Valentine threw a handful of sand in his face. Little Hands ducked it, but not the kick that followed. It caught him squarely in the groin. Little Hands went down on one knee, and as Valentine tried to deliver an other kick, grabbed his foot out of the air, gave it a twist, and shoved him away. Valentine flew back but managed to stay on his feet. The blonde reappeared at the top of the sand trap.
“I called the police on my cell phone,” she called down. “They’re coming.”
“Run!” Valentine yelled back at her.
“I can’t leave you here,” she said.
“Do as I say.”
Little Hands got to his feet. Valentine went into a crouch, putting himself between the woman and Little Hands.
“They ever figure out what’s wrong with you?” Valentine asked him.
Little Hands flexed his arms. “I’m going to mutilate you.”
“It was something to do with your mother, wasn’t it?”
“Shut up!” Little Hands said.
“Now, I remember. When you were a little kid, you saw her screwing a guy wearing a fireman’s hat, and never got over it.”
Little Hands charged him. Valentine adroitly stepped to one side and kicked him in the knee. Little Hands went down again. Valentine kept his distance, still crouching.
“I always have sex wearing a fireman’s hat,” Valentine said.
Little Hands tried to shake the image from his head. His mother on all fours on the bed, the fireman doing her from behind with the red hat perched on his head. Like his mother wasn’t worth hanging around for. In the distance, he heard a siren.
He slowly stood up. It occurred to him that he might kill Valentine, but wouldn’t get away with it. The police were already too close. He thought of the ninety-seven hundred in the bag, and the new life that awaited him south of the border. Pointing his finger at Valentine, he said, “I swear to God I’ll get you one day. And your girl friend. I’ll get both of you. That’s a promise you can take to the bank.”
Little Hands turned around, and scampered out of the sand trap.
Gloria ran to Valentine’s side, and threw her arms around him. “Oh my God, Tony, that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Valentine held her while watching Little Hands run. The siren that had driven him away was starting to fade, and wasn’t coming their way. He thought about Little Hands’s threat and looked at Gloria. “If I ask you to do something, will you do it?”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Stay here until I call you.”
“Of course.”
He went to the toppled golf cart. There was a driver lying across the backseat, which Rufus had loaned him. He clutched the driver between his hands.
As Valentine came out of the sand trap, he saw Little Hands climbing into his golf cart. The guy had more muscle than anyone he’d ever seen. So much so, that he probably thought nothing could harm him. He imagined Little Hands showing up on his doorstep someday, or worse, on Gloria’s doorstep. Showing up and ruining their lives. That wasn’t going to happen if he could have a say in the matter.
He ran up to Little Hands’s cart just as it started to pull away. Swung the driver like it was a baseball bat and he was trying to knock one clean out of the park. Little Hands glanced sideways at him with a look of disbelief on his face. Like he hadn’t expected an old guy to move so fast.
The driver hit Little Hands a few inches above his nose. It snapped his head straight back, and Little Hands jerked the wheel to his right, going off the trail and directly into a palm tree. Little Hands flew out of the cart and hit the tree as well.
Valentine approached him, the driver still clutched in his hands. Little Hands lay on his back, blood pouring out of his ears and nose and mouth. Beside him was a paper bag filled with money. The wind had picked it up, and hundred-dollar bills blew across the golf course. Little Hands’s eyelids fluttered; he looked up at Valentine and weakly shook his head.
“I should have quit when I was ahead,” he whispered.
Then he shut his eyes and died.
43
Karl Jasper was standing on the balcony of George Scalzo’s suite, sweating through his five-thousand-dollar Armani suit.
He’d woken up that morning and flipped on the TV to CNN like he always did, then found himself staring at stark images of a gigantic bust taking place in Atlantic City. A perky newscaster had identified those being arrested as “known associates of George Scalzo, reputed head of the New Jersey Mafia” and described the bust as the largest in Atlantic City’s history. The newscaster also said that an arrest warrant had been issued for Scalzo. Jasper had run upstairs to Scalzo’s suite and found the old mobster flying around in a rage. Scalzo had also seen the news, and they’d gone onto the balcony, and Jasper had tried to talk Scalzo into turning himself over to the authorities.
“Never!” Scalzo screamed at him.
“Come on,” Jasper begged.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Do it for the tournament. For me.”
Scalzo grabbed Jasper by the throat and thrust his weight against him, and for a moment it had felt like they were both going over the railing. “For you? You think I care about you or your fucking tournament?”
Jasper pushed him away. Other hotel guests were watching from their balconies, and he straightened his jacket and tie. “If you won’t do it for me, then do it for your nephew. If they arrest you, the police will want to talk to Skip as well. He’ll have to withdraw from the tournament.”
“So what?” Scalzo bellowed at him.
“You don’t care if your nephew goes down?”
“He’s not going down,” Scalzo said. “He’s leaving with me and Guido. We’re getting out of Las Vegas, is what we’re doing.”
“Have you talked with him about this?”
“Why should I?”
“What if he doesn’t want to go? He’s the tournament leader.”
Scalzo pounded his chest with both fists like a cave man. “Skipper does what I tell him. He’s leaving with me. Understand?”
Jasper nodded stiffly. There was no use arguing with a maniac.
“In two hours, I want you to drive me, Skipper, and Guido to a little airport on the outskirts of town,” Scalzo said. “We’re going to take a charter plane to Los Angeles, and from there, a private yacht to Central America. Just give me two hours to make the necessary arrangements. You drive us to the airport, and we’ll disappear.”
“At least let your nephew play before you leave,” Jasper said.
“Why should I?”
“Because he’s a goddamn celebrity, that’s why,” Jasper said. “The more air time he has, the better the tournament does.”
Scalzo stuck his chin out defiantly. “Okay.”
Jasper looked at his watch. “I need to run. I’ll see you downstairs.”
Jasper turned to open the slider. Scalzo’s hand came down hard on his shoulder, and he felt the old mobster’s breath on his ear.
“You’d better not mess this up,” Scalzo said.
Jasper felt himself stiffen. A shift had occurred, and he hadn’t even realized it. He was in charge now, with Scalzo’s fate in his hands.
“You have nothing to worry about,” Jasper said.
At twenty minutes to nine, Skip DeMarco came out of his bedroom. Normally his uncle came to his room before he went downstairs to play, and they went through their little routine. But today his uncle hadn’t shown, leaving DeMarco to dress without his uncle appraising his selection of clothes.
“Hey Skipper,” he heard a voice say.
“That you, Guido?”
His uncle’s bodyguard grunted in the affirmative.
“It doesn’t sound like you,” DeMarco said. “What happened to your voice?”
Guido’s big feet scuffed the carpet as he crossed the suite. “I hurt my nose,” he explained.
Guido had been his uncle’s bodyguard for twenty years; a more loyal employee you’d never find. But that loyalty came with a price. When his uncle lost his temper and flew into a rage, Guido’s role changed, and he became a whipping boy.
“He smack you in the face again?” DeMarco asked.
“Couple of times,” Guido grunted.
“What did you do this time?”
“I woke him up with bad news.”
“It must have been real bad.”