“Feel up to doing a job?” his father asked.
“I don’t know, I’m kind of busy right now.”
He paused, hoping to hear his father laugh. When he didn’t, Gerry said, “Of course I’ll do a job, Pop.”
“In the trunk are the files of the nine hundred Nevada Gaming Control Board agents,” his father said. “I’ve winnowed the field down to seventy-five.”
“Let me guess,” Gerry said. “You want me to pull those seventy-five out, and find the bad agent.”
“That’s right. Sure you’re up for it?”
Sure you’re up for it?That didn’t sound like his father at all. Maybe saving his old man’s life had erased some of the horrendous crap he’d put his father through over the years. Through the IPOD’s earplugs lying on the seat he could faintly hear Aretha singing about respect, and found himself smiling.
“I’m up for it,” Gerry said.
He hung up, then got the stack of files out of the trunk and returned to the front seat of the car. Leaving the door ajar, he grabbed a handful of files, and began sorting through them. He pulled out every agent who worked for the ESD, and placed those files into a separate stack. When the larger stack was exhausted, he picked up the smaller stack and counted it. Seventy-five files, just like his father had said.
The IPOD was still playing, and he considered plugging himself back in, then decided against it. This was work, and he needed to start acting serious.
He heard the storage unit’s air conditioner come on, and felt the manufactured air cool the car’s interior. His father had once told him that to catch a criminal, you needed to know his motivation. He tried to imagine what the motivation was for a gaming agent to rip off the people he worked for. He’d once had a woman who worked for him as a bartender, and had discovered her stealing money out of the till. When he’d confronted her, he’d discovered that she’d been carrying a grudge because he’d never asked her out. The stealing had nothing to do with money. It was spite. The woman had also taken a lot of sick and vacation days, and worked all the angles.
He thumbed through the stack, and pulled out the file of every agent who’d taken a high number of days off in the past few years. There were seven in all.
He worked through the seven files. Two women and five men. Each had been out of work well above the norm. Maybe they’d been sick, or had to deal with a sick family member. He began to think he was barking up the wrong tree, when a thought occurred to him. If a bad agent was running around Nevada stealing jackpots, that agent needed to be taking time off to engineer those thefts. There was no way around it.
He felt the tingle of excitement. One of these seven agents was their thief. His father was going to be proud of him.
Another first, he thought.
Chapter 31
A few miles outside of Reno, Valentine had an epiphany. He’d been having them since childhood, and he asked Bill to pull the car into a roadside gas station. Bill took his eyes off the highway, and gave him a funny look.
“What’s up?”
“Just pull over,” Valentine said.
Bill pulled into a gas station and parked the car by the air pumps. Killing the transmission, he turned to look at him.
“I want to know why you’re holding out on me,” Valentine said after the engine’s fan had stopped whirring. Bill shot him a guilty look, and Valentine knew he had him. “Last night at the strip club, you knew Garrow was going to exchange secrets with the Asian. Who the hell told you that? I certainly didn’t, and neither did my son.”
Bill stared through the windshield at the desolate empty field behind the gas station. There was a lot of pretty geography in Nevada, but mostly it was a desolate place, and Valentine couldn’t imagine himself taking a nature walk and finding anything but snakes and scorpions and maybe a coyote or two. He waited for Bill to defend himself, and when he didn’t, resumed.
“You know something about this case that I don’t. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me. You’re the head of the largest law enforcement agency in the state, and it’s your business to know things other people don’t. Only, there’s a problem. I’m supposed to be running this investigation. So, tell me what’s going on, okay?”
Bill went inside the convenience store that was attached to the gas station, emerging a minute later with two cups of coffee. Bill liked his coffee black and strong, just like Valentine. Handing him a cup, Bill said, “Maybe I should start from the beginning.”
“That’s usually the best place,” Valentine said.
“How much do you know about what’s going on inside China?” Bill asked.
“Just what I read in the papers. The country is booming.”
“Their economy is growing at an annual rate of ten percent, while the rest of the world’s is stagnant. Any idea why?”
Valentine shook his head.
“The underlying factor is the Chinese government. They will stop at nothing to dominate any business that will make money. Right now, they’re the world’s number one manufacturer of electronic equipment, clothing, sporting equipment, and household appliances. They’re also trying to dominate other markets.”
“Including gambling?”
“Including gambling. The casino gambling on the island of Macau is booming. The government is helping build a number of lavish casinos there. The plan is to attract the high-rolling Asian gamblers who are coming to Las Vegas, and get them to gamble in Macau instead.”
It made sense. Every week, American Airlines flew five luxury jumbo jets from Hong Kong to Las Vegas. These jets were filled with high-rolling Asian gamblers, or what the industry called whales, and were the single most profitable group of gamblers in the world. Of course the Chinese government wanted them to stay at home and gamble. They were worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy.
“How does the Pai Gow scam fit into this?” Valentine asked.
“Rumor is, the Chinese government struck a deal with the Triads to gaff every Pai Gow game in Las Vegas,” Bill said. “Since the equipment is manufactured in China, the story makes sense. The Chinese are hoping that if Las Vegas starts losing money at Pai Gow, the casinos will close the games down.”
“And the Asian gamblers will stay home and play Pai Gow in Macau.”
Bill blew on his coffee. “That’s right.”
“And Bronco was the cheater who was going to rip off the casinos with the Pai Gow scam.”
“Right again. Now, there’s a problem with this story, and it’s this. Once I heard the rumor, I had every casino in Las Vegas pull their Pai Gow equipment off the tables, and send it to a forensic lab. They tested for marks, luminous paint and hidden gaffs. Nothing showed up.”
“What about ultra-violet inhibitors?
“They were tested for those, as well. The dominos are clean.”
“No, they’re not,” Valentine said. “Think about what you just told me. The Chinese government is intent on shutting down every Pai Gow game in Las Vegas. That means every Pai Gow game in Las Vegas can be scammed. There’s something wrong with those dominos. You just don’t know what to look for.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”
Bill’s cell phone went off. He took the call, then hung up and started the car’s engine. “That was O’Sullivan. The cops got a reading on your son’s cell phone. It’s coming from a storage facility on the south side of town. They’re waiting for us.”
The cars wheels spun pulling out of the parking lot.
Ten minutes later, Bill pulled into the self-storage facility where the Reno police had determined that Gerry was being held. The front gate was open, and Bill drove around back and parked. As a cop, Valentine had always hated industrial parks. Every car thief and drug smuggler he’d ever busted had worked out of one, and he considered them a haven for crooks and scum bags.
Eight uniformed Reno cops were standing outside a unit with a sliding metal door. They were all big and tan, wore bulletproof vests and clutched shotguns protectively to their chests. One had a large mallet, and Valentine guessed his job was to break the lock on the sliding door. O’Sullivan stood beside the building, staying cool in the shade.