Grift Sense (20 page)

Higgins hit Play and they listened to an agitated Nola Briggs calling Brother's Lounge and asking the bartender for Fontaine.

“Sounds like Fontaine was harassing her,” Valentine said.

“It does, doesn't it?” Higgins said.

“Anyone talk to the bartender?”

“Yeah. He says Fontaine was a regular until last week.”

“You give him a polygraph?”

Higgins scratched the late-afternoon stubble on his chin. “No. But that's not a bad idea, come to think of it.”

“Mind if I talk to him first?”

“Go ahead. Only you've got to share with me whatever he tells you.”

“Share's my middle name,” Valentine said.

“Good,” Higgins said. “Then maybe you'd like to tell me what happened at Sherry Solomon's place earlier.”

Valentine felt something catch in his throat. Sherry had called Longo and lodged a complaint, and Longo had called Higgins. The question was, who were the police going to believe, a snitch or an ex-cop?

“Nothing much,” he lied. “Why?”

“She said you leaned on her. Is that true?”

“I was just poking around.”

“Do it again, and Longo will bust you.”

“Sorry.”

They sorted through the rest of the tagged evidence. Most of it was junk, scraps of paper, scribbled phone messages, the usual bills. In the bottom of the box, Valentine found Nola's diary. He started reading. Every day had an entry, even if it was only a sentence long.

“Anyone study this?” he asked.

“One of Longo's detectives went through it,” Higgins replied. “He found seven entries Nola wrote during her trip to Mexico. It's the same story she told us at the station.”

“You're saying she's telling the truth.”

“The evidence sure looks that way. You still think she's guilty?”

“I sure do,” Valentine said.

“You're in the minority, you know.”

“I usually am.”

The last envelope was tagged with a question mark. In it Valentine found two twisted metal coat hangers.

“Cops found those in a closet,” Higgins explained.

“Mind if I straighten them out?”

“Be my guest.”

Valentine straightened the hangers out. Both were three feet long and bent in the same spots, with a curved fish hook on one end. They reminded him of the contraptions people used to open locked cars, only he was certain that was not what they were intended for.

Standing, he held one hanger at chest height so the curved end was pointing at the ceiling. He moved the hanger up and down, using the hook to move an imaginary object above his head. The first piece of the puzzle fell into place, and he felt a sense of relief. He'd been right about Nola from the start. She despised Nick, so much that she hadn't replaced the shag carpeting in her house. It had served as a reminder, all these years.

“So what do you think?” Higgins said.

Valentine folded up the hangers and handed them back to him.

“Beats me,” he replied.

Twenty minutes later, Higgins left, taking the box of evidence with him. Valentine was chaining the door when the phone rang.

“Why did you poison Sherry's dog?” Nick shouted at him.

“I didn't poison Sherry's dog,” he replied stiffly.

“Don't bullshit a bullshitter,” his employer retorted. “It ain't healthy.”

“I kicked the little floor mop in the mouth.”

“Why'd you do that?”

“Sherry sicced him on me.”

“Oh,” Nick said, backing down. “She does that sometimes when she's in a pissy mood.”

“How sweet. Did she move in?”

“Yeah, and I moved out,” Nick said. “You and I are neighbors.”

Valentine was standing by the picture window in his living room just as the Mirage's volcano spit a mammoth fireball into the pinkish sky. Without thinking, he said, “You're staying at the Mirage?”

“Fuck the Mirage, you stupid Jersey asshole,” Nick bellowed. “I'm staying down the hall, room 1201. We're neighbors, as in next door.” One of the luxuries of being the boss was not having to watch your tongue.

“Sorry. What happened?”

“None of your fucking business,” Nick said testily. “I called because I wanted to hear how your day went.”

“Well,” Valentine said, “I started out—”

“Not over the phone!”

“Sorry. I'll be right over.”

Nick's suite was unlocked and Valentine entered without knocking. The living room was a throwback to the glorious seventies, the walls covered with splashy LeRoy Niemans, the furnishings sparkling chrome and glass. He crossed the tiled floor and noticed a boxy RCA television set propped against the wall. It did not fit in with the cheesy decor, and he noticed a brass plaque screwed into the top. On May 4, 1972, Elvis Presley had stayed in the suite, distinguishing himself by putting a bullet through the TV. The plaque did not say why.

