“Same here,” Misty said.
“I’ll let someone else do that. Later.”
Cory parked in front of the house and killed his headlights. Billy drove past with one eye in his mirror, looking to see if they’d been followed. He’d taken every precaution to avoid a tail, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. At the next block, he did a U-turn, drove back, and parked in the driveway. He got out to find Tommy standing on the front lawn waiting for him.
“I texted my father and told him the score,” Tommy said. “He’s waiting inside the house with the rest of my family.”
“Tell your father I’ll be right in,” Billy said.
“Will do.” Tommy went up the path and disappeared inside the house.
The SUV was parked at the curb, its engine idling. Billy went to the passenger side and the window lowered. Cory and Morris looked at him from inside.
“Travis is at it again,” he said. “He contacted Pepper, Misty, and Gabe and tried to recruit them to join his crew.”
“Do I have your permission to shoot that asshole?” Cory said.
Cory had never shot anyone in his life, and Billy let the remark pass. “You both did good tonight. You made me proud. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Billy,” they both said.
Billy entered the rented house to find Tommy in the living room telling his family how the gaming board was on to them. Victor sat in a big leather chair, his children on couches or the floor. Tommy had given his father the photo taken with the claimer. Victor studied it before passing it around for his children to see. They’d been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and the look on Victor’s face bordered on disgust. His entire life, Victor had managed to avoid getting his picture taken and so had his kids. Like all good things, it had come to an end.
“Damn it,” Victor said. “Okay, Billy, how bad off are we?”
He stood next to the fireplace with his arms crossed. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d call your situation a nine and a half. You need to pull up stakes and run.”
“But the gaming board doesn’t know my kids’ names. You said the other night that we could put a disguise on Nico, and everything would be okay. Why can’t we put disguises on Kat and Tommy and go ahead with our job?”
“The risk is too great,” Billy said.
“Explain yourself, if you don’t mind.”
He stepped away from the fireplace. Victor had told him that the super con was his last hurrah. Once it was over, Victor intended to climb into his Cadillac and ride off into the sunset. He hated to be the one to tell Victor that the retirement party would have to wait, but he didn’t see that he had any other choice. The gaming board had the Boswells in their crosshairs, and if they didn’t hightail it out of town, their days of freedom would be over.
“You’re right, the gaming board doesn’t know your children’s names,” he said. “But chances are, they eventually will. Nico, Kat, and Tommy each visited a casino and were spied upon by casino surveillance. A pan-tilt-zoom camera can read the date off a dime. If Nico opened his wallet and exposed a credit card, the PTZ camera captured the name on the card. If Kat used her cell phone, the PTZ captured the number she called. The same for Tommy. If he used his cell phone or flashed the inside of his wallet, it got captured. That’s enough information for the gaming board to track all of you down.”
“No, it’s not,” Nico said. Nico was the heir apparent, and he knew how important this job was to his father. “I have a false identity I use for jobs, a guy named Andrew Allen. That’s the name on my credit cards and my cell phone. Kat and Tommy also have false identities.”
“Are these dead people?” Billy asked.
“Yup. We search the papers for obituaries of people who have died without any immediate family or survivors, and we steal their names and addresses and set up credit card accounts and cell phones in their names.”
“How often do you rotate the names?”
“Every six months. If the gaming board does a trace, they’ll turn up a dead end.”
“No, they won’t,” Billy said. “The gaming board recently started using a software program called NORA. It stands for Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness, and it was developed by a data mining company that the government uses to track down terrorists. Let’s say that the gaming board enters Andrew Allen into NORA. Even though it’s a false identity, NORA can spit out every single person that Andrew Allen has made a phone call to or shared an address with. NORA connects the dots and will figure out who your family is.”
Nico swallowed hard. “They can really do that?”
“Afraid so.”
“Sounds like we’re royally fucked.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“How soon should we leave?”
“Right now,” Billy said.
Twenty-Five
There were only so many ways to leave Vegas, and all of them were risky if the gaming board was hunting you.
The quickest escape was McCarran International Airport. But using the airport meant dealing with TSA, plus a small army of full-time cops and six dedicated FBI agents, all of whom communicated regularly with the gaming board.
The Greyhound bus terminal on South Main was another alternative, but there were plenty of cops there as well, looking for wanted thieves and criminals jumping bail.
The last route was by car. Most fleeing criminals took I-15 south into LA. Problem was, the cops had planted high-resolution surveillance cameras on light poles every few miles on I-15, and they used software programs to compare faces in the cars to those on wanted posters. Billy had also heard there were surveillance cameras hidden in cactus trees and billboards, although he’d never seen proof of this.
Three ways to escape, and none of them was foolproof.
At the end of the day, it was Victor’s job to spirit his family safely out of Vegas. Victor chose the car escape, believing Kat, Nico, and Tommy would be safer at night on the highway. The Boswells had driven to Vegas in three separate vehicles, and Victor assigned three of his children to be drivers of the escape vehicles.
“I want you to leave five minutes apart,” Victor said. “Kat, Nico, and Tommy, you need to stay hidden during the drive. Is that clear?”
“Should we lie on the floor of the backseat under a blanket?” Kat asked.
“That should do the trick,” Victor said.
“No, it won’t,” Billy said. All heads turned to stare at him. “The surveillance cameras on I-15 have infrared lenses and can see into the back of cars. If the police spot something suspicious-looking in the car, that’s cause to pull you over.”
“Jesus. Then where should we hide?” Kat asked.
“I’d suggest drilling air holes in the trunk and hiding there. It’s the safest way to go. Make sure your cars are filled with gas when you leave, so you can drive nonstop. Every gas station has hidden surveillance cameras, and the cops scrutinize every driver.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before,” Victor said.
Billy had helped cheats flee town many times. It was harder than people imagined, but with the right planning and attention to detail, it could be done. “It used to be easy to get out of town. Then the Crips gang out of East LA entered a casino with machine guns and robbed the cage. They escaped on the I-15 with their loot and were never caught. That’s when the cops decided to install surveillance cameras on the highway.”
“That settles it,” Victor said. “Nico, Kat, and Tommy will hide in the trunks. We’ll drill air holes and put pillows down to make everyone comfortable. Sound good?”
Victor’s family agreed to the plan and went to make preparations. Victor stayed behind and spoke to Billy when it was just the two of them in the room.