Dazed, Tony G stumbled to the cart as if he had two left feet. Billy grabbed a bottled water out of the cooler and handed it to the bookie. The enforcers hopped out of their cart.
“What’s the matter, boss? You look pale,” Guido said.
“We just got taken for three hundred and fifty thousand big ones,” Tony G said.
“What? By who?”
Tony G smirked, as if to say, Who do you think? He leaned against the hood of the cart and gulped down the bottled water. His eyes were blinking, his brain playing back the events of the past hour and analyzing them, frame by frame, word by word, looking for a clue that might lead him to understand how Billy had scammed him. Long shots did not win horse races, and Tony G knew that the race had been fixed. But knowing something and proving it were two entirely different things, and if Tony G didn’t pay Billy off, his reputation would be ruined.
“Was it this little twerp?” Guido poked Billy in the arm.
“Leave him alone,” Tony G said.
“Wait a minute-I know this guy. I’ve seen him in the clubs around town, picking up all the hot chicks. He’s nothing but a two-bit hustler.”
“That’s great. Now, leave him alone,” Tony G said.
“Fucking piece of shit-you think you can scam us?” Snap jumped in, his chest puffing up like a rooster’s. “Maybe I should teach him a lesson and break his arm.”
“I said leave him alone,” Tony G said, growing irritated with them.
Snap backed off, only he didn’t back off. His eyes held the promise of future mayhem down the road. One day, Guido and Snap were going to hurt Billy. They’d do it in a parking lot or a lavatory or some place where no one was watching, and they’d mess him up real good.
Or not. Billy still held his putter. By extending his arm, he brought the putter’s head into Snap’s face and struck the bridge of his damaged nose. Snap groaned and took a knee with blood pouring out of both nostrils. Guido’s turn. Billy feinted and Guido shielded his head with his arms. The putter found the magic spot between Guido’s legs, and muscles went down in a heap. Billy tossed the putter into the cart and dusted his hands.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Tony G said.
“Yes, I did. You and I need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Stuff.”
Billy drove the cart while Tony G rode shotgun and listened.
“Let’s start out by talking damages,” he said, his eyes glued to the narrow path. “I lost twenty-three thousand five hundred bucks between my first four bets at Santa Anita and the golf, and you lost three hundred and fifty thousand on my last bet at the track, which puts me ahead three hundred and twenty-six thousand, five hundred bucks. Does that sound right to you?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Tony G grabbed the roof as they took a curve. “Look, kid, I know you scammed me. Your reputation will be shot when I’m done with you.”
He jammed on the brakes, nearly throwing his passenger out of the cart.
“Don’t threaten me,” Billy said.
Tony G started to reply, but didn’t, knowing that a display of anger would solve nothing at this stage in the game. He looked at Billy the way a parent looks at a misbehaving kid.
“You’re a tough little fucker,” the bookie said.
He took off down the path. “I have a business proposition for you. You and I have a mutual acquaintance named Gabe Weiss. Gabe is currently into you for three hundred large. I want to wipe away Gabe’s debt with the money I just won. Interested?”
“How do you know Gabe?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
“But I owe you more than that.”
“Keep it.”
The path ended. Billy parked by the pro shop and killed the cart’s engine. Las Vegas was the land of the unforgiving; there were no gimmes, freebies, or torn-up IOUs. Tony G waited to hear what the catch was.
“I don’t want any hard feelings down the road,” he said. “No threats or bad-mouthing. What’s done is done.”
“Trying to buy me off, huh,” the bookie said. “What the hell. I’ll take your deal.”
They shook hands on it. Billy got out and grabbed his clubs from the back. He started to walk away but not before giving Tony G a parting look to make sure things were good.
“Those two kids playing in front of us were part of it, weren’t they?” the bookie said. “They must have lost twenty balls, but they still kept playing. I should have known.”
“Have a nice day,” Billy said.
Cory and Morris were horsing around when he exited the clubhouse into the parking lot. They did that a lot, and he’d decided that they were too cocky for their own good and needed to be knocked down a peg. He tossed Cory the golf bag.
“Tony G made you,” he said.
Their faces crashed. The apprenticeship to become a grifter was filled with tests, and they’d failed this one miserably.
“How bad did we fuck up?” Cory asked.
“Bad enough. Your horse racing scam is weak. Those goons could have messed me up, put me in the hospital. The good news is, it still worked. Gabe’s a free man.”
“Sorry,” they both said.
“Fuck sorry. You need to do better, start thinking things through. Got it?”
They both promised that they’d do better next time. Talk was cheap, and he found himself wondering if they had what it took to make it in a town as tough as this one.
He drove back into town, the fading sunlight creating a blinding sheen on his windshield. At Russell Road he stopped at the light and checked his Droid for messages. He’d gotten five calls from Ike and sensed something was amiss.
“What’s up?” he asked when Ike picked up.
“Doucette’s looking for you. There’s some bad shit going down.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“That would be an understatement,” Ike said solemnly.
FORTY-TWO
Hanging up, Billy wondered if his time had run out.
Doucette had ordered Ike and T-Bird to grab Billy when he came into the hotel and bring him up to room 1444 in the main tower. Room 1444 was where Ricky Boswell had been tortured and killed, the designated torture chamber.
Doucette had decided to snuff him. Billy had spun so many lies in the past two days that it was hard to know which one had finally caught up to him. Or maybe it was an accumulation of lies that had tipped the scales. It really didn’t matter. Doucette wanted him gone.
He considered running. But that meant leaving his crew behind to face the music. Crunchie had promised to turn their names over to the police if he didn’t play ball. His crew would go down, and eventually the gaming board would find him, and he’d go down as well.
He could run, but he couldn’t hide.
Traffic was brutal. As the sunny afternoon turned to dusk, tourists poured out of the hotels and filled the Strip’s sidewalks and traffic crossings, eager for the party to start. By the time he pulled into Galaxy, it was dark. He threw his keys to the valet and went inside. It had been a great ride, and he had no regrets. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t make him suffer.
Ike and T-Bird were in the lobby. They’d ditched the new threads and gone back to basic black. No words were exchanged, just nods of the head. They both looked sad. Their million-dollar paydays had just gotten flushed down the toilet.
They boarded a service elevator. Ike punched a code into the keypad and appeared frustrated when the doors wouldn’t close. He tried the numbers again. This time the code worked, and Ike pressed the call button for the fourteenth floor. The elevator began its ascent.
Billy imagined himself making a run for it before they tried to kill him, and knew that he’d need the service elevator to facilitate his escape. Having watched Ike punch in the code, he said it three times to himself and stored it away in his memory for future use.