Super Con

One

Sunday, two weeks before the Super Bowl

Fremont Street was the armpit of Las Vegas, with more derelicts and hookers than you could shake a policeman’s nightstick at. It was also home to a dozen no-frills casinos with two-buck beers and penny slot machines.

Tonight’s target was the Golden Gate, the oldest joint in town. Billy’s crew was working the scam along with a crew called the Gypsies. Six members of Billy’s crew and six members of the Gypsy clan made a dozen cheats ripping off one poor casino. The Golden Gate didn’t have a prayer.

Billy had never worked a scam with another crew, but this was a special occasion. In two short weeks during Super Bowl weekend, the combined crews would pull a heist with a potential payday in the millions of dollars. It was called a super con and worth the extra effort.

Super cons were different from regular cons. A regular con could be pulled many times, a super con only once. Once a casino determined how it had been ripped off by a super con, the other joints in town were notified in order to stop it from happening again.

Before the super con went down, the two crews needed to get acquainted. As a test run, Billy had decided they should pull a scam called playing the lights on the Golden Gate, which required plenty of cooperation. If the crews could pull this off, the super con would be easy.

Billy was the captain of his crew. Because the casinos knew him, he wore disguises during jobs. Tonight’s getup consisted of a baseball cap, nonprescription glasses called zeros, and a rubber tire beneath his shirt. As another precaution, he entered a casino twenty minutes after his crew. To kill time now, he decided to try out the zip line on Fremont Street. It looked like a pure adrenaline rush, and right up his alley.

“Sure you don’t want to join me?” he asked.

Leon, his African American limo driver, shook his head. Billy had recently started giving Leon a cut from each job to ensure Leon’s silence if they got busted. Leon was living large and loving it.

“No thanks, boss. I’m afraid of heights.”

Billy’s cell phone rang. He was hoping the caller was an old flame named Maggie Flynn. He liked to think Mags still cared about him, but maybe he was kidding himself. When it came to love, he was a sucker, just like everyone else. He answered with a cheery “Hello.”

The caller was male and spoke with an Asian accent. “Cunningham? My name Wan Kuok-koi. People call me Broken Tooth. You know who I am?”

Some names rang bells. Others set off fire alarms. Broken Tooth was a Chinese gangster who ran a gang of Triads. Prostitution, loan-sharking, and contract killing paid the bills, but the big profits came from gambling. Billy wondered what had brought him to this side of the pond. “Sure do. I’m busy right now. Let’s talk some other time.”

“We talk now,” Broken Tooth insisted. “I got a job for you, make us both rich.”

“What kind of job?”

“No discuss over phone. We meet up, and I explain the deal.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll call you back in the morning.”

“No good. We meet tonight.”

There was desperation in Broken Tooth’s voice, and Billy guessed the guy was broke. Normally, he had a soft spot for hustlers down on their luck, only this joker was out of line. “Listen, pal. I’m working right now. We’ll get together tomorrow, and I’ll buy you lunch.”

Broken Tooth cursed him. Billy had heard enough and said, “Lose my number,” and hung up. To the tattooed attendant running the zip line he said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Which did you pay for, the zip or the zoom?” the attendant asked.

“The zoom. I heard that was the way to go.”

“Only if you want to be a superhero. Put on this uniform.”

He climbed into the flight uniform and zipped up the front. “This feels tight.”

“It’s supposed to feel tight,” the attendant said. “If it were loose, you’d fall out and plunge to your death. Lie down on the table so I can strap you in.”

He lay on his stomach on the table in the room’s center. The attendant attached hooks on the back of the uniform to a thick metal cable that ran the length of Fremont Street, which let riders exceed forty miles per hour while dangling in the air like Peter Pan.

“Has anyone ever fallen?” he asked.

“Not recently,” the attendant said.

“You sure about this, boss?” Leon asked.

“Damn straight,” he said. “See you back at the limo.”

The attendant flipped a switch. The wall in front of the table lowered, and a blast of cold air invaded the room. He felt like he was about to be shot out of a cannon, and he took a deep breath. The attendant gave him a gentle push, and he slid off the table and flew headfirst down Fremont while dangling from the cable. His heart was racing, and down below he spied the break-dancers and half-naked women hustling tourists for tips. It was as sleazy as a carnival sideshow, and he wouldn’t have traded it for any city in the world.

At the ride’s end was a landing platform. A female attendant unstrapped him, and he stepped out of his uniform, his skin tingling from the adrenaline rush. If he ever hooked up with Mags again, he’d make sure to bring her here.

Taking the elevator to the street, he encountered his first problem. The Shriners were in town for a convention, the sidewalks teeming with drunks wearing maroon fezzes. Instead of blending in, he was going to stand out like a sore thumb in his disguise.

He ducked into a shop called Hats R Us. When he emerged, he was wearing a fez with a tassel and looked like the rest of the gang. Except he needed a drink. Inside a dive called Mermaids, he purchased a strawberry daiquiri. Fremont Street had the market cornered on bad food, and the bartender tried to talk him into an order of deep-fried Twinkies, but he took a pass.

Drink in hand, he entered the Golden Gate. It was a low-ceilinged joint and very loud. He found Victor Boswell, the leader of the Gypsy clan, in the back playing a slot machine, a carved walking stick propped against his chair. He took the chair beside the older man.

“I won a hundred-dollar jackpot earlier,” Victor said with a laugh.

“Dinner’s on you,” he said.

“That won’t pay for appetizers. Whatever happened to the endless buffets the casinos used to serve? I used to take my family to them all the time. Saved me a fortune.”

“Gone but not forgotten.”

“I’ve been watching your crew. You’ve schooled them well. The big guy’s got it down pat. What’s his deal?”

“Travis dealt blackjack at Palace Station and was cheating on the side. He was about to get promoted to pit boss when I recruited him.”

“You’ve got to be sharp to be a pit boss.”

“Travis has eyes in the back of his head. He’s also good under fire.”

“I like him.” Victor fished some coins out of his bucket and fed them into the machine. “The girls are also good. So’s the fat guy. The two punks, I’m not so sure about.”

Victor was talking about Cory and Morris, the screwup kings. Cory and Morris were reformed potheads, or so they’d led Billy to believe.

“What did they do?” Billy asked.

“Nothing. They know how to move.”

“Then what’s bothering you?”

“Their appearance.”

Cory and Morris had to be two of the most innocent-looking cheats in town; it was one of the reasons Billy had recruited them into his crew. “What’s wrong with their appearance?”

“They barely look legal,” Victor explained. “Caesars got in trouble for letting underage kids play in their poker room, so the casinos are carding anyone who doesn’t look old enough. I should know; it happened to my daughter Kat.”

Cheats had to look unspectacular when doing business inside a casino. A cheat needed to blend in and avoid scrutiny. To be remembered often spelled disaster down the road.

“I’ll give them a makeover,” Billy said.

His cell phone vibrated. Travis had texted him.

“Something’s up. Let me go check on the troops.”

“Look at that, I hit another jackpot,” Victor said.