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“Sixty grand. Pay up.”

Night Train slowly shook his head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“It means I don’t have the money. I’ll have to owe you.”

“You said this game didn’t take IOUs.”

“Look, man, I’m good for it. I’ll have the money wired from my bank. You’ll have it tomorrow.”

“Fair enough. You got a pen and something to write on?”

“Choo-Choo, help our friend out here,” Night Train said.

Choo-Choo fetched a ballpoint and a notepad from inside. Billy used them to write up an IOU for sixty large, which included the date, names of participants, and where the game had taken place. Up until now, they’d been playing a friendly game of poker; that was about to change in a negative way, and he stood up from his chair in case he needed to take off running, then slid the IOU and pen across the table to Night Train’s spot.

“Here you go,” he said.

Night Train lowered his head to read the IOU. As he did, Billy took out his cell phone. It was a Droid, and it had a unique feature not available on other cell phones. If the user forcefully snapped his wrist, the Droid’s photo app came to life. Lowering the cell phone to his side, he snapped his wrist below the table, then raised the phone to chest height and snapped a photograph of Night Train putting his John Hancock on the bottom of the IOU. The Droid’s flash was like a bomb going off, and Night Train leaped out of his chair. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Memorializing our agreement,” he said.

“No photographs.”

“Then how’s anyone going to know that IOU came from you?”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Not really.”

Night Train came around the table. The look on his face betrayed real apprehension. “Listen, man, I’m going to be straight with you. We’re not supposed to be at Caesars right now. If that photograph ever got out, the media would destroy us and we’d all get hurt. You don’t want that to happen, do you? So just make it go away.”

“All right. But I want some collateral with this IOU,” he said.

“If I give you my father’s watch, will you erase that picture?”

“Let me see the watch first.”

Night Train retreated into the villa and returned holding an old wristwatch with a cracked leather band and a faded inscription on its back.

PRESENTED TO FRANK MCCLAIN
FOR THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF SERVICE
1975 TO 2010
BY
THOMAS H. WILSON CO.

“My daddy gave this watch to me before he died,” Night Train said. “It’s worth more to me than all the tea in China. Is that good enough for you?”

“That works.” Billy slipped the timepiece into his pocket. Holding the Droid so Night Train could see the screen, he deleted the incriminating photo. Night Train visibly relaxed.

“Happy now?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Night Train said.

Night Train and his pals were veteran cheats and had probably never lost this much before, and he wondered how long it would take before it kicked in that they’d been swindled. He wrote down his cell phone number on the notepad and left it on the table.

“That’s my number. Call me when you have the sixty grand,” he said.

Then he got the hell out of there.

Fourteen

Billy was flying high as he left Caesars. There was an art to swindling another cheat that required a delicate level of finesse. The fact that Night Train hadn’t threatened to throw him off the balcony told Billy that he’d handled things just right.

Traffic barely moved. A show was being filmed at the LINQ Hotel and Casino, closing a lane to accommodate the production trucks. Vegas should have been a natural location for TV shows and movies, but most production companies avoided the town. The amount of red tape required to film was a nightmare and required sign-off from the dreaded gaming board.

It gave him an idea. If the production at LINQ continued, maybe he could rip the joint off. Films and movies required plenty of people and equipment, all of it a distraction to the casino’s surveillance department. Using his cell phone, he got on the Internet and typed Las Vegas film production into Google. He got a hit and followed the link to a story in the local paper. A company called Bad Dog Productions was filming a pilot called Night and Day at the LINQ starring an actress named Maggie Flynn. How ironic was that? Mags had left Vegas for the bright lights of Hollywood and, like an escaped convict, had gotten caught and sent right back. LINQ’s entrance was a block away, and he decided to pay her a visit.

LINQ was a no-frills joint, the lobby without furniture. A receptionist smiled as Billy approached, happy to have another person to talk to. “Good afternoon and welcome to LINQ.”

“Hi. I need to use a house phone,” he said.

“House phones are across from the elevators. Are you looking for someone?”

“Maggie Flynn. She’s an old friend.”

“Ms. Flynn the actress? I spoke with her a few moments ago. Would you like me to ring her room and announce your arrival?”

Maggie had done a number on him before breaking things off, and he decided to repay the favor. “That would be great. Tell her Rand Waters is here to see her.”

“Rand Waters the TV producer? I totally love your shows. Sweet and Sassy’s my fave.”

“Thank you. Those are words I never get tired of hearing.”

The receptionist made the call. “Ms. Flynn said to come right up. Room 2081.”

“Thanks. You’ve been very helpful.”

He rode alone to the twentieth floor and walked down a hallway littered with room-service trays. When he rapped on the door to Mags’s room, a voice from within said, “It’s open,” and he entered. The suite was on the low end of the Vegas experience and reminded him of an old Billy Joel song. “In hell there’s a big hotel where the bar just closed and the windows never opened, no phone, so you can’t call home, and the TV works but the clicker is broken.” An open script lay on the coffee table. Next to it, a bottle of Chivas and a vial of sleeping pills.

“You could have put me up some place decent, you know,” Mags called from the next room. “There’s no hot water half the fucking time, and the carpet smells like bad weed.”

He picked up the script and started reading. The plot of Night and Day revolved around a female gaming agent who solved crimes during the day and ripped off the casinos at night, hence the clever title. For a kicker, the money she stole went to charity.

“For the love of Christ, how did you get in here?”

Mags stood before him wrapped in a bath towel and wearing no makeup. Her eyes looked tired, and she’d lost weight since he’d last seen her.

“I lied to the girl downstairs,” he said. “How you been?”

“I should call security and have you tossed.”

“I just wanted to say hi and congratulate you. You’ve got your own TV show.”

“Thanks. It’s just a pilot.”

She let her towel drop to the floor, revealing heavenly skin. There was nothing like Irish hot, and the sight of her took his breath away. From the closet, she grabbed a fluffy white bathrobe supplied by the hotel and slipped it on. “Fix me a scotch, will you?”

“I thought you quit drinking.”

“What are you, my sponsor? Straight up, two ice cubes. Make it strong.”

He took the Chivas to the minibar and fixed the drinks. Through a picture window, he spied a Ferris wheel behind the hotel that did not have a single rider. Vegas was about action, and this place didn’t have any. It was beyond depressing.

Mags parked herself on a couch. He served her drink and pulled up a chair.