“I owe you,” Victor said.
“You don’t owe me a thing,” Billy said.
“Yes, I do. Any other cheat would have taken off once the gaming board showed their faces. You did the opposite. I owe you.”
Billy decided not to argue with Victor over this. The cheat’s code required Billy to help a fellow cheat in need with the understanding that one day, that cheat might help him out of a jam. What goes around comes around, as the old saying went.
“Let me ask you something,” Victor said. “This asshole Grimes — why does he have it out for my family? What the hell did we do to him to deserve this?”
“Nothing that I know of,” Billy said.
“Then why’s he targeting us?”
“Because your family is his ticket to getting a promotion. Most gaming agents are drones. They punch a time clock and count the days to retirement. Grimes is a different breed of cat. He’s a smart son of a bitch and can’t understand why he doesn’t get promoted.”
“Why doesn’t he?”
“I don’t think he plays politics very well. In Vegas, it’s all about juice. It’s not what you know but who you know. Grimes is trying to get ahead on merit instead of kissing ass.”
“Is that why he’s after us?”
“You bet. If he can bust your family, he’ll parade you in front of the newspapers and show everyone what a great job the gaming board does in policing the casinos. His superiors won’t have any choice but to kick him upstairs.”
“So this isn’t about us.”
“That’s right. It’s all about him.”
Air holes were drilled in the trunks of the Boswells’ three vehicles. Nico, Kat, and Tommy climbed into the trunks holding pillows to rest their heads upon. The cars departed at five-minute intervals, leaving Billy and Victor standing in the driveway beneath a waning moon.
“You going to fly out?” Billy asked.
“Have to. I can’t sit for more than a couple of hours with my bum leg.”
“I’ll give you a lift to the airport.”
“Much appreciated.” Victor used his cell phone to book a ticket on a Southwest flight to Sacramento that left in a few hours, then went inside to pack. When he was done, Billy carried the suitcase outside and tossed it into the trunk of his car.
“Before we go, I need you to help me get rid of the blackjack table in the rec room,” Victor said.
The lines at airport security were unpredictable. Billy didn’t want Victor to miss his flight and said, “Plenty of people have blackjack tables. Can’t you just leave it?”
“Afraid not. I told the owner that we were hardly going to use the place. It doesn’t jibe with the story I told him. There’s a fire ax hanging on the wall in the garage. Use that.”
“It seems like a waste of a perfectly good table. I can hire someone to move it.”
“Destroy it. No loose ends. You know the score.”
“Whatever you say, Victor.”
Billy chopped up the blackjack table while Victor sat in a chair in the rec room watching him. Victor wanted the table reduced to little pieces so that not even the garbage men would recognize what it had once been. It was harder work than Billy would have imagined.
“Is this small enough?” he asked, holding up the last piece of the table.
“A little smaller, if you don’t mind. It still looks like a leg.”
“Do you really think the garbage man’s going to care?”
“You don’t know who the garbage man is. Remember the mob boss Joe Bananas? The feds nailed him by going through his garbage and reading his mail. Stupid guinea didn’t have enough common sense to shred his letters before he tossed them away.”
Billy cut the remaining piece in half and showed it to Victor. “How about now?”
“Good enough.”
In the garage were two wheeled plastic garbage cans. Billy brought them into the house and filled them with the remains of the table, then wheeled them outside and deposited them at the curb for the next pickup. He went to his car to find Victor sitting in the passenger seat.
“Did you figure out my super con?” Victor asked during the drive to the airport.
Billy said no. He’d examined the table while chopping it apart. It was ordinary, without any hidden crevices to hold a tiny camera that could pick off the dealer’s hole card and relay the information to the cheat. The secret of Victor’s ingenious scam was still safe.
“It’s built into the equipment,” Victor said.
Billy went over the double line. He righted the car before speaking. “You’re kidding me. I looked at every square inch of that table.”
“I noticed that. I discovered a flaw in the equipment that lets me rip the house off blind. It’s happening at the factory, and the casinos don’t know about it. Yet.”
“You think they’re going to spot it?”
“Eventually they will. Or another cheat will figure it out and rip them off. It has a limited shelf life. If it’s not used soon, it will go away.”
“You’re saying the casino will replace the flawed piece of equipment, and your super con won’t work anymore.”
“Correct. Which leads me to my next question. We need a large crew to pull this off. My family is out of the picture. Do you have another team you can partner up with? I’d hate to see this fall by the wayside.”
They had reached the airport with its confusing array of signs. Billy headed for the departure drop-off area while giving it some thought. He was on a first-name basis with the captains of several crews that made their living scamming the joints. There were cooler mobs that specialized in switching decks on unsuspecting dealers, past-posting crews that placed late bets at roulette, card-counting teams with hidden computers that bled the blackjack tables, and crews that manipulated the dice during craps for huge scores. Each crew was excellent at what it did and capable of pulling this off.
“I’d be happy to make some phone calls. What’s our split?”
“You’ll have to pay the other team half to get them to agree. You and I will split the other half. I know it’s not what we agreed to, but it’s still a huge score.”
It was a huge score. And it was also better than nothing.
“I’m in,” the young hustler said.
“Good. You can bring us our share, and I’ll take you out to the best steakhouse in Sacramento.”
Victor was paying him a compliment. He trusted Billy to deliver the money and not shortchange him and his family. That meant a lot to Billy. They shook hands, sealing the deal.
Twenty-Six
Cory and Morris went to Machine Guns Vegas to blow off some steam. There were many gun ranges in town, but only MGV offered military guns for rent. Just by plunking down a credit card, a customer could shoot a Barrett sniper rifle, a SPAS-12 dual-mode combat shotgun, or an M4 lightweight submachine gun used by SEAL Team Six.
They opted for the Three Gun Experience. For a hundred and ninety bucks, they got to shoot three weapons for forty-five minutes straight. Cory chose the AK-47, the M4, and the KRISS Super Vector, which looked right out of a sci-fi flick. Morris had his own preferences and chose the combat assault FN SCAR, the MP5 with a banana clip, and a fully automatic Uzi.
Together they shredded paper targets in the range. Cory preferred targets of flesh-eating zombies, while Morris liked killing terrorists. They were both steaming mad at Travis and made the targets pay for the big man’s betrayal. It was bad enough that Leon was being held against his will because of Travis. Now Travis had attempted to get Pepper, Misty, and Gabe to jump ship. Travis was trying to destroy Billy’s crew, the rat bastard.
Joining Billy’s crew was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Not that long ago, they’d been selling worthless coupon booklets on the Strip. Billy had plucked them off the street and offered to teach them the art of the grift. They’d signed up, and the money had started to flow. They’d bought a new car, rented a house, and filled the fridge with all the delicious food they’d missed growing up. Their lives were heaven, and they were not about to let Travis jeopardize their good fortune.