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“How much you have on the game?” Billy asked.

  “Who said I had a bet on the game?”

  “I did.”

  Gabe held up two fingers, signifying twenty grand was riding on the game’s outcome.

  “I thought you were broke.”

  “I got a line of credit from my bookie.”

  “Who in this town would lend you that kind of money?”

  “Tony G.”

  “You promised me you’d stay away from that shark. Next time you want to borrow money, come to me instead. Understand?”

  “Sure, Billy. Whatever you say.”

  Gabe had once owned a swanky jewelry store, which he’d lost betting on college sports. His gambling addiction was severe, and Billy was afraid it was going to get Gabe killed.

  Removing a jeweler’s loupe from his breast pocket, Gabe spent a moment examining the serial numbers and logo imperfections stamped on the stolen die. Every casino in town employed these tricks to thwart cheaters.

  “Piece of cake,” the jeweler said.

  Gabe sprung open a worn leather briefcase resting on the seat. The briefcase contained one hundred pairs of dice stamped with logos from every major casino in Las Vegas. These dice had been acquired through a variety of means, including bribing casino employees. Each die in the briefcase had been loaded with carefully disguised mercury slugs. When thrown on a craps table, winning combinations came up more times than not.

  Gabe removed a gaffed pair with the Four Queens logo. Using a portable welding machine plugged into the door’s cigarette lighter, he carefully stamped duplicate serial numbers onto the gaffed pair. When the dice had cooled down, a jeweler’s engraving tool was used to re-create the tiny imperfections on the logo. Finished, he handed the gaffed dice to Billy.

  Billy held the dice up to the light and compared the gaffed dice to the stolen die. The serial numbers looked exactly the same on all three, as did the tiny logo imperfections.

  “You haven’t lost your touch,” Billy said.

  “Thanks,” Gabe said.

  “We need to address this problem of yours. It’s going to ruin you.”

  “You got any ideas?”

  “Ever try Gamblers Anonymous?”

  “No. I can’t talk in front of groups.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Of course I mean it.”

  Using his Droid, Billy got on the Internet and did a search for a Gamblers Anonymous meeting in Gabe’s part of town. He found two daily meetings and showed Gabe the screen.

  “Pick one. I’ll take you to lunch first. Make an afternoon out of it.”

  “Can’t it wait? I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

  “Pick one, or I’ll fire you.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re all I’ve got.”

  “Then do it right now. That’s an order.”

  “All right. We’ll go to the meeting at the Unity Club at one o’clock.”

  “How much are you into Tony G for, anyway?”

  “Too much.”

  “Are you ever going to learn?”

  “I wish I could stop, I really do.”

  “You know what they say. There’s no time like the present.”

  Billy put the phone away. Back when he was learning how to hustle on the streets of Providence, he’d dreamed of running his own crew. A great idea, only there were times when he felt like he was running a flipping babysitting service.

  “Unity Club, one o’clock tomorrow,” he said.

  “I’m in,” Gabe said.

  As Billy started to climb out of the limo, Gabe flipped the TV back on with the remote. Billy stopped to glare at the jeweler.

  “Didn’t you hear a word of what I just said?”

  “Come on, man. I’ve got to see how it ends,” Gabe said.

  THREE

  Coming out of the parking garage stairwell, Billy slipped the fake teeth into his mouth and made sure the gaffed dice were finger-palmed in his hand in a way that could not be seen. There were surveillance cameras everywhere in Vegas, and he could never be too careful.

  Hurrying down Fremont Street, he spotted Cory and Morris standing outside the Four Queens and let out a shrill whistle. Tossing away their cigarettes, they followed him inside.

  The Four Queens craps pit was by the front doors. It was that way in most joints. The action was loud and frenzied and drew people the way honey draws flies. Travis was still throwing the bones, swigging on a beer bottle filled with water, pretending to be loaded. Billy pressed his body to the table and secretly passed the crooked dice to the big man.

  “They’re still warm,” Travis whispered.

  “So blow on them,” Billy said without moving his lips.

  Cory and Morris came to the table and threw down sizeable cash bets. At the same time, Travis scooped up the casino dice and switched in the gaffed ones in his hand. He wasn’t the greatest dice mechanic who’d ever lived, nor did he have to be. The boxman, dealer, and stickman were trained to watch the money. Everything else was secondary, including obnoxious drunks, screaming women, and people flopping dead from heart attacks. An elephant could have stampeded past, and they wouldn’t have looked up.

  The eye-in-the-sky wasn’t watching Travis, either. If the surveillance cameras had been taping Travis, they might have caught the switch. But the cameras weren’t watching because Travis had been losing, and that made him a sucker. Surveillance never watched suckers.

  “Yo, Eveline, lost her drawers in the men’s latrine!” Travis shouted.

  Travis sent the crooked dice down the table. Misty and Pepper pounded the railing, urging him on. They had also placed cash bets. The game was locked up.

  Eleven, a winner.

  The table erupted. Suckers sometimes got lucky, and the boxman, stickman, and dealer displayed no emotion. Travis kept throwing the dice, and their winnings began to add up. Two grand, five grand, then fifteen—the boxman, dealer, and stickman shaking their heads at the sudden turn of events. Like crew hands rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, they were clueless.

