King Con (27 page)

“What is it?” he said.

“Just a minute, sir,” Luke said. “I have Arnold Buzini from the Sabre Bay casino.”

He handed the phone to Buzini, who cleared his throat and watched as Duffy and Beano argued about his medicine. “Sir, we have a little situation here,” he said softly. “We have a big winner on the number three crap table. He’s hit us for over a million dollars … in less than an hour. This guy is white-hot. And a buncha other players are slip-streaming with him.”

“You check the dice?”

“Yes, sir. They’re okay … least they seem to be.”

“Tommy’s down there. Get Tommy.”

“We can’t find Tommy, sir. He’s not in your villa. We don’t know where he is.”

Joe sat up in bed. Sometimes Tommy’s lack of responsibility was startling. He was great when it came to wet-work, great at clipping somebody you wanted to put down, but when it came to just common-sense business, he was lame. Joe stifled a flash of anger at his brother
and tried to clear his head of sleep and concentrate. “Okay, this guy on any of our sheets?”

“No, sir. His name is Harry Price. Old guy in a wheelchair. He owns a car lot in Fresno. His nephew is named Douglas. Says on his credit-ap he’s an unemployed oil company geologist. The Eye-in-the-Sky was watching them. They’re either very good or they’re not cheating.”

“Okay, here’s what you do,” Joe said. “Put the table limit at fifty thousand. You let them roll once more to buy some time. While they’re doing that, go through their room. If it’s clean, plant something … dope, anything. Call the Bahamian Patrol. If your player gets angry or starts an incident, close the table for an accounting. Pay them slowly to stall them, but don’t let them out of the hotel with the money. We’ll bust ‘em for drugs and then take their winnings. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell my brother I wanna talk to him soon as you find him.”

“Yes, sir.” Buzini hung up the phone. “Okay, table limit is fifty thousand, you can roll,” he said to Duffy, who started to bitch that the no-limit was off. Buzini didn’t stick around to listen. He moved to another pit area, picked up the phone, and ordered Security to come to table three and to notify the Bahamian Patrol they had a possible drug problem. Then he called his assistant and told him what to plant in Duffy’s High-roller suite on the tenth floor.

“Same shooter, new point,” the Stick-man said. Beano bet the new lower table limit of fifty thousand dollars, grumbling at the casino Manager as he did. As they pushed the dice over to Duffy, he was quivering with anger.

“Buncha cheap fucks,” Duffy muttered, as he picked up the dice.

“Come to Daddy. Seven come eleven,” and he pitched the dice to the end of the table and they came up nine.

“Nine. The point is nine.”

Beano could tell from the phone calls and the furtive looks that they were about to get closed down. He nudged Duffy in warning, so Duffy didn’t go for the loadies and instead rolled the casino dice. After three rolls, he sevened out. The crowd around the table let out a sad collective breath and the dice were passed.

“Cash me in,” Duffy growled.

“This table’s closed while we do the count,” Buzini instructed, but the other players stayed there and watched as the old man’s chips were counted. The process took almost fifteen minutes.

“One million one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. How do you want that, sir?” Luke Zigman asked.

“Cash fucking money,” Duffy yelled, and the people at the table laughed.

They rolled a cart out from the cage and made a big deal of counting the money and laying the packs of bills in Duffy’s lap. Beano had brought the small, blue folding bag which, had Buzini and Zigman stopped to think, would have seemed very strange. Beano packed the money into the bag. Once it was all in, he started to roll Duffy out of the casino. Security guards were everywhere now and Duffy, with the bag on his lap, was stopped from leaving just a few feet away from the casino main entrance. Buzini stood in front of them, blocking their exit. “I’d like to buy you a congratulatory drink; maybe we could get some pictures of you with the money for the newspaper. It’s good for the casino to publicize big winners,” he said, as thirty or so spectators gathered around.

“Don’t drink. Hate having my picture took,” Duffy
croaked, but now he was shaking so badly that he was actually wiggling all over the chair. Several of the Security men had their hands on the arms of the chair so Beano couldn’t leave.

“Harry, you’re about to have one a your seizures,” Beano warned.

“You sure we can’t put that money in the safe for you?” Buzini said.

