Take Down (16 page)

“Make up excuse. You good at that.”

“They’re bad guys. They won’t understand.”

“Why you working for bad guys?”

“It’s a long story. I’ll be by in a couple of days. Stay out of trouble, okay?”

She tried to hug him. Billy knew better. Once their bodies touched, it would be all over. He gently pushed her away. Her eyes laughed at him.

“You going to take me back to LA?” she asked.

“I don’t know. You have someplace to stay?”

“Vicky put me up. I still owe her money for job at nail salon. You pay her for me?”

“How much do you owe her?”

“Two thousand five hundred.”

It was a small price to pay to get Ly out of his hair.

“I’ll pay her the rest,” he said. “Now let me go.”

“You really do that for me?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“Remember that time we almost fuck? It was in crummy motel just like this. I never forget that night. I want you so bad inside of me. Just like now. Why don’t you come inside and let me make you happy?”

Her eyes danced with the memory, and it took all his willpower to turn away and trot to his car. Not until he was speeding down Koval did he glance in his mirror. Ly remained in the doorway wearing an all-knowing look. She was the kind of woman that could get you killed, and he sped away thinking there were probably worse ways to check out of this life.

TWENTY-NINE

The hotel lobby was deserted as Billy came through the front doors, and he stuck his head into the casino before heading upstairs. The crowds had thinned, the action less frenetic than earlier. Casino games were designed to grind a player down, one dollar at a time. Over the long run you couldn’t win, but that didn’t stop people from sticking their heads in the buzz saw.

His ears popped on the way up in the elevator. Through the glass windows he beheld the slow-motion riot of people, cars, and blinking neon of the Strip.

His footsteps made scratching sounds on the hall’s carpet. He keyed the door to his suite and entered, expecting to find Ike and T-Bird counting the money they’d taken from his condo. To his surprise, they weren’t there, and he called the front desk at Turnberry.

“Good evening. Can I help you?” answered Jo-Jo, the lethargic night manager.

“This is Billy Cunningham in 28D. I’m looking for a couple friends of mine. Have you seen them around?”

“Hey, Mr. C. If your friends are a couple of mean-looking black dudes, then yeah, I saw them. They came in earlier and introduced themselves. I saw those big Super Bowl rings, and we got to talking. I remember those guys when they played for the Steelers.”

“Were they any good?”

“Naw, they sucked. The tall one nearly cost them the title.”

“Any idea where they are now?”

“They’re still upstairs in your condo.”

“They haven’t left yet?”

“Nope. I would have seen them, and I’ve been at my desk all night.”

An alarm went off in Billy’s head. Emptying his safe shouldn’t have taken Ike and T-Bird very long. What had they done, called some high-priced call girls and thrown a party? He had to assume that they were up to no good. That was a mistake, because he had the capability to screw them in a bad way, right from where he was.

“What’s the name of the security company that installed the hidden camera system in the building last year?” he asked.

“A1 Security and Alarm,” Jo-Jo said.

“Do you have their website?”

“Yeah, it’s taped to my computer: a1security.com, all lowercase. Is something wrong? Are those guys ripping you off?”

“That’s between me and them. Later, Jo-Jo.”

“Have a good night, Mr. C.”

He got on the Internet with his Droid and soon was on the A1 site. A year back, a cleaning woman had gotten caught trying to pawn valuable jewelry she’d stolen from a resident at Turnberry. To prevent further theft, the building’s management had hired A1 to install hidden CCTV cameras in each unit’s ceiling smoke detectors. These cameras were wired to the firm’s main location and could be accessed with a few simple commands.

He’d been happy to have cameras installed in his unit. He wasn’t worried about theft as much as what the gaming board would take if they ever raided his place. Chances were, they’d rip him off, and wouldn’t it be fun to have a tape of it? He went to the log-in page and typed in his password:
cheater
.

The interior of his condo appeared on the Droid’s screen. The CCTV cameras filmed in four-color, and his condo looked as sharp as the set for a late-night infomercial. He flipped between rooms and stopped at the master bedroom. As he’d expected, the wall safe was open and had been cleaned out, the stacks of money piled on the floor.

But there was more. His clothes had been removed from the closet and laid out across the bedroom. Dozens of silk shirts, designer slacks, cashmere sports jackets, and Italian shoes. Some articles had never been worn and still had price tags. His collection of men’s watches was also on display, along with the fancy cigarette lighters that he used to light beautiful ladies’ cigarettes when he went clubbing. They had decided to take inventory of his stuff.

Ike stood in the center of the bedroom lecturing T-Bird, who sat on the bed, staring at the floor. T-Bird’s posture was peculiar: sagging shoulders, head down, like a boxer collapsed on his stool between rounds of a fight, getting ready to call it quits.

