Take Down

TWENTY-SIX

Mags awoke with a start and spent a moment collecting her thoughts. She hated screwing in hotel rooms, but that was the price you paid for sleeping with a married man.

She slipped naked out of bed. From the closet she grabbed a fluffy white bathrobe several sizes too big, then fixed herself a stiff drink at the minibar.

“You want something?”

Special Agent Frank Grimes stood on the balcony in his striped boxers, gazing down at the Strip. After picking her up outside Galaxy, they’d come to Harrah’s for a good screw and a nice room-service meal. She hadn’t been in the mood, but there was no arguing when Frank wanted it. His wife had cut him off years ago, and he was hornier than a pack of Cub Scouts.

She’d known a few cops in her time. Most hated their jobs and longed for different careers. Gaming agents were a different breed. The state gave them unlimited power to police casinos, and they spent their days running down cheaters and collecting tax revenue. Crooks feared them, and casinos hated them. For Frank, that was just fine.

“How about a cold beer?”

No response. Normally, Frank jumped at the sound of her voice. Her purse lay on the dresser, the contents pulled out, including the metal tin containing the daub she used to mark cards. The breath caught in her throat.

When she’d become an informant for the gaming board, she’d promised Frank she’d stop cheating, and had gone right on doing it, thinking he was too infatuated with her to figure it out.

Stupid her.

The room had matching leather chairs. Drink in hand, she parked herself in one and let her bathrobe part. She wanted Frank to see her pussy when he came inside. It was crude, but what the hell else could she do? Her body was all she had left.

Her death spiral had started four years ago. She’d been in Atlantic City painting cards at one of Trump’s carpet joints when a square john at her table had alerted security, who’d looked at the surveillance tapes and arrested her. Instead of copping a plea and doing time in a country club prison, she’d skipped bail and moved to Sin City and set up shop.

It had worked for a while. She’d cheated the casinos and flown under the radar and life had been good. She’d gotten set up in a condo, had a closet filled with nice clothes, and took an occasional vacation to the warm beaches of Cancún.

Her undoing had come two years later. Her daughter was graduating high school and Mags had decided to call her. Her grandparents had raised Amber, and she hardly knew her own kid. She’d let the call drag on, never guessing Amber’s phone was tapped. An hour after hanging up, two Metro LVPD cruisers had invaded her drive, and her life on the lam had ended.

Right before trial, Frank had paid her a visit in the county lockup and offered her an undercover job with the gaming board in return for dropping the charges. Frank was comic-book ugly and had no class. She couldn’t see herself doing it, and said no.

If nothing else, Frank was persistent. He showed her a letter from a female inmate incarcerated in a notorious prison called Ely. In the letter, the woman stated that rotting in hell was better than her situation and that by the time her family read this, she’d be dead. Then Frank showed Mags a photograph of the woman hanging from a bedsheet. Mags caved, and a snitch was born.

Frank came inside. He glanced guiltily between her legs before sitting down.

“Ready to go another round, big boy?” she asked playfully.

“You’re in real trouble,” he said.

“How about a blow job?”

“Stop talking like that.”

“It never bothered you before. You want it-I can see it in your face.”

She crawled across the carpet on her knees, ready to go down on him. She looked into his eyes for compliance, and he pushed her away.

“You promised me you’d keep your nose clean,” he said.

She returned to her chair. “I must have forgotten.”

“I’m paying you five grand a month-isn’t that enough?”

“I can always use a little more.”

“I sent you into Galaxy’s casino to find a drug dealer named Reverend Rock. You weren’t supposed to scam the joint, you stupid bitch.”

His voice was turning harsh. If she wasn’t careful, he’d start slapping her around if the answers she gave him didn’t ring true. She closed her bathrobe. “You told me Rock’s game was blackjack, so I sat down at a game, thinking he might show his face. I started cheating without realizing it. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s just habit. Then a cocktail waitress asks me if I want a drink. I say no, and she gives me the brush.”

“A cocktail waitress made you?”

“Another hustler paid her to do it.”

“You ran into another hustler?”

“That’s right. Name’s Billy Cunningham. I knew him when he was a kid.”

“Billy Cunningham saved your ass?”

“You know him?”

“I nearly nailed that little fucker at the Hard Rock, and he turned the tables on me. If I ever catch him, I’ll put him away for the rest of his life.”

