James Swain - Take Down

He entered an unfinished suite. The layout was identical to the suite where Ricky had died, and he walked down a hallway to the master bedroom. An electrician wearing dirty blue jeans and sneakers wrestled with ductwork for the room’s AC handler inside the closet. The closet’s back wall had been removed and was propped against the bed. The space behind the wall looked perfect for what he needed.

The electrician stepped out of the closet. “Who are you?”

“I’m in charge of decoration,” he said.

“Where’s your badge?”

“I don’t have one. Is that a problem?”

“Everyone working on the floor is supposed to have a badge. Union rules. I’m going to have to report you, pal.”

The guy had a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. It was the same with most people that worked for the casinos. The casinos made billions while their employees made jack. The imbalance created resentment that carried over into every phase of the employees’ lives.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that. I don’t need the union harassing me,” he said.

The electrician said nothing, unmoved.

“Look, I’ve got a surplus of movie stills that aren’t going to be used. I’ll give them to you if you don’t report me.”

“Movie stills, huh. How many?” the electrician asked.

“Two dozen.”

“What do they run?”

“A couple hundred apiece.”

“No kidding. Anyone I’ve heard of?”

“Clint Eastwood, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicholson. Want them?”

“You bet I want them.” The electrician wiped his hand on his pants leg and stuck it out. “My name’s Buzzy. Nice doing business with you.”

“Same here. I’ll bring them by tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here. We’re working all weekend.”

He left the bedroom convinced the electrician would not call the union and report him. In the hallway he stopped to read the number on the brass door plaque. Room 1412.

By the elevators was a utility room. He went in and flipped on the overhead light. The room was a catchall and filled with garbage pails overflowing with debris. One man’s garbage was another man’s treasure, and in one pail he found a pair of painter’s coveralls that reeked of turpentine. More digging revealed a painter’s hat and a used surgical mask. He stuck everything on a shelf behind some equipment where the clothes would not be seen.

He came out of the utility room thinking he’d covered all his bases. If Ike and T-Bird thought they were going to rip him off, he’d let them continue to believe that, right until the bitter end. He was going to pay them back for every punch and every slap, so help him God.

Riding down to the main floor, he started to hum. The day was starting out right, and he had a sneaking feeling it was only going to get better.

Gabe liked a good challenge. That was what separated the men from the boys, the rich from the poor. It was why he enjoyed working for Billy; a week didn’t go by when the young hustler didn’t present him with a new way to rob a casino, and challenge Gabe to manufacture the apparatus necessary to make the scam work.

So far, Gabe was batting a thousand. Not once had he let Billy down. But there was always a first time, and the challenge of counterfeiting fake hundred-thousand-dollar gold chips in his garage had proven harder than he’d anticipated.

Once upon a time, Vegas casinos got counterfeited on a regular basis. Clever thieves took advantage of inexperienced cashiers and lax security and passed off handfuls of bogus chips before sprinting to the exits with their loot.

Casinos hated to get robbed, even for a measly dollar. Over time, they’d devised a series of elaborate tests to stop fake chips from appearing in their cashiers’ trays. These tests had proven highly effective, and today, it was rare to hear of a casino being counterfeited.

It was this hurdle that Gabe was attempting to overcome. He had to beat a series of tests that the industry considered foolproof. If he succeeded, endless days of wine and roses. If he failed, a life of banging out license plates in a prison machine shop.

Eight a.m. Saturday morning, after no sleep, he shuffled from his garage into the kitchen of his house carrying a tin can containing the forged chips that he’d spent the night slaving over. He yawned without covering his mouth.

The rest of the crew huddled around the kitchen table, eating scrambled eggs on paper plates. They’d spent the night bringing him coffee and keeping him company. Gabe had liked that. He missed his wife and kids, and it had been nice to have people in his house again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. The show is about to begin,” the jeweler announced. “Please remove your plates.”

The kitchen table was cleared. Pouring the gold chips from the can, Gabe spread them out so each chip was exposed. Eighty chips in all, they covered a large portion of the table.

“Our first act is called pick the winner. One of these little beauties is the real hundred-thousand-dollar gold chip that Billy gave me to work with. The rest are counterfeits. I defy you to pick the winner. No touching, please. You have to do it by sight alone.”

“How many chances do we get?” Misty asked.

“Three,” Gabe said.

“What do we win if we pick it out?”

“You get to watch a grown man cry. On your marks. Ready, set… go!”

While the crew studied the chips, Gabe fixed himself a cup of coffee with the Keurig coffee machine and laced it with enough artificial sweetener to kill a lab rat. His ex-wife hadn’t left much in the way of household furnishings, but the items she had left, like the Keurig, he used every single day. It made him think she still cared about him, if only a little bit.

“Time’s up. Make your selections, please. Ladies first.”

Misty picked three chips from the middle of the pile. Gabe explained that the real chip had been x-ed with a Sharpie on its opposite side. He flipped over Misty’s selections.

“Sorry, you lose,” he said.

“Fuck,” she said.

Pepper went next, followed by Morris, Cory, and Travis. Each failed to find the real chip. Gabe smiled to himself. The color on the fake chips was a match. If it hadn’t been, the real chip would have jumped out like a sore thumb.

“Which chip is real?” Travis asked.

“Beats me.”

Gabe flipped the remaining chips over until he found the ringer. Each member of the crew took it and compared it to the others on the table.

“You’re a genius,” Travis declared.

“You’re only saying that because it’s true. Save your applause until we’re done.”

Billy had given Gabe a gym bag filled with chips from Galaxy’s casino to work with. Gabe removed ten of these chips from his pocket and stacked them. He then made a second stack using ten fake gold chips and placed the two stacks side-by-side.

“New game,” he said. “Who wants to play?”

“I do,” Misty said.

“How good is your vision?”

“Twenty-twenty.”

“Perfect. The chips in Galaxy’s casino weigh eleven point five grams, are thirty-nine millimeters in diameter, and are exactly four millimeters wide. The fake chips I counterfeited should be exactly the same size. If I erred, it will show up in these two stacks. I want you to visually compare the stacks and see if they’re identical.”

Misty placed her chin on the table and eyed the two stacks of chips. Gabe held his breath and waited. If he’d made even the slightest miscalculation in the width, it would be exposed when multiplied by the number of chips in the stack.

“They’re exactly the same. What do I win?” Misty said.

“My never-ending gratitude.”