Take Down

TWENTY-ONE

The GM was in the hall when they emerged. Seeing something in Billy’s face that tipped him off, the GM rolled his eyes.

“Thanks for the office,” Shaz said in passing.

“Hope you found what you were looking for,” the GM said.

“Watch your mouth,” she warned him.

Billy followed her down the aisle past the sales cubicles. The heady rush of their sex was starting to fade, and he found himself wondering if he’d just dug his own grave. Illicit sex was one of those things you couldn’t hide forever. If the GM had figured out the score, so would Ike and T-Bird. It was only a matter of time before the news filtered back to Doucette, and he would make Billy pay for cheating with his wife. They came to the door that led back to the hotel lobby.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

“Because you turn me on,” she said.

“What I’m asking you is, why there? You had to know how dangerous it was. Why not an empty hotel room? It would have been safer.”

“Safe is for cowards.”

“You could have gotten us both in trouble.”

“The fuck I care.”

“Let me rephrase that. You could have gotten me killed.”

“Something tells me you would have talked your way out of it.”

Laughing at him with her eyes, she entered the lobby. The punishers lurked nearby, the hotel’s guests avoiding them as if they were carrying the plague.

“Call me if you get lonely tonight. My husband’s a heavy sleeper,” she said.

“I just might do that. Listen, I need a favor from you.”

“Name it, lover boy.”

“I want to get new threads for Sanford and Son, something to soften the blow. Chinos, maybe a couple of nice Tommy Bahama shirts. Where should I go?”

She cast a discerning eye at the punishers. “You want to give them a marketing makeover, turn them into a pair of dopey tourists?”

“That was the general idea.”

“There’s a men’s clothing store next to the casino called Threads. Pick some clothes off the discount racks and charge them to your room. Are you going to call me?”

“You’re an animal, you know that?”

“I know what turns me on.”

“You’re forgetting one little fact. Your husband is watching me twenty-four-seven. I can’t just slip out of my suite without being spotted.”

“For a bullshitter, you sure don’t know it when you hear it. Marcus doesn’t have the time to monitor your suite; he’s got a casino to run. Now, will you call me or not?”

Billy had just learned something important. If Marcus wasn’t watching him, he could get into all sorts of trouble and not get tagged.

“Give me your number,” he said.

She gave Billy her number.

“You’d better not forget,” she said, and walked away.

Every Strip casino operated high-end retail stores that sold brand-name watches, glittering jewelry, and designer clothes for prices 50 percent higher than the street. Suckers who won a few bucks at the tables entered these shops still high on their luck and got their pockets picked.

Galaxy’s shops had been designed to resemble a trendy block along Rodeo Drive. Threads was the largest, its splashy windows filled with the latest men’s fashions sans price tags. A sign in the window said they were closed. Movement in the rear of the store said otherwise, and Billy banged on the door. From the back appeared an animated tailor with pins stuck in his mouth. The tailor waved his visitors away before disappearing.

Billy fumed. He needed to get this done. Taking out his room key, he slid it into the vertical crack between the door and doorjamb, then bent the key in half, forcing it under the angled end of the bolt. He did this while leaning against the door. It popped open.

“Teach us that,” T-Bird said.

“He just did,” Ike said.

Billy entered and went straight to the rack of Bottega Veneta thousand-dollar shirts, to hell with the discounted crap, and searched for labels marked “XXL.” If Doucette was too busy to watch him, he was going to take advantage of it. For Ike, he picked a canary-yellow gabardine shirt with a Parma collar, for T-Bird, an embroidered white number with mother-of-pearl buttons.

“Try these on,” he said.

The punishers got undressed in the center of the aisle and tried on the new shirts. The tailor emerged from the back.

“Store’s closed. You come back later,” the tailor said in clipped English.

“We’ll be done in a minute,” he said.

“No-you leave now!”

The expression on the tailor’s face bordered on sheer terror, and Billy realized he’d stepped into a bad situation. From the rear of the store came a man’s booming voice.

“Didn’t I tell you, no fucking customers in the store while I got fitted?”

The tailor crossed himself. The pins began falling out of his mouth.

“That sounds like Reverend Rock,” Ike said.

“I thought he was in LA,” T-Bird said.

“Must have decided to check the place out,” Ike said.

Billy had been raised a Catholic and knew that the reverend rock was where the Virgin Mary had rested before reaching Bethlehem and giving birth to the baby Jesus. It was also a derogatory name used to describe a certain type of black sociopath who was best left alone.

He shoved the tailor. “Go take care of him.”

Too late. With the magnitude of Godzilla descending upon downtown Tokyo, Reverend Rock emerged from a fitting room wearing a billowing purple shirt and cuffed dress pants. Big and round, with a shaved head and a grill of hideous gold teeth, Rock walked with the aid of a knotty stick with a polished silver handle in the shape of a human skull. It was not uncommon for casinos to fly drug dealers into town by private jet, ferry them to the hotels, and stick them in private villas hidden away from the prying eyes of the law. The only time these guests showed their faces was late night in the casinos; otherwise, they didn’t exist. Flanking Rock were two slender Hispanic females wearing black leather with teardrop tattoos beneath their eyes. The tattoos were the mark of female assassins, or what the Mexicans called Las Tinkerbells.

Rock zeroed in on Billy. “Who are you?”

