Take Down

EIGHTEEN

Billy and the punishers watched The Price Is Right in the suite. Soon, they’d get a call telling them the guilty cashier and her partner had been arrested and the stolen loot recovered. A couple of hours at most, he guessed.

Billy felt certain about this, because he knew how the town worked. In Vegas, the only thing that mattered was the money generated by the casinos. Vegas had no industry, no port to ship out of, no mini-Silicon Valley to attract venture capital. Without the casinos’ uninterrupted cash flow, the beautiful golf courses would turn brown, the hotels would go ominously dark, and ninety thousand workers would end up singing the blues in the unemployment lines.

The guilty cashier was in a world of trouble. It would start with the cops going to her house, arresting her, and tearing her place apart. If the stolen money wasn’t found, they’d sit the cashier down and threaten her. If she refused to talk, handcuffs would be slapped on her wrists so tightly that the circulation would be cut off, and she’d be taken outside and shoved into the back of a cruiser, windows up, with no AC, where she’d be left to bake for a while.

The cashier would eventually break down-they always did-and roll on her accomplice. The cops would drive straight to the accomplice’s house and repeat the ritual until the stolen money was recovered. Only then would the suspects be taken to jail and booked and be given an opportunity to call their lawyers.

That was how the system worked. Anyone who robbed a casino in Vegas was treated worse than a rabid dog. There were no exceptions to these rules.

The landline in the suite rang. Ike answered it, then hung up.

“Doucette wants to talk to you. You were right about the cashier,” Ike said.

“Did he tell you who the accomplice was?” he asked.

“Sure did,” Ike said.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Figure it out yourself.”

Ike was being a prick and not sharing information, a typical trait of lowlifes.

“It was the cashier’s son,” Billy said.

“How the hell did you know that?” Ike asked.

“Her age. She’s in her late fifties; the dude wearing the motorcycle helmet had the body of a guy in his twenties. Not her boyfriend or her husband, must be her son.”

Ike rocked back on his heels. “That’s fucked,” he said.

To reach the penthouse, Ike had to punch a five-digit code into the elevator’s keypad, a feat that took several tries before he got the combination right.

“You took too many hits to the head,” T-Bird told him.

“That’s ’cause I played more than you,” Ike said.

The delay gave Billy a chance to take a closer look at the two men. Both wore tailored clothes, black limited-edition Rolexes, and enough jewelry to make a pawnbroker hard. They dressed like players, and he wondered how much Doucette was paying them. Fifty grand a year? Sixty? A decent salary, but not enough to pay for the threads and the bling. The real money was coming from ripping people off, the way they’d done to him last night.

Doucette was on a call as they entered, his wife hovering behind him. The casino boss motioned toward the chair in front of his desk, which Billy took. Crunchie had been banished to the other side of the office and stood glum-faced, Stetson in hand.

“Please give my thanks to the sheriff for handling this in such a professional and timely manner,” Doucette gushed into the phone, sounding like a used-car salesman. “You guys are the best, and I sincerely mean that. If there’s anything I can do for the department, don’t hesitate to give me a call. My door is always open for you. Thanks again. Have a great day.”

Doucette ended the call. Justice had been served, and the casino boss was happy with the outcome. Billy hated to burst his bubble but did so anyway. The more information he could feed Doucette, the more level the playing field became between them.

“You’re not going to get all of it back,” he informed him.

Doucette’s smile evaporated. “I’m not?”

“No. You might as well know now.”

“The cops are going to take a cut, is that the deal?”

“Afraid so.”

“Is there anything I can do about it?”

“Not really.”

“Is that true?” Doucette asked Crunchie.

“Billy’s telling you the truth,” the old grifter said from across the room.

“How much will they take?”

“Fifteen, maybe twenty grand,” Billy said.

“That’s highway robbery.”

“Think of it as a handling fee.”

“You trying to be funny?”

“I’m just telling you how things work, that’s all. You’re new to town.”

“What do they do, split it up among themselves?” Doucette asked, curious now.

How the Metro LVPD chopped up their ill-gotten gains was their business, and Billy said, “I have no idea. Look on the bright side. In the old days, they’d have taken half.”

“You’re shitting me. Did they do that to the mob?”

“Sure. Despite what people think, the mob never ran this town. The sheriff’s department did, and still does.”

