James Swain

Wild Card

For Nancy J. Barbara and Israel Hirsch, whose memories fill this book

I can never guess

What tomorrow brings

I don’t hear the song

That the mermaid sings —

I don’t care. For I find

It’s enough for me

Just once in a while

To believe I see

Past the dealer’s guard...

That

Next

Card.

Nick the Greek

November, 1979

November, 1979

Chapter 1

“Wake up.”

Detective Tony Valentine of the Atlantic City Police Department blinked awake. Doyle Flanagan, his partner and best friend, was pointing at the binoculars lying in his lap. Embarrassed, Valentine handed them over.

“You spot him?” Valentine asked, smothering a yawn.

“I’m not sure.” Doyle lifted the binoculars to his eyes.

It was six A.M., and they were sitting in a pushcart chained to the Boardwalk’s metal railing. During the summer, pushcart men dragged tourists up and down the Boardwalk, two bucks a ride. It was a custom that dated back to the turn of the century, when Atlantic City had been the country’s most famous resort town.

Fifty yards from where they sat was a neon-lit monstrosity called Resorts Atlantic City. Resorts was New Jersey’s first foray into legalized gambling, and already generating more money than all the other businesses on the island combined.

“Got him,” Doyle said. “He’s coming out the front doors.”

Valentine followed the direction of Doyle’s finger, and spied the bouncing dread-locks of a notorious pimp named Prince D. Smith. Recently, the Prince had spread his wings, and his girls were now working Resorts hotel. The Prince was also a wanted felon, and they had planned to arrest him inside the hotel lobby, only to have their superior squash the idea.

“The governor doesn’t want any bad publicity inside Resorts,” Captain Banko had told them. “Arrest the Prince when he’s outside. That’s an order.”

So they’d taken to hiding in a pushcart. Climbing out, they shook the life into their legs, and jogged to the casino. They were dressed identically: faded blue jeans, baggy sweatshirts, and New York Yankees baseball caps. That was where the similarities ended. Doyle was five-nine, thin and wiry, his face dusted with freckles, with a mane of red hair that made him look as Irish as Pattie’s pig. Valentine was four inches taller, broad-shouldered and weighed two hundred pounds, with jet-black hair and coloring that betrayed his Sicilian heritage.

The crowd leaving the casino was moving to its own rhythm. Resorts was a spruced-up pile of bricks in a crumbling city — “A shit house with carpet,” proclaimed a dirty-mouthed comic the opening night — yet no one seemed to care. People came here to gamble, and every night since Resorts had opened, thousands had packed its floors.

Doyle attempted to push his way through the crowd. Stymied, he flashed his badge. “Police,” he announced loudly.

Pimps had better hearing that most dogs. The Prince’s head snapped. Seeing them, he started to run. Valentine drew a snub-nosed .38 from his pocket holster.

“Out of the way!” he exclaimed.

The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and the two detectives ran past the fountain in front of the casino. The Prince had gotten a good jump on them, and was already a block away. He had a long, relaxed gait, and did not seem concerned that he was being pursued.

“I’m right behind you,” Doyle said.

Valentine hadn’t lost a foot race in years. He picked up the pace, and saw the Prince jump into a pink Cadillac with a Rolls Royce grill. The Caddy pulled away from the curb just as Valentine caught up.

“I’m going to get you!” he declared.

The driver’s window came down, and the Prince flipped him the bird. It made his blood boil and he continued to run, not seeing the monster pothole in the middle of the street.

Valentine didn’t know which hurt more; not catching the Prince, or falling down and tearing out the knees of his jeans. They were his favorite pair, and he sat in an unmarked car with his partner, cursing his luck.

“Maybe the department will reimburse you,” Doyle said.

“Maybe the moon will fall out of the sky,” Valentine replied.

“Look on the bright side. Our shift just ended.”

“Let’s get something to eat. My treat.”

They drove to the Howard Johnson’s on the north end of the island. There were plenty of good places to eat in Atlantic City — the White House Sub Shop, Angelo’s Tavern, Tony’s Baltimore Grille — but Hojo’s coffee was always fresh. Pulling into the lot, they both stared at an Out of Business sign made to look like a funeral notice hanging in the window. Through the window Valentine saw that the restaurant’s trademark ice cream churn was gone. No more twenty-eight flavors, he thought.

“Guess they couldn’t compete with Resorts’ $1.99 buffet,” Doyle said.

“Guess not.”

Resorts had the cheapest food in town, and was driving the local restaurants out of business. The politicians had said that legalized gambling would be a boom to Atlantic City. So far, the only boom had been inside the casino.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Valentine suggested.

Doyle drove south, and found a twenty-four hour Jack-in-the-Box in an area called Snake Alley. The food was garbage, but that was what you got at six-thirty in the morning. They drank coffee and shared a bag of greasy french fries. Valentine’s knees were aching from where he’d fallen. On top of that, he was in a lousy mood and didn’t want to take his bad attitude home to his wife and son. He said, “Heard any good jokes?”

Doyle put his coffee down. He had been cheering Valentine up since they were kids. “This traveling salesman knocks on the door of a house. The door opens, and a ten-year-old kid steps out holding a cigar and a can of beer. The salesman says, ‘Are your parents home?’ And the kid says, ‘What the hell do you think?’”

Valentine sipped his coffee and grinned. The radio on the dashboard crackled, and Marlene, the dispatcher on the graveyard shift said, “Pick up if you can hear my voice.”

“You up for it?”

“You’re the one who fell down.”

“I didn’t fall down, I tripped. There’s a difference.”

Doyle smiled. “Yeah, I’m up for it.”

Valentine answered the call. “Hey Marlene, what’s up?”

“Detectives Crowe and Brown are arresting an armed suspect at the Rainbow Arms apartment complex,” she said. “They’ve requested back-up. Can you help them?”

The Rainbow Arms was less than five minutes away. It had been a long, frustrating night; maybe assisting in a collar would make them both feel better. Doyle mouthed the word yes.

“Tell them we’ll be right there,” he said, grabbing the last french fry.

Atlantic City was the last stop on a railroad to nowhere. It was there because there happened to be the shortest distance between Philadelphia and the sea. Once, there had been swanky hotels and nightclubs and a standard of living that was hard to beat. Then Las Vegas and Miami Beach had stolen the tourists away, and the island — all thirteen miles of it — had gone straight to hell, with crime so rampant that it had led the nation when Valentine joined the force in ‘64. The Rainbow Arms apartments were one of the island’s war zones. Doyle parked near the front entrance, and they got out.

Crowe and Brown stood beside one of the block’s few trees. The detectives were wearing bulky bulletproof vests and had twenty-gauge Remington shotguns cradled in their arms. They were not the friendliest pair, and wore grim looks.

“Hey,” Valentine said.

“What are you doing here?” Crowe snapped.

“We’re responding to your call.”

“You been in a fight? You look busted up.”

“And you look like you’re hunting elephants,” Valentine replied.

Doyle laughed under his breath. Another pair of detectives materialized behind Crowe and Brown. Their names were Freed and Mink, and they also wore bulletproof vests and carried shotguns. Crowe wagged a finger in Valentine’s face. “Listen, funny man. We’re going into that apartment house, and we’re coming out with a black motherfucker who shot at us earlier. If you’re not ready for action, get out of the way.”

Mink, who was black, looked away, his jaw tightening. Valentine stared at Crowe. “When did this happen?”

“Twenty minutes ago,” Crowe said. “You with us, or not?”

“We’re with you. Just give us a minute to suit up.”

“Make it fast,” Crowe said.

Valentine and Doyle got their gear from the trunk of their car, and suited up. Under his breath, Doyle said, “How did Freed and Mink get here so fast?”

Valentine was wondering that himself. Freed and Mink worked the same shift they did, and were also off-duty. “Beats me,” he said under his breath.

They formed two lines of three, with Crowe and Brown leading the charge. The Rainbow Arm’s front path was littered with broken beer bottles and debris. As they reached the stoop, the front door swung in, and the detectives froze. A little black boy emerged clutching a Fat Albert lunch box to his chest.

“Hey kid, get lost,” Crowe said.

The little boy’s eyes turned fearful.

Mink tried. “Son, go home,” he said gently.

The boy was dressed for school, but it was too early for school. Valentine felt a hot wire ignite his blood. It was a trap.

“Get away from the door,” he said loudly.

The other detectives did not move. They were seeing the frightened little boy, and not the threat. A spot appeared in the crotch of the boy’s pants.

“Move,” Valentine barked at them.

A black man with dread locks appeared in the doorway behind the little boy. He was holding a UZI submachine gun and had a crazed look in his eyes. Using the boy as a shield, he aimed at the detectives’ legs and started firing. It was the Prince.

Chapter 2

Valentine’s shotgun flew into the air, and melted into a hedge. His hand screamed with pain, and he brought it up to his face. A bullet had gone through his palm as clean as a paper punch. Falling to his knees, he saw black pools appear before his eyes.

“Help me,” Doyle gasped.

Valentine twisted his head. Doyle lay a few feet away, his thigh shredded by a bullet. The other detectives were scattered around him. No one was moving. The Prince shoved the little boy into the building, then stepped outside, and began executing them.

He capped Crowe between the eyes, stepped over his body, and did the same to Brown, his movements calm and efficient, like he had ice cubes in his veins. Then, it was Mink’s turn. Mink had taken a bullet in the leg, and lay sprawled on his side. The Prince put the Uzi’s smoking barrel against his cheek. “I don’t like to kill brothers,” the pimp said, “but with you, I’m gonna make an exception.”

“Please, don’t,” Mink whispered.

Valentine always carried two guns. The snub-nosed .38 was beneath the vest, and out of reach. He drew the derringer strapped to his ankle, and pumped two bullets into the pimp’s stomach. The Prince staggered backward into the apartment and disappeared. Valentine rose on wobbly legs, and saw Freed do the same. Freed’s thigh was bleeding, and he found his shotgun on the ground, pumped it, and entered the apartment dragging his wounded leg.

“Wait for back-up,” Valentine said.

Freed ignored him, and went in.

Valentine knelt beside his partner. Taking a snot rag out of his pocket, he ripped it in half. With one piece he plugged Doyle’s wound, with the other, his own.

“My stomach,” Doyle moaned.

“You get shot in the stomach?”

“Fucking french fries.”

Valentine expected to hear sirens at any moment, then remembered where they were. He started to go to the car to call for an ambulance when Doyle grabbed his leg. His partner had a stricken look on his face, and Valentine knelt down beside him.

“Crowe lied to us,” Doyle said.

“What do you mean?”

“We were chasing the Prince twenty minutes ago. He couldn’t have taken a shot at them.”

Doyle was right. Freed’s story was bullshit. Cops lied all the time, but not to each other. They had stepped into something.

The Uzi rang out inside the apartment. Valentine ripped away his vest so he could get at his .38., then stood up.

“Hang tough.”

“Be careful,” Doyle said.

The apartment’s doorway was wide open, and Valentine stuck his head through, and saw Freed lying motionless at the bottom of the stairwell with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. Valentine guessed the Prince had been hiding at the top of the first floor stairwell when Freed had come in. Daylight was streaming into the building, and he could see that no one was hiding up there now.

He climbed the stairs with Doyle’s words ringing in his ears. The building had four floors, and at the top floor he paused to catch his breath. His left hand had gone numb, and he wondered how bad the damage was. The sound of someone inside an apartment throwing a deadbolt made him jump.

“Stay inside,” he called out.

“Yassah,” a woman’s voice said.

The Prince had left a trail of blood, and he followed the drops down a hallway to a corner apartment. Light flickered behind the peep hole. The Prince got off a round, but not before Valentine emptied his .38 into the door. He heard pounding footsteps and kicked the door down, then stepped into a dingy apartment with a radio playing in one of its rooms. It had a shotgun layout similar to the apartment he’d grown up in, and he went down a hallway to the kitchen. An open window led to a fire escape. He could hear the Prince on the roof.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice said.

Spinning around, he discovered an elderly black man in a wheelchair. “Where did you come from?”

“I live here. I pray you’re the police.”

“That’s right. Why did you let the Prince into your apartment?”

The elderly man’s arm twitched, and the wheelchair came forward. “He’s my daughter’s boyfriend. She stupidly gave him a key.”

Through the open window they heard the violent whup-whup of a police helicopter hovering overhead, followed by several rapid bursts of the Prince’s Uzi. Valentine put his face to the window, and watched the helicopter fly away to safety. He turned back to the elderly man. “What’s your name?”

“Sampson.”

“Mr. Sampson, I need to reload my gun, only my hand is wounded. Can you—”

“Help you? Afraid not.”

Valentine let out an exasperated breath. Staying in the apartment with an empty gun was an invitation to disaster. Only he didn’t feel right leaving Sampson, either.

“Is there anyone here who can?”

“Just my grandson.”

“Please get him.”

Sampson sent his wheelchair into reverse and went down the hallway. Braking at a bedroom doorway, he said, “Bernard, come here,” and a skinny tyke wearing Batman pajamas emerged. The resemblance to the old man was uncanny, right down to the mud brown eyes. Together, they entered the kitchen.

“This man needs our help,” Sampson said.

The boy gave him a hostile stare. “You a cop?”

“That’s right.”

“Screw you.”

Valentine motioned Bernard towards him. The boy held his ground, and Valentine said, “There’s a bad man on the roof. I need to stop him. Will you help me?”

“Prince isn’t bad,” Bernard said.

“Yes, he is. He just shot six policemen.”

“Bet none of them was black.”

The boy was maybe ten, and already had no use for white people. Valentine looked him in the eye. “One of the men was black. His name is Mink, and he has a son named Marcus. He goes to Atlantic City High with my son.”

“And Prince shot him?”

“That’s right.”

Valentine saw the gears shifting in Bernard’s head. He decided to take a chance, and handed the boy the .38., then explained how to open the chamber, and reload the weapon. Bernard stared at the gun like it was a bomb.

“Do it, Bernard,” Valentine said.

Bernard pursed his lips. “You ain’t lying to me?”

“No. Prince is bad.”

Sampson nudged the boy with his chair, and whispered to him.

“Okay,” Bernard said.

Valentine removed six bullets from his pocket and gave them to the boy. When Bernard was finished reloading the .38, Valentine made him and his grandfather go down the hall and hide in a bedroom. Then, Valentine went to the window leading to the fire escape, and started to climb out. Hearing footsteps on the metal stairs, he pulled himself inside and pressed his face to the window.

The Prince was coming down. For some reason, he’d taken off his shoes, and Valentine watched him materialize in pieces — first his dirty feet, then his blood-soaked pant legs, and finally his upper torso — while steadying the .38’s barrel against the window. When their eyes met, Valentine shot him.

The Prince flew backwards onto the fire escape, the bullet entering an inch below his heart. He lay motionless on the steps, and Valentine climbed out the window and pried the Uzi from his grasp. The Prince’s eyes were fading, and Valentine leaned in close.

“Remember me? I was chasing you over at the casino.”

His eyelids flickered. “Sure. You... run fast.”

“What’s the deal with you and Crowe?”

“You dunno?”

Valentine shook his head.

“They sent Crowe and Freed to get their little book back,” the pimp said.

“What little book?”

“In my pocket.”

Valentine rifled the Prince’s pockets, found a wad of cash and put it back, then found a black address book, and thumbed through its pages. It contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of two dozen men. All were Italian and lived in the New York area. Next to each of their names were the dates they’d visited Atlantic City in the past eighteen months.

“Who are these guys?”

“Crowe and Brown work for them,” the pimp whispered.

“Mobsters?”

“Yeah...”

“What were they were doing?”

The Prince’s eyes shifted, and Valentine realized he was staring at something in the distance. Turning, Valentine saw the neon outline of Resorts in the distance, the garish colors fading in the early morning dawn. He looked back at the pimp.

“They got a scam going on?”

“Yeah...”

The Prince grasped Valentine’s sleeve. On his face was a look that Valentine had seen before; of a man about to die, wanting to come clean. In a hoarse whisper he said, “They’re stealing a million bucks a day.”

“What? How?”

“Got an arrangement...”

“Inside the casino?”

“Yeah...”

“With who?”

The Prince stared straight up at the sky. The sun had risen, and a ray of light rested on his face. Valentine waited for him to continue, then saw the life leave his eyes, and realized he was dead. Slipping the address book into his pocket, he closed the Prince’s eyelids with his fingertips, allowing him one final courtesy before his soul went to the place that cop-killers went. Then he climbed off the fire escape, and went outside to help his partner.

Chapter 3

“How’s the hand?” Banko asked.

Valentine held up his bandaged hand. “Almost healed.”

“You lead a charmed life.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, sergeant.”

“What would you call it?”

“I don’t know. You ever been shot?”

Banko shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Four weeks had passed since the shooting at the Rainbow Arms, and it was Valentine’s first day back at work. They were trying to have a civil conversation in Banko’s office, which was never easy. Banko was a round-faced, overweight, fifty-two-year-old cop who ran the precinct with an iron fist. The motto emblazoned on his coffee cup summed up his style to a T. It said FEEL FREE TO SHUT UP.

“Shot at,” Banko said defensively. “Never hit.”

“Then I’d say you lead a charmed life, sergeant.”

Banko snarled at him. It was how most of their conversations ended. Sensing he’d worn out his welcome, Valentine rose from his chair.

“Sit down,” his superior said.

Valentine’s ass hit the seat. He watched Banko pull open his desk drawer and remove an envelope marked EVIDENCE. From it Banko removed a stack of poker chips, and held them in his outstretched hand. “Ever see one of these before?”

He stared at the chips. Five reds, or what gamblers called nickels. He guessed they weren’t normal, and said, “I don’t know. What are they?”

Banko flipped the chips over on his palm. They weren’t chips at all, but a hollow brass cup painted to look like chips. Reaching into his desk, Banko removed four black hundred dollar chips, and handed all of it to Valentine. “It’s called a chip cup. A pit boss at Resorts found it on a blackjack table two days ago. We’re holding the dealer. The four hundred dollar chips were hidden inside the cup.”

Valentine loaded the four hundreds into the cup. They fit perfectly. He didn’t know much about casino games, and tried to guess how the stealing was taking place.

“I give up,” he finally said. “What’s the scam?”

Banko smiled triumphantly. The rift between them had started when another cop had asked Valentine if he thought Banko dyed his hair. Valentine said no, he just thought Banko was going prematurely orange. The remark had gotten back to Banko, and they had been at war ever since. The truth was, Valentine didn’t care that Banko didn’t like him. Banko had risen in the ranks by kissing ass. Valentine had never kissed an ass a day in his life.

“It’s simple,” Banko said. “I’m a crooked blackjack dealer, and you’re my partner. You sit at my table, and make a bet with the chip cup. You purposely make a bad bet, and lose. When I pick up your bet, I use it to cover another bet—”

“The four hundreds,” Valentine said.

“Correct. They disappear inside the cup. I put the cup in my tray, only it goes with the other red chips. The hundreds disappear.”

“Doesn’t the casino notice?”

“There’s no way for them to notice,” Banko said. “That’s the bad part about the casino business. They can’t track how much inventory there is on the floor. It leaves them wide open to employee theft.”

Valentine turned the chip cup over on his palm. Instead of stealing the house’s money, the crooked dealer was stealing a player’s money, which the player had just lost. “What’s going to happen to the dealer?”

“He’s screwed,” Banko said. “He got caught in Reno pulling the same scam. Went to the federal pen to iron out a nickel. Did two and a half to parole.”

“What’s he facing here?”

“Seven-to-ten.”

“Who explained the scam to you?”

“Special Agent Bill Higgins of the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s investigation unit. We talked over the phone. The GCB is loaning him as an expert witness to help us prosecute the dealer.”

Valentine was surprised. After New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling, the state had decided not to talk to anyone who’d ever worked in the Nevada gaming industry. While never publicly stated, the message was clear: New Jersey didn’t want Nevada’s organized crime families invading their little town by the shore. A great idea, except the mob had been in Atlantic City for as long as Valentine could remember.

“I thought Nevada was having nothing to do with us,” Valentine said.

“They’re making an exception with this case.” The phone on Banko’s desk lit up. Ignoring it, he went on. “Higgins is flying into town. I want you to meet him, see if you can learn some pointers.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s full of himself. I’m sure you’ll get along fine.”

Valentine had always enjoyed a challenge, and decided that he’d like to meet Higgins. Then it dawned on him what his boss had just said.

“Am I working inside Resorts now?”

Banko leaned back in his chair and nodded. “That’s right. I’m putting you in charge of our new Casino Investigation Division. You’ll work inside the casino with the surveillance department to stop the casino from being swindled. You’ll get to pick another detective to work with you.”

Valentine felt the blood drain from his head. Fifteen years of busting his hump catching thieves and pimps and murderers and now he was being taken off the street. It wasn’t a demotion, it was a kick in the teeth, and he realized that Banko had finally found a way to pay him back for the orange hair crack. “What if I don’t want the job?” he said.

“This is a promotion, Tony. More pay, better hours—”

“I don’t want a desk job. I want to be where the action is.”

“You’ll see plenty of action inside the casino.”

A copy of that day’s Camden Union Register lay face-up on the desk. Valentine stabbed his finger at the headline. ATLANTIC CITY KILLER STILL AT LARGE. POLICE BAFFLED. “You’ve got three women raped and murdered in three weeks, no leads, and every woman on the island walking around scared for her life. Come on sarge, let me have this one. You know this is right up my alley.”

“No,” Banko said.

“The killer’s got to be local. I’ll use my contacts to track him down, make the department look good. What do you say?”

“I already put in the paperwork. I have reasons for wanting you inside the casino, Tony. You start tomorrow.”

“What if I say no?”

Banko eyed him cooly. “That would be a bad career move.”

Instead of driving home from work that night, Valentine drove to the Atlantic City Hospital to see Doyle. He drove a Pinto, which necessitated driving with one eye in the mirror. Right after he’d purchased the car, he’d learned that it had a minor defect. If a Pinto got rear-ended by another car, it would explode in a fiery nova. As a joke, Doyle had a special bumper sticker made for him which said KABOOM!

Valentine found Doyle in the basement doing physical therapy for his leg. Doyle’s therapist was a nurse who his partner had nick-named Hilda-Who-Never-Smiled. Hilda wore her hair pulled back in a steel bun, and was reminiscent of a villainess from a James Bond movie. She was monitoring Doyle’s pulse while he pedaled a stationary bike.

“Guess what? I nearly got her to laugh,” Doyle said.

“No, you didn’t,” Hilda said without humor.

“Well, you were thinking of laughing.”

“You have no idea what I’m thinking. Keep pedaling.”

Doyle winked at him. Taking the bait, Valentine said, “I know this is none of my business, but are you Polish?”

Hilda shot him an icy stare. “You’re right. That’s none of your business.”

“I know this funny Polish joke.”

“Spare me.”

“Don’t I get a shot?”

“You want a shot? Bend over, I’ll give you a shot.”

“Come on. I want to see if I can make you laugh.”

Her face was mirthless, and reminded Valentine of an old European painting. She tossed her clipboard onto a table. “I will do no such thing,” she said, and walked out. Doyle climbed down off the bike and grabbed his crutches.

“Let’s get something to drink,” he said.

The hospital’s cafeteria served coffee so strong it could have woken up a dead man. Sitting at a corner table in the back of the room, Valentine removed the chip cup Banko had lent him, and explained the ingenious scam while his partner played with the device. “They caught the dealer, huh?” Doyle said.

“By accident,” Valentine said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how you would catch a dealer using one. But I’m about to learn. I’m running the new Casino Investigation Division.”

“Banko’s taking you off the street?” Valentine nodded, and Doyle said, “But you’re the best detective on the force. You should fight it.”

Valentine shook his head. His partner had slid the cup back, and he put it into his pocket. “I talked it over with Lois, and she convinced me to take the job.”

“Not to second guess your wife, but why?”

He held up his bandaged hand. “She reminded me that I could have gotten killed last month. She also pointed out that I’ll be running my own show at Resorts.”

Doyle stared into the depths of his coffee. “Where does that leave us?”

“Well, like the Army poster says, I’m looking for a few good men. Actually, one good man. Banko said I could recruit a detective to work with me.”

Doyle lifted his gaze. “Afraid not.”

“You don’t want to work with me?”

“I got some bad news today. My leg is permanently messed up. Doctor said no more sparring in the gym, or playing handball. He doesn’t think I’ll be able to run again.”

“So, this will be perfect.”

“Don’t paint a silver lining on this, okay?”

“Come on, it will be fun. Hell, we’ll make it fun.”

“You want a gimp working with you?”

Valentine leaned across the cafeteria table and squeezed his partner’s arm. They’d known each other since they were kids, and had been through thick and thin. “This isn’t about chasing pimps in the middle of the night. People who cheat casinos are clever. It’s like a chess match. We have to use our brains, and outwit them.”

“I was never good at chess, and neither were you.”

“Then we’ll learn.”

Doyle got his crutches from the floor and stood up. He took a few uncertain steps toward the door before glancing over his shoulder. “Let me think about it,” he said.

They took the elevator to Doyle’s room. On the bedside table in his room was a photo of him as a child in a baby carriage. Doyle’s father had run a bingo parlor on the Boardwalk, and at closing time stuffed the day’s receipts into Doyle’s carriage, and wheeled him to the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, where the money was put in a vault.

“Who’d think to rip off a baby?” his father was fond of saying.

Doyle changed into pajamas and climbed into bed. Valentine pulled up a chair and leaned on the metal arm. “I ran the names in the Prince’s address book through the system. They’re all soldiers in the New York mafia.”

Doyle played with the motor on his bed until he was comfortable. “You said the dates in the address book went back eighteen months. It occurred to me that Resorts opened eighteen months ago. These mobsters are working the casino, aren’t they?”

“That would be my guess.”

“And Crowe and Brown were on their payroll.”

Valentine glanced over his shoulder at the open doorway. The doctors and nurses wore rubber sole shoes, and he didn’t want anyone walking in, and hearing what he was about to say. “This is what I think happened. One the Prince’s girls slept with a mobster, got her hands on the address book, and gave it to the Prince. When the Prince wouldn’t give it back, Crowe and Brown were sent to get it.”

“How were Mink and Freed involved?”

“I think they’re also dirty. We responded to the call in two minutes, and they were already there with their vests on.”

Drops of rain appeared on the window beside Doyle’s bed. His partner stared at them for a long moment, then replied. “How is the mob stealing a million bucks a day?”

Valentine had turned that one inside out. To steal that much money, the mafia would have to be putting their hands in the till. Out in Nevada, that stuff still went on, but this wasn’t Nevada. The New Jersey Casino Control Act required the presence of state agents in the casino’s “count” room at all times, making skimming out of the question.

“I wish I knew,” Valentine said.

Doyle said, “I think we should ask Banko to start an investigation.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Those guys were dirty.”

Outside it had started to storm, and they listened to the wind howl off the Atlantic Ocean. By tomorrow morning, several hundred tons of sand would have moved from one end of the island to the other.

“We don’t have any proof,” Valentine said.

“Investigations have been started with less.”

“We’re talking about three dead cops.”

“So what?”

Doyle hadn’t attended the memorial service for Crowe, Brown and Freed at St. Michael’s. Valentine had been there, packed into the church along with four hundred cops from around the state. Governor Brendan Byrne had given the eulogy, and made it clear how he viewed the three detectives’ passing. “Let it be known, that I know of no braver crime-fighters than these three men,’ Byrne had told the packed cathedral.

“They’re heroes,” Valentine said. “We can’t smear their names without proof.”

Doyle fell silent and resumed staring out the window. Valentine could tell his partner was wrestling with his conscience. Doyle went to Mass every Sunday, had a brother who was a priest. He believed that God watched over him, every day.

“So you want to sit on the address book,” his partner said.

“For now. We need to dig up more evidence to make our case, and tie everything together. Then we’ll go to Banko.”

His partner thought about it some more.

“Okay,” he finally said.

Valentine put his chair against the wall. Lois was at home, holding dinner until he arrived. They tried to eat together whenever they could. He tapped Doyle on the arm.

“I’ll come around tomorrow. Maybe we can get Hilda to smile.”

“You really think working in Resorts won’t suck?”

He didn’t know if policing a casino would suck or not. But it would be better than sitting at a desk sharpening pencils, which was where they were headed if they refused the assignment. His late mother liked to say that life sometimes dealt you bad cards. How you played them was up to you.

“Like I told you. We’ll make it fun,” Valentine said.

Chapter 4

Israel “Izzie” Hirsch had a problem.

Izzie was the captain of a team of card hustlers. As the captain, he maintained the bankroll, scouted out strong games, and after their work was done, cooled out the suckers. Those were his duties, and he did them well.

Izzie’s problem was a woman named Betty Horn. Izzie was not handsome, and women had never been receptive to his advances. Then Betty had come along. She was about forty, and not hard on the eyes. Izzie had picked her up one night in a sleazy bar. Betty was just out of prison for kiting checks, and needed to make some money.

Normally, women didn’t get involved with cheaters. Not even bad women. But Betty was different. She loved to hear Izzie tell road stories, and watch him manipulate playing cards and switch dice. She loved Izzie, or so she said.

Izzie didn’t see the problem, but the other members of the team did. Their names were Josh and Seymour, and they were Izzie’s brothers. Seeing Izzie swoon whenever Betty was around, the brothers knew they had a disaster on their hands. They had tried to talk to Izzie, but getting through to a man who was getting laid wasn’t easy. In the end, they decided to go along with their older brother. It was a decision they’d later regret.

The poker game they had decided to fleece was played in the back room of a bar in Nyack, New York. Each month, five traveling salesman got together and gambled away their commission checks. Izzie, posing as a greeting card salesman, had gotten himself invited to the game, then convinced the others to invite Josh.

For the first two hours of the game, nothing happened. First one player was ahead, then another. At the halfway point they decided to take a break, and Josh offered to get sandwiches from the all-night deli across the street. Taking everyone’s order, he headed outside. The Hirsch’s car was parked across the street. Josh slipped into the passenger seat. Seymour was at the wheel, while Betty sat in the back, smoking a cigarette.

“How’s it looking?” Seymour asked.

“They’re a bunch of real chumps,” Josh said. “They’re using two decks. Red Bicycles, and a deck of blue Squeezers.”

Seymour opened a briefcase sitting on seat. Inside were a hundred decks of playing cards. The brothers worked poker games from the Catskills to New York City, and had collected every deck of cards sold in those markets, including promotional and souvenir decks. Seymour removed a deck of red Bicycles and blue Squeezers, and handed them to his brother. Josh stacked the decks so the players in the first and third spots would take the fall. Turning in his seat, he passed Betty the stacked decks and the sandwich order.

