throw you into the Mississippi River. I want you to understand that, because I do not make idle threats. Just nod if you understand.”
The trembling girl nodded, and Styer took her lover’s cloned cell phone and tossed it into a garbage bag.
He moved out to Cynthia’s Toyota, drove it over to the far side of the barn near the mechanic station, and covered it completely with an old tarp.
Climbing back into the van, Styer cranked it and drove out of the structure into the stark, flat landscape. Now he could get on with his employer’s primary operation, and take the next step in wrapping up his own.
15
Pierce Mulvane eyed the action at the high-stakes blackjack tables the way a farmer surveys a field for signs of sun damage or pest infestation. A dark-haired, clean-cut young man was winning steadily. He was up over forty- five thousand dollars and, despite the fact that the pit boss had changed dealers on him twice every hour, he showed no signs of a reversing fortune. The kid was cocky, and his success had drawn a crowd. It was both good and bad that people were watching him. It was good because it would encourage them to gamble. It was bad because asking him to leave would attract attention and put a damper on the audience. He’d let the boy win and have Albert White deal with it later.
Pierce thought back to the first cheater he’d caught in Atlantic City, a young man with tattoos covering his arms. The backs of his fingers spelled LOVE on the left hand, and HATE on the right. Using a pair of pruning shears, Pierce had edited the tattoo to read, LOVE HAT. The memory always made him chuckle. He hated cheaters.
After five minutes of watching the young man, Pierce turned and walked slowly through the playing floor, shadowed by Tug Murphy. He paused at one of the craps tables to watch a pig farmer from Arkansas named Jason Parr, whose one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar line of credit Pierce had personally approved. The year before, he had lost sixty thousand and paid it back within a week. Today Parr was dressed in a T-shirt under a tailored leather jacket, faded blue jeans, and shiny black wing-tips. Pierce watched with an inner glow as the farmer placed stacks of twenty-dollar chips on several numbers. He was chasing his losses, which, according to the floor boss, totaled twelve thousand dollars.
The pig farmer spotted Pierce, waved, and yelled, “Hey there, Mr. Mulvane!”
When the dice stopped rolling on seven and the farmer’s chips had been collected, Pierce walked over and rested a hand on Parr’s shoulder. “Nice to see you, Mr. Parr,” Pierce said, turning on his warmest smile. “So nice to have you with us again. How is everything going?”
“Financially speaking, it’s looking grim at the moment, Mr. Mulvane.”
“I hope at least your accommodations are satisfactory.” “Room’s fit for a king. And I thank you for the bottles of bourbon you sent up.”
“Our pleasure. If you need anything, you’ll let us know?”
“I sure will. My only question is, what are y’all gonna do with my hog farm?”
The farmer guffawed, and Pierce laughed right along with him.
Pierce stayed long enough to watch the farmer toss back a glass filled with brown liquor and lose another two thousand dollars. He didn’t want a pig farm, but if Parr lost enough money, the casino’s attorneys would figure out how to liquidate one pretty quickly.
The bottom line was Pierce’s responsibility. When all was said and done, gambling was just a business like any other. Pierce Mulvane was just another CEO working long hours to generate profits for a corporation.
The main gaming tables ran the length of the casino center like a narrow island bordered by an ocean of slot machines, row after row like the cash crop they were. Though they were the main source of casino income, they were just machines, and got only a cursory glance from Pierce. Twenty-eight poker tables were surrounded by a low wall, so people could watch games in progress without interrupting them.
As Pierce and Tug rode the private elevator back upstairs, he couldn’t shake his curiosity about how the young blackjack player was beating the house. He opened his phone and poked in a number.
“Albert, no-limit blackjack, table four. The man in the yellow V-neck. He’s counting, with quite an audience. Let him run his streak. Check the black book and see if he’s in it. Handle it with your customary discretion.”
Pierce closed the phone. He couldn’t allow cheaters to profit and tell their pals that the Roundtable was an easy mark. He knew that White would handle this matter properly. As security director, Albert White received a substantial salary, but the additional enrichment incentives Pierce made available to him here and there ensured results, not to mention the above-and-beyond effort Mulvane expected. And Pierce’s above-and-beyond requests often called for tasks he couldn’t give to people he didn’t trust one hundred and ten percent.
16
The house that Alphonse Jefferson had listed as his address when he’d been arrested three months earlier had long since surrendered to the elements. Several of the paint-starved clapboards were missing and shocks of faded-pink fiberglass shot out from several open spaces like clown hair.
The yard was bare dirt except for scattered clumps of stiff rust-colored weeds, a dead washing machine, a child’s bicycle without wheels, a flattened shoe, and an emaciated and shivering pit bull whose head was much wider than his shoulders. The animal, standing in front of a wood-crate shelter with a floral plastic shower liner weighted down by brickbats on top of it, was anchored to a stake by a short section of swing-set chain. The dog growled as though he was saving his barks for more worthy customers than the two strangers he watched approach his master’s front door.
Brad stood and loudly rapped on the jamb. The interior door opened a few inches. The unmistakable sounds of a fist-flying talk show boomed from the living room.
“Yeah, what?” a scrappy voice rumbled from inside.
“Mrs. Jefferson, it’s Sheriff Barnett. I’m looking for Alphonse,” Brad said through an aluminum door whose fabric screening hung like a mainsail from a corner of it. A mangy cat shot out and flew around the corner of the house. The watchdog eyed the fleeing feline without comment.
“What you wants wif my grandbaby?” the old woman asked, her rheumy brown eyes floating in a cocoa lake of skin, her gaze moving between Brad and Winter like a drunk counting fish in an aquarium. “He ain’t been here for two, three days. You the sheriff, you say?” she asked, warily.
Brad opened his jacket to show her the badge on his shirt. “Yes, ma’am. Does Alphonse live here?” Brad asked her. “He used this address the last time he was arrested.”
“When he want to, he stay here. When he don’t, he don’t. What you wants him for?”
The old woman reached up to her outraged hair as if to check whether it was still there.
“Does your grandson have a rifle?” Brad asked.
“He a vetrin, so in the Army he might a’ did,” she said. “He didn’t brang one back from thur. It ain’t unlegal to have guns when you in the Army, is it?”
“No, ma’am, it isn’t. I was just wondering if he has a rifle
“Not that I ever seen around here, he don’t.” She laughed. “If he had one, he sure would of pawnded it.”
“Can I come in and look at his room?” Brad asked.
“Not without no warrants you ain’t coming in my house. I knows my sivah rights.”
“I can get a warrant, Mrs. Jefferson.”
“Then why you standing there? Go on and get it.” And she slammed the outside door closed, causing the jamb to vibrate.
Winter waited until they were almost back to the cruiser to laugh. Once inside, Brad laughed as well.
“Mrs. Jefferson was downright inhospitable,” Brad said.
“Less than cooperative,” Winter said. “How soon can you get a warrant?”
“I didn’t figure she’d cooperate, so one of my deputies is at the courthouse getting it right now. Watch the front, and I’ll cover the back.”
