James Swain - Take Down

“Guess who wants to bust your balls,” Ike said.

“Who’s this?” Billy said.

“Hey, Billy, did you have a nice meal in Brando’s? What’s that you’ve got in your hand? A wet bagel? You have strange tastes, kid,” Crunchie said, laughing in his face.

Billy scanned the hotel lobby. Thursday was the beginning of the weekend in Vegas, the lobby a mob scene, with snaking lines of tourists wrestling with luggage in the check-in line. Seeing no sign of the old grifter, he said, “Where are you hiding? Under a rock?”

“I’m in the surveillance room watching you on a monitor,” Crunchie said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m going to catch the Gypsies before you do.”

Casino surveillance rooms were filled with the latest electronic spying equipment. Trained techs stared at a matrix of high-def video monitors, hunting for cheaters and thieves on the casino floor. The old grifter had a huge advantage and had called him to rub it in.

“Want to bet on it?” Billy asked, not willing to throw in the towel.

“You’re a cocky little bastard. Ten grand says I find the Gypsies first.”

“You’re on. You know, Crunch, if you’d made Ricky Boswell like you were hired to do, none of this would have been necessary. You blew it, you dumb shit.”

“Who told you that?”

“A little bird. Have a nice day.”

He ended the call and tossed Ike the cell phone. The game was on.

He sifted through the lobby with the punishers on his heels. The hotel was big enough to hold a few thousand guests, and any one of them could have been a member of the Gypsy clan. He needed to narrow down his search if he was going to catch them.

Raised voices snapped his head. At the check-in, a comely blond reservationist was trying to calm down an irate male guest wearing a rumpled suit and a livid expression.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I can’t do that,” the reservationist said.

“I just traveled two thousand miles,” the man protested.

“Sir, the hotel is completely sold out. There are no rooms.”

“Are you telling me there’s not one available room? I don’t believe that for a minute.”

“Are you part of a group or convention?”

“No. I’m here by myself.”

“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

The man stormed off. Weekends were a hot ticket in town, with bookings made months in advance. The Gypsies would have needed to book their rooms a long time ago, unless they were part of a convention. The hotels always reserved blocks of rooms for conventions, and those rooms were held open, even when the rest of the hotel was sold out.

It made sense, when he thought about it. Being part of a group was the perfect cover to pull off a scam. Just wear the plastic registration badge around your neck inside the casino, and no one would pay the slightest attention to you. He needed to find out the names of the groups booked into the hotel and whittle down the list. That couldn’t be terribly hard.

Concierges generally knew the hotel guest list inside out. The concierge on duty was tan and pretty and wore a gold uniform with a burgundy vest and a gold necktie with a crisp knot. He was talking on the phone to a guest when Billy slapped the bell on his desk.

“I need to see your welcome board.”

He followed the direction of the concierge’s finger. A digital welcome board the size of a movie poster hung by the elevators, with names of groups booked into the hotel crawling down the iridescent blue screen. The American Society of Podiatric Surgeons, Esurance, the CAR Group, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, plus a slot tournament, the MacGregor family reunion, and nine weddings. Eenie meeny miney mo. Which group were the Gypsies with?

“What you looking at?” Ike said into his ear.

“Be quiet. I’m working,” he said.

On the board, a calendar of Friday’s events appeared, listing the conference rooms each group was meeting in. The podiatrists were in the Clark Gable lecture hall from nine until four, the car salesmen in the Humphrey Bogart room from eight until noon, followed by a golf tourney on the casino’s Golden Bear course, and so on, every group on the list accounted for. Each group had their days planned out for them, morning, noon, and night. Now he was getting somewhere. Returning to the concierge’s desk, he slapped the bell again, this time much louder.

“What do you want?” the concierge asked.

“Pico,” Billy said, not liking the concierge’s attitude.

“Excuse me?” the concierge said.

“Thomas Pico. I’m a guest in your hotel.”

“You and two thousand other people.”

“Are they all comped in a high-roller suite?”

Tap, tap, tap across the keyboard went the concierge’s fingers. His eyes looked at the screen and grew embarrassingly wide. “Mr. Pico, my apologies. How may I help you?”

“I need to see Saturday’s calendar of events.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to give out that information. House rules.”

“Does the GM have that information?”

“I’m sure he does.”

Billy turned from the concierge desk. “Call Doucette, and ask him to put a call into the GM,” he said to Ike. “I need to see the events calendar for Saturday. The Gypsies are going to be attending a function in the hotel. If I can see the calendar, I should be able to narrow down which group they’re with.”

“You just figured that out staring at that stupid board?” Ike said.

Inanimate objects weren’t stupid. People were stupid.

“That’s right,” he replied.

Ike made the call to Doucette.

A minute later, Shaz emerged from an elevator and crossed the lobby to the concierge desk, snapping heads in a black leather mini, sensuous black leggings, and a black leather jacket zippered to her neck bomber-pilot style. Her outlandish outfits seemed to change by the hour.

“Marcus said you’re onto them,” she said.

“I need to see Saturday’s events calendar,” Billy said. “The Gypsies are booked into the hotel with a group, and I want to see which groups are holding events in the hotel Saturday afternoon. The concierge said the GM has the information.”

“Piece of cake,” she said.

At the registration desk she got a reservationist’s attention by snapping her fingers. A door beside the desk sprung open. Soon they were walking past a warren of sales cubicles to the GM’s corner office. As was her custom, she entered without bothering to knock.

“Surprise,” she said, as if jumping out of a cake.

The GM was on the phone putting out a fire. With the weary expression of a man who spent his day making tough decisions, he said, “I’ll call you right back,” and rose with a pained expression on his face, as if Shaz was the bane of his existence.

“Hello, Ms. Doucette, what can I do for you?” the GM asked.

“Hello, Jerry. We need to see Saturday’s events calendar,” she said.

The nameplate on the desk said his name was Jack, not Jerry. The GM tapped a command into his computer and pivoted the monitor so Saturday’s events calendar faced them.

“That’s the whole list. Anything else I can do, Ms. Doucette?” the GM asked.

“Disappear for a few minutes,” she said.

The GM left the office with the attitude of a man who just might not come back. Billy brought his face up to the monitor to read the calendar. The foot doctors were attending a lecture from 2:00 until 4:00 p.m., as were the insurance agents. The MacGregor clan was also gathering in the hotel during that time period.

“The Gypsies are part of one of these three groups,” he said.

“How can you know that looking at a screen?” she asked.