  When their winnings hit thirty grand, Billy gave the signal to end the play. He’d done his homework and knew how much the Four Queens would lose before security was sent to the table. Winning too much, too often, had gotten more than one crew in hot water.

  Small bets were placed on the table. Travis switched out the gaffed dice for the regular pair and threw them hard.

  Two, a loser.

  The table groaned. The boxman, dealer, and stickman visibly relaxed, and the losing bets were picked up. Resting his arm on the table, Travis dropped the crooked dice into Billy’s hand.

  “Where we going for dinner?” Travis whispered.

  “Golden Steer,” Billy whispered back.

  “That’s a winner.”

  Possession of a crooked gambling device inside a casino was a felony, and Billy headed down Fremont clutching the gaffed dice in his hand until he’d reached a construction site for a new casino. New casinos were always popping up in Vegas, even when the economy sucked. He heaved the gaffed dice over a tall wooden fence plastered with “NO TRESPASSING” signs.

  His skin was tingling as he headed for the elevated garage. There was no greater rush than ripping a joint off, and it wouldn’t be very long before he’d want to do it again. He’d recently done a walk-through of the Luxor, and decided it was easy pickings. That was what made Vegas so great. There were so many scores and so little time.

  His Droid vibrated. Only a handful of people had his number, and he yanked the phone from his pocket. Caller ID said it was an old grifter named Captain Crunch. Crunchie was about as friendly as a coiled rattlesnake, but that was how it was with most of the old-timers.

  “Hey, I need to call you back,” he answered.

  “This ca
n’t wait,” the old grifter said.

  “Everything can wait. I’ll call you later.”

  “You’ll talk to me now.”

  “I’m on a job, man.”

  “Fuck your job. There’s a lady blackjack dealer in the high-roller salon at Galaxy that’s flashing every fifth hand, and the dumb shit management hasn’t caught on. This might be the single biggest score on the Strip.”

  High-roller salons catered to whales capable of losing millions of dollars without breaking a sweat. The salons were awash in money, and it was every hustler’s dream to take one down. No hustler in town ever had, and Billy would have relished being the first.

  “You want me to be a whale?” he asked.

  “That’s right. Interested?”

  “Of course I’m interested. How are you going to get me into Galaxy’s salon?”

  “It’s all been taken care of. Just show up and work your magic. It will be like stealing candy from a baby.”

  “What’s your take?”

  “We’re straight partners, fifty-fifty.”

  “Make it eighty-twenty, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “Sixty-forty, and that’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”

  Billy hated to cave but didn’t see that he had any other choice. If he said no, Crunchie would call another hustler, and cut him out of the action.

  “I’m in,” Billy said.

  “Meet me at the Peppermill at ten o’clock, and I’ll fill you in.”

  “See you there.”

  He ended the call and headed up the stairwell. Salons had the highest betting limits around and were known to let whales wager $100,000 a hand. If this lady dealer was flashing every fifth hand, he could steal a hundred grand every five rounds, or roughly seventeen hands per hour, which translated into one point seven million bucks for an hour’s work. It got him excited just thinking about it.

  But what if he played longer? If he stayed on the tables for several hours, he could cheat Galaxy out of four or five million easy. Normally, casinos cut off a player when he won too much, but the rules were different for whales. The casinos expected whales to occasionally get lucky and take them for a major score, knowing they’d win the money back later on. As a result, whales rarely got cut off.

  Whales also got special privileges and were often allowed to play in private rooms, away from the other players, and with employees whom they liked. If a whale was fond of a particular dealer, the whale could request for that dealer to deal his game, and the request would be honored.

  Crunchie wasn’t kidding when he said it was the best score on the Strip. It was the best score of the last ten years. And all Billy needed to do was pretend he was some superrich asshole, and the money would be his.

  FOUR

  Billy’s head was spinning as he climbed into the backseat of the limo. Every hustler’s dream was to scam a Vegas casino for a monster score, and he was about to realize that dream.

  He wedged himself between Pepper and Misty. Leon pulled out of the space and drove the limo down the garage’s spiral exit with the speed of a carnival ride.

  Travis was looking at him funny. Billy chose to ignore it.

  “Let’s chop up the money before we eat,” he suggested.

  His crew pulled out their winnings and dropped the money in his lap. He sorted through the bills and separated the denominations into neat piles, then counted the money aloud, starting with the smaller denominations and working his way up, just the way Lou Profaci had taught him during his apprenticeship in Providence. The take came to thirty grand on the nose. He paid his crew a straight percentage off the top. Misty and Pepper got two grand apiece, the same for Cory and Morris, while Gabe and Travis got three grand because they did more of the heavy lifting, while the rest went into his pocket.

  The hot dice scam was the sweetest operation he’d ever run. On average, they were taking down three casinos a week. Because the casinos ran three shifts—day, swing, and midnight—they’d robbed several casinos multiple times and had never gotten caught.

