“No, it’s not,” his son said. “Remember that scam you told me about at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas? Major Riddle, the owner, lost his casino to a poker scam that one of his dealers pulled off. How long did the police examine those cards?”
“Two weeks,” his father said.
“And the cards came up clean,” Gerry said. “Then they sent them to you, and what did you find? The cheaters used an X-acto knife to draw tiny lines on the faces of all the high cards. The dealer felt when high cards were going to Major Riddle, and he signaled the other players.”
“What does that have to do with this case, Gerry?”
“I’m saying that stuff gets missed. If Jack said that card was marked, then it was marked. You have to ask the Atlantic City police to start over.”
Valentine blew out his cheeks. He’d already called in a bunch of favors with the police in his hometown; any more and he might start losing friends. It didn’t help matters that Jack Donovan had been a scammer and had been run in many times.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Valentine said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’m running out of options, Gerry.”
“Come on, Pop. I’m begging you.”
Valentine stared at the videotapes stacked next to his VCR/DVD player. He was on monthly retainer for dozens of casinos, and every day got a videotape from a client who thought his casino had been ripped off. He’d been neglecting his work to help Gerry, and couldn’t continue to ignore his customers without it affecting his income.
“I’m trying, Gerry,” he said.
His son pushed himself off the couch and walked out of the house.
Valentine believed that food was the antidote for most things that ailed you. Fixing two ham-and-Swiss-cheese sandwiches, he poured some potato chips onto the plates, stuck two cans of soda into his pockets, and went out the back door to where Gerry stood, smoking a cigarette in his postage-size backyard.
“You hungry?”
“No,” his son said.
“I made you a sandwich.”
“Pop, it’s four o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Eat something anyway. It will make you feel better.”
Valentine put the food on the plastic table in his yard, and pulled up two plastic chairs. His son begrudgingly sat down and they began to eat. A few minutes later, Gerry pushed his empty plate to the center of the table, and stared at his father.
“Did I ever tell you that Jack came to Mom’s funeral?”
Valentine was still eating his sandwich, and glanced at his son. His wife had died two weeks after they’d moved to Florida to retire. He’d taken her body back to Atlantic City, and buried her beside her parents. The ceremony was for friends and family, and Valentine was sure Jack Donovan had not been present.
“You could have fooled me.”
“He was in a tree,” Gerry said.
“Hanging out with his friends?”
“I’m being serious, Pop.”
“Why was he doing that?”
“Because cops were there, and Jack was wanted at the time.”
Valentine put his half-eaten sandwich onto his plate. “Why was he at your mother’s funeral, is what I meant.”
“Jack loved Mom, and he loved you.”
Valentine put his elbows on the table, and gave his son a hard look. He’d always considered Jack something of a public menace as well as a bad influence on his son, and had never hidden those feelings. Now he waited for Gerry to explain himself.
“Remember when I was a kid, and the Donovans lived on our block?” his son asked.
“Sure,” Valentine said.
“Mom used to ask Jack down on Christmas day to open presents, and have breakfast with us. Then, around noon, Jack would go back to his house, and open presents with his parents. We did that until the Donovans moved. Remember?”
Valentine nodded.
“When I got older, Jack explained to me that his parents were both drunks, and used to fight in the morning. Christmas day was always bad. He realized that you and Mom invited him down so his Christmas wasn’t spoiled by his parents’ fighting. He loved you guys for that.”
Valentine sipped his soda. His own father had been a drunk, and he’d always felt bad for kids whose parents abused the sauce. He picked up his sandwich, and noticed that an almost invisible line of ants had crawled onto the table, and they were attacking his food. He dropped his sandwich on his plate.
“You know that when Jack got older, he was involved in a lot of bad stuff,” Gerry said. “But what you didn’t know was that Jack protected you, Pop. None of the things he was involved with ever happened when you were on duty. And none of the gangs he ran with ever robbed anybody when you were on duty, either. That was the deal if someone worked with Jack, and he always stuck by it.”
Valentine drummed the table. It would have been a Hallmark moment had Gerry told him that Jack had avoided a life of crime because of the Christmas mornings he’d spent at their house. This revelation was anything but.
“I’m touched,” he said.
“Jack looked out for you, Pop. You should be grateful.”
Valentine found himself wishing he’d arrested the kid and hauled him in front of a judge. That was the type of treatment that usually straightened out the Jack Donovan’s of the world. He walked over to the garbage pails behind his house, and tossed the paper plate with his sandwich. Returning to the table, he said, “I’ll continue to ride the Atlantic City detectives working the case and I’ll continue to examine the evidence. But I can’t promise you anything, Gerry.”
Gerry rose from the table. From his pocket he removed a piece of paper and unfolded it. It was a composite that Gerry had paid a courthouse artist in Atlantic City to draw of the man he’d seen in the hospital stairwell. He handed the drawing to his father.
“Just look at the case some more, Pop, that’s all I’m asking.”
Valentine patted his son on the back. It was tough to lose a childhood friend, harder still when you thought the friend had been murdered.
“I’ll do what I can,” Valentine said.
3
Gerry left, and Valentine went inside and back to work. As he walked through the rooms to his office, he paused to dust off a stack of videotapes. Along with his collection of crooked gambling equipment and books, the house contained his massive library of casino surveillance tapes and DVDs. Twenty-five years of cases were shoved into the dwelling, and every inch of storage space was filled with boxes.
He hadn’t intended for the house to be that way. When he’d retired from the Atlantic City Police Department and moved to Florida two years before, he’d been ready to turn his back on the gambling world. But then his wife had died, and his social life had vanished. His days had turned into treading water. Out of necessity he’d gone back to work and started his consulting business.
His office was in the rear of his house. Normally his office manager, Mabel Struck, was manning the phones, but she had taken a much-deserved vacation, and was cruising the Caribbean. The room felt lonely without her, and he sat at his desk and sorted through the mail.
Today’s batch contained several letters from frantic casino bosses. Every day somewhere a casino got ripped off. Sometimes, an old-fashioned grifter was responsible. In other cases, high-tech whiz kids were using a new gadget to beat the house. In this game of cat-and-mouse, the mouse sometimes won.
As he tore open each envelope, he checked to see if the sender had enclosed a check. That meant they were serious, and not shopping for free advice. Today’s mail had two checks. The first was from a French casino that was losing a few grand a night at baccarat. The second from a Houston oil man who believed he’d been ripped off in a private poker game. Each check was accompanied by a CD on which the sender had recorded the suspected cheater’s play. As Valentine popped the oil man’s CD into his computer, the office phone rang.