King Con (23 page)

They were ready to go and were all sitting out in front of the Xanadu Hotel in the late-afternoon heat, waiting for Dakota, who had not come down yet. When she finally walked out of the entrance and across to the van, Victoria was startled. Dakota was dressed in a sexy, yellow evening gown that was slit up the sides and was low in front. You could see everything she had right through the thin, silky material. Her nipples and hips poked against the fabric with arresting results. It was sleazy and classy at the same time.

Dakota got into the van, picking up Vicky’s expression. “It’s a little slutty, but I’m only allowed to bait my hook once.”

They took off with Victoria driving and Roger-the-Dodger nestled in beside her, his chin on her thigh. The little terrier had definitely adopted her. They were headed back along the Grand Bahama Highway toward the Sabre Bay Club. It was almost eight-thirty when they got to the eastern tip of the island. The sun had just begun to set: a fiery orange sphere on the tropical green vanishing point. Then, like a slow-motion shot of a cue ball dropping into the pocket, it slid below the horizon.

Beano looked at his watch. “Almost nine. Where the hell is the night shift?”

Finally, several hotel vans pulled up in the employee parking lot. … Ten men and women in black tie got out and headed into the side door of the casino.

“The night team,” Beano said. “Table bosses, pit and stick men. Okay, you ready, Duffy?”

The old man nodded. “I’m gonna start with a ‘splash move,’” indicating he was going to rehearse the switch of the dice first without actually playing them, to see if the Pit Boss would spot it.

Beano nodded. “Dak, you ready?” he asked.

She nodded, took a deep breath, and checked herself in the visor mirror.

Beano retrieved the wheelchair, bringing it around to the side where Duffy sat by the sliding door. He helped Duffy down onto the potty seat. Victoria could see that there was a hotel towel placed inside the plastic catch basin of the Porta-Toilet to muffle the sound of the dice once they were dropped between his legs. Duffy lowered himself into the chair and took out some eye drops that he had mixed. He put several in each eye. … They would make his eyes turn red and watery, making him look sick. Then he began to shake with a practiced but very realistic palsy.

“You set, Uncle Harry?” Beano said, using the alias they’d agreed on. They both had phony I.D.’s saying they were Harry S. Price and his nephew, Douglas.

“Time to go south,” Duffy said. “Going south” was a grifter’s term for any play where you illegally removed dice or money from a casino table.

“There’s a good easy-listening station on 107.6,” Dakota said to Victoria as she climbed out of the van.

“Hey, Dakota …” Victoria responded, and when the beautiful mack turned around, Victoria gave her a thumbs-up. “Break a leg, kid.”

Dakota nodded solemnly and then followed Beano, who was already pushing Duffy’s wheelchair into the casino.

Victoria watched them until they were deep inside the Sabre Bay Club, then she drove the van around to the golf shop. She got out and moved over to the pay phone where she had an unobstructed view of the front entrance. She stood there patiently and waited for her part in the tat.

D
AKOTA FOLLOWED AS BEANO PUSHED DUFFY INTO
the windswept ocean-view hotel lobby. Then he turned right and rolled Duffy through a massive threshold, across an open courtyard, and into the dark, air-conditioned, windowless casino. The sound of trade winds and vibrating palm fronds was quickly replaced by ringing slots and the drone of a dozen Stick-men calling the games at their tables. Beano wheeled the chair across the rich, two-toned purple and red carpet and up to the Cashier’s cage.

“Like to deposit some cash an’ shoot some craps,” Duffy said, his voice shaking now, his palsied hand waving uncertainly in the air as he raised it to get the cage clerk’s attention. She looked down and saw him in the wheelchair, then smiled at Beano, who now seemed both bored and angry. Dakota had already split off, heading to the bar.

“Come on, Uncle Harry, you’re just gonna lose it like yesterday at the Freeport Princess Casino.”

“Don’t you start in on me again, Douglas. All you been doin’ is carpin’ an’ complainin’. What’m I supposed t’do, put on one a’them jock strap bathing suits a’yours an’ jump in the pool?” He looked up at the clerk, whose name tag said she was
CINDY.
“Gonna buy
fifty thousand in chips, then maybe we could arrange some credit if that runs out.” He pushed an envelope full of cash through the cage and watched with red-rimmed eyes while Cindy’s nimble fingers counted the bills.

