Mr. Lucky (6 page)

9

V
alentine sat in a rocking chair on the screened porch of his new house and stared at the forest that was his backyard. The night was chilly, and he wore his overcoat buttoned to his neck. He’d downed a gallon of Diet Coke during the drive, and didn’t think he could fall asleep if his life depended on it.

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s music continued to blast out of Ricky Smith’s house. Valentine had decided that he liked it; the music had an earthy quality that struck him as real. And he liked the man’s singing voice. It was raw and powerful.

A few minutes past midnight, Ricky Smith’s stereo stopped playing. Valentine watched the windows in Ricky’s house go dark. He tried to imagine what it had been like for Polly to be married to such a clown. His own marriage had lasted more than forty years. The secret had been compromise and more compromise. Ricky sounded like he didn’t know the meaning of the word.

The forest came alive with hoots and cries that he never heard down in Florida. Back home, it was mostly frogs and crickets and an occasional dog. The sounds he was hearing now were wilder. He leaned forward in his chair, trying to place them.

Then he heard the footsteps and sat up straight in his chair. They were in the forest and coming toward the house. He decided it was kids returning from the woods and felt himself calm down. It was a perfect place to drink beer.

The backyard was a hundred feet wide. Then the forest began. The footsteps were close, and he imagined the kids were directly behind the first stand of trees. He strained his eyes to see them. It was too dark to make out anything but vague shadows.

“This the house?” one of them asked.

“That’s the one,” another replied.

“You positive? I don’t want to hit the wrong one.”

“That’s the one. Fucker’s in there.”

The voices weren’t coming out of kids’ mouths. They were adults, male, and had hints of Spanish accents. They also spoke like tough guys, each syllable laced with a threat. Valentine started to push himself out of his chair and heard it loudly creak.

“What the hell was that?” a third voice said.

“We’ve been made,” a fourth voice said.

“You think so?”

“Shut up,” the first one said.

Valentine felt his heart doing the funny thing it always did when he got scared out of his wits. His gun was in his suitcase on the other side of the house. He could call the police on his cell phone; only, he hadn’t gotten the house’s address from Polly. His earlier conversation with Mabel suddenly hit home.
Stop thinking about Ricky jumping out of the burning hotel
. In other words, look at it like any other crime. Only, he hadn’t, and now he was screwed.

His other option was to run out the front door. It would buy him some time, and right now, he needed as much of that as he could get. He pushed himself out of his rocker and heard his cell phone ring. It was sitting on the side table, and he stared at the illuminated caller ID. Gerry, calling from Gulfport. He cursed silently.

From the woods came whispering. It was in Spanish, and he tried to pick up a few words that he knew. They were debating what to do. They outnumbered him, but no one wanted to go first. He’d never met a tough guy with an ounce of courage, and these jokers were no different.

He looked around the porch for something to defend himself with in case they rushed the house. In the corner sat a mop in a bucket. He’d found other cleaning utensils around the house and guessed the last cleaning person had just up and left. He went and picked up the mop. It had an adjustable handle that allowed the user to squeeze the water out without having to bend over. He had an idea.

He waited until his cell phone stopped ringing, then took the mop and jerked the handle down the throat of the mop two times. He did it hard. It sounded similar to a shotgun being pumped. He walked to the edge of the screen and stared at the spot in the darkened forest where he believed the four Spanish men stood.

“I hear you sons-a-bitches out there,” he called out in his best hillbilly accent. “I’ll shoot the first one of yah that steps foot on my property. You hear me?”

The words almost sounded comical; only, he had a feeling that these guys didn’t know the difference. The question was, would they call his bluff, or would they run? More whispering came out of the trees. He thought about easing backward off the porch and making his way toward the front door, when he heard the men start to walk away. They’d bought the act, hook, line, and sinker. He smiled to himself. He couldn’t wait to tell Mabel about this one.

In the forest he heard a small animal running through the brush. One of the guys said something excitedly in Spanish. His words were followed by the
bang, bang
of a small-caliber firearm. Valentine dropped to the floor.

“Cut that shit out,” the first voice said.

