Con Sampler

Chapter 8 – Meet Up-2

Movement caught my eye to my right. A young woman stood up from a bench inside a gazebo, closed a book and started down the gazebo steps. It was the girl Mel suspected was Hannah Yoder.

My luck is changing!

Hannah walked past my table and out across the parking lot behind me toward the street, much as she had on Monday. When she reached the road she turned left and continued walking to where it dead ended in a traffic circle. She went through the trees past the dead end and was gone. I knew she’d come out by a couple of businesses and that Muddy Misers, where Mel and I had eaten Monday, was just across the road from those. There were no homes in that direction in close walking distance. Could she be working in one of those businesses through there?

“What are you looking at?”

I startled and about jumped through my skin. I’d been so intent on watching after Hannah, I hadn’t seen Terri come up behind me herself from the parking lot.

I didn’t answer her; I just looked her over. She was never thin, but she was at least 30 pounds heavier now than when I’d last seen her a few years or so ago. Her short, sandy colored hair was graying at the temples. Thinking back, I remembered that she was a half dozen year older than me which made her about 40 now. The graying made a little sense but the haggard look on her face was new. Terri had always had such a baby smooth face.

“It’s good to see you Dana. You look well.” She took a seat opposite me without asking.

“Terri.”

She looked around quickly. “So, are you staying near here?”

“No.”

She leaned across the table, “One-word answers, huh?”

“Look Terri, you called this meeting. I don’t want to be here at all so can we just cut to the chase?”

“Why so hostile Dana? I’m the one in trouble here. What did I ever do to you, after all?”

I sucked in a deep breath and slowly counted to ten as I let it out. It just wasn’t worth getting into it with her. I knew I shouldn’t have come!

“I’m sorry to trouble you but you’re the only one I can turn to with my problem. I really don’t know what else to do.” Her voice lost its edge and began to tremble as she spoke. When I didn’t respond, she continued; “Do you remember Janice?”

“Janice Wright?” I nodded.

“Yes. After we split up,” she waggled her finger back and forth between the two of us, “she and I dated briefly. She was working HR for Harrah’s Joliet...the casino then.” She looked at me for confirmation.

I shrugged. “I guess. I don’t remember.”

“No, she was. I had some, ah, issues with my employer at the time and we parted ways.”

I just bet!

“Anyway, Janice hooked me up with a blackjack dealer job at the casino.”

“Mmm, I’ll bet that was convenient.”

“I know what you’re thinking but it wasn’t like that. Things didn’t go far between us because Janice ended up getting a promotion. She moved out to Las Vegas. She was gone before I even finished my dealer training.”

“I see. So, what does this have to do with the trouble you’re in?”

“I’m getting to that. Things went great at Harrah’s for a while, see. I really liked my job. I made good money at it too...” She trailed off.

“Made? Did you quit?”

She shook her head. “I was asked to resign.”

“You were fired?”

“Not fired. I resigned.”

“Are you welcome back to Harrah’s?”

Her chin dropped. Her next statement was said so low I almost didn’t catch it, “I’m not welcome in the casino industry.”

“Spill it Terri! Tell me what happened.”

She drew in a deep breath and continued, “I was doing great as a dealer. A pit boss job was opening up. I was training up for that. Everything was going great and then I met Aggie a few months ago.”

“Aggie?”

“Yeah. I doubt you know her. Neither did I. Me and a couple of the other dealers, we would sometimes go out to a...a club in Chicago and hang out after hours, you know. A private club.”

“A gay club?”

“Sort of.”

“Define ‘sort of’.”

She hesitated for a minute and then admitted, “It was a private club for anonymous hook ups.”

I wasn’t shocked. I knew such places existed even though I’d never been in one. They weren’t my scene, but I could see the appeal they would have for a control freak like Terri. I’d be willing to bet she got her kicks there with a little b**m role playing.

“So, you met Aggie at this club?”

“She was a pretty little bar fly that hung around in the lounge a lot. She didn’t ah...um...use the private rooms all the time.”

“I get it but what I don’t get is what this has to do with the trouble you’re in and why you think I can help you. You’re wasting my time here.”

“Please, hear me out. I’m getting to that.”

“Make it fast. I’m tired of listing to this garbage.”

Terri slapped her hands down on the picnic table, “Aggie conned me, okay? She started chatting me up in the lounge. She said she had a guy, but she really dug women. She wanted a f**k buddy but no commitments. I was okay with that. We started seeing each other but, at first, she would only meet with me there. Sometimes we’d go into a room, sometimes we’d hang out, drink and talk about nothing.”

“Usually, I’d go in there with my buds from work and, if it was a slow night, they’d hang out in the lounge too. Aggie and I would hook up and do our thing and then we’d join them or one or both of them would do their thing and then join us if we weren’t... Well, anyway, one night when we were doing more drinking than anything we all got to talking about the casino and what we did there.”

She said she was conned. I can just see where this is going...

