Mr. Lucky (21 page)

37

T
he visitor parking lot of the Slippery Rock police station was empty, and Valentine parked beside the front door of the darkened station house, then jumped out, went to the door, and loudly knocked. It was a single-story concrete building with as much personality as a sewage treatment plant. When no one answered, he went back to the car.

“Stay here,” he told Ricky.

Ricky lowered the wad of Kleenex pressed to his nostril. It had started bleeding right after they’d driven away from his house. “Where the hell am I going to go?”

Valentine leaned on his opened door. During the drive over, Ricky had refused to say why the Cubans were at his house, beating the daylights out of him. Valentine had saved Ricky’s life twice in the past two days, yet they were no closer than the moment they’d first met.

“Just stay put, okay?”

“Sure thing, Sarge.”

Valentine went around the back of the station house and saw a clunker parked in the employee lot. He banged on the back door, and a Hispanic woman appeared behind the steel-meshed glass, looking shaken up. She shook her head to indicate that she wasn’t opening the door come hell or high water. He went back around the building and got into the car.

“No one’s here,” he said.

“It’s Sunday night,” Ricky said. “Whoever’s on duty is probably on a call or getting something to eat at McDonald’s.”

“Who’s going to answer if I call 911?”

“An operator over in the other county. She’ll call whoever’s on duty and give him the message.”

Valentine turned the key in the ignition and fired up the engine. He’d wanted to get Ricky someplace safe, and the police station had seemed the best choice. He backed out of the lot and pulled onto the street, but not before first looking in both directions. The road was quiet. He wondered if the Cubans had been smart enough to bring a backup car with them. Most professional crews usually had one.

“I need to put you someplace safe,” he said.

“You got me,” Ricky said.

“I was thinking about dropping you at your ex-wife’s.”

Ricky jerked his head so hard that the dog sleeping in back lifted its head. “Are you nuts? Polly and I can’t be in the same room together.”

“She still cares for you. She showed me my house and couldn’t stop talking about you.” He glanced at his passenger. “Not all of it was pleasant, but there’s something still there.”

“Wow, this is great. First you save my ass, now you’re trying to save my failed marriage. Is there anything you can’t do?”

If Ricky hadn’t been bleeding, Valentine would have backhanded him in the face.

“Where does she live?”

“I’m not telling you,” Ricky said.

“You want me to call information, and call her and make you look like a fool?”

Ricky threw the bloodied Kleenex to the floor and buried his head in his hands.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said.

Dressed in a bathrobe, Polly Parker stood on her wraparound front porch when Valentine pulled down her gravel driveway a few minutes later. He’d gotten her number from Ricky and called her, and she’d offered her house as a safe haven without a moment’s hesitation. He had been right. The thread of love was still there.

Polly’s house was small and quaint, with enough Southern charm to grace the pages of a magazine. Before getting out of the car, Ricky scrubbed his face with his shirtsleeve. It was like watching a kid going on his first date. As he climbed out, the dog bounded out of the backseat and moments later was in Polly’s arms, getting hugs and kisses.

“Oh, my God,” Polly said as Ricky climbed onto the porch. “What happened to your face?” She glared at Valentine coming up from behind. “Did you do that to him? Did you?”

“Some hoods came to the house and beat me up,” Ricky said. He jerked his thumb in Valentine’s direction. “Mr. Wonderful saved me.”

Polly gently pushed the dog away. She was wearing Garfield slippers and was a foot shorter than her ex. Reaching up, she touched his damaged face.

“You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?”

Ricky pulled his head away like he’d been slapped. “Don’t start in, okay? He’s bad enough. I don’t need any more.”

“Oh, Ricky, come on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean grow up and put it behind you. I have.”

He looked down at his feet. “I’m…sorry.”

She slid her arms around his waist and held him. “Why don’t you come inside, and I’ll clean you up and make you a sloe gin fizz, and you can sit in front of the TV and not worry about anything. What do you say?”

A long silence followed as Ricky seemed to wrestle with her offer, his eyes still staring downward. And then it hit Valentine what was going on. Ricky had kept Polly in the dark. She wasn’t one of the gang of people in Slippery Rock involved in whatever crazy scheme he had going on. He’d protected her by not telling her. It said a lot of things about him as a man, but most importantly, it told Valentine that Ricky knew what he’d done was wrong. Otherwise, he would have had no reason to hide it from her.

“I’d like that,” he said.

Polly started to lead him into the house. She turned when they were both in the foyer and looked at Valentine. “You’re welcome to join us. I’m sorry I was so short with you.”

“Thanks, but I need to run,” Valentine said.

Ricky turned to stare at him. Panic had returned to his eyes.

“You going to the police?”

“I sure am,” Valentine said.

