Unallocated Space: A Thriller (Sam Flatt Book 1) (2 page)

L
AS VEGAS

N
OW

I
had seen pictures
. Read all about it. Even saw an episode about it on a reality show about amazing something or other. High-res and high-def did nothing to prepare me for the real thing. 'Amazing' didn't come close. It was shocking.

SPACE, not just the world's largest casino hotel, but the world's largest man-made structure. The company was my newest client; their high-dollar slot machines were paying out huge jackpots more often than they should, and the company suspected foul play. Hence the arrival of yours truly, owner and sole employee of Sam Flatt Digital Forensics.

The property loomed on the far south end of the neon canyon called Las Vegas Boulevard, a.k.a. the Strip, like an unearthly presence. Which was exactly the point: The illusion was that of a space station, and its realism made the rest of Vegas's architectural wonders look like kitschy little toys from a dollar store. When the limo was a couple miles from it, already it looked enormous. I don't know how many hundreds of acres it covered, but the whole thing was bathed in a bluish light that heightened the surreality of the scene. Tiny white strobes flashed at random across the whole thing, both on the structures and in the air.

A huge white glass dome housed the casino and anchored the center of the spread. From the center of the dome, a 185-floor round hotel climbed the night sky, a gleaming white shaft peppered sparsely with dark windows among glossy white ones. On the ground, five spokes connected to and radiated out from the dome’s perimeter. Each of these spokes terminated in a structure that was itself some noteworthy attraction. On the north spoke, the largest mall in the country. Others ended variously in everything from entertainment complexes to a NASA museum with a retired space shuttle. In a city full of spectacles, SPACE was the one to end them all.

When the driver turned into the complex, I saw that the twinkling strobes in the air weren’t mounted on anything. They were tiny flashing orbs that were flying themselves around like mechanized fireflies. Wow. We arrived at the portico, and I stepped out of the car without waiting for anyone to open the door. The hot night air hit me, felt like I'd opened the door on an oven. The difference between its dryness and the soggy heat back home in Houston was immediately apparent.

Outside the car, I was greeted by an attendant in white coveralls emblazoned front and back with the SPACE logo. "Mr. Flatt," the attendant said when I exited the car, "welcome to SPACE. I'm James Nichols and I'll be your host while you're here." I shook his hand. "If you'll come with me, I'll get you settled in and have your luggage brought up."

I followed him through an entrance fashioned like an air lock. Twenty feet inside, we boarded an escalator with clear steps. At the top of its long climb, we stepped onto a people mover, also with a transparent floor, that arced up and over the casino floor. Above us, the massive dome looked to be one giant video screen. Its realistic panorama of the space environment combined with the nearly invisible conveyor we were riding created a convincing illusion of floating through space between components of a space station. Well, except for the hundreds of gaming tables and thousands of slot and poker machines below us. After a lengthy ride we arrived at an elevated platform at the top center of the dome. That platform turned out to be the hotel lobby. Nichols ignored the desk and headed straight for a bank of elevators. The acceleration was unlike anything I'd experienced in an elevator, my ears popping as the floor numbers whizzed by. I felt it slowing and watched the display as the number settled on 140.

My suite looked like something straight from the future, all softly glowing glass and plush furnishings. I had expected a much more modest room but I have a bit of a thing about small spaces so I was glad to see the spacious accommodations. As Nichols was showing me around, my bags arrived. When I tried to tip the bellhop, he nodded and said, "Thank you, sir, but that won't be necessary," and backed out of the room.

"What's up with that?" I said.

"You're our guest, Mr. Flatt. Nothing here will cost you anything, unless you want to gamble." He smiled and said, "That's on your dime. By the way, here's your credential bracelet." He handed me a thin rubbery bracelet, bright blue. "It functions as your key. Just wear it and it does the rest." I thanked him and he left.

Even the water in the shower glowed along a blue-to-red spectrum depending on temperature. Clean and fresh in a hotel robe, I stood at the window with my phone and touched the icon to initiate a video chat with my daughter. Ally's mom, my ex, had moved them here a few years ago, after the divorce, when a good job came up in her field. Ally’s mom is an event planner who sets up conferences and conventions and such, and Vegas is a hotbed for that industry. I objected to the move, but it did no good. Abby Lowenstein Flatt is a stubborn and formidable woman, and I wasn't willing to create great strife between the two of us. We compromised: I wouldn't fight the move, and she wouldn't gripe about my unconventional lifestyle when Ally came to visit me back in Texas. It worked.

When Ally answered, I held the phone against the glass so the camera faced out at the amazing view. "Guess where I am?" I said.

"Hmmm, lots of lights," Ally said. "Oh my gosh, you're here, Daddy? In Las Vegas?"

