Don't Look Twice (13 page)

M
orales's death put things on hold for a while.

The headlines ran that the triggerman in the Greenwich drive-by shooting had been killed. They still didn't have a connection to DR-17, but the newspaper article found in the truck and the connection to Sunil seemed to tie it up neatly enough.

Steve Chrisafoulis was waiting for Hauck as he came in the next day. “Are we shut down?” the detective asked.

“I don't know,” Hauck said. “Why?”

Steve tapped together another set of papers. The smile sneaking through his thick mustache suggested he'd found something important. “Just thought I'd show you how I spent the weekend, Ty…”

He followed Hauck into the office and spread out a couple of piles on the conference table across from Hauck's desk. “This time I went after it a different way. I went back and cross-ran Sanger's social. I figured you can get credit under any name…” He paged through the first stack. “You see this Amex file…”

“Yeah.”

“Took me all weekend to find it. The damn thing's made out to a D. Mark Sanger. The sonovabitch had it mailed to the goddamn U.S. attorney's office in Hartford.”

Hauck paged through the statements. There wasn't a whole lot of activity on them.

It took maybe a second for Hauck to realize just why.

They were all gambling charges. Online poker sites. Casino cash advances. The whole credit card.

David Sanger had a life he kept secret from his wife and kids.

But that wasn't what had begun to make Hauck's temperature rise.

Steve drew his eye to a highlighted item.
October 17.
Just a few days before Sanger was killed.

A $327.61 charge from the Pequot Woods Resort and Casino.

“Turn the page,” Chrisafoulis said with a slight smile, “there's more.”

Hauck did, flipping back through statements from September, August, and prior. There were at least eight transactions highlighted. All visits to the Pequot Woods Resort. Some even had corresponding cash advances drawn against the card. Some ran as high as $10,000. Charges for lodging, meals.

It was clear Raines had been lying.

He would have known this. Sanger's name would have come up. His face would have been well known.

“And that's not all.” The canny detective flipped a few pages. “I cross-checked the card against Sanger's bank account at Bank of America that we found up in Hartford. Check it out…” He drew the tip of his pen to a charge. “You see this Amex charge for eight hundred and forty-seven dollars on April fourth?”

Hauck nodded.

“Take a look what happened April
fifth.
In his bank account.”

Hauck ran his eye down the column.

There was a deposit for $12,500 listed there.

“Here too,” Steve said, pointing. June 10. Sanger had withdrawn $10,000 from his account that night he visited the resort. The next day he put $22,000 back in.

“It's a whole pattern,” Steve said. “Withdrawals one day and the next day he hits the resort. Then deposits, sometimes spread out over the next few days. We're talking tens of thousands, Lieutenant.
Lucky
sonovabitch, wouldn't you say?”

“Blessed.”
Hauck glanced again over the bank statements. It was showing over $400,000. Sanger's secret life. One he had gone to great lengths to conceal.

Sanger and Kramer clearly had something going on up there together. The two friends, who barely kept up with each other.

Both dead.

“So what's next, Lieutenant?” Steve Chrisafoulis shut the folder and looked at him. The papers had this thing as solved.

“Maybe it's time to try my own luck up there,” Hauck replied.

F
rom the thousands of acres of rolling woods ceded to the Pequot tribe two hundred years ago as their tribal homeland, the Pequot Woods Resort rose like a towering glass teepee, reflecting the sun across the banks of the Thames River.

Back in 1996, the United States Supreme Court, having recognized that Native American tribes, as “sovereign entities,” could open gaming facilities free of state regulation, the tribe, along with two large gaming and real estate conglomerates, TRV and Armbruster International, built the spectacular Pequot Woods, housing the largest gaming facility in the world. Not to be outdone, the Pequots' natural enemies, the Mohegans, on the other side of the river, did the same. Now, two hundred years later, the two warring tribes were battling all over again for the gambling dollars of New Yorkers and Bostonians with the two largest casinos east of Las Vegas.

The setting sun glinted amber as Hauck wound his Explorer around a bend and onto the casino's vast grounds.

