Take Down (24 page)

“Bury it with her.”

He tossed the gun into the grave. She had not let go of his arm, and he walked her back to the Mercedes. The sparkle in her eyes said he’d won her over, but what about the others? As she got into the passenger seat, the car’s interior light came on. Doucette was still on his call and shot Billy a thumbs-up. Crunchie was retrieving e-mails on a handheld device and ignored him. Whatever reservations they’d had were gone. He’d passed the test.

The Mercedes’s taillights grew faint as it rumbled out of the campsite. Billy waited until he was certain they were gone before returning to the clearing. Ike and T-Bird had remained by the grave, prepared to finish the job. P. T. Barnum once said that you couldn’t fool all the people, all the time. Barnum was wrong. You could fool all the people, if you played your cards right.

He got down onto the ground, lying flat on his stomach. Reaching into the grave, he tapped Mags on the shoulder.

“Get up. It’s safe now,” he said.

FORTY-FOUR

They entered the urgent-care clinic on the corner of Eastern and Flamingo at just past ten. Mags had a bloody towel pressed to her ear, and fit right in with the rest of the clinic’s walking wounded. The clinic was run by a drunk named Dr. Gregorio Ibarra. Ibarra specialized in treating the city’s criminal element, the reception area’s cheap plastic seats filled with drug dealers and tattooed gang members. Ibarra treated their gunshot and knife wounds without bothering to report their injuries to the police, as the law required. That was his racket, and he made a good living from it.

A female receptionist reading a celebrity magazine sat behind a plate of bulletproof plastic. Billy sweet-talked her, his breath fogging the plastic. Soon Mags was being ushered into an examining room ahead of the other patients.

The examining room was without decoration. Mags sat on a steel table bolted to the wall and kept shaking her head, pissed off that she hadn’t been taken to a regular hospital. Billy stood against the wall with his arms crossed, refusing to wilt under her hostile gaze.

“This place is a dump. The floors aren’t even clean.”

“I can’t take you to a regular hospital without the cops getting involved. You’ll be fine here. Your wound isn’t that bad.”

“You could have blown my head off with that crazy stunt.”

He had shot Mags on the side of her head directly above her left ear. He hadn’t meant to take a sliver of her ear off, but shit happened. To everyone in the campsite it had appeared that the bullet had entered her skull, when in fact the bullet had only grazed it. The timing of her fall into the grave had sold the play, and he didn’t think it could have gone better.

“You’re alive, aren’t you? Show some gratitude,” he said.

“A piece of my ear is gone. I’ll be scarred for life.”

“So wear your hair long.”

“My hearing’s fucked up as well.”

“Learn sign language.”

She angrily threw the towel at him. “I thought you cared about me.”

He started to steam. He’d risked everything to save her. It had seemed the right thing to do; now he wasn’t so sure. But he was stuck with the decision, and he decided to let the situation play itself out. If he played her right, maybe she’d tell him what her deal with the gaming board was.

“I do care about you,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you use the gun to shoot those bastards instead of me?”

“The gun had only one bullet.” He retrieved the towel from the floor and placed it on the examining table. “Let’s not talk about this right now, okay?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

A noise in the hallway ended the conversation. Ibarra entered, his eyes watery from too many liquid meals. In his hand was a clipboard containing Mags’s personal information, all of it lies. Ibarra gave her wounded ear a cursory examination before addressing Billy.

“Gunshot?” the doctor asked.

Billy acknowledged that Mags had indeed been shot.

“You look familiar.”

Billy acknowledged that he’d visited Ibarra’s clinic in the past.

“I’m assuming you know the drill.”

Billy said that he did.

“Six hundred, cash, and I’ll make your friend as good as new.”

Ibarra’s rates had gone up. Billy was in no position to argue, and he extracted six crisp hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. Ibarra held the bills up to the overhead light to ensure they were not counterfeit before stuffing them into his lab coat. Then he got busy stitching Mags up.

The closest Walgreens was on the corner of Flamingo and Maryland Parkway. The aisles were empty as they walked to the back of the store to where the twenty-four-hour pharmacy was located. The pharmacist on duty was a pleasant guy with a goatee and a silver ponytail and said it would take fifteen minutes to fill Mags’s prescription for painkillers.

They waited on a short bench outside the pharmacy window. Mags’s ear was covered by a flesh-covered bandage that didn’t look so bad, until you saw her face and knew that she’d just stepped one foot in hell. He felt bad for her, even if she was a snitch, and held her hand.