"Yup."

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

"Case just popped up this morning."

"Where are you staying?"

I braced myself. "SPACE."

"Daddy! You know I wanna see that place, and Mom won't take me! When can I come? Say I can come!"

"I don't know, sweetie. Not sure a casino is the best place for a fourteen-year-old, but I'll talk it over with your mom."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

We chatted a few minutes more and said good-night.

I stood at the window and marveled at the north-facing view, Las Vegas spread before me like a bejeweled domain. If only I had known what I was standing on top of.

S
PACE

L
awyers have a bad rep
. Many times it’s an unfair stereotype. Sometimes it’s not. Case in point was my meeting the next morning, which featured a couple lawyer examples. Jacob Allen was general counsel for SPACE Corporation and we met in his office. It was the first room I’d encountered that wasn’t technofuturistic. Instead, Allen was obviously enamored with the traditions of law. Situated on the hotel tower’s third floor, the office was all dark wood and tufted leather and old books. Allen was a human version of a Bassett hound, sad-eyed and droopy in his vested suit, and seemed a pretty nice guy.

He didn't small talk, got right to the case details. "What do you know about EGMs?"

"Don't know the term," I said.

"Electronic gaming machines. Slots, poker?"

"Not a lot. At the gambling game, you guys win. And I'm a sore loser."

He smiled. "Suffice to say there's a reason why we have ten times as many machines as tables: They're profitable. Very. Today's EGMs are all electronic, really just computers. Instead of adjusting mechanical parts to tweak payout rates, we just change some computer settings."

I said, "While I have some idea of what you're talking about, pretend I don't. What's a payout rate?"

"By law in Nevada, a slot has to have an RTP of at least seventy-five percent. So over time—and it can be a long time—a machine has to 'return to players' at least seventy-five percent of what's put into it. Make sense?"

"Perfect."

"In reality, the only machines with rates that low are the ones in airports, convenience stores, McDonald's, and a few gimmick machines in casinos. It's a competitive area and the average RTP in this town is about ninety-five percent. But here's the problem. Over the past several weeks, a number of our high-stakes machines have been paying out anywhere from ninety-eight to ninety-nine. Considering the amount of money fed into a thousand-dollar-a-pull machine, you can understand that this is resulting in a significant loss of profit."

I nodded. "You want me to find out who's doing the tweaking."

"Exactly," he said. He pushed a small binder across his desk to me. "This will get you up to speed on the general process of managing these machines."

I picked up the binder, opened it, flipped through its pages of diagrams, procedures, personnel.

"So, does this sound like something you can do?" he said.

"It's computer data. It's what I do."

"Excellent. If you look at the people in that binder, you'll see a summary for a former employee named Christine Gamboa." I found the page and he continued. "Miss Gamboa was an executive host when she came here, meaning she took care of certain VIP clients, the kind who play blackjack at twenty-five thousand per hand, slots at a thousand a pull. She's brilliant, has a graduate degree from CalTech in some kind of computer science. Not quite a year ago, she asked to be transferred to the technology department. We jumped at it and in no time she was running the unit in charge of programming EGMs. Two weeks ago, she bolted for a competitor, Renaissance. No trouble here, no warning signs, and no notice, just didn't show up for work one morning."

"She get a better position there?" I said.

"No. She went back to hosting. Makes no sense."

"Interesting," I said. "I assume you have her devices on hand for me to examine."

"Of course."

On the other end of the lawyer personality spectrum was Brandy Palmer, the outside counsel leading this charge. She was the high-powered titular head of Palmer & Bradford, a smallish forty-lawyer litigation firm known for its aggressive posture and unwillingness to lose. About fifty, she was dressed and smelled expensive. A slim brunette with curves, she had probably been a knockout as a young adult, but years of being a bitch had taken its toll. So far today, she always looked like she'd just bitten into a rotten pickle and sounded like a bulldozer.

"We'll need the results by the end of the week," she said.

I stopped taking notes. "Ms. Palmer, that's unlikely in the extreme."

"Why’s that?"

"This is a complex investigation involving, what, a hundred or more machines, not to mention Gamboa's devices? I could get lucky and find a smoking gun right away, but it could also take weeks. Just the way it is."

"The local forensic guy I use is willing to do what it takes to get the results I need. When I need them." She cut eyes at Allen. "And at half your rate, Mr. Flatt."

"Then use him," I said. "It's just millions at stake, after all. Maybe Mr. Allen should hire himself a cut-rate attorney, too. I'm sure he can find one around Fremont Street at a fraction of your rate."

I swear I saw smoke coming from her ears. "How. Dare. You," she said.