“Just so we’re straight, which pocket of your apron are the decks are going in?”

“You think I’m going to screw up?” Her tone was nasty.

“Just tell me.”

“Red deck in my left pocket, blue deck in my right. Happy now?”

Betty gave him a wink. Josh hated when she flirted with him. He got out of the car, and slammed the door.

Josh returned to a table of roaring men. Izzie was telling jokes. They had grown up in the Catskill Mountains, and Izzie had learned from the best. Josh clenched his right hand into a fist, signaling to his brother that the scam was on.

“Oh man, that was rich,” a lightbulb salesman named Hicks said. “Tell us another.”

“Okay,” Izzie said. “An Iranian living in the United States goes to the doctor, says he doesn’t feel well. The doctor examines him and says, ‘I want you to go home, shit in a paper bag, and leave it out in the hot sun for a week. Then I want you to stick your head in the bag, and take a deep breath. I guarantee you’ll feel better. The Iranian comes back a week later, tells the doctor he feels great. Then he says, ‘But doctor, what was wrong with me?’ And the doctor says, ‘You were homesick.’”

The five salesmen slapped the card table and roared some more.

“I think we should bomb Iran,” Hicks suddenly said.

“Nuke ‘em,” another of the salesmen piped in.

One hundred and twenty-eight Americans were being held hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and sentiments were running high toward retaliation.

The room grew quiet. Betty stood in the doorway holding a cardboard tray with their sandwiches. She wore tight-fitting jeans, an I LOVE NY sweatshirt, and had a cook’s apron tied around her waist. Even in those drab clothes she was a looker.

“Here’s the grub,” Josh said.

Betty crossed the room. Josh leaned back in his chair, watching.

“Give me a deck.” Izzie said, pointing at the two decks on the table.

Hicks slid the blue Squeezers toward him. Izzie picked the Squeezers up with his left hand, then slid his chair sideways, allowing Betty to come in, and put the cardboard tray on the table edge.

“I got the corn beef,” Izzie said.

Betty passed the sandwiches around the table. She was the perfect shade, and Izzie stuck his hand into the pocket of her apron, and switched the cards for the stacked deck.

Betty flirted with the salesmen and left. Izzie began to deal. Josh stared in disbelief as the cards sailed around the table. His brother was holding a deck of red Bicycles. Betty had put the wrong decks into the pockets of her apron.

Josh knew he had to do something to save his brother. S.W. Erdnase, a famous card cheater, once wrote, ‘The resourceful professional, failing to improve the method changes the moment.’ Picking up his cup of coffee, he poured the hot drink onto his lap.

“My balls, my balls!” Josh screamed.

It didn’t work. Hicks rose from his chair and pointed an accusing finger at Izzie.

“Hey! Those cards changed color,” Hicks said.

The other salesmen stared as well. Then, all hell broke loose.

Even nice guys turned into monsters when they thought they’d been swindled. The salesmen beat the living daylights out of Izzie and Josh, took their money, then dragged them outside, and tossed them into a garbage-filled Dumpster behind the bar.

“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you,” Seymour said a half hour later. They were driving on the outskirts of Nyack, the windshield wipers beating back the rain.

Josh sat beside Seymour. He’d lost a tooth and several of his ribs were bruised from where Hicks had kicked him. Izzie sat in backseat with Betty. His older brother had two black eyes and his swollen lips looked like blood sausages.

“I’m sorry I messed up,” Betty said.

“It’s okay, baby,” Izzie said.

“You sure?”

“Positive. Mistakes happen. It’s part of the business.”

Josh glanced at Seymour and saw his younger brother roll his eyes. If Betty kept screwing up, they’d all end up in the hospital, or a graveyard.

“I love you, Izzie,” Betty whispered.

“I love you, too,” Izzie whispered back.

The unmistakable sound of Izzie’s fly being yanked open shattered the silence. Josh shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Betty was like one of those sirens in the ancient Greek stories. Izzie was her slave, and she wasn’t going to let go of him.

An convenience store materialized on the road side. Josh said, “I need some smokes,” and Seymour pulled into the lot and the two brothers went inside. They nosed around the potato chip aisle, killing time while the lovebirds got it on.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Josh asked.

“I sure am,” Seymour replied.

“I make a motion that we lose her.”

“I second the motion.”

“All those in favor, say I.”

“I.”

“Done.”

Five minutes later, Josh and Seymour were back in the car. Izzie had his arm slung over Betty’s shoulder and was breathing like he’d just run a marathon. Seymour started to drive away, then slammed on the brakes. “Damn. I left my wallet on the counter.”

The tires spun on the gravel as Seymour backed up. Josh turned in his seat, and looked Betty in the eye. “Would you do my moronic brother a favor, and get his wallet?”

Betty giggled. It was no secret that she thought Seymour was a putz.

“Sure,” she said.

She hopped out of the car, and went into the convenience store. When Betty was happy, she walked with a little skip. It was the only thing remotely child-like about her.

Josh grabbed her purse off the back seat. Rolling down his window, he flung the purse with all his might, and it hit the convenience store’s front door with a loud Wham! Seymour threw the car into drive and punched the accelerator.

“Hey!” Izzie exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

“We’re leaving,” Josh said.

“What about Betty?”

“She’s not coming.”

“Who said she’s not coming?”

“We took a vote, and you lost.”

Izzie made a strangled sound, then fell silent. For a while they drove in silence. The highway was dark and unforgiving. Road hustling was tough work, and the brothers knew that it was time to change locales. Miami Beach was nice, and the money was always good in Chicago. But Josh wanted to branch out, and from the glove compartment he removed a glossy brochure from Resorts in Atlantic City, and passed it around the car.

Josh and Seymour took turns reading the brochure. The brothers had often fantasized about pulling an Ocean’s Eleven-type caper, and taking down a casino for a huge score. It was every hustler’s dream, yet only a handful had ever tried it. The risks far outweighed the rewards.

“I thought the mob was running Atlantic City,” Izzie said skeptically. “If those guys catch us cheating, they’ll kill us.”

“Screw the mob,” Josh said. “I’ve got this plan that will let us steal five grand a week from Resorts, and the mob will never have a clue. On top of that, we’ll get to stay in one place, and not have to move around. No more crummy motel rooms and shitty food.”

“Five grand a week? That’s huge,” Seymour said.

“You thought this out?” Izzie asked.

Josh tapped his forehead with his finger. “Every last detail.”

“Count me in,” Seymour said.

“Me, too,” Izzie chorused.

An exit sign loomed ahead. They’d been driving around aimlessly for over an hour. Seymour flipped on his indicator. Soon, they were heading south on I-95 toward New Jersey, ready to take on the mob without hearing the details of Josh’s plan, or fully understanding the dangerous risks they were about to assume.

It was another decision the brothers would later regret.

Chapter 5

Valentine’s Sicilian grandmother had a favorite expression. He doesn’t know that he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know. She liked to use it when describing really stupid people. Valentine had never thought it applied to him. But it did apply to Mickey Wright. Mickey was a fixture in Atlantic City, and for years had worked as a concierge at hotels around the island. When Resorts opened, Mickey had pulled some strings, and wound up running the casino’s surveillance department. The fact that Mickey had no casino experience hadn’t fazed the people running Resorts. Mickey was their man.

Mickey had shown Doyle and Valentine the basics of casino surveillance. He taught them how to operate a VCR, how to start the Time/Generator machine so each video tape was properly certified, and how to fill out Incident Activity Reports.

Mickey also liked to play on the job. He used surveillance cameras to pick up hairpieces and patchwork suits, and watch pretty girls wearing red clothes, which became invisible under the camera’s invasive eye. And, he was into games. Find the prettiest girl in the casino was one. Find the ugliest guy another. Mickey loved to have fun.

One afternoon, Mickey got a call from Sergeant Banko. The chief was bringing Bill Higgins, the Nevada Gaming Control Board special agent, to the casino, and wanted Mickey, Doyle and Valentine to meet him. Mickey hung up the phone shaking his head.

“What the hell am I gonna learn from this guy?” Mickey said aloud.

They met in one of the hotel’s swanky conference rooms. Bill Higgins was a lean, unusually handsome Native American with a mop of black hair that touched the collar of his shirt. He wore cowboy boots and a suit that had gone out of style years ago, yet still looked good on him. He came around the table where Mickey, Doyle and Valentine were sitting, and shook their hands. Valentine noticed Higgins was holding a video tape in his other hand, and wondered what it was.

“Bill is in town helping us prosecute a crooked blackjack dealer, ” Banko said. “I asked him to give us some pointers on catching casino cheaters. Take it away, Bill.”

Higgins faced the three men. There was a tension in his movements, like the news he was about to give them wasn’t so good. “I’d like to start with a question,” he said. “How much experience policing casinos do you guys have?”

“None,” Mickey said brightly.

“That’s what I thought.” Higgins crossed the room to where a TV with a VCR sat, and inserted the tape into the machine. The TV came to life, and he paused the tape.

“Do any of you know what a candy store is?” he asked.

Mickey, Valentine and Doyle shook their heads.

“A candy store is a casino that’s wide open to cheating. It means the people running things are clueless. It’s what you have here in Atlantic City.”

“Hey — watch it!” Mickey exclaimed.

Valentine knew there were problems in the casino — with so much money flowing in, it was hard to imagine there wouldn’t be — but he hadn’t expected Higgins to waltz in, and call them morons. He decided to take the high road, and said, “You sure about that?”

“Yes, I am,” Higgins said.

“How recently did you see this cheating?”

“About an hour ago.”

Exactly one hour ago, Valentine and Doyle had canvassed the casino floor — all thirty thousand square feet — and seen nothing to indicate they were being swindled.

“I think you’re wrong,” Valentine said.

Higgins pressed the Play button on the VCR. “See for yourself.”

“This tape is of a blackjack game in your casino,” Higgins explained. “Sergeant Banko had one of your techs video tape the table for me.”

The tape was in grainy black & white. Six people — one woman, five men — were playing blackjack with a mustachioed dealer. In the lower right corner of the tape was the date and time. The tape had been made sixty minutes before.

Valentine watched in silence. He wasn’t seeing a single bad thing happening at the table. He glanced at Doyle, then Mickey. They weren’t seeing anything unusual, either. Sensing their discomfort, Higgins shut the VCR off.

“Had enough?” he asked.

“What are we missing?” Valentine said.

Higgins used the chalkboard to draw a blackjack table. He assigned the players numbers, then turned the VCR on, and let them watch the action while he explained the scene-behind-the-scene. He was low-key, and would have made a good teacher.

“Six players and a dealer. Each player is doing something dishonest.”

“All of them are cheating?” Mickey said.

“Afraid so. Let’s start with the sweet little lady at spot #1. If you watched her all night, you probably wouldn’t catch what she’s doing. Hustlers call her scam ‘Excuse me!’ At the start of each round, she puts a hundred dollar chip in the betting circle. Only the chip isn’t completely inside the circle. That’s on purpose. The dealer deals her a card, which is face up. If the card is a Ten, or an Ace, she doesn’t say anything. Know why?”

Valentine had been reading a book on casino games, and was halfway through the section on blackjack. “Because high-valued cards increase her chances of winning,” he guessed.

“Correct. With a Ten, she has a 12 % advantage over the house. With an Ace, a 50 % advantage. What happens if her first card isn’t one of those cards?”

The answer seemed obvious, only no one knew what it was. Valentine took a stab in the dark. “She asks for change for her hundred dollar chip?”

“Very good. If the dealer balks, she’ll say, ‘Excuse me, but I thought you knew I wanted change!’ Chances are, the dealer won’t challenge her. She’ll take her change, and put down a minimum bet.”

Mickey was fuming. “Come on. Is that really cheating? I mean, she can only do it once a night without it being obvious.”

“It certainly is cheating,” Higgins said. “Casinos rotate dealers every fifteen minutes. She can scam four dealers, wait until a shift change, and scam four more.”

Mickey ran his fingers through his oily pompadour. “Oh.”

Higgins pointed at the chalkboard. “Player #2 is a hustler from Las Vegas called The Wheel. Supposedly, he’s missing a couple of spokes. That’s a little Western humor. The Wheel is adding chips to his bet after he’s seen his cards. Hustlers call this capping. Any time the Wheel gets good cards, he adds a chip. I’ll give you a hint. It’s palmed in his right hand.”

They watched The Wheel do his thing. Each time he brought his right hand over his bet, his bet magically grew in size.

“Players 3, 4 and 5 are a team of card counters,” Higgins went on. “Card counting isn’t illegal, except if you’re getting help, which these players are. They’re using a Hewlett Packard 59 computer. Tell me if you can guess which one’s operating it.”

An excruciatingly long minute passed as the three men stared at the mute images on the screen. Players 3, 4 and 5 were smoking cigars and drinking beer and having a swell time. They were not paying attention to the cards, yet winning every hand.

“None of them,” Valentine said.

“Good call. Any idea who is?”

“The chubby guy standing behind them,” Valentine said. “It’s in the bag he’s holding. He’s punching in the values of the cards as they’re dealt.”

“How did you know it was him?”

“His eyes. He keeps staring at the cards on the table.”

“Right again.” Higgins pointed at the blackboard. “Player #6 poses the biggest threat to the game. The scam he’s doing is called Playing the Anchor, and it involves the dealer.”

“The dealer’s cheating too?” Mickey said in astonishment.

“That’s right. You know him?”

“Shit, I hired him,” Mickey said.

“Dealer/player scams are the worst; they can bleed casinos for huge sums before they’re discovered,” Higgins said. “Playing the Anchor is pretty straightforward. The dealer flashes his hole card to Player #6 each time he slips it under his face card. It’s impossible to see from a surveillance camera. However, the scam does have a tell. Player #6 will sometimes do strange things, like stand on a weak hand, or split a strong pair when the dealer is showing an Ace.”

“You have any idea what he’s talking about,” Doyle whispered.

Valentine had stopped listening to Higgins, and was staring at the screen. Behind the blackjack table, he’d spotted a hooker he’d once arrested, an Hispanic girl with a body that could stop traffic. She was talking to a john, and Valentine watched her take the john’s arm, and walk away. Jack and Jill going up the hill to have a little intercourse, he thought. Then, something strange happened. Out of the john’s back pocket popped a silver flask. The john anxiously shoved the flask back into his pocket. He seemed desperate to hide it, and looked panicked. The hooker didn’t see the flask, and a look of normalcy returned to the john’s face. They disappeared from the picture.

Valentine lifted his eyes from the TV. Higgins had returned to the chalkboard, and was explaining how to detect each of the scams. He put the incident on the tape out of his mind, and focused his attention on their guest.

They wrapped up an hour later. Higgins was leaving for Las Vegas that night, and Valentine walked him downstairs to Resorts valet area to pick up his rental. The line of cars stretched around the block, and Higgins handed the uniformed attendant his stub.

“So, how do we learn this stuff?” Valentine asked.

“You mean the scams and hustles?” Higgins said.

“Yeah. Before Resorts gets robbed blind.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. You’ve got a unique situation here. Ever hear the expression ‘Why slaughter the cow, when you can milk it?’ That’s true with your casino. Resorts is making so much money that smart cheaters will milk it for as long as they can.”

“That’s encouraging.”

He laughed. “Okay, here’s what I’d suggest. Start with the basics. Learn how the games are played, and the odds. I’ve been in Atlantic City two days, and seen two people win hundred thousand dollar jackpots at slot machines. Know what happens in Las Vegas if two people win back-to-back jackpots?”

“What — you throw a party?”

“Far from it. There would be an investigation, and the jackpots would be withheld from the winners until the investigation was completed.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because of the odds,” Higgins said. “Any idea what they are?”

“Of a person winning a jackpot? I don’t know, a million to one?”

“Try seventeen million to one. The same as a person getting struck by lightning twice in the same day. Odds of that happening two days in a row? Not very likely.”

Valentine found himself nodding. If he was going to police the games, he needed to understand how they worked, no different than working vice or narcotics.

“Got it.”

“Mind if I ask you a question? You got fixated on something on the surveillance tape I showed you earlier. What was it?”

“I saw a john picking up a hooker inside the casino,” Valentine said.

“Is that unusual?”

“He hid something from her. Something about his body language didn’t feel right. We’ve had three women killed on the island in the past month, and every cop is on the lookout. I’ve always had this ability to dissect a crowd, and pick out the scum bag.”

“Grift sense.”

“Is that what it’s called?”

Higgins nodded. “It’s an old hustler’s expression. You have the ability to pick out what’s wrong in a situation. It should help you police Resorts’ casino.”

Valentine wasn’t so sure. He’d been on the job for a week, and hadn’t nabbed a single thief. “Would you mind if I called you if I had any questions?”

“Not at all.” Higgins took out a business card, and wrote a number on the back. “That’s my home number. Call me anytime. Good luck.”

His rental had come up. They shook hands, and Higgins got into his car, and drove out of the crowded valet area. Valentine took out his wallet and stuck the card into the billfold. Something told him be talking to Higgins often, and he didn’t want to lose the gaming agent’s number.

Chapter 6

Lying in bed that night, Valentine used a deck of playing cards to show Lois some of the cheating techniques Bill Higgins had tipped that afternoon. They were like magic tricks, and his wife lay beside him, mesmerized. She wore no clothes, and his heart did the funny thing it always did when she was naked.

He didn’t think there was a more beautiful woman in Atlantic City. Her skin was as fine as porcelain, her soft green eyes as enchanting as emeralds. As a teenager, she’d won every beauty pageant she’d entered — Miss Ventnor, Miss Steel Pier, Miss Mermaid, Miss Atlantic County — while being pursued by every hot-blooded guy on the island. They’d met over a Bunsen burner in an eleventh-grade biology class, and he’d never gotten over the fact that she’d chosen to spend her life with him.

“You learned all that in one day,” she said.

He nodded and put the cards away. He could tell Lois liked his new job. He was learning things, and he wasn’t getting shot at. And, he was home at night at a decent hour. Like every other woman in Atlantic City, the recent killings had put a healthy dose of fear into her. He turned off the light and they lay in the dark, sharing the silence.

“Are the police any closer to catching this killer?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know. I don’t hear about that stuff anymore. The casino is its own little world.”

“You sound resentful.”

“I think I could catch this guy, if Banko would give me a chance.”

“Did you ask him?”

“About a dozen times. He keeps telling me no.”

“Do they have any leads?”

His wife knew him too well. Valentine had talked to the lead investigator on the case and asked the same question. So far, the police had hit a stone wall.

“Not yet. They think someone local is responsible.”

“Why do they think that? Couldn’t a tourist be behind it?”

“Tourists stay around the casino. The killings are taking place around the island. The fact that there haven’t been any witnesses means the killer is probably someone we all know. We’re seeing him, but we’re not making the connection.”

“Oh.”

They fell silent and watched a gibbous moon cut a sphere through the window. Valentine started to drift off when a noise snapped him awake. The music coming out of their son’s bedroom had gone up several decibels, and he got out of bed to investigate.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He tapped lightly on his son’s bedroom door, then entered. The lights were on, and Gerry lay in bed with a copy of The Catcher in the Rye propped on his chest. The room’s walls were covered in posters of rock bands, and his son’s clothes were scattered across the floor along with the other items that made up a thirteen year old’s world.

“You having a Beatles’s reunion in here?”

“It’s the Bee Gees, Pop.”

Valentine killed the stereo. His son was listening to the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever. He and Lois had seen the movie at a drive-in, and thought it gave working-class Italians a real black eye. He parked himself on his son’s bed.

“Lights out.”

“I was doing homework, you know.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Gerry slid the book onto the night table. So far, puberty had been kind to him. He was growing like a weed, and his skin was unblemished.

“Your mother said you got your report card today.”

“It wasn’t so hot. I left it downstairs on the kitchen table. You have to sign it.”

“How bad?”

“Three Cs, two Bs and an A in gym.”

“That the only class you showing up for?”

A hurt look crossed his son’s face. “I’m trying, okay?”

“You still getting headaches?”

“Every day.”

Since entering junior high school, Gerry’s grades had taken a precipitous nosedive. He claimed that all the reading was giving him headaches, so they’d taken him to an eye specialist. A hundred bucks worth of tests had revealed his son’s eyesight to be 20/20. Valentine tucked him in, then tousled his son’s hair. “It will get better.”

“That’s what mom said. Are things okay with you and her?”

Valentine felt a knot tighten in his stomach. “Everything’s fine.”

“You seem really uptight. And you’re smoking cigarettes again.”

“Are those bad signs?”

“Yeah. It means something’s bothering you. I don’t want to be one of those kids who gets shuttled around on weekends.”

Valentine’s own parents had broken up when he was a teenager, and his life had never been the same. He lay his hand on his son’s stomach. Nature had only let them have one child, and he loved his boy more than anything in the world.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “Now, go to sleep.”

He switched off the light on the night table. Outside his son’s window he could see the spot in the backyard where he’d buried the Prince’s address book. By hiding it, he’d figured he’d stop thinking about it, but so far it hadn’t worked.

“You sure everything’s okay?” Gerry asked.

Valentine kissed his son’s forehead in the dark. “Positive.”

Chapter 7

The telephone call came at seven the next morning.

Gerry had left to catch the bus. He was a drummer in the marching band, and went to practice at the high school three mornings a week. Valentine sat at the kitchen table, staring at his son’s dismal report card while munching on a piece of toast.

Lois answered the phone on the third ring. She was at the kitchen counter, preparing her husband’s lunch. Money was tight, and he bagged it whenever he could.

“Can I tell him who’s calling?” She stuck the receiver into her shoulder, and lowered her voice. “It’s some guy pretending to be Nucky Balducci.”

“Tell him to get stuffed and hang up.”

“It sort of sounds like him.”

Enoch “Nucky” Balducci had run Atlantic City’s rackets for forty years. As a kid, Valentine’s mother had told him that if he didn’t behave, Nucky would climb through his bedroom window, and slit his throat. “You think it’s Doyle?” he asked.

“Could be,” Lois said.

Valentine took the phone from his wife. “Hey buddy, what’s up?”

“We need to talk,” a gruff voice said.

“Who’s this?”

“Your wife fucking deaf? This is Nucky Balducci.”

He saw Lois staring at him. Had his adolescent fear of Nucky registered on his face? “How do I know this is Nucky Balducci?” he asked.

“Your father has a tattoo with your mother’s name stenciled on his ass,” the man growled. “That good enough for you?”

They agreed to meet at the foot of Lucy the Elephant in thirty minutes.

Lucy resided in a park in Margate not far from Valentine’s house. Once, she had been one of Atlantic City’s most famous attractions. Made of timber and sheet metal, she stood sixty-five feet from head-to-toe. For twenty cents, a visitor could climb the spiral staircase in her hind leg, and sit in the basket on her back, called a howdah. These days, Lucy sat unused, the weeds around her long and ragged.

Crossing the park, Valentine spotted Nucky standing beneath Lucy’s tail. The old gangster wore a long winter coat and a black fedora. He was carrying an umbrella, even though it hadn’t rained in days. A scruffy park attendant unlocked Lucy’s hollow leg, then shuffled away.

“You come alone?” Nucky asked.

“Yeah. How about you?”

“Don’t be a wise ass.”

They climbed the spiral staircase and got settled in Lucy’s howdah. A veil of bluish fog hung over the nearby rooftops. Nucky started the conversation.

“Zelda asked about you the other day,” the old gangster said.

“How’s she doing?”

Nucky removed his fedora. He had a shaved head and bulbous, bloodshot eyes. If he wasn’t the ugliest man in Atlantic City, he was in the running.

“Terrible,” he said.

“Still won’t come out of her room?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You should come by. It would cheer her up.”

Zelda Balducci had lost her marbles the day Elvis Presley had died. Locked herself in her bedroom, and kissed the world goodbye. Two years later, she was still in her room. “She likes you,” Nucky added.

Valentine gave him a hard look. His relationship with Nucky was a thin one. His father had saved Nucky’s life before Valentine had been born. Stopped a man from braining Nucky with a shovel, was how the story went. As Nucky had risen up in the ranks of Atlantic City’s underworld, he’d looked out for Dominic Valentine. Valentine had taken Zelda to a high school dance as a favor to his old man, and recalled Zelda stepping on his toes all night long.

“I hear you got promoted,” Nucky said. “Catching cheaters in the casino.”

“That’s right.”

“My first job as a kid was inside this elephant. Lucy was a speakeasy. There was also a blackjack game.”

“What did you do?”

“Cleaned out the spittoons, ran errands.”

“Sounds like a blast.”

Nucky elbowed him in the ribs. “You inherited your old man’s mouth, you know that?”

“Excuse me for asking, but what do you want? ” Valentine said, “If people see me hanging out with you, they might get the wrong idea.”

Nucky stared off into space, then punched his hat with his fist. “There’s bad stuff going down at Resorts. Stuff that could get you hurt.”

He paused, and Valentine realized he was expecting an answer. To act uninformed around Nucky was a mistake, so he said, “I know.”

“I ain’t talking about the stuff you think I’m talking about,” Nucky said.

“What stuff are you talking about?”

“Other stuff.”

“What stuff is that?”

Nucky opened the umbrella and covered them with it. To stop anyone watching with binoculars who knew how to read lips, Valentine guessed.

“I’m talking about stuff you don’t know about,” Nucky said. “Maybe never will know about it. Which is probably for the better.”

“It is?”

Nucky nodded vigorously. “For you, and your family.”

Valentine stared at him. Why was Nucky dragging his family into this? He watched the fog start to lift, the sunlight bleeding through as the day began.

“How much did the Prince tell you before he croaked?” Nucky asked.

So that was why Nucky had asked him here. The Prince.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

Valentine shook his head.

“You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“You check his pockets?”

There was no love in Nucky’s eyes now. The old gangster wanted to know what had happened to the address book with the names of the New York mafia soldiers.

“No. I don’t roll dead men,” Valentine replied.

Nucky owned two identical Cadillac Eldorados. One was for driving around, the other for parking in front of his plumbing supply store so people would think he was working. Luther, his ex-football player bodyguard and chauffeur, had parked the driving car on the street, and now opened the back door as they came out of the park.

“You ever patch things up with your old man?” Nucky asked.

The question caught Valentine by surprise. “No.”

“I saw him the other day on the street. I took him to a diner, and we talked over coffee. Your father still has a lot upstairs. He hasn’t killed all his brain cells.”

“Glad to hear it,” Valentine said.

“You need to smoke the peace pipe. Make peace.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying you should do it.”

Valentine watched Nucky climb into the backseat. There was a delicate balance in Atlantic City between the crooks, the Jews, the blacks, and the Republican machine, and at the center of it was this man. The passenger window came down, and Nucky peered out at him from inside the car. Valentine realized he was expecting an answer.

“I’ve tried a hundred times.”

“Try a hundred more,” the old gangster said.

Chapter 8

Doyle drove to the beach that morning while it was still dark. It killed his leg to drive, but he gutted it out. He had circled today’s date in his calendar two months ago, right after seeing an article in the newspaper which said a company called Bally’s had gotten the go-ahead to demolish the Marlborough-Blenheim hotel, and build a new casino on the Boardwalk.

The Marlborough-Blenheim had once defined everything that was wonderful about Atlantic City, it’s reinforced concrete towers rising up like a cathedral at the edge of the sea. Doyle had played in its lobby as a kid, and had his wedding reception in one of its ballrooms. And now it was coming down.

An eight-block stretch had been cordoned off by police sawhorses. He parked on Atlantic Avenue, then walked a block to the Boardwalk and headed north. He used a cane, and stopped occasionally to catch his breath. Being crippled was a drag. People avoided eye contact, fearful, he guessed, of being like him one day. It’s not so bad, he wanted to tell them, once you get used to the rejection. Reaching the Boardwalk, he spotted a man with a two-day beard standing by a pushcart.

“You working today?” Doyle asked him.

“Trying to,” the man said, blowing into his hands. “I read in the newspaper there might be a crowd to see the explosion, so I figured I’d come out.”

“How much to take me to the hotel?”

“They won’t let you that close.”

“I’m a cop,” Doyle said.

The man scratched his unshaven chin. “Two bucks.”

Doyle climbed into the pushcart. A cold wind was coming off the ocean. He tied a knot in his scarf, then removed the Bell and Howell camera slung around his neck, and made sure it was loaded with film. The man lifted the pushcart onto his shoulders, and started walking. The Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel loomed ahead, still the biggest kid on the block. Ten years ago it had fallen on hard times, and become a refuge for Welfare mothers and transients. Today, it was surrounded by police sawhorses and sleepy-eyed cops.

They soon reached the hotel. Doyle said hello to several cops he knew, and they let him through. The man pulled the pushcart down to the beach and parked it. Doyle got out, and handed the man a five-dollar bill.

“Keep the change,” he said.

Doyle walked down to the shoreline until he was a few feet from the water. He filled his lungs with air, the tangy smell of salt and kelp honing his spirit. Ever since he could remember, he’d loved the smell of the sea.

“You want me to come back when it’s over?” the man asked.

“Do that,” Doyle said.

He spent several minutes focusing his camera, the picture he wanted slowly taking shape as the sun snuck up behind him. At seven, one of the sleepy-eyed cops sauntered over. “We have to clear out,” the cop said. “You’re on your own.”

“Thanks a lot,” Doyle said.

“It could be dangerous, standing this close.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Good luck.”

The cop left, and Doyle continued to adjust the hotel’s image in his camera. At seven-fifteen, five men wearing hard hats came out of the hotel. They worked for a Dallas-based company called Controlled Demolition Incorporated. For the past month, they’d busied themselves drilling 4,000 holes into the hotel’s supports, then filled the holes with 1,200 pounds of high-grade explosives. The local newspaper had run a picture, detailing how the hotel would implode upon itself. Three years to build, the caption read, ten seconds to destroy. The CDI experts also went south.

The wind had picked up, and Doyle felt the cheeks of his ass freeze together. He looked up and down the beach, and realized he was alone. The Marlborough-Blenheim deserved a better send-off, but he guessed no one cared about history these days.

Five minutes later, the beginning of the end. From inside the Marlborough-Blenheim came a series of booming explosions. The whole earth shook, and a flock of seagulls exploded from the roof of the hotel, and flew directly over Doyle’s head. He dropped his cane, then fell backwards in the soft sand, the camera resting safely in his lap.

“There she blows!” he yelled.