  Travis cleared his throat. He was drinking two-fisted, a Bud Light in one hand, a Johnnie Walker on the rocks in the other. The funny look on his face that Billy had thought was the booze he now recognized as something troubling.

  “You got something you want to tell us, Billy?” the big man asked.

  “Not particularly,” Billy said.

  “You were late.”

  “So?”

  “You’re never late. It just bothered us.”

  “Think I ran out with the money?”

  “Did I say that?”

  Billy started to steam.

  “We were just worried that something happened to you,” Travis said. “When you didn’t show up, we got nervous. We care about you, man.”

  Billy didn’t hear a word of what Travis had just said. They worked for him—he didn’t work for them—and he had half a mind to tell Leon to pull over so he could throw Travis out of the limo and let him go find another crew to work with.

  But he didn’t do it. He had a temper and he knew that it sometimes got the better of him. Instead, he pulled a Heineken out of the minibar and took a long swig. It calmed him down, and he looked across the seat at Travis and saw the big man cringe. Later in the restaurant he’d corner Travis and straighten him out. If Travis challenged him again, he was history.

  No one was smiling anymore, just a bunch of sour faces wondering what to say next. Leon pulled into the Golden Steer parking lot and circled the building. The place was packed, and parking spaces were at a minimum. Misty’s hot breath tickled Billy’s face.

  “Don’t be pissed,” she said.

  “Who said I was pissed?” he said, hearing the anger in his voice.

  “We care about you, Billy.”

  “You’re the magic man,” Pepper chimed in, snuggling up next to him. “Did something bad happen? You can tell us.”

  Billy looked down at his sweaty beer bottle. He never should have taken Crunchie’s call while he was doing a job. It was the first rule of hustling: no interruptions. Only he’d broken it, and his crew wanted to know why. Trust ran both ways, so he decided to tell them.

  “I got a call from an old friend. That’s why I was late. Everybody cool with that?”

  “She must be a great fuck for you to take her call,” Pepper said.

  He looked at her. “You think I’m pussy-whipped?”

  “All men are pussy-whipped.”

  “Not me.”

  “Bullshit. What’s her name?”

  Pepper’s pale green eyes were laughing at him. Pepper had made porno flicks for several years, doing straight fuck films before switching to blow job movies because the pay was better, and she knew everything there was to know about the crazy little brain in a man’s dick.

  “Crunchie,” Billy said.

  “Her name’s Crunchie?”

  “Him. He’s an old grifter I used to run with. They used to call him Captain Crunch because he was always good in a tight spot.”

  “Why were you talking to him?”

  “Does it matter?” he said, feeling his anger start to rise.

  “You told us no interruptions during a job.”

  She had him dead to rights. He faced the group.

  “Crunchie knows a Strip casino that’s primed to get ripped off. He needs someone to play a whale, so he called me. I’m hooking up with him later tonight to go over the details. I would have told you sooner, but I didn’t want to jinx it. Is everybody cool with that?”

  Their heads bobbed in unison.

  “Can you tell us which casino?” Gabe asked.

  “Galaxy.”

  “Have we ever ripped that one off?”

  “No. It’s only been open a few months.”

  “How’s security?”

&n
bsp; He quizzed Cory and Morris with a glance. He’d turned them onto the art of wheel tracking, and they’d visited many of the town’s casinos to analyze their roulette games. Roulette wheels sometimes became biased through faulty construction and could produce amazing winnings to a player willing to track a few hundred spins of the wheel with a hidden computer.

  “Have you checked out Galaxy yet?” he asked them.

  “We got acquainted with Galaxy last week,” Cory replied.

  “And?”

  “Staff is pretty green. I got chummy with a cocktail waitress, and she said that they were having trouble with their systems. It’s a candy store.”

  Billy nodded. The scam was getting sweeter by the minute.

  “Can you tell us what the scam is?” Gabe asked.

  “We’re going to take down the high-roller salon at blackjack,” he said.

  Misty stiffened, and so did Pepper. The others got real quiet, too.

  “Has anyone ever ripped off a high-roller salon?” Gabe asked.

  “No. We’re going to make history.”

  Travis leaned forward in his seat, wanting to get back on good footing with the boss. “Billy, this sounds really great. How much do you think we can take them for?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll jinx it if I tell you.”

  Travis swallowed hard. He’d just bought a four-bedroom, three-bath money pit and needed every spare dime he could get his hands on. “Can you give us a range?”

  “Try the stratosphere,” he said.

  Leon continued to circle the restaurant. All Billy could hear was the fluttering sound of Gabe breathing through his nose. He knew what each one of them was thinking. Was this the big score that would forever change their lives? It was Gabe who braved the silence.

  “For the love of Christ, Billy, tell us, before we wet our pants,” the jeweler said.

  “All right. If this goes as planned, we’ll walk away with a few million bucks, maybe more.” He paused to let the words sink in, then said, “You’ll each get your usual cut.”

  Everyone got crazy all at once. The girls crawled into Billy’s lap and started to unbutton his shirt. He tried to fight them off and ended up kissing Misty instead, wanting more than just a taste of her sweet breath. The slider came down and Leon stuck his head into the back.