“You going to be okay?” he asked.

“I’ll survive. I want to finish our conversation. What was going to happen to you if you didn’t shoot me? Were the people in the car going to kill you?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“Who are they?”

“The good-looking guy is named Marcus Doucette. He runs Galaxy. The wacky blond’s his wife. The old guy is a grifter I once ran with who switched sides.”

“What’s your deal with them?”

“They caught me cheating their casino and blackmailed me into doing a job for them. I’ll be done tomorrow afternoon, and then they’ll let me go.”

“What happens tomorrow afternoon?”

“I can’t tell you that. What’s wrong?”

“My ear’s starting to throb.”

He coaxed the pharmacist into giving him a single pain pill. Mags swallowed it dry and thanked him with a thin smile. He decided it was time to level with her. “I followed you out of the casino the other night. You got into a Jeep Cherokee on the corner of Sahara. There was a guy behind the wheel. You want to tell me about him?”

She hesitated, the gears shifting, thinking hard.

“He was my partner,” she said.

“Was, as in past tense?”

“We’re splitting up. I’m done with him.”

“He treat you bad?”

“The fucking worst.”

“Explain why you came back to Galaxy.”

“I wanted to see you again. I want to run with your crew. It’s what I wanted my whole life. When you made me the offer the other night, I thought, shit, it’s finally come true.”

He didn’t believe that was her motivation for coming back to Galaxy. The gaming board had made her do it, then left her hanging in the wind. They were bastards that way. But maybe she was being truthful about being done with them. After what had happened tonight, he didn’t think she was very useful to the gaming board anymore.

“Your prescription’s ready,” the pharmacist announced.

He paid for the drugs. The pain pill had taken hold and Mags was acting spacey. Taking her by the arm, he guided her to the front of the store.

“I’m dying for a smoke,” she said.

“You still smoke Kools?”

“You remembered. How sweet.”

He bought a pack and they went outside. The Camaro was parked by the entrance, windows down, the blaring rap music loud enough to stir the dead. Ike and T-Bird occupied the front seat, playing chauffeur because he’d asked them to.

He helped Mags into the backseat. She lived on the east side of town in a town house development. The drive was short. As Ike pulled into the driveway, Billy glanced up and down the street, just to make sure no gaming agents were hanging around.

He walked Mags to the front door. She was fighting to stay awake and struggled to get the key into the front door. She invited him inside, and he heard an urgency in her voice that caught him by surprise. They entered the foyer. The door slammed behind him.

“I want you to stay,” she said.

“I can’t do that.”

“Not even for a little while?”

“No. You need to rest up. You took a real beating tonight.”

“I really want to run with you, Billy. We’ll make a good team.”

He’d been sincere when he’d asked Mags to join his crew. It seemed out of the question now, considering what he knew. Her days as a grifter were over. She needed to find another line of work, go back to school, get a degree in a profession that paid the bills. Anything but this.

“Let’s talk about this in a couple of days,” he said.

“You’re not backing out, are you?”

“Of course not.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, and kissed him on the mouth with everything she had. She had smoked a cigarette in the car, and the menthol taste did a wicked number on his head. When their lips parted, he could hardly breathe.

“Why won’t you stay?” she asked. “Don’t I turn you on?”

“I just can’t,” he said, the words unconvincing.

“You never forgot that day in Providence, or me.”

“I’ve got to beat it.”

“Admit it. You want me so bad your pants are about to burst.”

“Not tonight.”

“You’d better not stand me up on Sunday, or I’m going to hunt you down.”

Her eyelids had turned heavy and she could barely stand up. He guided her through the town house to the master bedroom and made her lie down on a bed covered with a collection of teddy bears. She was asleep within moments of her head landing on the pillows.

He found a blanket on the top shelf of the closet and covered her, then stood beside the bed and drank in the sight of her for the very last time. She was the definition of everything he found beautiful in a woman. Never seeing her again was the right thing to do, even if it was going to tear him apart.

“You take care of yourself,” he whispered.

He walked out of the town house and locked the front door behind him. He needed to wash away the memories with a few stiff drinks. Ike and T-Bird were chilling in the driveway, and he offered to buy them dinner. They climbed into the Camaro with Billy riding shotgun. Ike fired up the engine and backed out of the drive.

“What are you gents in the mood for?” he asked.

“You’ve got some explaining to do first,” Ike said.