He watched the hotel begin to cave in, its walls a jittering mass. It was horribly beautiful the way only a tragedy can be, and he steadied the camera with both hands and started snapping pictures.

Doyle had a small darkroom in the basement of his house. He drove home and went there immediately, not bothering to brush the dust out of his hair. The hotel had come down fast, and he wasn’t sure if any of his pictures were good.

He spent an hour inhaling the warm chemical stench as he shepherded glossies from developer to stop bath to fixer tray. He worked backwards in the roll. His fingers were in several of the shots. Others were ruined by a bad angle, or the intrusive sunlight. Reaching the last shot, he hesitated before removing it from the tray.

He shook the glossy out, then placed it beneath an infra-red light on his work area. The photograph showed the building in mid-collapse, the floors caving in with uniform precision, while the building’s towers were still erect. Through a cloud of white dust, he spied a face in an upper-story window. A man, staring out, wanting no part of a world that would destroy a building as beautiful as the Marlborough-Blenheim. Then, before his disbelieving eyes, the face vanished.

“Can’t be,” he said aloud.

He got a magnifying glass and had another look. The image hadn’t left a trace, and he decided it was the processing fluid. It always distorted a picture before it dried.

“Who lived in the hotel?” his wife Liddy asked a few minutes later. Seeing the stricken look on his face as he’d come upstairs, she’d fixed him a pot of coffee.

“Welfare mothers and elderly people,” Doyle said, sitting at the kitchen table. “A month ago they were evicted. Some refused to leave, so Banko made us take them out. Bunch of them were crying.”

Liddy sat next to her husband. She knew how much Doyle had loved the hotel, and how its demolition had torn his heart in two.

“It must have been hard,” she said.

“Hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said.

“But it had to be done,” she reminded him.

“I know. But it still didn’t feel right. Couldn’t Bally’s have built their casino someplace else? That building was special.”

Liddy placed her hand on top of her husband’s. They had grown up on the island, and it was hard to see the old places being torn down to be replaced by casinos.

“Do you really think you saw a face in the picture?” she asked.

“I saw something, that’s for sure.”

“Can I have a look?”

“Sure.”

They went downstairs to the darkroom and looked at the photograph together. Now, instead of a face in the upper-story window, there was nothing but bright sunlight. Doyle wondered if his eyes were playing tricks with him.

“Maybe it was a ghost,” Liddy suggested.

“I heard the hotel was filled with those,” Doyle said.

She put her arms around her husband’s waist, and held him tightly.

“I’m sorry, Doyle. I know you loved that place.”

Doyle kissed the top of his wife’s head. As they headed back upstairs, he glanced at his wristwatch. It was ten minutes before nine. Banko had called a special meeting at the station house at nine sharp. If he hurried, he could still get there on time.

“Got to run,” he said.

Chapter 9

The station house was a tomb when Valentine came in at five past nine.

“Hey Joe, where is everybody?” he asked the desk sergeant.

Joe Scagglione looked up from the sports section of the newspaper. He’d gotten shot in the spine during a foiled bank robbery ten years ago, and was a constant reminder to every cop of what happened to the disabled.

“Jesus, Tony, didn’t you get the memo?”

“What memo?”

“Banko wanted everyone here at nine sharp. He’s brought in the FBI.” Joe pointed down the hall at the room that was used for morning briefings. “In there.”

Valentine hurried down the hallway, and entered the briefing room to the stares of a hundred of his peers. The briefing room had tiered seating, and he saw Doyle sitting in the last row, holding a chair for him. He scampered up the aisle and joined his partner.

Moments later, Banko entered the meeting room followed by two men wearing off-the-rack suits that screamed law enforcement. One was Mexican, heavyset, with salt and pepper hair and slate blue eyes. The other was white, with a hatchet face and a mouth as thin as a paper cut. Banko addressed his troops.

“Good morning. I realize it’s not the wisest thing to pull every cop off their beat for a meeting, but I believe this situation warrants it. As you know, there’s a killer on the loose, and we have no idea who he is, or where he’ll strike again. To help our investigation along, I’ve asked the FBI for help. Special Agents Romero and Fuller are based in Washington, and work in the bureau’s Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. Agent Fuller will speak to you first.”

Fuller took center stage. He wore a scowl, and looked like a classic ball-buster. Behind him, Romero pulled down a movie screen hanging above a chalkboard.

“Good morning,” Fuller said. “The FBI normally doesn’t involve itself with local problems. But with serial killers, we make an exception. And that appears to be what you’re dealing with here.”

A slide projector sat on a table in front of the screen. Fuller picked up a clicker and pressed it. A slide appeared containing two photographs. One showed a smiling brunette, the other, the same girl hanging by her bound wrists from the ceiling. The dead girl wore wide bell bottoms, a denim shirt with flower embroidery, and strands of love beads. Rigor mortis had left her body, and her flaccid skin hung limply from her bones.

“This is Mary Ann Crawford, originally from Philadelphia, most recently Atlantic City,” Fuller said. “Twenty-two years old, trained as a beautician. Moved to Atlantic City six weeks ago, lived by herself. She was found in a hotel room on the beach, cause of death starvation. The hippie clothes are her killer’s calling card.”

Fuller pressed the clicker, and a second slide filled the screen. It was similar to the first: A photo of a smiling brunette on the left, the same woman hanging from her wrists on the right, dressed in a flowing Woodstock dress and love beads.

“Melissa Edwards, twenty-two, part-time actress and model, a recent transplant from the Baltimore area. Cause of death was also starvation. Same deal with the clothes. She was also found in a motel room hanging by her wrists.”

He hit the clicker a third time, and the roomful of cops stared at the photos of the most recent victim. “Connie Howard, twenty-four, aspiring actress, originally from New York, lived in Atlantic City a few months, reduced to skin and bones and hippie clothes. She was found hanging by her wrists in an abandoned warehouse last week.”

The screen went blank. Fuller stuck his hand in his pocket, and the scowl on his face grew. “This killer — who we call the Dresser — is on a spree. We believe he’s suppressed his murderous urges for a long time. Now, he’s erupted. Why, we have no idea. But we are reasonably certain he’s going to strike again, and probably soon.

“There’s a great deal we don’t know about our killer. We don’t know his name, or what he looks like. However, there are certain things we do know. Our profilers have determined that he’s a white male, between the ages of thirty and forty-five, who lives alone and has few friends. His taste in women runs to attractive brunettes between five-four and five-six, with green eyes. He’s methodical, and of above-average intelligence. We also think he’s an Atlantic City native, since he seems to know where to dump these bodies without getting caught.

“My partner and I are asking for your cooperation in helping us track this guy down. We need you to put the word out on the street, and talk to everyone you know. Our guess is, other women have been approached by the Dresser, and might remember him. With a little prodding, perhaps we can get a solid lead on who he is. I’m leaving a stack of sheets with the killer’s profile for you to distribute. Before we go, my partner would like to say a few words.”

Fuller stepped aside, and Romero took his spot. He was over six feet tall, and built like a linebacker. For a big guy, his voice was unusually soft, and every cop in the room leaned forward to hear what he had to say.

“These women were all starved to death,” Romero said, his hands stuck in his pockets. “As some of you might know, starvation can take five or even six days, sometimes longer. These young women all died painfully. We’re dealing with one sick bastard here, and we’re hoping you can help us catch this guy. Thank you.”

Romero relinquished the floor to Banko. The chief asked if anyone had questions. He got no takers, and escorted the FBI agents from the room.

The cops began filing out, with no one saying a word. Soon the room was empty, save for Valentine and his partner. Doyle rose from his chair while Valentine remained seated, staring at the blank movie screen.

“Give me a minute,” Valentine said.

“Something wrong?

“I’m not sure.”

Valentine shut his eyes and focused on the darkness. It made him relax, and he felt his body melt into the chair. It was like being in a trance, and something he’d been doing since he was a kid. Doyle’s brother, a priest, called them epiphanies. All Valentine knew was that when he had them, the world always seemed a little clearer.

A minute later Valentine opened his eyes. Doyle was still there waiting for him. He stared at the blank movie screen, still seeing the faces of the three victims. He ticked off their names in his head: Mary Ann Crawford, Melissa Edwards, Connie Howard. It was an old trick a homicide cop had taught him. Remember their names, and you’ll always remember their faces.

“You going to tell me what’s wrong?” his partner asked.

“The FBI has got this case all wrong,” Valentine said.

“How the heck do you know that?”

“Because I saw this guy on a surveillance tape. He was in the casino, hunting a victim.”

“When was this?”

“Back when Higgins was in town.”

“Why is the FBI wrong? What did they miss?”

The FBI knew a lot about serial killers, but they didn’t know much about Atlantic City. Valentine had begged Banko to put him on the case a few weeks ago. Now, Banko was going to wish he had.

“He’s picking up his victims inside the casino,” Valentine explained. “We’re probably seeing him on the surveillance cameras, and not realizing it.”

“How can you be certain of that, Tony?” Doyle asked him. “Maybe he picked up one victim inside a casino, and met another in a bar, or the grocery store.”

Valentine shook his head. Doyle had missed it, and so had every other cop sitting in the room. He pushed himself out of his chair, and walked out of the room with his partner. “I need to talk to these FBI agents before they leave.”

“Sure. Just do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t say anything to these guys you’ll later regret.”

Valentine slapped his partner on the shoulder. Doyle knew him too well.

“I’ll be on my best behavior.”

Chapter 10

Valentine searched the station house for Fuller and Romero. The cafeteria was empty, and so were the other areas where cops hung out. Finally he asked Joe at the front desk, who was still reading his paper.

“They walked out the front door five minutes ago,” the desk sergeant said.

Valentine found the agents in the visitor’s section of the parking lot, sitting in a blue Chevy with government-issued plates. They were having a conversation, and he hesitated before going to the driver’s window, and tapping the glass with his wedding ring. The window lowered, and Fuller stuck his head out.

“What can I do for you?” Fuller said.

“We need to talk about the Dresser,” Valentine said.

The agents followed him back inside. Valentine wasn’t sure what the protocol was when dealing with FBI agents, so he got Banko to join him in the meeting room. Fuller and Romero sat in the front row with their overcoats draped over their laps. Neither man had uttered a word since getting out of the Chevy, and stared at him with blank faces.

“I hope you guys aren’t easily offended,” Valentine said.

“Depends whose doing the offending,” Fuller said.

“Your victims are all hookers,” Valentine said. “These girls came here because the casino is drawing hookers from all over the northeast. The Dresser is after hookers.”

For a long moment, neither agent acknowledged him.

“How can you know that?” Romero asked.

“All three victims recently moved here,” Valentine said. “ I’m assuming you got their occupations from their parents. Well, they lied to their parents. Atlantic City has a thirty percent unemployment rate, the highest in the nation. There are no jobs for models or beauticians. The only jobs are in the casinos, or working the street.”

“That’s a pretty big leap,” Fuller said.

Valentine hesitated, then told them what he was really thinking. “I think I saw the Dresser pick up a hooker.”

The agents practically jumped out of their chairs. Valentine held up his hands like he was stopping traffic. “Let me explain. Last week, an agent of the Nevada Gaming Control Board was here talking to us about casino cheating. While we were watching a surveillance tape, I saw a strange thing. A john standing behind the table was negotiating with a Puerto Rican hooker I recognized. It felt contrived.”

“How so?” Fuller asked.

“As a rule, johns don’t come into Resorts to pick up hookers. They pick them up on the street. Hookers inside the casino charge more than street walkers. They do it because the guys have gambling money they’re willing to burn.”

“You’re saying the john on the tape came inside Resorts specifically to pick up a hooker?”

“Yes. There was something else. As they started to leave, the john fumbled with a flask in his back pocket. I thought it was liquor, and he was going to take a pull to get his courage up. But now I think it was something else.”

The agents waited expectantly. So did Banko, who leaned against the wall.

“I think it was chloroform,” Valentine said.

Fuller and Romero exchanged long glances. They appeared to be communicating by telepathy, their eyes doing all the talking. Fuller looked at Valentine again.

“We think that’s how he’s knocking them out,” the agent said.

“So I’m right.”

“Perhaps. You said there was a surveillance tape,” Fuller said.

“Mickey Wright has it. He runs Resorts’ surveillance department.”

Fuller rose from his chair. “I’d like to see him immediately,” he told Banko. He approached Valentine, and stuck his hand out.

“You’re a hell of a detective,” the FBI agent said.

Valentine shook his hand while looking at Banko. His superior snarled at him before leaving the room.

Valentine started to leave the station house, then realized he hadn’t picked up his messages in several days. He went to his desk, and found a message from Bill Higgins thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. Bill had left his home number, said it was urgent. He checked the time. It was nearly ten, which made it seven in Las Vegas. He picked up the phone, and punched in the number. A man that was not Bill answered.

“This is Tony Valentine. Is Bill around?”

The man put the phone down. When Higgins came on, he was out of breath.

“I was in the garage working out. I wanted to alert you to a gang of blackjack cheaters that are ripping off your casino.”

Valentine grabbed a pen and pad off the desk. “I’m all ears.”

“We have a wiretap on a group of cheaters working the Sands. We caught a conversation that leads us to believe half the gang is working here, the other half in Atlantic City.”

“Any idea what they’re doing?”

“Yeah, and it’s pretty clever. They’ve constructed beer cans to hold mirrors in the base. If a player sits at one end of the table and puts his can down, he can glimpse the dealer’s hole card during the deal. He signals the card to another player at the table, the BP. The BP then plays his hand accordingly.”

BP was casino slang for Big Player. Hustlers had learned that casinos were more inclined to pay off a BP than an average player. And, BPs got complimentary suites and free meals and a lot of other free stuff. They lived large, and when they were part of a gang of cheaters, they lived even larger.

“Anything else I should look for?”

“The guy with the beer can signals the BP by blowing cigarette smoke through his nostrils,” Higgins said. “One puff means the hole card is a ten. Two puffs, an ace. If he breathes through his mouth, the dealer has a stiff. One more thing. They always use Budweiser cans.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s their favorite drink.”

“I really appreciate your giving me the heads-up,” Valentine said.

“Any time,” Higgins said.

Valentine heard someone cough and glanced up from his writing. Banko was standing a few yards away from his cubicle along with Fuller and Romero. The three men did not look happy.

“I’ve got to beat it. Thanks again.”

He hung up the phone, then looked expectantly into the three men’s faces.

“Mickey Wright erased the tape,” Banko said dejectedly.

Chapter 11

Valentine had inherited two things from his father. The first was his mouth, which had gotten him into more trouble than anything he’d ever done. The second was his photographic memory.

His father’s memory was phenomenal. Dominic Valentine could remember just about anything that had ever been said to him, or anything significant he’d ever seen. It was a gift wasted on a drunk, but that was how life went sometimes. Valentine’s memory was just as good, and it hadn’t gone to waste.

Banko made a phone call. Twenty minutes later, an artist from the Camden Union Register was setting up an easel in Banko’s office. The artist’s name was Ernie Roe, and he had a goatee and wore his stringy blond hair on his shoulders. Valentine knew him from the court house, where Ernie often covered important trials. Ernie removed a charcoal pencil from his breast pocket.

“Ready when you are,” Ernie said.

Valentine leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and described the john he’d seen inside Resorts picking up the beautiful Puerto Rican hooker the week before. He saw the john clearly: Five-eight, one hundred and sixty-pounds, with a paunch, stooped shoulders and thinning hair that he parted on the left side of his head. The face was hard to remember, but that was only because the video tape had been poor. Had he seen the john in person, he was sure he’d remember him perfectly.

Valentine opened his eyes when he was done. Ernie was facing him, and he guessed by the wide motions of Ernie’s hand that he was doing the john’s hair. Finished, Ernie turned the easel around.

“What do you think?”

The face in the drawing looked a lot like the one stored in his memory. The nose, which Valentine had struggled to remember, was thick, the nostrils slightly flared. It wasn’t perfect, but renditions never were.

“That’s him,” Valentine said.

Banko called his secretary into the office, and got her to take the sketch to the Xerox machine downstairs to make copies. While they waited, Romero said, “You said you recognized the Puerto Rican hooker the john picked up. Can you describe her?”

Valentine started to do, then had a thought. Banko had been running sweeps of hookers every week. As a result, hundreds of girls had been booked in the past few months.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said.

He led the FBI agents downstairs to the basement where the records were stored, and had the clerk on duty pull out the files of every hooker that had been arrested on the island in the past two months. There were over two hundred. Each girl’s mug shot was stapled to her record, and Valentine put them on a desk, and began sorting through them. Within minutes he was holding the Puerto Rican hooker’s record in his hand.

“You sure this is her,” Romero said.

“She was hard to forget,” Valentine said.

Her name was Maria Sanchez. Twenty-three, dark brown hair, five-foot five, originally from San Juan, she’d come to the U.S. a few years ago and immediately started turning tricks. Unlike a lot of girls, who looked frightening without a coat of make-up, Maria was a beauty.

Fuller took the file, and Valentine walked the agents outside to their car. What had started out as a pretty morning had turned ominous, and dark, muscular clouds filled the sky. Fuller and Romero shook Valentine’s hand again, then glanced at the sky.

“Think it’s going to snow?”

“Sure feels like it,” Valentine said.

“How come it feels so much colder here?”

“It’s the humidity. It cuts to the bone.”

The agents climbed into the Chevy. Valentine started to walk away, then stopped at the entrance to the station house. Sometimes the most obvious things were the easiest to miss. He caught Fuller as he was backing the car out of its space. The driver’s window came down, and Fuller said, “You think of something else?”

Valentine stuck his hands into his pockets. He’d come out without his coat and was freezing. “The Dresser is picking up hookers inside the casino. That’s his MO. Hookers think he’s a tourist, and they let their guards down.”

“So?”

“Chances are, he picked up all these girls inside the casino.”

He paused, and let Fuller think about it. Romero leaned over from the passenger side so his face was visible. “You think he might be on another surveillance tape?”

“I’d bet dollars to doughnuts on it,” Valentine said.

“Never thought of that,” Fuller said. “Can we look at those tapes?”

“We’re talking about hundreds of hours.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“I work in Resorts’ surveillance control room. I’ll show the composite to the techs who watch the monitors, and have them review the tapes. If those guys are good at anything, it’s picking a face out of a crowd.”

Fuller looked at his partner. It was an angle they’d missed. They climbed out of the car, shook his hand, and thanked him one more time.

Chapter 12

The sky had opened up like a busted feather pillow, and Romero stared gloomily at the falling snow while Fuller drove back to their motel. Stopping at a traffic light, Fuller threw the car into park and glared at him.

“What’s eating you?”

“Nothing,” Romero said.

“It’s written all over your god damn face.”

Romero blew out his lungs. He’d stopped playing cards with Fuller because his partner always knew what he was holding. “We should have talked to the rank-and-file cops the moment we got here.”

Fuller continued to glare at him. “We agreed that we wouldn’t talk to the cops until we were sure the Dresser wasn’t one of them. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“Then why bring it up now?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, stop thinking it.”

The light changed and Fuller put the car into drive. They had arrived in Atlantic City several days ago, and with Banko’s help, started their investigation. The Dresser had contacted the FBI twice with letters — the first after he’d abducted Mary Ann Crawford, the second after Connie Hastings, both times sending pieces of jewelry as proof — and declared he could kill woman at will, and the FBI would never capture him. The FBI’s profilers had latched onto this, and decided the killer was someone the public implicitly trusted. A doctor, perhaps, or a fireman. Or even a cop.

So they’d done background checks on every doctor, every fireman, and every cop on the island. Atlantic City had less than fifty thousand full-time residents, and it had only taken a few days. To their surprise, the FBI’s profilers were wrong. None of the town’s doctors, firemen or cops matched the profile. The Dresser had fooled them.

Fuller turned into the beach front motel they were staying in. It was called The Lucky Boy, and was a dive. Both men got out of the car.

“I’m going to check for messages at the desk,” Romero said. “See you in a few.”

The Lucky Boy’s check-in was a tiny building with a neon sign in its window. Every afternoon, the clerk got married to a gin bottle, and getting information out of him was never easy. Romero tapped on the door before entering.

“Why didn’t you tell me the rug smelled,” the clerk said.

“What are you talking about?” Romero asked.

“The rug in your room. Did you puke on it?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

The clerk drew back in his chair. “Listen, you stinking wet back, you can’t come in here, and talk to me like that. I’ll throw you and that partner of yours out of here—” He snapped his fingers for effect “—just like that!”

Romero’s open wallet hit the counter, exposing his gold badge. It was a move he’d practiced for situations like this. The clerk’s jaw became unhinged.

“You a cop?”

“FBI.”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” the clerk said.

Romero tucked his wallet away. “I’m listening.”

“A deliveryman came by earlier, carrying a rug over his shoulder. Said he’d been told to replace the one in your room. I thought you’d called him. Jesus, I’m sorry. ”

“Why are you sorry? What did you do?”

“I left him alone in your room. Sure hope he didn’t steal anything.”

Romero felt his radar go up. Leaving the office, he hurried down the winding brick path to his room. The motel had a pool in its center, and as he walked around it, he saw the door to their room was open. Fuller came out, holding his automatic limply by his side. Romero drew his own gun, then approached him.

“What happened?”

Fuller slipped his gun into its shoulder harness. Then he took out a pack of cigarettes, and banged one out. Sticking it between his lips, he said, “See for yourself.”

Romero went to the doorway and looked in. A dead girl hung by her wrists from a light fixture in the ceiling. She was wearing a go-go dancer’s outfit, complete with knee-high Nancy Sinatra boots, and a piece symbol around her neck. Mexicans believed that the dead’s spirits hung around earth for a while. Not acknowledging them was a mistake, and Romero mumbled a prayer before going in.

The dead girl’s face was covered with hair. Romero got close to her, then blew it away. It was Maria Sanchez, the beautiful Puerto Rican hooker that Tony Valentine had seen the Dresser pick up inside the casino. He walked outside, and bummed a cigarette off his partner.

“I think we’d better change motels,” Fuller said.

Chapter 13

Valentine was exhausted when he walked into the kitchen of his house at seven o’clock that night. It had been a long afternoon at the casino.

First, he’d busted a man for putting a coin into a slot machine with a string attached to it, and jerking the coin out. A silly crime, only the man played the machine so many times he won a jackpot. Jackpots could not be paid until the videotape was reviewed, and now the man was sitting in a holding cell, facing three-to-five.

Then, he’d nailed a card mucker. The guy could invisibly switch cards while playing blackjack. What had tripped him up was his face. It was in a book of mug shots of known cheaters Bill Higgins had sent him. Valentine had made the match, and now the mucker was in the same cell with the yo-yo man.

The icing had been nailing a gang of teenage boys who’d been ripping off slot players. The boys would enter the casino from the Boardwalk, and approach a woman playing a slot machine. One boy would toss coins beneath the woman’s chair. A second would tap her shoulder, and point at the coins on the floor. While the woman was retrieving the coins, the third would snatch her purse. And out the door they’d go.

Until today. The slot player had been Doyle, wearing a wig. Now the lads were sitting in a juvenile detention center, waiting to face their parents.

The kitchen of Valentine’s house was cold and empty. Taking off his jacket, he went to the oven and pulled down the creaky door. Nothing cooking. After his parents had split up, his mother had stopped cooking, and it had taken the warmth out of their house. They were memories that he’d just as soon forget.

He checked a pot sitting on the stove. It was half-filled with water. Pasta? His hopes rose. He stuck his finger in the water. Ice cold.

“We’re in here,” Lois said from the dining room.

He poured himself a glass of cold water and took a long swallow. Gerry’s school bag sat on the kitchen table next to his wife’s purse. He sensed something was not right, and walked into the dining room. Gerry sat at the head of the dining room table with his head bowed. Lois stood behind him, breathing fire.

“Stand up when your father comes into the room.”

Gerry sat motionless at the dining room table.

“What’s going on?” Valentine asked.

“The school principal called me,” Lois said. “Gerry is hanging around with a group of older kids accused of gambling and selling pot.”

“What?”

“We’re not selling pot,” his son declared.

“I said, stand up.”

“We’re not. I swear—”

“Stand up.”

Gerry rose guiltily from his chair, and Valentine stared in disbelief at his son’s wardrobe. A black leather jacket, white tee shirt, jeans, and a pair of pointy-toed boots that locals called fence-climbers. He looked like a punk.

“Where are your school clothes?” Valentine asked.

“These are his school clothes,” Lois answered. “He’s been changing them every day in the gym. Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.”

“All the kids do it,” his son said.

“And if all the other kids jumped off a bridge, would you follow them?”

Gerry smirked. “Probably.”

Valentine wanted to start yelling. Or take off his belt and whip the bejeeus out of him. Things that his own father had done that he’d never forgotten. But he was not about to follow in his father’s footsteps. Going into the kitchen, he grabbed his son’s school bag and brought it into the dining room, dumping its contents on the table. Out fell a pack of cigarettes, candy bars, a glossy hot-rod magazine, and a gold necklace.

“How much allowance do we give you a week?” Valentine asked.

“Fifty cents,” Gerry mumbled.

“Let me guess, you took a job bagging groceries at the A & P and forgot to tell us.”

“Hey,” his son said, “it’s just some stuff.”

“Stuff costs money.”

Gerry swallowed hard. “It’s not what you think.”

“You weren’t selling pot?”

“No, sir,” his son replied.

“We have a meeting with the school principal first thing tomorrow morning,” Lois said.

“You’d better not be lying to me,” Valentine said.

“I swear Pop, I’m not.”

“And those clothes are gone.”

“Yes, sir.”

His son looked truly remorseful. Valentine glanced at his wife. Lois nodded her head, satisfied. He started dropping his son’s loot into his school bag when a bulge in a side pocket caught his eye. It was the paperback novel he’d seen Gerry reading the night before, The Catcher in the Rye. The book’s cover was coming off, and he flipped it open, and read a few lines. Looking up, he caught his son’s fearful gaze.

“When did J.D. Salinger start writing porno?” he said.

Chapter 14

Izzie missed Betty.

He missed her soft cooing voice, and the taste of her cheap lipstick mingling with the smell of her hair and her sticky skin. He missed her throaty laugh, and the liquid heart-stopping sensation of having sex with her. Having sex with Betty, Izzie had come to the conclusion that no movie or book had ever gotten it right.

Izzie missed her so much, he decided to call her one night during a poker game in the house he and his brothers had rented in Ventnor, a fancy suburb just south of Atlantic City. Excusing himself, he’d gone upstairs, and used the phone in the extra bedroom to call her apartment. Betty answered on the fifth ring, still sound asleep.

“Hey baby,” he said.

“Who the hell is this?”

“It’s me, Izzie.”

“You crummy bastard!”

“Hey, I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you’re sorry! Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Izzie glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was two A.M. They’d been bringing suckers to the house every night from Resorts’ casino, and he’d forgotten what normal hours were. “I’m sorry. I missed you so much, I had to call.”

“You left me at that convenience store,” she shouted into the phone.

The receiver was jammed into the crook of Izzie’s neck, leaving his hands free to stack the cards he would soon switch into the game. “It was my brothers’ idea—”

“I thought you loved me!”

“I do.”

“Then why didn’t you make them come back?”

He finished stacking the deck and tucked it into his back pocket. “How was I going to do that?” he said without thinking.

Betty screamed like he’d stabbed her. “I’ll get you for this,” she declared.

Izzie went downstairs in a funk. His brothers had always said women were not cut out to be grifters. They did not understand the rackets, and held grudges when they got cheated. Cheat a guy, and eventually he’ll forget it. Cheat a woman, and she’ll carry a grudge for the rest of her life.

Izzie found the game the way he’d left it. Three rug merchants sat around the felt-covered card table in the den along with Josh and Seymour. The rug merchants were in town for a convention. They were all named Patel. A deck of cards sat at Izzie’s spot. Sitting down, he pointed at them. “These shuffled?” he asked.

The Patel to his right said yes. Izzie asked him to cut the cards. The Patel obliged him. Picking the deck up, Izzie dropped his hands below the table to adjust his chair. When his hands came up, he was holding the deck he’d stacked in the bedroom.

As Izzie dealt the round, he looked around the den. He and his brothers had spent days making it look presentable. They had built a bookcase and filled it with second-hand books, then hung photographs that looked like someone’s family, but wasn’t theirs.

“What are we playing?” one of the Patels asked.

“Draw poker,” Izzie said.

“Anything wild?”

“Betty.”

“Who’s Betty?” the Patel asked.

“I mean deuces,” Izzie said. “Deuces are wild.”

The deck played out the way he’d stacked it, with the Patels losing their shirts. They paid up without a beef, and Izzie hid a smile. Their scheme to beat Resorts was simple enough. Every night, he and his brothers scoured the casino, looking for suckers who’d won big, and convince them to come to the house. Then, they’d beat them out of their winnings, but never their stake. It was Resorts’ money they wanted. So far, it had worked like a charm.

When the Patels were gone, Seymour got the strongbox and counted their winnings. Minus expenses, they were ahead twenty thousand bucks. It was the most money they’d ever made.

“I need some fresh air,” Izzie declared.

Izzie went outside. Josh and Seymour followed their older brother into the front yard, where Izzie stood smoking a cigarette. Izzie pointed north, in Resorts’ direction. “For every sucker we bring back, we’re leaving ten inside the casino. I think we should add more games, turn this into a real show.”

“How about craps?” Seymour said.

“Craps would be a winner,” Izzie said. “So would roulette.”

“I’m game,” Seymour said.

“What about the mob?” Josh asked. “We don’t want them finding out.”

The Hirsch brothers had spotted a number of wise guys hanging around Resorts’ bar and restaurants, and had figured the mob was running a scam inside the casino. Dealing with the mob was like dealing with a mean dog; if you stayed off their turf, the mob left you alone. If you didn’t, they bit you hard.

Izzie finished his cigarette. “We have to tip-toe around the mob, make sure they don’t catch wind of us. I still think we should do it.”

“I agree,” Seymour said.

“Sounds great, except for one thing,” Josh said.

“What’s that?”

“Betty.”

“What about her?”

“You’ve been talking to her, haven’t you?”

Izzie jabbed his forefinger in Josh’s chest. “Don’t talk about Betty.”

“You’ve got to stop sneaking off, and calling her.”

“Why should I?”

“Because Betty’s bad news, that’s why.”

“Don’t talk about Betty like that. Ever.”

“Bad news Betty. It sort of rhymes.”

“I don’t even want you saying her name.”

“Betty, Betty, Betty.”

