“No. Don’t you think we should—”
“Call the tribal police? No.” He climbed out of the car, then stuck his head back in before shutting the door. “I want you to drive up the road a hundred yards and wait. If someone besides me comes out of that trail, beat it. Understand?”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“No,” he said.
The Volvo pulled away. Valentine walked down the trail until he was in the thick of the swamp. It was like being in a forest, only the ground was gooey soft. He heard voices. Peering around a cypress tree, he saw two figures standing on a grassy knoll next to a pond. He put on his bifocals. It was the redhead and the limo driver. The redhead was naked. The driver was stripping out of his uniform while holding a gun on her, the act made more complicated by the big boy distorting his trousers.
Valentine weighed his options. Making a run at them was out of the question. The distance was too great, and he’d given up wind sprints years ago. The other option was sneaking up on them and disarming the driver, which wouldn’t be terribly hard once they started going at it. He stepped off the trail into a thicket of mangroves.
As he approached, he listened to the redhead talking to the driver. Her voice was soothing, like she knew she was about to get raped and didn’t want to do anything to make it worse. The driver told her to get on her knees.
Valentine parted a bush and had another look. The redhead was on all fours. The driver was behind her, poised to make his statement. She was still talking, the fear absent from her voice. Leaning forward, he felt his shoe catch an exposed root and fell into a disgustingly soft belly of muck.
His head came out of the water just in time to hear the redhead scream. Rising, he stared into the clearing. The redhead had tried to run, and the driver was holding her underwater. Her legs were thrashing as air bubbles burst the water’s surface. The kicking grew faint, then stopped altogether. Valentine broke through the mangroves.
“Let her go.”
The driver’s eyes went wide. He had the gun in his left hand, the girl’s head in his right. He looked scared. Like he’d seen a ghost. And Valentine supposed he probably did look like a ghost, his wet hair in his face, the blood from his nose flowing down his chin. Or a dead man risen from a swampy grave.
“Who are you?” the driver said.
“Jack Lightfoot,” he growled.
Valentine saw the redhead sink beneath the water’s surface. “I deal blackjack,” he said. “Remember?”
The driver was out of the pond and picking up his clothes, the gun still pointed in Valentine’s direction. He was going to run, and Valentine stepped back into the mangroves and ducked out of sight. Barefoot, the driver raced past moments later, swearing in Spanish.
Valentine pulled the redhead out of the pond and gave her CPR. Her face had turned blue, and he didn’t think there was much hope. In between breaths, he wiped at the blood on his face, hoping not to get any on her. Stupid, but he did it anyway.
She was a natural redhead, and it was hard not to look at her privates. That had always been the hard part of police work. Every day, he’d be confronted by things that he knew were wrong but wanted to do anyway. Like staring at naked corpses.
He heard something like a frog trying to climb out of her stomach. An eruption in the making. He leaned backwards, but not in time. She puked on him.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Oh, my God.”
She lay on her back, fighting for breath. Valentine lay down next to her. The world was spinning, and his head was starting to throb. She reached out and found his arm.
“Who are you?”
“Tony Valentine.”
“I’m Candy. Where’s—”
“The guy trying to kill you? I scared him off. Look, try not to talk.”
She found his hand and squeezed it. “I owe you, Tony.”
Gladys Soft Wings entered the clearing. She was visibly frightened and stared at them lying in the grass, holding hands.
“I hope I’m not interrupting something,” she said.
20
Splinters pulled off 595 at the first exit. Parking behind a Shell station, he threw his driver’s uniform back on while muttering to himself. He hadn’t gotten laid, the hooker had nearly escaped, and he’d seen a fucking ghost. Someone had put a curse on him, and he hadn’t even known it.
Back in the limo, doing eighty, he started to feel really bad. Rico had told him to do one thing, and he’d gone and done another. Rico wouldn’t like that if he found out. He would kill Splinters for something like that. The exit sign for Davie loomed in his windshield.
He slowed down. Off to his left, striped carnival tents filled a cow field. He’d been fuming for days over the outrageous bribe Rico had paid the carny owner. Four thousand two hundred dollars. And for what?
He put his indicator on. An idea was percolating in his head. He would get the money back—all of it—and show Rico his loyalty. He changed lanes and nearly ran another vehicle off the road.
Black limousines were symbols of power, and he circled the carnival’s perimeter without anyone stopping him. Parking beside the owner’s trailer, he hopped out and looked around. Peals of laughter floated down from the carnival Ferris wheel. It was Friday afternoon, and the grounds were teeming with teenage kids.
He walked up the trailer ramp and rapped loudly on the door. When no one came out, he pushed the door open and stuck his head in. The shit smell that greeted him was like a punch in the face, and his eyes settled on the caged chimpanzee. Rico hadn’t mentioned anything about a fucking ape.
Splinters stepped inside and shut the door. The chimp was strumming a miniature guitar, his head swinging back and forth. The tinny sounds of Madonna’s Like a Virgin sent an icy chill running down Splinter’s spine. First a ghost in the swamp, now a chimp playing his favorite song.
“Play something else,” he said.
The chimp broke into Prince’s Purple Rain, another favorite. Splinters decided he was hallucinating, the music really nothing more than random chords he was mistaking for these songs. He got behind the desk and started opening drawers. Suddenly, the chimp started hissing at him like a cat.
Splinters drew his gun. He didn’t want to shoot the chimp, but if the chimp started making noise, Splinters wasn’t going to have a choice. The chimp stared at the gun, then flopped on his back and played dead, his feet twitching comically.
Splinters jerked open the top drawer of the desk. Inside lay a stack of hundred-dollar bills. He counted out forty-two hundred dollars and was stuffing the money into his pockets when the chimp came flying out of the cage.
“You want to hear a cool scam?” Zoe asked.
They were sitting on a couch in the Fontainebleau’s lobby, Kat watching the front doors. She’d checked into the Castaway the night before, then started trying to reach Tony. No answer in his hotel room or on his cell phone. She didn’t want to leave a message and sound desperate, so she’d parked herself in his hotel. It would be better to see him in person, she’d decided, and get things back on track.
“Tony taught it to me,” her daughter said. “A world-famous poker player showed it to him. He doped out the math for me and everything. It’s really cool.”
“It’s mathematical?”
“Yeah, sort of. You want to hear it?”
From where she sat, Kat had a bird’s-eye view of the hotel valet stand. A black Volvo pulled up, and a muddy Tony and an Indian woman got out. With them was a woman with red hair whose clothes were also muddy. She was glued to Tony’s side, and Kat felt her stomach do a slow churn.