Jackpot

Chapter 30

Valentine was standing on the side of the highway when his cell phone rang. The caller ID said GERRY. He fumbled hitting the Receive button.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Pop, it’s me.”

Hearing his son’s voice brought a flood of emotions over him that Valentine couldn’t control, and he sat down on the shoulder and began to weep. He hadn’t done that since his wife’s funeral, and the tears burned his eyes.

“You still there, Pop?”

“Yeah,” he choked. “I’m here. Where are you?”

“In a storage facility on the north side of town,” his son said. “I banged on the door, but no one came out. I didn’t see any people when we drove in, so I’m guessing the place is self-serve. I’m going to leave the cell phone on so you can find me.”

A trailer truck appeared on the highway. The driver didn’t slow down, and Valentine guessed it was common to see grown men sitting on the side of the road, bawling their heads off. Rising, he dusted himself off.

“How am I going to do that?”

“Call my cell phone company,” Gerry said. “They’ll know which tower my phone’s signal is originating from. It will be within a five mile radius. Once you know that, the Reno cops can look at all the self-serve storage facilities within that radius.”

Valentine saw another car coming up the road, the driver behind the wheel looking like Bill Higgins. Waving, he said, “How do you know that?”

“I saw it on a cop-show on TV,” his son said.

Valentine said goodbye to his son and killed the connection. Climbing into the passenger seat of Bill’s car, he told him that Gerry was still alive. Then, he explained his son’s clever solution to finding him in the storage facility.

Bill called the Reno police on his cell, and asked them to call Gerry’s cell phone company. Hanging up, he said, “You realize Bronco did this to stall us.”

The same thought had occurred to him. While they were finding Gerry, Bronco would be running away. Bill did a U-turn on the highway, and headed back to Reno. He drove way over the speed limit, the desolate scrub landscape going by in a blur. After a few minutes had passed, Valentine said, “Have I ever told you how smart my son is?”

Bill shook his head.

“Yesterday, when we were at Bronco’s house, Gerry said that he thought your bad agent was stealing jackpots using computers. Well, since there’s no physical way to rig modern slot machines, Gerry must be right. Which led me to realize something. Your bad agent works for Fred Friendly in the Electronic Systems Division.”

Bill looked stunned. “You think the bad agent is in ESD? That’s a stretch, Tony.”

“No, it isn’t. Bronco said this bad agent stole hundreds of jackpots. A field agent couldn’t do that, simply because hundreds of stolen jackpots — even small ones — would be noticed if they occurred in the same part of the state. But, they wouldn’t be noticed if they were spread out across the entire state. Somebody working for ESD could do that.”

Bill’s mouth worked up and down in silent thought.

“You’re right,” he said.

Another minute passed. They could see Reno ahead in the distance, the city a black dot on the brown landscape.

“How many agents work for ESD?” Valentine asked.

“Seventy-five,” Bill said.

“Those are our suspects,” Valentine said.

Gerry had discovered that being a father had its drawbacks. He couldn’t listen to loud music anytime he wanted to, like he had when he was single. So, he’d bought an Ipod, and plugged himself in whenever he got the chance. He was tapping his foot to Arethra Franklin’s soulful singing when his cell phone lit up. He’d turned the car’s interior light off, fearful of the battery dying, and stared at the cell phone’s illuminated face. It was his father.

“Feel up to doing a job?” his father asked.

“I don’t know, I’m kind of busy right now.”

He paused, hoping to hear his father laugh. When he didn’t, Gerry said, “Of course I’ll do a job, Pop.”

“In the trunk are the files of the nine hundred Nevada Gaming Control Board agents,” his father said. “I’ve winnowed the field down to seventy-five.”

“Let me guess,” Gerry said. “You want me to pull those seventy-five out, and find the bad agent.”

“That’s right. Sure you’re up for it?”

Sure you’re up for it? That didn’t sound like his father at all. Maybe saving his old man’s life had erased some of the horrendous crap he’d put his father through over the years. Through the IPOD’s earplugs lying on the seat he could faintly hear Aretha singing about respect, and found himself smiling.

“I’m up for it,” Gerry said.

He hung up, then got the stack of files out of the trunk and returned to the front seat of the car. Leaving the door ajar, he grabbed a handful of files, and began sorting through them. He pulled out every agent who worked for the ESD, and placed those files into a separate stack. When the larger stack was exhausted, he picked up the smaller stack and counted it. Seventy-five files, just like his father had said.

The IPOD was still playing, and he considered plugging himself back in, then decided against it. This was work, and he needed to start acting serious.

He heard the storage unit’s air conditioner come on, and felt the manufactured air cool the car’s interior. His father had once told him that to catch a criminal, you needed to know his motivation. He tried to imagine what the motivation was for a gaming agent to rip off the people he worked for. He’d once had a woman who worked for him as a bartender, and had discovered her stealing money out of the till. When he’d confronted her, he’d discovered that she’d been carrying a grudge because he’d never asked her out. The stealing had nothing to do with money. It was spite. The woman had also taken a lot of sick and vacation days, and worked all the angles.

He thumbed through the stack, and pulled out the file of every agent who’d taken a high number of days off in the past few years. There were seven in all.

He worked through the seven files. Two women and five men. Each had been out of work well above the norm. Maybe they’d been sick, or had to deal with a sick family member. He began to think he was barking up the wrong tree, when a thought occurred to him. If a bad agent was running around Nevada stealing jackpots, that agent needed to be taking time off to engineer those thefts. There was no way around it.

He felt the tingle of excitement. One of these seven agents was their thief. His father was going to be proud of him.

Another first, he thought.