Izzie tripped Josh, then fell on top of him on the grass. Izzie never fought with his hands. He couldn’t throw a punch without risking breaking a finger, and putting them out of commission for a few months. They grappled and grunted like a pair of Greco-Roman wrestlers. Seymour went inside and got a bottle of pop from the fridge, then sat on the stoop and drank it while watching his brothers hash it out. Ten minutes later, they stopped out of sheer exhaustion. Their clothes were ruined, and Josh’s nose was a bloody mess.

“Promise you won’t say her name again,” Izzie said.

“Betty, Betty, Betty!” Josh said.

Then they started fighting again.

Chapter 15

The principal of Gerry’s high school was a smooth-talking guy named Dick Henry. Lois was active in the PTA, and knew Dick well enough to address him by his first name. It was the first time they’d been called to Dick’s office, and Lois had asked her husband to keep his mouth shut during their meeting. Valentine had reluctantly agreed.

They sat around a square table, with Dick springing for coffee from the school cafeteria. Back when Dick was an art teacher, he’d sported a goatee, worn his hair on his shoulders, and spouted a lot of counter-culture nonsense. All of that had flown out the window the day he’d made principal. Now he was clean-shaven and blow-dried his hair.

“Is Gerry here?” Dick asked.

“He’s waiting outside in the car,” Lois said.

“Good. This is a serious thing these boys have going on.”

“How serious?” Valentine asked, drawing his wife’s glare.

Dick took a brown paper bag from his desk, and placed its contents onto the table. A deck of playing cards and six dice spilled out. “Gerry and two boys in the ninth grade are running a gambling ring. The other two have a history of problems. It appears they talked your son into joining their gang.”

“Can I examine these?” Valentine asked.

“By all means,” the principal said.

Valentine removed the cards from their case. The backs had a busy design, and he held the deck in his right hand, and riffled off the edge with his thumb. Little fluttering birds appeared on the backs of the cards. Bill Higgins had taught him this trick. It was the easiest way to tell if a deck had been marked.

Next he examined the dice. His eyes had gotten used to staring at casino dice, and he could tell these were not clean. The spots on three sides — the one, three and five — were drilled extra wide and filled with metallic paint. They were loaded, and would favor certain combinations more than others when thrown. My son the cheater, he thought.

“Mind if I keep these?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Dick said.

“What about the pot,” Lois said.

“It doesn’t appear Gerry’s involved with that,” Dick said. “It was a scam.”

“A scam? What do you mean?”

Dick took a second paper bag off the desk. From it, he removed a plastic bag filled with a green leafy substance. Dick dropped it on the table dramatically, then gave the worried parents a hard, no-nonsense stare.

“It’s oregano,” he said.

Lois wrinkled her face. She had never experimented with drugs, and looked to her husband for clarification. Valentine said, “And the ninth-graders were selling it as pot.”

“Yes. Ten dollars a bag.”

“But oregano is an herb,” Lois said. “Wouldn’t the kids they sold it to be able to tell the difference?”

“This oregano smells like pot. We think the older boys mixed it with a little bit of pot, so it smells like the real stuff.”

“But it isn’t?”

“No, it’s not.”

Valentine saw the tension melt from his wife’s face. Lying in bed the night before, she’d worried incessantly over the notion that Gerry had broken the law. This new revelation was bad, but it wasn’t as bad. She could live with this, and so could he.

“Gerry will be suspended for one week, the other boys for two,” Dick said. “I want all three boys to pay restitution to the boys they cheated, and the students they sold oregano to. And, I would suggest that your family get some counseling.”

“What kind of counseling?” Lois said stiffly.

“With a psychologist. Gerry has two different faces. The one he wears at home, and the one he wears at school. You need to get to know your son better.”

Valentine nearly told Dick Henry to mind his own business. Doing stupid things was part of growing up, and didn’t mean the whole family was falling apart. Only Lois was giving him the evil eye, and he kept his mouth clamped shut.

Dick handed the distressed parents a business card. It was for a local psychologist who specialized in adolescent behavior and family problems.

“This is who the school uses,” Dick said. “He’s expensive but good.”

“Is he a relative?” Valentine asked.

Lois kicked him beneath the table. Dick consulted his watch, then blew out his cheeks like Ed Sullivan used to do before he announced a really big act.

“Looks like we’ve run out of time,” the principal said.

Dick escorted the Valentines to the door of his office and opened it. Another pair of anxious parents sat in the reception area, awaiting the sales pitch.

“I’ve got a question,” Valentine said.

“What’s that?” Dick asked.

“How’d you know it was oregano?”

“Excuse me?”

“It smells like pot, and it looks like pot. Did you have a lab test it?”

“Well, no—”

“Let me guess. You fired some up in a pipe, and hacked your brains out.”

Dick’s face turned bright red. The other parents had risen from their chairs and were listening intently to their conversation. Valentine took the psychologist’s card out of his wife’s hand, and tucked it down into the principal’s shirt pocket.

“Thanks for the pep talk,” he said.

Valentine drove home while staring at Gerry in his mirror.

“You were cheating,” he said through clenched teeth.

Gerry stared out the window like he was going to the gas chamber. “It was Lou and Joey’s idea. They said the casino cheats, so there was nothing wrong if we did.”

It was the same excuse used by every cheater Valentine had busted. The casino cheated me, so I was getting my money back. He tried to control his voice. “I work in the casino, and it doesn’t cheat. The games are clean. I would have told you that.”

Gerry leaned between the front seats. “How much trouble am I in?”

“The school is suspending you for a week,” Valentine said. “You’re also going to pay back the boys you cheated. And, your mother and I want you to bring the boys you cheated to the house, and apologize to them in front of us.”

His son fell back into his seat. His greaser clothes had gone out with the garbage the night before, and he looked like your average thirteen-year old kid again.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Valentine felt his wife’s hand on his knee. He glanced at her, then in the mirror at his son. “You’re going to stop this behavior right now. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One more thing. Where did you get the marked cards and loaded dice?”

“The what?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, Gerry. Where did you get that stuff?”

“Some magic shop on Atlantic. Are you going there?”

Valentine said nothing, and drove his family home.

Uncle Al’s Magic & Joke Emporium was located in a dreary shopping center on the corner of Mississippi and Atlantic Avenue. Finding the front door locked, Valentine hit the buzzer, and watched an elfish man wearing a purple fez with a red tassel emerge from behind a curtain. Releasing the dead bolt, he ushered Valentine inside.

Valentine had dabbled with magic as a kid, and the store was a pleasant trip down memory lane. Brightly painted tricks lined the shelves — the Square Circle, Hippity Hop Rabbits, Passe Passe bottles — with smaller mysteries resting in a dusty glass counter. The stuff looked as magical as Uncle Al, who was seventy if he was a day, with extra-thick glasses that made his impish face look child-like. Pumping Valentine’s hand, he said, “Stand up straight, my boy.”

“I saw you on the Steel Pier when I was a kid,” Valentine said.

“Of course you did. They called me the Atlantic City Fakir. Worked the pier for over fifty years. Ask me why I don’t swim.”

Valentine knew a set-up when he heard one. “Why don’t you swim?”

“Because I drowned a hundred and sixty-eight times.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“I was doing my act at Fortescue’s beer garden. Whenever business was slow, I’d jump in the ocean, pretend to drown, and get my rescuers to drag me back to Fortescue’s. There was always a crowd. When I recovered, a shill suggested everyone toast my good fortune.”

“That’s beautiful,” Valentine said.

“Thank you. Now, what can I interest you in? A whoopee cushion? Or would you like to learn a simple trick to fool your kid?”

From his pocket, Valentine removed the marked cards and loaded dice he’d gotten from Gerry’s principal, and handed them to the proprietor. “Recognize these?”

Uncle Al examined the merchandise. “Cards came from here. Not the dice.”

“You don’t sell crooked dice?”

“Didn’t say that. These just happened to come from someplace else. You a cop?”

“Detective. I want you to stop selling this stuff. It’s getting in the wrong hands.”

“You mean kids?”

“I mean my son.”

Uncle Al’s face turned serious. Removing his glasses, he said, “I’m terribly sorry, detective. I’ll get the stuff off my shelves immediately. Now, how about a trick for your son? Something you can fool him with, then teach him.”

Dick Henry had been right about one thing. Valentine needed to spend more time with Gerry, and get to know him better. “Sure. What have you got?”

“What’s your price range?”

“Five bucks.”

“Five bucks it is.” Uncle Al removed a stack of nickels from his pocket, and placed it on the counter. Taking a brass tube from the same pocket, he handed it to Valentine to examine. It was clean, and Uncle Al made him cover the stack of nickels with it. Then, the elderly magician clicked his fingers three times. Lifting the tube, Uncle Al pointed at the stack of dimes now sitting on the counter, and knocked them over with his finger. The nickels had vanished. Valentine picked up the brass tube and examined it. Empty.

“Get’s them every time,” Uncle Al said triumphantly.

Valentine pulled out his wallet. “Show me,” he said.

The trick was called Nickels to Dimes. The stack of nickels was actually a hollow shell with a nickel glued on top, it’s inside painted the same color as the brass tube. A stack of dimes was hidden inside the shell from the start. The brass tube fit so snugly over the shell, it took a special device to pry it free.

Uncle Al went through the trick several times, then let Valentine have a try. To his surprise, Valentine did it perfectly the first time.

“You’re a natural, kid,” Uncle Al said.

Pocketing the trick, Valentine thanked him and went to the door. “Remember, no more crooked gambling equipment.”

“You got it.”

Valentine was sticking the key into the ignition when he had a strange thought. The Nickels to Dimes used the same principle as the chip cup that Banko had shown him. Both were clever magic tricks, designed to fool the brain, and the eye.

He sat in his car and thought about it. He’d been having a hard time catching cheaters inside the casino, and now he knew why. The cheaters were doing magic tricks to rig the games. They were magicians, disguised as ordinary people.

His thoughts drifted to the Budweiser gang Bill Higgins had warned him about. He’d been wracking his brain trying to figure out how to catch them. Why not ask another magician, he thought.

Getting out of his car, he went back inside the magic shop.

Chapter 16

Uncle Al knew a lot about mirrors, and claimed they were part of every serious magician’s repertoire. Houdini, Thurston, Keller and Blackstone had all used mirrors in their stage shows at one time or another. When Valentine pressed him, Uncle Al admitted that they had one serious drawback. They were light sensitive, and often exposed themselves to the audience.

“You really want to catch these cheaters using beer cans with mirrors hidden in them?”the old magician asked.

Valentine nodded enthusiastically. That was exactly what he wanted to do.

“That’s easy,” Uncle Al said.

Valentine drove to work with a smile on his face. Going upstairs to the surveillance control room, he rounded up the technicians on duty, plus Mickey Wright and Doyle, and explained how they were going to catch the Budweiser gang. Then he picked up the house phone, and called downstairs to the casino floor.

“In one minute, I want you to turn up the house lights,” he told the floor manager.

“Why should I do that?” the floor manager asked.

“Because I told you to.”

Valentine hung up the phone, and went to stare at the wall of video monitors that showed the action in the casino. So did everyone else in the room. One minute later, the house lights were raised. On the monitors, all the players looked up.

“I saw a flash!” a tech shouted.

“So did I,” another tech said.

Valentine had seen it as well. A tiny bright light had appeared at Blackjack Table #30. It had come from third base, the last seat at the table. The seat was occupied by a muscular guy drinking a can of Budweiser. The mirror glued to the bottom of the can was so bright, it was impossible not to see.

“Touchdown,” he said.

The scam was simple. The muscle head was using the mirror to read the dealer’s hole card, then signaling its value to the other members of his gang at the table. Valentine called downstairs, and got six security guards off the floor. Then, he called Lois, who was at home supervising his son during his suspension from school.

“Please bring Gerry over here. I want him to see something.”

Twenty minutes later, Lois and Gerry were sitting in front of the wall of video monitors. Behind them stood six burly security guards, ready for action. Doyle and Mickey Wright had already gone downstairs, and were telling the cashiers working the cage not to pay the cheaters off, in case they tried to leave. Valentine stood next to the monitors, and pointed at the center screen.

“See those guys playing blackjack?” he asked his son.

Gerry nodded. His wife had taken him to the barber down the street, and Gerry looked like a baby Marine.

“They’re cheaters,” Valentine said.

“Really? What are they doing?” his son asked.

“That’s none of your business. I had your mother bring you here because I want you to see what happens to cheaters.”

“Are you going to arrest them?”

“You bet I am.”

Then, Valentine marched out of the room with his posse.

“Pay attention,” Lois said.

Right before coming over, she’d caught Gerry smoking a cigarette behind the garage, and the foul odor was still on his clothes and breath. Like every damn boy that had ever been raised on this island — and this included her own husband — her son was smoking Marlboros, the man’s cigarette.

“I don’t get it,” Gerry said. “Why does Pop want me to see this? I promised him I wouldn’t do it again.”

“This is just in case you get second thoughts,” she said.

“I’m not going to—”

Lois slapped her hand on his knee, and several techs lifted their heads from their monitors. “Your father wasn’t born yesterday,” she said under her breath, “and neither was I. Watch the monitor. It’s for your own good.”

Gerry made a bored face. Lois swallowed the rising lump in her throat. In profile, he was his father’s spitting image.

“Here we go!” one of the tech announced.

Lois and her son stared at the monitor in the center of the video wall which showed the Table #30. The gang had won another round, and were giving each other jubilant high-fives. Suddenly, six security guards swarmed around the table, and knocked the gang’s members off their stools, and onto the floor. For a moment, the cheaters seemed dazed, and struggled helplessly.

Then, the man with the Budweiser can jumped to his feet, and started swinging his arms like billy clubs. Two security guards flew through the air. Soon, more guards were lying on their backs, and Lois watched the melee spread across the casino like wild fire. The cheaters were scattering, the posse doing everything but stopping them.

“Where’s your father?” she asked Gerry.

“Over here,” Gerry said, pointing at a different monitor.

Tony was battling the man with the Budweiser can, his blows bouncing harmlessly off the cheater’s skull. The cheater’s blows were having the opposite effect, and each punch was shrinking her husband an inch. Suddenly, Tony stopped defending himself, and his knees began to buckle.

Lois brought her hands to her mouth. Long ago, she had accepted she might lose Tony one day. That was the price of being a cop’s wife. But she had never expected to see him die before her eyes.

“Somebody do something!” she screamed.

Doyle would later swear that he’d heard Lois’s cry for help all the way down on the casino floor. Her husband’s partner appeared in the monitor, holding his walking cane like a club, and whacked the cheater across the knees. The cheater’s mouth curled into a perfect O, and he crumpled to the floor.

Gerry and the techs erupted into cheers.

Lois continued to stare at the monitor. Tony had fallen backwards on a craps table, and knocked a gigantic tray of chips onto the floor. His body looked broken, and his legs were no longer moving. One eye was open, and it stared directly into the camera. Help me, it begged.

Grabbing Gerry by the arm, she ran from the room.

Chapter 17

Valentine was released from the hospital the next day. Despite the severity of the beating he’d taken — the surveillance tape showed him getting punched in the head a total of nine times — the worst injury he had suffered was when he’d keeled over, and landed on the craps table. He’d torn a ligament in his ankle, and been reduced to hobbling around on crutches.

The doctor told him to stay off his feet for two weeks. Valentine had gone home and collapsed on the couch in the living room. He tried to read a book, and when that didn’t work, he watched an old John Wayne movie on TV. By that night, he was bored to tears, and driving his wife and son crazy.

The next morning, he overheard Lois calling Captain Banko, and asking him to give her husband something to do, even if it was just filling out forms.

“Thanks,” he called across the house to her.

At noon, Banko appeared on his doorstep. With him was a tech from the casino’s surveillance department. Soon a video monitor and VCR were sitting on the coffee table in Valentine’s living room. Next to the table was a cardboard box overflowing with video cassettes the tech had lugged in. As the technician connected the VCR to the monitor, Banko said, “You told Fuller and Romero that you were going to have the surveillance techs look at past surveillance tapes, and see if they might spot the guy who’s killing the hookers. Well, I had an idea.”

“You want me to watch them,” Valentine said.

“Exactly. You can’t watch all the tapes the casino has — it would take a year. So, I selected tapes from ten o’clock on, because that’s when the hookers usually come out.” Banko had put his overcoat on a chair, and he removed an envelope from one of its pockets, and dropped it on the couch. “Those are the pictures of the killer’s victims. It might be easier for you to spot one of them before you spot the killer. I realize this is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but who knows, you might get lucky.”

Valentine grabbed a video tape out of the box, eager for something to do.

“I’ll get right on it.”

Banko picked up his overcoat and slipped it on. He’d arrived covered in snow, and the flakes had melted in the pattern of little men on the coat’s shoulders. He brushed them away, and Valentine retrieved his crutches from the floor, and walked him and the tech to the front door.

“One more thing,” his superior said. “Fuller and Romero would like your help tomorrow afternoon.”

“Doing what?”

“They want to talk to hookers, see if any might have been approached by this sicko. I told them you knew every hooker in town—”

“Thanks.”

Banko flashed a rare grin. “—and that I thought you’d be happy to.”

Valentine hadn’t gotten a decent piece of information out of a hooker in all his years as a cop. But he had a feeling that watching surveillance tapes non-stop would eventually have him climbing the walls, so he said yes.

“Feel better,” Banko said.

Valentine watched videos all day, and well into the night. At a quarter of midnight, the phone rang. His wife and son had already gone to bed, and the downstairs was empty. Getting his crutches from the floor, he hobbled into the kitchen. On the fifth ring, he answered the phone by saying, “This had better be good.”

It was Doyle, calling from a payphone. “Remember my cousin Shawn? Owns the Irish pub off Atlantic, near the beach.”

“Shamrocks?” Valentine asked.

“That’s the place. Shawn called an hour ago, said your father came into his bar tonight, got loaded, and passed out in his bathroom.”

Valentine felt his face grow flush. His father has been passing out in bars for as long as he could remember, and it had never lost its impact on him.

“I drove over, got some coffee in him,” Doyle said. “Then, I took him to a flophouse and bought him a bed for the night. He seemed to remember me.”

“What did he say?”

“He talked about you beating him up.”

Valentine’s vision grew blurry. Twenty years past, he’d thrown his father out of the house before he could lay another hand on his mother. Drunk, his father had challenged him to a fist fight on the front lawn. Valentine hadn’t wanted that; he just wanted his father to leave. But his father had thrown a punch, and then there was no stopping it. He’d beaten his old man silly. Beat him until he was on one knee, and still throwing punches in the air. Beat him like there was no tomorrow. It had solved nothing, and he had regretted doing it every day since.

“I really appreciate your doing this,” Valentine said.

“For you, anything,” his partner replied.

He said goodbye and hung up the phone. He went back into the living room, and saw that the surveillance tape he’d been watching had run its course. He popped it out of the VCR, and replaced it with another. If he’d learned anything as a cop, it was that patience sometimes paid off.

Sitting on the couch, he stared at the grainy image on the screen. The new tape was of the Resorts’ front entrance, with hundreds of people passing through the doors every few minutes. He found it interesting to note the difference in their postures. People entering the casino had their shoulders thrown back, and were ready to take on Lady Luck. Those leaving were slumped forward, their pockets empty, and egos bruised.

A woman in a white jump suit appeared on the tape. She had a man on her arm, and was leaving the casino. She looked familiar, and Valentine rewound the tape until she was back in the picture. Then, he opened the envelope which contained the victims’ photographs, and pulled out Mary Ann Crawford’s. He compared the photograph to the woman in the white jump. It was definitely her.

He turned the photograph over. Printed on the back was the date Mary Ann Crawford had disappeared. He popped the tape out of the VCR, and looked at the date printed on its spine. It was the same.

He popped the tape back into the VCR, hit play, and stared at the screen. If his theory was correct — and the Dresser was picking up hookers inside the casino — then the Dresser was probably the man on Mary Ann’s arm. Valentine watched them come into the frame. The man’s face was completely obscured by Mary Ann’s hair.

“Shit,” he said.

“What’s wrong, Pop?”

Valentine glanced up to see Gerry standing at the foot of the stairs, dressed in his pajamas and rubbing his eyes.

“I’ve got a headache,” his son explained.

In the kitchen, Valentine got a bottle of aspirin out of the pantry, then poured two tall glasses of milk. Gerry took the medicine, and Valentine gave him a homemade chocolate chip cookie out of the jar on the counter.

“Makes the medicine work faster,” he said.

“Yeah, right,” his son said, biting into the cookie.

Gerry had reached the age where he didn’t like to be hugged. Valentine hugged him anyway, then tousled his hair. They returned to the living room. The surveillance tape was still playing, and a familiar-looking face flashed by on the screen.

“Hey. That’s Mr. Crowe,” Gerry said.

“How did you know Mr. Crowe?” Valentine asked.

“He coached my little league team, remember?”

Out of curiosity, Valentine rewound the tape and hit Play. The familiar-looking face reappeared, and he froze it on the screen. It was definitely Crowe, and he was huddled by the front door of the casino with three other men.

Valentine grabbed his wife’s glasses off the table, and fitted them on. He knelt in front of the screen, and studied the men standing with Crowe. One of them was Brown, Crowe’s partner. The second and third men were mysteries.

He focused on the second man, a tall, black guy wearing a dress coat that hung to his knees. It wasn’t Mink, or any of the black detectives on the force. Valentine hit play, and watched the black guy break off from the group, and walk away. He had a swagger, and his hair bobbed on his shoulders. There was no doubt in his mind now. The second man was Prince D. Smith.

“That guy walks like a pimp,” his son said.

Valentine had forgotten that Gerry was in the room. Rising from the floor, he touched his son’s arm. “Go to bed, okay?”

“Was Mr. Crowe involved with that guy?”

“Just do as I say, okay?”

“Ah, come on. He must have done something.”

Valentine gave Gerry a look that said the conversation would go no further. His son mumbled goodnight and went upstairs to his room.

“Sleep tight,” Valentine called after him.

Then he rewound the tape, and played it again. The third guy was really bothering him. He was several inches shorter than the others, and practically invisible to the camera, yet Valentine felt certain he’d seen him before. He played the tape backward, then played it forward in slow motion, and watched the man enter the picture. His face was still invisible to the camera, but the top of his head wasn’t, and Valentine stared at his oily pompadour.

He cursed under his breath. He’d seen that haircut every day for the past month. The third man on the tape was Mickey Wright, Resorts’ head of surveillance.

Chapter 18

Valentine felt a gentle tug on the lapel of his bathrobe and opened his eyes. Lois stood over the couch, all dressed for work, the living room awash in sunlight.

“Hey, sleepyhead, rise and shine,” she said.

She took his half-finished glass of milk into the kitchen, and came out a minute later with a steaming cup of coffee. Valentine sat up on the couch, and let the coffee bring him back to the real world. His wife sat down beside him.

“Any luck with the surveillance tapes?” she asked.

Valentine stared at the video monitor’s blank screen. He’d stayed up until three A.M. watching Crowe, Brown, Mickey Wright and the Prince standing by Resorts’ entrance. He still wasn’t sure what the four men had been doing together.

“I need you to do me a favor, and take Gerry with you to work,” he said.

Gerry was still on suspension from school, and since Valentine was at home, it made sense that he should watch him. His wife made a face.

“Would you mind telling me why?” she asked.

“Doyle’s coming over to discuss a case. I don’t want Gerry overhearing us.”

Lois frowned. She was a special ed instructor at the Atlantic City School for the Deaf. The last time she’d taken Gerry to work, his inability to sign had made for a long day.

“Must be a serious case,” she said.

“Real serious,” he said.

Doyle came to the house at lunch time, and brought corned beef rye sandwiches. While they ate, Valentine played the surveillance tape he’d watched the night before. Doyle’s eyes were sharp, and he immediately made Crowe, Brown, Mickey Wright and the Prince standing at the front door.

“For the love of Christ, what are they doing together?” his partner asked.

“I don’t know. I want to make a copy of it. Did you bring the VCR?”

“Yeah. It’s in my car.”

Doyle went to his car, and got a VCR he’d borrowed from the casino. He hitched it up to the back of the video monitor, and made a copy of the tape.

“What are you going to do with it?” Doyle asked.

“Bury it in the backyard with the Prince’s address book.”

“But it’s evidence. You need to show it to Banko, or we could get screwed.”

Valentine understood what Doyle was saying. If someone in the department found out they were withholding the tape, they were finished as cops.

“But what’s it evidence of? We still can’t prove anything. We need to figure out what’s going on before we start shooting our mouths off to Banko.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We need to start watching Mickey Wright.”

Doyle ran his fingers through his thinning hair. One of the annoying aspects of working in a casino was that everyone was watched, even people in surveillance. If they spied on Mickey Wright, the other people they worked with soon notice it.

“I think we’re risking our careers,” his partner said.

Valentine gave him a no-nonsense stare. “Four men died at the Rainbow Arms, and three of them were hanging out with Mickey Wright. I want to know why. Don’t you?”

Doyle shook his head in resignation. His conscience had been eating at him since day one. “I think this thing is bigger than us, Tony. That address book was filled with the names of New York mobsters. Do you really want to tango with those guys? We could end up with horse heads in our beds. Or worse.”

Valentine had already thought it through. They were in too deep to quit. He had killed a man over that stupid address book, and he wanted to know why.

“I’m not afraid. Are you?”

Doyle shot him an exasperated look. “All right, already. We’ll spy on Mickey Wright.”

Sparks steakhouse on New York’s tony upper east side was where you went to talk business, and eat a good steak. It was a mob joint, and had no windows on its bottom floor. Every day, the owners checked the dining room tables for bugs and hidden microphones before opening their doors. And, the food was good.

Sparks had a number of rules. Women were not welcome, unless they were draped on the arm of a local hoodlum. Men were required to wear jackets and ties, no exceptions. And, you were not supposed to raise your voice in anger, although it sometimes happened.

It was noon, the restaurant packed with hoodlums from each of the five boroughs. At his usual corner table sat Paul “The Lobster” Spinelli with two of his soldiers, Gino Caputo and Frankie Musserelli. Gino had elephant ears, Frankie six fingers on his left hand. Someday, these would be the two men’s nicknames, if they lived that long.

The Lobster was wrestling with a five pound monster flown in that morning from Maine. His bib was splattered with melted butter and tiny bits of white meat. He ate like a man going to the electric chair. The Lobster knew he was a spectacle, and he didn’t care. “These Philly fucks are messing with the wrong people,” he said through a mouthful of food. “I’ll whack every one of them if they don’t stay out of Atlantic City.”

The Lobster snapped open a claw, and a piece of shell flew onto a nearby table.

“Hey,” he called to the adjacent diners. “Any meat in that?”

The claw was dutifully examined.

“No,” the man at the table said.

The Lobster resumed speaking to his men. “I hate Philly. You know what I’m saying. It’s a rat prick town. I went twenty years ago. Nothing to do.”

Gino was eating a plate of garlic meatballs. He speared one with a fork, and ate it in small bites while sipping on a glass of draft beer. “I took my kids last year. My son looks at the Liberty Bell and says, ‘The crack in my ass is bigger than that.’”

The Lobster snorted and slapped the table.

“I love kids,” he said.

“Dumb fucking town,” Frankie added.

The Lobster lowered his voice, and his soldiers conspiratorially leaned in. “If those Philly fucks don’t pull out of Atlantic City, we’re going to drive over there and kill them in their fucking beds. We can’t let them muscle in on this thing we’ve got going.”

“In their beds,” Frankie said, like he wanted to be sure.

“Isn’t that what I just said, you dumb shit?”

“I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.”

“Don’t ever make me repeat myself.”

“No, sir.”

“What did I just say?”

“That I should never make you repeat yourself.”

“That’s right. And don’t forget it.”

“What about Nucky Balducci?” Gino asked.

The Lobster had lost his appetite and tore off his bib. He extracted an Arturo Fuente Opus X from his pocket and viciously bit off the end. A waiter appeared with a light, and the cigar’s tip glowed a bright orange. “What about that dumb wop?”

“I thought he was running things in AC,” Gino said.

“Nucky runs the nickel-and-dime crap,” the Lobster said. “This is out of his league. I sent Vinny Acosta down. He’s running the AC operation now.”

The Lobster spent a few minutes enjoying his cigar, oblivious to the stifling haze it was creating inside the restaurant. Three years ago, on November 5th, 1976, one day after New Jersey voters voted to legalize casino gambling, New York’s five mafia families had congregated in the back room of a restaurant on Carmine Street in Little Italy. A single topic had been on the agenda: The opening of Resorts’ casino in Atlantic City. At the meeting, it had been decided that The Lobster would run the Atlantic City operation, with the five families splitting the profits. The Lobster was the natural choice for the job. He’d made his bones in Las Vegas in the fifties, and knew how to rip off a casino.

The Resorts’ scam was a huge moneymaker for the mafia, and was netting the five families three million dollars a month. Eight more casinos would be opened in Atlantic City in the next three years. Each would be shaken down, and the operation set up. The projected take was twenty-seven million a month, almost a million bucks a day. It was enough money to make the Lobster’s head spin.

“Life is fucking good,” he proclaimed.

The Lobster paid the tab, then flirted with the twenty-year old hat check girl before venturing outside. The air was chilly, and he took his time tying his scarf, enjoying the last few puffs on his cigar. Gino and Frankie dutifully trailed a few steps behind.

Tossing the cigar into the gutter, the Lobster stepped out of the restaurant’s shadows into the sun-drenched afternoon and sucked in the invigorating air. His black Lincoln town car was parked at the curb, its engine idling. He considered taking a short walk, then decided against it. Exercise had never appealed to him. Opening the passenger door, he started to climb into the town car, then heard pounding footsteps on the sidewalk. His head instinctively snapped at the sound.

A skinny Italian kid with pimply skin and wearing a tan leather jacket was running towards him. The Lobster immediately recognized him. It was one of the Andruzzi twins from Philly, come to assassinate him.

“Frankie! Gino!” he cried. “Get him!”

Frankie and Gino jumped in front of their boss, at the same time drawing their weapons. Before they could get off a round, the Lobster heard a dull popping sound, and saw his bodyguards crumple to the sidewalk. A set-up, he thought.

The Lobster had always suspected he’d die this way. His belly full of rich food, the taste of a cigar in his mouth, his guard down. The price for being a glutton. He glanced over his shoulder just to be sure. The other Andruzzi twin stood behind him, aiming a gun with a silencer directly at his face. Nearly a million bucks a day, the Lobster thought, and joined his Gino and Frankie on the sidewalk as he was shot dead.