Not knowing his way around Slippery Rock, Valentine retraced his steps back to the police station and, finding the parking lot empty, drove back to his house. On the way, he started to punch in 911 on his cell phone, only to stop when he realized that he would have no way of knowing if the cop who replied to his call was also involved in Ricky’s scheme. So he called information instead and asked for Rodney Gaylord’s number. As he suspected, it was unlisted.

“I need you to do me a favor,” he told the operator. “Please call Sergeant Gaylord and tell him Tony Valentine needs to speak with him. Tell him I’m at my house, and he should drive there right away. Okay?”

The operator was young and didn’t like being told what to do. “I’m not supposed to do that. It’s against the rules.”

“Tell him I just shot someone, and I figured he’d want to know,” Valentine said.

“You serious, mister?”

“Dead serious.”

He drove back to Ricky’s house. As he expected, the black SUV was gone. He pulled into Hank Ridley’s driveway a few minutes later. Hank had looked pretty stoned a half hour ago, and Valentine guessed Hank was spinning in the ozone by now. Leaving the keys on the front doormat, he put his ear to the door and heard blaring rock ’n’ roll bleeding through the grain. It was another bootleg of the Grateful Dead. The band sounded horribly out of tune. Maybe it sounded good to Hank.

Valentine traipsed through the woods back to his house, stopping every fifty feet to listen to the sounds of the forest. In his eardrums he heard a steady beating sound, then realized it was his heart. He came to a stump and sat down on it.

His thoughts drifted to Juan. He’d hated shooting him, but he hadn’t seen any other choice. Back when he was patrolling Atlantic City’s casinos, he’d rarely drawn his firearm, much less used it. Guns were dangerous in crowded places. But having been a street cop, he also knew that guns never settled problems. They simply ended things.

For the hell of it, he took his pulse. Eighty-eight beats a minute. Normally it was seventy. He stood up and walked down the path toward his house.

Sergeant Gaylord was waiting for Valentine in the driveway of his rental house. He was dressed in blue jeans, a threadbare sweater, and sneakers. His eyes were puffy, and his hair looked like he’d stuck it in a blender.

“Give me your gun,” he said.

Valentine removed the Glock from his ankle holster. Gaylord examined the gun and shook his head. “One bullet?”

Valentine didn’t understand what he meant.

“You shot him with one bullet in the head.”

Valentine felt the air escape his lungs. “That’s right.”

“You’re pretty damn good at that.” Gaylord locked the Glock in the trunk of his vehicle. Then he said, “Show me where.”

Valentine walked him down the road to Ricky’s house while explaining what had happened and why he’d chosen to shoot Juan in Ricky’s driveway. Gaylord stared at him intently in the dark. More than once the sergeant stumbled on the uneven road.

“Ricky tell you why they were beating him up?” Gaylord asked.

“No, sir.”

“And Mary Alice Stoker stonewalled you as well?”

“Yes.”

“You think this has something to do with the scam at the Mint?”

Valentine met his gaze. It was the first time he’d heard Gaylord imply that he thought Ricky was a cheater. “I sure as hell do,” he said.

They halted at Ricky’s driveway. Gaylord said, “Stay behind me,” and walked a few yards ahead of him while asking Valentine to point out where the vehicle had been parked. They came to the spot, which was directly in front of the garage. Gaylord pointed at a spot in the grass. Valentine stood there and watched the sergeant remove a small flashlight from his pocket and flyspeck the area. He took his time, and Valentine felt himself shiver as the chilly night area knifed through his clothes.

After a minute, Gaylord went into a crouch. Sticking the flashlight into his mouth, he plucked several things off the ground and placed them on his outstretched palm. Rising, he came over to where Valentine stood. Valentine stared at several tiny shards of tinted glass and the butt of a cigarette. It looked odd, and he picked it up and gave it a whiff. Reefer. The men in the van had been smoking a joint when he’d shot them.

“Looks like they cleaned up after themselves,” Gaylord said.

They had also cleaned the interior of Ricky’s house. No broken or damaged CDs on the living-room floor, the furniture back in its proper place. Even the pool of urine left by the dog in the kitchen was gone. Gaylord dug into the trash and, finding nothing, went outside and looked in the garbage cans beside the garage. Ricky’s destroyed CD collection was nowhere to be found.

“You said they shot at you,” the sergeant said.

Valentine stood on the back lawn and re-created what had happened. Gaylord looked through the grass for shell casings from Juan’s automatic rifle but found none. He took a cell phone out of his pocket and called for backup. They went inside and sat in Ricky’s kitchen.

“What do you think’s going on here?” Gaylord asked.

Valentine shook his head. He had no earthly idea.

A uniformed cop named Farnsworth appeared fifteen minutes later. He was a handsome guy and all red in the face. Valentine wondered where he’d been rousted from.

