Ritz returned to the car. He was sweating bullets and breathing hard.
“Good job.” Billy eased the car out of the spot.
The call came fifty minutes later. The kidnappers had dumped Carley in a vacant lot next to the Ellis Island Casino on Koval Lane. Billy again did the driving.
Ritz found his daughter sitting on the ground, dirty and bleeding from the mouth.
“They hurt her,” Ritz cried, cradling his child in his lap.
Billy glanced at the kid as he drove back to the Grand Bay. One of the kidnappers had popped her in the jaw, the blow leaving a perfectly round impression in the skin that resembled a man’s ring. This treatment told Billy that the kidnappers had a score to settle with Ritz, and he was surprised that Ritz hadn’t already figured this out.
“You know a good doctor who makes house calls?” Billy asked.
“What’s wrong with the hospital?” Ritz asked.
“The doctors will want to know who beat her up. If you tell them the truth, the police will want to know why you dealt with the kidnappers yourself. Word will get out you were blackmailed, and that will make you look weak. You need to keep this quiet.”
Ritz clutched his daughter to his chest. “I don’t know of anyone. Do you?”
“The guy I use is named Ibarra. He runs an urgent care clinic on Flamingo and doesn’t report his clients’ injuries to the police.”
“Is he any good?”
“I haven’t heard of any of his patients dying.”
“Call him.”
Soon they were in Ritz’s office watching Ibarra shine a pen light in Carley’s eyes. Ibarra reeked of cigarettes and cheap booze, which he didn’t try to hide. He gave Carley a sedative and the little girl drifted off to sleep on the couch. Ritz stuffed enough money into Ibarra’s hand to buy his silence and walked him to the door. Billy remained by the couch and gazed down at the little girl. She looked like an angel, and he wondered what kind of animal would punch a defenseless kid in the face. Ritz edged up beside him.
“So what do I owe you?”
“You don’t owe me a thing.”
“I wasn’t born last night. Name your price.”
“How much is your daughter’s life worth?”
“You trying to blackmail me?”
“Just asking a question.”
“She’s worth more than everything I own. I think it’s time for you to go.”
Billy went to the door with the intention of not looking back. But his conscience wouldn’t let him. He needed to explain the deal to Ritz, otherwise the kidnappers would steal Carley again, only this time she’d end up buried in the desert with petrified wood for a headstone.
“The people who did this work for you. I thought you should know that,” he said. “I figured it out when you were on the phone with them. You told them you could come up with only nine hundred thousand, which wasn’t what they asked for. More like a million, right?”
Stunned, Ritz nodded.
“But they accepted the figure because they already knew how much money was in the cage. They asked for a million, hoping you might have mad money stashed in your office. When you told them you had only nine hundred, they didn’t balk. They knew.”
Ritz blinked, the gears shifting in his head. “It was Fister.”
“He work for you?”
“Used to run the day shift. I caught him stealing and termed him.”
“Sounds like he’s the one. Don’t be so nice to him this time around.”
Ritz thought about what Billy was saying and nodded.
“I need to run. See you around,” Billy said.
Ritz’s attitude changed, and he walked Billy to the elevators in the hall. The elevator doors parted, and Billy got in and punched the button for the lobby.
“You still haven’t told me what I owe you,” Ritz said.
“Let me get back to you,” Billy said.
The operator came back on the line, snapping Billy out of his daydream.
“Mr. Ritz said he’ll send someone down for you.”
Billy hung up. Moments later a security goon wearing an ill-fitting suit appeared. As they went up in the elevator, the goon appraised Billy as if taking his measurements.
“Something wrong?” Billy asked.
“Mr. Ritz said you’re a cheat, and that I should remember what you look like.”
“You used to work security at the Luxor.”
“How did you know that?”
“We met about a year ago. My crew rang a cooler into a blackjack game and took the joint for thirty grand. You were working security, and I stood right next to you, talking football while my crew switched six decks on the dealer and cleaned you out. Remember me now?”
Next stop was Ritz’s corner office. Ritz was packing a few extra pounds but didn’t look much different. A chair and drink were offered. Billy was soon swirling cubes in a glass of bourbon. Ritz parked himself on the edge of his desk and raised his glass in a silent toast.
“How’s your daughter doing?” Billy asked.
“Just turned twelve going on twenty-one,” Ritz replied. “I put her in a private boarding school, just for the peace of mind. She seems to like it. So what can I do for you?”
“Do you have a photo of her?”
Ritz shot him a funny look before handing Billy a framed photograph off the desk. It showed Carley in a field hockey uniform and wearing braces. Billy was able to make out the faint outline of the scar that one of her kidnappers had put on her jaw for no good reason other than being subhuman. He handed the photo back.
“When I left your office three years ago, I assumed you were going to have the guys who kidnapped your kid whacked. Why didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The kidnappers are still around.”
Ritz stared at the floor. Billy bore down on him. “A guy named Fister was behind your daughter’s kidnapping. Fister had a partner. Why didn’t you have those assholes whacked?”
“How I handled Fister and his brother is none of your business.”
“Yes, it is. Those two bastards murdered a friend of a friend of mine. Punched him in the face and left the same impression on his chin that they left on your daughter’s face.” Billy paused. “You let them go, and I want to know why.”
Ritz went to the picture window behind the desk and fixed his gaze on a distant point. Billy came up beside the casino boss. “You owe me, man. I saved your kid.”
Ritz took a swallow of his drink before replying. “That night after we got Carley back, I got my gun out of the safe and grabbed my head of security and two guards I trusted. We drove to Fister’s house and let ourselves in. Fister and his brother were inside counting the ransom money. We had them dead to rights.
“I asked Fister which one of them had punched Carley. Fister said that he and his brother had planned the kidnapping but had hired two pros to carry it out. They’d paid the pros fifty grand, which had come out of the ransom money. I made Fister give me their names.”
Ritz stopped talking. A line of sweat had formed above his upper lip.
“Then you killed them,” Billy said.
“Yeah. Shot them in the head and got rid of their bodies. Then I set my sights on the other two. Their names were Haney. A father and son who did jobs for the casinos.”
“You mean killings?”
“That’s right. They’ve been around a long time.”
It was no secret that the casinos rubbed out cheaters who kept coming back and robbing them. Hollywood had shown the practice in movies and it had been written up in books, yet it still went on, the cheaters’ bodies deposited in shallow graves on the outskirts of town.