One of the men laughed wickedly.

When they were gone, Valentine ducked inside the house and got his gun from his suitcase. It was a Glock pocket rocket. People who purchased them did so with the intent of carrying them around. He needed to start doing that, or go home and enter the shuffleboard league near his house. He ventured outside the front door and got the flashlight from the trunk of his Honda. It was the kind favored by foot cops, and big enough to double as a weapon.

He walked around the house and into the backyard. It was peaceful again, and he walked to the forest with the gun’s barrel aimed at the shadows. Entering the darkness, he flicked the flashlight on and saw its yellow beam cut a wide swath in the brush. He found the footpath and walked down it, trying to make as little noise as possible.

He found the dead rabbit in the middle of the path. Its body was still warm, and he examined the entry point of the bullet. It had gone through the back of the neck and was small enough to be a .22. Tough guys didn’t carry. 22s. Kids did.

He felt the air trapped in his lungs escape. Had they been planning to rob the house? That was the logical explanation, and he decided to go with it. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be careful. Arming himself was a good start.

The next morning, he awoke at dawn, just like he had every day of his adult life. Splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth, then threw on last night’s clothes and went outside.

It was always coldest before dawn and there was frost on the grass. He went into the garage and found a shovel propped against the wall. Going into the forest, he found the rabbit just as he’d left it. He lifted its limp body with the shovel.

He found a shady spot in the backyard and laid the rabbit down. Then he dug a hole a few feet down. The ground was hard and unforgiving, and sweat dotted his brow. The older he’d gotten, the more he’d come to appreciate the sanctity of life, even that of dumb animals.
Stupid damn kids,
he thought.

He laid the rabbit in the hole and covered it with dirt. With the toes of his shoes, he patted the mound down, then found a stick in the forest that resembled a cross. He plunged the stick into the mound, crossed himself, and went back inside the house.

10

R
ising before dawn, Ricky Smith threw on a track suit and headed out the door, his trusty Doberman by his side, the dog enjoying this new habit his master had acquired. His name was Thor, and although he technically belonged to Ricky’s ex-wife, Thor had run away from her and back to Ricky so many times that she’d given up trying to make any claims on him. “Keep him!” she’d screamed into the phone the last time they’d spoken. Ricky had hung up, laughing his head off.

His feet quickly found the familiar trail through the woods, the matted leaves glistening from yesterday’s rain. Right after he’d come back from Las Vegas he’d started jogging, determined to shed the extra fifty pounds he’d been lugging around since high school. He’d started out slow, huffing and puffing, but after a few days tiny wings had sprung from his heels, allowing him to keep up with Thor’s medium-paced trot.

Hank Ridley’s woods backed up onto Ricky’s two acres, and as Ricky jogged down the path, Ridley’s falling-down barn became visible through the trees. A chemical in the shingles made them glow under the sunlight, and Ricky saw his rotund neighbor coming around the path, a joint palmed in his hand. Hank’s dog, a shaggy mutt named Buster, exploded through the trees and stopped dead upon seeing Thor. The two dogs sniffed tails, checking out what the other had for dinner, then started wagging.

“Morning, Hank,” Ricky said. Wherever Hank went, an aromatic fog of marijuana followed. He’d never been arrested, nor asked to curb his egregious behavior, and Ricky was one of the few in town who knew why: Hank’s family still held the lease on the land on which the police department was built.

“Morning, Ricky,” Hank said, exhaling a blue cloud. “How’s the rat race?”

Hank did not read the paper or watch TV and, like Roland, knew nothing of Ricky’s recent good fortune. It had kept their relationship normal, and Ricky said, “Not so bad. Yourself?”

“Can’t complain. Ever read any Walt Whitman?”

“Just
Leaves of Grass
back in junior high.”

“Didn’t make much of an impression, huh?” The joint dropped from Hank’s hand, and he ground it into the wet path. In Hank’s world there were people who read poetry and those who didn’t. “Didn’t know if you’d heard the latest, but we’ve got a new neighbor.”

“Someone rented the Muller place?”