“Watch him,” Gaylord said.

Farnsworth took Gaylord’s seat. The sergeant went outside and slammed the door. Through the kitchen window Valentine watched him enter the woods with the flashlight in his hand. Feeling the weight of Farnsworth’s stare on his face, he shifted his eyes.

“I saw the video of you shooting the bank robbers,” Farnsworth said. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that? Army?”

Valentine shrugged and resumed looking through the window. The images of Beasley and the scarecrow were gradually fading from his mind; in a few weeks, they’d be gone and would resurface only during bad dreams or those times when life got him down.

“I meant it as a compliment,” Farnsworth said.

“Thanks.”

“I’ve never had to shoot anyone,” he admitted.

“You’re damn lucky.”

Gaylord emerged from the woods ten minutes later. In one arm he held Ricky’s cat. He entered the kitchen and let the cat slip out of his grasp. It scampered over to its food bowl. He came over to the table, reached into his pocket, and dropped several small objects on the table.

“I found those in the woods,” he said.

Valentine picked the objects up and examined them. They were rubber bullets.

38

S
weet dreams,” Isabelle said into the phone.

They were in the kitchen of her house, Gerry drinking a cup of decaf at the kitchen table, Clarkson in the other room watching ESPN, two cruisers parked outside on the street. Isabelle blew a kiss into the phone and hung up. To Gerry she said, “Want a refill?”

“That would be great,” he said.

She joined him at the table, and he saw the glimmer of a tear in her eye. He remembered the first time his father had gotten shot and how his mother had reacted. It was like someone had invisibly torn her in half.

“Lamar wants to know if you’ve spent the money you won off him,” she said.

“I haven’t had time.”

“I think he was joking,” she said, spooning sugar into her cup.

Clarkson let out a yell. Gerry looked into the next room and saw the detective throw his arms into the air as his team scored. It was nice to see he had his priorities straight.

“Lamar really likes his job, doesn’t he?” Gerry said.

“Loves it,” Isabelle said.

“This won’t slow him down?”

She shook her head. “I think he saw it as another badge. Not one he wanted, but one he’d wear if it happened.”

“What kind of badge?”

She glanced at the living room, not wanting Clarkson to hear her. She had a sultry look that was in her genes. Part French and who knew what else. In a soft voice she answered him. “When Lamar was sixteen, he went into a convenience store in Gulfport to buy a loaf of bread and some milk and got himself arrested. Spent a whole night in jail. Got thrown in a holding cell with a bunch of hard cases. They scared the shit out of him. Worst experience of his life, to hear him tell it.”

“What did he do?”

“I told you. He bought a loaf of bread and some milk.”

Gerry felt like she was baiting him. He tried to imagine a scenario where a sixteen-year-old black kid could innocently enter a store and get arrested, and came up with air.

“Was it a case of mistaken identity?”

Isabelle shook her head. “It was nine-fifty in the evening. The store closed at ten.”

He chewed on the information for a little bit.

“Was the store in a bad part of town?”

“Yes. The store owner had been robbed several times. It always happened when he was closing up. That’s when there was the most money in the till. He saw Lamar and thought he was getting robbed again, so he pressed a buzzer beneath the counter and called the cops. And all because Lamar was big and black.”

Gerry said, “Is that why he went into law enforcement?”

“Yes. The first day on the job with the Casino Commission, you know what he did?”

“No.”

“He went back to that convenience store and had a chat with the manager.”

Isabelle’s cell phone rang. It was down inside her pocketbook and sounded like a tiny bird trying to escape. She dug the phone out and stared at the caller ID.

“Speak of the devil.”

She said hello to her husband, then went silent for a moment. She handed the phone across the kitchen table to her guest. “He wants to speak with you. Says it’s urgent.”

Clarkson drove Gerry to Gulfport Memorial Hospital. One cruiser led the way, while another followed them. Clarkson said it was risky going out, but Gerry didn’t care. He was not one to ignore a dying man’s request. They went inside and were met by a white-haired doctor with a kind face, holding a clipboard clutched to his chest. The doctor looked saddened by what had happened.

“He was doing fine a few hours ago,” the doctor said. “Then suddenly everything started to slip. I don’t like to give people death sentences, but I’m afraid I had to tell him. I asked him if he’d like us to call anyone, and he asked that we track you down.”

“Did he say why?” Gerry asked.

“No. I don’t think he has any immediate family. He wrote
None
in the box that says
Next of Kin
on his admittance application.”

They took an elevator up to the top floor of the hospital. It had rubber floors and walls and felt like the interior of a spaceship. Gerry followed the doctor down the hallway past the nurses’ station to the ICU. At the doorway the doctor pulled back.

“Call me if you need anything. There’s an intercom by the bed.”

