James Swain - Take Down

Frank stared absently into space, processing the things she’d said. In a moment of weakness after sex, he’d told her that millions in drug money was being laundered through Galaxy’s casino by a dealer out of LA named Rock, and that the gaming board had gathered enough evidence to raid the place, and that they wanted Rock on the premises to make the case stick. How Billy’s working for Doucette played into this was anyone’s guess, although she felt certain that Frank would figure it out. Frank always did. It just took a little time.

She went to the minibar and fixed a Jack and Coke extra strong. Kneeling beside his chair, she served him, and his cop mask melted away. If she didn’t ask him now, she’d never find out.

“Tell me what Cunningham did to you at the Hard Rock,” she said.

Frank had been chasing Billy for a while. Whenever Billy was in a casino, money flew out the door, a sure sign that cheating was taking place.

Gaming agents were rated by the number of busts they made. To accomplish this task, agents could freeze games in casinos, enter restricted areas, and tap phone lines of employees and guests. They had unlimited authority and did not hesitate to use it.

Frank had gone around town and given Billy’s head shot to several casinos and asked them to videotape Billy if the young hustler showed his face.

Eventually, Billy appeared in one of the casinos and was taped. Frank studied the tape and determined that Billy and his crew were bringing gaffed dice onto the craps table. Billy’s crew was slicker than snot on a brass doorknob, and no jury would convict them based upon the fuzzy images on the tape. To make an arrest stick, Frank would have to catch them red-handed.

Frank did some more digging and learned that Billy lived in a luxury condo at Turnberry Towers, even though the condo was in someone else’s name. He got a warrant from a judge to tap Billy’s phone and for several weeks listened to Billy’s calls.

Everyone slipped up, even the smart ones. One day while talking to a friend, Billy mentioned wanting to check out the Rehab pool, which was part of the Hard Rock. The remark made Frank believe that Billy had the Hard Rock in his sights and was planning to rip it off.

Frank decided to set a trap and camped out in the Hard Rock’s surveillance room, living on sandwiches and black coffee. His intuition paid off. Two days later, Billy and his crew appeared in the Hard Rock’s craps pit and started scamming. Frank alerted casino security and went downstairs. He was determined to catch Billy with the gaffed dice, and parked himself directly outside the front entrance.

A few minutes later, Billy came through the front doors, his right hand cupped by his side. Frank approached in his rumpled suit and two-day-old beard. Smelling a cop, Billy tried to run. Frank drew his sidearm and took dead aim at the young hustler.

“Don’t tempt me,” he said.

The Hard Rock’s entrance was distinguished by a giant neon electric guitar balanced atop a rectangular concrete awning. Drawing his right hand back, Billy made a heaving motion at the awning. The bottom dropped out of Frank’s stomach. He grabbed Billy’s arm and shook open his hand. The gaffed dice were gone and so was Frank’s case.

Frank went on tilt. He ordered Billy to drop to his knees and stick his arms behind his back. He handcuffed Billy, squeezing the cuffs so tightly that they cut off the circulation in Billy’s hands. Then he smacked Billy in the face.

“You’re going down once I get those dice back,” Frank said.

“What dice?” Billy replied.

“The gaffed dice you just threw onto the awning. I’m onto your scam.”

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

Deny, deny, deny-that was the hustler’s refrain. A blue platoon of security burst through the front doors and circled the two men. Traffic coming into the casino ground to a halt, causing a line of yellow cabs waiting to drop off fares to back up to Paradise Road and down Harmon. Frank was in deep shit now. He wasn’t supposed to get in the way of casinos making money. But at that point, Frank didn’t care. He hated Billy, hated his lavish lifestyle, his sleek Italian sports car, and most of all, the harem of women Billy had at his disposal. Frank was going to nail this little candy-ass hustler if it was the last thing he did.

A metal ladder was produced, and Frank tried to climb atop the awning. It wasn’t tall enough, and Frank could not get up without fear of falling. By now, the Hard Rock’s general manager was begging Frank to reconsider. Couldn’t Frank see the casino was losing money? Frank told the GM to get lost and summoned Las Vegas Fire and Rescue to bring a fire truck with a retractable ladder to the casino.

While Frank waited for the fire truck, a KLAS news van appeared. Local TV news crews weren’t allowed inside the casinos and were forced to slum around town, looking for stabbings, shootings, and other mayhem suitable for the evening news. The front entrance to the Hard Rock was fair game, and a female reporter stuck a mike in Billy’s face.

“Care to make a statement?” the reporter asked.

“They grabbed the wrong guy. I didn’t do anything,” Billy declared.

By now, Frank was sweating bullets. If he didn’t find the gaffed dice, his long-overdue promotion would disappear, and he’d be stuck pounding the pavement. He got on the horn and asked for a team of agents to help search for the missing dice.

The fire truck was wailing as it pulled into the Hard Rock. A team of gaming agents arrived, including Frank’s boss, a hard-ass named Tricaricco. Under Frank’s direction, the fire truck’s ladder was stretched onto the awning, and the gaming agents scampered up the ladder. Frank was the last to go. He was afraid of heights and kept gazing down at the pavement. He spotted Billy staring up at him, his boyish face curled in a shit-eating grin.

It was at that moment that Frank knew he was fucked.

“Fucked how?” Mags asked.

She continued to kneel by Frank’s chair. She could not imagine how Billy had gotten out of this jam, and she gave Frank’s arm a tug.

“Come on, tell me.”

Frank’s glass was empty. He belched into space, consumed by the memory. “We looked everywhere on that awning for those fucking dice. It was so hot, the soles of our feet got burned. We couldn’t find them.”

“Did they skip over the other side?”

“That’s what I thought at first. We climbed down the ladder and scoured the bushes where the dice would have fallen. The branches were sharp and cut our hands and arms. The dice were nowhere-it was as if they’d vanished. My review was coming up, and I knew this was going to sink me. Ten years busting my ass down the drain.”

She pretended to be sympathetic, only she wasn’t sympathetic at all. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about Frank’s promotion or how bad he’d looked in front of his boss. What she cared about was how on earth Billy had managed to weasel his way out of this.

“What happened to the dice? They didn’t just disappear.”

“They got flushed down a toilet inside the casino.”

“What?”

He found the strength to meet her gaze. “The Hard Rock’s surveillance director broke the news to me. He said the tapes showed Billy passing off the gaffed dice to one of his bimbos before coming outside. She ran to the bathroom and flushed them away.”

“So what did Billy throw on the awning?”

“Nothing. His hand was empty.”

“He faked you out?”

“Yeah, and I fell for it. We had to let him go.”

It was as delicious a cross as Mags had ever heard, and a tiny laugh escaped her lips. Her mother had warned her never to laugh in a man’s face. The difference between men and women, her mother had claimed, was that men were afraid of women laughing at them, while women were afraid of men killing them. Somehow, she’d forgotten her mother’s sage advice.