Valentine found Nick sitting at the dining room table while a doctor attended to a puncture wound on his hand. The doctor removed a needle from his bag and swabbed Nick's forearm with alcohol.

“This is going to sting,” the doctor warned.

“Great,” Nick said, clenching his teeth as the booster was jammed in. To Valentine, he said, “What kind of guy kicks a little dog?”

“One who doesn't want to get bit.”

“Only W. C. Fields didn't like dogs,” Nick said, flexing his arm as the doctor tried to apply a bandage.

“It was self-defense.”

“Me, I love animals. Sherry says she has a dog, I say, ‘Bring it over.' Dog comes into the house, sniffs my leg, I bend down to pet it, suddenly the little monster attacks me.”

“You let her move in?” Valentine asked, unable to hide his astonishment at Nick's lack of judgment.

“No! I invited her over for some sex and a little dinner,” Nick said, feigning innocence. “The next thing I know, she's got a U-Haul parked at the front door. I tried to talk some sense into her, but she wouldn't listen.” He shook his head. “Crazy broads. I'm a magnet for them.”

“So you moved out.”

“Temporarily. If she's not gone by tomorrow, Hoss and Tiny will toss her.” The doctor was packing his bag. Nick dug out his wad and tossed him several hundred dollars. “Hey, Doc, I really appreciate you coming over. You're a lifesaver.”

Pocketing the money, the doctor handed him a vial of white pills. “These are antibiotics. Take three a day for the next two weeks. And no alcohol.”

“Sure thing. Thanks, Doc.”

The doctor showed himself out and Nick threw the vial into the garbage. “So, on to more important things. You find any trace of Nola?”

Valentine told him how his day had gone, leaving out Higgins's visit. Bill had stepped over the line by sharing police evidence with him, and telling Nick now would only compromise his friend for the rest of his days. In conclusion, he said, “Look, Nick, you may not want to hear this, but the way I see it, Fontaine's going to show up in your casino again, and Nola's going to be with him. Maybe not physically with him, but with him nonetheless. The more I look at what happened, the more I'm convinced she's the one pulling the strings. Shakespeare said all the world's a stage, and this is Nola's stage we're playing on.”

Nick's face was emotionless. His fingers fumbled with a half-smoked stogie that lay in a heart-shaped marble ashtray on the table. As it reached his lips, the tip magically turned orange.

“I still want to see her.”

Valentine said, “I just wanted to warn you.”

“I want to make peace, you know? Clean the slate.”

“She might gouge your eyes out.”

“You're a real positive guy, you know that?”

Valentine nearly told him to go to hell. His argument with Gerry was eating a hole in him. It was growing dark outside, and across the street, the Mirage had turned its lights on, the mammoth structure glowing like a thousand-watt bulb.

“You think Fontaine will try to rob us when Holyfield's fighting tomorrow night?” Nick asked.

Valentine gave it some thought. The casino would be dead during the fight, and he said, “Probably not.”

“Good. Being that Sherry won't be joining me, I was wondering if you wanted to come.”

Valentine did not know what to say. Why was Nick offering him the hottest ticket in town? Then it dawned on him: Nick had lived in Las Vegas for over thirty years but didn't have any friends. He suddenly felt sorry for the guy, even if he was a flaming jerk.

“Sure,” he mumbled.

“I'll give it to the bellman if that's the way you feel about it.”

“No,” Valentine said. “I'd like to go.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“Seriously.”

“You a fight fan?”

Valentine acknowledged that he was. Nick slapped his hand on the empty seat beside him, begging for company. Valentine moved to join him. Then it hit him like a thunderbolt: He hadn't called Roxanne. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly seven. He imagined her at home right now, the steam pouring out of her ears.

Nick practically pulled Valentine into the chair.

“Sit down, sit down,” the little Greek said. “I got a story about Muhammad Ali you're not going to believe.”

