The Collectors by David Baldacci
the risk.
Leo kept his eye on a blackjack table and a gent who’d been playing and winning for a nice stretch. Not big enough to arouse suspicion, but cumulatively Leo figured the guy was making a lot more than the minimum wage for sitting on his butt and sipping free drinks. He used his cell phone to call Annabelle.
“You ready to do this?” he asked.
“Looks like my past-posters are just about ready to hit it, so let’s go.”
Annabelle walked over to a thickset man she’d easily sized up as a pit boss and whispered into his ear, inclining her head toward the roulette table where the scam was happening.
“There’s a third-section-straight-up drag going down at table number six. The two women seated on the right side are the check-bettors. The mechanic’s in the chair near the bottom of the table. The claimer’s the skinny guy with glasses hanging back behind the dealer’s left shoulder. Call up to the eye-in-the-sky and tell the layout camera to zoom in on the action and hold until the drag’s executed.”
Roulette tables were so large they were routinely covered by two ceiling cameras, one aimed on the wheel, the other on the table. The problem was the surveillance tech could only look at one camera at a time. The pit boss stared at her for a second, but Annabelle’s authoritative description couldn’t be ignored. He quickly spoke into his headset, relaying this order.
Meanwhile, Leo sidled up to the pit boss in his section and whispered, “At blackjack table number five you got a bad dealer doing the zero-shuffle. The player in seat number three has a card counter analyzer strapped to his right thigh. If you get close enough, you can see the impression through his pant leg. He’s also got an intracranial in his right ear where he receives the call from the computer. The eye-in-the-sky won’t pick up the deck cut because the dealer’s movements obscure the slice, but if you get a handheld down here, you can record it easy enough from floor level.”
As with Annabelle’s warning, the pit boss only took a few seconds to call upstairs, and the handheld came down to take pictures.
Five minutes later the stunned cons were led away and the cops called.
Ten minutes after that, Annabelle and Leo found themselves in a part of the casino where no grandma with a Social Security check to blow would ever be invited.
Jerry Bagger rose from behind the huge desk in his lavish office, his hands in his pockets and several nice pieces of bling around his wrists and his muscular, tanned neck.
“Excuse me for not thanking you for saving me a few lousy grand,” he said in a bark of a voice that revealed his Brooklyn background. “Fact is I’m not used to people doing me favors. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I don’t like the hair on my neck standing up. The only thing I like erect on my body is what’s behind my zipper.”
The six other men in the room, all in high-dollar suits with big shoulders that were not the result of padding, stared at Leo and Annabelle, their hands clasped in front of them.
Annabelle stepped forward. “We didn’t do it as a favor. We did it so we’d end up here to see you.”
Bagger spread his hands. “So you’re here. You’ve seen me. Now what?”
“A proposition.”
Bagger rolled his eyes. “Oh, here we go.” He sat down on a leather couch, picked out a walnut from a bowl on the table there and cracked it open using only his right hand. “Is this the part where you say you’re going to make me a ton of money, even though I already got a ton of money?” He ate the bits of nut.
“Yes. And you can serve your country at the same time.”
Bagger snarled, “My country? Is that the same country that keeps looking to lock my ass up for doing something that’s perfectly legal?”
“We can help with that,” Annabelle said.
“Oh, so now you’re feds?” He looked at his men. “Hey, guys, we got feds in the casino. Call the fucking Orkin man.”
The muscle all laughed on cue.
Annabelle sat down on the couch next to Bagger and handed him a card. He looked at it. “Pamela Young, International Management, Inc.,” he read. “Means shit to me.” He tossed it back to her. “My guys tell me you two really know your casino scams. They teaching that in fed school now? Not that I believe you’re feds.”
Leo said in a gruff tone, “You run what in a day, thirty, forty mil? You have to keep a certain level of reserves to comply with state gaming regs, but that leaves a lot of cash to float. So what do you do with the excess? Come on, tell us.”
The casino owner looked at him in amazement. “I wallpaper my fucking house with it, asshole.” He looked at his muscle. “Get this jerk-off outta my face.”
His men moved forward, and two of them actually lifted Leo off the floor before Annabelle said, “What would you say to a ten percent return on that money?”
“I’d say that sucks.” Bagger rose and went toward his desk.
“I meant ten percent every two days.” He stopped, turned and looked at her. “What do you think of that?” she said.