Mags grew quiet. She was joining Billy’s crew, to hell with her deal with Frank. Billy had offered her a fresh start, something she’d been trying to do since the quarterback of the high school football team had knocked her up in his car, and she’d quit school to have Amber, and her life had become one long slippery slope of failure and brushes with the law. She hadn’t thought there was a way to climb out of the hole she’d dug for herself, and then Billy had said, “You don’t remember me, do you?” and it had all changed.

“Okay, finish your story,” Frank said.

“The cocktail waitress gives me the brush, so I ditched my disguise in the restroom and ran. I’m outside waiting for you when Cunningham comes out. We went inside to a bar and had a drink. He told me the people running Galaxy were bad news, and that they’d kill me if they caught me. He told me never to come back.”

“Think he was protecting you?”

“I guess.”

“Does he have the hots for you?”

“Probably. I turned on his love light a long time ago.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“For Christ’s sake, he was fifteen years old.”

“What was he doing in Galaxy? Running a scam?”

“He didn’t say. I got the impression he was doing a job for them.”

“He wouldn’t be the first criminal on Doucette’s payroll.”

Frank stared absently into space, processing the things she’d said. In a moment of weakness after sex, he’d told her that millions in drug money was being laundered through Galaxy’s casino by a dealer out of LA named Rock, and that the gaming board had gathered enough evidence to raid the place, and that they wanted Rock on the premises to make the case stick. How Billy’s working for Doucette played into this was anyone’s guess, although she felt certain that Frank would figure it out. Frank always did. It just took a little time.

She went to the minibar and fixed a Jack and Coke extra strong. Kneeling beside his chair, she served him, and his cop mask melted away. If she didn’t ask him now, she’d never find out.

“Tell me what Cunningham did to you at the Hard Rock,” she said.

Frank had been chasing Billy for a while. Whenever Billy was in a casino, money flew out the door, a sure sign that cheating was taking place.

Gaming agents were rated by the number of busts they made. To accomplish this task, agents could freeze games in casinos, enter restricted areas, and tap phone lines of employees and guests. They had unlimited authority and did not hesitate to use it.

Frank had gone around town and given Billy’s head shot to several casinos and asked them to videotape Billy if the young hustler showed his face.

Eventually, Billy appeared in one of the casinos and was taped. Frank studied the tape and determined that Billy and his crew were bringing gaffed dice onto the craps table. Billy’s crew was slicker than snot on a brass doorknob, and no jury would convict them based upon the fuzzy images on the tape. To make an arrest stick, Frank would have to catch them red-handed.

Frank did some more digging and learned that Billy lived in a luxury condo at Turnberry Towers, even though the condo was in someone else’s name. He got a warrant from a judge to tap Billy’s phone and for several weeks listened to Billy’s calls.

Everyone slipped up, even the smart ones. One day while talking to a friend, Billy mentioned wanting to check out the Rehab pool, which was part of the Hard Rock. The remark made Frank believe that Billy had the Hard Rock in his sights and was planning to rip it off.

Frank decided to set a trap and camped out in the Hard Rock’s surveillance room, living on sandwiches and black coffee. His intuition paid off. Two days later, Billy and his crew appeared in the Hard Rock’s craps pit and started scamming. Frank alerted casino security and went downstairs. He was determined to catch Billy with the gaffed dice, and parked himself directly outside the front entrance.

A few minutes later, Billy came through the front doors, his right hand cupped by his side. Frank approached in his rumpled suit and two-day-old beard. Smelling a cop, Billy tried to run. Frank drew his sidearm and took dead aim at the young hustler.

“Don’t tempt me,” he said.

The Hard Rock’s entrance was distinguished by a giant neon electric guitar balanced atop a rectangular concrete awning. Drawing his right hand back, Billy made a heaving motion at the awning. The bottom dropped out of Frank’s stomach. He grabbed Billy’s arm and shook open his hand. The gaffed dice were gone and so was Frank’s case.

Frank went on tilt. He ordered Billy to drop to his knees and stick his arms behind his back. He handcuffed Billy, squeezing the cuffs so tightly that they cut off the circulation in Billy’s hands. Then he smacked Billy in the face.

“You’re going down once I get those dice back,” Frank said.

“What dice?” Billy replied.

“The gaffed dice you just threw onto the awning. I’m onto your scam.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.”