21

V
alentine didn't sleep much knowing that Mabel was in jail, Roxanne was angry at him, and he and Gerry had come close to never speaking again. While doing ceiling patrol at three
A.M.
, he realized that his propensity for angering the people he cared about most had gotten steadily worse since Lois's death, and he came to the sad conclusion that his unerring ability to find the negative in everything came from missing Lois as much as he did. And so he made others suffer.

He got up for good at six, ordered coffee and some plain white-bread toast from room service, then got on the horn and started making noise. It was nine o'clock back east, and he located the captain of the Clearwater police without much trouble. Luckily, the captain remembered a cruise ship gambling case Valentine helped the department solve, and he promised to move Mabel into a private cell once he got out of a staff meeting. As a rule, cops didn't lie to other cops the way they lied to practically everyone else, and Valentine hung up feeling better than he had before making the call.

Breakfast came, and he munched on toast while watching the sun rise. It was going to be another brutally hot day, and down the block he saw bare-chested men putting the finishing touches on the outdoor arena that had been erected behind Caesars Palace for tonight's extravaganza. He had seen many prizefights, but never one in Vegas, where probably every member of the audience, except him, would have a financial stake in the outcome. He had never placed a bet in his life and did not think tonight's bout would be any different. But it would still be fun to watch.

The food lifted his spirits, and at six-thirty he began trying to reach his son with a renewed sense of purpose. He'd done a real number on Gerry the night before and had probably made him feel a lot more guilty than he should have. It was time to fall on his sword and start over. He felt certain Gerry would let him.

Only . . . he couldn't find his son. No one answered at the saloon, and Gerry's cell phone emitted a frantic busy signal. He waited a few minutes, then called Gerry's cell phone again. This time Gerry's Puerto Rican girlfriend answered sleepily.

“This is Tony Valentine. I'm looking for Gerry.”

He heard the phone hit the floor, then cursing. When Yolanda came back on, she was on fire. “Jesus Christ. Can't I get a decent night's sleep once in a while? First, some guys bang on my door; now, his old man's looking for him. I work late, you know.”

Valentine mumbled a lame apology. “You work in a club or something?”

“A club? You think I'm a stripper?”

The sun was streaming into his suite, and Valentine covered his face with his hand. “No. I figured you were a bartender or a waitress. Gerry owns a bar, so I assumed that was how he met you.”

“You think I hustle tips?”

He took a deep breath. “I didn't say that. Look, I didn't mean to offend you. Your name's Yolanda, isn't it?”

“That's right.”

“So what do you do, Yolanda?”

“I'm an intern at Bellevue.”

It was Valentine's turn to lose the phone. Retrieving it, he said, “You're studying to be a doctor?”

“That's right,” she said icily. “Not your usual Puerto Rican success story, huh?”

“I didn't mean that.”

“Sure you did, Tony. Because I'm Puerto Rican, you took me for some lowlife. Gerry was the same way when we first met.”

“No, I didn't,” he said forcefully. “I was just surprised to hear that my son is seeing someone who didn't flunk out of high school.”

Yolanda let out a laugh. “Gerry likes them stupid, huh?”

Valentine wanted to say, “No, they like
him,”
but he decided to shelve the line. As voices on the phone went, she sounded trustworthy, what the Jews called a mensch, and he said, “Used to. Listen, you said some guys were banging on your door.”

“That's right.”

“You know them?”

“Never seen them before,” she said.

“Can you describe them?”

“Sure. Big, Italian, midthirties. One didn't talk; the other had a zipper scar down the side of his face. Kind of scary looking.”

“Did they say what they wanted?”

“Yeah. They wanted Gerry.”

Being a bookie, his son did business with a nefarious group of people, and those two could easily have been customers or even runners for him. Or they could have been thugs sent by Sonny Fontana.

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them Gerry had gone to Florida for a few days, which is what he told me. They acted pissed off and left.”

Valentine smiled into the phone.

“Thank you, Yolanda,” he said.

