Super Con

Twenty

“Cut!”

Mags stopped in midsentence to stare at her director, a spoiled Hollywood brat named Hudson, Hud for short. Hud had a neatly trimmed goatee and an effeminate silver earring that she would have enjoyed ripping off his pink earlobe. They were on the twelfth take of a scene that a high school senior could have shot on a cell phone.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you’re feeling,” Hud said.

“I’m feeling exhausted, that’s what I’m feeling.”

“I mean in the scene. You’re a blank canvas. I need emotion, Mags.”

She nodded tiredly. The scene called for her to walk across the floor of a busy casino while juggling two simultaneous calls on her cell phone. The first call was to her teenage daughter, with whom she was having a heated argument, the second to her meathead partner, who was constantly screwing up and the source of continual irritation. At the scene’s end, she would spy a casino patron dropping a slug in a slot machine and arrest him.

The scene had seemed easy when she’d read the script; now, not so much. She didn’t have another actor to play off and was struggling to stay in character.

“What are you feeling?” Hud asked.

“I don’t have a clue. Why don’t you give me a hint,” she said.

“You’ve run out of patience with your bitchy daughter, whom you suspect of slipping out at night to go clubbing with her hot boyfriend, and you’d like to take your male chauvinist pig of a partner and close a door on his head. That sound about right?”

“Anger and frustration.”

“There you go. Let’s take it from the top.”

Mags retreated to her starting point. A ponytailed grip stepped in front of her and held up a small board so it faced the camera. “Night and Day, take thirteen, walking through the casino,” the grip announced.

“Action,” Hud said.

She raised the cell phone to her face and started walking toward the camera. If the pilot bombed, she’d have to go back to hustling suckers. She’d just as soon paint houses, and she played back Hud’s advice. Bitchy kid, asshole partner. That shouldn’t be too hard.

“Now you listen to me,” she said to her imaginary daughter. “I know what you’re up to, and I want it to stop. You can’t be going to clubs when you should be home studying. Hold on, I’ve got another call.” Without breaking stride, she punched a button on her phone that allowed her to switch calls. To her imaginary partner she said, “Speak of the devil. Look, Jake, I’m sick of covering for you every time you go on a bender and miss work. Get your sorry ass over here.” Ending the call, she punched the button and returned to her daughter. “You still there? Good. Now here’s the deal. If I catch you skipping out again, you’re grounded for six months.”

She halted at a spot on the carpet with an X made of silver duct tape. The camera was a few feet away, doing a close-up. She put on her best pissed-off mother’s face, then pretended to see a cheating patron putting a slug into a slot machine and said, “I need to run. I’ll bring pizza home for dinner. Good-bye.”

“Cut!” Arms extended, Hud came out of his chair. “Perfect — perfect! That’s what I call acting. Mark my words, you’re going to be a star.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” she said.

Filming a TV show was exhausting, and Mags went to her trailer and lay down on a cot. Amber was arriving tonight, and she wanted to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when her daughter stepped off the plane. A tapping on the door lifted her eyebrows.

“Come on in.”

Rand entered wearing his best smile. The first time they’d met, Mags had fleeced Rand at poker. Instead of getting pissed, Rand had turned on the charm and offered her work. He was a phony, through and through, but he was her phony, so she put up with him.

“Hud said you were fantastic,” Rand said.

“Doing the best I can. What’s up?”

“We have a date with the gaming board. They’re going to give us a tour of the surveillance control room of LINQ’s casino.”

“I’m beat. Why don’t you go, let me get some rest?”

“No can do. You’re playing a gaming agent in the show, and you need to see what these people actually do. Come on, it will be a good learning experience.”

“But I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, the gaming board is the key to our show’s success. If they decide they don’t like us, we’ll have to switch locations.” A plastic bag dangled in his hand, which he placed on the cot. “This was delivered by courier, courtesy of Special Agent Grimes. There was a note asking that I personally give it to you.”

She sat up and had a look inside the bag. The breath caught in her throat.

“What is it?” her producer asked.

“A chip tray,” she said.

“And what is a chip tray?”

Casinos gave chip trays to customers who purchased large amounts of chips, making it easier for the customer to carry around the chips, as opposed to stuffing them in their pockets.

The chip tray Grimes had couriered over had five tubes designed to hold twenty chips, a hundred chips in all. This was the standard size for every Vegas casino. The tray in her hands was altered. Each tube had been ground out with a router so it could accommodate an additional chip.

Mags had once lived in an apartment on the south end of town. Down the hall lived a Mexican girl named Louisa who worked as a cashier at Circus Circus. One night they’d gotten drunk on cheap wine, and Mags had persuaded Louisa to steal a chip tray and bring it home. The next night, Mags had gaffed the tray while explaining the scam to her new partner.

Louisa would keep the tray at her station in the cage. Mags would enter the casino and approach the cage when things were quiet, then pass $2,500 through the bars to Louisa. Louisa would exchange the money for a hundred green chips, which were worth twenty-five dollars apiece. But instead of putting twenty green chips into each tube, Louisa would put twenty-one.

Mags would visit the ladies’ room with the tray, enter a stall, and deposit the five stolen chips into her purse. Then she’d enter the casino and play a slot machine. After an hour, she’d exchange the chips at the cage and leave $125 ahead.

The scam shouldn’t have worked, yet it did. Every transaction inside the cage was videotaped and scrutinized. Only the dopes working surveillance thought a chip tray could hold only a hundred chips, so the scam flew right by them.

They’d pulled the scam twice a week for a year. Mags called it the Rent Scam, since the money went to covering their monthly rent. Every scam had a shelf life, and Mags had decided to retire the scam while they still were ahead.

Or so she’d thought.

If the gaffed tray was any indication, Louisa had found a partner and continued the scam until she got caught. That was how the gaffed tray had ended up in Grimes’s possession.

But how had Frank tied the scam to her? Had Louisa grown a tail and ratted out Mags? That was the logical explanation, and since any videos of the theft from Circus Circus were long gone, Grimes had sent Mags the tray just to rattle her cage.

Frank was being a prick. Nothing new there.

A garbage pail sat in the corner of the trailer. The gaffed tray made a loud bang before falling inside. Mags checked her makeup in the vanity and went to the door.

“Are you going to explain?” Rand asked.

“There’s nothing to explain,” she said. “Let’s go see what the inside of a surveillance room looks like, shall we?”