James Swain - Take Down

There were a lot of reasons not to. Doucette had warned him what would happen if he tried to pull a scam inside the casino, and he didn’t think the casino boss was lying. But Doucette was a cokehead, and people who did drugs were easily duped.

Rock’s bodyguards were a different story. Bodyguards in Vegas were a dime a dozen; female bodyguards were not. Billy guessed Rock’s femme fatales were lethal in every way and would cut him down in a New York minute if he looked cross-eyed at their boss.

He didn’t care. He was going to figure out a way to rip off Rock.

Then there was the man himself. Rock was as nasty as a heavy in a James Bond flick, not to mention the stick with the skull-crushing handle. It would be a major hurdle for anyone to take Reverend T. Rock down and live to tell about it.

Fuck it, he was still going to do it. He just needed to let the idea rattle around in his head for a little while, and take form. Anything was possible when he put his mind to it.

The waitress brought their drinks. Ike and T-Bird handed over their keno tickets along with their two-dollar payments. As the waitress walked away, Ike passed his phone to Billy.

“Her Highness,” Ike said under his breath.

“Billy Cunningham, at your service,” he said into the phone.

“I’ve got some bad news for you, lover boy,” Shaz said. “Crunchie just made one of the Gypsies cheating at blackjack. We’re going to pull her off the floor and put the screws to her, find out where the rest of her family is. I’m afraid you lose.”

The Gypsies had avoided the law for decades, and Billy didn’t buy that Crunchie had spotted a member of their clan so quickly, even with the help of surveillance cameras. A more likely scenario was that Crunchie had spotted another cheater doing business in the casino and had decided to rat them out, hoping it would get him back in his boss’s good graces. Billy needed to plant the seed of doubt in Shaz’s mind, and he needed to do it quickly.

“Crunchie’s been wrong before,” he said. “That’s why you brought me on board.”

“He’s not wrong this time,” she said. “This woman’s marking cards with a secret substance. I watched her on the cameras and saw her digging into her pocketbook to get it. Crunchie called her a Lady Picasso.”

“Maybe she was getting her lipstick.”

“Admit it, you’re beaten.”

“The fact that she stuck her hand into her purse doesn’t mean she’s one of the Gypsies, or that she’s cheating. Crunchie will say anything to keep his job. If you bust this woman and she’s clean, she’s going to sue your ass off. You don’t want that, do you?”

“But she’s beating us silly.”

“How much are you into her for?”

“Ten grand.”

“That happens sometimes. Let me take a look and tell you if she’s cheating or not.”

“Why do I feel you’re playing me?”

“I’m not playing you. What table is she sitting at?”

“She’s at the second-to-last table in the blackjack pit, sitting at third base.”

“I’m going right now.”

“Call me after you’ve had a look. I don’t want to lose any more money to this bitch.”

He tossed Ike the phone. Lady Picassos were skilled female cheaters who secretly marked the backs of playing cards with special substances during blackjack, allowing them to know the dealer’s total before the dealer did. These substances ranged from daub to luminous paint that could be seen through special rose-tinted glasses to Vaseline jelly. Women were especially adept at this type of cheating and used their pocketbooks to hide the substance. He was acquainted with several female cheaters in Vegas who made their living this way, and he felt reasonably certain that one of them had had the misfortune of getting caught in Crunchie’s crosshairs.

Rising from the table, he threw down money for the drinks.

“Let’s go check this woman out,” he said.

The winning keno numbers were flashing across a digital screen, and the punishers paused to stare. Keno was a carnival game, the chance of winning so poor that it was rare that anyone ever did. But Ike and T-Bird didn’t know that. They didn’t know the odds, and in this town, that was usually the kiss of death.

They watched long enough to find out they were losers. Throwing their receipts to the floor, they followed Billy out of the cocktail lounge.

Blackjack had always been a popular game, more so after the movie 21 depicted a crew of fun-loving math whizzes taking down Vegas. The movie was typical Hollywood horseshit, but that hadn’t stopped scores of people from teaching themselves how to count cards and descending upon Sin City believing they could beat the house.

Billy spotted several counters in the blackjack pit. Their body language gave them away. Hunched over, never drinking anything stronger than a Coke, they stared at their cards with the intensity of accountants doing an audit. The casinos had developed measures to send them home broke, only they were usually too busy counting to notice all their chips were gone.

He came to the second-to-last table in the pit. The dealer was a woman with perfect posture who slid the cards out of the plastic dealing shoe at a rapid pace. The faster the game was dealt, the more money the house made.

He passed the table without slowing down. The woman at third base was a major speed bump. Mid-thirties, with a great face hidden behind librarian glasses and a blond wig, and a body that looked just right. He couldn’t remember seeing her around before. A newbie.

He parked himself twenty feet past the table to watch her play. To determine if she was cheating, he counted the number of hands the dealer dealt, divided by the number of times she won. She was winning more than 50 percent of the time, which was what marked cards gave you. Crunchie had called it right. She was a Lady Picasso.

He kept watching, hoping to catch her go into her purse and get the substance. Every painter had a little quirk that was unique. Some only marked aces, while others marked ten-value cards. The amount of substance they applied to the card was also unique. Some painters used small marks, while others preferred the larger variety.

Lady Picasso unclasped her purse. Out came a lipstick, which she applied generously to her lips. As she returned the lipstick, her hand stayed a little too long.

Busted.

When her hand came out, her fingers were spread wide and looked frozen. She’d put the substance on all four fingers so she could mark four cards in succession without going back to her purse. It was a nice touch, something he hadn’t seen before.

During the next two rounds, she marked four ten-valued cards that were dealt to her. To the eye-in-the-sky it had to look above suspicion, her fingertips lightly brushing the back of the cards she wished to mark. In reality, she was turning the deck into an open book.

“Guess who,” Ike said, handing Billy the cell phone.

“Is the bitch cheating or not?” Shaz asked.

“I’m not sure. Are you filming her?” he asked.

“Of course we’re filming her. The video’s inconclusive.”

Billy’s appreciation of Lady Picasso grew. She’d honed her cheating to the degree where the surveillance camera could not discern exactly what she was doing. That kind of skill was a rarity, and he found himself wanting to get to know this woman.

“Let me watch her some more,” he said.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Shaz said. “I’m going to tell Ike and T-Bird to pull her in the back and frisk her. If she’s got a substance in her purse, she’s going down.”

“You’re going to kill her?”

“That’s right. It’s how we deal with people that steal from us. Put Ike back on.”