Ike kept talking to his partner, and T-Bird kept staring at the floor. Not a lecture, Billy decided, but a pep talk. Ike was trying to cheer up T-Bird, who was clearly depressed.

He tried to put himself in T’s shoes. The bird man was past his prime, maybe nursing a bad knee or suffering memory loss from too many hits to the head, all the while holding on to some thin dream of wealth. Then he’d seen Billy’s mind-blowing collection of threads and jewelry, and the crushing weight of his own crummy reality had hit him, and all he wanted to do was go to a bar and get loaded, because that’s what dumb guys did when they got depressed.

And Ike was saying no, we got a job to do, come on, man.

He had caught them at a vulnerable moment, and a Roman candle went off in his head with the most glorious of colors. They were his for the taking. He just had to handle them right.

He picked up the room’s phone and dialed 9 for an outside line and called his condo. On the Droid, he saw the punishers’ heads snap as the phone in the condo rang. He repeated this three more times. On the fourth try, Ike snatched the phone off the bedside table.

“Who’s this?” Ike said.

“It’s me, Cunningham. I’m watching you and your partner.”

“You’re watching us? How the fuck can you be doing that?”

“Through my cell phone.”

“Don’t fuck with me, asshole.”

On the Droid, Billy saw T-Bird get off the bed and stand next to his partner with a pensive look on his face. T-Bird wasn’t sure what was going on, and he started to gather the stacks of money they’d pulled out of Billy’s safe and cradle them in his arms the way a nervous parent might hold a newborn baby. T-Bird was going to bolt—Billy was sure of it—and he said, “I’m not fucking with you. T-Bird just got off the bed and is now grabbing the money you took from my safe. Tell him he needs to hear what I have to say.”

“How can you be spying on us?” Ike said. “There ain’t no surveillance camera in here.”

“The smoke detector on the ceiling has a closed-circuit TV camera with a fish-eye lens hidden in it. There’s one in every room.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not. Take the cover off one if you don’t believe me.”

Ike found the smoke detector on the ceiling and yanked off the cover. His arm was so long that he didn’t need a chair to stand on.

“Fuck, look at this,” Ike said.

T-Bird stared into the tiny camera, his face so close that Billy saw forests of nose hair.

“It’s Cunningham,” Ike explained. “He’s watching us.”

“That’s fucked up,” T-Bird said.

“So what do you want to talk about,” Ike said to the camera.

“I have a job for you. I’ll pay you life-altering money.”

“What kind of money?”

“Life altering. As in lots.”

“How much?”

“Enough to retire on. You interested?”

Ike turned to stone, thinking hard.

“Ain’t no harm in talking to him,” T-Bird said into his partner’s ear.

“When?” Ike said into the phone.

“Right now,” he replied.

“Where?”

“In my suite at the hotel. I’ll order room service. You guys hungry?”

“We’re always hungry. Get me a filet, well done, french fries, hollandaise sauce on the side. Same for T, only make his medium rare with a baked potato and sour cream.”

“Got it. See you soon.”

“Listen, Cunningham, you’d better not be fucking with us.”

“I’m not fucking with you.”

Ike ended the call. He slapped his partner on the shoulder at their sudden good fortune, then remembered the CCTV camera in the ceiling. He flipped Billy the bird before ripping it out.

THIRTY

Billy ordered the punishers’ steaks from room service along with a large shrimp cocktail for himself. The room service attendant explained that the kitchen was backed up and that it would take forty-five minutes for the meals to be delivered. Billy wanted the food on the table when Ike and T-Bird arrived, and he said, “Make it twenty, and I’ll be happy.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but that’s impossible,” the attendant replied.

Nothing was impossible inside a Vegas casino. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Hinton, sir.”

The incoming caller ID on Hinton’s phone said that Billy was calling from a high-roller suite. “If you don’t get those meals up to my suite right now, I’ll check out of this crummy dump and tell the rodeo clown at the front desk you were rude to me. Got it?”

“Please don’t do that, sir,” Hinton said.

“I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

“You’ll have your food in twenty minutes. I’ll deliver it myself.”

“I’m counting on you, Hinton.”

While waiting for the food to arrive, Billy went to work on the suite. He was about to sell a bill of goods to Ike and T-Bird, and to do that, he needed the suite to look just right. He started by positioning the chairs at the dining room table so that Ike and T-Bird sat together and would face him while they ate. He wanted to gauge their expressions while he made his pitch and know how each man was leaning. More importantly, he didn’t want them communicating with each other, even if it was with their eyeballs.

