The wall clock said eleven o’clock. That didn’t seem real. He’d arrived at noon, and had been talking with Jack for most of the day. It was strange that the debacle at Caesars hadn’t come up before now; it had been the first and last time they’d tried to scam a casino together.
Gerry had been eighteen at the time. His father was a detective with the Atlantic City Police Department, and had been assigned to protect the island’s twelve casinos. His father knew more scams and greasy hustles than anyone around, and as a result, Gerry overheard a lot. One night, while his parents were doing the dishes, his father had told his mother that Caesars had seen a rash of marked cards called luminous readers. These cards could only be read by someone wearing glasses or contact lenses outfitted with special infrared material. Gerry, who’d been in the next room watching TV, immediately ran upstairs and called Jack on the phone.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Gerry told him.
Jack found an optometrist in town willing to fit him with special contact lenses to read luminous paint. The lenses were difficult to see through, and Jack spent several days walking around wearing them. When he stopped bumping into things, he called Gerry on the phone and told him he was ready to scam Caesars.
That night, Gerry drove Jack to Caesars in his father’s car. The casino was a replica of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only smaller and not nearly as opulent. Nothing in Atlantic City was as opulent as Las Vegas, yet it hadn’t stopped the place from making billions of dollars a year.
Caesars sat on Atlantic Avenue. Gerry pulled the car in front, and watched Jack put drops into his eyes, then pop the contact lenses in. Too many cops in Atlantic City knew Gerry, and he couldn’t walk into a casino without someone recognizing him. So, it was up to Jack to rip off the place.
“Good luck,” Gerry said.
“This is going to be like stealing candy from a baby,” Jack said.
Jack got out of the car, and walked across Caesars’ promenade. The place was fancy, with lots of nude statues and gushing water fountains. Jack walked directly into the largest fountain, his body flipping over the metal railing and going headfirst into the water. He had not practiced with the lenses at night, and was almost blind.
Gerry jumped out of the car and saved his friend from drowning, but not without getting collared by casino security, and by a cop for leaving his car illegally parked. When neither authority liked the bullshit story Gerry concocted to explain what had happened, his father was summoned. It had been a long night.
That had been many years ago. Now it seemed funny as hell, but the truth was, they could have both ended up in jail. That was how Gerry saw his past now; there were consequences for breaking the law. Getting married and having a baby had changed his perspective.
Gerry pressed the elevator button while holding the sodas and sandwiches against his chest. The hospital was quiet, and he waited while humming a song he couldn’t get out of his head. Finally he decided to take the stairs.
The stairwell had a dank smell. Halfway up, he heard footsteps, and looked up to see an Italian guy about his age coming down. The guy was dressed in black, had pocked skin and wore a scowl on his face. Normally, Italians were hospitable to other Italians. This guy wasn’t, and grunted under his breath when Gerry said hello.
“Suit yourself,” Gerry said when the guy was gone.
A minute later he walked into Jack’s room. The monitor next to Jack’s bed was beeping, and the oxygen tube that had been attached to his friend’s nose had been ripped out, and lay on the floor. Jack lay with his arms by his side, his chest violently heaving.
“Jack!”
Gerry hit the red emergency button on the wall to summon the nurses. He stared at the monitor; Jack’s oxygenation had fallen below 80 percent. He put his face a foot from his friend’s.
“Who did this?”
Jack’s eyes snapped open. “Hitman...”
“Hitman for who?”
“Guys I taught scam...”
“Why? You can’t hurt them.”
“Afraid I’d squeal...”
“Squeal about what?”
Jack’s hand came out from beneath the sheet. Clutched between his trembling fingers was a playing card. Gerry took the card: It was an ace of spades from the Celebrity Casino in Las Vegas.
“Is this part of the poker scam?”
Right then two nurses ran into the room. They pushed Gerry away from the hospital bed as they worked to get Jack’s oxygen intake back to normal. It was at that moment that Gerry noticed that the canvas bag underneath Jack’s bed was gone. He shouldered his way between the nurses and lowered his face next to Jack’s.
“What’s the scam?” Gerry whispered.
Something resembling a smile crossed Jack Donovan’s face, like he was happy to have pulled Gerry back into the fold. But then the look was replaced by one of pure fear.
“Tell me,” Gerry said.
Jack’s mouth moved up and down.
“I... so...”
“You so what?”
“I... so...”
“Come on.”
“Bye... Gerry.”
Jack’s mouth stopped moving. And then he stopped breathing. Jack had accepted that he was dying, and he had asked his friends to accept it as well. Gerry had tried, yet it didn’t make it any easier now that it had actually happened. He bowed his head and wept.
2
Tony Valentine could feel his son’s eyes burning his face. He knows the news isn’t good, Valentine thought. Still, it didn’t make this any easier. Hanging up the phone, Tony sat down on the couch beside his son. He put his hand on Gerry’s arm.
“The police are ruling it a suicide,” he said.
“What? What are they smoking?”
“I’m sorry, Gerry, but all the evidence is pointing that way.”
“For Christ’s sake, Pop, don’t take the company line on this.” Gerry put his bottled water on the coffee table in his father’s living room. “Jack was murdered. Take my word for it. I was there in the goddamn room.”
Eight days had passed since Jack Donovan’s death in the intensive care unit of the Atlantic City Medical Center. After Jack had been buried, Gerry had come home and asked his father to ride the coattails of the homicide detectives working the case. Still having juice with the Atlantic City Police Department, Valentine had obliged his son.
“Gerry, the only evidence you have is a suspicious-looking guy in the stairwell,” Valentine said. “The nurses are saying that Jack talked about ending his life when things got bad. Maybe that’s what he did.”
Indignation rose in his son’s face. “Jack was in the middle of telling me about this poker scam. Said it was the greatest thing since the baloney sandwich. I left, and that guy came into the room and pulled Jack’s tubes and beat on Jack’s chest. Jack said he was a hitman.”
“The police checked Jack’s room for fingerprints. The only prints besides Jack’s and the nurses’ were yours.”
“The police also found a pair of rubber gloves in the garbage pail by the door,” his son said. “The guy was a pro.”
“There isn’t any proof, Gerry.”
“What about the playing card Jack gave me? Isn’t that evidence?”
It was like déjà vu all over again. Valentine had examined Jack’s playing card for hours, found nothing, then sent it to an FBI forensic lab in Langley, Virginia, where he had a friend. All the tests had come back negative.
“The FBI didn’t find anything, Gerry. The card is normal.”