“About what?”

“That shit at the campsite. Me and T think you’re trying to pull a fast one on us.”

Before Billy could explain, Ike cuffed him in the mouth, and the car took off.

FORTY-FIVE

Ike and T-Bird took turns smacking him around inside the car. A slap in the face, a poke in the back of the head, all the usual fun stuff. The beatings were getting old, and he raised his arms protectively to shield his face from a cheap shot.

Finally the beating ended. Being of diminutive stature, he’d taught himself to fight with whatever objects happened to be handy, and the car’s cigarette lighter was just itching to get shoved into Ike’s eye. But he didn’t do it. One day, he’d pay them back in spades, but not today. Today, he needed them to help him rip off Galaxy’s casino, and he repeated his offer to buy them dinner, thinking a few slabs of bleeding red meat might settle them down. He suggested a fancy Brazilian restaurant tucked away on East Flamingo called Fogo de Chão.

“What kinda food do they serve?” Ike asked.

“Bleeding red meat. It’s one of the best steakhouses in town,” he said.

“I can always eat a steak. What do you say, T?”

“If he’s buying, I’m flying,” the bird man said.

Fogo was one of the town’s better meateries, bolstered by a waitstaff willing to do backflips to get your order right. Billy bribed the host into seating them at a table away from the other parties, and a waiter dressed in a gaucho outfit went over the specials before taking their orders. Ike chose the beef ancho, T-Bird the
costela de porco
, which were fancy names for rib eye and pork ribs, while he ordered a traditional filet mignon. Soon their drinks came.

“You guys must really enjoy beating me up,” he said.

“We don’t appreciate being messed with,” Ike said.

There was real menace in Ike’s voice. Billy proceeded cautiously.

“Messing with you how?”

“What happened at the campsite, where you faked shooting that bitch. You’ve got some kind of side deal going with her, don’t you?”

“Her name’s Mags. She’s a grifter I met back in Providence when I was a kid. I ran into her the other night in the casino and told her to stay away. She came back anyway, and Crunchie busted her. You know the rest. To answer your question, no, I don’t have a side deal going with her. We’re just old acquaintances.”

Ike put his elbows on the table. He had an enormous wingspan, and it was easy to imagine him scooping up defenseless quarterbacks and throwing them savagely to the ground.

“Do I look like I was born last night? Me and T saw what happened. She jumped into the grave when you faked pumping a bullet in her head. It was staged. You guys are a team.”

“We’re not a team. It was spur of the moment,” he said emphatically. “Look, I’m not trying to double-cross you, if that’s what you guys are thinking.”

“Then how’d the bitch know to jump in the grave? Answer me that.”

“I cued her.”

“Say what?”

“I gave her a verbal cue. When you led Mags across the campsite, I turned her around and whispered in her ear. That’s when I told her to jump in the grave.”

“Your mouth touched her ear for a half a fucking second. You’re trying to tell me that’s when it happened? There was no prior conversation?”

“That’s right. I said, ‘Jump in the grave,’ and she played along.”

“That’s the biggest pile of bullshit I’ve ever heard.”

“Man’s messing with us,” T-Bird said under his breath.

The conversation had taken a brutal turn and Billy knew that he’d lost their trust. Without trust, there could be no partnership, and the scam would die before it ever got off the ground. He decided to start the conversation over, from the beginning, and bring them back into the fold.

“You guys want to hustle, right?” he asked.

“What kind of question is that? You know we do,” Ike said.

“All right, then hear me out. To hustle you have to be able to gain a person’s trust and get them to play along with you. It isn’t easy, yet hustlers do it all the time. It’s what separates the men from the boys. Want to know what the secret is?”

“Lay it on us.”

“You have to know what a person’s thinking. That’s not as hard as it sounds. I’ll give you an example. I’m standing under the clock tower outside the Providence railroad station hustling fake watches for fifty bucks a pop. The watches resemble expensive Swiss timepieces, only the inner workings are as sophisticated as a rubber band. Suddenly, a sucker comes toward me, holding the fake watch I just sold him. Stupid bastard dropped it on the ground and the back’s popped off and he’s seen it’s junk. So what’s he thinking?”

“He’s mad, and he’s going to call the cops,” Ike said.

“You’re half-right. He’s mad, but he isn’t calling the cops. If he were going to call the cops, he’d stay a safe distance away from me. Try again.”

“He wants his money back.”

