The manifest was produced. Valentine opened it on the hood of the cruiser, and scanned the list of names. He didn’t think Janet Haskell was traveling under her own name, and had assumed a false identity.
“How long have you’ve worked with Haskell?” he asked Bill.
“Fifteen years.”
“She married?”
“Divorced a few years back. Why?”
“What’s her maiden name?”
Bill dredged his memory. “I think it was Bowen. No, Brown.”
Valentine ran his finger down the manifest and found Jane Brown. She was sitting in first class, no doubt already enjoying life on the lam.
“Got her. Let’s get her off that plane.”
Buzz cut got Haskell off the flight by having a filght attendant make an announcement over the plane’s P.A. system, and asking Jane Brown to come forward, and claim a personal belonging that had dropped from her handbag while it was being X-rayed. As they waited for Haskell to come down the jetway, buzz cut explained that he’d used this ploy successfully many times before.
“Most ladies have so much stuff in their handbags, that they don’t know when something’s missing,” he said.
Haskell came down the jetway with a bounce in her step and a glassy look in her eye, and Valentine guessed she’d started hitting the sauce the moment she’d boarded. She was dressed for Mexico, with a festive straw hat on her head, and a flowery skirt and matching silk top. A happier crook he’d never seen.
The happy look disappeared when she spied Bill. She did an about-face, and tried to beat it back to first class, only to have two TSA agents run down the jetway, and grab her by the arms. They lifted her clean in the air, and with cries of “Help! No!” coming out of her mouth, carried her off the plane, and into a windowless room beside the screening area.
Valentine entered the room to find Haskell wiping her eyes with a tissue. He started to shut the door, and saw Gerry standing outside.
“Get me two cups of coffee.”
By the time Gerry returned with two cups of Starbucks, Haskell had killed the water works, and was sitting with her back against the wall, her arms crossed defiantly.
“I want a lawyer,” she said.
She was in her late forties, with rings beneath her eyes and a sad face. Valentine guessed that she’d planned to start her life over in Acapulco. First she’d buy all the things that she couldn’t afford before — a sports car, house on the beach, maybe even a water craft — then go hunting for a male. This was the plan of most people who robbed and ran, and Valentine had tracked enough of these people down to know that it rarely panned out. But you couldn’t tell the Janet Haskells of the world that.
He handed her one of the cups.
“I want a lawyer,” she said again.
“Talk to me first.”
“Up yours.”
He leaned against the wall. “You’re the first member of the gang to be caught. That can be either bad for you, or good for you.”
She blew steam off her drink, and said nothing.
“It’s bad for you if we don’t catch Friendly or any of the other members of the gang. Bronco Marchese murdered a man in Lake Tahoe, and just killed another man on Fremont Street. Because your gang was working with Bronco, you’re all responsible for those deaths. If you end up being the only person we catch, you’ll take the rap.”
As she sipped her coffee, tears ran down her cheeks. Valentine believed that when a criminal cried, it meant that deep down, there was still a person left to work with.
She said, “How can it be a good thing?”
“You can play ball with me, and that will be the first thing the judge hears when you go to trial. You’ll do time, but it won’t be as much as the others. And, you won’t get pinned for two murders. Think about it.”
She did. After a long moment, her body started to shudder, her conscience finally starting to win out. Her hands shook so badly that coffee spilled onto the floor. Valentine took the cup from her, then went into a crouch, putting their eyes on an equal plain.
“You going to work with me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s more like it. I need you to tell me something. How many Universal video poker machines did ESD rig to pay off jackpots?”
“All of them.”
He rocked back on his heels. “What? How many is that?”
“Ten thousand.”
He did the math in his head. Ten thousand jackpots at a million dollars apiece was ten billion dollars. In exactly one hour, Las Vegas was going to be wiped out.
Haskell saw the look of shock on Valentine’s face and let out a bitter laugh. She’d drunk enough alcohol on the plane that it cut right through the coffee.
“And there’s nothing you can do about it,” she added.
Chapter 57
The honorable Franklin E. Smoltz arrived in his private helicopter at McCarren International Airport at two-thirty in the afternoon. To be governor of a state whose tax base came primarily from legalized casinos and prostitution, you had to have a special view of the world, and Smoltz was the right man for the job. A former federal prosecutor, he had never tried a case where he hadn’t considered how its outcome would affect his career. He exited from his chopper spewing obscenities at his two aides.
“How many god damn times do I have to tell you?” Smoltz bellowed, his voice rising over the chopper’s blades. “I am unavailable to the media at the present time. Got it?”
His aides had short haircuts, wore matching pin stripes, and looked like they’d been ordered out of the same catalogue.
“Yes, sir,” they chorused.
Smoltz stood on the edge of tarmac as if looking for a cab. Seeing Bill standing nearby with Valentine and Gerry, he hustled over and shook his fist in Bill’s face. The blood in his cheeks had risen to the surface, and he looked ready to explode.
“What the hell is going on? Every casino boss in Las Vegas has called me. They’ve got more video poker players than they can handle. It’s pandemonium.”
“Fred Friendly and his gang corrupted ten thousand video poker machines in Las Vegas,” Bill explained. “In thirty minutes, they’re all going to pay jackpots.”
“That’s horsegarbage!” Smoltz said, breathing down on the shorter man’s head. “Our games can’tbe corrupted. What are you doing, drinking your own bathwater?”
Bill jabbed his thumb in Valentine’s direction. “Tony confirmed it.”
Smoltz looked angrily at Valentine. They’d disliked each other since the first time they’d met, and the governor said, “Is this shit true?”
“Shit’s true,” Valentine said.
Smoltz’s face contorted like he was about to have a seizure. He angrily stomped the ground. “This is your god damn mess, Bill. I wanted to cut a deal with Bronco Marchese from the start. But you said no. Well, your ass is on the line, my friend.”
The wind was blowing off the runway, and it pulled Bill’s eyelids back as he spoke. “Governor, I just told you that a quarter of all the video poker machines in Las Vegas are corrupted. It’s your responsibility to deal with it, not mine.”
“What are you suggesting I do?”
“Las Vegas’s casinos are connected through a special intra-net called Secure Internal Network,” Bill said. “SIN lets the casinos make each other aware when there are gangs of card-counters and cheaters running around. You need to contact the casino owners through SIN, and tell them their video poker machines have been rigged, and not to pay out any jackpots which occur after 2:59 this afternoon.”
“That’s your solution?”
“Yes,” Bill said. “We’ve proven that the video poker machines are corrupted, so it will hold up in court if anyone tries to challenge us.”
Smoltz’s face changed colors. “That’s insane! Do you have any idea what type of shit storm that will cause? I have a better idea, Bill. I want your resignation on my desk tomorrow morning. Now, get out of my face.”