Deny, deny, deny-that was the hustler’s refrain. A blue platoon of security burst through the front doors and circled the two men. Traffic coming into the casino ground to a halt, causing a line of yellow cabs waiting to drop off fares to back up to Paradise Road and down Harmon. Frank was in deep shit now. He wasn’t supposed to get in the way of casinos making money. But at that point, Frank didn’t care. He hated Billy, hated his lavish lifestyle, his sleek Italian sports car, and most of all, the harem of women Billy had at his disposal. Frank was going to nail this little candy-ass hustler if it was the last thing he did.

A metal ladder was produced, and Frank tried to climb atop the awning. It wasn’t tall enough, and Frank could not get up without fear of falling. By now, the Hard Rock’s general manager was begging Frank to reconsider. Couldn’t Frank see the casino was losing money? Frank told the GM to get lost and summoned Las Vegas Fire and Rescue to bring a fire truck with a retractable ladder to the casino.

While Frank waited for the fire truck, a KLAS news van appeared. Local TV news crews weren’t allowed inside the casinos and were forced to slum around town, looking for stabbings, shootings, and other mayhem suitable for the evening news. The front entrance to the Hard Rock was fair game, and a female reporter stuck a mike in Billy’s face.

“Care to make a statement?” the reporter asked.

“They grabbed the wrong guy. I didn’t do anything,” Billy declared.

By now, Frank was sweating bullets. If he didn’t find the gaffed dice, his long-overdue promotion would disappear, and he’d be stuck pounding the pavement. He got on the horn and asked for a team of agents to help search for the missing dice.

The fire truck was wailing as it pulled into the Hard Rock. A team of gaming agents arrived, including Frank’s boss, a hard-ass named Tricaricco. Under Frank’s direction, the fire truck’s ladder was stretched onto the awning, and the gaming agents scampered up the ladder. Frank was the last to go. He was afraid of heights and kept gazing down at the pavement. He spotted Billy staring up at him, his boyish face curled in a shit-eating grin.

It was at that moment that Frank knew he was fucked.

“Fucked how?” Mags asked.

She continued to kneel by Frank’s chair. She could not imagine how Billy had gotten out of this jam, and she gave Frank’s arm a tug.

“Come on, tell me.”

Frank’s glass was empty. He belched into space, consumed by the memory. “We looked everywhere on that awning for those fucking dice. It was so hot, the soles of our feet got burned. We couldn’t find them.”

“Did they skip over the other side?”

“That’s what I thought at first. We climbed down the ladder and scoured the bushes where the dice would have fallen. The branches were sharp and cut our hands and arms. The dice were nowhere-it was as if they’d vanished. My review was coming up, and I knew this was going to sink me. Ten years busting my ass down the drain.”

She pretended to be sympathetic, only she wasn’t sympathetic at all. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about Frank’s promotion or how bad he’d looked in front of his boss. What she cared about was how on earth Billy had managed to weasel his way out of this.

“What happened to the dice? They didn’t just disappear.”

“They got flushed down a toilet inside the casino.”

“What?”

He found the strength to meet her gaze. “The Hard Rock’s surveillance director broke the news to me. He said the tapes showed Billy passing off the gaffed dice to one of his bimbos before coming outside. She ran to the bathroom and flushed them away.”

“So what did Billy throw on the awning?”

“Nothing. His hand was empty.”

“He faked you out?”

“Yeah, and I fell for it. We had to let him go.”

It was as delicious a cross as Mags had ever heard, and a tiny laugh escaped her lips. Her mother had warned her never to laugh in a man’s face. The difference between men and women, her mother had claimed, was that men were afraid of women laughing at them, while women were afraid of men killing them. Somehow, she’d forgotten her mother’s sage advice.

Frank’s hand slapped her face. The next thing Mags knew, she was lying on her back, watching the room spin like a pinwheel. Frank threw on his rumpled clothes and grabbed his wallet and keys off the bureau. Standing over her, he spoke in a dead, emotionless tone.

“Don’t ever laugh at me again.”

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“You okay?”

“I’ll live.”

“That’s my girl. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at noon.”

“Okay.”

“Mad at me?”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Good answer.”

The door slammed, and Mags listened to his footsteps tread down the hall to the elevators. Only when she was certain he was gone did she pull herself off the floor.

She sat on the edge of the bed. She was seeing double, and she tried to will it to stop. It seemed a perfect metaphor for the two worlds she was living in. She’d gotten herself into this mess, and she was the only one who could get herself out.

The room returned to normal. She went to the slider on wobbly legs and pressed her face to the glass. The Strip’s neon bathed her in false colors, and she forced herself not to cry.