“Who is this?”
“My name’s Tony Valentine.”
A short silence, then, “There was a cop in Atlantic City named Tony Valentine. A real prick, if I remember.”
“That’s me,” Valentine said.
The hallways in casino hotels were the longest hallways in the world, and Valentine beat a path to DeMarco’s room while smothering a yawn. He’d been going nonstop all day, and the three-hour jet lag was starting to wear on him. That was one of the tough things about getting old. You no longer told your body what to do. Your body told you.
DeMarco was staying at the hallway’s end. Valentine rapped on the door, and stepped back so the person on the other side could see him through the peephole. He heard the door being unlatched, then saw a bodyguard dressed in black standing before him.
“You Valentine?” the bodyguard asked.
Hoods had a tendency to ask ridiculously stupid questions, and Valentine had discovered that he couldn’t answer them without insulting someone. He handed the guy his business card. The bodyguard stared at it in a way that suggested his inability to read had driven him from seeking a higher education, and motioned him inside.
DeMarco was staying in a high-roller suite, and Valentine entered a large living area with ornate furniture that looked straight out of Buckingham Palace and with a view of the city that matched anything he’d ever seen. He wondered how DeMarco rated such digs, as he knew that hotels did not normally rent their high-roller pads, preferring to offer them as freebies to their best customers, called whales. In all his years in the business, he’d never heard of a single poker player getting this kind of treatment.
“You must be Valentine,” a voice said.
An older Italian guy with slicked back hair stood by the window, gazing at him through the reflection. Stocky, about five ten, wearing black slacks and a flowing black shirt that hid his paunch, hands festooned with gold jewelry, mouth retracted in permanent distaste. Valentine assumed this was the Tuna and nodded, then placed the bag of insulin on a chair.
“It probably went bad, you know,” the Tuna said.
He still hadn’t turned around, preferring to let Valentine see the back of his head.
“What went bad?” Valentine asked.
“My nephew’s insulin.”
“I kept it cold for you,” Valentine said.
Valentine could see the Tuna’s face in the reflection. He look surprised.
“I appreciate that,” the Tuna said. “You like something to drink?”
“A glass of water would be fine.”
“You on duty?”
Valentine realized the Tuna thought he was still a cop.
“I’m retired. I don’t drink the hard stuff.”
The Tuna nodded that this was acceptable, then snapped his fingers. The bodyguard went to the bar, which was filled with bottles of top shelf brands. He poured a Scotch for his boss and a glass of tap water for his guest, then delivered them to the two men. The Tuna turned around but remained by the window, as if getting too close to a cop, even a retired one, was not anything he planned on doing in this lifetime.
“Salute,” he said, raising his glass.
Valentine raised his glass and took a sip. He could hear someone in the next room, and glanced over his shoulder through an open door. Skip DeMarco was standing in the next room with his shirt off. He was built like a martial artist, his body lean and sinewy, and he practiced his exercises in slow motion, his movements quick and fluid. Valentine stared at the ugly red scars that marred his arms and chest and spoiled his otherwise perfect physique. He’d seen scars like that before, when he’d been an undercover cop assigned to narcotics in Atlantic City. He’d seen them on little kids whose parents were crackheads. They were cigarette burns. He shifted his gaze to the Tuna, and lowered his glass.
“You once threw me out of a casino in Atlantic City,” the Tuna said.
“When was this?”
“June 7, 1987.”
Valentine tried to remember the incident, but came up blank. The Tuna was good at reading faces, and said, “You said I was an undesirable. You let the niggers and Spics into the casinos, but not me. I always resented that.”
Valentine had heard a lot of hoods use this argument, as if blacks and Hispanics were some social yardstick by which acceptance should be measured, instead of who you were, and what you’d done.
“Just doing my job,” Valentine said.
The Tuna twirled the ice cubes in his drink. “I had you checked out after that. You know, we’re alike in a lot of ways.”
Valentine didn’t think the Tuna could have insulted him any worse than he just had. Nothing about them was alike; not one damn thing.
“How so?”
“We’re Sicilian. Both our fathers were immigrants; both came through Ellis Island. You had a tough upbringing, so did I. You know anything about Sicily’s history?”
Valentine decided to indulge him and nodded.
“For hundreds of years, the Italians treated us like dogs. The island was lawless, people were poor, there was no electricity, no running water, and no one in Rome gave a rat’s ass. Only one thing kept Sicily from falling apart. The dons. They were the law, and everyone respected them.”
“Do you see yourself like a don?” Valentine asked.
The Tuna downed his drink. “Yeah, I do.”
As a child, Valentine’s father had told him about the Sicilian dons who’d traveled to Rome during the early 1900s, and convinced Italy’s leaders to give Sicily food and money to keep its people alive. For the Tuna to liken himself to those men was like comparing the Sistine Chapel to an outhouse.
“Afraid I don’t see it that way,” Valentine said.
“You don’t?”
“No. Those dons saved lives. You destroyed them.”
An ice cube spilled out of his host’s drink. He came forward very quickly, halving the distance between them. But that was as far as he came. Valentine held his ground.
“This isn’t Atlantic City,” the Tuna said. “You watch yourself, Valentine, you hear me?”
Valentine realized he was being threatened, and again found himself looking at the ornate furnishings. DeMarco was getting the royal treatment, which meant that either he, or his uncle, had juice with someone.
“Thanks for the drink and the fun conversation,” Valentine said.
The Tuna turned to the bodyguard. “Guido.”
The bodyguard was standing behind the bar with a bored look on his face.
“Yes, Mr. Scalzo,” he said.
“Throw this asshole out of here.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Scalzo.”
Guido came around from behind the minibar and dropped a massive paw on Valentine’s shoulder. Valentine guessed it was his gray hair, or maybe that he’d said he was retired, that had gotten Guido to drop his guard. He kicked Guido in the instep, a spot that people who practiced judo called a vital point. Guido grunted and began to hop around on one leg. Valentine kicked him again, this time in the ass. He put a lot behind the kick, and Guido hurtled across the room, his arms flapping like he was trying to fly.
“What’s going on?” a voice said.
DeMarco appeared in the open doorway separating the rooms, a towel draped across his glistening torso, his walking cane clutched in his right hand. The two men collided with a bang of heads, and DeMarco hit the floor hard.
“Skipper!”
The Tuna ran across the room to his nephew’s aid. Kneeling, he cradled DeMarco’s head in his arms. When he looked up at Valentine, there were tears in his eyes.
“You’ll pay for this,” he said.
32
It was late, and Mabel was still in the office when Tony’s phone rang. One week of mindless inactivity aboard the Love Boat had turned her brain to mush, and when Tony’s computer had frozen right before quitting time, she’d found herself on the phone with a polite but utterly worthless support technician in New Delhi trying to fix it. She’d wanted Tony to get rid of his desktop in favor of a notebook computer, but was now grateful for the bulkier model. It was less tempting to throw out the window.