Super Con

Two

Billy headed over to the blackjack pit to see what the trouble was. The Golden Gate’s blackjack tables had maximum bets of a hundred dollars, which was puny for Vegas. Fremont Street attracted a blue-collar crowd, and it was all the traffic would bear.

Travis stood inside the pit, clutching a bottle of Bud. Travis’s job was to watch the action and signal the crew if security swooped in. Billy edged up beside the big man.

“You rang?” he said under his breath.

“False alarm,” Travis said. “I thought a security guy was watching us, but he split. What’s with the fez? You look like an Arab.”

“There’s a Shriner’s convention in town. Everyone getting along?”

“So far, so good. The Boswells are real pros.”

Billy shifted his attention to the five blackjack tables closest to the entrance. At each table a member of his crew sat in the last seat, to the dealer’s right, in the position called third base. A member of the Gypsies sat to the dealer’s left, at a position called first base. The Boswells were betting a hundred dollars a hand, and they were winning big.

That was because Billy’s crew was cheating. Each member had a small mirror concealed in their hand called a shiner. By holding the shiner against the table at an angle and slightly lifting that hand, his crew could secretly glimpse the cards as they came out of the dealing shoe. This let his crew know the value of the dealer’s hand before the dealer did.

His crew signaled this information to the Boswell at their respective tables. The Boswell would play accordingly and rip off the joint. The advantage of having two cheats working a game was that the Boswells could play loose and draw no heat.

Most scams had flaws, and playing the lights was no exception. If a shiner caught the light the wrong way, a reflection would hit the ceiling. These reflections resembled dancing fireflies and were easily spotted by pit bosses.

It was Travis’s job to watch the ceiling. If a dancing firefly appeared, Travis would drop his beer bottle and curse. This was the signal for everyone to clear out.

“You mind covering for me? I need to piss,” Travis whispered.

“Go ahead.”

Travis left. Moments later, a security goon wearing a polyester suit and a cheap tie appeared at Cory’s table. Billy stiffened, believing Cory had exposed the shiner, and the goon had been sent to bust Cory. The goon circled the table, bypassing Cory, and went straight to the Boswell at first base, which happened to be Nico, Victor’s favorite son, and demanded to see Nico’s ID. Nico had on his best choirboy face and handed over his driver’s license. Casinos didn’t interrupt a player unless there was good reason, and Billy got ready to run.

Travis edged up beside him. “The older I get, the better that feels.”

“Pull everyone off the game. Nico got made,” he whispered.

“What did he do?”

“The hell I know. Do it right now.”

He headed for the front doors. He planned to hit the sidewalks on Fremont and find the nearest bar, where he’d make a hasty trip to the men’s room and lose his disguise. Then he’d meet up with Victor and decide how to deal with Nico’s fuckup.

“Wait — the goon’s backing off,” Travis said.

He stopped and turned around. The goon had returned the ID and was patting Nico on the shoulder like it was a big misunderstanding. The storm had passed, but his radar wasn’t coming down. Something was wrong with this picture, and he tried to determine what it was.

Finally, it hit him. The goon was working without backup. That never happened.

Every casino had procedures when dealing with problems. If a player needed to be checked out, two goons were sent. While one goon talked with the player, the second goon acted as backup. If the player tried to run, the second goon would knock him to the floor and sit on him.

There was no backup with Nico. Just the goon in the polyester suit, asking for ID. That told Billy that surveillance had used the opportunity to take high-definition photos of Nico’s face with a pan-tilt-zoom camera. These photos would be run against a database of known cheats in the hopes of making a match. Nico was in surveillance’s crosshairs.

But would they make a match? The Boswells were masters of evading the law, and he wanted to believe that there wasn’t an incriminating photo of Nico on any computer. But as he’d learned long ago, you could never be too careful when it came to stealing.

“Give the signal anyway,” he said.

“You sure?” Travis groaned.

“Damn straight I’m sure. You got a problem with that?”

“We haven’t made any money. I’m a little short this month.”

“Do it anyway.”

As Billy headed out the door, a beer bottle shattered on the floor.

“Aw, shit,” Travis cursed loudly.