Take Down (25 page)

FORTY-SIX

While T-Bird settled the tab, Billy waited outside. It was a faultless night, and he watched a jet pass beneath the stars. He couldn’t remember ever gazing up and not seeing a plane. With the same ferocious determination of lemmings, suckers flocked to Vegas to gamble their money away. One day, they were going to collectively wake up and realize the town was a big scam. Until that happened, he’d ride the wave along with everyone else.

His Droid vibrated. Ly calling. The late hour spelled trouble. If she hadn’t been his friend’s girlfriend, he wouldn’t have taken the call.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Gaming agents come to motel looking for me,” she said. “They bang on everyone’s door, tell people open up. I climb out bathroom window, hide by pool. Finally they leave.”

“Tell the manager to move you to another room.”

“You tell him. I scared.”

“Come on, work with me.”

“You want gaming board to arrest me? Maybe I tell them how we cheat Slots A Fun. I bet they like to hear about that.”

Blackmail. As if he didn’t have enough problems right now. He told her to hold tight and ended the call. Ike and T-Bird came outside. He sensed a subtle change in them. They’d accepted the fact that they were clueless and needed to do what he said.

“I need you to cover for me for a few hours,” he said.

“No problem,” Ike said.

Ike took Flamingo to Koval and pulled into the motel parking lot where Ly was holed up. Billy checked for unmarked vehicles and saw none. As he started to get out, Ike stopped him.

“Me and T want to hear details about tomorrow’s scam,” Ike said.

“Yeah, like what are we supposed to do?” T-Bird asked.

He’d purposely avoided talking about details, knowing they’d wake up tomorrow having forgotten. It was the problem when you worked with morons.

“I’ll go over the details tomorrow over breakfast,” he said. “Just make sure you get a good night’s sleep. You need to be on your toes.”

“Sleeping’s never been a problem.” Ike shot T-Bird a disgusted look.

“That’s not funny,” T-Bird said.

Billy didn’t want to hear anymore, and jumped out. The Camaro roared away. He took another look around the parking lot before approaching Ly’s room and tapping on the door.

“It’s me, open up,” he said.

She let him in. She’d lost the dealer’s uniform and wore tight-fitting designer jeans, a sleeveless pink top, and a gold necklace with a crouching-tiger ornament.

“Any sign of the gaming agents?” he asked.

“There were no gaming agents,” she replied.

“Then why’d you call me?”

She gave him a kick in the nuts. Pools of black opened before his eyes, and it took all his willpower not to go down. The lost snapshot of Mags’s daughter lay on the dresser, and he guessed it had gotten stuck in the money he’d given her.

“I hate you! You ruin my life!” she exclaimed.

“You’re the one who wanted to cheat casinos,” he gasped.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were piece of shit.”

“I saved your ass, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, then you leave me in this dump, go play around with other girl. Fuck you!”

The snapshot had set her off. He picked it up and waved it in Ly’s face.

“She’s the daughter of a woman I know. There’s nothing between us.”

“You lie. Billy Bullshit should be your name.”

“I’m not lying. And by the way, I’m not your boyfriend.”

She snatched the snapshot from his hand and tore it in half.

“I hate you,” she said again.

Women were complicated. There was nothing between them, yet Ly had gotten her feelings hurt. He needed to set her straight, so he took her outside to the pool, where they sat in lounge chairs by the water’s edge. Next to the diving board was a metal sign explaining all the reasons hotel guests weren’t allowed to swim at night. Ly still had the pieces of Amber’s graduation photo clutched in her hand.

“Her mother’s a grifter named Maggie Flynn,” he explained. “Mags got me started in the rackets. I ran into her the other night, and we had a drink and talked about her joining my crew. After she left, I found her daughter’s photo on the floor. I stuck it in my wallet and mistakenly gave it to you. That’s the story—okay?”

“This woman going to work with you?”

“No. I found out she’s a snitch for the gaming board.”

“How you know
that
?”

“She tripped up. When we first met, I told her how my old man wanted me to go to college. I left after a year, and Mags asked why I quit. I never told anyone that I quit, except the gaming board. When Mags repeated the lie, I knew she was working with them.”

“This woman no good.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Why you quit college? Something bad happen?”

He stared at the pool’s still surface. He’d traveled three thousand miles to escape the utter shame of his failure, yet there were times when the distance wasn’t nearly far enough. Ly put her hand on his arm.

“What you do? Sleep with all the girls and make them cry?”

“I wish it was that simple.”

“You not going to tell me?”

“No.”

“I tell you my secrets. Why won’t you tell me yours?”

She was prying, and he gave her a hard look.

“Why do you care? There’s nothing in it for you.”

“I just trying to be your friend.”

“Do you really mean that?”

She took her hand away and nodded solemnly.

“All right. Here’s why I left,” he said.

The beginning of the end of his days at MIT had begun early one Saturday morning with a visit from two big-gutted Boston cops. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he’d stepped into the hallway outside his dorm room to discover the boys in blue banging on doors, looking for him. When he’d asked what the problem was, the one in charge had wagged a finger in his face.

