Valentine had little experience with video poker machines because the belief in the industry had been that no one had ever successfully scammed one. Looking at Bill, he said, “This make sense to you?”
Bill nodded. “Random functions generate starting values, which are called seeds. The seeds are randomly changed to insure a fair game.”
“Exactly,” Gerry said. “The kid discovered that his game used the machine’s internal clock to create seeds. When he hit the start button, the random function looked at the number of milliseconds which had elapsed since 12:00 A.M., and used that number to create the seed. Since there are eighty-six million milliseconds each day, the seed should have been random. Only it wasn’t, because the kid could generate the sameeighty-six million seeds on his computer because he knew the starting point. That let him calculate which cards were coming out.”
“How did this translate to you beating a video-poker machine in Atlantic City?” Valentine said. “The kid was playing a game, for Christ’s sake.”
“The kid’s game was manufactured by a company that made casino video poker games,” Gerry explained. “He told his brother, and his brother went to Atlantic City, and played one of the company’s real games. Guess what? The same cards came out as his brother’s game at home. They were generating the same seeds.”
Bill crossed his arms. “Gerry, what you just described is ancient history. Remember what I told you before, about my being involved in updating the machines? We discovered that flaw, and made the manufacturers stop using internal clocks.”
“But what if a company didn’t?”Gerry said. “What if one company ignored your order, and didn’t change the program? You know, to save money.”
“Like Universal did when it used the same fingerprint on its slot machines,” Valentine said.
“Exactly,” Gerry said. “And Fred Friendly’s gang discovered the flaw. But instead of making the company update the machines, they keep it a secret, just waiting for the day when they knew they could screw the casinos with it.”
Valentine sensed where his son was headed. “If that was true, it would mean that those video poker machines could be scammed if a player played at a certain time, and a certain way. Just like the e-mail is telling them.”
Bill’s face had turned ashen, and he clenched both his hands into fists. Out on the boulevard, traffic had gotten worse, the angry blare of car horns echoing across town. “How far are Fred Friendly’s offices from here?” Valentine asked.
“A couple of miles,” Bill said.
“We need to pay them a visit.”
Chapter 56
The Electronic Systems Division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board was headquartered in a nondescript three-story building on Sahara boulevard, two blocks off the strip. At a quarter of two, Bill pulled into the parking lot with Valentine and Gerry, and braked by the front doors. Bill had taken back roads, and it still took twenty minutes. Bill used his pass to enter the building’s elaborate security system, and they took an elevator to the third floor, where the ESD managers worked. The gang’s offices were at the end of a hallway, and stood side-by-side. Each had a brass name plate on their door. Haskell, Robinson, Lacross, Dolan, Howard, Ortiz, and Friendly.
Bill did a quick check of each office. Their personal belongings were gone from their desks, and their computer screens were blank. Fred Friendly occupied the corner office, and Bill sat down at his desk, and rifled the drawers. His elbow touched the keyboard for the computer, and the screen came to life.
“What is this?” Bill muttered.
Valentine edged up to the computer to have a look. On the screen was a spread sheet with a heading that said LV/VIDEO POKER. He touched the keyboard, and began to scroll through the document. “It’s all the video poker machines in Las Vegas.”
“Do you think Fred left this for us to see?”
“Sure looks that way. Looks like he highlighted some of them.”
They brought their faces up to the screen. Friendly had highlighted a quarter of the machines on the spread sheet. Each highlighted machine had a notation that said UNV. Valentine thought he knew what it meant, but asked anyway.
“It means Universal,” Bill said softly.
“Universal makes video poker machines, too?”
“Yes. They’re responsible for a quarter of the machines in town.”
Valentine drew back from the computer screen. The realization of what Friendly’s gang had done hit him over the head like a lead pipe. Friendly’s gang hadn’t corrupted five Universal video poker machines to pay out jackpots at 3:00 o’clock; they’d corrupted hundreds of them to pay out jackpots, then sent out emails to insure that the machines got played. Las Vegas’s casinos were about to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
“What are we going to do?” Bill said.
“Run them down, and find out how to reverse what they’ve done.”
Bill looked at his watch. “It’s almost two. We’ve got an hour.”
“Piece of cake.”
Bill glanced up at him, and smiled grimly.
Valentine gathered the garbage pails from each office, dumped them on the carpet in Friendly’s office, and with Bill kneeling beside him, went through their contents. His guess was, the gang had split up, and taken different routes out of town. That was the smart thing to do, and these guys were as smart as they came.
The garbage didn’t say much, but then he found a coffee-stained receipt in the bottom of the pail that had come from the office of Janet Haskell, one of the two women in the gang. The receipt was for three paperback books purchased at the nearby Borders, and was from yesterday afternoon. Two of the books were mysteries by Valentine’s favorite authors, Michael Connelly and Elmore “Dutch” Leonard. The third book was a Fodor’s Guide to Acapulco. He showed it to Bill.
“You’re a genius,” Bill said.
Clutching the receipt in his hand, Valentine walked down the hallway to the empty office where Gerry had parked himself behind a desk, his fingers dancing across the keyboard as he tried to access the computer. His son looked up expectantly.
“You find something?” Valentine asked.
His son nodded. “I think this was left for us. I’m printing it now.”
The laser printer sat atop a metal stand in the corner. Valentine grabbed the sheets as they were spit out and quickly read the manuscript. It had been co-authored by the gang, and explained in detail why they’d gone bad. Every criminal had a “reason” for committing crimes, and the reasons were all bogus. Everyone on the planet knew the difference between right and wrong; even the severely retarded. But this gang surprised him. They weren’t saying they weren’t guilty. They simply stated in plain English that they were fed up with how justice was administered in Las Vegas.
A hand tapped his shoulder, and he turned to face Bill.
“There’s an American Airlines flight to Acapulco out of McCarren that leaves at two-thirty, ” Bill said. “I called TSA, and told them to ground that plane.”
They went downstairs and climbed into Bill’s car. Bill started to pull the vehicle onto the street, then jammed on the brakes. Traffic had reached critical mass on Sahara, and the cars looked glued together. Bill called the Metro Las Vegas police on his cell phone. They weren’t much help, and he cursed after hanging up.
“The city’s roads and highways are at a standstill,” he said.
Valentine was riding shotgun. “Where are the cops?”
“The cops have been dispensed to the casinos to keep things under control,” Bill said. “Thousands of people have come in for the promotion. They’re fighting over seats at video poker machines.”
Valentine tapped his fingers on the dashboard, then turned around and looked at Gerry in the backseat. “How did you leave things with Nick?”