James Swain - Take Down

“Trying to buy me off, huh,” the bookie said. “What the hell. I’ll take your deal.”

They shook hands on it. Billy got out and grabbed his clubs from the back. He started to walk away but not before giving Tony G a parting look to make sure things were good.

“Those two kids playing in front of us were part of it, weren’t they?” the bookie said. “They must have lost twenty balls, but they still kept playing. I should have known.”

“Have a nice day,” Billy said.

Cory and Morris were horsing around when he exited the clubhouse into the parking lot. They did that a lot, and he’d decided that they were too cocky for their own good and needed to be knocked down a peg. He tossed Cory the golf bag.

“Tony G made you,” he said.

Their faces crashed. The apprenticeship to become a grifter was filled with tests, and they’d failed this one miserably.

“How bad did we fuck up?” Cory asked.

“Bad enough. Your horse racing scam is weak. Those goons could have messed me up, put me in the hospital. The good news is, it still worked. Gabe’s a free man.”

“Sorry,” they both said.

“Fuck sorry. You need to do better, start thinking things through. Got it?”

They both promised that they’d do better next time. Talk was cheap, and he found himself wondering if they had what it took to make it in a town as tough as this one.

He drove back into town, the fading sunlight creating a blinding sheen on his windshield. At Russell Road he stopped at the light and checked his Droid for messages. He’d gotten five calls from Ike and sensed something was amiss.

“What’s up?” he asked when Ike picked up.

“Doucette’s looking for you. There’s some bad shit going down.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“That would be an understatement,” Ike said solemnly.

Hanging up, Billy wondered if his time had run out.

Doucette had ordered Ike and T-Bird to grab Billy when he came into the hotel and bring him up to room 1444 in the main tower. Room 1444 was where Ricky Boswell had been tortured and killed, the designated torture chamber.

Doucette had decided to snuff him. Billy had spun so many lies in the past two days that it was hard to know which one had finally caught up to him. Or maybe it was an accumulation of lies that had tipped the scales. It really didn’t matter. Doucette wanted him gone.

He considered running. But that meant leaving his crew behind to face the music. Crunchie had promised to turn their names over to the police if he didn’t play ball. His crew would go down, and eventually the gaming board would find him, and he’d go down as well.

He could run, but he couldn’t hide.

Traffic was brutal. As the sunny afternoon turned to dusk, tourists poured out of the hotels and filled the Strip’s sidewalks and traffic crossings, eager for the party to start. By the time he pulled into Galaxy, it was dark. He threw his keys to the valet and went inside. It had been a great ride, and he had no regrets. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t make him suffer.

Ike and T-Bird were in the lobby. They’d ditched the new threads and gone back to basic black. No words were exchanged, just nods of the head. They both looked sad. Their million-dollar paydays had just gotten flushed down the toilet.

They boarded a service elevator. Ike punched a code into the keypad and appeared frustrated when the doors wouldn’t close. He tried the numbers again. This time the code worked, and Ike pressed the call button for the fourteenth floor. The elevator began its ascent.

Billy imagined himself making a run for it before they tried to kill him, and knew that he’d need the service elevator to facilitate his escape. Having watched Ike punch in the code, he said it three times to himself and stored it away in his memory for future use.

The doors parted on the fourteenth floor. He cleared his throat and said, “It’s been a gas, gents,” and heard them grunt in the affirmative. They got out and started their long walk. A lack of progress on finishing the floor was evident-electrical wires popping out of walls, unpainted drywall, piles of dust. Reaching number 1444, Ike paused.

“You scared?” Ike asked.

He shook his head. His old man had set the bar on dying and had demonstrated to his only child how a man was supposed to check out of this world. Three days off life support with no food or water, gasping for breath on rotted lungs, his body finally succumbing when his heart couldn’t take it anymore, fading away in his son’s arms with a satisfied expression on his face, as if to say, See, kid, this is what tough is .

“Bring it on,” he said.

They entered the suite. It had not changed since two nights ago-the prerequisite movie stills of iconic dead celebrities on the walls, the flat-screen TV showing the house channel.

“Anybody home?” Ike called out.

“We’re in the bedroom,” came Shaz’s voice from another room.

Billy started down the hall, prepared to face the music. It was how his old man would have handled the situation, and he was his old man’s son. Ike and T-Bird scrambled to catch up. The bedroom door was cracked. Kicking it open, he went in.

“I hear you’re looking for me,” he said.

Doucette, his bride, and Crunchie were having a party and sat in chairs, gorging on BBQ ribs, chicken wings, and other finger food they’d ordered from room service. A low-budget slasher film was playing on the TV, the sound muted. Other things stood out. Lines of coke on the coffee table. Duct tape on the night table. And a body wearing a black hood lying beneath the bedspread, struggling to free itself from crisscrossing ropes holding it down. The first thought that went through Billy’s mind was that he wasn’t going to die. The second thought was that the poor schmuck lying on the bed was going to die.

“What took you so long?” Doucette asked, licking BBQ sauce off his fingers.

“I got stuck in traffic. Who’s this?” he asked.

“Crunchie caught another cheater in the casino this afternoon.”

“Did he trip over him?”

“Fuck you, you little turd,” the old grifter said.

Billy edged up to the bed to get a better look at their prisoner. He was on a first-name basis with most cheaters in town and wondered if the poor bastard was someone he knew.

“Is this necessary?” he asked.

“Rock’s rules,” Doucette said. “Any cheaters we catch, Rock wants snuffed. Except you, of course. You’re special.”

The body on the bed let out a muffled cry. There was nothing Billy could do, and he watched Doucette snort up a line of coke that could have gotten an army on its toes.

“Let’s hear about your golf game. Are these people the Gypsies?”

“It’s them,” he said.

“How can you be sure?”

“I got them apart on the golf course, caught them in a few lies. Stupid stuff, like the name of the high school they went to. It’s definitely them.”

“Good. Now tell me how they’re planning to rip off my casino.”

Billy had been planning to hold on to this piece of information for as long as possible but didn’t think that was prudent anymore. “The scam involves the wedding gown,” he said.

Doucette’s handsome face went blank, not understanding.

“The bride’s gown is part of the scam. She’s wearing a Chinese knockoff made of a synthetic material. I saw her wearing it in the bridal shop, and it occurred to me that a gown made of synthetic material would not tear as easily as one made of silk. That was the tip-off.”

“Do you know what he’s talking about?” Doucette asked Crunchie.

The old grifter nodded. “Billy’s onto something. Keep talking, kid.”