A toll-free number for the police flashed across the screen. After a few seconds it faded away to a commercial for a local car dealership.
“You look like you could use a drink,” the bartender said.
Billy glanced at his ashen reflection in the bar’s backlit mirror. “You’re right, I could use a drink. Give me a rum and Coke. Same for my friend.”
The bartender moved away to fix their drinks. Billy remained standing with his stomach pressed against the bar. Gabe dropped his voice. “You know that guy who got murdered?”
“Never seen him before.”
“Then why do you look so pale? He’s just a dead guy with the same name as you.”
“Do the math. A guy with my name and who is my age got whacked and dumped in a field last night. What do you think the odds are of that happening?”
“You’ve got a common name. It could be a coincidence.”
Vegas had been built by people who knew the odds. People who didn’t know the odds ended up broke or dead. Billy took out his Droid and got on the Internet. He typed in his own name along with Las Vegas into Google. A link to a site called White Pages appeared. By clicking on it, he was taken to a page showing every single person with the name William Cunningham with a Las Vegas address. He handed Gabe his cell phone.
“Here’s a list of all the guys with my name who live in Las Vegas. Count them.”
Gabe ran his finger down the screen. “There’re fifteen.”
“Each listing shows the guy’s approximate age. How many are my age?”
Gabe studied the names on the site. “Two.”
“And now one of them is dead. That’s not a coincidence.”
“It could have been a robbery.”
“The reporter said the police ruled out a robbery. Know why? Because the victim had his wallet with him. That’s how the police knew his name. Otherwise the stiff would sit on a slab in the morgue for a few days until a next of kin came and identified him.”
The bartender served them. There was nothing to toast over and they knocked back their drinks. Billy liked to think he was one of the better-liked cheats in town. He’d lent money to other cheats when they were broke and had been respectful to the police the handful of times he’d been busted. He’d never shot anyone or critically injured anyone, and outside of the stealing, had kept his nose relatively clean. He didn’t have any known enemies, yet obviously there was someone out there who wanted him in the ground. He needed to figure out who it was, because there was no doubt the person would try again. Vegas was funny that way. People had long memories and they held grudges. There was no such thing as unfinished business.
That afternoon as Billy was playing blackjack in the Rio’s blackjack pit, he got introduced to the pair of guys who wanted him dead.
The word pit was a misnomer. There was no dip in the floor where the blackjack tables were located, and as far as Billy knew, there never had been. It was simply an area of the casino where the blackjack tables were assembled like a circle of covered wagons. As the dealers dealt the game, the stone-faced pit bosses lurked behind them, watching the cards, the bets, and the players at the table the way a fox watches a henhouse.
The pit was noisy and filled with cigarette smoke. Billy liked neither, yet had chosen to play here rather than the more refined high-roller salon. His purpose for coming to the Rio was to be stolen away, and that wasn’t possible if he were hidden inside the salon.
His crew filled the rest of the seats at the table. They were horsing around and having a good time, and it was all an act. Cory, Morris, Travis, and Gabe were chugging on bottles of beer, only the beer had been poured down the drain in the john and replaced with sparkling water. Misty and Pepper were drinking vodka tonics, which had also been replaced with H2O.
Their dealer looked like he’d just stepped off of the cover of the Latino edition of GQ. His name was Eduardo, and Pepper and Misty pretended to be smitten. There were more than twenty thousand dealers in Vegas, and they ranged from seasoned veterans to rank beginners. Billy decided to find out which category Don Juan fell into.
Billy tossed a five-thousand-dollar gray chip into the betting circle. The move was practiced, the chip landing so it straddled the line. Eduardo dealt the round and snapped the cards out of the shoe. Billy’s first card came to him faceup. It was a six. Sixes usually produced sixteens, which were stiffs and lost the hand for the player.
“Change, please.” He pointed at the gray chip.
Eduardo hesitated. The right call was to say, “Sorry sir, this is your bet.” Only that might cause a scene. So Eduardo played nice and made change.
Billy placed a black hundred-dollar chip into the betting circle, saving himself four thousand nine hundred bucks. Some of the best scams ever invented had nothing to do with winning, and were designed to minimize a player’s losses. “Change please” was such a scam.
Billy cleared his throat. The sound made his crew snap to attention.
“So where are you from?” Pepper asked.
“I grew up in San Diego,” Eduardo replied, dealing the cards.
“You always work afternoons?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ever play football? You look like a tight end,” Travis said.
“Soccer,” Eduardo replied.
“Do you deal blackjack only, or do you work other games as well?” Travis asked.
“Just blackjack.”
The questions alternated between innocent and personal so Eduardo wouldn’t recognize that he was being pumped for information about his work habits. This information would be entered into a software database that Billy kept on his computer and traded like baseball cards with other cheats who’d give Billy equally valuable tips in return.
Billy’s cell phone vibrated. Caller ID said the call originated from Turnberry Towers, where he lived. He excused himself and left the table.
He found an empty slot machine and took the chair. “Hello?”
“Mr. Cunningham, this is Jo-Jo at Turnberry Towers. Sorry to bother you, but two guys are here from the cable company to replace the box in your unit. I know you told me the cable people were coming, but these guys look like a couple of creepers. They’re sitting outside in a van. Want me to let them into your unit?”
“What’s a creeper?”
“Someone who acts weird and keeps doing it after you notice.”
“How are they doing that?”
“It’s an old guy and a young guy. The old one doesn’t talk and kept staring at me like he was trying to drill a hole into my soul. The younger guy pretended not to notice.”
“Do they have credentials?”
“Yeah, they checked out. It’s your call, Mr. Cunningham.”
Billy lived in a penthouse unit that he’d won off a Texas oilman in a rigged poker game set up by the concierge at a Strip casino. The concierge owned half the unit and the lease was in his name. Billy lived there invisibly, or so he liked to believe, but there always was the chance that the Nevada Gaming Board had run him down and sent over a pair of techs to bug the place.
The gaming board was not his friend. He’d been playing a game of cat and mouse with them for years and wouldn’t have been surprised if the two strange-acting guys in the van were in their employ. Unlike the cops, who didn’t care one bit if the casinos got swindled, the gaming board made it their duty to run down every hustler who popped up on their radar.
If these guys had been sent to bug his condo, then Billy could start giving the gaming board all sorts of false leads and make their lives hell.
“Let them in,” he said.