“That’s a lot of money. Did he steal it in cash or chips?” he asked.
“Cash.”
“Did he bring a bag with him?” he asked.
“Yeah. Flipped it to the cashier, had her fill it up. He came prepared.”
Casinos got robbed every day, mostly by their own staff. Dealers stole chips off the games and hid them in secret pockets on their uniforms called subs, while technicians filched handfuls of silver dollars while emptying out slot machines. Thefts committed by outsiders were different. Usually it came in the form of the thief stealing a woman’s purse, a bucket of coins, or a man’s wallet. What Ike had just described was neither of these things. Or perhaps, it was a combination of both.
The door to the suite banged open, and Shaz made her entrance, dressed in a glittering hostess costume and a fake casino smile.
“Where’s old smelly?” she asked.
“On the balcony talking to the boss,” Ike said.
“Has he figured out how we got robbed?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Ike said.
“That son of a bitch is out there, having a laugh at our expense,” she said. “If I ever get my hands on that skinny bastard, I’ll kill him. You’re a thief-tell me how we catch this guy.”
She was looking at Billy as she spoke these words. It occurred to him that the theft would be figured out eventually, either by a smart cop or a gaming agent. It was too obvious not to be. Better for him to do it, and get something in return, he decided.
“I can catch him, if you want,” he said.
“Aren’t we being cute.”
“I can.”
“Don’t fuck with me, you little shit.”
“I’ll figure it out in ten minutes.”
She drew closer, her nose sniffing the air. “You smell like perfume. What have you been doing, banging one of your babes?”
“You want me to help you or not?”
“So sensitive. Men are stupid when they’re getting pussy. Yes, I want you to help me.”
“Show me the surveillance tape, and I’ll tell you how to find your thief.”
“You can do that?”
He nodded. He was 99 percent certain of how the theft had gone down; seeing the surveillance tape would only confirm it. Shaz produced a smartphone and punched an app. A surveillance tape of Galaxy’s cage played on the small screen. A skinny motorcycle dude wearing a helmet with a black visor came up to the bars and stuck a.45 in the face of an older female cashier with a beehive hairdo. A cloth bag was pushed through the bars, and the cashier stuffed it with money and passed the bag back through. The motorcycle dude disappeared, and the cashier sounded the alarm.
He looked up into Shaz’s cold blue eyes. “Cashier’s involved.”
“Give me a break. You can tell that by watching one time?”
“It’s obvious, if you know what to look for.”
“Show me.”
Watching the tape again, he said, “There are three bill drawers inside the cage. The drawer directly beneath the bars contains singles, fives, tens. The next drawer contains twenties and fifties, and the last drawer contains hundreds. Watch the cashier when she’s given the bag. She goes directly to the hundreds drawer. Another cashier would have dumped stacks of twenties into the bag, and only taken the hundreds if your thief had told her to. Your cashier’s part of it.”
Shaz lowered the phone and looked at him, still not quite there.
“The tip-off was the score. You can’t steal a hundred grand without inside help,” he said.
“So you knew it before I showed you the tape.”
“I had a good idea. The tape confirmed what I knew.”
“Why didn’t that asshole Crunchie see this?”
“Maybe he needs a new pair of glasses.”
She let out a mean little laugh, leaned in as if to kiss him; instead she sank her teeth into his earlobe and tugged it hard, sending him to the floor. A different kind of mating ritual, he supposed. Going to the slider, she banged on it with her fist. Crunchie came inside, red-faced from the tongue-lashing he’d just received.
“Pretty boy figured it out,” she said. “We need to tell Marcus.”
The look on Crunchie’s face said he wanted to kill Billy. Shaz went to the door and the old grifter followed her liked a whipped pup. She turned before going out.
“Stay here,” she told the punishers, “and don’t take your eyes off this little bastard.”
EIGHTEEN
Billy and the punishers watched The Price Is Right in the suite. Soon, they’d get a call telling them the guilty cashier and her partner had been arrested and the stolen loot recovered. A couple of hours at most, he guessed.
Billy felt certain about this, because he knew how the town worked. In Vegas, the only thing that mattered was the money generated by the casinos. Vegas had no industry, no port to ship out of, no mini-Silicon Valley to attract venture capital. Without the casinos’ uninterrupted cash flow, the beautiful golf courses would turn brown, the hotels would go ominously dark, and ninety thousand workers would end up singing the blues in the unemployment lines.
The guilty cashier was in a world of trouble. It would start with the cops going to her house, arresting her, and tearing her place apart. If the stolen money wasn’t found, they’d sit the cashier down and threaten her. If she refused to talk, handcuffs would be slapped on her wrists so tightly that the circulation would be cut off, and she’d be taken outside and shoved into the back of a cruiser, windows up, with no AC, where she’d be left to bake for a while.
The cashier would eventually break down-they always did-and roll on her accomplice. The cops would drive straight to the accomplice’s house and repeat the ritual until the stolen money was recovered. Only then would the suspects be taken to jail and booked and be given an opportunity to call their lawyers.
That was how the system worked. Anyone who robbed a casino in Vegas was treated worse than a rabid dog. There were no exceptions to these rules.
The landline in the suite rang. Ike answered it, then hung up.
“Doucette wants to talk to you. You were right about the cashier,” Ike said.
“Did he tell you who the accomplice was?” he asked.
“Sure did,” Ike said.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Figure it out yourself.”
Ike was being a prick and not sharing information, a typical trait of lowlifes.
“It was the cashier’s son,” Billy said.
“How the hell did you know that?” Ike asked.
“Her age. She’s in her late fifties; the dude wearing the motorcycle helmet had the body of a guy in his twenties. Not her boyfriend or her husband, must be her son.”
Ike rocked back on his heels. “That’s fucked,” he said.
To reach the penthouse, Ike had to punch a five-digit code into the elevator’s keypad, a feat that took several tries before he got the combination right.
“You took too many hits to the head,” T-Bird told him.
“That’s ’cause I played more than you,” Ike said.
The delay gave Billy a chance to take a closer look at the two men. Both wore tailored clothes, black limited-edition Rolexes, and enough jewelry to make a pawnbroker hard. They dressed like players, and he wondered how much Doucette was paying them. Fifty grand a year? Sixty? A decent salary, but not enough to pay for the threads and the bling. The real money was coming from ripping people off, the way they’d done to him last night.
Doucette was on a call as they entered, his wife hovering behind him. The casino boss motioned toward the chair in front of his desk, which Billy took. Crunchie had been banished to the other side of the office and stood glum-faced, Stetson in hand.
“Please give my thanks to the sheriff for handling this in such a professional and timely manner,” Doucette gushed into the phone, sounding like a used-car salesman. “You guys are the best, and I sincerely mean that. If there’s anything I can do for the department, don’t hesitate to give me a call. My door is always open for you. Thanks again. Have a great day.”