He left the car at check-in in front of the lobby. A pretty, dark-haired receptionist in a well-tailored uniform came out from behind the reception desk.

“Mr. Raines is expecting you,” she told him. “I'll have your
bag taken up to your room and I'll escort you to see him now.”

“Sounds fine,” Hauck said, smiling back at her. He tucked his sunglasses into his jacket.

She informed him her name was Katie and led him up a wide, carpeted staircase rising from the lobby, a vast, glass-enclosed atrium with lava-colored rock formations rising spectacularly to the sky. They shared a little small talk on the way, about the casino, whether Hauck had been there before, the new celebrity-chef steak place that had just opened. Hauck couldn't help but admire her nice, long legs.

On the second floor, she took him down a long hallway to a door marked
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. “We call it the Flight Room,” Katie said. “Mr. Raines asked if you would meet him here.”

She put an electronic key in the door and opened it. Hauck found himself in a massive, darkened room. The space was filled with hundreds of video monitors, many suspended high above, displaying wide angles of the entire gaming operation. Most were smaller-sized screens in workstations that seemed to be focused on individual betting tables, and observing them were security personnel in headsets.

Dozens and dozens of them.

It almost took Hauck's breath away.

The hush of low-key voices penetrated the air like an airport flight tower.

“Everybody has the same reaction the first time.” Katie smiled, observing him. “We have the largest security operation in the East.”

A tall, lanky man in a dark sport jacket who had been talking to one of the security personnel came over to Hauck. “Thank you, Katie.”

She smiled and backed out of the room, saying, “Have a good stay.”

“I'm Joe Raines,” the man said. Raines was about fifty, with a pockmarked face, salt-and-pepper hair, sort of a military bearing, like a man who had worked himself up from the ranks.

“Ty Hauck,” Hauck said. His shake was firm but cool.

“Impressive?” the security man remarked.

Hauck took in a wide scan. “Yes, it is.”

“People always stare a bit their first time. Over four thousand slots, six hundred and eighty gaming tables. You know what the average daily take in an operation this size is?”

Hauck shrugged. “No idea.”

Raines pursed his bloodless lips. “Thirty-one point six mil. Not counting food and beverage, of course. Weekends you could double that.”

“I'll look for that one the next time I'm on
Jeopardy.
” Hauck chuckled.

Raines gave him a smile. “And you know what the one thing is that holds the whole thing all together, Lieutenant?” He pointed to a large screen focused on a table of blackjack players. “Check out up there…”

On the screen, a man in a cowboy hat and aviators drummed his fingers while he studied his hand. The dealer showed a jack. The man in the hat had what seemed a troubled expression, deciding what to do.

“That,”
Joe Raines stated. “That it's the player who has to bust first—not the house. That the poor bastard has no idea in the world what to do because of that ten card showing there. That's our edge. Our
only
edge, Lieutenant. If he knows the dealer's holding a five, everything switches back against the house. But because he doesn't, we keep the advantage.”

On the screen, Cowboy Hat tapped the table for a card and
the dealer flipped over a king. He busted. The dealer took in the man's chips. The next player in line stuck with a king and a seven, seventeen, and the dealer flipped over his hole card and revealed a six. Sixteen. He had to hit. He flipped over a ten and busted himself. Raines smiled knowingly. “You see…”

“You mind being a little clearer on what you're trying to tell me?” Hauck asked, drawing his gaze back from the screen.

“You care for something to drink?” Raines asked. “A beer? Soft drink? Something stronger, perhaps?”

Hauck shook his head. “Thanks. Still on duty.”

“That's what I figured. In this job you have to size people up quickly and you look like a man who's serious about his work.”

“I think we both know why I'm up here, Mr. Raines,” Hauck said, growing impatient at all the dancing around.

“Yes, we do, Lieutenant.
Sanger…
” Raines nodded. His eyes were hooded and gunmetal gray. “Keith Kramer. Like I said, you upset that balance”—Raines looked at him—“it disrupts everything. You understand what I'm trying to tell you, Lieutenant?” He motioned around. “Everything you see here, all these fancy screens, these trained people, tens of millions of dollars—all of it's just here to protect that one thing. So that what that dealer has facing down on the table remains in doubt. All it takes is one bad egg on the inside, and this whole big show doesn't mean shit. Are you understanding?”

