“Of course,” Gabe said. “Let’s go.”
Palace Station was what locals called a sawdust joint. It was a half mile off the Strip and featured cheaply priced rooms, mediocre food, and lousy floor shows. Keno cost a dollar a ticket and could be played in the Grand Cafe over dinner.
The only steak on the menu was a chewy New York Strip smothered in onion strings with a scoop of lumpy mashed potatoes on the side. While the Haneys chowed down, Gabe filled out the Keno tickets that a pleasant waitress brought to their table. Every seven minutes, the winning numbers were flashed across an LED display over the marble-top bar. By the time the Grand Chocolate Cake desserts arrived, Gabe had won $600.
“How come you don’t bet more?” Junior said. “If you bet more, you win more.”
“Because it wouldn’t pass the smell test,” Gabe said. “If I just waltz in here off the street and win thousands of dollars, the alarms will go off and security will be all over me like a cheap suit.”
“Why’s that? Aren’t people supposed to win?”
“Not at Keno. The house has a thirty percent edge. The players aren’t expected to win, and they rarely do. If you’re going to scam a Keno game, you need to steal the money in drips and drabs. Hustlers call scams like these ATMs. You withdraw the money when you need it.”
“How long can you work a scam like this?”
“For as long as you want.”
“Years?”
“Sure. Provided the house doesn’t change the balls, which they rarely do.”
The father leaned over and whispered in his son’s ear. Gabe still hadn’t figured out what the old man’s deal was. There was a rage burning inside of him unlike anything Gabe had ever seen, and he wondered if the old man had been in the burning deserts of Iraq or Afghanistan. Men were not born hating their fellow man; they became that way.
“We want this scam for ourselves,” Junior said. “You understand what I’m saying? You give us this as part of our deal with you.”
Gabe didn’t have a choice, but he wanted something in return. “My daughter is coming over to my house. I’ll give you the Keno scam if you stay away.”
The elder Haney whispered in his son’s ear. Junior nodded.
“You have yourself a deal,” Junior said.
An invisible weight lifted from Gabe’s shoulders. On a paper napkin, Gabe wrote twenty numbers with the golf pencil. Done, he passed the napkin across the table.
“Every time you play the game, bet on these numbers. Do that, and you’ll always win.”
Junior stared at the napkin. “You had these committed to memory, huh?”
“You bet. That’s part of being a cheat. Commit as much as you can to memory, and there’s less evidence if the cops come calling. I’d suggest you do the same.” His daughter would be at his house soon, and Gabe rose from the table. “Remember, don’t win too much in one sitting. And when you do come back here, do it during a different shift. That way, it’s less likely an employee will remember your faces.”
The father again whispered in his son’s ear. Junior rose from the table and followed Gabe out of the café and through the casino. They had brought separate cars, with Gabe having parked with the hotel’s valet. As they were waiting for Gabe’s car to come up, Junior spoke.
“You still haven’t explained how it works.”
“The winning balls are normal, but the losing balls aren’t,” Gabe said. “They’ve been punctured with sewing needles. When the blower is turned on, the losing balls eventually drop because the air pushes through the holes. Only the winning balls are capable of entering the gooseneck.”
“How did you rig the balls?” Junior asked.
“A young guy in our crew got a job at the factory where the Keno game is manufactured,” Gabe explained. “The balls are stored in plastic sleeves. When no one was looking, our guy punctured the balls through the plastic with a needle. Our guy then got a hold of a work order and saw that Palace Station had ordered a new Keno game. After that, it was easy.”
A uniformed valet brought up Gabe’s Infiniti SUV. The Infiniti was the first purchase Gabe had made after joining Billy’s crew. Sixty grand, cash. Every time Gabe got behind the wheel he was reminded that he’d made the right choice in becoming a thief.
“I’ve got to run,” Gabe said.
“You do that,” Junior said.
As Gabe climbed behind the wheel, he realized how frightened he was. These animals had killed Nate for no sane reason, and they would kill him too if the mood struck them. A loud rapping sound snapped his head, and Gabe lowered the passenger window.
Junior stuck in his head, his face a vicious snarl.
“Don’t go thinking that this changes things between us,” Junior said. “You’re a cheat, and cheats can’t be trusted. If we catch one whiff that you or Cunningham are trying to double-cross us, we’ll beat Cunningham to death and make you watch. Then we’ll find your daughter, tie her to a tree, and rape her, and make you watch that, too. That’s a promise you can take to the bank.”
Junior pulled his head out.
“Have a nice night,” he said.
Gabe did not see the highway as he drove home. Or if he did see it, the pavement did not register in his brain, the images of the Haneys torturing his daughter poisoning his thoughts. His car’s sound system was connected to his Droid via Bluetooth, and he called Billy by speaking Billy’s name into the speaker positioned above his head. The call went to voice mail.
“Call me back when you get this,” Gabe said, his voice cracking. “And do it fast.”
Forty-One
At seven o’clock, the stretch limo pulled in to the MGM’s valet area, and Billy and his crew got out. Even though the Bruno Mars show didn’t start until eight, Billy had attended enough events at the MGM to know to arrive at least an hour early.
Billy exited the limo with Misty glued to his side. Misty wore a red sequin miniskirt and a low-cut blouse designed to cause whiplash wherever she went. Cory and Morris followed, wearing the slacker uniform of jeans and untucked shirts. Travis came next, dressed in a sports shirt and blazer and holding what looked like a beer. The big man never drank when on a job, and the bottle contained water. Last but not least was Eddie DeSantis, who, along with attending to Billy and his crew, would be scouring the crowd for new whales to steal.
“Follow me,” DeSantis said, the tickets fanned in his hand.
You couldn’t survive in Vegas and not have a theme. For the MGM Grand, it was all about the magic of Hollywood. A rectangular movie screen the size of a football field flashed larger-than-life images of a dancing Bruno Mars as they passed the front desk.
DeSantis walked through the casino and they followed. Every Vegas hotel made visitors pass through their casinos first, in the hope that a person might drop a few dollars. It was about as subtle as parking a hooker at the front door, and it worked.
They entered an area called the District and passed the usual array of overpriced shops and restaurants before reaching the Garden Arena entrance. A line of people waited to get in.
“Let me see if I can grease some wheels here,” DeSantis said.
Their host went to the front of the line. Travis edged up next to Billy.
“The first job I ever pulled with you was here. Remember?” the big man asked.
“Like it was yesterday,” Billy replied.
“How much did we pull down that night?”
“A hundred large.”
“That’s right. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
Every casino had a flaw that could be exploited. For the MGM Grand, that flaw was its entertainment venues. There were several, including a lavish Cirque du Soleil production, a nightclub with rotating DJs, and a magic show featuring illusionist David Copperfield.