Valentine hung up feeling even better about the world. Twenty years earlier, when Gerry had started giving him and Lois problems, they'd gone to a family counselor. What Valentine had learned about himself had been surprising. Adult children of alcoholics, of which he was one, fell into four categories. Some ran away from their problems; others became loners; others made jokes about it. The fourth category, into which he fell, tried to right the world's wrongs in the mistaken belief it will heal their own wounds. Children of these people, he'd learned, often feel neglected or ignored.

So he'd set aside time for Gerry and gotten to know him better. A few hours a week had narrowed the chasm between them. Baseball games, movies, sometimes a long walk on the beach. And although they fought constantly—and probably always would—in the end they'd always come to terms. It was a harsh kind of love, never easy, but what was easy in this world?

Which was why it elated Valentine to know that Gerry had kept his word and had gone to Florida to rescue Mabel.

At eight he went downstairs to try and patch things up with Roxanne. The casino was packed, and as he crossed the floor the drone of a hundred discarded conversations was shattered by the electronic buzzer of a jackpot being paid. As he passed the craps table, a stickman bellowed “Winner eleven!” and the table went wild.

Roxanne was running the front desk. She looked almost radiant, her long red hair tied back in a bun, revealing her perfectly symmetrical Irish face. Slapping his hands on the counter, he wondered how many hot-blooded guys walked into the casino and offered to chuck their jobs and whisk her away to a tropical island.

“Hey,” he said, “think you could find it in yourself to give a smelly old guy like me a second chance?”

“Not on your life,” she said stiffly. “Get lost.”

He returned a minute later with a dozen white roses.

“You're sweet,” she said, sniffing the flowers. “But it doesn't make up for not calling me.”

“I was going to, but Nick moved in across the hall,” he explained. “He grabbed me and I couldn't get away.”

“You spent the night with that little prick?” She tossed the flowers at his head, missing by inches. “Goddamn you!”

He picked the flowers off the floor, wondering how he'd lasted so long without understanding the opposite sex. Meeting her gaze, he saw a scowl so mean that it nearly made him run.

“I'm sorry,” he stammered. “I'll make it up to you.”

She had a customer. Out of the side of her mouth, she said, “I'm going to hold you to that, Tony. Why don't you make yourself useful until I go on my break.”

“Sure. What do you want me to do?”

From her pocket, Roxanne removed five silver dollars and slid them across the counter. “Go play One-Armed Billy for me. I was in such a hurry this morning I forgot.”

“You play that stupid thing?” he said without thinking.

“Every stupid day,” she replied.

They met up twenty minutes later in Nick's Place, which had transformed itself from a sleepy hole-in-the-wall to a jumpin' speakeasy with a jazz band and cocktail waitresses in leotards and more customers than places to sit. Valentine pounced on the first available table and had two cups of coffee waiting when Roxanne came in. She'd let her hair down. She managed to snap around the head of every guy in the place as she crossed the room to join him.

“How'd you do?” she asked.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

Roxanne obliged, and he placed three cherries, a slice of orange, and a wedge of lime into her palm.

“I put your money in the slot machine and that's what came out.” He smiled and said, “I really did mean to call you.”

She put the steaming coffee beneath her nose and sipped. “I fell asleep by the phone. I thought something horrible had happened to you.”

Valentine squirmed in his chair. Wounding people he cared about was becoming a real specialty. He put his hand on the table and drummed it nervously with his fingers. He was pleasantly surprised when she placed her own atop his and gave his fingers a squeeze.

“Don't let it happen again,” she said quietly.

“I won't.”

They listened to the band play “New York, New York.” It was one of those songs that could get him stirred up even if a trio of Shriners were blowing it on kazoos, and he hummed along. As the story went, Sinatra was going to name it “New Jersey, New Jersey” until a crowd in Hoboken had booed him offstage one night. What a way to get even.

When the song was over, Roxanne was grinning from ear to ear. She said, “I didn't know you were musical.”

“Men have died for having voices like mine.”

“But you have rhythm.”

“No, I have a pulse.”

“Do you play an instrument?”

“Just the radio.”

She slapped the table. “You win. Look, I've got to get back to work. How about we have dinner later and make up for last night?”

“I need to hang around tonight, in case Fontaine sneaks in.”

