“Airport?” the driver asked.
“Yeah. Delta terminal,” Billy said.
The driver loaded Gabe’s suitcase and got back behind the wheel. It was a necessary precaution for Gabe to cab it to the airport, and from there, for him to take another cab to his house. Billy and his crew were pretending to be out-of-towners, and that charade needed to be continued, even with people who didn’t directly work for the casino.
Billy started to go back inside. Gabe touched the young hustler’s sleeve.
“I’m not getting something,” Gabe said. “How did the Haneys know where I lived? I’m the one member of the crew who nobody ever sees. How did those fucking guys find me?”
The words hit Billy in the head like a lead pipe. Gabe was the invisible member of the crew and had been used only a handful of times in actual scams, usually when they were shorthanded. Gabe should have been the least vulnerable member of Billy’s crew, and not susceptible to contract killers paying him a surprise visit late at night.
Billy thought back to the surveillance tape Gabe’s neighbor had shot of the Haneys as they’d pulled up to Gabe’s house. The son had been holding a piece of paper with an address. Whoever had hired the Haneys had given them Gabe’s address.
Right then, Billy realized he knew who the Haneys’ employer was. The cab’s meter was running, and he said, “Driver’s running up the fare. Go home. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Am I safe in my house?” Gabe asked.
“Yeah, you’re safe. Remember, it’s me they’re after.”
“I think I’ll sleep with a gun under my pillow, just in case.”
“You do that.”
Gabe got in and the passenger window came down. “This is a cop, isn’t it, Billy?”
Of course it was a cop. Only a cop would have the resources to connect Gabe to Billy, and then to gain access to Gabe’s home address. Billy had pissed off plenty of law enforcement during his time in Vegas, but none so badly that they wanted him dead. Except for one guy. This guy had a history with Billy that had turned personal, and that was never a good thing.
“Yeah, it’s a cop,” Billy said.
“What are you going to do?” Gabe asked.
“To be forewarned is to be forearmed.”
“You’re going to pay him back.”
Not a question but a statement of fact.
“I’ll think of something. Now, go home and get some sleep,” Billy said.
“Will do, boss.”
The taxi peeled away. As Billy headed back inside, he spied Maggie Flynn and Jimmy Slyde coming toward him. Mags was dressed in a low-cut blue dress and looked good enough to eat. The gaming board had put Mags on their Most Wanted List and distributed her photo to the casinos, but that hadn’t stopped her from coming back and ripping off suckers. Some people were born to steal, and Mags was one of them.
He ducked behind a concrete pillar that was part of the hotel’s facade. Mags stood at the curb while Slyde hailed a cab. She was so close that Billy could smell her perfume. The last time he’d seen her, they’d been sharing a bed in a funky hotel in Venice while plotting their future together. It had seemed like a fairy tale, until Mags had told him that she wanted to join his crew so they could take down casinos together.
Billy had gotten scared. Mags was risking her freedom every time she set foot inside a casino. She didn’t seem to care, but Billy cared, not just for his own safety but also his crew’s. His crew was the closest thing to a family he’d ever had, and he wasn’t going to let the love of a woman put them in jeopardy. So he’d split without saying good-bye.
A cab pulled up. Slyde opened the back door and Mags got in. Her dress went up her leg, exposing her thigh. The breath caught in Billy’s throat.
He stepped out from his hiding place and watched the cab fade into the night. There was a name for what he was feeling. Euphoric recall. Remembering the amazing stuff while forgetting the bad. Putting a label on it didn’t change how he felt. Mags had stolen his heart, and if the opportunity ever presented itself to win her back, he’d grab it. He didn’t know if the outcome would be any different, but it was certainly worth a try.
Twenty-Four
— FRIDAY, ONE DAY EARLIER —
If there was any part of a man’s body that gave him away, it was his mouth.
A man couldn’t control his mouth, at least not all the time. Get a man upset or nervous, and the corners of his mouth would turn down, while the tip of his tongue licked his lips like a dog anticipating a piece of steak. When a man’s mouth behaved this way, it was called a tell.
Pavlov, ring that bell.
This wasn’t the only part of a man’s anatomy that betrayed him. Flaring nostrils or a bobbing Adam’s apple were also tells, and so was accelerated breathing. Every poker player worth his salt knew how to read these tells. It was part of the game.
Mags had learned how to read tells while playing poker in the back room of Lou Profaci’s factory on Providence’s south side. Lou manufactured Rolex knock-offs and counterfeit “brand-name” clothes that fell apart the first time they were laundered. To move product, Lou employed a team of hustlers who were given a defined territory. Mags had been part of that team.
On rainy days, the team played cards in the factory’s back room. Everyone in the game was a hustler, yet no cheating was allowed, as Lou did not tolerate his people stealing from one another. It was in these games that Mags had learned the art of reading tells. She was the only female in the game and her pretty face was a weapon. If she really wanted to get an opponent’s defenses down, she’d unbutton the top of her blouse and flash some hardware.
When Mags had first come to Vegas, she’d tried to read her opponents and discovered that Vegas poker players knew about tells, and they wore ball caps and shades to hide their faces. Reading tells in Vegas didn’t work, so Mags had stopped doing it.
That had changed with the arrival of Jimmy Slyde. Slyde’s little magic pills had taken her ability to read tells to another level. While under their influence, nothing escaped her.
If that wasn’t enough of an edge, the pills expanded her memory and allowed Mags to remember how her opponents played every single hand during the course of a game. She’d always enjoyed ripping off suckers, but this was an all-new high, the adrenaline coursing through her veins so fiercely that beads of sweat broke out on her forehead and her hands got clammy.
And like any great high, all she could think about was doing it again.
Mags was taking another sucker to the cleaners when her cell phone buzzed. Her purse was slung over the back of her chair and the vibration carried through the frame. She stole a glance at the gold Piaget strapped to her wrist. Eight in the morning. No one ever called this early.
“You got a plane to catch?” a voice asked.
It was the mark. A banker named Dolan with a penchant for challenging the town’s best poker players in games of heads up. Dolan liked to play early in the morning when most poker players were asleep, as it gave him an edge. Dolan also wore a secret device strapped to his leg that vibrated every ten seconds. This let Dolan time his opponents’ bets, which was another surefire way of reading tells. These tricks had allowed Dolan to beat some of the town’s sharpest players, but they hadn’t worked on Mags. She’d already taken thirty grand from him and expected to have the rest of his bankroll in short order.
“Who said anything about catching a plane?” she said.
“You looked at your watch. You weren’t planning on leaving, were you?”
“A fun party like this? Not on your life.”