Then he was gone. Gerry swallowed hard and stuck his head into the room. It was a single, with a bed against the wall and a bunch of tubes running into the patient. Tex “All In” Snyder stared back at him with drooping eyes. He looked one foot in the grave, his face ashen. His hand popped up out of the sheet like something in a horror movie. He beckoned Gerry closer, his lips moving up and down. Gerry pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed.

“Hey, Tex, how’s it going?”

“I’m dying,” he whispered.

Tex tried to reach across the bed. Gerry took his hand with both his own.

“You want me to do something for you?”

Tex nodded.

“Name it.”

“You got religion in that bathroom yesterday, didn’t you?” the old gambler said, his voice hoarse. “You went in ready to rob that sucker with me. When you came out, you’d changed. What happened?”

Gerry told him about getting the message from his wife and how the sound of his daughter’s laughter had cleared his head and driven away the bad decisions he’d made. Tex nodded approvingly when Gerry was finished, then motioned for the water bottle sitting on the night table. Gerry placed the flexible straw beneath Tex’s lips and watched him drink.

“I have a half sister in St. Augustine,” Tex said when he was done. “Haven’t seen her in twenty years. I want her to get some money I have stored away.”

“Where is it?”

“In a safe-deposit box. Her name is on the box. She doesn’t know it.”

“You want me to contact her for you?”

“Yes. I would be forever in your debt.”

Gerry got a pad and pencil from the nurses’ station and wrote down the location of the safe-deposit box and the box number, then Tex’s sister’s name and her last known address. He told Tex he’d be able to find her even if she’d moved, the Internet being what it was. Tex reached beneath his cotton pajamas and removed a thin gold chain hanging around his neck. From it dangled a safe-deposit key. He started to give it to Gerry, then hesitated. “Promise me you’ll do it,” he said.

“You have my word,” Gerry said.

“Please don’t rob me.”

“How much money are we talking about here?” He saw Tex glare at him and said, “What I’m asking is, should your sister bring a bag?”

“A million and a half dollars.”

Gerry blew out his cheeks. A small fortune for a sister Tex hadn’t laid eyes on in twenty years. He tore the sheet off the pad and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he took the key out of Tex’s hand. He saw Tex stare at him like he’d just made the worst decision of his life.

“Please don’t rob me,” he said again.

“I’m not going to rob you,” Gerry said. “But I want you to come clean with me.”

“About what?”

“Did Ricky Smith really beat you at the Mint that night?”

Tex flashed the weakest of smiles. “’Course not.”

“You let him win?”

“His partner paid me to lose. Slick guy from New York. I said sure. Good for business.” Gerry didn’t understand. Tex motioned him closer to the bed. “It’s like this, son. I’m a cheater. Problem is, if I win all the time, nobody will play with me. So I lose sometimes to lesser players. Word gets out that I’m getting old and not what I used to be. The suckers think I’m easy pickings and come looking for me.”

The exertion got him coughing, and Gerry grabbed the water bottle. He thought back to the videotape of Tex and Ricky playing. Neither had shown their cards at the same time. Usually that meant one player was bluffing. That wasn’t the case here. Tex had thrown away winning cards and let Ricky steal the pot.

“How much did this guy from New York pay you?”

“Ten grand.”

“Did he have a name?”

“Stanley.” Tex’s eyes darted across the room. Gerry turned around in his seat and saw Clarkson standing in the doorway. The look on his face was not a happy one. He motioned with his hand, and Gerry rose from his seat. Tex grasped the cuff of Gerry’s shirtsleeve.

“Swear on a stack of Bibles you’ll contact my sister.”

“I already told you I would.”

“I don’t trust you.”

Gerry looked into Tex’s face, and their eyes locked.
Then why did you ask for me to come here?
he nearly said. He put his lips to the dying man’s ear.

“Too bad,” he said.

Clarkson took Gerry into the hallway. In a hushed voice he said, “Huck Dubb and his retarded brother showed up at the Holiday Inn a half hour ago. Huck asked the receptionist on duty to tell him what room you were staying in. The receptionist told him you checked out yesterday. Huck didn’t believe him. He and his brother tore the place up.”

“Did my coming here get you in trouble?”

“Yes. I need to get you back to Lamar’s house, pronto.”

“I need to say good-bye to Tex.”

“Your life is in danger. We’ve got to leave right now.”

The detective took Gerry’s arm and began to drag him down the hall. As they passed the nurses’ station, a piercing alarm went off. The nurse on duty stared at a monitor on her desk. She jumped up, ran down the hall, and disappeared into Tex’s room.

Gerry looked at the monitor. A flat line was tracking across the screen. Tex was gone. Gerry crossed himself, then got onto the elevator with Clarkson.