"Listen to me and listen good," Valentine said quietly. "I'm going to give you a chance to come clean. I know what's going on, and I think you do, too. Help us, and you won't go to jail."
Nick and Wily were listening intently. Nola looked at them, then back at Valentine. The harsh fluorescent light caught her face at a bad angle, robbing it of all beauty.
"Okay," she mumbled.
"Martini, Joseph, and the Texan are a team, aren't they?"
"Uh-huh."
"They're all reading different dealers, just like Fontaine read you. They're girls you know, and you tipped Fontaine off to the things that turn them on, like cowboy clothes and foreign accents."
"That's right," she mumbled.
"Fontaine slapped you around and put you in that motel, hoping we'd stay away from the casino. With Sammy out of the way, and us across town, he figured he'd have easy pickings."
"Go to the head of the class," she said.
"Which one's Fontaine?"
"The Aussie."
Valentine was stunned. He would have put his money on the pizza king. Sensing his disbelief, she said, "The overbite is a bridge. He made his nose bigger by sticking a piece of plastic tubing up each nostril."
Valentine looked at Nick. "Heard enough?"
Nick bent toward Nola, his face twisted by the grief that only lost love can cause. "You don't love me anymore, do you?"
Nola started to cry. "I used to. I really did."
"But not now?"
"Oh, Nick, don't you get it?" she said. "I'm always going to love you, no matter how much I hate you."
Truer words had never been spoken. Nick embraced her from a crouch, kissing the top of Nola's head as she wept into his chest. Just then, Nick's cell phone rang. He answered it, then handed Valentine the phone.
"Someone's looking for you."
Valentine put the phone to his ear. "Hello?"
"Oh, Tony," he heard Roxanne cry, "I came up to your suite to surprise you, and the phone rang a dozen times so I answered it. It was a woman in New York, Yolanda somebody-or-other."
Valentine felt his stomach turn upside down. Roxanne began to cry hysterically.
"Tony, something terrible has happened to Gerry."
"What?" he said.
Roxanne could not stop crying.
"Sweet Jesus," he said into the phone. "I'll be right up."
Valentine handed Nick the cell phone. "I've got to go."
He started to walk across the surveillance control room, his thoughts a thousand miles away.
"Where the hell are you going?" Nick yelled across the room.
Valentine kept walking. Why hadn't he called the New York police after he'd gotten Gerry's first call? Why hadn't he tried to do something? Why?
"Tony," Nick called after him, "don't do this to me!"
Valentine stopped at the door. He hesitated, then he put his hand firmly on the doorknob.
"Tony-look at me!"
Valentine jerked open the heavy steel door. Glancing back, his eyes met Nick's and he saw pure hatred.
"You Jersey piece of shit!" Nick shouted as Valentine left the surveillance room.
Valentine rode up to his room in an elevator crammed with drunks. In the corner, a man was having a heated discussion with his wife about their current financial situation.
"Give me the money I told you not to give me," the man insisted.
"No," the wife said emphatically.
"Give it to me!"
"No!"
At the sixth floor, the last passenger got off and Valentine rode alone to his suite. His jaw had started throbbing from the punch he'd taken, and he shut his eyes, trying to ignore the pain.
His suite was unlocked, the lights were muted, and vintage Sinatra was playing on the stereo. Two places had been set at the dining-room table. In the table's center, a pair of skinny candles burned seductively.
He found Roxanne on the couch bawling like a baby. She wore a red silk blouse and a leather mini and looked like a supermodel. She'd teased her hair, and a lazy curl formed a question mark on her forehead. Do you dare? it seemed to ask.
"I was going to surprise you," she said with a sniffle as Valentine sat down.
"What happened to my son," he asked quietly.
Roxanne put her hand on his knee and dug her fingernails into his skin. "You need to call Yolanda."
"Tell me."
"Call her, Tony. She's hysterical."
"Is he alive?"
"Yolanda said-"
"Is he alive?" Valentine put his hand on Roxanne's chin and made her look at him. "Is he?"
"Please… call her."
Valentine buried his head in his hands. Sinatra's melancholy "Only the Lonely" filled the suite and he began to weep. The cell phone in Roxanne's lap warbled. She answered it, then pressed the receiver against her chest. "It's Nick. He says he's giving you one more chance."
"Tell him to go to hell."
Roxanne did as she was asked, and Tony could hear Nick screaming through the phone. Valentine got up and went to the picture window and stared down onto the neon Strip. He tried to imagine his son the last time he'd seen him. It had been at the saloon, Valentine whipping him with his belt. Would that be last image he would have?
"You stupid bastard," he said to himself.
Then he cried some more.
"Good-bye," Roxanne said curtly, and hung up.
"What did he say?" Valentine asked her.
"He's going to shoot you."
It sounded like the perfect antidote for the way he was feeling. Valentine took a deep breath, then said, "Give me the phone."
Roxanne crossed the room and handed him the phone. Then she gave him a hug. Valentine held her tight, his heart about to break.
Then he went into the bedroom and shut the door.
Sitting on the bed, Valentine suddenly felt like an old man. No wife, no son, nothing left. His eyes fell on a long-stemmed yellow rose lying on the pillow. He picked it up and smelled it. Roxanne had thought of everything.
He dialed Gerry's cell phone and heard the call go through.
"Hello," a woman said hoarsely.
"Yolanda, it's Tony Valentine."
"Oh God, Mr. Valentine." She let out a sob, and Valentine joined her.
"The goons caught up with you," he said.
"Yeah."
"Where?"
"Holland Tunnel. Traffic was so bad, we couldn't move."
"Did they hurt him?"
"Yeah."
"Did you run?"
Another sob.
"It's okay," he told her.
"Yeah," she said, "I ran like hell."
"It's okay," he said.
"No, it's not," she said.
"You call the police?"
"Yeah. They looked around. No Gerry."
Which meant they hadn't really looked at all. Taking a deep breath, he said, "Maybe we could go look for him together."
"Okay," Yolanda whispered.
"I'll call you when I get in."
"Okay."
He started to hang up, but she said, "Mr. Valentine?"
"Yes, Yolanda?"
"I really loved him."
"Me, too," Valentine said.
He killed the power and tossed the phone on the bed. Then he went into the bathroom and looked at his puffy face in the mirror. Would he spend the rest of his days cursing himself for not getting Gerry out of New York? Yeah, he probably would.
The numbness from the punch had worn off and his jaw was throbbing. Hearing Roxanne enter the bedroom, he went out to face her.
"Got any aspirin handy?" he asked, coming out of the bathroom.
Only it wasn't Roxanne standing before him. The closet door was wide open and the cowboy who'd aimed a.350 Magnum in his face a couple of days ago was standing in his bedroom. Now he was holding a three-foot steel pipe, ready to begin the final act in the drama of Nola Briggs and Frank Fontaine.
"Didn't I tell you to get out of town?" the cowboy said.
Valentine took a step back and nearly fell down. His balance was gone, his body having forgotten how to defend itself. The cowboy flashed him a crooked smile.