After folding up my notebook and stowing my pen, I stood, looked at Allen, and said, "Thanks for the trip, but I'm busy enough that I can reject cases I don't like. And this one? I don't—"

"Please sit down, Mr. Flatt. You are the digital forensic expert on this case."

"Jake," she said, "since when do you choose my experts?"

"This is an internal investigation. It may develop into litigation, but it's not there yet. That makes the expert my choice, Brandy."

She grunted, her lips drawn into a tight little wad that looked a lot like an anus.

I took a couple deep breaths and said, "Okay. If we can get my letter of engagement signed and retainer paid, I'll get started. But I have no patience for bullshit like this." I pointed at Palmer to be really clear.

Palmer started up out of her chair but eased back into it after a look from Jacobs.

Allen said, "My admin will take care of that right now. Your host—Nichols, I think?—will get you set up in a workplace and have the computers brought to you." He looked at Palmer. "And there won't be any more...bullshit." Looking back at me now. "Anything else?"

"Nope," I said.

I
left
Jacob Allen’s office and Nichols took me to a mid-sized conference room where my equipment was waiting. Correction: Staying true to SPACEtalk, he took me to a conference chamber on the fifth floor. Apparently there are no rooms in space. By the time I had my gear arranged and powered up, the retainer was in my checking account and Christine Gamboa’s full personnel file had arrived in my inbox from human resources. The letter of engagement hadn't arrived yet but since the money had, work could begin.

The front page of Gamboa's file was a headshot of an absurdly beautiful woman. Glossy black hair and a mild Eurasian look with impossible green eyes. Twenty-six years old, never married. Master's degree from CalTech in Applied and Computational Mathematics—and she chose to take a job as a glorified escort? And then to work on slot machines? And back to escort? The rest of her file was more of the same: She was a brilliant and beautiful girl without a hint of trouble in her background. One of life's winners.

About the time I finished perusing her file, a courier arrived with her devices. It was a typical high-end corporate spread: desktop PC, laptop, iPad and iPhone. It took about twenty minutes to get forensic copies of all her data started. With that process chugging along, I opened the binder Allen had given me and dug into the scintillating world of electronic gaming machines. Okay, it wasn't scintillating. Behind the flashing lights and cool sounds, it was all about a bunch of little computers that generated random numbers in a very careful way. An hour into it my eyes were glazing over and my stomach was screaming for input.

James Ever-Present Nichols was outside the door. "Hey, Jimbo," I said. "You guys have anything to eat around here?"

He took me to the Rings of Saturn, a big round buffet from which I ate a stupid amount of really good food. All terrestrial fare, best I could tell, but with creative names like Renduvian Rolls and Spironicus Spaghetti. At the exit, the doors whooshed open as I approached, Star Trek style, no doubt a function of the "credential bracelet" on my wrist. "Please tell me there's a holodeck," I said to Nichols.

"Sort of," he said.

"No crap?"

"Yeah, a virtual video game like you've never seen. We can go if you like."

"Definitely," I said, "But later."

T
he forensic copying
was done when we got back from lunch, so I fired up the initial processing of the evidence, a bunch of techno-crunching that prepares the data for my hardcore examination. While that ran, I dug into the initial analysis of the oh-so-lovely Miss Gamboa's data. It took about two minutes to encounter the first red flag. She, or someone, had formatted the hard drives on both her computers. Silly people, especially computer-oriented people like her who should know better. Lesson number one? If you want to destroy data, find out how. Don't pull stunts like this that do nothing but make you look guilty. And stupid.

Fifteen minutes later, I had recovered the data she thought she deleted. The techno-crunching that was still running would recover far more, but for now I had enough to start getting an idea of who Cyber-Christine Gamboa was. On the surface, she was just a good-looking girl living the high life in Sin City. Like every woman on the planet with a smartphone, she loved taking selfies. Especially in her car. Why do they do this? I have no idea. She Facebooked and tweeted and Instagrammed and saved thousands of pictures to her boards on Pinterest. She texted a lot but thankfully she did so with real words, not "ur" and b4" and "bff" and other crap that make grown people look like twelve-year-olds.

She also bought enough books from Amazon to stock a library, but it would be an e-library. Kindle. She favored thrillers, which gave us something in common. Maybe when this was over I'd ask her out, if I hadn't helped put her in prison by then. Or even if I had, maybe we could have a prison romance. I'd write her beautiful letters and we'd have a darling little jailhouse wedding, and then would come the conjugal visits. Or maybe she'd tell me to go conjugate myself.

Quicken was her tool of choice for financial management, and it was there that red flags started pinging like the Whack-a-Mole at a county fair. Holy crap.