Chapter 19

Fuller and Romero pulled into Valentine’s driveway at noon the next day. Valentine hobbled out of his house on crutches, his right foot covered in a green ski sock. He slid into the back seat of the FBI agents’ car, and laid his crutches on the floor.

“I hear you want to talk to some ladies of negotiable affection,” he said.

Fuller’s eyes danced in the mirror. He was driving, and wore a black sweater that showed off his physique. “Rumor has it you’re the expert.”

“You can’t work this town and not be one,” Valentine said. “Get onto Pacific Avenue and head north until you hit Harold’s House of Pancakes.”

“That the local hangout?” Fuller asked.

“There’s usually one or two girls hanging around.”

Fuller followed his instructions. Leaving Margate, he drove through the suburb of Marvin Gardens, entered Ventnor with its rows of majestic mansions that locals called slammers, and then came to the mean streets of Atlantic City. The scenery changed from spectacular to slum in the time it took to smoke a cigarette. A sign for Harold’s House of Pancakes loomed in the windshield. Valentine had Fuller pull into the lot.

“Hookers like to eat here,” Valentine said. “Manager has a special for them.”

They went in. The restaurant was paneled in knotty pine turned smeary from grill grease and smoke. Valentine canvassed the back of the room. In the corner sat a hooker hunched over a plate of rheumy eggs with hash browns that looked like wood shavings. Her eyes locked onto his.

“Looks like we’re in luck,” Valentine said.

Her name was Mona. Valentine had always thought it was a put-on, until he’d run her in, and the name had appeared on her rap sheet. “I popped out of my mother’s belly, doctor slapped my ass, I started moaning like a cat in heat,” she had explained, her wrist handcuffed to a chair as he finger-typed his report. “Name stuck.’”

Valentine had always liked her after that. Mona was heavy on the sarcasm, and he guessed she was trying to hide the real self, which was a strung-out, broken down women whose best days were past. She liked him, too, as much as any hooker could like a cop.

“Mind a little company?” Valentine asked.

Mona looked the three men over. “Pick up the check?”

Fuller agreed, and they sat down at her table. Mona’s right hand held a fork, her left a cigarette. She hacked violently in their faces. “I hear you got shot,” she said.

Valentine showed her where the bullet had gone through the palm of his hand.

“No more life line, huh?” she said.

The bullet’s scar had wiped away the life line on his hand.

“All gone,” he said.

“What’s with the crutches?”

“I fell down running after my wife.”

Mona laughed hoarsely while sizing up Romero and Fuller. “Who are these Toms?”

“Special Agent Fuller, Special Agent Romero, FBI.”

“You’re hanging out with fast company.”

“I’m helping them with a case.”

A waitress with a cigarette glued to her lip took their order. Coffee all the way around.

“What do you want from me?” Mona asked.

Romero removed an envelope from his jacket, took out head shots of the Dresser’s four victims, and slid them Mona’s way. She pushed her plate to the far end of the table, then spread the photographs in front of her and stared.

“These girls were working Resorts,” Valentine said. “Know any of them?”

Mona pointed a gnarly finger at one. “She kind of looks familiar. Haven’t seen her in a while.”

Romero removed the Dresser’s composite and showed it to her.

“How about him?” Valentine asked.

Mona studied the composite for a few moments. “Naw.” She looked up, and her eyes rested on Romero, as if trying to place him.

“Now you, I know,” she said.

Romero dabbed at his brow with a paper napkin. It was cold inside the restaurant, yet there was sweat pouring off him. Had he gone out for some fun, and done her?

“You must be mistaken,” the FBI agent said.

“Don’t get smart with me, federal agent man. I saw you the other morning in the Catholic church over on Atlantic. You were in the front pew, praying. You said good morning to me. Remember?”

She banged out a cigarette from her pack of Kools. Romero picked up her lighter and fumbled with it. Finally, he got her cigarette lit.

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

Mona inhaled deeply on her cigarette. “I pray for my sister. She’s dying of leukemia. Who you praying for?”

“A dead friend,” Romero said.

“That ain’t nothing to be ashamed off,” Mona told him.

Fuller and Romero had printed flyers with the Dresser’s composite along with a special 24-hour FBI hot line to call, and asked Mona if she would distribute them to other working girls on the island. Mona read the flyer and shook her head.

“This will never work,” she said.

“Why, what’s wrong with it?” Valentine asked.

“It says, ‘If you think you recognize this person, please call Special Agent Fuller or Special Agent Romero of the FBI at this number.” She snorted with laughter. “Come on. You really think a whore is gonna call the Hardy Boys?”

Valentine hid a smile. “Probably not.”

“Have them call you,” Mona said.

“Me?” Valentine said.

“Yeah. The whores trust you. Your word means something.”

Fuller turned sideways to looked at Valentine. “Do you mind if we do that?”

Valentine hesitated. He had enough on his plate, only he knew Mona was right. The hookers in the town would call him if they thought their lives were in danger.

“All right,” he said.

Romero got pens from the waiter, and he and Fuller crossed out the last line on each flyer, and substituted Valentine’s name and station house phone number. Mona took one of the flyers, and appraised it with a skilled eye.

“This will work,” she said.

Chapter 20

Two days after Christmas, Valentine tossed his crutches, and decided to go back to work. Hanging around the house was starting to feel like a prison sentence, and he found himself looking forward to returning to Resorts, and making some cheater’s life miserable.

But first, he had some business to take care of. Driving to the Margate mall, he found a jewelry store with a sign in the window that said Christmas sale, all items 30 % off. He had a female clerk help him pick out an appropriate gift, then had her wrap it. He drove to the Rainbow Arms apartment with the gift in his lap, and parked on the street.

The building’s elevator was on the blink, and he climbed the stairs to the top floor. He was puffing hard as he knocked on the door to Sampson’s apartment, and told himself he needed to start exercising again. In two years he’d turn forty. He’d never had to regularly exercise, but suddenly it seemed like a good idea.

He heard chains being drawn. The door opened, and ten-year-old Bernard stood before him, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt with the face of a toothless Leon Spinks, the former heavyweight champion of the world. He stared at the gift in Valentine’s hand.

“Thought you were coming by last week,” Bernard said accusingly.

Valentine had called and said he was coming by. Then he’d gotten beat up.

“I was out of commission,” Valentine said.

“What does that mean?”

“I got hurt. I called your grandfather from the hospital. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Hurt how?”

“Guy punched my lights out.”

“You get any licks in?”

“A couple.”

A smile spread across Bernard’s face. Yes, Valentine thought, his grandfather had told him. But Bernard wanted to hear him say it, and judge for himself if it was true. Valentine handed him the gift.

“Merry Christmas.”

They went down the shotgun hallway to the kitchen with the naked bulb danging from the ceiling. The grandfather sat at the table, the newspaper spread before him.

“I was getting worried about you,” Sampson said.

“I hurt my foot and couldn’t walk,” Valentine said. “It’s fine now.”

“Glad to hear it. Would you mind making some coffee? I’m dying for a cup.”

There was a cannister of ground coffee on the counter, and Valentine doled several teaspoons into the Mr. Coffee maker sitting beside it. He heard Bernard open his present, but did not turn around until he knew it was out of the box.

Bernard stared at the Timex watch. “This really for me?”

“Yes, it’s for you.”

“Let me see it,” his grandfather said.

Bernard held the watch a foot in front of his grandfather’s face and let him visually appraise it. “A fine looking time piece,” Sampson said. “Tell Mr Valentine thank you.”

“Thanks,” the boy said.

Bernard was good at keeping his feelings hidden, and Valentine didn’t realize until he’d put the watch on how much he liked it. Valentine had chosen a snappy-looking black leather wrist band, and it looked just right on him. Bernard knew it, too.

“Better hurry before you miss the school bus,” his grandfather said.

“Yeah,” Bernard said.

He was gone in a flash, the front door slamming behind him. Soon the coffee was ready. Valentine poured two mugs and brought them to the table. He held Sampson’s cup to his lips, and let the old man drink first. Then he took a sip from his own mug.

“I have some bad news,” Sampson said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m dying,” he said.

Sampson said he had less than a month to live. He spoke about it matter-of-factly, like you would the weather, and did not say what was killing him. So much of his dignity had been stripped away by his paralysis that Valentine did not feel it was right to ask him.

“I am not afraid of death,” Sampson said. “But I fear for the boy. There are few good influences around here.”

“What about his mother? Can’t she watch out for him?”

Sampson shook his head ruefully. “My daughter is not a good influence.”

“Is she here?”

“No.”

Valentine drank his coffee in silence. He’d figured out that Bernard’s mother was a street walker, and had considered sitting her down, and reading the riot act to her. But he didn’t think it would do any good. She had a son to feed, and the old man.

“Perhaps you could do something,” Sampson suggested.

Valentine stared at the grains in the bottom of his mug. He knew what Sampson wanted: If he came around the apartment more often, perhaps he could exert a positive influence on Bernard.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Valentine drove to work feeling rotten. Bernard had practically saved his life. That was worth something. But how much was it worth? He would come around and check up on him, but it wouldn’t be as much as the grandfather wanted.

He parked on the street, and entered Resorts’ casino from the Boardwalk entrance. The casino was packed, with customers standing five deep at every table, waiting to place a bet. Most of the customers looked like working Joes, gambling with their paychecks. Out in Las Vegas, the casinos depended upon wealthy gamblers, called whales, to make their nut. In Atlantic City, a whale was a sanitation worker with a hundred bucks to burn in his pocket. He felt a tug on his sleeve and stared into the face of a security guard.

“You’ve got a call,” the guard said, pointing at a house phone by the elevators.

“Thanks.” Valentine went and picked the phone up. “Valentine here.”

“I’m up in the catwalk,” Doyle said.

“What have you got?”

“A card-counter,” his partner replied.

Valentine took an elevator to the second floor, walked down a long, windowless hallway, and punched a code into the combination lock of a steel door. The door swung in, and he entered a dark, cavernous space.

“Over here,” Doyle said.

Valentine found his partner hanging over a metal railing, staring at the blackjack pit through a camera with a wide telephoto lens. Located in the ceiling above the casino, the catwalk let security personnel watch the games through two-way mirrors, and gave a feel for the action that surveillance cameras could not provide.

“Where is he?” Valentine asked.

“Table number 46, guy at third base,” Doyle replied.

Resorts had seventy-two blackjack tables. At any given time, a handful of card-counters were scattered around those tables. Card-counting altered the house edge by two percent. It didn’t sound like much, but if enough people did it, it could bankrupt a casino.

Counters were intense people, and often wore baseball caps to hide their faces from the eye-in-the-sky cameras. What gave them away was the way they bet. For hours, they would bet the table minimum. Then, the shoe would get rich in high-valued cards, and their bets would grow twenty times. Casinos called it bet fluctuation.

Doyle handed him the camera, and Valentine stared through its lens at the suspected counter. The guy fit right in with the other players: gold chains, white leisure suit, red silk shirt. A true polyester prince. What stuck out was his bronze skin when everyone else in the casino was pasty white. They’d been seeing a lot of counters from Las Vegas, and Valentine pegged this guy as one of them.

Handing the camera back, he walked to the end of the catwalk, found the phone, and called down to the floor. He spoke to a pit boss, then rejoined Doyle.

“Bill Higgins taught me this trick,” he said. “Watch.”

Down below, a pit boss approached table 46. A velvet rope hung behind the table. Reaching over the rope, the pit boss took his thumb, and drew an X on the card counter’s back. The counter scooped up his chips and left the table.

“What’s that called?” Doyle said.

“The brush,” Valentine replied. “They use it out in Vegas. It tells the card counter they’ve been spotted, and it’s time to leave.”

“I like it.”

They started to leave the catwalk. Something caught Doyle’s eye, and he pointed down at the cage. “What’s Mickey Wright think he’s doing?”

Valentine grasped the catwalk railing and looked down. Mickey was standing by the cage in his signature maroon jacket. He was talking to a customer, an Italian with a thick mane of slick-backed hair. The customer looked like a mobster, but so did half the guys inside the casino. As they watched, a cashier slid two racks of purple chips under the glass. Mickey signed for them, then presented the racks to the customer, who shook Mickey’s hand and sauntered off to the blackjack pit.

“How much money do you think that is?” Doyle asked.

Purples were worth a thousand dollars apiece.

“A hundred grand, easy,” Valentine said.

Doyle whistled through his teeth. “What do you think Mickey’s up to?”

Valentine had no idea. The casino occasionally offered lines of credit to high-rollers, letting them sign for chips they were legally responsible for paying back to the casino. If the high-roller didn’t pay, the state went after him.

The problem was, Mickey Wright didn’t have the authority to approve credit lines. And, he wasn’t supposed to be on the casino floor. Resort discouraged surveillance employees from entering the casino, and fraternizing with employees, or customers.

Maybe Mickey had slipped. Maybe the guy was from the old neighborhood, and Mickey had seen him on a camera, and run downstairs to say hello. Or, maybe something else was going on.

“Get a picture of this guy,” Valentine said. “We’d better find out who he is.”

Chapter 21

Leaving work that night, Valentine remembered that he was supposed to bring food home for dinner. It was Wednesday, which meant Chinese take-out. To stay within their budget, he picked up a quart of wonton soup and three egg rolls to go with the chow mein Lois made at home. It made dinner special, and didn’t cost a lot of money.

He drove to a strip mall in Margate and parked in front of Lo’s Imperial Palace. He’d been coming here every Wednesday for years, and was not surprised when Sam Lo met him at the door with his order. He started to make small-talk, only Sam cut him off.

“You wife call five minutes ago,” Sam Lo said. “Go home now. Pay me later.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Your wife crying,” Sam Lo said.

“What happened?”

“Somebody break into your house. Sound real bad. You’d better hurry.”

Valentine drove down Margate’s quiet streets faster than he should have. Pulling onto his block, he saw a pair of police cruisers parked in his driveway, and was relieved to see there wasn’t an ambulance with them. He parked on the street and ran inside. A uniformed cop named D’Amato met him in the foyer.

“Is my family okay?”

“Yes,” D’Amato said.“Your wife’s in the kitchen and your son’s with a neighbor.”

“Is the house wrecked?”

“Pretty much, I’m afraid.”

Valentine didn’t want D’Amato telling him any more. He had to see for himself, and walked through the foyer into the dining room, and stared at the wreckage. His house was a disaster area. Everything of value had been turned upside-down, and smashed with some type of blunt instrument. The credenza his mother had given them as a wedding present lay on the floor, its sides battered, with every piece of his china removed and shattered. The dining room table, another wedding present, had been chopped up with an axe, and lay on the floor like discarded pieces of kindling.

He entered the living room. Paintings and family photographs had been pulled off the walls, their frames fractured; tables and chairs split in half. Then, he checked the other downstairs rooms. They were also ruined, and he wondered if a small tornado had somehow ripped through his house. He walked back to the foyer where D’Amato stood.

“How about the basement and the upstairs?”

“The same,” D’Amato said.

“Anything not destroyed?”

“They spared the breakfast table,” D’Amato said.

Valentine found Lois sitting at the breakfast table, her face buried in her hands. He touched her shoulder, and she jumped up and stuck her head against his chest and began to sob. They had never had much money, and she treasured the few things of value they had. “I brought Gerry home from school, and found the place like this,” she said. “He was so upset, I sent him next door. They destroyed his record collection and his phonograph.”

“You think it was other kids?”

“I don’t think kids would use knives to rip out the stuffing in the mattresses in our beds, do you?”

Valentine blinked. In the living room he’d seen where the burglars had kicked a wall in, and the significance of the act hadn’t registered. Holding his wife’s shoulders, he said, “No one was hurt. We can always replace this stuff. Remember that.”

Lois looked up into his face.

“With what money?” she said.

They heard the back door open. D’Amato’s partner stepped into the kitchen. Valentine had seen him down at the station house before. His name was Dolce, and he had a friendly face and an easy-going manner. Seeing them, Dolce took his hat off.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Dolce said.

Valentine mumbled the word thanks.

“I walked the property and had a talk with your neighbors on both sides,” Dolce said. “No one appears to have seen anything.”

“How about in the alleyway behind the house?”

“Nothing,” Dolce said.

“So these burglars waltzed in during the middle of the afternoon, destroyed my house, and no one saw a thing,” Valentine said.

“One of your neighbors was in the basement doing laundry. The other is sick, and was sleeping.”

Valentine lived on a busy street. Someone had seen something. Only no one was coming forward. It confirmed his suspicions, and he said, “Do you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes?”

“I’ll be with my partner if you need me,” Dolce said.

Valentine took a glass from the cupboard, filled it with cold water, and handed it to his wife. “Drink this. It’ll make you feel better.”

Lois held the glass with trembling hands and took a long swallow. “Is that what you tell people who’ve been burglarized?”

“No. I tell them I’m going to find the people who did it, and make them pay.”

“You have to know who they are first.”

“I know who did this,” he said.

Lois put the glass onto the table. “You do?”

“Yes. Now promise me you won’t repeat that to these officers.”

A look of uncertainty crept into her face. “Okay,” she said.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He went to the kitchen door and opened it. Stepping outside, he shut the door behind him. The weather had turned bitter, yet he did not feel the cold, nor hear the howling wind, the bam bam bam of his heart blocking it out. He hurried across the backyard, tripping over Gerry’s outdoor toys — stuff he and Lois planned to give away once they accepted that Gerry was no longer a little boy — and stopped at the fence.

In the corner of his yard sat an ugly concrete bird bath. The previous owner had left it because it was too heavy to move. He stared at the spot in the ground where he’d buried the Prince’s address book, and, just a few nights ago, the surveillance tape from Resorts. The ground around the bird bath was undisturbed. He felt his heart beat return to normal, and turned back toward the house. He had to deal with this right now, or he had to walk away. There was simply no other choice.

He crossed the yard and saw Lois step onto the back porch.

“I want to know who did this to us,” she said.

“Nucky Balducci,” he replied.

Chapter 22

Every town in the state of New Jersey had at least one fancy restaurant that was run by the mob. Hoodlums had to eat somewhere.

The restaurant in Atlantic City which bore this distinction was called Lou Sonken’s. Although the cuisine was northern Italian, the interior resembled a French bordello, with naked statuary and red carpeted walls hung with paintings of plump nudes. No cop Valentine knew had ever eaten there.

He parked in a vacant lot across the street, then jogged over in the shadows, trying to avoid the valets, most of them were thugs just out of prison who needed work. He slipped inside the front door, and was spotted by the maitre d’, a weasel in an ill-fitting tux. As he tried to enter the restaurant, the maitre d’ blocked his way.

“I’m sorry, but we’re booked solid,” the maitre d’ said.

“Go back to your little stand,” Valentine said.

“But—”

“Or I’ll arrest you.”

The maitre d’ retreated, and Valentine walked down a foyer covered with photos of Lou Sonken shaking hands with every mafia kingpin who’d ever stepped foot in Atlantic City. Entering the restaurant, his eyes canvassed the dimly lit room. Nucky Balducci’s bald head popped up like a buoy in a sea of slime. He sat at a corner table, inhaling a plate of clam linguine. Luther sat beside him, gnawing on a pork chop. As Valentine approached, Luther rose up in his chair. Valentine put his hand on the bodyguard’s shoulder, and drove him into his seat.

“One word out of you, and I’ll cuff you,” Valentine said.

Luther’s mouth clamped shut. Nucky continued to twirl linguini on his fork. “Why don’t you pull up a chair, and join us,” the old gangster said.

Valentine borrowed a chair from a nearby table without asking the diners if they minded. As he sat down, his legs hit the table, disturbing the two men’s drinks. Luther reached out and stilled both glasses.

“How you been?” Nucky asked.

“Shitty.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Valentine took out his wallet, and dropped it on the table so his detective’s badge was showing. Nucky glanced at it.

“You here on business, huh?”

“You’re psychic.”

“Want something to eat?”

“No. Do you know my partner, Doyle Flanagan?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“Doyle says he could stop all the break-ins and burglaries in this town by putting four guys in jail. Four guys do all the jobs.”

“No kidding,” Nucky said.

“Doyle says it’s easy to tell which burglar is which. One always drinks a beer and leaves the empty. Another’s into lady’s underwear. The third pisses on bathroom floors. I won’t tell you what the fourth does, too disgusting. Problem is, we never have enough evidence to put them away.”

Nucky put his fork down. “What does this have to do with me?”

The rest of the diners had started to file out of the restaurant. Valentine glanced up at the smokey mirror hanging behind Nucky’s shaved head. In its reflection, Lou Sonken and two big waiters stood in the doorway, waiting for Nucky to call them in. Valentine turned around in his chair. “Get back in your cages,” he told them.

Lou and his apes did not move.

“Do as he says,” Nucky ordered them.

The three men went away. Nucky leaned into the table and dropped his voice.

“Explain yourself, will you, Tony? The suspense is killing me.”

“My house got broken into this afternoon. The guy who did it wasn’t one of those four guys. And he was looking for something.”

“You think I know?”

“You run this town, don’t you?”

Nucky balled up his napkin and tossed it onto his bowel of unfinished pasta. “You’re not wearing a wire, are you?”

Valentine rose an inch out of his chair.

“Okay, calm down. Luther, take a powder, will you?”

The bodyguard excused himself from the table. When he was gone, Nucky explained the situation. “You’ve been seen around town with a couple of feds.”

“So?”

“People are getting nervous.”

“I’m helping the FBI find a guy who’s murdering hookers.”

“That’s the story everybody’s heard,” Nucky said.

“You don’t believe it?”

Nucky snorted contemptuously. “Who gives a shit about dead hookers? Take my advice. Stay away from those FBI guys. It’s making plenty of people nervous.”

“Did you order someone to break into my house?”

“No,” Nucky said.

“Then who did?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Tell me who they are, Nucky, or I’ll run you in.”

“You’ll do what?”

“You heard me.”

Nucky’s bald head turned beet red. He suddenly looked like a pressure cooker ready to explode. “You’re serious.”

“Damn straight,” Valentine said.

Nucky rose from the table, and motioned for Valentine to follow him. They walked through the empty restaurant and down the foyer, turned right at the maitre de’ stand, and entered the nightclub. It had been modeled after the Moulin Rouge, with a serpentine bar, a stage that mechanically moved up and down, and bar stools covered in zebra skin, their stripes highlighted by an ultra-violet light. The club was empty, except for the ancient mixologist, an old Sicilian named Arthur who’d been there since the beginning of time. They shouldered up to the bar.

“A Budweiser, Arthur,” Nucky said.

“Of course. And for your friend?”

“Tap water,” Valentine said.

Arthur smiled like Valentine had made a joke and he thought he was supposed to smile.

“Turn the TV on,” Nucky instructed.

“You wanna watch anything in particular?”

“I want to see the news.”

A big color TV hung from the ceiling behind the bar. Arthur climbed up on a chair and turned the set on. Then he poured their drinks.

“Talked to your old man lately?” Nucky asked.

“Leave him out of this,” Valentine said.

Nucky shrugged and sipped his beer. “I thought you were gonna drop by, see Zelda.”

“She still in her room?”

“Yeah.”

“You want something for her to do?”

Nucky perked up. “You got any ideas?”

“She can help clean up my goddamn house.”

The news came on. It was from a station out of Newark. One of the newscasters was a woman in her late thirties, the other a man about the same age. They spoke to the camera without acknowledging each other. It was like watching a marriage on the skids. After five minutes, a story about a killing came on. Nucky pointed at the screen.

“Here we go,” he said.

“South Philly crime kingpin Giuseppe “The Gip” Scarfone was killed by a car bomb in the God’s Pocket section of Philadelphia this morning,” the woman reporter said, standing on a Philly street corner with a scarf around her neck. “The bomb was so powerful that pieces of Scarfone’s sharkskin suit were found on a rooftop a block away. Also in the car were Antonio and Salvatore Andruzzi, known in law enforcement circles as The Twins. According to police, it is believed the killing was in retaliation for the slaying of Paul “The Lobster” Spinelli in New York two days ago.”

Nucky nudged Valentine with his elbow.

“You hear that?”

“What about it?” Valentine said.

“Guys that did that, same guys that broke into your house,” Nucky said. “You want my advice? Stay away from those feds. You’re scaring people, Tony.”

The old gangster finished his drink, and then he was gone.

Chapter 23

It was Liddy Flanagan who came to Lois’s rescue the next day.

Liddy was the oldest daughter from an Irish family with twelve kids, and knew a thing or two about taking charge. Hearing about the burglary, she’d gotten the afternoon off at the bank where she worked, then rounded up four women from her church, and appeared on Lois’s doorstep, armed with brooms and vacuum cleaners and plastic garbage bags. Seeing them, Lois had let out a shriek.

“You’re a godsend,” she exclaimed.

While the church ladies cleaned the house, Liddy sat with Lois at the kitchen table, and made her write down every single item that had been broken, or was missing.

“For insurance,” she explained.

The list ended up being two pages long. It made Lois miserable all over again. The family heirlooms and the presents they’d gotten at their wedding could never be replaced, nor the memories that went with them. But it was a start.

By early afternoon the broken furniture was sitting on a pile on the front lawn, and the church ladies were gone. Liddy had brought over a portable TV, and the two women sat on the rug in the empty living room and watched the soaps. Their favorite soap was called Endless Love. Although they both worked, they watched the show every day during their lunch breaks. So did most of their friends. When the program was over, Liddy let out a deep sigh.

“And we thought our lives were complicated.”

They went to the kitchen and stood at the counter. Lois fixed a pot of coffee, then picked up the phone and dialed a number. She spoke to someone in Italian for a minute, then hung up. Liddy quizzed her with a glance.

“That was my Aunt Rosealita in Brooklyn,” Lois explained, pouring two cups. “I call her every day, and explain what happened on the show.”

“Your aunt doesn’t speak English?”

“About ten words. Hello, goodbye, yes, no, pizza, coke, you know, the essentials. She immigrated here from Italy, came through Ellis Island with my folks. My mother used to translate the soaps for her. When Mom died, the tradition was passed on to me.”

“It’s good that you do that.”

“Thanks.” Lois leaned against the counter and blew steam off her cup. “Listen Liddy, I want you to come clean with me about something.”

“What’s that?”

“I think you know.”

“Honestly, Lois, I don’t.”

Lois shot her a look. Liddy avoided confrontation whenever possible, and Lois guessed it came with being part of a large family. She pointed out the window at the ugly concrete birdbath in the backyard. “Tony buried something out there. I want you to tell me what it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liddy said.

Lois put her drink on the counter, and pinched her friend’s arm. “Remember the promise we made to each other when we first became friends?”

“The one about not keeping secrets?”

“That’s right.”

Liddy swallowed hard. She and Lois had met in high school during their senior year. Tony and Doyle, their boyfriends, were already best friends, so it had made sense for them to be as well. They were both practical that way.

“I remember,” she said.

“I know Doyle confides in you — you told me so a hundred times,” Lois went on. “He tells you things he can’t keep bottled up. Tony buried something out there, and I think you know what it is.”

Liddy looked at the floor, feeling trapped. “Doyle made me promise—”

“No secrets,” Lois said.

Liddy started to protest, then caved in.

“All right,” she said.

They sat at the breakfast table. Liddy played with a paper napkin as she spoke. “There’s something rotten going on at Resorts’ casino. Doyle said the three cops who got killed at the Rainbow Arms were part of it. Tony buried an address book and a videotape he thinks is evidence. Doyle said that’s why your house was ransacked.”

“Evidence of what?”

“Some kind of stealing. Tony got his hands on the casino’s financial statements, and sent them to that guy in Las Vegas, only he said the numbers were okay.”

“You mean Bill Higgins?” Lois said.

“Yes. Bill compared the financials to the casinos he polices in Las Vegas. He said the percentages were correct, and nothing was wrong.”

“Which means no one at Resorts casino is stealing anything.”

“Right. Doyle and Tony think the money is coming from someplace else.”

“Where?”

“They don’t know.”

“Who’s behind it? The mob?”

“I don’t know.”

“No secrets.”

“Yes, it’s the mob.”

Lois suddenly felt afraid. She put her hand on Liddy’s wrist and squeezed it.

“Is Tony scared?” she asked.

Liddy stared at the floor.

“They’re both scared,” she whispered.

That night, Lois and Tony slept on the floor of their bedroom on a mattress borrowed from a neighbor, while Gerry stayed down the street with friends. Lying beneath the bare window, Lois stared at the smiling face of the moon while remembering the night fifteen years ago when they’d moved in and had no furniture. Their lives had just been starting, the future filled with promise and unfulfilled dreams. Turning on her side, she propped her head on her hand. Tony’s eyes were closed. She licked his ear, and his eyes snapped open.

“We need to talk,” she said. “Liddy told me everything. Were you trying to protect us by not telling me what’s going on?”

He stared at the ceiling, as if considering the request.

“Yes,” he said.

“It didn’t work.”

Lois ran her fingers through her husband’s thick head of hair. He hadn’t been much to look at when he was a teenager, just a gangly kid with a thin face and a long Roman nose. As he’d gotten older, his face had taken on character, and he’d turned downright handsome. It had been like watching him grow into himself.

“I paid Nucky Balducci a visit last night,” he said, breaking the silence. “I confronted him, told him I wanted to know who’d robbed us.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was the New York mob.”

For a moment, Lois couldn’t speak. “Is that who Nucky works for?”

“Yes. The mob has somehow gotten their fingers into Resorts’ operation. I have an address book they want. It has some names in it, all hoods. They’re tied to whatever’s going on. The trouble is, I can’t prove a damn thing.”

“Then why should Nucky or anyone else care?”

“Because I’ve been seen around town with the FBI. I told Nucky I was helping them find a serial killer, but he didn’t believe it.”

“What are you going to do?”

He took a deep breath. “Two things. I’m going to figure out what the mob is doing. And, I’m going to stay away from the FBI.”

“You’re not going to help them catch the killer?”

“Being connected to the FBI right now isn’t healthy,” he said. “I need to back away from it. It’s not worth jeopardizing our lives over. Nothing is worth that.”

“Oh,” she said.

Soon, her husband was asleep. Lois fell back on her pillow and stared into the darkest corner of the room. She had never heard Tony say he wasn’t willing to help someone. It was the thing she loved about him most, the quality that drawn her to him when they were teenagers, and made him so special in her heart. It saddened her to think that his job had changed him, and only after he had started to lightly snore did she let herself cry.

Chapter 24

Someone once said, the heart is a lonely hunter.

