Super Con

Fifty-Seven

The Nevada Gaming Control Board was nobody’s friend. Over the course of a year, it busted just as many casinos for not paying taxes and money laundering as it did cheats for stealing. Nobody in Vegas liked the gaming board, and that included Falanga and his cohorts. Grimes came around the table to where Mirage’s surveillance team stood. No one shook hands.

“Hello, Special Agent Grimes,” Falanga said, striking a formal tone. “I was just explaining to our suspect how you were reviewing the surveillance tapes and would link him to the card-marking scam at the MGM’s casinos.”

“That was stupid,” Grimes said.

“Is there something wrong?” Falanga said, taken aback.

“Our suspect is a known cheat. The less he is told about our investigation, the better.”

“Sorry,” Falanga said.

Grimes turned his attention to Billy. The special agent’s face was filled with hostility born from a decade of fruitless investigations and botched stakeouts. Ten years of wasted effort was enough to bring out the worst in a man, and Grimes looked bent on revenge.

“This little prick has ripped off every casino in town,” Grimes said. “You name the game, he’s scammed it. Our file on him is as thick as a high school yearbook. We’ve gotten close to nailing his sorry ass plenty of times but always come up short. He’s a goddamn plague.”

Grimes put his hands on the table and let a moment pass. His stare was unrelenting.

“Which is why I’m sorry to tell you he’s not the guy who helped the bag lady mark the cards in your casinos,” Grimes said.

Falanga’s jaw flapped open. “He’s not?”

“No sir. I reviewed the surveillance tapes myself, frame by frame. It’s not him.”

Falanga angrily balled his hands into fists. “But he has to be involved. He was standing behind the table wearing sunglasses each time our casinos got ripped off by one of the football players. He was reading the marks and signaling his partners.”

“Have you been in your poker room lately? Everyone wears sunglasses,” Grimes said. “The fact that this little rat was in your casinos wearing shades doesn’t prove a damn thing. And without proof, I can’t arrest him.”

“You’re letting him go?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

The air trapped in Billy’s lungs slowly escaped. Grimes’s story was total bullshit. The gaming board’s file included Billy’s weight, height, how he walked, shape of his ears, and other salient physical features. Grimes could have matched Billy to the ranch hand seen on the surveillance videos with Mags but had chosen not to, knowing that if Billy got busted, his case against Broken Tooth would get flushed down the toilet, along with his promotion.

Billy rose from his chair. “Can I go?”

“Sit down. We’re not done with you,” Falanga barked.

“Yes we are,” Grimes said.

“But he cheated us!” Falanga said.

“You can’t prove that,” Grimes said. “If you detain him any longer, he’ll have grounds to sue you for false imprisonment.”

If there were a group of people that hated Billy more than the gaming board, it was the town’s surveillance directors. Their efforts to nail Billy had left them with nothing but egg on their faces.

“Get out of here, before I throw you out,” Falanga said, reduced to threats.

An elevator took Billy to the main level. His feet sprouted tiny wings as he walked the concrete sidewalk to the parking garage where his car awaited. He’d once read that getting married and having a kid was the strongest bond two people could share. He didn’t think that was true. The strongest bond two people could share was committing a crime together. When two people broke the law, they shared a singular experience that was theirs and theirs alone. It was a bond stronger than love or blood, and it would never fade. He and Grimes now shared such a bond, and he could only imagine where it would take them.

The Strip was a mob scene, the traffic bumper-to-bumper. It was that way most of the time, yet Billy didn’t care. He drove the Strip whenever he had time to kill, the garish billboards and outrageous people lining the sidewalks making him feel more alive than any place he’d ever been. There was nothing pretty about it, nor did it hold any subtle charms. It was all about the action, and the Strip had more of it than the rest of the cities in the world combined. He got a call from Grimes, his partner in crime.

“Hey boss,” he said by way of greeting.

“You are the definition of a problem,” Grimes said.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Go home and pack yourself a suitcase. You’re taking a trip.”

“I am?”

“The FBI tipped us off that a hired killer from Hong Kong illegally entered the country last night through LAX and is heading to Vegas. There’s a contract out on your life.”

“Broken Tooth?”

“That would be a logical guess. He doesn’t want you testifying against him. I’ll pick you up in front of your place in forty-five minutes.”

“Exactly where am I going?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Should I be scared?”

“I would be.”

He wasn’t afraid of dying, just not today. He departed the Strip at the next intersection and took the back roads home with one eye on his mirror.

He was waiting by the curb in front of his building with a packed suitcase when Grimes pulled up in a Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows. The desert sun was brutal on paint jobs, and the hood was flaking away in large chips. Maybe when Grimes got his promotion he’d lose this piece of junk and get himself a sexy new ride.

Grimes refused to make eye contact as he drove. “You owe me.”

“No kidding,” he said.

“I mean that. We need to come to an understanding.”

“What’s that?”

“You told me the Rebels’ defense said no to fixing the Super Bowl. Then these same players try to rip off the casinos with you in charge. That tells me you’ve corrupted them. I don’t know what your arrangement with them is, and I don’t care. Just keep your nose clean until we bring the case against Broken Tooth and don’t scam any casinos. Because, so help me God, if you get busted, I’ll fuck you.”

There were poker rooms and casinos in every state in the union. If his trip took him to a place where one of these fine establishments existed, and he saw an opportunity to make some money, he wasn’t about to turn his back and walk away.

“Fuck me how?” he asked.

“I’ll put the screws to Maggie. You wouldn’t want that happening, would you?”

“Mags has nothing to do with this,” he said.

“Bullshit. I have more videos of her cheating than I do of my kids growing up. I compared them to the video of the bag lady marking the cards. Same technique. It’s her.”

Billy stared at the white lines in the highway. He liked to think he could weasel his way out of just about any jam. But Mags was not so lucky in that regard, and another encounter with the gaming board would do her in. A plane roared overhead as they neared the airport.

“I won’t scam any casinos until this is over,” he said.

“Glad to hear it. Pick a terminal, and I’ll drop you off,” Grimes said.

He chose Terminal A. Maybe he’d go somewhere warm where there were golf courses so he could hustle some old geezers for pocket change.

“Do you know what this hired assassin looks like?”

Grimes pulled up a photo on his cell phone that showed a thick-faced Chinese male with a unibrow and a snarl as mean as a junkyard dog. He texted it to Billy as he drove.

“Send it to your crew. Just in case,” the special agent said.

“I told you—”

“I know, I know, you don’t have a crew. Do it anyway. This hit man is a member of a secret society based in Hong Kong called the Chinese Assassins Corps. They’ve been murdering people for more than a hundred years and are real pros.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

The Jeep’s front tire kissed the curb. Billy had a thought and said, “Why did MGM decide not to press charges against the football players? They caught them red-handed.”

“MGM got a call that told them to let them go.”

“A call from whom?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, should I?”

Grimes gave him a smug look. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

Grimes was the second person to tell him that. Billy hated to be kept in the dark and decided to press the special agent for an answer. A TSA officer’s whistle cut him short.

“Get out before this asshole tickets me,” Grimes said.

He opened the passenger door and put a foot on the curb. Hoping to bring Grimes’s guard down, he waited a beat before turning around. “Night Train knew he wasn’t going to jail. He even bet me a hundred bucks. How could he know that?”

“You’ll figure it out someday,” Grimes said. “Have a nice trip.”