Take Down

TWENTY-FIVE

Ike and T-Bird were by the craps pit, their faces filled with bad intentions. Billy said, “I didn’t know I needed a hall pass to leave,” expecting they’d buy the line. Only Ike cuffed him in the head, making Billy see a bunch of stars that weren’t on Hollywood Boulevard.

They pulled him into the employee lounge and slapped him around. A handful of dealers on break got up and left. When Billy had taken enough punishment, they took him down a hallway to a room, threw open the door, and shoved him inside.

Doucette, his crazy bride, and Crunchie stood in front of a two-way mirror, their faces showing collective despair. In the next room was the seething blond who’d been mistakenly pulled off the floor. Hell hath no fury like a woman with a torn blouse.

Doucette cast Billy a scornful gaze. He wore a pin-striped suit, a silver necktie, and had slicked his hair back, and looked every bit the casino boss.

“You seem to have a problem following instructions,” Doucette said.

“I went outside for a breather. I didn’t realize I was breaking the rules.” The line wasn’t getting him anywhere, and he decided to steer the conversation in another direction. “You grabbed the wrong woman, didn’t you? I told Crunchie to back off.”

“Like hell you did. Shit bird’s lying,” the old grifter said.

“Ask Ike,” Billy said.

“Did he?” Doucette asked.

“Billy said she wasn’t the one,” Ike said under his breath.

“Then why did you grab her?” Doucette said.

“Because old smelly told us to,” Ike said.

“What did you call me?” the old grifter exploded.

“Old smelly. It’s because you stink. Take a shower,” Ike said.

“Both of you, shut up. We’ll deal with this later,” Doucette said.

Doucette resumed looking through the two-way mirror at his new problem. Dyed-blond hair and a nice face, she sported an ugly purple bruise on her forehead along with the ruined blouse. Standing beside her chair was a smarmy casino host with blow-dried hair and sparkling white teeth. A hidden microphone in the ceiling picked up his spiel. He was offering her a free stay, free meals in the casino’s four-star restaurants, free show tickets, and $10,000 of free credit to gamble with, provided she signed a form releasing the casino from liability for the beating she’d endured. When the host tried to shove a pen into her hands, she defiantly crossed her arms in front of her chest. Nothing doing.

“Any idea who she is?” Billy asked.

“Stay out of this,” Crunchie warned him.

“Hey, old man, I’m just trying to help.”

“You never helped anyone in your life,” the old grifter said.

Doucette slapped his hand into the old grifter’s chest. “Shut your yap. I want to hear what pretty boy has to say. Spit it out, kid. What’s on your mind?”

“You’re trying to make peace with her, and you don’t know who she is?” he asked.

“Tell him,” Doucette said to his bride.

“Her name’s Cecilia Torch, and she lives in Sunnyvale, California.” Shaz read off a xeroxed sheet of the woman’s driver’s license that security had made after pulling her off the floor. “That’s all we know about her. She hasn’t spoken a word.”

“Did she ask for a lawyer?”

“No.”

“How about a husband? Did she want to call him? She’s wearing a wedding band.”

“I didn’t hear her ask. Did you?”

“No,” Doucette said. “You think she’s hiding something from us?”

“It sure seems that way,” he said. “Maybe she’s supposed to be on a girls’ weekend, but came to Vegas to shack up with her boyfriend. Or she told her hubby she was heading downstairs to shop, but blew a few grand on the tables and is too ashamed to tell him. Whatever the reason is, she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Doucette saw the wisdom of what Billy was saying. He spent a long moment studying the problem on the other side of the glass. “I’m still not letting her walk out of that room until she signs that release. Fuck, she’ll sue me for everything I have, and probably get it.”

“You can’t bargain if you don’t know what her deal is,” he said.

“How can I find out what her deal is if she won’t talk?”

“Can I see her ID?”

“Give it to him,” Doucette said.

Billy spent a moment studying the sheet. The woman’s last name was familiar. He could remember every score he’d ever pulled off, right down to the date, time, and the money he’d made. So where had he seen the name Torch? Then it hit him: the name had been on the welcome board in the lobby. Bradford Allaire and Candace Torch were getting hitched in the hotel’s wedding chapel on Saturday followed by a private reception.

Cecilia Torch was the mother of the bride. The punishers had humiliated her, and she was hesitant to call the cops or get her husband involved, fearful she’d ruin her daughter’s upcoming nuptials. That was why she wasn’t responding to the host’s offers.