“Yeah. Guy named Tony Valentine. Rumor is, he’s a retired cop writing his memoirs.”

The wind was blowing easterly, carrying the pungent smell of Hank’s breath away. Slippery Rock’s grapevine had many drums, and strangers didn’t stay that way very long.

“You talk to him?”

“Naw, but your ex has. She rented him the house.”

Ricky was getting cold standing still, the sun hanging like an ornament in the crisp blue sky. Talking about Polly always put him in a funk, and he shrugged. Hank snapped his fingers, and Buster exploded out of a bush, all out of breath.

“I’ll keep you posted once I find out what he’s up to.”

“You think he’s up to something?” Ricky asked.

“Why the hell else would someone come to Slippery Rock?”

“Thanks, Hank.”

Ricky took a long cut home, his legs having grown stiff from standing too long. He ran down a seldom used path, the steep descent made treacherous by the wet leaves. Clumps of mud flew up from his heels, and he found himself surfing down the hill with Thor by his side. At its bottom, he hung a sharp left and got onto a paved road.

A minute later he passed the old Muller place. A beat-up Honda Accord with Florida plates was parked in the drive. It was early May, and from what he’d seen on the Weather Channel, the weather in Florida was letter perfect. Slippery Rock was anything but perfect, with lots of rain and leftover cold winter air. Hank was right. It was a strange time of year for someone from Florida to be visiting.

Only after he had showered and was drinking coffee at the nook in his kitchen did Ricky give it any more thought. Polly had obviously checked the guy out. She checked out all her potential clients. If she thought Valentine was snooping around, would she have deliberately rented him a house nearby?

Going to his study, he booted up the computer on his desk and got on the Internet. He went to Ask Jeeves, typed in Valentine’s name, then hit Search. A split second later, he was staring at a menu of Internet articles that included Valentine’s name. The first item immediately caught his eye. The guy had a Web site called Grift Sense.

Ricky went onto the site. Valentine ran a consulting business and helped casinos around the world catch cheaters. The site included articles he’d written for
Casino Times
on the subject and a long list of satisfied clients. Ricky leaned back in his chair. The Mint had sent Valentine to Slippery Rock, convinced Ricky had cheated them.

“Thanks, Polly,” he said.

The alarm clock in the kitchen buzzed. He went and turned it off, then fiddled with the radio on the kitchen table until he found WADU. He pumped up the volume as they played a roadhouse boogie of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Love Struck Baby,” the supercharged twelve-bar shuffles getting Ricky’s toe tapping. WADU was public, and therefore at the mercy of those who gave it money. Upon receiving Ricky’s promise of a generous donation, the station manager had been more than willing to review a list of his “favorite artists” as well as the “time of day” that Ricky usually tuned in. According to a blurb he’d seen in the paper, the station had put out a call for Stevie Ray’s old bootlegs. He could hardly wait to see what they turned up.

Thor came into the kitchen followed by Miss Marples. She, too, had refused his ex’s company, tearing up so much furniture that Polly had appeared on his doorstep one day and handed her over, not a word spoken. Miss Marples was old and slept in most mornings, asking to be fed whenever she awakened, and Ricky opened the fridge and got the Friskies Senior dinner that was precut into bite-size pieces. The cat rubbed against his legs and arched its back.

With a soft moan, Thor settled down in the corner. Miss Marples usually left food, which ended up in Thor’s stomach. Ricky slid into the nook with his cup of coffee in one hand, the cat food in the other. Putting his cup down, he slid the food onto his ex’s former spot, then slapped his hand on the table, indicating it was okay for Miss Marples to come up. With age had come bad hips, and Miss Marples hit the table edge with her belly, her back end dangling in space. Ricky lifted her onto the table, where she promptly knocked over his coffee.

He watched the steaming black liquid sweep toward him. He had nothing to stop it with, and not enough time to get out of the way. Just a split second, really, so he sat very still and watched the coffee split into two distinct streams as it hit a bulge in the table and poured down the floor to either side of him. Not a drop touched his left leg, nor his right. The cat, who had not touched her food, stared at him quizzically.

Lucky me,
he thought.