“You think he will?”

“It's a distinct possibility,” Valentine said.

“So we have dinner here.”

“What time?”

“My second shift ends at ten.”

Valentine took a deep breath. The fight was scheduled to begin at eight to accommodate everyone back east who'd be watching on Pay-Per-View. Nick would want to get back once it was over, freeing him up. So what if they were light-years apart and probably totally incompatible? She was the real thing, and that didn't come along very often.

Roxanne squeezed his hand. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Ten it is,” he said.

“You sure you can stay awake that long?” she teased him.

“Only if I nap this afternoon.”

She got up and kissed him on the cheek.

“Sweet dreams,” she said.

There was nothing like a pretty woman's smile to start the day. Braving the heat, he walked to the Desert Inn and paid the valet twenty bucks for Nick's loaner. Las Vegas was not a morning town, and he cruised the Strip in a minimum of traffic.

Brother's Lounge was located on a desolate side street named Audrie. As bars went, it was a rathole, its neighbors a pawnshop and a tanning salon, and his shoes crunched broken glass as he entered the dimly lit establishment.

The bartender had a hockey player's blunt, proudly damaged face. His name was Mike, and he wore a ruffled tuxedo shirt with stained armpits and a yellow collar. “Can or tap?” he inquired when Valentine ordered a Diet Coke.

“Can's fine,” Valentine said, casing the room. In the back, a guy sat nursing a draft beer; otherwise, the place was empty. He drew a C-note from his wallet and let it float to the laminated counter. “Can you change that?”

“Sorry,” Mike said. “It's too early.”

“Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

“Depends,” Mike said.

Valentine nudged the C-note toward him. “There was a guy who used to come in here named Frank Fontaine.”

Mike crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You a cop?”

Valentine nearly said no, then stopped himself. He would always be a cop, and this joker knew it. “Retired,” he confessed.

“Private dick?”

“Consultant.”

“That's a new one.”

“Welcome to the nineties.”

In the mirror behind the bar Valentine saw the guy in back kill his beer. He was built like one of those behemoths that carried refrigerators on their backs on ESPN. As he strolled out the front door, Mike pocketed the C-note.

“You know that dude?” Mike asked.

“No—should I?”

“He's looking for Fontaine, too.”

Valentine spun around in his chair, wishing he'd gotten a better look at the guy. “Did he say why?”

“Said Fontaine owes him money.”

“I wouldn't want to owe money to a guy that big.”

Mike popped a can of Diet Coke and poured it into a plastic mug. He put a big head on it, which Valentine found insulting. He was sure Mike was capable of pouring a soda without making it look like a root beer float.

“Look, I'll tell you exactly what I told the cops,” Mike said. “Fontaine came in a few times, mostly to use the phone. Never drank anything hard. Always left a fat tip.”

Valentine waited. “That's it?”

“He liked to play video poker.”

“He win much?”

“Hell, he never lost.”

“Which machine?”

“Get out of here,” Mike said with a laugh. The cordless phone beside the register warbled. Mike took the call in the kitchen.

After five minutes, Valentine realized Mike wasn't coming back. He finished his soda while reflecting on how little a hundred bucks bought these days. Instinct told him that Mike knew more than he was telling; the problem would be getting him to flip. Maybe a subpoena would do the trick, or Longo's doing a number on him. He threw a few pennies on the bar, just to piss Mike off.

On his way to the john, Valentine found the video poker machines. Video poker was a tough game to beat consistently, and he patted both machines down. A dime-size hole had been drilled into each, and he guessed Fontaine had found a way to rig the machines' silicon chips to pull up specific cards. It was one more headache for Bill Higgins to deal with.

The johns were crudely marked
POINTERS
and
SITTERS
. Valentine went through the appropriate door and the smell nearly knocked him over. Taking a deep breath, he soldiered up to a urinal.

As he'd aged, taking a piss had started to feel about as good as having sex, and he was lost in the moment when he heard someone barrel into the room. Jerking his head around, he saw the big guy hovering menacingly behind him, his eyes glazed over like he'd just inhaled a popper.