“Billy Cunningham.”

“What’s a Billy Cunningham?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be.”

“Don’t get cute with me. See the sign in the window? Store’s closed.”

“We’re here to get some shirts.”

“You don’t listen, and you don’t read signs.”

“How about I buy you a drink, and we’ll call it a day,” Billy said, wanting to diffuse the situation and get out of the store.

“I don’t drink,” the drug dealer said, his tone not softening.

“Can I buy a bottle of champagne for your beautiful friends?”

“They don’t drink, either.”

“This is Vegas, man. Everyone drinks.”

“Your jokes don’t amuse me, or your fucking mouth.”

Rock slapped the stick against the palm of his hand. Back when Billy was hustling fake watches to suckers in Providence, he’d made the acquaintance of several drug dealers. To a man, they’d all carried a weapon, be it a knife, a handgun, or a club. Billy guessed Rock’s stick was also a weapon and that the hand was hollow, filled with buckshot or small rocks.

“I’m doing a job for Marcus Doucette,” he said.

“You don’t say. What kind of job would that be?” Rock asked.

“Doucette hired me to sniff out some hustlers.”

“I’ve heard said the only people that can catch hustlers are other hustlers. You a hustler?”

“Yeah, I’m a hustler.”

“You motherfuckers stand aside,” Rock said to the punishers.

Ike and T-Bird stepped out of harm’s way. Rock lifted his stick so it became horizontal and rested the knob on Billy’s shoulder. It was heavy and easily weighed two pounds. With a flick of his wrist he could crack Billy’s skull open and scatter his brains across the floor.

“So you’re a hustler,” Rock said. “That’s funny. I would have sworn you were an undercover cop.”

“I tried, but I didn’t pass the height requirement,” Billy said.

“I’m going to give you a chance to prove you’re not a cop. Fuck up, and I’ll split your head open.” Rock paused to let the threat take hold. “Do we understand each other?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Good. Ever hear of a guy named Doc?”

“Sure, I’ve heard of Doc.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Doc is out of East LA by way of Atlanta. Maybe the best pair of hands in the world with a deck of cards when he isn’t hitting the sauce, which is most of the time.”

“He’s got a scar on his face. Describe it.”

“It’s on the point of his chin. Guy in prison stuck a shiv in his face and a piece of it broke off. He doesn’t have any feeling in the lower half of his jaw.”

“What’s Doc’s specialty?”

“Depends who you’re asking.”

“Come again.”

“Doc’s a major-league bullshitter. He sits around all day practicing dealing off the bottom of the deck and hopping the cut, but he never uses that stuff in a game, too risky, even though he’ll tell you otherwise. His real specialty is ringing in a cooler.”

“A what?”

“Deck switching during a game.”

“How’s he pull that off?”

“He has a stacked deck sitting in his lap. The deck in play is shuffled and passed to Doc for the cut. Doc switches it in the act of doing the cut and passes the stacked deck to the sucker, who deals the hand. It’s a perfect illusion.”

“What happens to the switched deck?”

“During a break, Doc drops the switched deck into a garbage pail by the door and pours beer on it. If anyone sees the deck, they’ll think it was old and got thrown away.”

Rock was trying to read Billy’s face. From his pocket the drug dealer removed a stack of chips and toyed with them. “Doc’s done a stretch in the federal pen and has a file. Plenty of what you just told me’s in that file. Tell me something that isn’t, or I’ll take you out right now.”

Getting clubbed to death like a baby seal in an overpriced clothing store was not how Billy wanted to exit this life. Doc had visited Vegas a few years back, and a mutual friend had set up a meeting at the Ghostbar at the Palms. They’d traded stories until the sun peeked its head over the brown desert sand. Although they came from different worlds, they spoke the same language, and they’d parted knowing their paths would cross again.

“Doc’s superstitious,” Billy said, taking his last shot. “When he does his deck switch, he holds a fan of bills in his hand to cover the move. There’s always a two-dollar bill in the fan. There’s a reason for that.”

The chips made a loud clacking sound in Rock’s hand.

“I’m listening,” Rock said.

“Doc’s last name is Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson’s face is printed on the two-dollar bill. Get Doc drunk enough, and he’ll tell you how his family tree starts with one of Jefferson’s slaves on a plantation in Virginia.”

A chip fell out of Rock’s hand to the floor. “Shit. You do know him.”

“I sure do. We’re pals.”

Rock removed his stick from Billy’s shoulder. “My gut tells me I shouldn’t trust you, but I’m going to let it pass. Take your pretty shirts and get the hell out of here.”

The errant chip lay at Billy’s feet. Bending down, he saw that it was a coveted gold chip, worth a hundred grand in Galaxy’s high-roller salon. Rising, he glanced at the stack resting in Rock’s palm. They were all gold. Rock was treating them as if they were pocket change, and a crazy thought went through Billy’s head. If Rock wasn’t listening to his gut, then he was vulnerable. Why not rip him off?

He decided to put his idea to the test. Placing the errant chip in Rock’s hand, he clicked it loudly against the other chips, then flipped his own hand over to expose a clean palm. Rock never saw the deception.

“Don’t want to lose that,” he said.

“Plenty more where it came from,” the drug dealer replied.

It wasn’t every day that Billy made a hundred large, and he walked out of the clothing store with a thin smile creasing his face.