“You okay?” his father asked.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Are you sure going to the police is a such good idea?”
His father glared at him. “Sure, I’m sure. Why, you getting cold feet?”
“My friends think Jinky Harris has the police department in his back pocket,” Gerry said. “They don’t think turning ourselves in is such a smart idea.”
His father frowned. It was a look that made Gerry feel ten years old.
“Hoods don’t have police departments in their back pockets,” his father said. “At best, they have a cop they pay off to do them favors. This is the best way to go, trust me.”
“I still think they’re apprehensive,” Gerry said. “These are street guys, Pop.”
“Want me to talk to them?” his father asked.
“Sure. But don’t yell, okay?”
His father got out of the car and gave him a look. Gerry stared at the ground.
“Sorry,” he said.
Cops were pricks, especially the good ones. It wasn’t just what they said, but how they came on to you, rough and hard and full of piss and vinegar. It was the only advantage they had when dealing with lowlifes and scumbags. That veneer didn’t wear off when a cop got older. It sure hadn’t with his old man.
His father slid into the passenger seat of the rental, and faced the Fountain brothers and Frank. For a long moment, his father did nothing but stare at the three men. Gerry stayed outside, listening through the open window.
“Which one of you did the shooting?” his father asked.
Frank raised his hand like a kid in sixth grade. “I did.”
“You ever kill anyone before?”
“In the ring,” Frank said.
“How did it make you feel?”
“Shitty.”
“How about this time?”
“ ’Bout the same,” Frank said.
“Where’s the gun you used?”
Frank took a paper bag off the floor of the backseat and carefully handed it to Valentine. He looked inside the bag, then placed it on the seat. “Here’s the deal,” Valentine said. “We’re going back to Lucky Lou’s, and you’re going to tell the police what happened. I want the cops to know you’re out here, doing a job for me. I know you don’t have police records, but if the Metro Las Vegas sheriff starts digging, he might discover there’s a file on you with the Atlantic City Casino Commission, and that file has you tied to a scam several years ago.” Valentine turned, and glanced out the window at his son. “All of you. So, let’s go back there, and get this settled while we still can. Okay?”
Gerry swallowed the lump rising in his throat. His old man had a sixth sense when it came to knowing all the dumb things he’d done in his life, yet he still stuck with him. He was going to have to remember that when his daughter grew up.
“You’re going to vouch for us, Mr. Valentine?” Vinny asked.
“Isn’t that what I just said?” Valentine snapped.
“I just wanted to be sure.”
Valentine growled at Vinny. Then he took the paper bag off the seat and climbed out of the rental. Valentine crossed the lot and got into his own car without a word. Gerry slid into the rental and looked at his friends.
“Let’s go,” Gerry said.
Expectations and reality were never the same. Expectations took place inside your head, reality on the street. Gerry had expected Lucky Lou’s parking lot to be packed with police cars and an ambulance, but when Vinny pulled into the lot a few minutes later, the place was no different from when they’d left it.
As Vinny drove the rental down the aisle, Gerry saw why. The construction worker’s body was gone. Gerry jumped out, and went to where the construction worker had gone down. There was a pancake-size bloodstain that was slowly blending into the jet black macadam, but otherwise no evidence of what had happened.
Gerry glanced over his shoulder. His father was sitting in his car behind Vinny, his face demanding an explanation. Gerry raised his palms to the sky, then saw a silver-haired security guard speeding toward him in a golf cart. Gerry waved the guard down.
“What’s up?” the guard said, braking the cart.
“Sorry to bother you,” Gerry said, “but we heard some gunshots, and ran over to see what was going on.”
“Gunshots?” The guard tapped the hearing aid in his ear to make sure the battery was working. “There weren’t no gunshots here.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. How many did you hear?”
“Five or six,” Gerry said.
“Five or six? You’re making it sound like this here’s the OK Corral,” the guard said, now sounding annoyed.
“I’m just telling you what we heard.”
“You all heard it?”
“Yeah, didn’t you?”
The guard didn’t like being challenged and picked up the walkie-talkie lying on the dashboard of his cart. “No, I didn’t. Unless you’ve got some business here, I’d suggest you boys get off the premises immediately. Understand?”
Gerry didn’t need another invitation to leave. He walked over to his father’s car and knelt down to his open window. “The body’s gone, and the security guard swears there wasn’t any shoot-out. I honestly don’t know what’s going on, Pop.”
His father tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. The look on his face said he was thinking hard. It was a look that Gerry always identified with hope. Like the time his father had bought him a ten-speed bicycle that had come in pieces through the mail, and needed to be assembled from scratch. His father had read the instructions aloud several times with that same look on his face. The thinking look.
“Get in the car,” his father said.
29
Raising a kid was the hardest thing Valentine had ever done. It wasn’t the discipline of teaching his son right from wrong that he’d found so challenging, or the sense of futility that had come from not succeeding. What had made it hard was the realization that his son was his own person, and could not be molded into the person Valentine wanted him to be.
Because the body of the construction worker was gone from the parking lot, Gerry assumed that the shooting was no longer a problem. He was ready to walk away, and get back to whatever he’d been doing. Valentine knew better. A dead man was always a problem, even if you couldn’t find the body.
“Pop, you can’t be serious,” his son said.
“I’m dead serious,” Valentine said.
“You want us to confess to the police?”
“Yes. That guy’s body is going to turn up.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Valentine blew out his cheeks in exasperation. Sometimes, reasoning with his son was like talking to an atheist about religion. “Think about it, Gerry. Twice today you had guys try to whack you. You kill one of them, and the body disappears. It’s going to turn up, and when it does, it’s going to be tied to you. If you don’t talk to the police before that happens, you and your friends are screwed.”
“We’re screwed if we do talk to the police,” Gerry said. “Frank and Nunzie didn’t graduate high school. Do you honestly think either one of them can keep his story straight? A smart detective will trip them up in five minutes. Then we’ll all be in real hot water.”
Valentine realized that his son had a point. If the Las Vegas police thought Frank or Nunzie were lying, they’d arrest them, and individually interrogate each man until they got a straight story.
“There’s our motel,” Gerry said, pointing up the block. “Why don’t we dump the bag I stole, and talk about this some more?”
Valentine tapped his fingers on the wheel. He hadn’t told his son that he’d seen him rob the Tuna earlier, and now he decided to see how truthful Gerry was being with him.