Then the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance and Duffy looked up at Arnold Buzini, rolled his eyes back in his head, and suddenly convulsed. His legs shot out straight and his neck went rigid. He catapulted out of the chair, onto the floor.

“Oh, my God, he’s having an epileptic fit,” Beano screamed, pumping the atmosphere with adrenaline and confusion. “Call a doctor! Call an ambulance!” he shouted.

Duffy was on the floor; his legs shot out, his back arched, he gagged as he inhaled.

The cops from the Bahamian Patrol now came running into the casino. Several of them were met by the Assistant Manager and led off to the tenth floor to find bags of pure heroin that were planted in Duffy’s room.

Duffy was convulsing terribly. A ring of people stood helplessly with their hands up to their mouths in horror.

During all of this, Beano had managed to slip silently out of the casino with the bag full of money. He moved to the parking lot, and Victoria pulled up in the blue van. He jumped in the back. Roger-the-Dodger put his paws up on the seat and looked back at him.

An ambulance arrived a few minutes later and the attendants ran inside. When they reached Duffy, he appeared to be unconscious. When they pried open his mouth, they found he had swallowed his tongue. They cleared it out to open the airway.

“This man is in critical condition,” a paramedic announced.

“Where the fuck is the other guy?” Buzini said, finally realizing that Beano had disappeared with the cash. “The guy with the bag. Where’s the guy with the bag?” Buzini said, in a panic.

But Beano wasn’t in the casino.

The paramedics pushed Buzini out of the way. They got the roiling stretcher from the back of the ambulance and loaded Duffy aboard. They wheeled the unconscious man out and into the back of the yellow and white ambulance. Then, with red lights and sirens, they roared away, heading for the Community Hospital, ten miles to the west. Nobody noticed the van that followed.

Fit-Throwing Duffy sat up in the back of the ambulance and looked at the startled paramedics.

“I’m okay now. Feel much better. Thanks,” he said. “I’ll just get out here.”

“Lie down, mon,” the startled attendants ordered. Duffy got off the rolling stretcher and moved to the back of the ambulance, but the door was locked. Duffy tried to open it but couldn’t.

“Get back on that stretcher,” the young Bahamian paramedic commanded.

“Go fuck yourself,” Duffy shot back.

They were now almost to the hospital. Beano could see that Duffy wasn’t going to be able to get out unless they did something drastic. “Gotta stop the ambulance,” Victoria said, picking up his exact thought. She gunned the van, shot around the ambulance, hit the brakes, and threw the van into a four-wheel drift right beside the ambulance. Once she was sideways in the lane next to the ambulance, she floored it; the tires caught hold, smoking and squealing on the pavement. She was now perpendicular to the ambulance, and as the Bahamian driver hit the brakes in panic, she T-boned the yellow
and white ambulance, pinning it against the curb. The ambulance and van both smoked to a stop. Roger was thrown off the seat to the floor with a yelp. Beano jumped out and yanked open the back door of the ambulance. Duffy leaped out and ran for the van. Beano wasn’t far behind. An ambulance attendant had jumped out and was running after them, but Victoria now had the van in reverse. She backed up and skidded the van around and cut the attendant off. The van engine was smoking, the radiator leaking water. Beano and Duffy jumped in the open door on the opposite side as the ambulance attendant banged on Victoria’s locked door, trying to pull it open.

“Come back here, that’s our patient,” the attendant screamed as Victoria floored it and squealed away, heading in the opposite direction.

Beano looked over at her, surprised, as Roger-the-Dodger jumped back up on the seat between them.

“You okay?” Victoria asked Duffy, who nodded.

“Not my best fit but certainly in the top ten,” Fit-Throwing Duffy grinned, as they roared away.

They could hear sirens coming toward them. Beano knew that Buzini was heading toward them with the police. “Turn right, across the field!” he yelled.

Victoria turned the blue van right and crashed through a fence and drove across the soft ground. She could barely control her progress in the soft dirt but managed to keep the van slip-sliding on course, heading southwest. The van fishtailed and threw up a plume of brown dirt that was visible from the road in the lightening sky. Through the back window, Beano could see the cop cars pull up and park next to the ambulance. Several of the police, plus a fuming Buzini, got out and looked at them across the field. They had gained distance, but now the police cars backed up and gave chase, roaring out through the broken fence, across the field after them.