“The next time we came in, Aggie and I went off to do our thing. When we came out, my friends were hanging out in the lounge. Aggie got us all a table in the back corner and said she had a proposition for the four of us to pick up a little extra cash. We were surprised but we all listened.”

“She wanted us to steal players club cards from the casino and put small amounts of cash on them for comps or for free play and give them to her. She said she had connections to turn the cards into real cash and we’d each get a cut according to our contributions.”

“Did she say how all of that was going to work?”

“No. Not then. At first, none of us wanted anything to do with her little scheme and we said so.”

“Obviously something changed...”

“Well, yeah, for the three of us. Oh, Aggie was cool with it...it was just an idea she said. Anyway, she got a call that night and she had to leave. The three of us, we just sat there talking and...and drinking again, like the time before, and we started thinking about ways we could steal new loaded cards and get away with it and, well, we ended up coming up with a plan. All three of us shook on it. Later we pulled a fourth person in – a queen who worked in the cash cage.”

“So, the four of you started stealing cards and giving them to Aggie at the club?”

“Kind off; me and the cash cage guy had more access to them in our jobs. He issued them out to all new slots players all of the time. They were preloaded with $10 in free play already. He just had to associate a name and address to each one. As a pit boss, I could issue them to comp a table games player. The only way the two dealers could get their hands on them was to steal them from actual players and, really, most table games players don’t have them.”

The queen and I would get cards and I would take them to Aggie at the club or wherever else we agreed to meet on days that we set. The queen never went to the club to begin with and the other two stopped going into the city with me at all once our little scheme started. Aggie would pay me for the cards we’d stolen previously, and I’d go back and split the cash with the other three.”

“Equally?”

“No, since only two of us were taking risks, I was just giving the other two a small cut each.”

“How did that go over?”

“It didn’t, at least, not with one of them. She threatened to turn me in if she didn’t get a bigger cut.”

“Wouldn’t she be exposing herself?”

“No. She had that all figured out. I’m competitive, everyone knows that.” She eyed me. When I didn’t respond, she continued, “She knew I would cave in to her demand and I did. The problem was, we were only netting a few hundred a week or so for our efforts. Casino security is tight. It was no easy task to get away with the cards. We worked hard to get them.”

She actually sounds like she’s proud about stealing from her employer!

“Giving her a bigger cut meant I took from the fourth person or from the two of us who were doing the heavy lifting. To keep the peace, I started giving her a little of my own cut and I tried to step up my game and take a few more cards each time. It was security that was my downfall though.”

“They caught you stealing cards?”

“No, that’s just it. They caught the two of us on camera arguing about cuts of the money. We were out in the lot where I always paid everybody off. I knew there were cameras there. I didn’t realize there was sound.”

At the ‘You’re an i***t!’ look I shot her, she bristled.

“Neither one of us said where the money was coming from! At least, I don’t recall us saying it. Anyway, after seeing that, they started watching both of us on camera anytime we were on site at the casino. They saw me making more payoffs and that led them to watching the queen and the other woman as well. Eventually, they caught two of us on camera taking cards and they put it all together.”

“So, they nailed all of you?” As I said that, I heard a car pull into the lot behind me. Terri’s eyes grew wide. She leaned in closer.

“No. They quietly fired the other three and blackballed them all from casino jobs. They looked at me as the ringleader. They pulled me in and set up a sting.”

“To get Aggie?”

“Yeah. See, the cards weren’t being used at Harrah’s Joliet. They weren’t able to track the payback across Harrah properties, so they wanted to know who I was fronting for.”

“And so, you went ahead and led them right to Aggie? You f****d your f**k buddy to save your own damn skin, didn’t you?” My voice had risen but I didn’t care.

She didn’t even have the good grace to hang her head. “What was I supposed to do? I was looking at embezzling and grand theft charges. If I did what they wanted, I got a plea bargain deal. I ended up with a six-month suspended sentence.”

“Yep, there’s the Terri I know!”

“What do you mean by that?” She half rose from her seat and braced her hands on the site of the table.

“It means that you’ll never change! It’s always all about you!”

“Hey, Aggie was committing the actual crime here. I was a victim!” She was standing up straight and yelling at me now.

“That’s really, really rich! You’re not the victim; you’re a thief and a very bad one at that.” I leaned back away from her. “I don’t want to hear any more of this. Get out of my sight! Go back home to Chicago!”

“But Dana, Aggie has people out there that are trying to kill me. You have to help me.”

“I don’t have a clue why you think I can help you and, honestly, if I could, at this point, I don’t know that I would. Just beat it! I’m done with you!”

She started to say something else and stopped short.

Mel spoke from behind me in that strong, command voice I’d come to know well, “The lady said to leave her alone. Move along.”

Terri glared at Mel but then did as asked. She looped her legs over the table bench and started to leave. Looking back over her shoulder she said again, “I really do need your help,” and then we both watched as she got into her car and left the lot.

I caught a very fleeting glimpse of a silver car pulling out of the parks other lot, north of me as she passed out the only entry and exit road.