James Swain - Take Down

“A casino employee might remember seeing Ricky snooping around the casino earlier in the week and get suspicious. That would bring heat. Better for Ricky to appear as the family hits the casino. He’ll blend in easier.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Ike said. “Ricky ain’t showing up Saturday afternoon. His family’s gonna notice.”

“Of course they’ll notice, but that won’t stop them. Ripping off casinos is the family business. There are bills to pay and mouths to feed. They won’t shut the operation down because Ricky pulls a no-show at the last minute. Trust me, I know.”

“Man, that’s cold,” Ike said.

A cheater’s first job was not to get caught. Ricky had slipped up and had paid for his mistake with his young life. The family would eventually realize what had happened to him, and they would mourn his passing, but that wouldn’t stop them from scamming casinos. If anything, losing a member would only strengthen their resolve.

“How you going to know which wedding these people are a part of?” Ike asked. “Aren’t there a bunch in the hotel?”

“According to the welcome board in the lobby, there are nine weddings in the hotel on Saturday. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out which one they’re a part of.”

“Why’s that?”

“The Boswells are Gypsies, and Gypsies have strange habits. They’re nuts about cleanliness, always washing their hands, clothes are always spotless. They’re obsessive-compulsive-it’s in their genes. I’ll figure out who they are, no problem.”

Billy was sick of talking. He’d only allowed Ike and T-Bird to question him because he didn’t want them getting cold feet Saturday. So he put up with their bullshit. But it was tiring.

Ike said, “So how do we fit into all this?”

Billy had told Ike last night what their role was, and he guessed the booze had erased the memory. “While the Boswells are pulling their scam, I’ll blow the whistle, and security will bust them. While security is hauling them away, you guys will rip off the cage with the counterfeit chips. By the time Doucette realizes he’s been robbed, you’ll be wasting away in Margaritaville.”

“That don’t sound so hard,” Ike said.

“It isn’t. The hard part comes now,” Billy said.

“What you mean?”

“This stuff isn’t going to happen by magic. I have to go see my guy so he can counterfeit the chips. I also need to figure out who the Boswells are. And, I need to keep Doucette and his crazy wife in the dark so they don’t get a wild hair and decide to kill me.”

“How you gonna do all that and not get caught?”

“Simple. You two are going to cover for me.”

“We are?”

“That’s right. You don’t work for Doucette anymore, you work for me, and that means you’re going to cover my ass so I can set this thing up. Dig it?”

“But what if Shaz calls us on the cell phone, and wants to speak to you, and we say you ain’t here, and she goes psycho on us? What do we do then?”

“Make up a story. Tell her that I discovered the Boswells are part of a wedding party, and that I’m running around the hotel trying to figure out which wedding it is. That will get her excited. Then call me. I’ll call her back and string her along some more.”

“You think she’ll fall for that bullshit?”

“She will if you say it right. It’s all about the delivery, and the conviction in your voice.”

“Sounds risky, you ask me.”

Every job he’d ever pulled was risky; without the risk, there was no reward. He poked the larger man in the chest so hard that it made Ike’s eyes bulge. Ike wasn’t used to someone half his size pushing him around, and it showed.

“It’s called the big time. The question is, are you guys ready to play?”

“I’m ready,” Ike said.

“Me, too,” T-Bird said.

“Good. I need two things from you. First go downstairs, and buy a few thousand in chips from the cage, and put them in my gym bag. My guy is going to need them so he can set the molds correctly. Then get your car, and bring it around so I can get out of here.”

“You want to use our car?” Ike asked.

“If I drive my own car out of here, I might get spotted. Better to take yours.”

“Well, all right. Our ride’s a refurbished ’68 Camaro. Just go easy on the gas. There’s a tiger under the hood.”

“I’ll remember that. Use the money you took from my safe to buy the chips from the cage. My guy will want to see lots of them. He claims that it makes counterfeiting easier.”

“I thought that was our money,” T-Bird objected.

“It’s our money, and we need it to pull this thing off. By the way, I took my jewelry out of the gym bag and hid it. That wasn’t part of our deal.”

“That Rolex with the diamonds was mine ,” T-Bird said, clearly upset. “It went perfect with my Super Bowl ring.”

“You can buy yourself a watch with your share of the haul. Now give me your cell phone numbers so I can get a hold of you.”

The punishers gave him their cell numbers, which he entered into his Droid’s memory bank. Two nights ago, as he was getting the crap beat out of him, he’d promised himself he’d pay Ike and T-Bird back. Revenge was sweet, especially when the other guys didn’t see it coming.

“Our car’s parked in the employee garage,” Ike said. “We’ll bring it around to the rear exit. It’s usually pretty quiet this time of day.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Billy said.

He drove to Gabe’s place in the punishers’ vintage ‘68 Camaro. Vegas was the pits during the day, and he kept his eyes on the road. Without a million watts of neon to light the place up, it was just another tourist town, the sandblasted hotels showing every dimple and crack.

The Nike gym bag sat on the passenger seat. As instructed, T-Bird had visited the cage and purchased several thousand dollars of chips, from lowly five-dollar red chips to coveted five-hundred-dollar purple chips. Gabe would need these to make his knock-offs. Not just to duplicate the look and color, but also the feel and weight, which varied from casino to casino.

The Strip ended and the highway turned straight and uninteresting. Gabe’s subdivision was dead ahead, with its manicured lawns and indistinguishable track houses, where nothing exciting ever went on. He couldn’t imagine living in these surroundings. Not in a thousand years.

A parade of cars was parked in front of Gabe’s house: Misty’s Mercedes, Pepper’s Beamer, Cory and Morris’s Infiniti, and Travis’s Windstar. His crew was having a meeting, and he hadn’t been invited. He didn’t have a problem if his crew got together socially, but the fact that Travis was present-Travis who never left home except for work-told Billy this wasn’t a book club meeting. They were talking business without the boss.

He parked and cut the engine. He needed to handle this in steps. Step one: find out who the ringleader was and toss his sorry ass on the street. Step two: sit down with the others and read the riot act to them. He didn’t need them, but they sure as hell needed him.

He stared at the house while working up the courage to confront them. The sheers in the front window fluttered, and a man’s face materialized behind the glass. Suntanned, big jawed.

Travis.

He punched the steering wheel. Travis had been challenging him lately, and he’d passed it off to the fact that Travis had gotten married and now answered to a higher authority. Wrong . Travis was trying to take over and had called everyone to Gabe’s house while Billy was dealing with the mess at Galaxy. The big man had betrayed him.

He shouldn’t have been as upset as he was. Part of running a crew was dealing with problems: members got sick, divorced, thrown in jail, all the usual fun stuff. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle except having a knife stuck in his back.