Izzie could not get Betty out of his mind. Trying to track his beloved down, he’d called around Nyack, and discovered she was renting a one room apartment over a butcher shop with freezing cold floors. He got her number from information, and called her every night. Most times, Betty cursed him and slammed down the phone. Once, she’d tortured him by talking dirty, then hung up. She could be rotten like that, but Izzie still missed her. He decided to send her a present. Not just any present, but a true expression of his love. Slipping out of the house in Ventnor one morning while Josh and Seymour were asleep, he drove up and down Atlantic Avenue until he found a pawnshop. The store was called Goldfarb’s, and could have given Fort Knox a lesson in security. Iron bars on the windows, multiple surveillance cameras, a burly armed guard by the door. The owner was a Rumpelstiltskin-like character named Herbie.

“What’s your pleasure?” Herbie asked.

Izzie placed a stack of hundred dollar bills on the counter. Herbie riffled the stack with his thumb to make sure they were all real.

“I’m looking for something special for my girlfriend,” Izzie said.

“She must be quite a lady.”

“She itches where I can’t scratch,” Izzie explained.

Herbie disappeared behind a beaded curtain. When he returned, he was carrying a metal strong box. It was heavy, and he placed it on the counter with a grunt, then popped the lid. Inside was a collection of the most beautiful jewelry Izzie had ever seen.

“Do you ship?” Izzie asked.

Two days later, he phoned Betty. This time, she’d wanted to talk.

“I can’t believe you bought this for me. It’s so beautiful,” she cooed.

Izzie was sitting in the second floor bedroom of the rented house with the phone pressed to his ear. He could hear the ice melting from his beloved’s voice. He had sent Betty a spectacular diamond bracelet along with a pair of fur-lined slippers.

“I wanted you to know how I felt,” he said.

“How many diamonds does it have?”

“Thirty-five.”

She purred into the phone. “One for every year.”

Izzie knew she was older than that, but played along. “That’s right.”

“Are they all real?”

“They sure are. No glass for you, baby.”

“And the metal. Is it silver?”

“Platinum.”

“God. It must have cost a small fortune.”

“It’s hot, so the guy gave me a good price.”

Betty screamed so loud that Izzie had to pull the phone away from his ear.

“You sent me a hot bracelet?”

“Yeah,” Izzie replied. “Whatta you think, I got it from Tiffany’s?”

Betty called him a fucking asshole and slammed down the phone.

Izzie went downstairs feeling lower than a snake’s belly. This long-distance romancing wasn’t working. He needed to drive to Nyack and see Betty, and apologize to her before she tore a hole out of his heart as big as Manhattan.

The first floor was jumping. He and his brothers had brought home a dozen suckers from the casino, and everyone was drinking and smoking and having a good time. They had expanded their operation to include a pool table, which doubled as a craps table, and a second card table, where the suckers could play each other before Izzie cleaned them out. He found Josh in the kitchen fixing a tray of sandwiches. His brother looked worried.

“What’s eating you?” Izzie asked.

Josh said, “Whose idea was it to invite that guy Vinny Acosta?”

“Mine. He’s got a ton of money. And he’s dumb as a fence post.”

“He’s a scary guy. I want to get rid of him.”

“His money’s as green as anyone else’s. Leave Vinny to me,” Izzie said.

By four A.M., all of the suckers had left the house except for Vinny Acosta. He was a scary guy, about six-two and two hundred and fifty pounds, with a nose turned sideways, slicked back hair, and a way of looking at you that made your skin crawl. Vinny had gotten drunk, sat down in front of the TV, and started watching a new cable station called ESPN that showed crazy stuff like sumo wrestling and log rolling. At four, a college basketball game came on, and Vinny killed the set, and came over to the card table where Izzie, Josh and Seymour were sitting.

“Basketball is for fags,” Vinny declared, throwing down a wad of cash. “Let’s play cards.”

Izzie whistled through his teeth. “What did you do, rob a bank?”

“None of your fucking business. Deal ‘em.”

Izzie shuffled the deck sitting on the table, and had Vinny give them a cut. Vinny was watching him like a hawk, and Izzie knew not to try and switch a deck on him. Instead, he held the deck over his Zippo lighter, and sailed cards around the table. It was called using a shiner, and let him see every card as it was dealt. He memorized only one hand — Vinny’s — and signaled it to his brothers when he was finished dealing. If Vinny was strong, they would all drop out. If not, Vinny would be raised and cleaned out.

Vinny had a pair of 7’s. Izzie signaled the hand to his brothers, then glanced at Josh. His brother was sweating. Vinny had him spooked.

Izzie didn’t like it. If Vinny sensed that Josh was nervous, he might realize the game wasn’t kosher. Josh needed to regroup.

“Hey Josh,” Izzie said. “Get me a Coke, will you?”

“Sure,” Josh said. “Anyone else want anything?”

“I want a slow gin fizz,” Seymour said.

The brothers laughed. Vinny, staring at his cards, didn’t say a word.

Josh retreated to the kitchen, and ran cold water over his wrists. They’d made a lot of money since adding the pool table and the second card table. So why did Izzie have to bring this cretin home? They were playing with fire, and were going to get burned. He grabbed a bottle of Coke from the fridge and returned to the den.

Josh approached the table, then froze. Vinny had his back to him, and was staring up at the ceiling. Looking up, Josh saw tiny butterflies dancing above Izzie’s head. It took a moment before it registered what they were. The Zippo had caught the overhead light, exposing the gaff.

Josh looked at Vinny, and saw him start to pull a gun. He’s going to shoot Izzie. Josh figured he had a few seconds to save his brother’s life. Flipping the Coke bottle over in his hand, he smacked Vinny on the back of the head. The bottle disintegrated upon impact, and Vinny fell forward, and hit the card table with his face.

“Why did you do that?” Izzie shouted.

Josh pointed at the ceiling. Izzie looked up at the butterflies.

“Whoops,” Izzie said.

They laid Vinny out on the floor. He was still breathing, and except for a small cut on the back of his head, did not appear to be seriously injured.

“He told me he’s staying in one of the high roller suites in Resorts’ hotel,” Izzie said, calmly smoking a cigarette while Josh and Seymour paced the den. “He must have a key on him. I say we take him back, and lay him out on his bed. Then we pack our stuff, and go find another house.”

“What about the furniture?” Seymour said.

“We leave it.”

“The pool table, too?”

“Yes. We’ve got to move fast. If Vinny comes back, we’re history.”

Seymour stomped around the room in anger. He’d spent a whole week gaffing the pool table so they could cheat at dice on it. It was a thing of real beauty, and was going to make them rich.

“We can’t leave it,” Seymour whined.

“Stop acting like a baby,” Izzie said.

Josh got on his knees, and searched Vinny’s pockets for a room key. The lower buttons on Vinny’s silk shirt had come undone, and Josh spied a thick canvas money belt wrapped around Vinny’s stomach.

“Oh-oh,” Josh said.

Izzie knelt down; so did Seymour. They had seen the money belt, too.

“Better see what he’s carrying,” Izzie said.

Josh undid Vinny’s shirt, then unzipped the money belt. Inside the belt were stacks of brand new hundred dollar bills. Josh removed the money and counted it.

It was a hundred grand.

Josh’s hands began to tremble. He looked into his brothers’ eyes. They were thinking the same thing, and equally terrified.

Vinny Acosta was a runner for the mob.

Chapter 25

Valentine felt the change in Lois the next morning. His wife was the same, only she wasn’t the same. She fixed his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, filled his coffee cup, said have a nice day, and kissed him goodbye. But it wasn’t the same. She was going through the motions.

Driving to work, it hit him over the head like a lead pipe what was wrong. Lois didn’t care about the scam at the casino, or the mafia. She wanted him to find the Dresser, just like every other woman in Atlantic City wanted the police to find the Dresser. Lois was scared out of her wits, and somehow he’d failed to notice. Reaching his office inside Resorts’ surveillance control room, he picked up the phone and called his wife at work. And he’d apologized.

“I knew you’d figure it out eventually,” she said. “Does this mean you’re still going to help the FBI find the killer?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll just do it without telling anyone.”

“Thank you,” his wife said.

He said goodbye and hung up. Doyle came into his office a few moments later. His partner had a surveillance tape in his hand, and popped it into the VCR on Valentine’s desk. The monitor beside the VCR came to life.

“Take a look at this,” Doyle said.

The tape was of Resorts’ hotel lobby, and showed a drunk being dragged across the lobby by three men. A stack of money fell out of the drunk’s shirt. One of the men picked it up, and shoved it into the drunk’s pocket. Doyle froze the tape.

“So what,” Valentine said.

“The drunk is the same guy we saw Mickey Wright give all those chips yesterday,” Doyle said.

Valentine stared at the screen. “Jesus. You’re right.”

Doyle hit play, and the tape changed to show the hotel’s elevators. The men appeared in the picture, and propped the drunk in the corner of an empty car. Then the doors closed. The elevator had an old-fashioned floor indicator and rose to the penthouse without stopping.

“He must be a guest,” Valentine said.

“That’s what I thought,” Doyle said.

“He isn’t?”

“I called the front desk, tried to find out who he was. The penthouse has ten suites, I figured it would be easy to peg him. Only the girl said the penthouse suites are taken by a junket of Asians from Hong Kong.”

“The guy doesn’t exist?”

“Not according to the hotel.”

Anonymous guests in the hotel’s penthouse was nothing knew. Celebrities had stayed in the hotel’s penthouse anonymously all the time. Only the drunk in the tape wasn’t anybody famous. And he was carrying a lot of money hidden in his shirt.

Valentine rewound the tape, and watched it again. This time, he stared at the three guys escorting the drunk. They looked related, with curly hair and bounces to their walk. They reminded him of the Marx brothers, and he found himself trying to place them.

“I’ve seen those guys before,” he said.

“Really? From where?” Doyle asked.

“The Catskill Mountains.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“No. But my wife will.”

“You’re so sweet,” Lois said.

Valentine had followed up his apology of that morning by delivering lunch to his wife at work. He’d brought a New York Delight — fresh bagels, cream cheese with chives, and thinly sliced lox. They sat at a table in the cafeteria amongst the noiseless students, and he saw the light return to her face. She wasn’t angry with him anymore.

Several students came by the table, and signed the word Hello. As a young woman, his wife had modeled for a while, decided she didn’t like it, and gone to work at the school. The school had been a dumping ground for rich parents with deaf kids, and the curriculum was poor. Over time, Lois and other teachers had changed that, and classes now included signing, lip reading, and dealing with emotional problems.

“Remember when we met in the Catskill Mountains as kids,” Valentine said.

Lois smiled with her eyes. “You were so shy.”

“There were three brothers, always doing crazy stuff.”

She made a face. “Why bring them up?”

“I think they might be part of the scam going on at the casino.”

“You saw them?”

“Just on a video tape. Do you remember their names?”

“The Hirsch brothers.”

“That’s it. Hirsch. How well do you remember them?”

“The oldest was always trying to get into my pants. Israel Hirsch and his two reptile brothers, Josh and Seymour. I stayed in my cabin at night just to avoid them. The next year, when we came back, they’d been thrown out.”

“Do you remember why?”

“It was their mother.”

Valentine vaguely remembered Mrs Hirsch. A loud, wildly entertaining woman with a penchant for big hats and flowery dresses. “What did she do?”

“She was cheating at cards,” Lois said. “My mother told me. She played Mrs Hirsch poker and always lost. When she heard she’d gotten caught, she was so mad.”

There had been three things to do in the Catskill Mountains. Eat, see the shows at night, and play cards. Valentine said, “Cheating how?”

“Mrs Hirsch hummed opera tunes when she played. It was a signal to her partner. If she hummed ‘Three Little Maids Are We’ from The Mikado, it meant she was holding three-of-a-kind. ‘The Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’ was a straight or a flush. There were more. What were the Hirsch boys doing, anyway?”

“Dragging a guy through the hotel. The guy dropped some money, and one of them stuffed it into the guy’s pocket. It looked suspicious as hell.”

Lois used the last piece of bagel to wipe clean the plastic container the cream cheese had come in. Popping it into her mouth, she said, “That doesn’t sound like the Hirsch brothers.”

“Not the good Samaritan types?”

“They were bad back then. I can’t imagine they’ve changed.”

Chapter 26

Special Agents Fuller and Romero had hit a wall.

Their investigation was going nowhere. Not a single hooker on the island had responded to their fliers, nor had they gotten any concrete leads from the autopsy done of the latest victim, who the Dresser had dumped in their motel room.

Out of frustration, they had decided to change their approach, and focus on males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five living in Atlantic City who’d committed sexual offenses against women. It was scattershot, but their investigation was going nowhere, and they needed to try something different.

Sergeant Banko had supplied them with the arrest records of thirty-eight men in Atlantic City who fit their profile. In order to save time, the agents had divided the records in half, with Romero taking suspects on the south end of the island, Fuller the north. Grabbing his coat off the bed, Romero went to the door of their new motel room.

“I’ll meet you at six o’clock at the pancake house. We can trade notes, and see what we’ve found,” the Mexican agent said.

“Sounds like a plan,” Fuller replied.

“Sure you don’t mind cabbing it?”

They had drawn straws, and Romero had gotten the rental.

“Not at all,” Fuller said.

Romero left. Fuller counted to ten, then went to the window, and parted the blinds. He watched his partner pull out of the parking lot in their rental. Romero had been getting on his nerves, and he was happy to have him out of his hair.

Taking a phone book off the night table, Fuller opened it to the yellow pages section for escort services. There were pages and pages of salacious ads of women willing to go the extra mile. He found a service called Discreet & Willing, and dialed it on the rotary phone. A woman with a husky voice answered.

“Hold on,” the woman said.

“Make it fast,” Fuller replied.

The woman put him on hold. Fuller was hungry. It had been a week since he’d satisfied his cravings. He’d be thirty-four in the spring, and had assumed that as he’d grown older, his cravings would diminish. It wasn’t working out that way. She came back on the line.

“I’d like to arrange a date,” he said.

“In call or out call,” the woman asked.

“Out call.”

“Rate’s a hundred an hour, two hour minimum, plus fifty for the room. Pay before you play.”

“Deal. I’m looking for a girl named Amber.”

“Have you used our service before?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

Fuller thought back to the name he’d used the week before. “Harold.”

“Oh. I remember you. Amber said you were rough.”

“Should I call someone else?”

“No. You’re on.” She gave him the name of a motel not far from where he was staying. She gave him a time, then said, “Make sure you identify yourself to the manager.”

Fuller acknowledged her instructions before he hung up the phone.

An hour later, Fuller left his motel, walked a block to Atlantic Avenue and headed south. Out in the ocean, black storm clouds were forming, and he turned up his collar to the bitter wind. Four blocks away, he spotted the blinking sign of his rendezvous point, and felt himself get aroused. No matter how many times he arranged to meet a call girl, it was always exciting. Call girls understood that men had different needs. More importantly, they understood his needs. Reaching the motel, he glanced through the window into the office, and saw the slovenly manager sitting behind the counter. He went in.

“What’s up?” the manager asked.

“I’m here to see Amber,” Fuller said.

“You must be Prince Charming. Room costs fifty bucks. No credit cards.”

Fuller paid up. Picking up the phone, the manager dialed a number and said, “A gentleman requests the presence of your company. Will do. I’ll send him right up.” The manager hung up. “She’s in room 9F. As in fuck.”

“Much obliged,” Fuller said.

“I’m sure you are.”

The motel was a dump, and Fuller had to search for the room. His heart was beating faster now, the sound like a bass line in his ears. He found 9F next to a soda machine, and tapped lightly on the door. “It’s open,” a voice called from inside.

He took a deep breath and entered the room. Amber lay beneath the sheet of a queen bed. She’d put a low wattage bulb in the lamp on the night table, and it cast a creamy patina on the room’s cheap furnishings and nautical wall paper. Fuller thought about the two hour minimum as he removed his wallet and extracted his money. Maybe he would use it up this time. He started to throw the money on the bed, then froze.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Krista,” the girl said.

“I asked for Amber.”

“Amber’s sick.”

She slipped out of bed and came over to where he stood. Naked, about five-seven, with everything he liked in a woman except for the scar running across her belly. A C-section, he guessed.

“Amber called me, and asked that I take the job. She told me all about you.”

Fuller was holding the money in his hand. Krista tried to take it, but Fuller wouldn’t let go. “What does that mean?” he said.

“Amber said you were into bondage.”

“That’s right. Are you?”

She flashed a devil’s smile. “Isn’t everybody?”

Krista had brought two pieces of white clothesline and a silk gag. She talked about herself while Fuller tied her arms to the headboard. She’d gone to Atlantic City High, liked to smoke grass and party, blah blah blah. Normally, he tied his girls so they were lying face up, but the scar on her belly was a turn-off, so he tied her face down. To make her comfortable, he put a pillow under her stomach. Then he stripped off his clothes.

“You want to use the gag?” Krista asked.

“Only if you keep talking,” he said.

The fun left Krista’s eyes and she grew silent. Fuller liked it when a girl was a little afraid. It made him feel in control.

“I’m going to turn off the light,” he said.

“Do whatever you want.”

He turned off the light on the night table, then started to climb on top of her. He heard a door bang open, and felt a blast of cold air invade the room. He looked fearfully over his shoulder. Standing in the doorway was a man wearing a baggy green Army jacket and a plastic Richard Nixon mask, cradling a sawed-off shotgun.

“Hello, Special Agent Fuller,” the man said.

The man entered, shutting the door with his foot. Krista’s head snapped around, and she started to scream at the top of her lungs.

“Shut her up!”

Fuller did not want to die. He shoved Krista’s face into the pillow, silencing her.

“Guess who,” the man said.

Fuller hesitated, his mind racing. “You’re the Dresser.”

“Yes, I am. I followed you from your motel. You were so anxious to see your friend, you didn’t even see me.” The Dresser waved his shotgun. “Release her.”

Fuller let her go, and Krista pulled her face out of the pillow.

“Oh, god,” she sobbed.

“I need to have a chat with Special Agent Fuller. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Please, let me go.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. In fact, I’d like you to help me. You see, Special Agent Fuller is with the FBI. I need to search his clothes, and find his gun. Then, I’m going to drop his gun in the toilet. Special Agent Fuller may try and run. And that leaves just you and me. Am I making sense?”

“What do you want me to do,” Krista said.

“You appear to be a limber young lady. I’m going to have Special Agent Fuller put his legs between yours. I want you to tie his legs up with your legs. Think you’re up to it?”

“Okay.”

The shotgun’s cold barrel touched the crack in Fuller’s ass. Fuller moved his legs between Krista’s, and she wrapped him up. The Dresser crossed the room and proceeded to search through Fuller’s clothes. Finding his gun, he disappeared into the bathroom, and they heard a loud plop in the toilet.

“I can disarm him,” Fuller whispered.

“Don’t even dream of it,” she said.

“But—”

“Shut your mouth.”

The Dresser returned to the bedroom and stood by the bed. From the pocket of his Army jacket he removed a cheap Polaroid camera, and held it with one hand.“Say cheese,” he said, and began snapping photographs. As each one popped out of the camera, he placed them in a row on the bed. He was close enough for Fuller to punch in the stomach, only Krista had him in a death grip. As the snapshots developed, the Dresser showed them to Fuller. In every one, he’d included Krista’s arms being tied to the headboard.

“Pick your favorite,” he said.

“I don’t have a favorite,” Fuller said through clenched teeth.

“Pick one anyway. I’m going to send it to your boss in Washington.”

“You’re not going to kill me?”

“That would be a taint on my resume. No, I prefer to ruin you.”

Fuller stared at the snapshots. He’d already been put on leave for beating up his wife. These pictures would be the end of the line, at least at the government trough. He didn’t want that. He liked being in the FBI; it gave him a power that no other job in the world afforded him. He didn’t believe in truth and justice the way Romero did. He believed in power, and holding onto it. “Maybe we could make a deal,” Fuller said.

“I’m listening,” the Dresser said.

“I’ll leave Atlantic City and drop the investigation.”

“Is that in the realm of your power?”

“Yes. I’ll tell my superiors I’ve traced you to another city. They’ll never know.”

“What about the wet back?”

Fuller had to think. Getting Romero to leave wouldn’t be easy, but he saw no reason to tell the Dresser that. “Romero will do as I tell him,” he said.

The Dresser ran the shotgun’s barrel between Fuller’s legs. “Is that a promise?”

Fuller grit his teeth. “Yes.”

“Scout’s honor?”

“You have my word.”

“And I’m sure your friend will also keep her mouth shut.”

“I won’t say nothing,” Krista said.

The Dresser picked up the snapshots from the bed and slipped them into his pocket. “I’ll keep these, just in case you change your mind. Have a nice day.”

He went to the door, opened it, and another blast of cold air invaded the room. It was snowing outside, and he walked backwards out the door, and disappeared.

Fuller felt Krista’s legs untangle themselves from his own. Climbing off the bed, he went to the open doorway and stared outside. The snow was coming down hard, the giant flakes covering everything in sight. He envisioned himself running naked down the street after a man with a shotgun. He shut the door and locked it.

“Let me go,” Krista said.

He untied Krista from the headboard. She grabbed her clothes from the closet and started to throw them on. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he shook her violently.

“You’re not going to go to the police, understand?”

She looked into his eyes. “You’re just as crazy as he is.”

“Answer me.”

“You’re hurting me...”

“This is nothing.”

“Okay... no police. I promise.”

Fuller let her go, and she ran half-naked out the door.

Chapter 27

There was a cork bulletin board hanging in Resorts’ surveillance control room. Pinned to it were pictures of known cheaters. Each cheater had been christened with a nickname. That way, if one of them came into the casino, a tech could put out an alert, and everyone would know who he was talking about. It was another Bill Higgins trick.

Valentine awoke to a ringing phone. The bedroom was dark, and he stared at the luminous clock on his bedside table. Midnight. He snatched up the receiver.

“This had better be good.”

“The Marx Brothers are in the casino,” a tech named Romaine said.

The Marx Brothers were the nickname Valentine had given the Hirsch brothers. He’d stuck their photo on the cork board, hoping they’d show up again. He threw his legs over the side of the bed. “What are they doing?”

“One’s playing craps, another blackjack, and the third is in the bar.”

“Keep watching them. I’ll be right over.”

“What if they try to leave?” Romaine asked.

“Have security grab them.”

He killed the connection and called Doyle’s house, woke him from a dead asleep, and told him to meet him inside Resorts’ casino in twenty minutes. Hanging up, he glanced over at Lois’s side of the bed. His wife’s eyes were wide open.

“You don’t have to explain,” she said.

Normally, he wouldn’t have left his bed for the likes of the Hirschs. Security could detain them until he got there in the morning. But the Hirschs were his thread to the man they’d seen with Mickey Wright, and he needed to pump them before they started screaming for lawyers. Leaning over, he kissed his wife on the lips.

“Thanks,” he said.

He broke every speed limit on the island getting to the casino. Leaving his car with the valet, he hurried inside. Just off the front doors were the house phones. He picked one up, and was connected to the surveillance control room.

“Marx Brothers are still here,” Romaine told him.

“Keep watching them.”

“I won’t let them out of my sights.”

Two minutes later, Doyle hobbled through the front door with his cane. Valentine pulled his partner to the side. “Here’s the deal. We’re going to pretend we’re gamblers. I’ll run into Izzie Hirsch and strike up a conversation. I’ll introduce you as my buddy.”

“Then what?” Doyle said.

“We improvise.”

They entered the packed casino. Watching people gamble reminded Valentine of a movie he’d seen about the Titanic. In the movie, everyone on the ship was having a great time, not knowing they were about to go down. Resorts’ casino was no different. Nearly every player would go down tonight as well.

He spotted Izzie Hirsch standing next to a blackjack table. Izzie had beefed up since his Catskill days, and was as fat as a tick. Izzie was chatting with a high-roller with a castle of black hundred dollar chips. Valentine approached him with a smile on his face.

“Izzie? Izzie Hirsch?”

Izzie took a giant step away from the table. “Who are you?”

“Tony Valentine.”

“Who?”

“Tony Valentine. We hung out in the Catskills when we were kids.”

Izzie feigned recognition and slapped Valentine’s arm. “Tony Valentine! How the hell are you? You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Neither have you. This is my buddy, Doyle.”

“Nice to meet you,” Izzie pumped Doyle’s hand.

Izzie introduced the high-roller. He was a jeweler named Moskowitz, and was playing a hundred bucks a hand while banging the table with his fist. Moskowitz was drunk, and had sucker written all over him.

Josh and Seymour Hirsch appeared a few minutes later. Introductions were made, and soon everyone was having a swell time. The Hirsch brothers were as smooth as snake oil salesmen, and Valentine wondered where this was heading.

At two A.M., a groan went up inside the casino as the house lights were raised.

“Closing time,” Izzie said. “Let’s go to our place.”

Everyone agreed to follow Izzie home. Moskowitz took his chips to the cage and cashed out, then went outside stuffing the money into his pockets. He climbed into the back of the Hirsch’s car, and it pulled out of the valet area.

Valentine and Doyle followed in the Pinto. Valentine had been around some smooth operators before, but the Hirsch brothers were in another league. They were funny and smart and impossible not to like.

“What do you think these guys are up to?” Doyle asked.

“I don’t know. But I think we’re about to find out.”

They drove to a small house on the outskirts of Ventnor. Parking in the driveway, Valentine realized he knew the place. Up until a few months ago, it had housed a gang of drug dealers. They followed the Hirschs and Moskowitz inside.

The place had been spruced up. A coat of fresh paint hid the cracked walls and misshapen door frames. There was a pool table in the living room, two card tables in the den. Valentine found a triangle and racked up the balls. Taking a twenty dollar bill from his pocket, he slapped it on the felt.

“Hey, Izzie. You ever play a game called Watermelon Seed?”

Izzie entered, and spied the money on the table. “No. How do you play?”

Valentine took two balls out of a pocket and placed them on the table. “ Each of us puts a ball on the rail. Then we push down on our balls like a watermelon seed. Whichever ball goes farthest wins.”

He saw the hint of suspicion in Izzie’s eyes.

“Do we have to use these balls?” Izzie asked.

“Use any balls you want,” Valentine replied.

Izzie took two balls out of another pocket and rubbed them on his shirt. Valentine came down to his end of the table. They lined their balls up, then shot them. Izzie’s ball went a foot, while Valentine’s ball went a few inches further.

“You owe me twenty bucks,” Valentine said.

“Double or nothing,” Izzie said.

They played five more times. Each time, Valentine’s ball went a few inches farther on the felt. As a kid, Valentine had learned a few tricks from his old man. The secret to playing Watermelon Seed was moisture. By wetting your shooting finger with saliva, the ball lost its backspin, and could be shot anywhere on the table.

Izzie was not a good loser, and demanded a chance to win his money back. Valentine agreed, and they sat down at one of the card tables.

“Shuffle them.” Izzie handed him a deck.

Valentine mixed the cards and gave them a cut. Most card cheating required misdirection, and he knew Izzie was going to have to “move” during the game in order to steal his money. He slid the deck towards his opponent.

“They’re made.”

“You ever hear the joke about the Polish peeping Tom?” Izzie asked.

“Afraid I haven’t.”

“He got caught looking down his own pants.”

Valentine acted like it was the funniest joke he’d ever heard. He saw Izzie drop his hands into his lap, then bring his hands back up, and start to deal. The deck had been out of sight for a few seconds. It was so obvious.

Valentine glanced over his shoulder. Doyle stood behind the table with Moskowitz, shooting the breeze. His partner hadn’t seen a thing.

It was time for the charade to end. Valentine took his wallet, and dropped it on the floor. Bending down, he stuck his head under the table, and saw a black velvet bag hanging underneath. He grabbed it, and heard the fabric tear. Bringing his head up, he tossed the bag on the table. The deck of cards he’d just shuffled spilled out.

“Game’s over,” he announced.

Chapter 28

It was illegal to run a private card game in Atlantic City. They let Moskowitz go with a warning, then took the Hirsch brothers to the station house, put them in separate interrogation rooms, and sweated them.

The brothers did not act terribly concerned. They were pros, and quoted the law during the ride in: The crime they were accused of was a misdemeanor, and would cost them a few hundred dollar fine and a warning from the judge. It was a slap on the wrist, which was why Valentine asked the DA, a local legend named Stump Hammer, to prosecute them for cheating. Stump had gotten his name after a heroic goal line stand during a high school football game. When he dug his heels in, there was no getting around him.

“Tony, I can’t prosecute them for running a card game, much less pulling some hanky-panky,” Stump said over the phone. “You’re have to let them go.”

“But they’re crooks,” Valentine protested.

“We’re a casino town, Tony. These guys were gambling after the casino closed. You think the governor wants me prosecuting people for doing that?”

“This is different. These guys are professional cheaters.”

“How am I going to pick a jury? ‘Sir, have you ever cheated at cards? You have? Well, you’re excused.’ It won’t fly, Tony. Sorry.”

Valentine felt the cold plastic of the phone seep into his hand. Justice wasn’t blind, but sometimes it was stupid as hell. “These guys are siphoning off players from the casino and stealing their winnings. It’s hurting the casino.”

“The casino is making twenty million a month. How much are these guys taking?”

Valentine had found the strongbox with the Hirsch’s money when they’d searched the house. “About five grand a week.”

“Pleeease,” Stump said.

“You’re not going prosecute?”

“No. Sorry.”

Valentine had learned never to let a DA end a conversation by saying ‘No.’, so he said, “How about coming down to the station house, and rattling their cages?”

“You want me to threaten these guys?”

“Just the ringleader. I need to get him talking.”

“All right. I’ll be right over.”

Stump worked over Izzie in one of the interrogation rooms. By the time he was finished, Izzie had sweated through his clothes, and looked like he might get sick.

Stump left, and Valentine remained in the interrogation room with Izzie. The room had a window covered by a grille, and furniture bolted to the floor. It also smelled of fear.

“I want a lawyer,” Izzie demanded.

“No, you don’t,” Valentine said.

“Yes, I do. You hustled us with that pool trick. You stole my money, and I tried to win it back. That’s entrapment. I’m going to get the best lawyer this two-bit town has. You’ll rue the day you pulled that crap with me. And so will that DA.”

“If you get a lawyer, then I’m going to formally charge you, and your brothers. And so far, I haven’t done that.”

Izzie thought it over. “You offering me a deal?”

“Maybe.”

“Whatever it is, it’s got to include my brothers.”

“How touching.”

“I’m not kidding around. All or none.”

“It will include all of you.”

