Ike and T-Bird were a pair of washed-up jocks and dumber than a box of rocks. Stupid people were easily played. He was going to have fun with those two mutts.
Last was Crunchie, who’d screwed with him in so many ways that Billy had lost count. But there was a reason for it. Age had caught up to the old grifter, and Crunchie no longer had the confidence in himself to do the job that he was asking Billy to do.
Each of them had an Achilles’ heel that he could stick a dagger into and twist around real good. They’d picked the wrong guy to fuck with, and he couldn’t wait to pay them back.
FOURTEEN
At noon the gaming agents broke for lunch. Trays of food were brought up from the jail’s cafeteria that weren’t fit for a dog. Billy thought the session had gone well, and he sipped from a can of ginger ale while watching LaBadie, Zander, and Tricaricco chow down on baloney sandwiches on Wonder Bread and cups of greasy potato salad. Bad food was part of a cop’s daily existence, and the gaming agents made sure to clean their plates.
“You haven’t told us how Maggie Flynn plays into this,” LaBadie asked when they were done. “That was part of our agreement.”
“Mags didn’t come into the picture until Thursday night,” Billy explained. “I didn’t want to jump ahead of myself.”
LaBadie also had a briefcase, although not as pretty as Underman’s. Placing it on the table, he popped it open, and removed a glossy eight-by-ten photograph of Billy and his crew taken inside Galaxy’s employee parking garage a few hours before they ripped the joint off.
“Yesterday afternoon, you and eight other people were secretly photographed by one of our agents inside Galaxy’s employee parking garage before the casino was robbed,” LaBadie said. “We know the two black guys in the photo worked for Doucette. I want you to tell me the other six people’s names.”
“That photograph isn’t want you think,” Billy said.
“Really. Then what is it?”
“Well, I was doing a job for Marcus Doucette. Doucette thought some cheaters were staying in his hotel, and asked me to sniff them out. I asked six friends of mine to help me find them, and on Saturday afternoon we met in the employee garage to talk things over.”
“You honestly don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”
“Ask the woman who runs the bridal shop. Lucille Gonzalez. She knows all about it.”
“This Gonzalez woman will back up your story?”
“Yes, sir.”
LaBadie looked stymied. If Lucille Gonzalez backed up the story-which Billy believed she would, considering how they’d left things-the gaming board would not be able to charge him with conspiracy, which seriously weakened their case against him.
LaBadie pointed at the photo. “These six friends of yours-are they part of your crew?”
“I don’t have a crew,” Billy said.
“Don’t get smart with us, Billy. You’ve been running a crew for years.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You had a crew when we busted you at the Hard Rock. You met with them yesterday afternoon in the employee parking lot, and conspired to rip off Galaxy’s casino.”
“My client was never busted at the Hard Rock,” Underman said.
“He was released on a technicality.”
Billy leaned forward and brought his mouth next to the tape recorder. “For the record, I’ve never had a crew that worked for me, and I wasn’t busted at the Hard Rock, and I did not conspire to rip off Galaxy’s casino with my friends.”
LaBadie looked ready to pull his hair out. Billy decided to shut him down.
“Want to hear the rest of my story?” the young hustler asked.
LaBadie slammed the briefcase and dropped it on the floor. He sat down in his chair hard, making the hinges sing. The expression on his face was anything but friendly.
“Start talking,” the gaming agent said.
FIFTEEN
Billy awoke the next morning sprawled across the leather couch in his living room. His body was a feverish mass of hurt from the beating Ike and T-Bird had inflicted upon him, his skin covered in bruises of every shade, from mauve to lilac to violet to plum.
In the bathroom he downed eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen while examining his face in the mirror. He had the beginnings of a world-class shiner. How did Doucette expect him to impersonate a whale looking like this? His job had just gotten that much tougher.
He kept a collection of designer shades in his bedroom, well over a hundred pairs. He rummaged through them and settled on a pair of mirrored Ray-Bans that could have belonged to Steve McQueen. When he’d first come to Vegas, you couldn’t wear shades inside a casino without drawing heat. Then the poker craze had started, and wearing shades became cool.
In the kitchen he brewed a pot of coffee and drank a cup. It had been years since he’d risen this early. Normally, he slept until noon, exercised in the building’s health club or worked on his golf game, ate an early dinner at a good restaurant, and started swindling the casinos at six, his work lasting until the small hours of the morning. The next three days were going to be different. He was going to have to keep a schedule and follow other people’s rules, no different than a regular job.
The coffee brought him around, and he stared at the coffee grinds swirling in the bottom. Kismet, the religion of all gamblers, was calling to him.
Three days.
There was a significance to that number, an event which occurred every three days inside a casino that had once been very important to him. Now, not as much.
Three days.
A minute slipped away. Nothing clicked.
Casinos were models of efficiency and worked on systems that were predictable and exploitable. Smart cheaters knew these systems inside out, and he was going to kick himself until he remembered what it was that happened every three days inside a casino.
The landline rang. Caller ID said it was Travis. The big man called once a day to talk shop; outside of that, they rarely communicated. Travis had recently gotten hitched and his new wife had two young sons. Karen knew about the thieving but the boys were in the dark, and Travis wanted to keep it that way.
The call went to voice mail. The enormity of Billy’s fuckup suddenly hit him, and he pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down. If he returned the call, Travis would want to know if the heist of Galaxy’s salon was still on, and that would lead to a conversation that Billy wasn’t ready to have. But if he didn’t call back, Travis would get worried, wondering what had happened to him.
The phone rang again. If not now, when? Billy asked himself. He took the receiver out of the cradle and in a calm voice said, “Hey, tough guy.”
“Jesus, Billy, I was starting to think you were in jail or something,” Travis said. “You okay? I called your cell phone, and some asshole answered it, so I hung up.”
Billy shuddered. Crunchie had answered his fucking cell phone. The damage was done, and he was going to have to tell Travis what had gone down last night.
“I had a little problem last night. What are you doing up so early?”
Travis also slept in, and rarely awoke before midafternoon.
“Karen called. Stevie got hit in the face with a soccer ball at school, and she’s taking him to the hospital so they can X-ray his nose. I’m going there once I get off with you.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s a tough little fucker. Oh, shit, there’s Karen calling me. Let’s talk later. I want to hear how things went.”
Breathing room. Billy needed some of that. It would give him time to construct the story he’d tell Travis and the rest of his crew. He started to say good-bye, then remembered that he had a question for the big man. “I need to ask you something. What procedure takes place every three days inside a casino? I know there’s one, but I can’t remember what it is.”