Doucette was getting a deal; he just didn’t know it. From his desk drawer he removed the gaffed Slots A Fun chip and the gaffed cigarette pack and tossed them on the desk. “I want to go over our deal again so we’re clear. In return for you stopping the Gypsies from scamming me, I’ll give you your toys back, and I’ll have my people erase the surveillance tapes of you using your mirror at our blackjack tables. That sound right to you?”

“What about my crew?” Billy asked.

“Crunchie has their names on a slip of paper,” Doucette said. “He’ll tear it up, and your friends will be home free. Now, are we in agreement?”

“Sounds good to me,” he said.

“You’re going to be given free rein to walk around my casino,” the casino boss went on. “You’ll get twenty grand in chips to play with, which you’ll turn in each night. We’ll be watching you every minute so make sure you behave. If you try to swindle me, my wife and I are going to flip a coin to see who beats you to death with a baseball bat. I’m not kidding. I know you just saved me a lot of money, but that doesn’t give you a license to rip me off. Keep your nose clean, and I won’t hurt you.”

Billy knew they’d do it, too, and wondered if they’d film it and watch it on the big flat screen in their bedroom while they snorted cocaine and screwed.

“I won’t rip you off, and that’s a promise,” he said.

Doucette motioned for his guest to rise. Billy stood up.

“Lose the shades,” the casino boss said.

Billy did as told. Doucette shook his head disapprovingly. “Can’t have you walking around my casino looking like that. Honey, can you make him look pretty again?”

Shaz’s eyes were glistening, and she seemed to be getting off on the miserable state of Billy’s appearance.

“I can try,” she said.

“Did you ever hustle?” he asked.

They were back in his suite, Shaz next to him in a chair, applying pancake to his bruises and his black eye, her tits in his face, her breath hot and, no doubt, filled with plans. Either she would get him in the sack or she’d bash his brains in with a baseball bat; it didn’t seem to matter, just as long as she got him in the end.

“For Christ’s sake, sit still,” she said.

“Did you?” he asked again.

“You think I was a hooker?” she said, not sounding the least bit offended.

“I meant as a grifter.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you did. You fooled me last night at the hostess stand. I never saw it coming.”

She gave a sweet little laugh that didn’t resemble the monster he knew. “I used to strip at a men’s club called Jumbo’s Clown Room in LA. I took home more money than any other girl at the club. Does that make me a hustler?”

“You got suckers to part with their money. What else did you do?”

“You talk too much. Shut up before I poke your eye out.”

She dabbed his face with a small sponge and kept breathing on him. On the other side of the suite, Ike and T-Bird shared the couch, talking in a conspiratorial tone. Plotting their next rip-off, he guessed. Crunchie was outside on the balcony on his cell phone. His story about his long-lost daughter was half true. He had a drug-addicted twenty-six-year-old son in Seattle he’d recently become acquainted with, and his son had called his father to beg for money, putting the old grifter in a foul mood.

“You know how I figured it out?” he said. “It was the way you handled me. You never missed a beat, didn’t give me a reason to be suspicious. You did more than just strip, didn’t you?”

“How’d you like me to bite your tongue out?” she asked.

“Before or after we fuck?”

“Aren’t we clever? Now shut up and let me finish.”

She went back to repairing his face. Her breathing had become accelerated and her nostrils were flared. She was wound way too tight, and Billy waited for her to calm down before he spoke again.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll get Ike and T-Bird liquored up tonight, and they’ll tell me. I’d rather hear it from you.”

She put the pancake down and rested her elbows on the arm of his chair, so close that he could have kissed her. “Why do you fucking care? What’s in it for you?”

“I want to know who I’m dealing with, that’s all.”

“All right, here it is. I got tired of stripping and started moving blow. I dealt with people scarier than anybody you could ever dream of. Mexican cartels, guys that would cut your head off and stick it on a pole if you looked at them cross-eyed. I was good at it. Real good at it.”

“How long were you in the game?”

“Five years. It taught me a lot.”

“Do you miss it?”

“It wasn’t that kind of work.”

Before he could ask another question, she put her finger to his lips, silencing him.

“I dig you and so does Marcus, even if you are a sneaky little shit. We both think there’s a place for you in the organization. Just keep your hand out of the cookie jar, and find the Gypsies before they scam us. When this is over, we’ll talk again. That sound good to you?”

He mouthed the word okay. Ike and T-Bird weren’t paying attention and Crunchie remained on the balcony getting worked over by his long-lost son. The landscape had shifted and they’d missed it. She took her finger away and planted a kiss on his lips, sealing the deal.