In the philosophy course he’d read a problem by the French philosopher Descartes that he’d never forgotten. The problem was this: You take your son and his friend to the beach. The two boys go swimming, while you stay on shore. Suddenly, you realize the boys have been pulled out by an undertow and are drowning. The boys are far apart, and as you swim out to rescue them, it becomes apparent only one can be saved. You are responsible for your son’s friend, since you’re the adult in charge, but you’re also responsible for your son, since you’re his father. Who do you save?
According to Descartes, you saved your son.
Descartes’ reasoning was perfectly logical. You might someday forgive yourself for letting the other boy drown, but you would never forgive yourself if your son drowned. It was a lesson that Valentine had never forgotten.
As the Metro Las Vegas Police Department SWAT team entered the warehouse where Gerry and his friends were being held, Valentine ignored the orders of the SWAT team’s commander, and came in behind them. The warehouse smelled of smoke, and he stared at the four burning bodies lying on the floor, the three men tied to chairs, and a man with a horribly damaged face holding a flamethrower. Then his eyes found his son.
Of all the men in the room, Gerry looked to be in the best shape. Gerry hadn’t been badly beaten up, and the look on his son’s face said that his spirits were still intact. The others needed help in one form or another, but Valentine ignored them and ran to his son. He untied the ropes holding Gerry prisoner. His son rose and they hugged each other.
“Go outside and stay with the cops,” Valentine said.
“I need to help my friends,” his son said.
“Just do as I say. I’ll take care of your friends.”
Gerry tried to say something. It was unusual for him to be at a loss for words, and he started to walk to the open door with light streaming through, then turned and walked across the warehouse to one of the burning bodies lying on the floor. Gerry stared down at the corpse and balled his hands into fists.
Valentine came up next to him. “What’s wrong?”
“This is the guy who killed Jack Donovan.”
Valentine looked down at the blackened body and then up into his son’s face. Many times he had heard wronged people say that there was nothing sweeter than revenge, but had never believed it himself. He placed his hand on his son’s shoulder.
“Feel any better?”
“You mean because this bastard’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” Gerry said. “I don’t feel any better at all.”
Gerry walked out of the warehouse, and Valentine untied Vinny and Nunzie from their chairs, and told them to go outside as well. As both men got to their feet, they shook Valentine’s hand and thanked him.
When they were gone, Valentine went over to check on the man with the damaged face. The man had put the flamethrower on the ground, and was standing with his hands against the wall, and his feet spread apart. While one SWAT team member frisked him, a second SWAT team member pointed a rifle at him. The man’s face looked like something out of a horror movie, and he grinned at Valentine.
“Hey, Mr. Valentine, how you doing?”
“Frank? What happened to you?”
“They tried to get me to talk,” Frank said, still grinning.
“You tell them anything?”
“Naw. They would have killed us.”
Valentine immediately understood. Frank had been willing to take the punishment on the slim hope that they’d be rescued. He was as dumb as an ox, but sometimes that was what you needed to survive in this world.
“Let him go,” Valentine said to the SWAT team members.
The man holding the rifle shifted his attention to him.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. He’s one of us.”
The man looked at his partner, who’d finished frisking Frank. Then he lowered his rifle and they both walked away. Valentine went up to Frank and saw him smile. He whacked Frank on the shoulder and the big man winced.
“Not so hard,” Frank said. “That’s my bad arm.”
Valentine led Frank outside and turned him over to a pair of medics who’d come in an ambulance, and were attending to Gerry, Frank, and Nunzie. The medics had already inspected the corpses inside the warehouse, and were happy to have live people to be treating. Valentine walked over to the police van they’d arrived in. Bill Higgins stood beside the van, making a call on his cell phone. Bill had stayed outside with Jinky Harris, who sat in the back of a van in his electric wheelchair. Jinky had started singing like the fat lady in the opera once he’d heard that Detective Hector Frangos had been arrested, and was cooperating with the Metro Las Vegas Police Department.
“Mind if I talk to your prisoner?” Valentine asked.
“Be my guest,” Bill said.
Valentine popped open the van’s back door and climbed in. Jinky’s chair was strapped to the floor of the van with pieces of rope, making him a prisoner. Jinky had the look of a caged rat, and started protesting before Valentine had shut the door.
“Get the hell away from me.”
“Hear me out.”
“No! Get away from me! Hey Higgins, get him away from me!”
Valentine slammed the door, then got down on his haunches and looked at Jinky. “If you had half an ounce of common sense, you’d play ball with me.”
Jinky stared through the van’s tinted window at Bill standing outside, talking on his cell phone. When he realized Bill wasn’t going to save him, he calmed down.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Some straight answers would be nice.”
“I brought you here, didn’t I?”
“That’s a good start.”
“What do I get in return?” Jinky asked.
Valentine glanced at his son and three friends standing outside the van. It was a miracle they hadn’t died, and he wanted Jinky to pay for what he’d done to them. Only Jinky was the key to finding out what was going on at the World Poker Showdown, and he was determined to solve this case. Then he had an idea.
“Come clean with us, and I’ll get Bill Higgins to persuade the prosecutor to cut you a deal.”
The air-conditioning in the van had been shut off and the interior air was warm and sticky. Jinky removed a wadded-up Kleenex from the pocket of his tracksuit and dabbed at his reddening face. “Is that a promise?”
“Yes, it’s a promise.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“How is Skip DeMarco cheating the World Poker Showdown?”
“You think the Tuna told me? Get real.”
“You must have some idea what’s going on.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Jinky said. “The Tuna stole a poker scam from some sick guy in Atlantic City. Nobody knows what the scam is, but it’s supposed to be perfect. No traces, no clues, nothing. There’s only one drawback.”
“What’s that?”
“It can make a person really sick if they don’t handle it right,” Jinky said. “That’s what everyone says, so it must be true.”
Valentine thought back to his meeting with Ray Callahan at the hospital, and how Callahan had stared at the playing card Valentine was carrying in his wallet.
“Is that why two dealers in the tournament collapsed?”
Jinky shrugged. “Could be. Like I said, I don’t know what the scam is.”
“Next question. Why did you try to have my son and his friends killed?”
Jinky dabbed at his face some more. “There’s a lot of mob money being bet on DeMarco to win the tournament. I have nothing against your son and his friends, but when they started screwing with DeMarco, I got told to whack them.”
“By the Tuna.”