He wasn’t going there, and he started walking backward.
“You’re in love with her. I can see it in your face.”
“It was nice meeting you,” he said.
“You’re the devil, aren’t you?”
The words stung more than he would have liked.
“I’m whatever you want me to be,” he said.
Thirty-Two
Getting rid of Travis was proving trickier than Cory and Morris had anticipated. They’d stowed his body in their rented storage unit at night when no one was around. Now, in broad daylight, the facility was swarming with people, and they couldn’t move him without being seen. Certain criminal acts you could talk your way out of. Unloading a corpse wasn’t one of them.
Cory sat behind the wheel of the SUV. He’d placed a call to Billy and was waiting for a call back. Billy was the champ at fixing messes and would know how to dispose of Travis. Before coming to Vegas, Billy had worked for a gangster, and he knew all sorts of valuable stuff.
While he waited, Cory watched horse racing from Santa Anita on his cell phone using an app called BetAmerica. His account with BetAmerica also let him place wagers. He also had accounts with sites with catchy names like Twin Spires and Horse Races Now.
The horses exploded out of the gate and galloped around the track. A ringer named Sally Boy pulled ahead and never looked back. It won at odds of ten-to-one. Cory had bet $500 on Sally Boy, which put him ahead five grand. He’d also bet $500 on a nag, which finished dead last. The racing sites monitored their customers’ action and would become suspicious if a customer won too much, too often. By purposely betting on a losing nag in the same race as a ringer, he was avoiding any unnecessary scrutiny.
Morris climbed in and took the passenger seat. Morris hadn’t slept and looked like death warmed over. The shock of having shot Travis was slow to wear off.
“Any word from Billy?” Morris asked.
“Not yet.” They fell silent. The car’s interior was suffocating. Morris held his hands in his lap. His fingers were trembling as if he had palsy. Cory had read that when a cop was forced to shoot and kill a suspect, the cop was put on leave for several weeks. Cory had thought this was an administrative thing but now realized otherwise. The cop needed to heal.
“So where are we going to hide out?” Morris asked.
“Billy suggested we head down to Mexico.”
“Refresh my memory. What’s in Mexico?”
“Billy owns a beachfront condo in Cancun that he hustled off a rich sucker with the newspaper scam. We’ll hang there and drink piña coladas and look at pretty girls.”
“Sounds good. What’s the newspaper scam?”
“I never told you about this? It’s beautiful.”
“Lay it on me. I could use some cheering up.”
“It’s done at a hotel pool. The cheat and the sucker play high-stakes gin rummy. At the next table sits the cheat’s partner smoking a cigar and reading the newspaper with a slit in it. The partner peeks through the slit at the sucker’s cards and signals their value by coughing.”
“The sucker doesn’t notice?”
“Guys who smoke cigars cough a lot. It flies right by the sucker.”
“We should try it in Cancun. Who’s going to feed the fish while we’re gone?”
Cory started to say, “Travis,” but stopped the word from leaving his mouth.
“You think Gabe will do it?” Morris asked.
“The way Gabe feels about me these days, he’ll probably poison them.”
“You really in love with his daughter?”
“It’s starting to feel that way. I’ll find out when I’m in Cancun, see how long it lasts when we’re apart. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Yeah, right.”
Morris suddenly punched the dashboard and yelped in pain.
“Why did you do that?” Cory asked.
“I never should have shot Travis. I should have just let him shoot his mouth off and he would have left. Killing him proved nothing.”
“Travis had it coming. If I’d gotten my hands on the gun, I would have shot him. That asshole was destined to die in our house, so stop flogging yourself.”
More silence. They both were craving a joint. Getting high was how they calmed themselves down. But they’d sworn off the dope, and neither wanted to be the first to bend.
“What are we going to do in Mexico besides get sexually transmitted diseases?”
“A couple of weeks ago, Travis told me about a project he was working on for Billy,” Cory said. “I’m going to ask Billy if we can take it over. It will give us something to do.”
“What kind of project?”
“Travis called it the Same Key project. It’s based upon the principle that companies will cut corners by putting out duplicates under the belief that no one will know. Ford did it years ago when they only put out four keys for their station wagons. Word eventually got out, and Ford got in trouble, but it still goes on.”
“In the casino business, too?”
“Especially in the casino business. Back in the old days, each slot machine needed a key to open it. Several manufacturers cut corners by having a skeleton key that could open all their machines. It worked great, until a gang of cheats made a copy and went around rigging jackpots. The casinos lost a bundle.”
“But that can’t happen now,” Morris said. “Can it?”
“Billy thinks it can. There are more than a hundred thousand slot machines in Vegas and another fifty thousand video poker machines. By law, each machine is required to have its own source code embedded in the EPROM chip that keeps the game from getting corrupted. Billy thinks there are machines out there that share the same codes.”
“These machines would be made by the same company.”
“Correct. It would save them a fortune by sharing codes. The machines would be vulnerable, but they’re banking on the belief that no one will realize what they’ve done.”
“Like Ford.”
“Exactly. Just like Ford.”
Morris was feeling more like himself and sucked on his swollen knuckle. “So how are we going to figure this out while we’re sitting on the beach in Mexico?”
“That’s the fun part. The companies that manufacture the games are publicly held. We look at their quarterly reports and see if any have been reporting unusually high profits. If one is making more money than the others, they’re probably cutting corners and sharing codes.”
“Stock reports,” Morris said.
“You don’t believe me.”
“It sounds far-fetched.”
“Travis said this was the way Lumber Liquidators got caught.”
“Those were the guys who put embalming fluid in the flooring.”
“Right again. A hedge-fund manager analyzed their stock report and didn’t understand why profits were so high. He investigated and found they were putting bad chemicals in their products. Stop sucking your hand. It makes you look like a baby.”
“What happens if we find a company that’s making more money than the others?”
“Billy will buy two of their machines and have Gabe pull out their EPROM chips and see if the codes match. If they do, it’s off to the races, my friend.”
It all sounded fine and dandy, but it didn’t explain how they were going to dispose of Travis without being spotted and going to prison. They were in a heap of trouble if Billy didn’t come to their rescue.
Cory’s cell phone chirped. “It’s Billy,” he said.
Morris tried to eavesdrop, and Cory pushed him away. The call was a short one. Cory hung up and started the car.
“Lock the unit,” Cory said. “Billy’s come up with a plan.”
Thirty-Three
Gabe’s home in Silverado Lakes was the crew’s unofficial meeting place. The neighborhood was sleepy, and the nearby pizza joint delivered.