He continued to stare, seeing nothing.
“Something wrong?” Doyle said.
Valentine again looked over his shoulder. His partner was standing beside the guard. “You didn’t hear that voice?”
“No, Tony, honest, I didn’t hear a thing.”
There was a doorway next to the stage. Valentine walked over to it, and stared down a dimly lit hallway at the dressing rooms in the back. It was the only place in the theater to hide. Drawing his .38, he pointed the barrel straight ahead, then glanced back at his partner. “Cover me,” he said.
Doyle limped up behind him, his weapon drawn. Valentine walked down the hallway remembering all the famous actors that used to play the Bijou. His leg hit a trip wire, and he heard a sickening Thwap!Before his life had time to flash before his eyes, his partner barreled into him from behind, and together they hit the floor.
Valentine landed on his side, and watched as a baby grand piano came crashing down on the spot where he’d just stood. The piano once sat in front of the stage, where a lady in a white dress would play old show tunes. As it hit the earth, music rushed out like a drowning symphony.
He got up off the floor, then helped Doyle to his feet. His partner was grimacing and holding his crippled leg.
“You okay?”
“I’ll live,” Doyle said.
The guard came running down the hallway, looking scared to death. He pulled a flashlight out of his back pocket, and shone it up at the ceiling. The piano had been hanging from a pulley. “I don’t remember that being there,” the guard said.
Valentine went to the dressing rooms and checked them. They hadn’t been used in years, and there was no sign of anyone being in them recently. Then, he checked the back entrance to the theater, and found it locked.
There was a pay phone at the end of the hall. Valentine fished a dime out of his pocket, and called Banko.
“You better come down here,” he told his superior.
“You heard a voice?” Banko said fifteen minutes later.
They were standing in front of the stage. In the hallway, they could hear the guard cleaning up the broken piano. Every time he threw a piece of wood in a wheelbarrow, the instrument emitted a mournful chord. Valentine had explained everything — from hearing the voice, to the misspelled message on the typewriter mimicking the messages he’d typed as a kid — and Banko was looking at him like he’d lost his mind.
“It was a man’s voice,” Valentine said. “He whispered my name.”
“Did Doyle hear it? Or the guard?”
“No.”
Banko made an exasperated face. “Tony, this isn’t good. You’re hearing things, and making connections that no one else is making. I want you to do your job at the casino. Stop running around town every time someone calls you on the phone.”
Doyle stood a few feet away, listening. He mouthed the words Say yes.
“Okay,” Valentine said.
“Terrific. If it makes you feel better, I’ll have another detective look into this, and see what turns up.” Banko started to walk away, then came back. “We have a meeting with the CCC tomorrow regarding Louis Galloway. Remember?”
Valentine said, “Of course I remember.”
“What time am I picking you up at your house?”
“Uh… seven-thirty?”
Banko walked away muttering under his breath.
Chapter 37
“You’re not going crazy,” Lois said reassuringly that night.
Valentine lay on the couch in the living room with his head in his wife’s lap. He had told her everything that had happened that day, hoping it would make him feel better. So far, it wasn’t working. “No,” he said, “but I’m headed in that direction.”
“Stop talking like that. It’s not like you. Lots of people hear voices.”
“Do say their name, and tell them they hate them?”
“Oh, Tony, it was just…”
“My imagination?” He shook his head. “My imagination isn’t that good. Someone was in that theater besides me and Doyle and the guard. Someone from my past who holds a grudge and who’s also killing hookers on the island.” He looked into her eyes. They were soft and beautiful and had never failed to melt his heart. “I just wish I could figure out who it is.”
“It will come to you eventually,” Lois said.
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
It was nearly ten o’clock and raining cats and dogs outside. That was the crummy thing about living in Atlantic City during the winter; one day it snowed, the next it rained. Gerry came downstairs in his pajamas, and kissed his mother on the forehead. Then, he put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “I hope you feel better, Pop.”
Valentine looked up at his son and smiled. He’d been teaching Gerry magic tricks he’d bought from Uncle Al’s shop, and his son seemed eager to learn more. They’d also received a note from school that said Gerry was showing improvement in his math and English classes. It had thrilled them to no end.
“I will,” Valentine said. “Sleep tight.”
They listened to their son go upstairs to bed. Then Valentine said, “I have a meeting tomorrow morning with the Casino Control Commission. I caught Louis Galloway cheating at blackjack the other day and busted him.”
“ TheLouis Galloway?”
“Yeah. Galloway is tight with the commission’s chairperson, Nancy Pulaski. She’s going to put my feet to the fire.”
“What are you going to do?”
Valentine stared at the ceiling some more. He’d never backed down from a case before, and had no intention of starting now. “Stand up for myself.”
“That doesn’t sound like the words of a crazy man to me.”
He had a feeling that his wife would support him even if he started running naked down the street with a tomahawk in his hand, and he looked lovingly into her face. “I need you to help me pick out what to wear. Banko wants me in a suit.”
Lois giggled. “Well, you only have one suit, so that should be easy.”
He pushed himself off the couch, then offered his hand to her.
“Yeah, but I have three neckties,” he said.
Banko picked him up the next morning at seven-thirty sharp, and drove to the three-story brick building on Tropicana Avenue where the Casino Control Commission was headquartered “Nice tie,” he said, looking him over.
Like most buildings on the island, the CCC’s headquarters had been a thing of beauty once, but had fallen on hard times, and was badly in need of refurbishing. They identified themselves to a stern-faced female receptionist, then stood in drab lobby while waiting to be called upstairs. Banko eyed the envelope in Valentine’s hand.
“What’s that?”
“I spliced together some surveillance tapes I wanted the commission to see.”
His superior grinned. “A little show-and-tell, eh?”
“I think they’ll like it.”
At seven-fifty-nine, they were summoned upstairs.
The commission’s five members worked in a boardroom with fraying carpet and rattling pipes. They sat at a faded mahogany table with pitchers of ice water in front of each member. Behind them, through a bank of windows, Resorts’ towering casino shone on the otherwise depressing skyline.
Nancy Pulaski, the commission’s chairperson, gave Valentine a no-nonsense stare as Banko introduced him to the group. Pulaski was pushing fifty, with lots of gray hair and wrinkles, yet dressed like a woman twenty years younger. Her haircut was particularly unnerving: A page boy. Picking up some papers from the table, she said, “Detective Valentine, do you know what this is?”
“No, ma’am,” he replied.
“I’m holding in my hand Louis Galloway’s arrest report. It says that you arrested him for spilling a drink on his cards. How can that be a crime?”
“Louis Galloway was exploiting a weakness in one of the casino’s procedures, so I had him arrested,” Valentine said.