They arrived at the Deep Water Airfield at five past six; the morning sun was just over the rim of the hill.

“If my cousin Lee isn’t on time, we’re all going to jail,” Beano said as Victoria pulled the van onto the runway tarmac and came to a screeching stop. Parked at the end of the runway was a red and gray King Air twin-engine plane.

“There,” Duffy said, pointing.

Victoria floored it. By now the police cars were in view, coming along the airport frontage road, their sirens braying. Victoria drove the van full-speed to the plane. Beano jumped out before Victoria had even brought it to a complete stop. He ran to the pilot leaning against the wing. “Lee, get this thing up right now!”

Leland X. Bates looked off at the approaching squad cars and shook his head in dismay.

“Usually you’re a little smoother than this,” Lee said, moving quickly into the plane. The squad cars were now on the runway and racing toward them.

Duffy, Victoria, and Roger-the-Dodger, toting the blue canvas bag, were already out of the van and running to the King Air.

Inside the plane, Leland was looking at the approaching police cars as he set the throttles and began to start the starboard engine. “It’ll be tight but let’s give it a go,” he said as he revved the starboard engine, then immediately started the port. “If you don’t mind, I’m gonna scrap the preflight,” he said, as the second engine coughed to life. He throttled up. The squad cars were only three hundred yards away as Leland shouted, “Hold on. …”

The King Air roared down the runway directly at the police cars, which had come to a stop across the center of the tarmac to block him. But they had left too much runway and, just before the plane hit the nearest car, Leland pulled back the yoke and the plane lifted
off. … They heard one of the tires leave a patch of rubber on the roof of the nearest police car as they skimmed over.

“Holy shit,” Victoria said, her heart slamming in her chest as she clutched Roger-the-Dodger in her arms. Then she looked over at Beano, who was grinning.

“Even more exciting than my first night in jail,” he said.

Duffy smiled. He was still out of breath and his chest hurt; he was pooped. Throwing a convincing epileptic fit was damn hard work.

Then the little plane turned west and headed out over the inland cut toward Miami.

E
VERYBODY WAS TRYING TO FIND TOMMY RINA. THE
Host in the High-roller casino described Dakota to the Desk Clerk, who remembered her vividly, and at eight
A.M.
they got a second key to her room. They opened her door to the overpowering smell of vomit. They found Tommy sprawled on the bed, facedown and naked, except for his laced-up wing-tip shoes and socks. He looked like a partied-out conventioneer. When they woke him up, he groaned and rolled to a sitting position, squinting at Arnold Buzini and two Security cops. Then Tommy looked down at his crotch and his exposed howitzer.

“Get the fuck out of here,” he growled at them.

“We been hit,” Buzini said by way of explanation.

“Get the fuck out of here! I gotta put on some clothes,” Tommy said, pulling the bedspread up onto his lap. They backed out of the room and Tommy tried to get to his feet.

“Goddamn …” he said. His head felt like it was being opened from the side with a can opener. He stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Then he got in and stood there, still in his shoes, and let it pour over him. He felt worse than afterbirth. He thought he
was going to die right there, in the shower, with his wing-tips on.

Then it all came back to him … the Goddess, the trip to the High-roller casino … the fuck on the bed, which he barely remembered. “Man, that bitch can hold her liquor,” he said to his water-soaked shoes. Then he remembered what Buzini had said, and he opened the shower door and called out.

“Hey, Buz … whatta you mean we got hit?”

Twenty minutes later they were seated in Buzini’s tiny office, and Tommy was on the phone with his little brother, Joe, in New Jersey. The doctored dice and the wheelchair were being examined in the next room. They had found where the dice had been drilled, and they knew they’d been hit by tat players. Joe was mad but his voice, as always, was cool.

“Tommy, you’re nothing but a wandering hard-on …. All you think about is pussy,” his little brother said to him in cold anger. “Women and clipping guys, that’s your whole routine.”

“Come on, Joe, it wasn’t like that.”

“First, the jewelry store gets hit for a hundred grand. Okay, that’s small stuff; it’s stupid, but I can live with it. But now this … this is over a million dollars, Tommy. You’re down there and the Shift Manager can’t even find you. You got that redheaded flute player stashed in my villa and you’re up on eight with another hooker, while our place gets hummed for a million bucks. … Nobody can find you.”