“I think I'm starting to see it,” Hauck replied.

Raines had thick eyebrows and a serious conviction in his gaze. “And there are several different ways to upset that perfect balance, Lieutenant.”

“You mean from the inside.”

“Yes. A dealer can execute what in the trade we call a ‘flash.' Flash a glimpse of his hole card to an accomplice at the table.
Doesn't take a whole lot of skill. That's what these operators are trained to look for. Or he can simply blink or just twitch his nose. A twitch to signal his accomplice to draw a card. Maybe only a moistening of the lips for him to hold. That's why we watch tapes of every one of our dealers in action, over and over, observing their mannerisms.”

Hauck started to have a clearer sense of where this was going.

“Then there's what we call capping, Lieutenant. And pinching. Placing more chips over a winning bet than it deserves. Maybe substituting a black five-hundred-dollar chip for a green. Or taking chips off the table in a loss. We monitor the one-on-one tables most closely. Look to see if the same player shows up with the same dealer on a regular basis…”

“What were Kramer and Sanger up to, Mr. Raines?” Hauck asked, growing tired of dancing around.

“Almost there.” Raines smiled. “There's one more technique I didn't mention. It's called a false shuffle. A dealer, say one motivated to participate in such a scam, slips a series of prerecorded, unshuffled cards on the top of his deck. It's called a slug.”

Raines took out a handheld remote control. He flicked it toward the screen at the desk where he and Hauck were stationed. A video recording came on. It was of a man in an open shirt and blazer at a table with his back to the screen. Short hair, sunglasses. He was the single player at the table. Blackjack. The dealer was a middle-aged man with bushy graying hair and thick black glasses, in his uniform of a white shirt and red vest. The first hand, the player with his back to the camera lost. He took a sip of his drink. The next hand, he drew nineteen. Won. A light bettor. Only a couple of chips.

The next hand he upped his bet significantly.

To Hauck it appeared he pushed in several thousand dollars, though he wasn't familiar with all the denominations. This time, the player was dealt two face cards.
Bingo.
To Hauck's surprise, he left all his winnings on the table and the dealer dealt again.
Blackjack,
this time. The man in the blazer quietly raked in his winnings.
Thousands.
Then he stepped away from the table. All in all, it took less than one minute.

As he did, for the first time Hauck could see his face.

It was David Sanger.

It was like a jackhammer bludgeoned him. He'd been so focused on the dealer and what Raines was trying to show him, he hadn't seen.

The security chief stood up and flicked off the screen. A haughty smile on his face that at the same time was both condescending and all-knowing.

“Why don't you go up to your room for a bit and relax. I'll meet you down in the casino in the blackjack section at eight o'clock. I'll give you a glimpse of what you're after there, firsthand.”

H
auck's room was large, on the thirty-second floor, with a huge Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom and a wide-screen TV. The view looked out over the river. It was dark and all Hauck could see were flickering lights. A pretty floor concierge escorted him down the hall and handed him his key.

Hauck stretched out on the bed and flipped on CNN on the TV. A cyclone was ravaging the Pacific, near the Philippines, killing thousands. A report from Baghdad showed a grown man crying that his family still did not have power. “How do you expect us to work?” he raged. “I ran a cement factory. Now I'm a ditch digger…”

He tried to absorb what he had just seen. Sanger and Kramer—friends from college; had they been hooked up in some kind of elaborate betting scheme? Had they gotten together to cheat the casino?

A United States attorney?

Hauck thought back to Sanger's hidden bank account. It pained him a little—from what he knew of him, from what his wife had told him and what he had seen at the funeral—that this seemingly “good” guy, a person of dedication and achievement, a devoted dad, could have been caught up in something
like this. It was dangerous business, taking on a casino. Casinos have their own way of dealing with things.

Still, it didn't justify getting them killed.

Before eight, he put on a white shirt and corduroy jacket and made his way downstairs. At the entrance to the casino off the lobby, he was hit by the loud jangle of slot machines turning, the chime of bets paying off, the smell of cigarette smoke.