“That’s fifty thousand dollars U.S.,” she said. “Do you want that all in chips?”

“Yes siree,” Duffy trumpeted. “You can deliver it to the nearest table over there and then stand back and watch a master at work.”

“Jesus Christ,” Beano groaned. “Some master. You been losing worse than the New York Jets.”

Cindy shot Beano a look hoping to shut him up, then said, “I could get that credit-ap started if you want. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Let ‘er rip,” Duffy honked loudly, which triggered a coughing spasm that doubled him over in the chair.

Cindy got a credit application out of a drawer under the counter. “Could I have your full name?” she politely asked the now-sputtering old man.

“Harry Stanton Price,” he said, getting the coughing spasm under control and regaining his composure.

“Place of business?”

“Price Is Right Automotive Center, Fresno, California. I own the sucker,” he smiled, but his voice was shaking slightly, his head nodding forward as if it were a constant struggle to keep it up on his wobbly pencil neck.

“Banking affiliation?” she said.

“The Central California Cattlemen’s Bank, Fresno,” he wheezed at her.

She carefully wrote that down. “Do you have any objections if we contact your bank, Mr. Price?”

“Hell, no! You gotta find out how much I got in there, don’cha? Just tell ‘em I’m down here, my luck’s finally changed, and I’m about ta kick some serious ass,” he
said, grinning and letting his head loll slightly over to one side.

‘“This should only take a short while, sir … if you want to check back in half an hour. In the meantime, I’ll send your rack of chips to table three.” She smiled at him and pointed to the nearest crap table.

He waved his hand at her, letting it make small, palsied circles in the air.

“Jesus,” Beano moaned, “can’t we at least get something to eat, Uncle Harry? You need to take your medicine.”

“Y’ just don’t know how t’have fun,” Duffy said weakly, stifling another war with his own lungs. Then he straightened slightly and in a high, reedy voice barked at Beano, “Let’s go. Take me, take me … gotta go,” he wheezed.

Beano turned and wheeled the chair across the carpet to crap table three.

Cindy watched them go, then picked up the phone in her cash cage and called the Box-man in the pit. “Zig, I’m sending two deadwood players to table three. They bought fifty thousand in chips. They sound like they already dropped a bundle at the Princess in Freeport. I’ll send a tray over and get them photographed by Security. You might wanna comp ‘em.”

The casino Box-man was the individual who was in charge of the crap tables. Luke Zigman was sitting on a metal-backed folding chair with the phone up to his ear. He looked over and saw Beano pushing Duffy up to table three. “The old duck in the rolling seat and the good-looking, red-haired guy?” he asked Cindy.

“That’s them. Couple of laydowns if you ask me; keep ‘em happy.”

“On it.” He hung up and watched as a casino employee in a uniform brought over a large tray of colorful
chips on a rolling cart and parked it near Duffy’s wheelchair.

“Okay, okay, time t’roll, time t’roll,” Duffy said, smacking his lips and grabbing some hundred-dollar chips off the tray beside him and throwing them over the rail onto the table, where they bounced on the green felt. “What’s the table limit?” he bellowed.

“Two thousand dollars, sir,” Zigman said.

“Gimme the big six-eight for two thousand and insurance. Cover the six and ten for five hundred each, the hard way.”

Zigman smiled slightly. The big six-eight, hard way, and insurance bets were all sucker plays. He stepped up and watched as the dice were passed to an elderly woman in pink pastel shorts and beach thongs.

“New shooter coming out,” the Stick-man said, beginning his unending line of patter known as table barking.

The woman threw the dice and they came up three and five.

“Eighter from Decatur,” Duffy shouted. “A winner.”

The Stick-man, who was dressed in white shirt, red vest, and tie, corralled the dice with the curved stick and pushed them back to the lady. Then he paid Duffy’s big six-eight, which was a winner. Duffy was determined to lose, so he left his winnings on the table, pushing it all on the line. The lady grabbed the dice and immediately rolled a seven.

“Seven, a loser,” the Stick-man droned. “The line loses. Pay the don’t come.” And he scraped Duffy’s lost bet off the table. When the dice were passed to Duffy, he looked at them with a practiced eye.

