Chapter 56
The Electronic Systems Division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board was headquartered in a nondescript three-story building on Sahara boulevard, two blocks off the strip. At a quarter of two, Bill pulled into the parking lot with Valentine and Gerry, and braked by the front doors. Bill had taken back roads, and it still took twenty minutes. Bill used his pass to enter the building’s elaborate security system, and they took an elevator to the third floor, where the ESD managers worked. The gang’s offices were at the end of a hallway, and stood side-by-side. Each had a brass name plate on their door. Haskell, Robinson, Lacross, Dolan, Howard, Ortiz, and Friendly.
Bill did a quick check of each office. Their personal belongings were gone from their desks, and their computer screens were blank. Fred Friendly occupied the corner office, and Bill sat down at his desk, and rifled the drawers. His elbow touched the keyboard for the computer, and the screen came to life.
“What is this?” Bill muttered.
Valentine edged up to the computer to have a look. On the screen was a spread sheet with a heading that said LV/VIDEO POKER. He touched the keyboard, and began to scroll through the document. “It’s all the video poker machines in Las Vegas.”
“Do you think Fred left this for us to see?”
“Sure looks that way. Looks like he highlighted some of them.”
They brought their faces up to the screen. Friendly had highlighted a quarter of the machines on the spread sheet. Each highlighted machine had a notation that said UNV. Valentine thought he knew what it meant, but asked anyway.
“It means Universal,” Bill said softly.
“Universal makes video poker machines, too?”
“Yes. They’re responsible for a quarter of the machines in town.”
Valentine drew back from the computer screen. The realization of what Friendly’s gang had done hit him over the head like a lead pipe. Friendly’s gang hadn’t corrupted five Universal video poker machines to pay out jackpots at 3:00 o’clock; they’d corrupted hundreds of them to pay out jackpots, then sent out emails to insure that the machines got played. Las Vegas’s casinos were about to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
“What are we going to do?” Bill said.
“Run them down, and find out how to reverse what they’ve done.”
Bill looked at his watch. “It’s almost two. We’ve got an hour.”
“Piece of cake.”
Bill glanced up at him, and smiled grimly.
Valentine gathered the garbage pails from each office, dumped them on the carpet in Friendly’s office, and with Bill kneeling beside him, went through their contents. His guess was, the gang had split up, and taken different routes out of town. That was the smart thing to do, and these guys were as smart as they came.
The garbage didn’t say much, but then he found a coffee-stained receipt in the bottom of the pail that had come from the office of Janet Haskell, one of the two women in the gang. The receipt was for three paperback books purchased at the nearby Borders, and was from yesterday afternoon. Two of the books were mysteries by Valentine’s favorite authors, Michael Connelly and Elmore “Dutch” Leonard. The third book was a Fodor’s Guide to Acapulco. He showed it to Bill.
“You’re a genius,” Bill said.
Clutching the receipt in his hand, Valentine walked down the hallway to the empty office where Gerry had parked himself behind a desk, his fingers dancing across the keyboard as he tried to access the computer. His son looked up expectantly.
“You find something?” Valentine asked.
His son nodded. “I think this was left for us. I’m printing it now.”
The laser printer sat atop a metal stand in the corner. Valentine grabbed the sheets as they were spit out and quickly read the manuscript. It had been co-authored by the gang, and explained in detail why they’d gone bad. Every criminal had a “reason” for committing crimes, and the reasons were all bogus. Everyone on the planet knew the difference between right and wrong; even the severely retarded. But this gang surprised him. They weren’t saying they weren’t guilty. They simply stated in plain English that they were fed up with how justice was administered in Las Vegas.
A hand tapped his shoulder, and he turned to face Bill.
“There’s an American Airlines flight to Acapulco out of McCarren that leaves at two-thirty, ” Bill said. “I called TSA, and told them to ground that plane.”
They went downstairs and climbed into Bill’s car. Bill started to pull the vehicle onto the street, then jammed on the brakes. Traffic had reached critical mass on Sahara, and the cars looked glued together. Bill called the Metro Las Vegas police on his cell phone. They weren’t much help, and he cursed after hanging up.
“The city’s roads and highways are at a standstill,” he said.
Valentine was riding shotgun. “Where are the cops?”
“The cops have been dispensed to the casinos to keep things under control,” Bill said. “Thousands of people have come in for the promotion. They’re fighting over seats at video poker machines.”
Valentine tapped his fingers on the dashboard, then turned around and looked at Gerry in the backseat. “How did you leave things with Nick?”
“What do you mean?” his son asked.
“You didn’t ogle his wife’s breasts or anything, did you?”
“Come on, Pop. I didn’t even meet her.”
“So you left on good terms?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Valentine took out his cell phone, and dialed Nick Nicocropolis’s direct line from memory. Twice in the past four years he’d saved Nick from going under, and he didn’t feel ashamed to call in a favor. The little Greek answered on the third ring.
“I need help,” Valentine said.
“Name it,” Nick said.
Nick showed up fifteen minutes driving a personalized white golf cart that looked like a pimp-mobile, with a frilly white curtain with pom-poms around the interior, and a shiny gold hood ornament of a naked woman leaning forward in a provocative pose. Valentine knew that Nick’s wife was six months pregnant, and could only wonder when fatherhood was going to catch up to the little Greek.
“Hop in, boys,” Nick said.
“I thought you were bringing your chopper,” Valentine said, climbing into the front.
“My pilot used it to take some big shots to the Boulder Dam,” Nick explained, flooring the accelerator once they were settled in. “Besides, this will get us there faster.”
“It will?”
“Yeah. It’s got a real tiger in the engine.”
Nick drove the golf cart onto the sidewalk and headed for the strip, his hand on the Harpo Marx horn hidden beneath the hood. The sidewalks were filled with tourists who didn’t seem to care if they got run over, and Nick screamed at anyone who stood in their path. Some people jumped out of the way, others didn’t, and more than once Valentine thought they were going to run somebody over.
“Slow down before you kill someone,” Bill yelled from the back.
“There’s plenty more where they came from,” Nick replied.
McCarren International Airport was a few short miles from the strip, its main runway visible to most hotel rooms on the south end of town. Nick drove his golf cart down the sidewalk on Tropicana Boulevard which ran parallel to the airport, then pulled into a gated entrance marked RESTRICTED/Airport Employees Only. As Valentine hopped out of the golf cart, he banged the hood with his hand.
