"I'll bet it is," Valentine said to the machine.
"Money's no object. I'm begging you, Tony. I'm having an airline ticket couriered to you. Call me."
Valentine erased the message. Vegas in August? Who was this joker kidding? Besides, what could he do? The Gaming Control Bureau was the single most powerful entity in Las Vegas and was responsible for prosecuting any cheating taking place inside a licensed casino. They were the knights on the white horses who were entrusted to keep things honest. Without their support, Wily didn't have a pot to piss in.
He stuck Mabel's lasagna in the microwave while thinking about the young woman on the tape. She was a sweet-looking kid and not the type he'd normally suspect of cheating. Now that she'd been arrested, her career dealing blackjack was over. It would be a crying shame if she was innocent.
The kitchen phone rang. Dinnertime was the witching hour for solicitors, and he let his machine pick up.
"This is Tony Valentine. I don't answer my phone because too many jerks call. Leave a message or a fax. Or you can go away. It's up to you."
"Hey, Pop, it's Gerry," his son's voice sang out. "Guess I missed you again. Glad you're leading an active social life down there."
"Get on with it," Valentine said to the machine.
"… anyway, it looks like I'm coming down to your neck of the woods. I scored some tickets to the Devil Rays and Yankees game tomorrow, and I figured we might catch a game. Whaddaya say? It would be fun, like old times. I'm flying down in the a.m. on Delta. Call me at the bar, okay?"
Valentine took the lasagna out of the microwave and stuck a fork in it. A baseball game sounded great, only not with Gerry. His son had been making his life miserable for years, and he wanted him to suffer and do a little penance. He did not think that was so much to ask.
His doorbell rang. His place was turning into Grand Central Station. Valentine went to the door; through the window, he saw a Tampa Express van parked in his driveway.
He opened the door, and the strangest-looking courier he'd ever seen waltzed in. Shaved head, with a dozen silver pins connected by silver chains adorning the side of his face. The name tag above his pocket said Atom. Had his folks actually christened him that?
Atom handed him a thin envelope, then produced a pen from behind a pierced ear. "Sign on the label."
Valentine scribbled his name, and Atom tore off the receipt.
"Atom, mind if I ask you a question?"
"Not at all."
"How much did it cost to have those pins put in your face?"
Atom smiled, thinking he was being paid a compliment. "I got it done in Ybor City at Pin amp; Pierce. Three hundred for all twelve. The chains were extra."
"Atom, if a man came up to you in the street, knocked you down, and pierced your cheek with a hat pin, they'd put him away for ten years."
Atom looked puzzled. Then his face reddened; Valentine almost could've sworn that the pins also changed color. "This is different," he spouted defensively.
"I'm glad one of us thinks so," Valentine said.
Atom refused a tip. Valentine shut the door and tore open the envelope. Inside was a ticket to Las Vegas on Delta, the departure the next morning. He checked the seat assignment. Wily had sprung for first class.
The phone rang and he let the machine pick up.
"Hey, Pop, it's Gerry. I just spoke to Mabel Struck on her cell phone. She says you're home and that you're probably standing in the kitchen sticking your tongue out at the phone. Look, Pop, enough is enough. I'm coming down to Florida whether you like it or not. We need to hash this out. Like men."
Like men? What were they going to do, Greco-Roman wrestling on the floor? Gerry didn't know how to act like a real man; that was the fundamental problem. "Get serious," he shouted at the phone.
"I mean it, Pop. I'm coming down."
The line went dead. His son sounded hurt. Good. Their rift was finally getting to him. His mother had coddled him, and now that she was gone, he was finally faced with having to grow up, whatever that meant these days.
Valentine checked the ticket again. The return had been left open. Neat-he could fly home once Gerry was safely back in New York. All of a sudden Las Vegas in the middle of August sounded like a nice weekend getaway.
He went to the bedroom and pulled a suitcase from the closet and started tossing clothes into it.
4
Nick Nicocropolis's father had been a sponge diver in Tarpon Springs, Florida, as had his father before him. It was dangerous work, perhaps the most dangerous profession in the world, and both men had died a few months apart while plying their trade, his father from the bends, his grandfather from a hammerhead's bite. Neither had carried insurance, leaving Nick to support his mother, three sisters, and an elderly grandmother at the tender age of sixteen.
Quitting high school had been much easier than finding gainful employment. He was small, five-six and one-forty, and because most Greeks were inherently superstitious, no one on the sponge docks would employ him as a diver, which happened to be the only decent-paying work around. So he'd taken to hustling pool in tourist bars and cheating at cards and loan-sharking and running a sleazy escort service and stealing rental cars at Tampa International Airport just to make ends meet. It was nickel-and-dime crap, and he'd humped it until his mother and grandmother were pushing up daisies and his sisters were in school or hitched. Then he'd packed his bags and headed west. The year was 1965.
Thirty-four years later, Nick Nicocropolis could look back and be proud. His childhood had been hardscrabble, but so what? Losing Gramps and his old man in the same year had been rough, but their losses had also taught him lessons that he might otherwise never have learned. It had hardened him, and in that hardness Nick found a strength he had not known he possessed. A callous had formed over the aching hole in his heart, and from that he had grown strong.
"Fontaine disappeared," Nick said, repeating Sammy Mann's words. "In broad daylight, he walked into the parking lot and vanished. How does that work? Trapdoor?"
"I think they use mirrors," Sammy said.
"Who?" Nick said.
"Siegfried and Roy. You know, the elephant."
"Sigmund Freud? Why the hell are you bringing them up?"
"I thought that's what you meant."
In anger, Nick slapped the expansive granite desk in his penthouse office. Biting off the end of a cigar, he spit it into the trash. "Every day, I look out my window at those two Krauts stealing the crowds from my casino. You think I give a rat's ass how they make the elephant vanish? What I'm asking you, numb nuts, is how Fontaine managed to shake the tail you had on him."
Sammy shrugged his shoulders, wishing he knew. Fontaine had sauntered around the casino into the covered parking lot, ducked behind a concrete pillar, and vanished into thin air. The tail never saw him again.
"We think he changed clothes and ducked into another car," Sammy explained. "That's all we can figure. He left his rental with the keys in the ignition."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Nick said sarcastically, "changed his britches and ran. What am I paying you for, anyway? I spend thirty years working my balls off trying to do someone a favor and you let a guy who's ripping me off take a walk. Jesus Christ."
Sammy hung his head in shame. His employer was the last of a dying breed, a hard headed little jerk who'd refused to sell out to the big hotel chains and was now paying the price for his hubris. The Acropolis could not afford to be ripped off on a regular basis without Nick's getting a distress call from the bank.
"Sorry, boss," he said.
"What about the girl?" Nick said.
"We had her arrested this afternoon."