Still kneeling, Billy grabbed the lapels of Gabe’s shirt and shook him hard. When that didn’t get the reaction he was looking for, he slapped him across the face, using enough force to snap Gabe out of the dangerous place his emotions were taking him to. “Don’t you dare question me again. Because if you do, I’ll fire your sorry ass and find someone else to replace you.”
“Don’t say that, Billy. You’re all that I’ve got.”
“Then do what I tell you and call the guys.”
Gabe rose on rubbery legs. Out came the cell phone, on which he made a call to Travis. In a trembling voice he asked Travis to get to his house as fast as he could and to bring Cory and Morris with him. Ending the call, he wiped the tears from his eyes.
“They’re on their way,” he said.
“Go outside and wait for them.”
Gabe shuffled out of the study while Billy got to his feet. He decided it would be best to use a bedspread to wrap the dead man in. As he headed for the door, he noticed the PC on Gabe’s desk was powered up, the screen burning ever so brightly.
He nearly got sick. Their scam at Carnivale was there for all the world to see.
Eighteen
Billy used the mouse on Gabe’s computer to scroll through the pages. It was all there. The script he’d written, the simulations they’d run, even his crude hand drawings showing where his crew would sit at the table as the Carnivale scam went down.
His face grew flush and he started to get angry. He’d spent the better part of a year hatching this scam, and he considered it one of the finer things he’d ever created. And here it was, sitting on Gabe’s computer like a screen saver.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Gabe’s PC was encrypted with antihacking software created by a company called Aurora, and so were Gabe’s laptop and tablet. Billy’s computers were encrypted with the same software. He’d made the investment in case the scam went south and their computers were confiscated by the gaming board.
So how had Gabe’s PC gotten hacked? It didn’t seem possible, unless Gabe had forgotten to shut it down before leaving for Lake Tahoe, allowing the bastards who had murdered Nate to see the Carnivale scam upon entering the study.
He forced himself to calm down. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter how the scam had ended up being exposed on Gabe’s computer. It was there, and Nate’s killers had seen it.
But had they understood it? Most criminals were dumb as rocks and didn’t have the mental bandwidth to understand a casino scam. But there was also the chance that Nate’s killers had printed out a copy with the idea of taking a closer look later on.
He shuddered at the thought. With a printed copy, Nate’s killers could blackmail Billy and his crew and ruin their lives.
With a shaking hand, he clicked on the computer’s control panel and found the printer drive. By default, a computer’s printer dropped a job once it was completed. But there was an option in the printer driver that kept a record of all jobs. If Gabe had enabled this option, then his answer was awaiting him in the print queue.
The print queue appeared on the screen. The last print job had occurred one hour and six minutes ago. Sixteen pages had been printed.
The Carnivale scam was also sixteen pages long.
Nate’s killers had made a copy.
“Fuck me,” Billy swore.
He shut down the computer. Beating a casino out of a monster score had nothing to do with stealing and everything to do with manipulating the odds. The best scams shifted the odds a few precious percentage points and tilted the game away from the house’s favor into the cheater’s favor. The play at Carnivale was such a scam. This Saturday, with the help of Tommy Wang, Billy and his crew would bleed Carnivale’s casino until it was as dead as a crash victim sitting beneath a twenty-car pileup. It was as sophisticated a play as any that had been pulled in Vegas in a long time, and it was in danger of going up in flames.
He stared into the void of the darkened computer screen. Perhaps Nate’s killers were smarter than the average scumbags and knew they’d hit the mother lode. Every crook was looking for a monster score. It was what drew criminals to Vegas, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Nate’s killers showed up in the next few days, hoping to cash in.
He went into the hallway and entered Nate’s older daughter’s bedroom. When he returned to the study he was holding the bedspread off a queen bed. He laid it across the floor and began to roll up the dead man.
Gabe returned and stood in the doorway. “Travis is here.”
“Did he bring Cory and Morris with him?”
“They’re in the car. What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Did you tell them?”
“I told them Nate got murdered and we had to bury him. Look, can we talk about this?”
“No. You got any lime?”
“What do you want a lime for?”
“I didn’t say I wanted a lime. I said I wanted lime, the kind you use in the garden. We need to cover his body with it so the coyotes don’t dig him up.”
Gabe covered his mouth with his hand. “Can’t we at least...”
“At least what?”
“Clean him up? He looks fucking awful.”
“Sure. Go get a towel.”
Gabe got a wet washcloth from the bathroom and handed it to Billy.
“Why you looking at me like that? What did I do?”
“You left your computer on. The guys who did this saw the scam and made a copy.”
Gabe teetered on an imaginary tightrope. “Are you sure?”
“Either that, or you left the passwords out. Doesn’t matter. They got the scam.”
“I’m sorry, Billy. Really, I am.”
“Save the apology for later. Go get the guys. We need to bury your friend.”
“You going to fire me?”
“Look, we’ll talk about this later, okay?”
“Sure, Billy.”
Taking a deep breath, Gabe righted himself and left the study. Something told Billy that this fuckup would change Gabe for the better and make him start cleaning up his tracks. But they still needed to have a serious sit-down. If Gabe screwed up again, he was history.
He cleaned up Nate’s bruised and battered puss. The beating had left a permanent frown in Nate’s once cheerful demeanor. There was no good reason to kill a man this way. Not when you could pump a bullet into the back of your victim’s head. Killers who used their hands to inflict pain had an agenda born from a lifetime of rage that could never be satiated, and there were enough of them running around Vegas that decent people kept their doors dead-bolted at night and a loaded handgun on the bedside table.
Nate’s chin had taken a particularly hard shot. As the caked blood came away, a perfectly round indentation the size of a dime remained in the skin. One of his killers had been wearing a ring that he’d used to stamp poor Nate’s face.
Billy’s memory kicked in. He’d seen that stamp years ago on the face of an innocent child who’d been stolen from her daddy and whose kidnappers had roughed her up for no good reason. He’d always believed the kidnappers had been run down and killed. Even in a town as mean as Vegas, you didn’t hurt little kids without paying the price.
He was wrong, and the stamp on Nate’s face proved it. The little girl’s kidnappers were still alive. Travis appeared in the study doorway along with Cory and Morris.
“What took you so long?” Billy asked.
“We went to the airport and rented a car. Is he dead?”
“As a church social. Put him in the trunk.”
Vegas was defined by the Strip’s six and a half miles of casinos. Venture away from the glitter, and the town quickly became Dullsville, with the same chains, quick-serve restaurants, and boring subdivisions as the rest of the country.