“I saw the name Torch on the welcome board in the lobby,” he said. “This woman’s daughter is getting married in your hotel Saturday, and she’s afraid she’s going to spoil the wedding. That’s why she’s not talking.”

“Is that all that’s bothering her?” Doucette looked relieved. “Hell, I can fix that.”

Doucette straightened his necktie and went next door. He was as smooth as a snake charmer, and he apologized to Cecilia Torch for the terrible injustice that had occurred, and began to pile on the goodies. Along with all the free stuff the casino host had offered, he was going to throw in free spa treatments for the ladies in the wedding party, free golf for the men, and, best of all, the surprise appearance at the reception of Grammy Award-winning singer Tony Marx, who was appearing in the casino’s theater and who would serenade the bride and groom.

Everyone had their price. For a mother, it was seeing her daughter happy on the most special day of her life. Rising from her chair, Cecilia Torch gave Doucette a motherly hug before snatching the pen from the casino host and scribbling her name across the release.

Together, Cecilia Torch and Doucette walked out of the room.

Billy stared at the empty chair long after Cecilia Torch was gone. It could just as easily have been Mags sitting in that chair, only Doucette wouldn’t have been bribing her but having Ike and T-Bird beat the living daylights out of her. That would have been hard to watch, and he wondered how he would have dealt with it.

“Billy.”

He turned around. While he’d been daydreaming, the punishers and Shaz had left the room, leaving him and Crunchie alone. The old grifter held his arm at chest height, fist cocked, a set of car keys protruding from his fingers, ready to plunge into Billy’s face.

“Going to poke my eyes out?”

“Yup,” the old grifter said.

“I got it worked out, didn’t I?”

“You made me look bad.”

“You already looked bad. Get over it.”

“Don’t play cute with me. I saw what you did in the casino. You paid that cocktail waitress to give Lady Picasso the brush, and she bolted from the table and ran. That one’s working with you, isn’t she? Another of your hot numbers.”

“You think I’d let one of my friends work this place, after what you did to me last night? Get real. I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemy.”

Crunchie’s face softened, if only a little. The story added up.

“Then why did you have the waitress give her the brush?” the old grifter asked.

“I wasn’t sure she was marking the cards, so I had the cocktail waitress brush her to see how she’d react. When she jumped from her chair, I knew she was a cheater.”

“How clever. You still let her go.”

“What was I supposed to do, tackle her? That was Ike and T-Bird’s job, and they blew it. When they grabbed the wrong woman coming out of the restroom, I told them to let her go, but did they listen? Did you listen? Hell, no. Stop blaming me for your fuckups.”

“You’re a slick son of a bitch.”

“It’s the truth. Believe what you want.”

The old grifter lowered his fist and pocketed his keys. “Maybe it is the truth, but know this. This little stunt doesn’t change a fucking thing. You still have a job to do, and that’s to find the Gypsies before they scam us Saturday afternoon. If you don’t come up with the goods, your crew is going down, and so are you.”

“You’d really hurt my crew?”

“Damn straight I will. And don’t give me that bullshit about the code saying you can’t rat out another cheater. Nobody believes that anymore.”

“I do.”

“Like hell you do.”

“We live by the code. The rules when it comes to other thieves are clear. Don’t expose another thief’s identity. Never rat out another thief to the law. Help another thief whenever you can. Those are the rules, man.”

“Do you really believe that, Billy? With all your heart, and all your soul?”

“Damn straight I do.”

“Then why’d you agree to rat out the Gypsies? Wait, I’ll tell you why. Because you want to keep your crew from going to jail. They mean more to you than the fucking code, don’t they?”

The real answer was right there, but Crunchie was too blind to see it.

“You’re no different than me, kid. You just don’t want to admit it.”

Crunchie walked out of the room thinking he’d won the argument. Billy followed him into the hall knowing otherwise. The deal he’d struck with Doucette had been nothing more than a bold-faced lie, born out of necessity to save his friends. By lying, he’d bought himself time to work his way out of his jam. If he put his mind to it, he’d find a way to make sure no harm came to the Gypsies, while continuing to abide by a strict set of rules that he’d lived by for most of his life. He may have been a criminal, but he wasn’t an animal. There was a difference, despite what the old grifter believed.