Her death spiral had started four years ago. She’d been in Atlantic City painting cards at one of Trump’s carpet joints when a square john at her table had alerted security, who’d looked at the surveillance tapes and arrested her. Instead of copping a plea and doing time in a country club prison, she’d skipped bail and moved to Sin City and set up shop.
It had worked for a while. She’d cheated the casinos and flown under the radar and life had been good. She’d gotten set up in a condo, had a closet filled with nice clothes, and took an occasional vacation to the warm beaches of Cancún.
Her undoing had come two years later. Her daughter was graduating high school and Mags had decided to call her. Her grandparents had raised Amber, and she hardly knew her own kid. She’d let the call drag on, never guessing Amber’s phone was tapped. An hour after hanging up, two Metro LVPD cruisers had invaded her drive, and her life on the lam had ended.
Right before trial, Frank had paid her a visit in the county lockup and offered her an undercover job with the gaming board in return for dropping the charges. Frank was comic-book ugly and had no class. She couldn’t see herself doing it, and said no.
If nothing else, Frank was persistent. He showed her a letter from a female inmate incarcerated in a notorious prison called Ely. In the letter, the woman stated that rotting in hell was better than her situation and that by the time her family read this, she’d be dead. Then Frank showed Mags a photograph of the woman hanging from a bedsheet. Mags caved, and a snitch was born.
Frank came inside. He glanced guiltily between her legs before sitting down.
“Ready to go another round, big boy?” she asked playfully.
“You’re in real trouble,” he said.
“How about a blow job?”
“Stop talking like that.”
“It never bothered you before. You want it-I can see it in your face.”
She crawled across the carpet on her knees, ready to go down on him. She looked into his eyes for compliance, and he pushed her away.
“You promised me you’d keep your nose clean,” he said.
She returned to her chair. “I must have forgotten.”
“I’m paying you five grand a month-isn’t that enough?”
“I can always use a little more.”
“I sent you into Galaxy’s casino to find a drug dealer named Reverend Rock. You weren’t supposed to scam the joint, you stupid bitch.”
His voice was turning harsh. If she wasn’t careful, he’d start slapping her around if the answers she gave him didn’t ring true. She closed her bathrobe. “You told me Rock’s game was blackjack, so I sat down at a game, thinking he might show his face. I started cheating without realizing it. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s just habit. Then a cocktail waitress asks me if I want a drink. I say no, and she gives me the brush.”
“A cocktail waitress made you?”
“Another hustler paid her to do it.”
“You ran into another hustler?”
“That’s right. Name’s Billy Cunningham. I knew him when he was a kid.”
“Billy Cunningham saved your ass?”
“You know him?”
“I nearly nailed that little fucker at the Hard Rock, and he turned the tables on me. If I ever catch him, I’ll put him away for the rest of his life.”
Mags grew quiet. She was joining Billy’s crew, to hell with her deal with Frank. Billy had offered her a fresh start, something she’d been trying to do since the quarterback of the high school football team had knocked her up in his car, and she’d quit school to have Amber, and her life had become one long slippery slope of failure and brushes with the law. She hadn’t thought there was a way to climb out of the hole she’d dug for herself, and then Billy had said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” and it had all changed.
“Okay, finish your story,” Frank said.
“The cocktail waitress gives me the brush, so I ditched my disguise in the restroom and ran. I’m outside waiting for you when Cunningham comes out. We went inside to a bar and had a drink. He told me the people running Galaxy were bad news, and that they’d kill me if they caught me. He told me never to come back.”
“Think he was protecting you?”
“I guess.”
“Does he have the hots for you?”
“Probably. I turned on his love light a long time ago.”
“Did you fuck him?”
“For Christ’s sake, he was fifteen years old.”
“What was he doing in Galaxy? Running a scam?”
“He didn’t say. I got the impression he was doing a job for them.”
“He wouldn’t be the first criminal on Doucette’s payroll.”
Frank stared absently into space, processing the things she’d said. In a moment of weakness after sex, he’d told her that millions in drug money was being laundered through Galaxy’s casino by a dealer out of LA named Rock, and that the gaming board had gathered enough evidence to raid the place, and that they wanted Rock on the premises to make the case stick. How Billy’s working for Doucette played into this was anyone’s guess, although she felt certain that Frank would figure it out. Frank always did. It just took a little time.
She went to the minibar and fixed a Jack and Coke extra strong. Kneeling beside his chair, she served him, and his cop mask melted away. If she didn’t ask him now, she’d never find out.
“Tell me what Cunningham did to you at the Hard Rock,” she said.
Frank had been chasing Billy for a while. Whenever Billy was in a casino, money flew out the door, a sure sign that cheating was taking place.
Gaming agents were rated by the number of busts they made. To accomplish this task, agents could freeze games in casinos, enter restricted areas, and tap phone lines of employees and guests. They had unlimited authority and did not hesitate to use it.
Frank had gone around town and given Billy’s head shot to several casinos and asked them to videotape Billy if the young hustler showed his face.
Eventually, Billy appeared in one of the casinos and was taped. Frank studied the tape and determined that Billy and his crew were bringing gaffed dice onto the craps table. Billy’s crew was slicker than snot on a brass doorknob, and no jury would convict them based upon the fuzzy images on the tape. To make an arrest stick, Frank would have to catch them red-handed.
Frank did some more digging and learned that Billy lived in a luxury condo at Turnberry Towers, even though the condo was in someone else’s name. He got a warrant from a judge to tap Billy’s phone and for several weeks listened to Billy’s calls.
Everyone slipped up, even the smart ones. One day while talking to a friend, Billy mentioned wanting to check out the Rehab pool, which was part of the Hard Rock. The remark made Frank believe that Billy had the Hard Rock in his sights and was planning to rip it off.
Frank decided to set a trap and camped out in the Hard Rock’s surveillance room, living on sandwiches and black coffee. His intuition paid off. Two days later, Billy and his crew appeared in the Hard Rock’s craps pit and started scamming. Frank alerted casino security and went downstairs. He was determined to catch Billy with the gaffed dice, and parked himself directly outside the front entrance.
A few minutes later, Billy came through the front doors, his right hand cupped by his side. Frank approached in his rumpled suit and two-day-old beard. Smelling a cop, Billy tried to run. Frank drew his sidearm and took dead aim at the young hustler.
“Don’t tempt me,” he said.
The Hard Rock’s entrance was distinguished by a giant neon electric guitar balanced atop a rectangular concrete awning. Drawing his right hand back, Billy made a heaving motion at the awning. The bottom dropped out of Frank’s stomach. He grabbed Billy’s arm and shook open his hand. The gaffed dice were gone and so was Frank’s case.