The suite’s bar was filled with top-shelf brands. He set a bottle of Hennessy XO on the marble bar top along with three snifters to toast their newfound partnership. By setting the bottle out ahead of time, he was signaling his desire to work with them.

Hinton arrived with a few minutes to spare and set the covered plates at the appropriate spots on the table under Billy’s instruction. When he was done, Billy shoved a hundred-dollar tip into Hinton’s breast pocket and made a new friend.

Ike and T-Bird arrived a short while later. T-Bird carried the money from the safe in a Nike duffel bag he’d taken from Billy’s closet.

The bag was popping at the seams, and Billy wondered how many other items they’d filched from his condo.

“What’s your fancy?” he asked from the bar.

“Whatever’s cold,” Ike said. “You having a party?”

He pulled three bottles of beer from the fridge, popped their tops, and brought them across the room. “Call it a celebration. Here’s to getting rich together.’

“Sounds good to me,” Ike said.

“Same here,” T-Bird said.

They took their spots at the table and started to eat. Ike and T-Bird were vacuum cleaners, weapons of mass consumption. Billy took his time and savored his shrimp cocktail. More shrimp got eaten in Las Vegas than anywhere on the planet, and the shrimp were always succulent and delicious. When he was done, he sprayed lemon on his fingers and washed away the remaining taste with beer. The punishers had already crossed the finish line and were watching him.

“Taste good?” he asked.

Ike grunted that his steak was decent, nothing great. T-Bird said the same. They did not act nearly as fierce with their bellies filled with red meat and potatoes.

“Want some dessert? The kitchen’s open all night,” he said.

“What we want is for you to talk to us about life-altering money,” Ike said.

“That’s right, tell us about the money,” T-Bird chimed in.

They wanted to hear about the payoff before they knew the risk. It was an amateur mistake, born out of desperation and greed. He took another swig of beer, just to make them wait. “Let me ask you a question. If I said there was a rich guy that could be ripped off, and that you’d walk away with enough money to retire on, would you do it?”

“Someone we know?” Ike asked.

“The right Reverend Rock.”

“What you smoking? It’s making you talk crazy.”

“Hear me out. Rock’s a drug dealer, and he’s using the casino to launder drug money. If Rock gets scammed while he’s here, he can’t call the police and file a report. Rock’s money is ours—he’s just holding it for us. It’s a perfect job.”

“Maybe for you it is,” Ike said. “If me and T get involved, we’d have to go into hiding, get new identities, the whole shebang. Rock has a long memory.”

“So what if you go into hiding? The way I see it, you guys have a problem. You’re too big to be thieves. Wherever you go, you stand out. That’s hard when you’re a thief. Look at me—I’m five eight and weigh a hundred sixty pounds. Stick a baseball cap on my head, and I look like your average schmuck.”

“You don’t look average,” Ike said.

T-Bird had pulled his chair closer to his partner. In the reflection in the mirror on the other side of the suite, Billy saw the bird man foot-tapping Ike on the leg the way cheating couples did at bridge, as if to say,
Listen to the man.

“There’s another problem—you’re also famous,” he said. “You played football for the Steelers, won a Super Bowl, your faces televised to a billion people during the game. How many times do you get recognized? I bet it’s a lot.”

“Guy recognized us tonight,” T-Bird said.

“There you go. You’re not cut out to be thieves. You need to make one big score and vanish into the wind.” He paused to let the idea set in. “So what do you say? Do you want in?”

T-Bird gave his partner another foot-tap. Ike scratched his chin, thinking.

“All depends on what our take is,” Ike said.

“Twenty-five percent.”

“Twenty-five percent of what?”

“Twenty-five percent of whatever was in the bag Rock passed through the cage last night. It looked like six million. Twenty-five percent would be one point five million. That’s your take.”

“Try eight million,” Ike said. “That’s what gets laundered each week.”

“All right, then your take would be two million. That’s enough to spend the rest of your life eating cheeseburgers in paradise, don’t you think?”

“That’s a nice number,” Ike said. “We could live off that. Couldn’t we, T?”

“Fat and happy,” T-Bird said.

The vibes coming off the punishers were of the feel-good quality. Billy had planted the seed; now he needed to make it grow.

“On Saturday afternoon, the Gypsies are going to scam Galaxy’s casino, and Doucette is counting on me to stop them. If I tell Doucette that the scam’s going to happen in front of the craps pit, he’ll send every security guard to the craps pit. You couldn’t ask for better shade to make a run at the cage.”

“Shade?” Ike asked.

“Distraction. Every hustler uses it. By the time Doucette realizes Rock’s eight million is missing, you two gentlemen will be gone.”

“Are you talking about a heist with guns?”

