“We’re done,” Billy said under his breath. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Billy made a signal to kill the play. His crew would now purposely lose a few bets and return some of their winnings before leaving. It was the best way to take heat off the scam.
Billy’s curiosity was killing him as he headed to the cage. Taking a handful of chips from his pocket, he pushed them through the bars and gave the pretty female cashier a wink. Behind her, the owner continued to throw money into the bag. He was built like a greyhound and had short black hair silvering at the temples.
“Mr. Ritz, can I help in some way?” the cage manager asked.
“Mind your own business,” the owner snapped.
“Have you called the police?”
“No. Go back to work. I’ve got it under control.”
The owner left the cage dragging the bag, his destination the elevator bank across the casino. Billy followed him. He wanted to know who he was dealing with, and he used his Droid to pull up an old news story on the Internet about Harlan Ritz. Ritz had gotten his start selling beer, built his distributorship into the largest in the southwest, sold it to a foreign conglomerate for a small fortune, and used the proceeds to build the Grand Bay.
And now Ritz was in a world of trouble. The kind of trouble that made him clean out the cage and not call the police. Life-altering trouble.
As Ritz reached the elevator bank, his cell phone rang.
“I’m here,” Ritz answered. “Yes, I’ve got your money. No, I don’t have the whole amount. There was only nine hundred thousand in the cage.”
The caller said something to Ritz.
“I know where that is. I’ll be there in one hour,” Ritz said.
The caller tried to end the call.
“I want to talk to her. I don’t care if that wasn’t part of our deal. I’m not giving you the goddamn money if I can’t talk to her.” Ritz went silent and his eyes welled up. He suddenly snapped to attention. “Honey! It’s Daddy. You hang tight. I love you, baby.”
The caller came back on the line.
“I understand. No police. Just don’t kill her,” Ritz said.
The kidnapper ended the call. Ritz put the cell phone away before noticing Billy.
“You look like you can use some help,” Billy said.
“Get lost,” Ritz said.
Successful people were good at making money. Ritz knew how to run a casino, and that was probably all he knew how to do. Ritz’s daughter was going to end up vulture food if Billy didn’t step in. “You want to see your daughter again, don’t you?”
Ritz swallowed hard. “Of course I want to see her again. Who are you?”
“I’m just a guy who cares. I can get her back, but you’ve got to listen to me.”
Harlan Ritz’s trust was not easily gained, and he spent a moment sizing Billy up. Billy didn’t look like the Good Samaritan type, but when a person was drowning, he couldn’t be too picky about who threw him a life preserver.
“You’d better not be screwing with me,” Ritz said.
“I’m not screwing with you.”
“What the hell. All right.”
Ritz’s penthouse office was a mess. Daily spreadsheets showing the takes from the various table games and one-armed bandits engulfed the desk. Every penny won in a casino appeared on a spreadsheet at day’s end, the flow of money as closely watched as a bank teller’s transactions. Those numbers were known to a close-knit group, including Ritz, his CFO, a head bookkeeper, and the managers of the day, evening, and graveyard shifts, whose salaries and bonuses were dictated by the profit the casino made during their shifts. Every casino’s hierarchy was structured this way, the bond among those at the top as strong as family. Ritz wasn’t going to be happy to learn that one of his inner circle was his daughter’s kidnapper.
On the desk sat a framed photo of a little princess with dimples and golden blonde curls. The Gerber baby, all grown up.
“What’s her name?” Billy asked.
“Carley,” Ritz said.
“You raising her yourself?”
Ritz scowled at him.
“No wedding ring, no picture of your wife.”
“You’re very observant. My wife died a few years ago in a car accident.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Ritz removed a painting from the wall to reveal a biometric wall safe. The safe sprung open after his fingertips touched the door’s optical scanner, and he removed a handgun, which he checked to make sure it was loaded before strapping it on a leather holster.
“You going to a gunfight?” Billy asked.
“Stop making jokes.”
“The kidnappers will be watching you when you drop the money. If they see you’re packing, they might get scared and snuff your kid. Lose the gun.”
“Why would they get scared? Isn’t this what they do for a living?”
“No. They’re amateurs.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“They called you at work. A smart kidnapper calls his victim while he’s at home and corners him. It’s how the game’s played. Lose the gun.”
“For the love of Christ. You’re a criminal, aren’t you?”
“Now that you mention it, I am.”
“What were you doing in my casino, robbing me?”
“I didn’t steal that much.”
“I should shoot you right now, you know that? How much did you steal from me?”
“About ten grand.”
“Jesus Christ. I need a miracle, and I get you instead.”
“You could do worse. Now, lose the gun, or I’m out of here.”
“What do you have against guns?”
“They draw the police, and I don’t particularly like cops.”
Ritz had a decision to make. He could make the drop with Billy or go it alone. He returned the gun and holster to the safe and picked up the garbage bag filled with money.
“I don’t know why I’m listening to you,” the casino owner said.
Ritz’s ride was a sleek BMW 760Li sedan. The soundtrack from a Disney movie came out of the Bang & Olufsen speakers, leading Billy to assume that Ritz had been with Carley not that long ago. Billy wanted to ask Ritz how the abduction had happened, just to confirm his earlier suspicion that a trusted employee was the culprit, but decided not to go there just yet.
Billy drove east on Flamingo to Memorial Highway while Ritz stared out the window at the blur of passing headlights. At Ritz’s instructions, he pulled into a strip shopping center and drove around back to a dumpster that was the designated drop. Parking a hundred feet away, he killed the engine.
“Why park so far away?” Ritz asked.
“Because they need to see you,” Billy said.
“So they’re watching us. Is my daughter with them?”
“She’s somewhere else. Get out of the car and take your time walking to the dumpster. Do the drop and return to the car. No fast movements, and don’t even think of taking out your cell phone. Once you’re in the car, I’ll drive you back to your casino.”
“How do I know they’re not going to kill her once they have the money?”
“If the people who kidnapped your daughter had planned to kill her, they would have done it after they abducted her and not let a bond form. They didn’t do that. You’ll get her back.”
“How the fuck do you know all of this?”
“I hang with bad people. Now, get moving, before they get suspicious.”
Beneath a gibbous moon, Ritz slow-walked to the dumpster, lifted the lid, and heaved the bag of money inside. Billy used the opportunity to have a look around. The land behind the strip center was arid and flat, and he guessed the lookout was perched on the top of a flat-roof garage a half mile away, watching with a pair of infrared binoculars while talking to his partner on a cell phone, the partner holed up in a motel with the blindfolded kid. Once they got their hands on the ransom, they’d count it, and when they were satisfied Ritz had held up his end of the bargain, they’d let the girl go. The kid would be traumatized, but Daddy had enough dough to hire a good shrink and get her straightened out.