“I figured he had some pussy there or something.”
“Gimme the line to the van.”
“I don’t think I should do that, Al. It’s against protocol.”
“You fucking shitting me? Gimme that fucking number, you little pissant, or I swear to all that’s holy, I’ll be at your fucking house in an hour to get it from you.”
“Wow, that’s an overreaction. Calm down, man. You’re gonna get an ulcer or something.”
“I’m not fucking around. Gimme the number.”
Manny gave him the number, and Parr grabbed a pen off the nightstand and wrote it down on his palm. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” he said and hung up.
Parr dialed. A male voice answered on the third ring. “Station Three.”
“This is Captain Alma Parr. You folks are on my dime right now. I need an update.”
“Looks good, Captain. He’s just inside a house over here on Flower.”
“What’s your name?”
“Henry, sir.”
“Henry, I want you to go knock on the door. If anyone answers, you apologize and say you got the wrong house and leave. But look inside and see if the mark’s there.”
“Gotchya. Hang on.” There was some shuffling around then the sound of a door opening. There were footsteps on pavement, knocking, and then a long wait. “Don’t look like anybody’s home.”
“Any lights on?”
“Nope.”
“Go around back and see if you can look into any of the windows.”
“’Kay, one sec… back window into the basement is broken out.”
Parr bit down and shook his head. The stupid bastard let him slip away. “Get in the house and see if anyone’s home.”
“Um, we don’t have a warrant or nothin’.”
“I’ll take the heat. Just get in there.”
“All right. Lemme check the door… back door’s open.”
“Radio the van and tell your partner you need back up.”
“All right. I gotta hang up, though.”
“Call me right back. I’m not fucking around-you call me right back.”
“I will, sir.”
Parr hung up and paced the room. The Homeland Security Unit at the Metro PD had been created in response to 9/11, and it had been stacked with college grads looking to get some experience before moving up to the feds to start careers as bureaucrats. A few were solid cops, but Parr hadn’t interacted much with them. He should have stuck to uniforms he knew.
His phone rang. “Yeah, this is Parr.”
“Henry again, sir. We’re inside the house.”
Parr heard Henry’s partner shout, “Clear.” Then feet shuffled on linoleum.
“Upstairs is clear, sir. We’re heading down.”
“Stay on your toes.”
Parr bit his thumbnail and walked to the bar in the living room. He pinned the phone to his shoulder with his cheek and poured himself more whiskey. He went to his balcony and stood watching the fire as helicopters dropped hundreds of gallons of water over it at once.
There was shouting then swearing coming from the phone.
“Uh oh,” Henry said.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“We’re gonna have to call it in, sir. We got a body here.”
21
Bill James got out of the shower and looked over his body in the full-length mirror. The years had been good to him, mostly free of the hard labor that he’d seen age his friends. He had no idea why society put such value on hard work. It aged people, caused them pain, and wore out their bodies and minds. It was for suckers. If they wanted to get rich, people had to work intelligently and with calculated forethought towards the future. Nothing else would get them rich.
He went to his walk-in closet and chose the Polo suit with the white pinstripes. Hand-made Italian sandals went over his sockless feet, and he chose a black t-shirt with no tie. Once he was dressed, he looked himself over and knew what was missing. He had been stalling, hoping he wouldn’t have to add it, but that would be a decision based solely on principle instead of practicality. Since he was a teenager, he’d sworn never to make decisions based only on principle.
He finally relented, reached into a drawer on his massive mahogany dresser, and pulled out a snub-nose revolver, which he tucked into his belt at the small of his back. He hadn’t carried a gun for forty years. The thought of it filled him with dread. People who carried guns naturally ended up in situations in which they had to use them. The universe wasn’t stupid. It gave back exactly what he put into it. But he feared the alternative might have been worse.
He left his suite and took the elevator down to the casino floor. He passed most of the tables, heading to one where a crowd had gathered. A chain-smoking Asian man sat at a blackjack table, a massive stack of chips piled in front of him. His glasses were down on the brim of his nose, and he was dispassionately analyzing the cards in his hand. He hit at sixteen and pulled a four. The dealer busted at twenty-three. The crowd cheered as the dealer counted out his bet: six thousand on one hand.
The pit boss came up to James and stood next to him quietly, like a soldier awaiting orders. Hot streaks required the commander’s attention.
“How long has he been winning?” James asked.
“Just over five hours.”
James smirked. The house had a nearly two percent edge over an amateur blackjack player, which meant that for every dollar played, the casino kept two cents as profit and paid the remaining ninety-eight cents back out to the player. Bet after bet, the edge would grind away at the player’s money, eventually taking all of it. In the long run, no one could beat the edge. The casino could be beaten in short bursts, usually no more than a half hour or so if someone was really on a hot streak. Few players had the self-control to make big bets a small number of times then walk away while they were ahead. In forty years of working in casinos, James had seen perhaps three people who could do it. Gamblers’ avarice was uncontrollable, and they were unable to pull themselves away from tables, even if they were millions of dollars ahead.
Five hours of winning was statistically impossible. James studied a couple of the man’s bets and his hands. He walked up behind the man, who was reaching to throw his cards to the dealer, and grabbed the man’s wrist. Twisting it, he exposed several thousand-dollar chips the man had palmed.
It was an old trick that had worked well before cameras were above every table. The player would place one or even two thousand-dollar chips under a stack of hundreds as his bet. If he leaned the stack toward the dealer at just the right angle, the entire stack appeared to be hundreds. If he won, he showed the dealer the thousand-dollar chips and claimed his prize. If he lost, he threw down his cards, and on the way out, he would pick up the chips at the bottom of the stack. Glue could be applied to the palm to make it easier, but the experts could pull out the bottom chips without making the stack fall.
Two security personnel rushed over and grabbed the Asian man. They lifted him out of his seat and dragged him toward the interrogation room at the back of the casino. James watched him go. He wanted to be back there with his own brass knuckles, but that wasn’t the way things were handled anymore. Nowadays, the police were called, the man would be cited, and lawyers would battle it out in court for a few months. He thought that even the cheats might have preferred a single, clean beating so they could move on with their lives.
James turned to the pit boss. “Fire the dealer now. Have him escorted out. Fire whoever was manning the eye in the sky for this table. Same thing, escort them out. That’s really important. If they’re in on it, they may be keeping a stack of chips somewhere in the building.”
“Will do. Anything else?”
“Follow up with me tomorrow,” James said before walking away. He knew the pit boss would be nervous that he was under suspicion as well, and he would work hard to clean up the mess. But after the pit boss had carried out his orders, James would fire him, too.