“Hardly. I’m talking a scam. The cashier will hand T-Bird eight million in laundered money, and T-Bird will waltz out the front door. Does that sound like fun to you?”

“I dig the way you describe things,” Ike said. “But it won’t be cash. It will be eight million in money orders. Doucette uses a chain of check-cashing stores in town to launder the money.”

“Can the money orders be traced?” Billy asked.

“Nope. Each money order is for ten grand. Rock comes to the casino with two big leather briefcases, and he leaves with a small one.”

“That will make your job even easier. This is going to be a piece of cake.”

“Keep talking,” Ike said.

It was time for the reveal. From his pocket, Billy removed the souvenir key chain with the rubber casino chip he’d purchased at Galaxy’s gift shop, and let it dangle on his finger.

“See this hundred-thousand-dollar gold chip? I bought it in the hotel gift shop. It’s the key to the kingdom. We’re going to get rich off this.”

T-Bird jumped out of his chair. “Are you fucking kidding? That thing’s rubber. No one’s gonna be fooled by that.”

“Sit down, and let him talk,” Ike said, knowing there was more.

T-Bird dumped his body back in his chair and folded his massive arms.

“You’re right, it is made of rubber,” Billy said. “Now, look at the color. It’s the same color as the hundred-thousand-dollar gold chip in the casino. The
exact
same color.”

T-Bird started to protest. Ike silenced him with an elbow to the ribs.

“What’s the one thing the casinos are most afraid of?” Billy went on. “Counterfeit chips. A talented forger can wipe a casino out. To stop this from happening, the casinos employ different measures to stop forgers. The two measures that have worked best are RFID microchips and using special colors that can’t be duplicated. You with me so far?”

“Yeah,” the bird man grunted.

“Galaxy doesn’t use RFID microchips, so that just leaves the special colors. And Doucette let a promotional company have the formula to make this rubber chip. I’ll get the paint from them, give it to a forger that works for me, and he’ll counterfeit gold chips. Get it?”

Ike nodded approvingly; he was on board. T-Bird still needed convincing.

“Passing counterfeit chips inside a casino has a name,” Billy said. “It’s called making a run at the cage. It’s a difficult scam to pull off. You’ve got to fool the cashier, the cage manager, and the eye-in-the-sky. If any of those folks think you’re trying to pass bogus chips, they’ll hit an alarm, and you’ll get busted.”

“This sounds hard,” T-Bird said.

“It won’t be when we do it. In fact, it’s going to be a piece of cake.”

“Why’s that?”

He’d already told them the answer, only T-Bird was brain dead and had forgotten. Ike’s brain was still working, and he slapped the table with his enormous palm.

“We’re going to make a run at the cage while the Gypsies are pulling their scam,” Ike said. “You understand what the man is saying? We’re going to pull a scam while another scam is going down. Security will be dealing with the Gypsies, while we’re ripping the joint off. Douche bag won’t know what hit him.”

T-Bird had a funny look on his face. Rising from the table, he pointed at the door to the master bedroom. “In there,” he said, and walked into the other room.

Ike rose as well. “Be right back.”

The bedroom door closed, and they started to argue like a married couple having a spat. For a couple of ex-jocks about to run out of road, it was the deal of a lifetime, and he wondered what the problem was. At the end of the day, it really didn’t matter. Ike was the brains of the duo, and T-Bird would eventually agree to what Ike wanted, because that was how it worked.

The Nike duffel bag sat on the floor. It had been eating him to know what they’d stolen from his condo. The zipper made a harsh sound as he tugged it open. The bag was filled with the money from his wall safe—no surprise there. In the side pockets they’d stuffed watches, jewelry, and fancy cigarette lighters.

He took everything back. The pieces that didn’t fit in his pockets went into drawers at the bar. He also helped himself to the money, and left twenty grand. That was the amount they’d agreed to, and he was not going back on his word.

Harsh words floated out of the bedroom. He went to the couch, flipped on the TV, and stared at images that made no sense. Sleep was calling to him. It had been a long fucking day, and he needed to recharge his batteries for tomorrow, which promised to be an equally long fucking day. He still had to find the Gypsies, and that was no small order.

The punishers came out of the bedroom and stood in front of the couch, blocking the TV.

“We got a question,” Ike said. “How do we know you won’t rob us and take all the money come Saturday? What’s to stop that from happening?”

“You have first touch,” he said.

When neither man responded to this most incredible of offers, he explained.

“You’re going to rob the cage while I’m catching the Gypsies. The cashier will hand you the money orders, and you’ll walk outside and jump into a car with my crew. I’ll meet up with you later and split the money. Sound fair?”

It was more than fair, and erased any doubts that Billy wasn’t being on the level with them. Both men stuck out their hands.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Ike said.