held his arms out innocently while shaking his head like he didn’t understand. Finally he shrugged and walked out the door.
“Want me to see if there are any more films of this guy?” Riddle asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Riddle checked the system, and came up empty.
“That’s the only film of him inside the casino,” Riddle said.
My spirits sagged. The film proved nothing that I didn’t already know. It wasn’t anything I could take to the police to prove my case. Feeling defeated, I looked over my shoulder at Valentine to see if he had any ideas.
“What about films of this guy outside the casino?” Valentine asked.
“There’s an idea,” Riddle said.
Riddle typed another command into the keyboard. The bread from his sandwich was gone, and he was now feeding Buster pieces of meat. The dog sat at stiff attention by Riddle’s desk, avoiding eye contact with me.
“The casino is required to film the grounds in case we get sued for a slip and fall,” Valentine said. “It’s a pain in the ass, but the insurance companies won’t cover us if we don’t. I’m guessing this guy had a vehicle, which might have been picked up by one of the cameras on the side of the building. Maybe we can get his license plate.”
“That would be great,” I said.
“Here we go,” Riddle said.
A film appeared on the computer screen showing the Hard Rock’s enormous parking lot. Mouse appeared, walking toward the back of the lot.
“There he is,” I said.
Mouse’s vehicle was parked in the last row. It was the same stolen maroon Ford minivan he’d been driving when he’d abducted Sara.
“Shit,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” Valentine asked.
“The vehicle he’s driving was stolen. He and his partner already dumped it.”