He wound through the crowded maze of tables and bettors and found the blackjack section. He spotted Raines in between tables, chatting with one of the staff.

The security chief saw him and came over. “Had a nice rest? How's the room? Okay?”

“Just fine.” Hauck didn't much relish the idea of accepting any of the casino's courtesies. “You said you were going to show me firsthand?”

Raines grinned. “Always work, huh? C'mon, I've got a table waiting over here.”

He took Hauck to a nearby blackjack table. There was a twenty-dollar minimum bet. The table was empty and there was an attractive female dealer who seemed to be waiting for them.

“You play?” Raines inquired, motioning for Hauck to take a seat.

“Nickels and dimes.” Hauck shrugged, pulling out a chair across from the cute dealer, casting her a polite smile.

“This is Josie,” Raines said, taking a seat next to Hauck. “She's actually working here while she gets her degree. This is Lieutenant Hauck, Josie. From Greenwich, right? The lieutenant here is looking to learn a little bit about certain dealing techniques we discussed.”

The pretty dealer nodded. She had long brown hair braided back in an unassuming style. What seemed like a sexy figure
hidden under her plain white blouse and vest. Liquid brown eyes.

“How're you doing today?” she said to Hauck, almost businesslike, and began to deftly shuffle together several decks.

“I'm doing fine, thanks, Josie.”

Raines removed some chips from his jacket and pushed them in front of Hauck. He laid out two even stacks. “Nickels and dimes, you said. Here's a little stake from the hotel. For demonstration purposes only, of course…” He patted him on the back.

The nickels were six brown fifty-dollar chips, and the dimes were two black hundreds.

Hauck looked at Raines uncomfortably.

He kept his eye on Josie as she raked in the cards from the shoe and reshuffled them into the new, large deck. Hauck wasn't exactly a studied eye—he'd played a little poker in college—but he didn't spot anything irregular. Neatly, Josie merged the decks into the shoe.

“Cut, Lieutenant?”

“Sure.” Hauck cut the deck in half in the middle.

Raines tapped the table. “Place your bet.”

Hauck pushed forward a chip. A fifty. The lowest he had.

Josie dealt out a ten and then a seven.
Seventeen.
She showed an eight. Raines shifted around his chair to face him.

“Good.”
Hauck held up his hand.

Raines said, “Our guest stays pat.”

Josie turned over her hole card. A jack.
Eighteen.
She didn't react. Raines sighed and twitched his mustache. “Bad luck, Lieutenant. Try again.”

“Your funds.” Hauck shrugged resignedly.

He pushed across another fifty. This time Hauck was dealt a nine and a five. Josie showed a king. He looked at her as if he
could spot some clue in her eyes. He brushed his fingers toward him, indicating another card. She turned over an eight.

He busted.

Josie's pink polished nails gathered in his chip. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”

She shot a quick glance toward Raines. The security man said, “I'm not sure our guest has found his rhythm.”

Hauck put forward another chip. This time, Raines took ahold of his arm. His gaze carried a steely importance to it. “Why not show a little confidence this time, Lieutenant?”

On the bet line, he stacked all of Hauck's remaining chips.

Four hundred dollars
.

Josie dealt Hauck a queen and a king. She showed a seven. Hauck stuck, of course, and she rolled over a ten. Seventeen.

“Lucky you!”
Raines exclaimed, as if impressed. “What do you say, why not let it run again, Lieutenant?”

There was a manipulative sort of arrogance about the security chief Hauck didn't like. Not even a hint of uncertainty in his question. He smiled conspiratorially.

Hauck shrugged. “Your money.”

Raines nodded and Josie dealt Hauck an eight and a three, turned over a six for herself.

Hauck paused. Eleven. The odds said he should double down.

“Have a little faith.” Raines grinned. From his pocket he removed another large handful of chips. He stacked them next to Hauck's and began to count them out, matching the total for him to double down.

That meant sixteen hundred dollars on the table.

“Go ahead.” Raines nodded to Josie. Her eyes met Hauck's and she turned over a nine. That made twenty. She flipped over an ace underneath.
Seventeen.

