Free Take Down by James Swain Page B

little bastard Ricky.”
    “Ricky was one of us. You don’t do that to your own. You broke the code.”
    “Let it go,” the old grifter said.
    The Maserati appeared with a distinctive roar, the valet a budding NASCAR driver. Billy instinctively reached for his wallet, and came away empty.
    “Give me my wallet back,” he said.
    “Ike’s got your wallet,” the old grifter said. “Come by tomorrow afternoon at three, and we’ll go over things. Remember, if you mess with us, we’ll destroy you and your friends.”
    Crunchie limped back inside. At least the story about his arthritis acting up had been true. Ike tossed Billy his wallet. Billy flipped it open to give the valet a tip, and found the billfold empty. Ike had cleaned him out. Laughing, the punishers went inside as well.

    Billy burned rubber out of the valet stand. Traffic was light, the late hour thinning out the herd, and he punched the accelerator as he headed north on the neon-infused Strip, desperate to put as much distance between himself and Galaxy’s casino as possible.
    He felt ready to explode. He hadn’t screwed up this badly since college. At the intersection of Sahara Avenue he pulled a wild-ass stunt, and with tires screaming, cut across four lanes and hung a sharp left. There wasn’t a traffic cop in sight, and as he sped down Sahara, he realized it was the first lucky break he’d caught all night.
    He was doing eighty when he hit the entrance ramp. With the wind blowing in his face, his fear ebbed away, and he told himself that he could beat these bastards. He didn’t know how, but he could do it. They’d tipped their mitts and revealed their hands and given him enough information to mess with them real good.
    Doucette was a coked-out fool, and so was his psycho bride, and neither one of them knew a damn thing about running a casino. If they had, they’d never have asked a known hustler to help them catch a gang of cheats. Only in the dumb movies did casino people do that.
    Ike and T-Bird were a pair of washed-up jocks and dumber than a box of rocks. Stupid people were easily played. He was going to have fun with those two mutts.
    Last was Crunchie, who’d screwed with him in so many ways that Billy had lost count. But there was a reason for it. Age had caught up to the old grifter, and Crunchie no longer had the confidence in himself to do the job that he was asking Billy to do.
    Each of them had an Achilles’ heel that he could stick a dagger into and twist around real good. They’d picked the wrong guy to fuck with, and he couldn’t wait to pay them back.

FOURTEEN
    THE HOT SEAT: SUNDAY, MIDDAY
    At noon the gaming agents broke for lunch. Trays of food were brought up from the jail’s cafeteria that weren’t fit for a dog. Billy thought the session had gone well, and he sipped from a can of ginger ale while watching LaBadie, Zander, and Tricaricco chow down on baloney sandwiches on Wonder Bread and cups of greasy potato salad. Bad food was part of a cop’s daily existence, and the gaming agents made sure to clean their plates.
    “You haven’t told us how Maggie Flynn plays into this,” LaBadie asked when they were done. “That was part of our agreement.”
    “Mags didn’t come into the picture until Thursday night,” Billy explained. “I didn’t want to jump ahead of myself.”
    LaBadie also had a briefcase, although not as pretty as Underman’s. Placing it on the table, he popped it open, and removed a glossy eight-by-ten photograph of Billy and his crew taken inside Galaxy’s employee parking garage a few hours before they ripped the joint off.
    “Yesterday afternoon, you and eight other people were secretly photographed by one of our agents inside Galaxy’s employee parking garage before the casino was robbed,” LaBadie said. “We know the two black guys in the photo worked for Doucette. I want you to tell me the other six people’s names.”
    “That photograph isn’t want you think,” Billy