James Swain - Take Down

The face in the window disappeared. He could remember recruiting Travis as if it were yesterday. Travis had been drowning in debt, with a house in foreclosure and a car about to be repossessed. Within six months of joining his crew, Travis had been back on his feet, the wolves no longer at his door. And this is how the bastard repays me.

He got out and unlocked the Camaro’s trunk. Pulling up a piece of carpet that covered the spare, he grabbed a tire iron. It felt nice and firm in his hand.

His heart was pounding as he banged on Gabe’s front door. To his surprise, no one answered. “Come on, you chickenshits, open up.”

Nothing. In a rage, he called Gabe’s number on his cell phone and got voice mail. “It’s me. I’m standing outside your front door. Let me in, goddamn it.”

When Gabe didn’t call him back, he hopped off the stoop and pressed his face to the front window, straining to see inside the furniture-less house. His view went straight to the family room in the rear. A group of people was moving through a slider onto the lanai, trying to escape. Bad thoughts raced through his head. Had his crew taken a vote and decided to dump him? Fuckers .

He marched around the side of the house, clutching the tire iron. A little voice was telling him to turn around, nothing would be accomplished by violence. A bigger voice was saying go ahead, break some bones, you stuck your neck out for these people, made them lots of money, and this is how they thank you, the dirty rat bastards.

Coming around the house, he hit the brakes. His crew was on the lawn, trying to scale the picket fence in the back of Gabe’s property. Misty and Pepper had on the skintight exercise outfits that they wore for Pilates, while Cory and Morris appeared to have just rolled out of bed, their boyish faces unshaven, hair uncombed. Gabe was a different story: beat up, face bloodied, his right leg hurting. Travis had a gun and was saying, “Hurry, we’ve got to get out of here.”

A hard object dropped in the pit of his stomach. He’d read the whole situation wrong. Something else was going on here; his crew hadn’t finked on him. Ashamed at his miscalculation, he tossed the tire iron into the bushes.

“Hey, guys, what’s up?” he called out.

Travis spun around and took aim. Billy’s bowels loosened, and he raised his arms into the air.

“Don’t shoot.”

“Billy-Jesus Christ, is that you?” Travis asked.

“No, it’s his evil twin brother. Stop aiming that gun at me, will you?”

The others had assembled behind Travis. The big man lowered his weapon and pointed it at the ground. “Was that you in the pimp mobile out front?”

“Yeah, that was me.”

“You scared the shit out of us. Some guys are after Gabe. We thought it was them.”

“Tony G’s boys?”

“Yeah. He’s into them real deep.”

He saw it clearly now, most of it, anyway. Tony G had sent his enforcers to put the heavy on Gabe. Hurt and bleeding, Gabe had called the crew, being they were the only friends he had, and the crew had dropped what they were doing and come to Gabe’s rescue, because that was what friends did. Billy had been left out because his crew knew he was at Galaxy, dealing with his own problems. No one had betrayed him. It was all good.

“I can fix that,” he said.

They went inside to the living room to talk things out. Except for an old-fashioned La-Z-Boy recliner that populated the room’s center, the space was bare. Folding chairs and stools were brought from the kitchen so that everyone could get comfortable.

Gabe dropped his pummeled body into the La-Z-Boy and gazed at the ceiling, horrified that it had come to this. Billy was late to the party and started by asking Gabe a question that the rest of them already knew the answer to.

“How much are you into Tony G for?” he asked.

“Does it matter?” Gabe said, the shame bunching up his face.

“I can fix this, but you’ve got to be straight with me.”

“You can’t fix this, Billy. I fucked up, and now I’ve got to blow out of here. I’ll go to another state, and get a job in a mall fixing watches. I’ll get by.”

“No, you won’t. Tony G has got a flag in every state,” Billy said.

“A what?”

“Tony G’s got mob enforcers he can call in every state. They’ll hunt you down, and pump a bullet into your head, and send Tony G photos of your corpse. You can run, but you can’t hide. Now, how much do you owe this guy?”

“Three hundred big ones.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“It’s the truth. That’s why I’ve got to run. I don’t have another choice.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“I’m not?”

“No, I need you for a job. Now shut up, and let me think about this.”

The living room went quiet. Billy kept a stash of cash buried in the desert for emergencies, but it wasn’t enough to cover Gabe’s debt to Tony G. Had the amount been smaller, Tony G might have been willing to take a down payment, with the rest coming later. But the amount was huge, and Tony G’s reputation was at stake. If the bookie didn’t collect, every gambler in town who owed him money would renege on their obligations.

The seconds dragged on. Misty got behind Billy’s chair and began to massage the knotted muscles in his shoulders.

“You’re all tense. Relax,” she said.

He tried. The tightrope he was walking was getting harder by the step. The safety net was gone, and the pole he used for balance had fallen out of his hands. If Gabe left town, Billy couldn’t scam Galaxy, and the biggest payday of his career would go down the toilet.

Cory and Morris were checking e-mails on their cell phones. It had to be the worst habit in the world next to picking your nose. Billy remembered they had a scam going at a racetrack in Santa Anita, and he guessed this was how the agent at the track was communicating with them.

“Is that horse-racing scam still alive?” he asked.

“We were about to shut it down, like you told us,” Cory said.

“What would you say if we used it to clean the slate with Tony G?”

Cory glanced at Morris. The horse race scam was their baby, and Billy did not own the rights to it. Cory and Morris could say no, except they were in this for the long haul, and Billy was their ticket to the big time.

“I’m okay with that,” Cory said.

“Me, too,” Morris said.

“Cool. Lay it on me,” he said.

“A horse trainer named Sal Lopez is fixing races at Santa Anita,” Cory said. “Sal’s a smart operator. He only fixes one race a day, and sends us the name of the horse a few minutes before post time. That way, we can get our bets down right before the race starts, and the other gamblers following the race can’t react when they see the odds change.”

“What’s Sal’s cut?”

“Half.”

“What kind of odds are you getting?”

“It varies. Yesterday, the ringer ran at twenty-to-one.”

“How does it work?”

“Sal’s got a stable of Brazilian horses he keeps nearby that are ringers. He dyes the ringers so they’re identical to the horses at the track’s stables, and switches them at night. The only problem is if it rains. Then the dye runs off, and the ringer changes color during the race.”

“I’d like to see that,” Misty said, still massaging Billy’s back.

“It must be the dry season in Southern California,” he said.

“Sal just sent us an e-mail saying the scam was on for today. It’s going to happen during the twelfth race at four twenty-five,” Cory said. “It’s yours if you want it, Billy.”

Billy played with it. He’d once scammed a bookie in Providence with a fixed boxing match, but that was Providence. Vegas bookies were smarter than that. They knew the angles and took precautions to protect themselves. That didn’t mean Tony G couldn’t be fleeced; it just meant that it was going to take a certain level of sophistication to make it work. But before Billy set the wheels in motion, he wanted to be sure that Cory and Morris would not harbor any hard feelings.