“You’re the problem. Get dressed. We’re going for a walk.”

As they crossed the campus and walked down bitterly cold Mass Avenue, Billy wondered what he’d done. He’d tried to keep his nose clean since entering college, but it had been tough. There were too many stuck-up rich kids that needed to be knocked down a peg, and he’d cheated them at weekly poker games for extra spending money. The scores had been chump change, and he couldn’t imagine that it had led to anything serious.

His attitude changed as they’d entered the office of the dean of undergraduate education. The dean was at his desk, a squirrely fellow wearing a dated striped suit and tie, his face a study in odd tics and twitches. The dean had presented Billy with his award a few weeks ago, and they were on a first-name basis. With him was a lanky detective with a badge pinned to his suit coat. Parked in chairs by the window were two juniors named Brett Wolf and Dan Fleshman. Wolf and Fleshman were his buddies, although judging by their refusal to make eye contact, he sensed they’d just thrown him under the bus.

“Hello, Billy,” the dean said solemnly.

“Good morning, Dean,” he replied. “How have you been?”

“To be honest, I’ve been better. Do you have any idea why you’re here?”

“Because my friends are assholes,” he nearly said. Instead he said, “No, sir, I don’t.”

“Brett and Dan have implicated you in a plot to scam the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. They claim you masterminded the operation, and attempted to steal a quarter of a million dollars from the casino.”

Billy swallowed hard. What had these two clowns done?

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

“We have proof, Billy. Why don’t you fess up and save us the trouble?”

“Because there’s nothing to fess up to.”

“You’re making this hard on yourself, son.”

“I’m Detective Peret with the Boston Police Department,” interrupted the man with the badge. He had the ruddy complexion that came from too many pints, what the locals called a saloon tan. “As you probably know, the Mohegan Sun is run by the Pequot Indian nation. I’ve been asked by the head of Pequot’s tribal police department to speak with you. The Pequots are very disturbed by what your friends have done. Do you mind if I call you Billy?”

He wanted to kill Wolf and Fleshman. Instead of ripping off the Pequots for a few grand a week as they’d agreed to, they’d gotten greedy and gone for the big enchilada.

“Not at all,” he said.

“Good. Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” From the dean’s desk Peret picked up a kid’s video poker game made by Bally Gaming. The game had been a big seller last Christmas and in all the department stores. “Last night, your friends got caught stealing a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar jackpot from a video poker machine at the casino. The video poker machine that got scammed was made by Bally Gaming. According to what your friends have told us, you figured out a way to use this kid’s game, also made by Bally, to scam the casino version. Is this ringing any bells, Billy?”

“They’re lying,” he said.

“Really? You created the software program they used to scam the game. We found the original on a computer in your statistics class. Your name was on it.”

Whoops. So much for covering his tracks.

“I want to speak to a lawyer,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” Peret said.

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. I’m here to cut a deal with you. The Pequots want to know how your friends knew the cards that were going to come up on their video poker machine. If you explain how you did that, they won’t press charges, and I won’t arrest you.”

Rule number one of cheating was never to explain, because an explanation was an admission of guilt, and once you admitted your guilt, your goose was cooked. But the other option was no fun, either. Arrest, plea bargain, or maybe a trial, and jail time.

“Detective, you have yourself a deal,” he said.

Peret’s disposition grew more hospitable. The detective crossed the office and handed Billy the video poker game. “Explain how you did it, and don’t leave anything out.”

“You got it.” He hit the play button on the machine and the game came to life. “I saw this game in a store last Christmas, and it got me to thinking. I knew Bally made casino video poker machines, and I wondered if they’d programmed the game’s internal clock using the same software that they’d used for their casino games. It would save time, and lots of money.”

“Did they?” Peret asked.

“Yes, although it took me a while to figure it out. First, I analyzed the game on a computer, and discovered it used a random function to shuffle its internal deck of cards. The random function generates starting values, called seeds, which are randomly changed each time you play. It’s a simple formula. When a player hits the game’s start button, the random function looks at the number of milliseconds which have elapsed since twelve a.m. and uses that number to create the seed. With me so far?”

“Keep talking, smart-ass,” Peret said.

“Since there are eighty-six million milliseconds each day, the seeds should be totally random, ensuring a fair game. Because I knew the starting point was twelve a.m., I was able to work my way backward, calculate the seed, and then calculate which cards would come out. I was able to cheat the store game within a few hours.

“Cheating the casino version of the game came next. Brett, Dan, and I visited the Mohegan Sun, and Brett played a game of video poker while Dan read the cards off the screen to me with his cell phone. I was in our hotel room on my laptop, and I ran the cards through my software program using the twelve a.m. starting point. Sure enough, the internal clock on the casino game was identical to the store game. We started beating the casino game right away.”

“How much did you win?” Peret asked.

“Two grand. I told them not to win too much. You know they say hogs get fed, pigs get slaughtered. I guess they didn’t listen.”

“That would be an understatement,” the detective said.