There was nothing more frustrating than knowing a scam was taking place, but not having enough evidence to nail the cheaters and shut it down. They agreed to talk again later that night. Bill opened the office door, and they walked back into the surveillance control room.
As Valentine passed the wall of monitors, he saw a tape of the Tuna taken in the casino lobby right after he’d been robbed by Gerry and his friends. The Tuna was stomping his feet and cursing up a storm, and looked almost comical. Valentine walked over to the tech whom Bill had told to erase the tape. The tech was sucking a thick shake like it was the only food he’d had in days.
“Any particular reason you’re watching this tape?” Valentine asked.
“Just covering my ass,” the tech said.
“How so?”
“Mr. Higgins told me to erase the tape of that guy having his bag stolen. I figured I’d better erase the aftermath as well.”
“I’d like to watch it before you erase it.”
“Be my guest,” the tech said.
Valentine went back to the monitor and watched the tape. The Tuna was poking DeMarco’s bodyguard in the chest while yelling at him. The bodyguard whipped out a cell phone and made a call. Thirty seconds later a guy with pocked skin entered the picture. Valentine felt the icy chill of recognition and turned to the tech.
“Freeze this.”
Instantly the image became frozen on the monitor.
“Now enlarge the guy’s face.”
“I can show you his pimples,” the tech said.
“A head shot will do.”
The face became enlarged, then appeared on every monitor on the wall. The tech was having fun, showing what his toys could do. It was enough of an overload to jolt Valentine’s memory into remembering where he’d seen that face before. Taking out his wallet, he removed the composite that Gerry had paid a courthouse artist to draw of Jack Donovan’s killer, and compared the composite to the face on the monitor. It was a match.
“Are your tapes digital?” Valentine asked.
“State of the art,” the tech said. “We use Loronex.”
Loronex was a digital surveillance system that could take a picture of a person, run it against ninety days of past tapes, and pull up any tapes the person appeared on.
“Find this guy in your digital database,” Valentine said. “I want to see where he went after this tape was shot.”
The tech’s fingers were a blur on the keyboard. Moments later, the monitors came alive with a new tape. It showed the guy with the pocked skin walking through the front doors, and giving the valet a stub for his car. As he waited for his car, he removed a shiny business card from his pocket, and dialed his cell phone while staring at it.
“Can you enlarge that card?” Valentine asked.
The business card became enlarged on the monitor. It was for the Sugar Shack, and had a naked girl lying horizontally across it. Bill, who’d been talking to another tech, came over to where Valentine stood.
“That’s Jinky Harris’s club,” Bill said. “He runs the local flesh market.”
“Is he in the mob?”
“He sure is.”
Valentine stared at the monitor while feeling his heart pound against his rib cage. Gerry and his friends were in real trouble, and not just because they’d stolen the Tuna’s canvas bag. He took out his cell phone and called Gerry’s cell. An automated voice answered, and told him to leave a voice or text message. His son was always picking up text messages from his wife, and Valentine typed a short message telling Gerry his life was in danger. He marked it urgent and hit send.
“Do you mind my asking you a question?” Bill asked.
Valentine snapped his cell phone shut. “What’s that?”
“Is your son really working with you?”
A lie was only good if you kept it going.
“Yes,” he said.
20
Las Vegas was like any other major city once you get away from the downtown, the roads and highways jammed with impossibly long lines of traffic. Highway 15, the main thoroughfare on the west side of town, was particularly bad, with lots of tire-burning stop-and-go. Gerry drove in the slow lane, searching for their exit.
“Boy, that was slick,” Vinny said, the canvas bag Gerry had snatched from the Tuna sitting protectively in his lap. “Those assholes didn’t know what hit them.”
“You did a good job knocking down that bodyguard,” Gerry said.
Vinny glanced into the backseat at Frank and Nunzie. “It was just like the good old days, wasn’t it, guys?”
Frank and Nunzie both started laughing. They had spent their formative years doing hit-and-runs on drunks playing the slot machines in Atlantic City’s casinos, knocking them off their stools and stealing their plastic buckets of coins. For a lot of bad kids, it had been the equivalent of having a summer job.
“So, when are we going to open the bag?” Nunzie wanted to know.
“Yeah,” Frank said, leaning between the seat, “let’s see what this secret is.”
Gerry took his eyes off the highway and glanced at Vinny. They’d talked about this earlier; Jack Donovan had lost his life because of this secret, and Gerry didn’t think they should just open up the bag, and start playing with it like a toy.
“We’re going to wait until we get back to the motel,” Vinny said.
“Aw, come on,” Frank said belligerently. “I want to know what it is.”
“Me too,” Nunzie said.
“Only when we’re back at the motel,” Vinny said.
Since Vinny was buying the secret, his word stood. Frank looked dejected, and popped an unlit cigarette into his mouth. It made him look like Marlon Brando from On the Waterfront, and he said, “I got a question. I know we were moving fast, but what if the cameras caught us? We could go to jail.”
Gerry saw their exit and put his indicator on. “The cameras are always rotating. Which means we had a one-in-two shot of not being seen. Sort of like a coin toss.”
Frank thought it over, then removed a quarter from his pocket, and tossed it into the air. Nunzie called heads, and Frank caught the coin, and slapped it on the back of his hand. He slowly pulled his hand away. Nunzie’s face said it all. Tails.
“Gotcha,” Frank said.
Gerry was in the motel parking lot when Vinny’s cell phone rang. Vinny had downloaded Frank Sinatra singing “My Way” and used it as the chime for his cell phone. The novelty had already worn off, and Gerry felt like tossing it out the window. Vinny answered the call, then covered the phone’s mouthpiece with his hand.
“It’s Jinky Harris,” he announced.
“Ask him if he’s still cleaning up the milk,” Gerry said.
“Shut up. That goes for everybody, okay?”
Everyone in the car quit talking, and Vinny took his hand away.
“I’m here, Jinky. What’s shaking?”
Vinny’s head bobbed up and down while he listened to Jinky talk. Vinny couldn’t have a conversation without some part of his body acting like a metronome. If he was standing, it was his hands; sitting, his head or his foot.
“You got it,” Vinny said. “We’ll meet you at the Voodoo Lounge in twenty minutes. I know where it is. See you there.”
Vinny killed the connection and gave Gerry instructions to the Voodoo Lounge. It was halfway between Las Vegas and the town of Henderson, and well off the beaten path. As Gerry headed back to Highway 15, Vinny explained that Jinky wasn’t angry about the night before, and wanted to talk to them about a business proposition.
“Jinky says he’s got a sweet deal for us,” Vinny explained.
“What kind of deal?” Gerry asked.
“You think he was going to tell me over the phone?”