“Be good t’Harry Price, good t’Harry Price,” he mumbled at the red translucent cubes. “These are the dice t’pay the price,” he chanted maniacally. While
Beano looked at the other players apologetically, nobody noticed as Duffy palmed the dice, expertly dropping them between his legs into the Porta-Toilet, at the same time switching them with a set of his brother’s Miami-made counterfeits. Then he put the switched dice down on the table. From his wheelchair seat, his head just barely appeared above the rim of the table. He reached over the rail and arranged the dice in a five-two combination of seven. He was giving the Stick-man a good look at his ringer dice to see if they would pass muster at that distance. Nothing happened so, with his “splash move” completed, he picked up the dice and shook them next to his ear.

“Okay, okay. Talk to me. Be nice to Harry Price,” he said to the dice in his fist. Then he turned and snapped at Beano, “Get me down on the come line, Douglas. Wanna raise the limit … five thousand.”

“I’ll approve the bet,” Zigman said to the Stick-man, raising the table limit.

There was a gasp from the table and, once his bet was down, Duffy rolled the bones. They came up six and four.

“Point is ten,” the Stick-man said.

“Get me down for two thousand, the hard way,” Duffy said. And Beano handed the Stick-man two thousand in chips to buy the longshot sucker bet that the ten would eventually get made as double fives, before he sevened out.

Zigman smiled from his place behind the Stick-man. If the old crippled guy kept betting like that, they’d take his whole poke in half an hour.

For the next thirty minutes Duffy threw his money away like a street sucker betting Three-Card Monty. The Box-man grinned as Duffy’s chips were repeatedly scraped off the table. Luke Zigman had quickly figured out that the old man was using a Martingale System,
which was a complicated betting scheme often employed by losers. It basically consisted of doubling and quadrupling bets after every other loss. Twice Duffy had to ask that the table limit be waived so he could quadruple his bet. Both times this happened he lost, and the Stick-man would rake over ten thousand of the old man’s dollars off the table. Duffy ended up being the only player shooting at table three because he was so cold he had become a plague on everybody’s luck.

“Jeezus, Uncle Harry … whatta you doing? Don’t bet all the hard-ways; it’s a jerk-off bet,” Beano whined with no effect, as Duffy hissed at him to shut up and did it over and over again. What nobody noticed was that, with each loss, while the Stick-man and Box-man were trying to contain their grins, another pair of casino dice rained down into the Porta-Toilet catch basin under Duffy’s bony ass. After he lost a big roll he would yell, “New dice! New dice!” in his wheezy rasp and the casino would only too gladly oblige this loser, pulling his counterfeit dice off the table and supplying him with a new set of casino perfects, which would hit the plastic catch basin under him a few moments later.

“Jeezus, Harry, can’t we get outta here?” Beano whined. “You need to take your medicine.” But the old man waved him away.

Zigman moved up and whispered to the Floor Manager, “We’re gonna Schneider this jerk in less than an hour.”

Every employee in the casino knew in minutes there was a major slab of deadwood on table three.

In the Credit Office, the Shift Manager, Arnold Buzini, was waiting for his Credit Manager to confirm the sucker’s net worth. Buzini was known around the Sabre Bay Club as the Buzzard, and was leaning over her desk, impatiently tapping his fingers.

“Try and verify him as high as you can,” Buzini said;
his close-cut hair was steel-gray and he had gray-white skin. He lived indoors and loved to see “leakers” like Harry Stanton Price show up. He lived for dumb bettors with systems.

The Credit Manager was named Angela Hopkins and she had just dialed the Cattlemen’s Bank of Fresno, using her new set of
McGuire Financial Listings
that had been unexpectedly delivered yesterday. After a series of clicks, which she assumed was the island telephone system but was really the rollover call-forwarding mechanism in Fresno, the pay phone at the golf shop, not two hundred yards away, rang.

“Cattlemen’s Bank of Fresno, one moment, please,” Victoria said in a high sing-songy voice; then she hit one of the numbers on the punch-dial to make a tone sound and held the receiver to her stomach until an island workman’s car with a loud muffler passed by. “Yes, how can I help you?” she said, coming back on the line.

“This is the Sabre Bay Club on Grand Bahama and we’d like to get a credit verification,” Angela said, while the Buzzard leaned closer to try and overhear.

“That would be Miss Prentiss. One moment, I’ll transfer you.” And she hit a number on the keypad for a sound effect, then put the phone back up to her ear.

“Louise Prentiss, Personal Accounts Manager,” she said, now using her normal voice. She was holding the sheet of paper in front of her with all of the information Beano wanted to impart.