“Sounds like a plan,” Gerry said.
Davis got out and silently shut the door.
Gerry climbed across the front seats. Growing up a cop’s son, he knew that there was a science to handling a bust. If the bust was to go right, the first few seconds of the suspect learning his freedom was about to be taken away were critical. Anything could happen if the arresting officer didn’t handle the suspect properly. Gerry got behind the wheel and found the switch for the headlights.
Then he watched Abruzzi. The mobster had fired up a cigarette and was blowing smoke out his window. Davis came up to the window and identified himself as a police officer, then ordered Abruzzi to step out of the car while keeping his hands visible. Stepping back, Davis made the okay sign to Gerry.
Gerry hit the headlights and flooded the Audi in light.
Abruzzi didn’t get out. Instead, he stuck his head through the open window and started talking. He was playing dumb, and Gerry guessed this was where he’d gotten the nickname the Clown. Davis again ordered him out of the car.
Abruzzi kept up the idiot routine, and Gerry found himself thinking how Abruzzi had approached them with the instructions. It had allowed him to see what he was up against, and Gerry sensed Abruzzi was going to put up a fight. Gerry flashed the car’s brights, and Davis glanced in his direction.
“What?” Davis said loudly.
“Signal 30,” Gerry called out.
A Signal 30 was used by the Atlantic City police dispatchers when there was trouble and they needed to round up officers.
“I won’t say it again,” Davis said to Abruzzi. “Out of the car.”
“All right already,” Abruzzi said.
Quickly drawing a gun from a hiding place in his door, Abruzzi fired it at Davis, a sharp bang! ripping the night air. Davis instinctively went backward, the bullet from Abruzzi’s gun taking out the headlight of a car parked across the street. Twisting his ankle, Davis fell to the pavement, and lay on his side with a dazed look in his eyes.
“Throw your gun away,” Abruzzi said.
“You’re under arrest.”
“Like hell I am. Throw it away or I’ll clip you.”
Davis reluctantly tossed his Glock across the macadam.
“You’re real smart for a spade,” Abruzzi said sarcastically.
Gerry sensed that Abruzzi was going to shoot Davis in cold blood, then drive away. Abruzzi had sized them up. Davis was the threat, and Gerry wasn’t.
Gerry twisted the key in the ignition and heard the Mustang’s engine roar. Abruzzi jerked his head and stared just as Gerry threw the Mustang into drive.
Big mistake, Gerry thought.
Gerry hit the rear of the Audi doing forty-five mph, throwing it into the street. The impact, making a horrible crunching sound, buckled the Mustang’s hood, and a mushroom cloud of black smoke hung ominously above the vehicle. Getting out, Gerry went to where Davis lay, saw a dark pool of blood swelling around the detective, and gagged.
“Jesus Christ, you’re shot,” Gerry said.
“I don’t feel shot.” Davis touched his back, then brought his hand to his face. It was covered with red, and he grimaced.
“Go make sure Abruzzi’s disarmed,” he said.
“But you’re bleeding, Eddie.”
“Just do as I say,” Davis said.
Gerry ran over to the Audi. It no longer looked like a fancy forty-thousand-dollar sports car. The driver’s seat was empty, the windshield disintegrated. Twenty feet up the street Abruzzi lay on the pavement with his head twisted at an unnatural angle. He’d killed a mobster. A mobster. Gerry staggered backward.
“Gerry!” Davis yelled at the top of his lungs.
“What…?”
“Don’t pass out on me, man.”
“He’s dead….”
“Stop looking at him.”
Gerry turned his gaze from the dead man and filled his lungs with air.
“Was there a police scanner inside the car?” Davis asked.
Gerry took a deep breath, tried to collect his wits, then went to the Audi, looked inside the crumpled car. An upside-down police scanner sat on the passenger seat, the multicolored lights on its control panel flashing wildly. Frantic voices came out of its speaker. The guy’s partners inside the casino had heard the collision.
Gerry went back to where Davis lay on the pavement.
“Scanner’s there,” he said.
“Get on my cell phone, and call Joey inside the casino,” Davis said. “Tell him to grab the guy’s partners. Joey’s number is in the phone’s menu.”
The pool of blood around Davis’s body was expanding. The detective’s voice sounded perfectly normal, but Gerry knew that people could get shot and never feel it. He ran back to the Mustang and pulled the car’s radio off the dashboard while praying it still worked. There was a crackle of static and a dispatcher came on.
“Officer down,” Gerry said. “I have an officer down.”
11
Valentine was sound asleep when the phone rang the next morning. He fumbled with the receiver, a word resembling hello spilling out of his mouth.
“You up?” Bill Higgins asked.
“I was writing my memoirs,” Valentine mumbled.
“I heard what happened last night. Are you okay?”
“My neck’s a little sore, but I’ll live.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Face to face,” Bill said. “Not over the phone.”
Before going to sleep, Valentine had shut the room’s curtains and turned the air-conditioning down to its coldest setting. Snuggled beneath the blankets was the place to be, and his body was fighting to go back to sleep.
“How about lunch?”
“How about right now?” Bill snapped.
Valentine opened his eyes and stared at the imaginary face of Bill hovering on the ceiling. One of his best friends, Bill was also director of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, and the most powerful law enforcement officer in the state of Nevada. Bill didn’t have to ask nicely if he didn’t want to.
“You’re sure this can’t wait?”
“George Scalzo sent those hitmen last night.”
“Who told you that?”
“The FBI are wiretapping Scalzo’s phones and over heard him putting out the contract. He did it in code, though, so they can’t arrest him.”
The FBI ran a special operation in Las Vegas that did nothing but try to prevent contract killings. Murder-for-hire was prevalent in Sin City, and the bureau paid snitches to keep their ears to the ground to hear when a contract came up.
“Scalzo doesn’t give up easily,” Bill went on. “Mark my words, he’s going to hire someone else to kill you.”
Valentine’s eyes had shut as his head sunk deeper into his pillow. Thirty more minutes of blessed sleep was all he wanted. “I’ll change rooms and grow a moustache.”
“Tony, I want to discuss this with you,” Bill said, growing agitated. “It’s my responsibility to make sure nothing happens to you while you’re in Las Vegas. I hired you for this job, remember?”
His eyes remained shut. Thirty years ago, having two guys try to kill him would have resulted in a sleepless night. He’d had a wife and a kid and a mortgage to worry about. But time had changed his situation: his wife was dead, the house sold, and Gerry a grown man. Being threatened didn’t have the same consequences anymore.
“I get it. This is one of those cover-your-ass phone calls.”
“Eight-fifteen in front of your hotel,” Bill said. “Be there.”
Bill’s shining Volvo C70 convertible was parked by the entrance when Valentine stepped through the hotel’s front doors thirty minutes later. Bill had driven Volvos well before they’d become fashionable, claiming that Swedish engineering and Native American sensibilities shared a lot in common. He sat behind the wheel, his protruding chin marred by random specks of gray. Valentine climbed in and they sped away.