Doyle entered with two steaming cups of coffee, then left. Valentine handed one of the cups to Izzie, and watched him gulp it down.

“I finally remembered you,” Izzie said when the coffee was gone. “You came up to the Catskills with your folks one summer. Thought you knew how to play ping pong.”

“I beat you,” Valentine reminded him.

“Yeah, but Josh creamed you. Took all your money, as I recall.”

“Josh was good.”

“He took lessons. This might sound funny, but my brothers and I wanted to recruit you. We were trimming the bus boys on the weekends at poker. We wanted you to act as our take-off man.”

“What’s that?”

“The take-off man wins the money from the suckers. He has to be a square john that everyone trusts.”

“Sounds right up my alley,” Valentine said.

“That’s what we thought. Only you had the hots for Lois Fabio.” Izzie let out a laugh. “God, was she a little tart.”

Valentine lowered his cup. “How so?”

“I got her on the golf course one night and tried to hump her in a sand trap. She let me take off her bra, but not her pants.”

“She showed you her breasts?”

“Yeah. They weren’t that great.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me she was your wife?” Izzie wailed ten minutes later, holding an ice pack to his swollen left eye.

Valentine’s hand was singing with pain. If they kept reminiscing, he might end up killing Izzie, so he decided to get to the point. “Two nights ago, you and your brothers dragged a guy through the lobby of Resorts’ hotel, and our surveillance cameras caught you stuffing money back into his shirt. Who was he?”

Izzie lowered the ice bag. “Some guy named Vinny.”

“What was his last name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I picked him up inside the casino, and brought him over to the house. There was a misunderstanding, and Josh broke a bottle over his head.”

“A misunderstanding?”

“Yeah. We decided to take him back to his hotel room. While we were dragging him through the lobby, the money fell out of his shirt. Being an honest person, I put it back.”

“Was he wearing a money belt?”

“I believe he was.”

“How much was in it?”

“A hundred big ones.”

“That’s a lot of cash to be carrying around. You think the guy was mafia?”

“Beats me.”

“What happened when you got him into his room?”

Izzie’s ice pack had sprung a leak and was trickling down his forearm. Turning it upside down, he reapplied it to his eye. “Vinny woke up. Didn’t remember a damn thing. We got him a beer from the mini-bar and turned on the TV. He really had amnesia. We shot the breeze for a while, then left.”

“I want his last name, Izzie.”

“Why don’t you call the hotel and ask them?”

“The name.”

“I told you everything I know,” Izzie said angrily.

“No, you didn’t.”

“You’re not going to drop charges?”

“No.”

Izzie threw the leaking ice bag at him. “You prick!”

Valentine jumped up and kicked Izzie’s chair out from under him. It was a move that Banko had taught every cop in Atlantic City, and Izzie hit the floor and yelped.

“Cut it out!” he cried.

“Come on, let’s make a deal,” Izzie said an hour later. Handcuffed to the leg of his chair, he sat with his shoulders hunched forward and a pained expression on his face. Stump had made a second appearance, and done a good job convincing Izzie that he and his brothers were going to the big house, where, because of their diminutive size, they would be brutally victimized by the other prisoners. As Stump had left, he’d shot Valentine a little smile.

“What kind of deal?” Valentine said.

“You want a scalp, right? Let’s forget Vinny, and talk about some real scalps.”

Valentine leaned back in his chair. “You know something I don’t?”

“I sure do.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Your casino is getting ripped off,” Izzie said. “My guess is, you’re losing fifty grand a week, maybe more.”

“To who?”

“Professional gangs of cheaters, working different shifts.”

“Cut the bull. Tell me Vinny’s last name, or the DA will throw the book at you.”

Izzie stared at him with his good eye. “You’re just like every other casino cop. You think you’re smart. You’ve got the eye in the sky and video tape machines and the other gadgets. And that’s just great, except for one thing. I can beat that stuff, and so can plenty of other guys.” Izzie paused, then added, “Want to learn?”

Izzie was being serious. Valentine leaned forward. “What’s the price tag?”

“Let me and my brothers go.”

By law, Valentine had to let the Hirsch brothers go. Only Izzie was scared, and he decided to milk that fear as much as he could. Taking the handcuff key from his pocket, he uncuffed his prisoner from the leg of his chair.

“Show me,” he said.

Chapter 29

They drove to Resorts in Valentine’s Pinto. Along with being a fire trap, his car was also a lemon, and sputtered uncertainly each time he put his foot to the gas. Izzie seemed amused, and Valentine caught him smirking several times.

“If you can beat any casino, why don’t you live in Las Vegas?” Valentine asked.

“You’re joking, right?”

“Why, is Vegas dangerous?”

“The casino owners out there will put a bullet in your head and bury you in the desert if they catch you cheating. Road hustling is easy.”

“Is that what you do?”

“Yeah. Guys who cheat private games are called hustlers. Guys who travel and cheat are called road hustlers, and guys who cheat casinos are called cross roaders.”

“You know a lot of hustlers?”

“Sure. I bump into other hustlers in games all the time.”

“What do you say — ‘Hey, I was here first?’”

They had reached Resorts. The valet wrote up a ticket, and they walked through the front doors. “Say I’m working a game,” Izzie said, “and another hustler sits down, and starts cheating. I’ll talk about a hunting trip I took, and how I killed some rabbits. That’s a signal that I’m a cheater.”

“Rabbits?”

“That’s right. Usually he’ll ask in code if I’ll cut him in.”

“Will you?”

“Sure. It’s good etiquette.”

They walked around the packed casino. Izzie’s purple eye was drawing stares, and they went to the cocktail lounge and grabbed a table.

“So how did you learn this stuff?” Valentine asked. “Did you have a teacher?”

“Everyone in my family cheated,” Izzie said. “They taught me the moves, and I practiced in front of a mirror. Once I felt confident, I tried the moves out in a soft game. Then, I graduated up to bigger games.”

“How about cross roaders? What’s their deal?”

“Cross roaders are different. They’re tough people, and most have criminal records. They’ll get together in someone’s house, and practice a scam. Then they’ll try it out, like a casino night at a church. If they’re successful, they’ll hit Vegas. Or your place.”

“Sounds risky,” Valentine said.

“Depends on the ringleader,” Izzie replied.

“What does he do?”

“He scouts the casino and looks for green dealers. Casinos have such high turnover that you can usually find one on every shift. The team goes in, and sets up. They try the scam, except they don’t actually do it. It’s called a splash move.”

“As in getting your feet wet?”

“Right. If the dealer doesn’t squawk, they do it later for real.”

A waitress took their drink order. As Izzie flirted with her, Valentine stared through the lounge at the casino. He still didn’t believe what Izzie had said back at the station house about all the games being susceptible to cheating.

“When does the lesson start?” he asked.

Izzie made a grandiose gesture with his arm toward the casino. “Whenever you want it to, my friend.”

“Start with blackjack.”

A bowl of salted peanuts sat on the table. Izzie popped them into his mouth while speaking. “Gamblers call it BJ, as in blow job, because that’s what you get if you play by the rules. Want to know how many types of BJ cheating I’ve seen in Atlantic City?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve seen cards nicked and daubed; I’ve seen teams switch cards under a dealer’s nose. I’ve seen guys add cards to a shoe, and guys take cards away. I’ve seen steer teams move cards under the dealer’s nose. And, I’ve seen players with cameras in their ties. How many is that?”

“Seven,” Valentine said.

“There’s more.”

“Start with these.”

“Nicked you know about. Daub is a substance that can only be seen through special glasses or contact lenses. It’s made with aniline dye.”

Valentine borrowed a pen from their waitress and began to scribble furiously on a cocktail napkin. “How do you switch cards?”

“You need a good turn. A turn is a hustler’s secret weapon. It’s used to turn the pit boss’s attention from the table. Usually, it’s a pretty girl. But it can just as easily be a geezer with a hearing aid.”

“What about the eye-in-the-sky?”

“Cameras can be turned, too. A couple having an argument works pretty well. So does a drunk falling down. I heard of one team that set a curtain on fire.”

Valentine kept scribbling. Things like Izzie was describing happened every night inside Resorts: It was the byproduct of serving free liquor to people.

“You said guys add cards to a shoe, and take them away.”

“Different moves, same outcome. If I secretly add ten high cards to a shoe, my odds of winning go way up. Same thing if I remove ten low cards.”

“What’s a steer team?”

“Two players make up a team. The first watches as the cards are shuffled. He spots the top card during the shuffle, and signals its value to his partner. The second player is offered the cards to be cut by the dealer. The second player cuts at a certain number, and both players know where the card lies in the deck.”

“So what?”

“They silently count to the card during the game. If the card is an ace or high card, they will draw cards in order to get it during the next round, when they’ll bet big. It guarantees the team a big payoff every round.”

The bowl of peanuts was empty. Izzie had eaten them like they were his last meal. Valentine wanted to ask Izzie if his mother had taught him any manners, but had a feeling that she’d been too busy teaching her boys how to fuck people.

“Cameras in ties,” Valentine said.

“The cheater has a tiny camera hidden in his tie. The camera transmits to a van parked outside. A guy inside the van types the card’s values into a computer that card counts. Then he radios back to the player what to do.”

Valentine had run out of room on his cocktail napkin. Bill Higgins had said that millions of dollars disappeared from Las Vegas’s blackjack tables every year, and had attributed most of it to employee theft. Bill’s going to be surprised, he thought.

Valentine motioned to the waitress for the check. Izzie rubbed his stomach like he was still hungry. Valentine took the hint, and said, “Want something else to eat?”

“Depends how much more you want to hear,” Izzie replied.

Chapter 30

An hour later, Valentine’s head was swimming. Izzie had devoured six bowls of peanuts, three draft beers, and two orders of shrimp cocktail while explaining how to scam every casino game in the world. He was an encyclopedia of grift and cons.

“Well, I think that’s it,” Izzie said.

“You tapped out?” Valentine asked.

“I’m sure there’s a few things I’ve forgotten.”

“What about sports betting?”

“That isn’t legal in Atlantic City,” Izzie reminded him.

No, Valentine thought, but it was legal in Las Vegas, and he owed Bill Higgins a huge favor for all the advice he’d passed along. “Tell me anyway,” he said.

“Sports betting is cheaters heaven. A player can beat them by being a better handicapper, or fixing the game, or by past-posting.”

“You mean placing a bet after the fact?”

“Yeah. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Especially with the ponies.”

A diner at another table had ordered nachos dripping with melted cheese, and Izzie stared at the mess while rubbing his stomach. Valentine got the waitress to bring them a plate, then pressed Izzie while he shoveled food into his mouth.

“Past-posting a sports book is easy,” Izzie said. “ Just bribe a guy who works for the power company.”

“What does he do?”

“He reduces the amount of electricity going to the sports book. He slows the clock down gradually, until twenty seconds are shaved off. That’s all you need to find out a race’s outcome, and get a bet placed before the betting is halted. Later the electricity is increased, so the clocks are kosher the next day.”

“You ever try this?”

“Yeah. Did it on a bookie in New York. Cleaned him out.”

Izzie was smiling. Over the years, Valentine had learned a lot from talking to criminals, but none had ever pulled back the curtain, and shown him the inner workings like Izzie was now doing. It wasn’t normal, and he guessed it had something to do with them knowing each other as kids. Izzie wanted to show him how smart he was, even if he was under arrest. His pride was at stake, so he’d let it all hang out.

Valentine drove his prisoner back to the station house without bothering to turn the car’s heater on. It was freezing outside, and Izzie began to shiver, his sports jacket and slacks offering scant protection from the cold.

“You want me to put the heater on?”

“Yeah,” Izzie said emphatically.

“Tell me Vinny’s last name.”

“I told you, he didn’t tell us.”

Instead of turning the heater on, Valentine rolled his window down, and the car’s interior dropped another ten degrees. Izzie protested loudly.

“You knock a guy out, you’re going to look through his wallet,” Valentine said. “Give me his name, and I’ll let you go.”

“First get me warm.”

Valentine rolled up his window and turned the heater on.

“His name’s Vinny Acosta,” Izzie said.

“What do you think his deal is?”

Izzie didn’t hesitate with his answer this time. “There’s a scam going on in Las Vegas right now, Cleveland mob is behind it. My guess is, Vinny’s got something similar going on here.”

“What’s the Vegas scam?”

“It’s pretty cool. Some hotel employees are skimming quarters from slot machines. Instead of trying to get the coins out of the casino, they’re converting them into bills at the cage. Every time a little old lady buys a bucket of coins, they put the bill into a briefcase. The briefcase gets taken out each night.”

“How much they stealing?”

“Millions.”

Valentine reached the station house, found an empty spot in the lot and parked. Izzie had set off a light bulb in his head. Every dollar in a casino went through the cage. If someone was going to scam Resorts in a big way, the money had to come from there.

Izzie started to get out, and Valentine grabbed him by the sleeve. “I want you to promise me that you and your brothers will never step foot in Atlantic City again.”

“Are you really going to let me and my brothers go?”

“I gave you my word, didn’t I?”

Their eyes met. Izzie believed Valentine was cutting him a deal, and he beamed.

“On my mother’s grave,” he said.

The first thing Valentine did upon returning to Resorts was check the cage for hidden suitcases. The cage was the most tightly watched area in the casino, and he called upstairs to the surveillance control room, and spoke to Mickey Wright.

“I need to do a search. We just got word that there might be some counterfeit money in our tills,” he said. “I’ll wave to you through the camera when I’m done.”

Mickey grunted into the phone and hung up.

Valentine did a thorough search of the cage. There were no suitcases lying around, and he checked each teller’s drawer for hidden sleeves to drop bills, or other secret places that money might be squirreled away.

The cage was clean. He thanked everyone for their patience, then went upstairs to the surveillance control room. Mickey was waiting for him as he walked through the door, his eyes filled with panic.

“You find anything?” Mickey asked.

“False alarm,” Valentine said. “The cage was clean.”

Mickey put his hand over his heart. “Don’t do that to me, Tony. You know I got a bad ticker.”

“Sorry, Mickey.”

Mickey walked away, and Valentine went into his office and shut the door. From his desk he removed the casino’s weekly financial statement. Every week, the Casino Control Commission conducted an independent audit of Resorts’ operation. Each game was financially dissected, with the “holds” carefully scrutinized. He looked at these statements religiously; they were usually the first evidence there was cheating on the floor.

He opened the report to the section on slot machines. The slots were Resorts’ biggest money-maker. The casino kept 8 % of every dollar put into a slot. And that was exactly what the report showed. Which meant Izzie was wrong. Vinny Acosta’s scam wasn’t at the cage, or with slots. That left BJ, craps and roulette.

You’re getting warmer, he thought.

He put the report back in his desk, picked up the phone, and dialed Bill Higgins’ work number from memory. His friend answered on the first ring.

“What if I told you the Cleveland mob is ripping off one of your casinos for millions of dollars,” Valentine said.

There was dead silence on the other end.

“You still there?”

“Who told you the Cleveland mob was out here?” Higgins said stiffly.

“A little bird with a pointed head. You know about this?”

“Sure do. The teamsters union loaned the Stardust money for a renovation. The teamsters have ties to the Cleveland mob. We’ve been watching the casino for a year, but haven’t caught anything. What have you got?”

“They’re stealing quarters,” Valentine said. “Lots and lots of quarters.”

Chapter 31

Sears had delivered their new furniture that afternoon, and Lois was the happiest person on her street. It didn’t replace the memories, but it was all new, and it gave the house a feel that it hadn’t possessed since they’d first moved in.

That night, while Gerry sat in the living room watching Mork & Mindy on their new TV, Valentine helped his wife do the dishes. While he dried, he made a point of sucking on his swollen knuckle, and she took his hand and examined his injury.

“Were you in a fight?”

“I punched a suspect in the face,” he said.

Lois eyed him cooly. “I hope he was doing something really awful.”

“Just sitting in a chair.”

The indignation rose in her face. “Tony, that’s barbaric. You should be ashamed of yourself. I’m ashamed of you.”

“It was Izzie Hirsch.”

“Oh. Why did you punch him?”

“He told me he took your bra off in a sand trap on a golf course.”

Lois dropped the plate she was holding into the sink. “That little bastard ripped my bra off, and my blouse. He practically raped me. I hope you knocked every tooth down his throat.”

Valentine tried to reply, only he was choking on his own laughter. Lois backed him into a corner, and began to playfully pummel his arms with her fists. “Tony Valentine, how dare you set me up like that!”

At a few minutes past nine, the front doorbell rang. Lois was upstairs reading a book. Valentine was still in the kitchen, and heard Gerry answer the door. When his son came into the kitchen a few moments later, his face was white as a sheet.

“There’s a man outside to see you. Says he’s with the FBI.”

Valentine couldn’t let the opportunity pass, and said, “What did you do now?”

“Me? I didn’t do anything.”

“Glad to hear it.” Valentine hung up his apron and went to the front of the house, opened the door, and stepped outside without his coat. Special Agent Romero was on the stoop, and wasn’t wearing a coat either. They shook hands, and Valentine glanced at the Chevy parked in the driveway. Fuller was nowhere to be seen.

“Let me guess,” Valentine said. “You caught the bastard.”

“I wish. Fuller and I are leaving Atlantic City tonight.”

“What? Why?”

Romero lowered his voice. “This conversation goes no further, understood?”

It had started to snow, with flakes the size of half dollars coming down. Valentine sensed that Romero was walking a tightrope, and simply nodded.

“Fuller came to me this afternoon, and said that he’d gone to an apartment where one of the suspects on our list lived,” Romero said. “The suspect had moved, and Fuller got the landlord to let him look at a box of things the suspect had left behind. In the box Fuller found bell bottoms, flower dresses and love beads. The landlord told Fuller the suspect had gone to New York. Fuller called our boss at the bureau. Our boss told Fuller to follow the suspect, which is why we’re leaving.”

“What’s the suspect’s name?”

“It doesn’t matter. Fuller’s lying.”

The snow had intensified along with Valentine’s sense of unease. “Why do you say that?”

“I asked him if I could see the clothes, and he gave me the box. When I looked through them, I found a sales tag. It was dated today. Fuller bought the clothes at a consignment shop.”

“Did you confront him?”

Romero shook his head. “No,” he added for emphasis.

“Why are you letting him get away with this?”

“It’s like this, Tony. Fuller is on probation for slapping around his ex-wife, and if I expose him, he’ll lose his job. We’ve been partners for five years. He took a bullet for me once. I can’t betray him.”

Valentine felt bile rising in his throat. He had always held the FBI to a higher standard than other law enforcement agencies, and he supposed it had something to do with their history of never having an agent in the field go bad. Romero knew better than to go along with this; saving Fuller wasn’t worth sacrificing his integrity.

“What about the four dead girls?” Valentine said. “Do you just kiss them goodbye? Or is leaving made easier by the fact that they were hookers?”

Just off the porch, everything had turned a magnificent white. Romero made a conciliatory gesture with his hands, then looked away. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper. “Do you know why I became an FBI agent?” he asked.

“You like long hours and crummy pay,” Valentine said sarcastically.

“I got a girl pregnant in high school. I played football and she was a cheerleader. I took her to a back alley abortionist, and he botched it and killed her.” Romero turned his head and gave Valentine a hard stare. “I became an FBI agent because I wanted to save a life. I wanted to save a life in redemption for the one I lost.”

“How does leaving town accomplish that?”

“I didn’t say I was giving up on the case.”

“I’m not reading you.”

“Your name is on the flyer with the killer’s composite. If a hooker spots the Dresser, you’re going to get a call. If you do, call me, and I’ll tell my boss the Dresser is in Atlantic City. Fuller and I will be back the same day.”

Romero was trying to protect his partner, and keep his integrity. He wasn’t a bad guy, just misguided, and Valentine said, “You shouldn’t be helping Fuller do this.”

“What’s the alternative? Ratting him out?”

“Try following your conscience. It’s always worked for me.”

“Would you rat out your partner? Tell me the truth.”

“My partner isn’t dirty.”

“But what if you found out he was? Would you rat him out and destroy his career?”

It was Valentine’s turn to look away. He and Doyle went back a long way. It was wrong for him to assume that Fuller and Romero’s bond didn’t run as deep. Put in Romero’s shoes, he’d probably do the same thing.

“No, I wouldn’t rat him out,” Valentine said.

The snow had stopped as quickly as it had started, and it suddenly didn’t feel as cold. Romero removed a pen from his pocket and scribbled a telephone number on a pack of matches, then handed the matches to Valentine. “That’s the number of the hotel where we’re staying in New York. Call me if you hear anything.”

“You leaving tonight?”

“Yes. I need to pick up Fuller, and then we’re gone.”

“Thanks for the heads up.”

Romero trudged down the path and climbed into the Chevy. As he backed down the drive, his eyes found Valentine’s face. He looked upset with himself, and Valentine sensed that his conscience was eating a hole in him. Life was filled with choices, and Romero had made a choice that he would forever regret.

Going inside, Valentine found his son lurking behind the door.

“Am I in trouble?” Gerry asked.

He tousled his son’s hair. “You will be if you don’t go upstairs, and start doing your homework.”

Chapter 32

The Dresser watched Fuller and Romero check out of their motel. Each man threw a single suitcase into the back of the Chevy, then climbed into the car, and drove north toward the causeway that would take them back to the mainland. The weather had sent everyone indoors, and the Dresser tailed their vehicle while singing along to the moronic song on the radio, Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Let it Ride.

The Dresser worked for AT&T, which had its advantages. He got a company van, a spiffy uniform, and the ability to tap phone lines. He had tapped the FBI agents’ motel room, and listened to the two men’s conversations. Romero had impressed him as being morally strong, Fuller spiritually weak. Blackmailing Fuller had been a piece of cake, and now the two FBI agents were out of his life.

The Chevy drove onto the causeway and soon disappeared. The Dresser slapped the wheel in glee, did a U-turn, and headed south.

He drove to Chelsea Heights and parked in the driveway of his house, a single-story ranch with crummy heating and a leaky roof. He’d inherited the place after his parents had died, and kept living with the loud pipes and leaks he’d been putting up with his entire life, his bedroom the same he’d had as a boy. He was a native, and like most people on the island, his upbringing had been uneventful, until he’d turned seventeen.

His parents had gone to Philadelphia one weekend, gotten caught in a blizzard, and been forced to stay overnight. It had been his first time home alone. Feeling brave, he’d called a girl he’d met the previous summer. In his closet were the clothes he’d stolen from her, which he liked to look at while imagining he was making love to her.

“Hey, my folks are out of town — want to come over?” he’d asked.

“I don’t think so,” she’d said.

“But I really like you,” he blurted out, instantly sorry he’d exposed his feelings.

“Sorry, but I already have a boyfriend,” she’d said in a condescending tone.

Her words had crushed him. I’m your boyfriend, you fucking tramp, he almost shouted. Hanging up, he’d gone to the liquor cabinet, grabbed his father’s prized fifty-year-old bottle of Scotch, and gotten drunk. The liquor had brought out the monster in him, and he’d taken his parent’s car, and driven to the Greyhound bus station on the north end of the island. It was a seedy place, and he found a hooker sitting on a bench, showing plenty of skin. He paid her a hundred dollars to get into the car.

Driving to the beach, he climbed into the back seat with the hooker, his head swimming from the booze. As they started to have sex, he began to strangle her. She struggled and screamed, then fell limp in his arms.

He’d taken the hooker home with him, and dressed her in the tramp’s clothes. Seeing her in those clothes had aroused him, and set a fire deep in his soul.

He’d been killing hookers ever since. For twenty years, he’d traveled to Philly and New York on the weekends, and gone on his prowls. He would lure a girl into his car, knock her out, and bring her home with him, keeping her as a slave until she died. The traveling had been a drag, but he’d seen no other way to keep killing, and not get caught by the police.

Then Resorts’ casino had opened. That had changed things. Overnight, the island had become filled with hookers, and he’d had his pick of victims.

As the locals liked to say, it had been a beautiful thing.

He showered and shaved and made himself look presentable. He dressed well when he went to the casino, and made sure to have plenty of cash. That was all the hookers cared about.

He went to his closet. Hanging from the bar were the clothes he’d stolen from the tramp twenty years ago. He’d never liked hippie clothes until he’d seen her wearing them. On her, they’d looked incredible.

The outfit he chose tonight was his favorite. A blue jump suit that reminded him of Diana Rigg from the TV show, The Avengers. Skin tight, and sexy. He pulled it out of the garment bag, and hung it on the door.

He left the house and drove to the casino. He parked a block away in the lot of a Catholic church on Atlantic Avenue. It was the same church where he’d followed Special Agent Romero one morning and watched him pray. A man of true convictions, he’d decided.

Inside the casino, he bought a bucket of quarters at a change booth and walked up and down the aisles of slot machines. A sad-eyed brunette wearing a tight sweater caught his eye. She was sitting in front of a machine, resting her feet. He’d seen her trolling for johns before. About five-five, small-breasted, with freckles on her nose.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sissy,” she said.

He explained that he was on a losing streak, and a friend had told him to go find a pretty girl, and ask her to pull the arm of a slot machine after he put the coins in.

“My friend swears by it,” he said.

Sissy scrunched over on her stool so he could share it with her. He started feeding coins and Sissy started pulling the arm of the slot machine. Within a few minutes the bucket was empty. Sissy dropped her hand on his thigh and gave it a squeeze.

“Hope you didn’t lose all your money in that machine,” she said.

“I’ve got more,” he said.

“I’ll sleep with you for a hundred bucks.”

“Okay.”

He gave her the cash. She stuffed the money into a beaded purse. In his closet at home, he had a box filled with similar purses. Each contained condoms, a can of mace, and a lipstick. That was all his victims ever seemed to carry.

In the lobby Sissy stopped at a payphone and made a quick call. They walked to his car, Sissy moving quickly, like the clock was already ticking. She didn’t have a coat, and shivered from the cold.

He wasn’t the only gambler who used the church lot, and a glut of cars was trying to leave. Sissy fired up a cigarette without asking him if he cared. He hated chimney breath, and would make her pay for the inconsideration. Finally, the lot cleared and he backed out.

“I know a good motel nearby,” she said.

“Lots of satisfied customers, huh?”

“Yeah, the night manager looks out for me.”

He wondered if that was who she’d called from the lobby. Or, was it a pimp, or a strung-out boyfriend? Those were the types of losers that wasted their time with hookers. He came to a stop light and threw the car into park. Then he made a fist and punched himself in the chest, a few inches above his heart. He groaned loudly.

“Oh, no,” he said.

“What’s wrong? You’re not having a heart attack, are you?”

“I get heartburn bad. I need my pills.”

The light changed, and he pulled down a darkened side street and parked, his tires rubbing the curb. He pointed at the glove compartment. “Would you mind getting my medicine out of there?”

“Sure,” she said.

Sissy popped open the glove compartment and sifted through his junk. She wasn’t paying attention to him, and he reached into the pocket on his door, and removed a flask of chloroform and a piece of folded cloth. In one practiced motion, he doused the cloth and waited for her to turn. That was the important part. Wait for them to turn into you.

Which Sissy did. She was holding the vial of medicine in her hand, and he pressed the cloth to her mouth and saw her eyes go wide. Her head rolled back, and she collapsed into her seat.

“Sleep tight,” he said.

He started to pull out. A police car blew past on Atlantic Avenue, its siren wailing. He froze, terrified. He thought about the phone call she’d made. Had she called the cops? He stuck his head out his window, and listened to the siren fade away. He was being paranoid. Of course she hadn’t called the cops. He leaned over and lifted up one of her eyelids with his thumb.

“Fucking tramp,” he said.

He grabbed her by the hair and shook her head. He felt giddy, like he’d gone into the woods and shot a deer, and was now dragging its carcass back to be gutted and its head proudly displayed on a wall. He noticed her purse lying beside him. Normally, he would have waited until later to check its contents. But something inside of him just had to know if she was carrying the same items as the others.

He dumped the purse onto the seat. A lipstick and some rubbers fell out. And a sheet of paper, folded in half. It looked like a promotional flyer, and out of curiosity he unfolded it.

He found himself staring at a composite of a man that bore a strong resemblance to himself. The flyer called him a serial killer, and said he liked hookers. On the bottom of the flyer was a phone number to call, and a name. Detective Tony Valentine. He couldn’t believe it: He had gone to high school with Tony Valentine, and had hated him. And now Valentine was chasing him.

Another wailing police car blew past on Atlantic, and he felt himself start to panic. Had Sissy called Valentine, and alerted him? He decided he couldn’t risk it. Leaning over, he unfastened Sissy’s seat belt, opened her door, and gave her limp body a shove. She rolled out of the van, and moaned as she hit the gutter.

Her precious purse followed. He started to shut the door, and stared longingly at her lovely body. He’d earned this one, and it hurt to let her go. For a few moments he listened to her tortured breathing, her lungs struggling with the freezing cold air. Perhaps no one would find her until morning, and she’d die of exposure.

He could only hope, and quickly drove away.

Chapter 33

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re causing me?” Banko asked.

Valentine had come to the station house to pick up his messages, and found a note from Banko scotch-taped to his phone. SEE ME IN MY OFFICE, it read.

“What did I do?” Valentine asked.

Banko loosened his neck tie and pulled the knot to one side. Their relationship had been going great recently, and Valentine guessed it was because he spent his days at the casino, and they rarely saw each other. Banko’s eyes did a slow burn on his face.

“You busted Louis Galloway in the casino. The same Louis Galloway that owns Galloway Insurance, and has bankrolled half the politicians’ elections in this state. Your arrest report says you caught Galloway cheating at blackjack. His lawyer claims that all his client did was spill a rum and coke on his cards. Please tell me this isn’t true.”

“Afraid so.”

“For spilling his drink?”

“That’s right. He spilled his drink on three different occasions.”

“And you arrested him.”

“On the third time, yeah.”

Banko shut his eyes like he was about to faint. He was usually not prone to such dramatics.

“He was cheating,” Valentine added.

Banko’s eyes snapped open. “You can prove it?”

“Absolutely. Did Galloway file a beef?”

“He did better. He called Nancy Pulaski, the chairperson of our illustrious Casino Control Commission. They’re old pals. Pulaski has asked me to appear in front of the commission tomorrow morning, and explain what the hell’s going on.”

Banko looked worried. The CCC was typical of the modern American representative committee. The board consisted of two high-powered attorneys, one heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, the owner of a car dealership, and Nancy Pulaski, the wife of a well-connected heart surgeon. The fact that none of them knew anything about casinos had made them a perfect rubber stamp for the governor.