“That’s right. He’s mad, and he wants his money back. You just figured out the two things that were on his mind. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Easy as pie,” Ike said.

“So what do I do?”

“Give him a refund.”

“In front of the other suckers and risk exposing myself? No way. I stick my hand into my pocket where I keep my wad, peel two fifties off the roll, and palm them in my hand. I bring my hand out of my pocket and stick the money into the sucker’s palm as I shake his hand. The other suckers think we’re friends. I whisper in his ear. I say, ‘Play along.’”

“Did he keep his mouth shut?”

“Damn straight he did. He paid fifty for the watch, got a hundred back. He just made a one hundred percent return on investment. He goes home happy. End of story.”

A trio of waiters brought their meals to the table with the precision of a military exercise. The meats were cooked to perfection, the smells mouthwatering. Ike and T-Bird picked up their cutlery and dug in. He had hooked them with a story from his youth. Now came the hard part, which would be to reel them in. He ignored his meal and watched them eat.

Ike finished his rib eye in record time and wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. The look on his face was skeptical. “You ever try this in a casino? You know, during a scam.”

“I use it all the time,” he said.

“How’s that work?”

He glanced furtively over his shoulder. None of the waitstaff were near the table, but he did it anyway, just for the effect. “It’s Friday night, and I’m scamming Planet Hollywood at roulette. The ball falls, and one of the ladies in my crew deliberately places a late bet. The croupier sees her and says, ‘Lady, you can’t do that!’ The croupier slides her late bet back to her. He does this real deliberately, so everyone can see he’s got things under control.

“At the same time, the other lady in my crew makes a second late bet. She’s sitting next to the red-black boxes on the layout, and she drops five hundred on the red, which happens to be the color that just won. No one sees a thing because they’re preoccupied watching the croupier. His movements block out her movements. The scam’s totally invisible.

“Suddenly, a little old lady standing next to me says ‘Holy crap’ under her breath. She’s seen the whole thing. So what’s she thinking?”

Ike rubbed his chin in thought. “She’s thinking, shit, I wish that was me.”

“You nailed it. What tipped you off?”

“’Cause she didn’t broadcast it.”

“There you go. If she’d wanted to expose us, she’d have said it out loud. So I slipped a few hundred in chips into her hands, and I whispered, ‘Be nice.’ When you whisper to a stranger, you’re making them an accomplice. She walked away with a big smile on her puss.”

“Very cool,” Ike said.

“Think about what happened at the campsite. I knew what Mags was thinking as you brought her toward me. She’s praying I wouldn’t shoot her. When I whispered ‘Jump in the grave,’ her prayers came true, and she played along.”

“But what if she hadn’t played along?” T-Bird said. “What then?”

“They always do. You just need to play it cool, and they’ll come around.”

He was done talking and ate his now cold filet while watching the punishers converse with their eyes. Eyebrows arched up, eyebrows down, a few short snorts, each man speaking his mind. Ike was sold, the jury still out for the bird man. They both needed to be on board if he was going to rob Galaxy’s casino, and he raised his arm and clicked his fingers.

Their waiter hustled over. “Is everything to your satisfaction?”

He waved the waiter closer and whispered to him. The waiter nodded and left. To T-Bird he said, “I just told our waiter it’s your birthday. Just watch. He’s going to bring out a piece of cake with a candle and get the entire staff to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you.”

“Did you ask him to do that?” the bird man asked.

“I didn’t have to.”

“Then how you know he’s going to?”

“Because our waiter thinks we’re high rollers. I could tell by the way he served us and how overly polite he’s been. Our waiter thinks that if he takes extra special care of us, we’re going to take care of him, so he’s going to pull out all the stops.”

“A cake with a candle and everybody in the fucking kitchen singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to little ole me, and you didn’t tell him to,” T-Bird said skeptically.

“That’s right.”

“You’re messing with us again.”

“Bet you I’m right. Loser picks up the tab.”

“You’re on.”

Sixty seconds later, their waiter returned to their table holding a dessert plate containing a slice of molten chocolate cake with a lit white sparkler on top, which he placed in front of a slack-jawed T-Bird. The rest of the waitstaff appeared and gathered round the table, along with the female bartender, both the cooks, and a gang of grinning busboys. On the count of three, they broke into a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ sung in Portuguese while enthusiastically clapping their hands. By the time they were done, every diner in the restaurant was applauding, and Ike was laughing his fool head off.