James Swain - Super Con

“Up yours, Frank.”

“Where’s your proof?” Amber repeated.

“Right here.” Frank flipped over the photo of the lunching Gypsies to reveal a phone number written on the back. “I distributed this photo to every tech on the Strip and told them I’d pay them a reward if they busted these guys. This particular photo was on Blake’s desk at LINQ. We know that because Blake identified it for us. The phone number is a friend of his. You had a conversation with Blake, then asked him where the restroom was. When Blake wasn’t looking, you swiped the photo off his desk and later passed it to the Gypsies.”

“I did no such thing. I’ve never met these people in my life.”

“Look, Maggie, the Gypsies run in a pack, and it occurred to me they might be renting a house. So I made Airbnb cough up the names of houses rented in the past few weeks, and I checked them out. The last one, on the north side, was empty. But we found the photo lying on the grass by the driveway. And since we can place you in the LINQ surveillance room the last time the photo was seen, we can connect you to them.”

“No jury will buy that. Give me a break,” Amber said.

“I’m not talking about a jury,” Frank said. “If I convince a judge that your beloved mama is attempting to defraud the casinos, he’ll let me turn her life upside down. I’ll look at every cell phone call, every e-mail, every bank statement. No stone will be left unturned.”

“You won’t find anything,” Amber said. “My mom doesn’t do that stuff anymore.”

“You might be right. Maybe we’ll turn up nothing,” Frank admitted. “But she’ll still have to hire a lawyer. She won’t be able to act in her precious TV show because she’ll be too busy defending herself. We’ll still win.”

Mags rose from her chair. “No, you won’t. I’ll take a lie detector test and say that I’ve never met the Gypsies in my life. And your stupid investigation will end.”

Frank slipped the photo into his jacket pocket and smiled. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll make sure not to administer a lie detector test.” Mags and Amber both started to protest, and he shut them down. “In case you forgot, my career is riding on this case. And that means more to me than all the tea in China. Get it, Maggie?”

“I don’t know them, Frank. You have to believe me.”

“I do believe you. But that doesn’t mean I care.”

“You dirty shit.”

“Is that all you’ve got left in your sling? Pick up the phone and start calling your grifter friends. Find out where the Gypsies are. If you don’t, I’ll destroy you.”

“This is blackmail.”

“I won’t argue with you there. Have a nice day.”

Frank walked out of the trailer. Rand was standing behind the door and nearly got his nose broken. He had heard every damn word and looked fit to be tied.

Rand entered and shut the door. “How do we make this go away?”

Mags shook her head, defeated. “I have no idea.”

“Will he take a bribe?”

“You want to give him money? We could all go to jail.”

“We could have the carpenters working the shoot put new countertops in his kitchen. The wives always dig that.”

“Jesus Christ, Rand. You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What about appliances? All name brand. He can’t say no.”

“That’s not going to work.”

Rand was a Hollywood charmer. A knife could have been sticking out of his gut and he still would have managed to exude optimism. The smile slowly disappeared, revealing a deeply troubled man. “CBS has budgeted two million bucks for this pilot. If the shoot gets shut down, everyone will be fired, and my deal with CBS will fall apart. You need to fix this, baby.”

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Mags said.

“You swiped that photo. You had to realize there would be consequences if you got caught.”

Rand glanced across the trailer at Amber leaning against the fridge. His eyes stayed longer than they should have, then returned to Mags.

“I’m sure you and your daughter will think of something,” he said.

Leaving Royal Links, Billy rolled down his window and let the desert air warm his skin. When he’d first landed in Vegas, he thought he’d walked into a pizza oven. Over time he’d gotten used to the intense heat and found himself looking forward to days when it broke a hundred degrees and the grass turned brown before his eyes.

He got a call as he pulled into Turnberry Towers. It was none other than Mags. Just yesterday she’d proclaimed that she never wanted to lay eyes on him again, and here she was, giving him an old-fashioned phone call. He answered with a cheerful, “Hey there.”

“You stupid little bastard,” she swore.

The valet approached. The valet liked his job too much, leading Billy to assume the residents’ cars were being taken for unauthorized spins. He waved him away and parked in the building’s shade. “I missed you, too.”

“Fuck you, Billy. And the horse you rode in on.”

“Are you going to explain what I did or just curse at me?”

“Frank Grimes just paid me a visit. Frank tracked down the Gypsies to a rented house on the north end of town. He went out there to arrest them, only your friends were gone. But they left behind a calling card in the grass next to the driveway.”

“What kind of calling card?”

“Excuse me. You left a calling card in the grass by the driveway.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you little turd. Remember the surveillance photo I gave you? Well, it must have fallen out of your pocket onto the grass.”

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. He’d given the photo to Tommy Boswell, who must have let the photo slip out of his pocket while he was climbing into the trunk of the getaway car. Even the best crooks screwed up and became complicit in their own demise. To make matters worse, the photo had landed in the hands of Frank Grimes, who prided himself on making cheats’ lives miserable, one day at a time.

“Can the photo be traced back to you?” he asked.

“It sure can. You need to fix this, Cunningham. Right fucking now.”

Mags was on tilt and running off at the mouth. He needed to look her in the eye and calm her down. Having her come to his penthouse was not a good idea, since she might say something out of line in front of the desk clerk or a resident and blow his cover. And then he’d have to go to the trouble of finding a new place to live.

Across the street, a brand-new joint called SLS shimmered like a mirage in the desert. He’d recently checked out the casino and found the pit bosses and dealers so green that they could have fallen off the backs of potato trucks. There were loads of dining options, ranging from super expensive to el cheapo, and he decided to meet Mags there.

“Meet me at Umami Burger at the SLS Hotel in half an hour. And don’t be late.” It was a crass thing for him to say. Mags had helped him, and in return he’d screwed up and put her in a bad light. But she still needed to be reminded who was in the driver’s seat. Otherwise, she’d run all over him.

She started to royally curse him, and he ended the call.

Mags sat down at Billy’s table at Umami. “Talk about treating a girl to a good time. This place is a toilet. At least you could have picked some place nice.”

Umami was nothing to write home about. It had a split personality and billed itself as a burger joint, beer garden, and sports book. It did none of those things well. There was nothing to recommend it, except fifty big-screen TVs that made it impossible to eavesdrop. The gaming board had bugged bars all over town, and Billy chose his meeting places carefully.

“This is my daughter, Amber. Amber, meet Billy Cunningham.”