“Want to die, asshole?”
Little Hands let go of the pilot and withdrew his arm.
“You’re a dumb son-of-a-bitch, you know that?” the pilot said. “Now, stand back.”
Little Hands retreated a few steps. The helicopter rose uncertainly, like a bird testing its wings. When it was at face height, Little Hands leaped forward and wrapped his arms around the landing gear, called skids. He twisted and pulled the skids as the helicopter continued to rise. He wasn’t going to let the pilot call him dumb.
When the helicopter was higher than a house, Little Hands let go, and fell back to earth. He landed on the grass and rolled onto his back. He waited for the pain in his legs to subside while staring into the sky. The helicopter was spinning crazily, the skids twisting. The pilot wouldn’t be able to land without crashing.
Little Hands saw the pilot shaking his fist and cursing him. He laughed.
He drove into Las Vegas thinking about the money. A thousand stinking bucks. He’d never taken a job with out getting paid up front. Either his employer didn’t know the rules, or wanted to keep him on a short leash. It’s like I’m still a prisoner, he thought.
He came into town on the north side, where the Riviera, Frontier, and Sahara were still struggling to survive, and parked beneath the Frontier’s mammoth marquee, its giant letters proclaiming BIKINI BULL RIDE, COLD BEER, DIRTY GIRLS.
Across the street from the Frontier was the Peppermill restaurant and lounge. The local cops didn’t like the prices, and as a result criminals often used the cocktail lounge for meetings. He needed time and a place to think, and decided it was as good a spot as any.
The lounge was behind the restaurant, a mirrored room with a sunken fire pit and plenty of intimate seating. The place was dead, and he took a seat at the bar and ordered a draft from the cute bartender, who seemed happy for the company. She set a tall one in front of him. “You look familiar,” she said.
It was his first beer since going to the joint. He savored it, saying nothing.
“Now I remember,” the bartender said. “You came in here awhile back, and stuck your hand in the fire pit.”
The fire pit was the lounge’s gimmick, the bright orange flames erupting from a bubbling pool of green water. Little Hands had stuck his hand into the flames on a dare and burned himself real good. “That was a long time ago,” he said.
She smiled like he’d made a joke, then tapped the screen of the video poker machine in front of him. Every seat at the bar had a video poker machine. It was how the lounge made money.
“Make sure you play Joker’s Wild,” she said.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“It’s paying off real good.”
He drank some more beer. She played this game with every customer who came in. She sold them on the idea of winning, even though no one ever did. He needed to figure out how he was going to kill Valentine, and fished a twenty out of his pocket.
“Thanks,” he said.
The beer went straight to his head, and he could hardly sit upright in his chair. This was how guys who broke out of jail got caught, he thought. The bartender came back. “How you doing?” she asked.
He looked at the video poker screen. “Shitty.”
She watched him play a hand. On the screen five cards appeared. He had a pair of jacks. He discarded the other three cards by pressing on them with his finger. The machine dealt him three more cards. They didn’t help his hand, and he won a dollar. She reached over the bar and touched his wrist.
“Can I give you some advice?”
“Sure.”
“Play the maximum amount of coins each time. That way, if you get a good hand, you’ll win big.”
He’d been betting a quarter a hand, thinking it would let him play longer, which would increase his chances of winning. Only, she was saying that it was a bad strategy, and would deny him the chance to really win. He pushed the button on the screen that said PLAY MAXIMUM AMOUNT.
“There you go,” she said.
Five new cards appeared on the screen. The ace of hearts, king of hearts, three of clubs, nine of hearts, and ten of hearts. He started to discard all the cards but the ace and saw her eyebrows go up.
“Discard the three and nine,” she said. “That way, you might make a royal flush.”
A royal flush was the best hand of all. According to the payout chart on the screen, he’d get two grand for a royal flush.
“Nobody gets those,” he said.
“That’s because they don’t try,” she said.
The day had been filled with surprises. He discarded the three and the nine. Two new cards appeared on the screen, a queen of hearts and a joker. She let out a war whoop. “You won! You won!”
He stared at the screen. “No, I didn’t. That ain’t a royal flush.”
“Yes, it is. Jokers are wild. That’s why they call it Joker’s Wild.”
He realized the screen was flashing. It didn’t feel real, and he touched the PAYOUT button with his finger. A slip of paper spit out of the machine saying he’d won $2,000.
He handed it to her, and she went into the restaurant to get the money from the manager.
He sucked down the beer left in his glass. Living in Vegas, he’d heard countless stories about people winning big in casinos, and how it had changed their lives. He’d always assumed the stories were bullshit.
The bartender returned holding a thick stack of bills. She counted the money onto the bar then pushed it toward him. Lifting her eyes, she looked into his face expectantly.
He hesitated picking up the stack, wondering how many customers heard her spiel each day. Fifty? A hundred? Giving suckers hope was how she made her living. He knew that, yet it didn’t change how she’d made him feel.
He put three hundred on the bar and walked out.
32
Valentine was ready to make a bust.
He’d shown Bill Higgins the surveillance tape of Skins Turner mucking a card. Bill had seen his share of muckers, and he whistled through his teeth when Skins did his switch in plain view of everyone else at the table.
“Guy’s got balls,” Bill said.
“He’s also got tremendous misdirection,” Valentine said.
“How so?”
“Everyone’s watching DeMarco.”
Taking out his cell phone, Bill had put into motion the necessary steps to go into Celebrity’s casino, and arrest Skins Turner. For starters, he alerted the casino’s head of security and explained exactly what Skins was doing. Then he gave a detailed description of what Skins looked like and where he was sitting in the game. More than one cheater had gotten away when a security guard had, in his haste to make a bust, nabbed the wrong person.
Then Bill called the Metro Las Vegas Police Department and went through the same drill with a sheriff. Skins would eventually end up in the Metro LVPD clink, and Bill didn’t want some judge letting him out on a hundred-dollar bail because the arresting officer hadn’t understood the seriousness of the charge.
The next thing Bill did was invite the other techs in the room to look at the tape of Skins and confirm that cheating was taking place. Juries in Nevada hated the casinos and would not convict a cheater without clear and compelling videotape evidence. A cop’s word simply wasn’t good enough.
Once the techs had agreed Skins was cheating, Bill did a background check on Skins. Nothing could be more helpful to prosecuting Skins than him having a prior conviction for cheating. Bill got Skins’s name and address from the hotel’s reservation department, and then called it in to the police, and his own people. If Skins had ever been arrested, either Metro or the Gaming Control Board would have a record of it.