“Too good to be true, so it is.” He took a steel-gray $5,000 casino chip from a desk drawer and tossed it to her. “Go have some fun. No need to thank me. Consider it a gift from God. Don’t let the door hit that nice ass on the way out.” He signaled his men to let Leo go.
She said, “Just think about it, Mr. Bagger. We’ll be back tomorrow to ask again. In accordance with my orders, we’re required to ask twice. If you don’t want in then, Uncle Sam will just go down the Boardwalk and give the deal to one of your competitors.”
“Good luck on that.”
She said confidently, “It worked in Vegas, it’ll work here.”
“Yeah, right. I wish I was smoking whatever it is you are.”
“Gambling revenue topped out five years ago, Mr. Bagger. So how can the Vegas crowd keep putting up billion-dollar properties? It’s like they’re printing money.” She paused. “And they are. And helping their country at the same time.”
He sat down behind his desk and stared at her with, for the first time, just a hint of interest. That was all Annabelle needed at this point.
“And did you ever wonder why none of the Vegas players have been investigated by the feds in the last ten years? I’m not talking Mafia prosecutions, that’s old news. But you and I know what goes on there. And yet like you said, the Justice Department is all over your butt.” She paused. “And I know a man as smart as Jerry Bagger can’t believe in that much luck.” She laid her card down on his desk. “You can call anytime. People in my business don’t keep regular office hours.” She glanced at the big men who still hovered next to Leo. “And we can see ourselves out, fellows, thanks.”
She and Leo left.
When the door closed behind the pair, Bagger snapped, “Tail ’em.”
CHAPTER 19
ANNABELLE AND LEO WERE IN A cab; her gaze had never left the rear window.
“They back there?” Leo asked in a whisper.
“Of course. Where else would they be?”
“For a second there, I thought those damn goons were gonna toss me out the window. How come I always have to play bad cop to your good cop?”
“Because you play bad so incredibly good.”
Leo gave a shiver. “The guy’s the same nightmare I remember him being. You see him crack that nut with one hand?”
“Come on, he’s a walking cliché from a bad mob movie.”
The cab pulled in front of their hotel, and they got out. Annabelle walked down the street and then crossed it. She rapped on the window of the Hummer parked there. The glass slid down, revealing one of Bagger’s burly men.
She said pleasantly, “You can tell Mr. Bagger that I’m staying in room 1412. Oh, here’s another card for you in case he threw the other one away.” She turned and rejoined Leo, and they walked into the hotel together. Her phone buzzed. It was Tony, calling to confirm he was in position. She’d bought him a very expensive pair of surveillance binoculars and had him check into a room of a hotel
The call to her room she’d been expecting came ten minutes later. She signaled Leo, who was standing by the window. He did a quick text message to Tony on his BlackBerry.
Annabelle poised her hand over the phone and motioned with the other one to Leo. “Come on, come on.” The phone rang five times, six, seven.
On the ninth ring Leo got a confirming reply right back and nodded. Annabelle snatched up the phone. “Hello?”
“How’d you make my guys so fast?” Bagger bellowed.
“When it comes to surveillance, my . . . employer really can’t be beat, Mr. Bagger,” she informed him. “It’s merely a question of thousands of assets on the ground and unlimited money.” The truth was she knew he’d order them to be followed, and kept her gaze out the rear window of the cab. She’d seen on their earlier recon of the casino that Bagger’s personal security all drove yellow Hummers. They weren’t that hard to spot.
“Meaning I’m under surveillance?” he snapped.
“We’re all being watched, Mr. Bagger. You shouldn’t feel singled out.”
“Cut the ‘Mr. Bagger’ shit. How do you know so much about casino scams that you were able to spot two going on in my place? Makes me think you’re way too close to the con world.”
“I didn’t spot them. We had three teams in your casino today who were trolling for something I could use as bait to get to you. The members of those teams are experts in casino cons. They relayed the intel to us, and we told your pit bosses. Simple.”
“Okay, we’ll just let that go for now. What exactly do you want?”
“I thought I was clear in your office about my intentions—”
“Yeah, yeah! I know what you said. I want to know what you meant by it.”
“This isn’t something I’m prepared to discuss over the phone. NS—,” she began, and then said quickly, “Hard-line phones aren’t very secure.”
“You were going to say NSA, weren’t you?” he shot back. “The spooks, I know all about them.”
“With all due respect, nobody knows all about NSA, not even POTUS,” she said, dropping one more carefully scripted initialism.
There was a silence on the end of the line.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
He snapped, “I’m here!”