Hauck was a winner. He made a move to pull in his chips.

“Leave it!
” Raines said again. He had his hand on Hauck's wrist. Both sets of their eyes went to it. He nodded to Josie.

This time, she flipped Hauck an ace and then a queen. Blackjack. That paid one and a half to one. She met his eyes, no attempt at surprise in them, and stacked out two large piles of chips, this time mostly blacks and purple.

Thousands.

“A cinch, isn't it?” Raines said. “You see how fast it adds up when you're dealt with cards from a prearranged slug…”

Hauck looked at Josie. “You inserted it in at the top of the shuffle.”

“Not at the top,” Raines answered for her. “Anyone could've done that. Too easy for the cameras to detect. Besides, you cut. She inserted it several hands down. All it takes is a stare—a little eye contact between the dealer and the player when it's time…”

Josie stacked up Hauck's chips. Eight thousand dollars.

Raines lightly slapped Hauck on the back. “Quite a lucky night, Lieutenant. They're yours to spend, of course. For your amusement, around the casino.”

Hauck turned to Raines. If disdain was an ocean, the entire room would be underwater now. He didn't like what the man was implying and didn't like the pile of chips in front of him now.

He stacked about half the chips, most of the purples and blacks, and slid them over to Josie.

“Tuition,” he said with a wink.

Her brown eyes widened in surprise. She glanced at Raines, unsure; he seemed to nod begrudgingly, more of a dismissive twitch. “Thank you, Josie. Why don't you let the lieutenant and me have a few words now.”

“Thank
you.
” Josie smiled at Hauck, disbelieving her good fortune, sweeping the chips into her apron. She took her leave.

When they were alone, Hauck turned to Raines and stared in the security man's narrow eyes. “Why don't we skip the floor show and you tell me what happened to Kramer and David Sanger?”

“I have no idea what happened to them, Lieutenant. I could throw out a possibility or two—hypothetical, of course. A pit boss who's in dire need of money. An old friend from college with a bit of a gambling itch. Maybe more than that. Let's call it a compulsion. I've shown you the film. I think you understand where this little scenario is leading, Lieutenant.”

“Who was the dealer?”

Raines shrugged and locked his hands. “That's a bit of a private matter, Lieutenant. In our little world here, we handle things our own way. All you have to know is we have the incidents on tape. Several, in fact. In themselves, they don't really prove anything. Like I said, all this is just a possibility…

“We run a very big business, Lieutenant, and it operates in the modern world. But at its heart, it still has an old-world way of handling things.” Raines's mustache twitched. “You never know who you might upset, going up the chain. And you know how people of that ilk might possibly handle things. Remember what I said earlier, regarding balance?”

“You're saying you had them killed? For ripping the casino off.”

“Me?”
Raines screwed up his brow innocently. “This is the twenty-first century, Lieutenant. I'm only suggesting one scenario. You'll find, if you choose to dig around, there are a myriad of interests at play here. The consortiums who oversee the place. The Pequot tribe. Law enforcement. Even the state…It's hard to say
what
actually happens or who's truly
affected”—Raines looked at him—“when certain people get in over their heads, you understand, Lieutenant?”

“You had them killed.” Hauck wasn't sure who Raines's warning was directed at, Sanger and Kramer, or
him.
“You used that gang in Bridgeport as a cover. You're saying David Sanger risked whatever he had—his job, his family, his whole life's standing—” He looked around the floor and shook his head. “
For this
…? This little
itch,
as you called it. What kind of person would do that, Raines?”

“I don't know, Lieutenant.” Raines looked back at him. “What kind of person are you?”

Hauck's blood came to a stop.

The security man got up, his gaze never removing itself from Hauck's amid the noise and exultations all around. “You enjoy yourself here, Lieutenant. You let me know if you need anything.” He raked in the rest of the chips, stacked them in two even piles. He pushed them over to Hauck. “Glad you came up. I hope it's been worthwhile. Be sure to call me if I can ever shed any further light on anything else.”

Then he left, leaving the chips on the table, without putting out his hand.