The cowboy's movements were swift and deliberate, and Valentine lifted his arms helplessly as the steel pipe came down forcefully on his skull.
26
That low-life fucking Jersey bastard," Nick roared, feeling as forsaken as the day he'd buried his father and kissed his childhood good-bye. "How dare he run out on me!"
Nick paced the surveillance control room and swore some more. Wily stood by the master console, watching his boss with one eye while keeping the other on the monitors. "Boss! They're into us for four hundred grand."
Picking up a house phone, Nick called the people working the cage and instructed them not to pay Fontaine's gang if they tried to cash out. Then he went and stuck his head into Sammy Mann's corner office. Nola lay on the busted couch, facing the wall. He could not wait to get her out of his life, and he said, "You gonna live?"
"Yeah," she said.
"I'm sorry about ten years ago. Sorry I blew it."
"Sure you are."
"You want a drink or something?"
Nola shook her head stiffly. Nick thought he understood. She didn't want anything from him. Wily tapped him on the shoulder and Nick followed the pit boss out into the hall.
Hoss, Tiny, and four other security guards stood at the ready. They all power-lifted together and were behemoths. Nick walked the line, appraising each man. "Wily says you're ready. That true?"
The guards nodded their heads in unison.
"I didn't hear you," he said.
"Yes, sir!"
"This is the plan," Nick told them. "Hoss and Tiny get the Aussie at table six. John and Brett, the Texan at eleven; Karl and Leroy, the pizza king at fifteen. I'll back you up if you have to break bones. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!"
Wily made them synchronize their watches. It was 10:05. He said, "Go downstairs and get near your assigned table without being conspicuous. At 10:08, grab your man. Any questions?"
This was not a talkative group. Hoss, their leader, said, "That doesn't sound too hard."
The guards disappeared into the stairwell, their footsteps as loud as jackhammers. Nick and Wily returned to the surveillance control room and stood before the wall of monitors.
"Think we should call the cops?" Wily asked.
"Fuck the cops," Nick said.
The door to Sammy Mann's office opened. Nola emerged, her hair standing on end like Frankenstein's bride. Pointing a finger at Nick, she emptied her lungs out.
"What the hell is she doing here?"
Nick didn't understand. "Who?"
"Her, you idiot!"
Nick glanced over his shoulder. Sherry Solomon had found her way into the surveillance control room, and was still wearing the same sooty clothes she'd worn when she set fire to Nick's mansion.
"Beats me," he confessed.
Then it was Sherry's turn to start screaming.
"You told me you and Nola were finished!"
Nick shrugged like it was no big deal. "Hey, baby, I mean, stuff happens. You know?"
Sherry grabbed a wastepaper basket and threw it at him. A lamp followed, coming from Nola's side of the room.
"Don't tell me you fucked her," Nola screamed.
"Only in the biblical sense," Nick said.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It means it was a fling, no big deal," he said. "I didn't ask her to marry me or anything."
"You two-timing, good-for-nothing prick!"
"Get away from him!" Sherry screamed at Nola.
"Make me, bitch!"
The two women met in the middle of the room, scattering everyone working at the master console. Sherry was in better shape and threw punches like she'd had lessons, while Nola was more of a scratch-and-pull kind of fighter. Within seconds, they were rolling around on the floor, tangled in each other's arms. Nick grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused them both with white foam.
"Don't just stand there," he told Wily. "Do something!"
Wily did. He grabbed Nick by the shoulders and spun him around. There were a hundred eighty-four monitors on the wall and each showed absolute bedlam downstairs. The Texan and pizza king were whupping their security boys good, the hustlers as skilled in the martial arts as they were in cheating at cards.
"Are we recording this?" Nick bellowed.
"I think so," Wily said.
"You think so?" Nick stuck his head into the adjacent room, which housed the VCRs the monitors were hooked up to. Each machine had a red light on, indicating it was recording. Fontaine's gang was going to jail for a long time. He shut the door and locked it.
"Come on," Nick said.
"What about the girls?" Wily asked.
Lying beneath the console, Sherry had gotten Nola in a half nelson and was systematically pulling out clumps of her hair, while Nola retaliated by biting her nemesis savagely in the bosom. That Sherry didn't feel it did not come as a surprise. Standing in the room's open doorway, Nick shrugged his shoulders.
Then he ran out.
Nick had never seen anything like it. Guys fighting guys, women fighting women, his employees trying to break up one fight while others erupted all around them. Chips and glasses and chairs were flying through the air; people were ruining his joint just for the hell of it. Nick had never understood the impulse, but he recognized it in others: the appetite for destruction.
He quickly marshaled his troops. First he commandeered a dozen dishwashers and his front desk staff, then the dealers who were on break or hiding. Each was given something solid to hold-golf clubs from the pro shop for the ladies, brooms and pool cues for the gents-and then sent into battle with these simple instructions: "If they put up a fight, beat them into the ground."
Nick's employees streamed into the casino. The craps table had been turned on its side by two dealers attempting to protect a rack of chips from a mob's greedy hands. With a handful of dishwashers backing him up, Wily descended on the mob, their war whoops sending shock waves through the casino.
It was Nick's distinction to have nothing but ladies in his gang. There was Betty, the sixty-year-old chip girl, and Louise, who ran Housekeeping and who claimed to have changed more of Nick's dirty sheets than his own mother. Over the years, he'd pissed off every single one of these women, yet every single one had stayed. They were his people, and as he led them toward the blackjack pit, a chant went up.
Nick, Nick, Nick.
At table fifteen the pizza king was kicking Karl and Leroy senseless. Clutching a Big Bertha, Nick moved in, swinging the driver around his head like a bolo. He hated guys who fought with their feet. You want to kick, take up tap dancing. He slammed the driver into the pizza king's back and sent him sprawling.
Nick, Nick, Nick.
"I'm just getting warmed up," Nick told the crowd, charging to the other end of the pit. Several tables had been overturned, and the Texan was dancing around and karate-chopping his security men silly. He was Chuck Norris and Lethal Weapon rolled into one, and Nick wisely steered clear. Two tables away, he saw Wily pounding the daylights out of someone and he went to investigate.
It was Fontaine. Wily had pinned him to the table and was driving his right fist repeatedly into the hustler's face.
"Call the Texan off," Wily said, drawing his fist back. "Make him stop before he kills someone."
"Fuck you," Fontaine said.
"Get off him," Nick said.
Wily did, and Nick grabbed Fontaine's ear and twisted until the skin turned a violent purple. The hustler fell to his knees in agony.
"You want me to tear it off?" Nick asked, being polite about it. "I can do that. It's your call."
"I can't call him off," Fontaine cried, writhing beneath Nick's hand. "He's an ex-con. Swears he won't go back to the joint. You're going to have to kill him."
"That can be arranged," Nick said. He released Fontaine's ear, then kicked him in the nuts for good measure. To Wily, he said, "Sit on him!"