“Do you want to meet at your office?”
“That’s no good. I’m, uh, I’m already headed out of town.”
“No, you’re not. You’re sitting in your office right now.” This information was what Tony had e-mailed Leo.
The line immediately went dead.
She put the phone down, looked at Leo and gave him a reassuring wink.
He let out a deep breath. “Deep waters we’re treading in, Annie.”
She looked amused. “You only called me Annie when you were really, really nervous, Leo.”
He wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead and lit up a Winston. “Yeah. Well, some things don’t change, do they?”
The phone rang again. She picked it up.
“This is my town,” Bagger said menacingly. “Nobody spies on me in my town.”
She said calmly, “Mr. Bagger, since this whole thing seems to be upsetting you, I’ll make it easy. I’ll report back that you turned down our second and final offer. That way you won’t have to worry about it anymore. And like I said, I’ll just go elsewhere.”
“There isn’t a casino around here that would believe your half-ass story.”
“It’s not just a story. We wouldn’t expect savvy casino operators to take this on faith. So we do trial runs. Let them make a lot of money very quickly, and then they decide. Either they’re in or out. And they get to keep the profits regardless.”
She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line.
“How much money?” he asked.
“How much do you want?”
“Why would the government offer me this kind of a deal?”
“There are many forms of ‘the government.’ Just because one part doesn’t particularly care for you doesn’t mean other elements don’t see advantages. For us it’s the very fact that Justice is after you that we’re interested.”
“How do you figure that as an advantage?”
“Because who’d ever believe that the U.S. government would be partnering with you?” she stated simply.
“Are you with NSA?”
“No.”
“CIA?”
“I’m going to answer every question like that with an unqualified ‘no.’ And I don’t carry my badge or creds in situations like this.”
“I got politicians in my pocket in Washington. One call and I’ll know.”
“One call and you’ll know nothing because the field I work in, the politicians know zip about. But call away. Call the CIA. They’re in Langley, that’s in McLean, Virginia, in case you didn’t know. A lot of people think they’re based in D.C. Believe it or not, they’re actually listed in the phone book. You’ll want the National Clandestine Service—it used to be called the Operations Directorate. But just to save you the call, they’ll tell you they never heard of Pamela Young or International Management, Inc.”
“How do I know this isn’t some kind of sting operation the feds are running?”
“I’m not a lawyer, but I’d have to say it would be a pretty clear case of entrapment. And if you want to check us for a surveillance wire, feel free.”
Bagger said, “What kind of trial run?”
“A few clicks on the computer.”
“Explain that.”
“Not over the phone. Face-to-face.”
She could hear him sigh.
“You eaten dinner?” he asked.
“No.”
“Pompeii, ten minutes. They’ll meet you at the front door.”
The line went dead.
She hung up and looked over at Leo. “We’re in.”
“And now comes the flash,” he said.
“And now comes the flash,” Annabelle agreed.
CHAPTER 20
AN HOUR LATER THEY WERE finishing an excellent dinner prepared by Bagger’s personal chef. Bagger took his glass of bourbon and Annabelle and Leo their wine and settled down in comfortable leather chairs near a flickering gas fire.
Bagger had taken Annabelle up on her offer and had her and Leo checked for listening devices.
“Okay, bellies full, livers pickled, talk to me,” Bagger ordered. He held up a finger. “First, what are you guys up to? And then tell me about the money.”
Annabelle sat back cradling her drink, glanced at Leo and said, “You remember Iran-Contra?”
“Vaguely.”
“There are occasions when the interests of America are best served by providing aid to countries and certain organizations that don’t have popular support in the U.S.”
“What, like giving guns to Osama to fight the Russians?” he sneered.
“It’s a choice of the lesser of two evils. Goes on all the time.”
“So what’s that got to do with me?”
“We have money from very discreet sources, some of it private, but it needs to be ‘finessed’ before it can be deployed,” she said, sipping her wine.
“You mean laundered,” Bagger said.
She smiled coyly. “No, I mean finessed.”
“I’m still not getting the connection.”
“El Banco del Caribe. You know it?”
“Should I?”
Leo spoke up. “Isn’t that where you park some of your casino cash? They specialize in disappearing money, for a price. No taxes.”
Bagger had half risen from his seat.
Annabelle said, “It’s part of our job to know things like that,” she said. “Don’t take it personally. You’re not the only one we have a file on.”
Bagger sat back down and eyed her spiky hair. “You don’t look like a