“Want me to go with you?” Valentine asked.

“First tell me why you arrested Galloway,” Banko said.

“I’ve put in several new procedures in the surveillance control room. One of them is called JDLR. It stands for Just Doesn’t Look Right. If a player does something that looks suspicious, we rewind the video, and watch it until we determine what the JDLR is.

“Usually, it’s something innocent. Or, it can be cheating we’ve never seen before. In Galloway’s case, a camera caught him spilling a drink on his cards. It looked rehearsed. Then I noticed that Galloway had won a lot of money.”

“How much?”

“Five grand.”

“Couldn’t it have been luck?”

“That’s what I first thought. Galloway came back the next night, and we taped him. Sure enough, he spilled his drink on the cards again.”

“How much did he win this time?”

“Six grand.”

“You figure out what he’s doing?”

“Not right away. But I knew he wasn’t drunk. It was his first drink of the night.”

“So you let him go.”

“Couldn’t prove anything, so I had to. Then he came in yesterday, and spilled his drink again. And I nailed it.”

Banko hunched his shoulders and leaned over his desk. For all his shortcomings, he still took tremendous pleasure out of arresting people who broke the law. “Tell me.”

“Galloway always played two hands,” Valentine said. “When he got dealt baby cards in both hands, he spilled his drink, and took the cards out of play.”

“Baby cards?”

“The two through six. Those cards favor the house in blackjack. If a cheater depletes the deck of baby cards, he alters the odds in his favor.”

“How many baby cards did Galloway take out?”

“Eight. It gave him an unbeatable edge.”

“Why didn’t the casino replace the cards?”

“They should have. It’s standard procedure in most casinos.”

“But not Resorts.”

“No, sir.”

Banko leaned back in his chair, the tension melting from his face. He had not disguised his dislike for the CCC over the past eighteen months. They had invaded his turf, and not once consulted him. “Why doesn’t Resorts replace the cards?” he asked.

“Commission rules. I guess they think it slows the game down.”

“Think we should get that rule changed?”

“Yes, sir.”

The office door opened, and Banko’s secretary came in. She was a Polish woman named Sabina who’d worked for Banko for many years. It was no secret that she disliked practically everyone, and she glanced impatiently at the clock on the wall, then frowned at her boss and walked out. Valentine guessed Banko’s next appointment was waiting.

“We’re meeting the CCC in their offices,” Banko said. “I’ll pick you up at your house at seven-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“Do I need to bring anything? Valentine asked.

“Just wear a suit,” the sergeant said.

Valentine found Doyle waiting for him in the lobby. The Pinto was in the shop, and Doyle had driven him to work. His son had suggested burning the Pinto to collect the insurance. Valentine wanted to burn the car just to put it out of its misery.

Standing with Doyle was a woman dressed in a leather mini-skirt, red leggings and a fake fur draped seductively around her neck. As he got close, he realized it was Mona. She had painted enough make-up on her face to almost look attractive. He didn’t know too many hookers with the guts to walk into a police station house, and he smiled at her.

“What brings you here?”

“Something’s come up,” Mona said.

“You got a hot tip for me?”

“Yeah.” She pointed at the front doors. “Can we talk in the parking lot?”

“You got a car?”

“No, I just like standing outside in the fricking cold.”

Mona marched out the front doors like she owned the place. Valentine looked at Doyle, and saw his partner shrug. “She wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important. I’ll catch up with you later.”

“You don’t have a car, remember?”

“I’ll bum a ride off Mona.”

“Don’t let her talk you into anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Valentine walked out of the station house. Mona was waiting for him in her car, a black, four-door Volvo 164 with a leather interior. He had gone kicking tires with Lois a few months ago, and priced this exact same model. It had cost more than his Pinto and Lois’s car combined.

“You act surprised,” Mona said as he slid into the passenger seat.

“I am.” Then he added, “In a good way.”

“You like it?”

“It’s boss.”

She had the heater on, and the local jazz station, and turned both down. She started to say something, then hesitated. He waited her out. No one liked to talk to cops, not even good people. It was especially hard for Mona.

“A girl I know had a strange thing happen last night,” Mona said. “She picked up a john at the casino. They got into his car, and he was driving her to a motel. The next thing my friend knows, she’s lying on the sidewalk, staring at the stars.”

“She black out?”

“She thinks he knocked her out. She thinks it was the Dresser.”

Valentine turned sideways in his seat. “Did she get a good look at him?”

“Yeah. He was maybe forty, about five-eight, a hundred and sixty, round face.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“She said the john acted like he was sick, asked her to remove his medicine from the glove compartment. Everything after that is a blank.”

“I want to talk to her.”

Mona shook her head.

“Why not?” he said.

“My friend violated her parole. She’s afraid you’ll run her in.”

“Mona, please. Even if its just over the phone. I need to interview her. Who knows what I’ll draw out of her. Maybe she saw the guy’s license plate, and doesn’t remember it.”

“No fucking way, so stop begging.”

“But—”

“She told me everything she remembered, so just listen. The guy combed his hair down, and it made him look different from the guy in the flyer. He wore nice clothes and was a smooth talker. My friend said he smelled like he’d just taken a shower.”

“What about the car?”

“Four-door, white, made in Detroit, maybe six or seven years old. She’s not big on makes. There was one really weird thing. When she opened the glove compartment to get his medicine, she saw this fake finger. It was hollow and made of flesh-colored plastic.”

“Was there something wrong with his hand?”

“She was going to look. The next thing she knew, she was lying in the gutter.”

Valentine digested what Mona had told him. Her hooker friend had seen a lot; his intuition told him there was more. He needed to talk to her friend right now, before the memory faded. He gave Mona a hard look. He liked her, but was ready to sacrifice that friendship if it meant finding a clue that would help catch their killer. Reaching behind his belt, he removed his handcuffs. Then he grabbed Mona by the wrist, and slapped the cuff on. Her painted face turned to horror.

“What are you doing?” she said angrily.

“Take me to your friend, Mona.”

“You can’t just cuff me,” she howled belligerently. “I have rights!”

“I can’t?”

“No, you fucking weasel.”

Valentine grabbed her purse off the seat, and turned it upside down. The usual women’s stuff fell into a heap on his lap. He sifted through it, found a tiny vial of white powder which he assumed was cocaine, and held it inches beneath her nose.

“Do you want me to arrest you?”

Mona drew back in her seat, her ringed eyes filled with tears. “I came here to help you,” she said indignantly.

“Just do as I say,” Valentine said. Then added, “Right now.”

Chapter 34

Mona calmed down during the drive to her friend’s place. She’d been turning tricks for twenty years, and understood the strange dance hookers and cops did in Atlantic City. The hookers hated the cops, but understood that they needed them when johns got rough.

Mona’s friend lived on the ground floor of a depressed apartment building on the south end of the island. Garbage everywhere, the windows barred. Since Resorts had opened its doors, there had been a revitalization in Atlantic City, but it had taken place strictly around the casino: Fresh pavement, new sidewalks, plenty of streetlights, everything spit-shine clean. On the south end of the island where people actually lived, everything was still the same.

Valentine recognized Mona’s friend the moment the front door opened. It was Sissy, the Queen of Visine. Sissy’s speciality was to mickey a john’s drink with Visine, then steal his money when he ran to the bathroom with his ass on fire. He’d busted her several times.

Seeing him at the door, Sissy said, “Oh, Jesus.”

She backed into the apartment, and they followed her in. She wore tight blue jeans, and a tee shirt that said, I’M FROM PITTSBURGH, A DRINKING TOWN WITH A FOOTBALL PROBLEM, and had a strung-out look in her eyes.

“I guess you wanna talk,” she said.

“That’s right,” Valentine replied.

Sissy led them down a hall to the kitchen. A hooker’s life could be summed up by the apartment’s empty rooms, and the grease-stained pizza box on the kitchen table. A radio was playing the Bee Gee’s How Deep is Your Love? Valentine lowered the volume, then pointed at the kitchen table’s two chairs.

“Take a load off your feet,” he said. “Both of you.”

The two women sat down at the table. Sissy emitted a little gasp and started to shake. She picked up a pack of Kools, and fumbled trying to light one. Mona reached out and steadied her hand.

“Tell me about the fake finger,” Valentine said.

“You going to throw me back in jail?” Sissy asked.

“Depends if you cooperate. You realize this guy is a killer.”

“Yeah. I’m one of the lucky ones, huh?”

“You sure are,” he said.

“Think I should go play a slot machine?”

“Slots are for suckers. Now tell me about him.”

The cigarette calmed Sissy down, and she passed it across the table to Mona. “The finger was in the glove compartment. It was hollow and flesh-colored. I think there was something stuck inside of it, but I can’t swear to it.”

“Like what?”

“Something white.”

“Was one of his hands deformed?”

“No. I sat next to him in the casino, and we played a slot machine together. I would have noticed if there was something wrong with his fingers.”

“So he had all his fingers?”

“Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “You gonna bust me?”

Valentine stared into her face. Sissy’s eyes looked like busted panes of glass, and he felt reasonably certain that there were narcotics in the apartment. He didn’t know too many hookers who didn’t use them. The only person Sissy was a threat to was herself.

“Not today,” he said.

The answer made her smile. “You gonna bust Mona?”

“No. The only person I want to bust is the Dresser.” He put his hand on the back of her chair, then knelt down so their faces were level. “I came here to see if I could get you to remember any more details from last night. I’d like to hypnotize you.”

Sissy looked at him with fear in her eyes. “You won’t... you know, take advantage of me while I was under, make me do something I wouldn’t want to, would you?”

Valentine shook his head. He wondered which family member had abused her when she was a kid. He hadn’t met a hooker who hadn’t been.

“Scout’s honor,” he said.

Sissy glanced at Mona. “He okay?”

“He’s the squarest guy in Atlantic City,” Mona said.

“All right. Go ahead and hypnotize me.”

He got a pillow from the living room and made Sissy put it behind her head. Then, he made her tilt her head back and roll her eyes up. A quarter inch of white cornea was visible below each iris. It was a good sign that she was receptive to hypnosis.

“Okay,” he said, “I want you to tell me about last night, what you were wearing, what you had for dinner, the whole nine yards. Play it out in your head like a movie, and you’re the narrator of the movie. Take your time.”

Sissy spent fifteen minutes recounting the events of the previous evening. Up until the point she encountered the Dresser inside Resorts it was pretty boring; then her voice changed, and became strained. “He was making me laugh, giving me a line. The first few minutes with a john, you have to feel him out, make sure you don’t have a Son of Sam on your hands. This guy was ultra-smooth, even if he wasn’t good-looking.”

She described the negotiation, then walking outside in the bitter cold to his car, then him feigning illness and pulling the car onto a darkened side street. “He asked me to open the glove compartment and get his pills. That’s when I saw the fake finger. It was sitting on a deck of playing cards that had the word DeLand printed on its side. My mom’s from Deland, Florida. Anyway, I stare at the finger, thinking ‘How weird is this?’ and then I saw something white and crumpled stuck in its end. It was...” She grit her teeth, working to pull the memory from the recesses of her brain. “...a cigarette butt.”

Her next memory was of lying face-up in the gutter. Valentine slowly brought her out of her trance, and got her a glass of water. Then said, “I want to have an artist come by named Ernie Roe. I want him to draw a composite of the man who picked you up.”

“Okay, detective,” she said.

Valentine motioned to Mona, and she took her handbag off the back of her chair and stood up. Sissy walked them to the front door and undid the chain.

“Guess I should stay inside until this guy gets caught, huh?” she said.

It was the first smart thing Sissy had said.

“I would,” Valentine replied.

Chapter 35

Mona gave him a lift back to Resorts. She pulled into the employee’s covered parking lot, and turned sideways in her seat.

“You’ve got to find this guy,” she said. “All the girls are terrified.”

“I’m trying,” he said. “Thanks for the tip.”

“See you around.”

He got out of her car, and entered the casino from the Boardwalk entrance. The place was packed, and it occurred to him that the Dresser could be hunting for his next victim at that very moment, right under their noses. Going upstairs, he found Doyle in the surveillance control room, drinking coffee.

“How did it go?” his partner asked.

“The Dresser was in the casino last night. I’m going to have the techs watch the tapes, see if they can spot him.”

Doyle grunted under his breath. If the casino’s surveillance had a flaw, it was the amount of raw tape that was recorded. A hundred hidden cameras produced thousands of hours of tape each day, much of it blurry, and out of focus. Finding one person who’d been inside the casino was like finding a needle in a haystack.

“I’ve got a JDLR on the wheel,” a voice called out.

They hurried across the room. The wheel was casino jargon for roulette, and Resorts’ wheel had been losing money for days. A white-haired Tech named Fassil who everyone called Fossil stood in front of a monitor.

“This guy is winning way too much,” Fossil declared, pointing at a player on the monitor.

Albert Einstein had said that the only way to win at roulette was by stealing chips. The player in question wore a polyester leisure suit, and had his left arm in a cast, which he rested on the table. He placed fifteen single bets of a hundred dollars on the layout. The croupier spun the ball, and the guy in the leisure suit’s number came up, putting him ahead by two grand.

“What doesn’t look right?” Valentine asked.

“Guy picked up his drink with his broken arm,” Fossil said. “I broke my arm once, and I couldn’t pick up a thing. And look how he places his bets. He always bets fifteen numbers that are together on the wheel. He knows something.”

Valentine saw where Fossil was headed. He went to a desk and picked up a house phone. Calling the floor, he got the head of security for roulette, and told him he wanted the player with the cast pulled into the back room, and held for questioning. Hanging up, he returned to the wall of monitors, and saw their suspect place fifteen more bets. The croupier set the wheel spinning, then spun the ball.

As sometimes happens at roulette, the ball hopped out of the wheel and flew through the air. It landed squarely on the suspect’s cast, where it remained stuck.

“He’s got a fricking magnet,” Fossil declared.

Valentine placed another call to downstairs.

“Arrest the croupier while you’re at it,” he told the head of security.

The croupier’s name was Alberto, only everyone called him Al. Al had been hired away from a casino in San Juan, where roulette bordered on high art. He sat in a plastic chair in the casino’s detention room, and pulled nervously on his droopy moustache. His partner with the cast sat in the next room, hollering for a lawyer.

Valentine read Al his Miranda rights. Then he made Al stand up, and empty his pockets. He was carrying the roulette ball he’d switched off the table. He looked disgusted with himself, and Valentine got the feeling he had something on his mind.

“You want to talk?” Valentine asked.

“Yeah. You got a butt?”

Valentine got him a cigarette and a light. Then he pulled a tape recorder out of a closet, checked the battery, and turned it on. Al took several drags and started talking.

Al was drinking at a bar when Larry, the clown with the cast, had approached him. Somehow, Larry knew that Al had gambling debts he couldn’t pay. Larry had a solution: He would wear a powerful earth magnet in a cast, and Al would switch the roulette ball for one with a steel core. The winnings would be split fifty/fifty.

“You ever commit a crime before?” Valentine asked.

“Never,” was Al’s reply.

“You were a law-abiding citizen until Larry approached you in the bar?”

“Yup.”

“Then why’d you do it?”

Al stared at the room’s concrete floor. He wore a wedding ring, and Valentine wondered how his wife would react to the news that he’d been arrested for cheating. Al hadn’t thought out the consequences, and now he was going to pay for it.

“I saw all that money passing by night after night, and I just wanted to reach out, and touch some of it,” Al said. “Know what I mean?”

“No I don’t. You sure you’ve never been arrested before?”

Al dragged hard on his cigarette. “Check it out if you don’t believe me.”

Al’s story checked out. Valentine was surprised. He had assumed that when employees went bad, it was because they’d come to the job that way. Jobs weren’t supposed to turn them bad. Al’s work folder said he made three hundred and fifty dollars a week, and was required to pay for his own clothes, which included a tuxedo shirt, fancy cummerbund, necktie, and dress pants. He also had to keep his shoes shined and his hair neatly trimmed. He worked an eight-hour shift, with a five minute break every hour. New Jersey’s politicians had touted the thousands of terrific new jobs the casinos would create for Atlantic City. Al’s job sounded anything but terrific.

Valentine went to his office, and typed out an Incident Activity Report. As he pecked away, it occurred to him that the scam Al and Larry had pulled not only ripped off the casino, but also the other players at the table, as it had denied them a fair game. At the bottom of the report was a space for notes. Normally, he left it blank. He typed in the words Throw the book at these guys and pulled the report from the typewriter, and scribbled his name across the bottom.

He spent the next hour sorting through the correspondence that had accumulated on his desk. He’d asked the records clerk at the station house to do a background check of Vinny Acosta, the hood they’d seen with Micky Wright, and later with the Hirsch brothers. The clerk had done the check, and Valentine pulled a handful of stapled pages from an envelope, and read Vinny’s rap sheet.

Vinny hailed from the Bronx section of Brooklyn. His childhood highlights consisted of dropping out of the seventh grade, and robbing a grocery store a few weeks later. Since then, he’d been arrested for vagrancy, burglary, contributing to delinquency, assault, assault and battery, assault to kill, obstructing justice, larceny, running an illegal “book”, loan sharking, damage by violence, bombing, running a prostitution ring, attempted murder, and murder.

Two of his arrests had led to convictions, and attached to Vinny’s rap sheet was a psychological evaluation that he’d undergone while doing a stretch in Sing Sing prison in upstate New York. The evaluation showed him to have a general IQ of 72 and a nonverbal of 88. The prison doctors had also psychoanalyzed him, and they deemed Vinny “a constitutional psychopath with strong antisocial tendencies.”

Valentine returned the rap sheet back to its envelope while thinking about the hundred thousand dollars Vinny had been carrying around his waist. Was Vinny laundering money for the mob, or was he stealing it from the casino? The casino was so tightly run that neither scenario seemed plausible, yet his gut told him that one of these crimes had to be going on. Yet somehow, he wasn’t seeing it.

At noon, the phone on his desk lit up, and he answered it.

“Tony?” a woman’s voice said. “This is Sabina.”

In all the years he’d known Banko’s secretary, she’d never addressed him by his first name, preferring to use his particular rank at the time. She was easily the most unfriendly person he’d ever known.

“Yes, Sabina,” he said.

“I just got a phone call for you. A man said he saw your name on a flyer, and wanted to talk to you about the serial killer.”

He grabbed a pen off his desk. “What’s his name?”

“He wouldn’t give it to me.”

“How about a phone number?”

“Not that, either. He asked you to meet him at the old Underwood Exhibit on the Boardwalk. He said he knew you once worked there.”

Valentine had worked at the Underwood Exhibit one summer as a kid. Except for Lois and his father, he didn’t think there was another living person who knew that.

“Did the guy say anything else?”

“He just emphasized that you hurry,” Sabina said.

There was a tremor in her voice. The newspaper had run a story that morning with a headline that read SERIAL KILLER CASE GONE COLD, and Valentine guessed there wasn’t a woman on the island who hadn’t seen it.

“I’ll get right on it,” he said.

“Thank you, Tony.”

Valentine grabbed his overcoat and went to the door. His movements were quick, and he felt a hot wire igniting his blood. He liked catching cheaters, but there were times when he desperately missed the street. He found Doyle sitting in front of a monitor.

“I just got a lead on our killer. Want to go for a ride?”

Doyle jumped out of his chair. “In a New Jersey minute.”

Chapter 36

As a kid, Valentine had never had a problem getting a summer job. The Boardwalk always had plenty of openings. There were jobs hawking ice cream, working carnival games, or selling photographs of beautiful women on horseback jumping off the Steel Pier. But, the best jobs were at the amusements and exhibits.

The summer of his sixteenth birthday, he’d landed a job at the Underwood Exhibit. Underwood was the country’s biggest maker of typewriters. As a publicity gimmick, the company had built the world’s largest typewriter, and shipped it to Atlantic City. The typewriter was 1,728 the times the size of a normal typewriter, and weighed five tons. It typed on stationery measuring nine by twelve feet, with a ribbon over thirty yards long. Valentine’s job had been to jump on keys, and type out messages for tourists, a nickel a letter. His father had been working a construction job nearby, and when Valentine was ready to go home, he’d jump on the typewriter’s bell, which could be heard for blocks.

The exhibit had been housed in the Bijou Theater, where it still remained. The Bijou had been built during the Depression to capitalize on the country’s madness for movies, its owner spending a fortune on its terra-cotta facade, terrazzo floors, and twinkling lights embedded in the domed ceiling. These days, the theater sat vacant, its history forgotten.

Valentine pressed the front door buzzer. A sleep-walking guard opened the door, and gave him a curious stare. Valentine showed him his badge.

“I got a call that someone wanted to meet me here.”

“Wasn’t from me,” the guard said.

“Mind if we come inside, and have a look around?”

“Not at all. I could use the company.”

Valentine and Doyle followed the guard past the musty-smelling concession area into the darkened theater. The guard flicked on the overhead lights and the room came to life. “Ain’t nobody been here in a while,” he said.

The theater was as Valentine remembered it, vast and beautiful. The world’s largest typewriter sat on the stage, covered with a blanket of gray dust. Getting paid to jump on something had been fun, and he found himself remembering all the vacationing secretaries who’d paid him to type out barbs to the boss back home.

My typust is awa on vacarion

My nu secreary cant spel

Git yur own cofee

“Looks like someone got here before us,” Doyle said.

There were fresh footprints around the base of the machine. Valentine got up next to the stage, and saw a message on the stationery, the letters so faint that he had to squint.

Do yu knw why I hate yu?

Doyle edged up beside him. “Think your father is behind this?”

Valentine’s gut said no. His old man was a drunk. Drunks pissed in doorways, and picked fights in bars. They didn’t go into old buildings, and pull crazy stunts.

“No. I think it’s the Dresser.”

“How would he have known you worked here?”

“Because he’s a local. The FBI has thought that all along.”

“And he’s got a grudge against you.”

“It sure seems that way.”

Doyle decided he wanted to talk to the guard, who’d picked a seat in the theater to park himself in. As Doyle walked up the aisle, Valentine heard a man’s voice. It was so close, it sounded like someone whispering in his ear.

“You like being the hero, don’t you, Tony?”

Valentine looked over his shoulder at his partner. “Did you hear that?”

Doyle turned around in the aisle. “Hear what?”

“That voice.”

“I didn’t hear anything, Tony. You must be imagining things.”

Valentine let his eyes canvas the stage. The typewriter was pushed right up against the wall, leaving nowhere to hide behind it. And the curtains had been removed long ago. There was no one there. So where had the voice come from?

“Defender of the weak and the innocent. All the girls had a thing for you.”

Valentine stared up at the fresco in the dome. The voice seemed to be coming from the air, and he stared at the angels and demons carousing above his head.

“Come on, Tony. I’ve given you enough clues. Don’t you know why I hate you?”

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.”

“The Louis 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.

“Please explain yourself.”

“ A player can gain an edge by spilling his drinks on low-valued cards, and getting them taken out of play. Louis Galloway did this three times. The last time, we caught it on video tape.”

Two of the commission members were attorneys. One said, “How big an edge?”

“Two percent,” Valentine said.

“That’s huge, isn’t it?”

“Yes sir, it is.”

“If enough players did this, we’d lose money at blackjack, wouldn’t we?”

“Yes, sir, we would.”

Nancy Pulaski wasn’t buying it, and stared at him like he’d made the whole thing up. “I’m sorry, detective, but your logic escapes me. Players spill drinks on cards all the time. Why does this make Louis Galloway guilty of a crime, when others aren’t?”

“Louis Galloway purposely exploited a weakness in the casino’s procedures,” Valentine said.

“So you’re saying it’s the casino’s fault.”

He hesitated, then said, “Partially. In most casinos, ruined cards are immediately replaced. Resorts doesn’t do that. Louis Galloway was clever enough to figure it out, and exploited it.”

“Does that make him a criminal?”

“In my book it does.”

Nancy Pulaski didn’t know what to say, and drew back in her chair. The other members nodded their heads, and seemed to be agreeing with him. Sensing his opportunity, Valentine said, “If you don’t mind, there are some other problems at the casino which I’d like to bring to the commission’s attention.”

The five members’ heads snapped in unison.

“Problems?” Nancy Pulaski choked.

“That’s correct.”

“Well, by all means, go ahead.”

He removed a video cassette from the envelope he was holding. The board room had a TV, and he went and turned it on, then popped the tape into the VCR that was hooked up to it. The screen came to life, and he paused it. “This is a composite of some incidents which have happened inside Resorts’ casino in the past month. The first took place in the blackjack pit.”

He hit play, and on the screen appeared an unusually tall, male blackjack dealer. The dealer was shuffling cards at his table. Another dealer came over, and tapped his shoulder. The tall dealer clapped his hands, and stepped away from the table. Break time.

“Most casinos make their dealers sew their pants pockets together to discourage them from stealing chips off the table,” Valentine said. “Resorts doesn’t do that. This dealer had a habit of sticking his hands in his pockets, so we started watching him.”

The film showed the dealer leaving the table. He walked with a pronounced limp. Suddenly he halted, and a torrent of silver dollars came pouring out his pants leg. Back at the station house, there wasn’t a single cop who hadn’t busted a gut seeing this. Valentine glanced into the commissioners’ faces. None of them were laughing.

The tape changed to show a man wearing a Superman costume standing on a craps table while bellowing at the top of his lungs. A security guard appeared, grabbed the man’s cape, and pulled him down.

“This happened last week, and caused such a commotion, I decided to look at the tapes of the other games,” Valentine said. “Here’s what I found.”

The tape switched to show a blackjack game. Play had halted, with everyone’s eyes on Superman. The dealer grabbed the plastic shoe that held the game’s six decks of cards, took it beneath the table, and switched it for another shoe in a woman’s floppy bag, which he immediately placed on the table.

“Every player at the table was involved in this scam,” he said. “They’re part of a cooler mob. This same scam happened in Las Vegas several years ago; now they chain their shoes to the tables.”

“And we don’t,” one of the attorneys said.

“No, sir,” Valentine replied.

The tape changed to show the roulette table. Because the table was unusually long, the camera did not show the complete picture. Instead, there was a split screen, one half showing the wheel, the other showing the betting area.

“In roulette, it’s the croupier’s job to tell the players when they can no longer place bets,” Valentine said. “The croupier does this by waving his hands over the betting surface. Resorts doesn’t do this. Instead, the croupier says, ‘No more bets.’ There’s a problem with that. No one in the surveillance control room can hear him. Which means that no one watching through the cameras knows when the betting has stopped.”

He pointed at the split screen. As the roulette ball came to rest, a hand appeared, and placed a late bet. “That’s called past-posting. And guess what? We couldn’t arrest the player for doing it, because the tape doesn’t show that the betting was halted.”

“Was the croupier involved?” the other attorney asked.

“No, just poorly trained,” Valentine said.

The air in the boardroom grew uncomfortably still. The tape changed to show an elderly man playing a slot machine. The gods were smiling, and the man won a jackpot. He was so happy there were tears in his eyes.

“This happened yesterday,” Valentine said.

They watched the elderly man go to the cashier’s cage. He was paid off in stacks of hundreds, which he stuffed gleefully into his pockets.

“In a few seconds, an I.R.S. agent is going to step into the picture, and tell the man he needs to collect taxes on the man’s winnings,” Valentine said. “Watch what happens.”

A male I.R.S. agent appeared on the screen. Pointing at the elderly man’s money, the agent explained the deal. The elderly man’s face turned to horror, and he shoved the I.R.S. agent to the floor, and ran out the door.

The camera followed him outside. The elderly man ran into a parking lot with a pair of guards on his heels. He appeared to be trapped. Leaping onto the roof of a car, he began hopping from vehicle to vehicle, leaving dents in the rag tops and cheap imports. Jumping to the street, he quickly disappeared.

“We never caught him,” Valentine said.

The tape had ended, and he popped it out of the VCR. Several members of the commission were mumbling under their breath to Nancy Pulaski. When he turned around, the chairperson was staring at him.

“Detective, you have obviously become an expert on catching cheaters,” she said. “The commission is open to hearing how you’d like to tackle these problems.”

Valentine hid the smile forming at the corners of his mouth. He knew that the commission members had graduated from some of the finest universities in his country. His own degree had come from Atlantic City High School. “First, I suggest we drop charges against Louis Galloway, if he agrees to never gamble in Atlantic City again.”

“I thought you said he was guilty,” she said.

“He’s guilty of being clever. He saw a flaw, and he exploited it. He probably didn’t realize he was breaking the law.”

“But you still want to ban him.”

“It would send a bad message to other cheaters if we didn’t.”

The members went into a huddle. Under his breath, Banko said, “Go for the kill, kid.”

The commission members came up for air.

“This seems like a reasonable compromise,” Nancy Pulaski said. “We’ll have the district attorney contact Galloway’s attorney, and present your offer. Now, what are your other suggestions, detective?”

Valentine looked into their faces. The night before, lying with his head in Lois’s lap, he’d realized something. If the casino was going to be his new home, then he needed to police it, and stop horsing around. “I want to overhaul Resorts’ procedures from top to bottom. First, I want to bring in an outside consultant to shore up our procedures. Then I want to add more cameras. And, I want to do background checks on our high rollers.”

“Why?”

“I want to make sure the casino isn’t being used to launder money.”

They went into another huddle. He had thought long and hard about the hundred grand in Vinny Acosta’s money belt. He was convinced Resorts wasn’t getting ripped off, which meant Vinny was somehow laundering mob money.

The commission broke from their huddle, and he saw Nancy Pulaski lean forward on her elbows, studying him. The other members mimicked her. Banko laughed softly under his breath.

“Think you’re up for the job, detective?” she asked.

Valentine nodded and said, “Yes ma’am.”

“Then it’s yours,” she said.

Chapter 38

“Your tip led to the biggest bust here in ten years,” Bill Higgins said over the phone that night. His voice was slightly raised, and he sounded happy. “A group of employees at the Stardust had rigged the scales used to weigh coins from the slot machines. They were stealing thirty-five grand a day in quarters. It was going on right in front of our noses.”

Valentine smiled into the receiver. “You nail the whole gang?”

“Every last one of them. Tell your snitch I owe him a drink.”

Valentine stood at his kitchen sink drying dishes. Before dinner, he’d told Lois about his new responsibilities, and she’d acted like it was the best news she’d ever heard. Now, Bill was telling him he’d help nail a bunch of wise guys three thousand miles away. It didn’t get any better than this.

“How would you like to do some consulting work for me?” Valentine asked. “I’m paying two hundred bucks a day, plus expenses.”

“Air fare, too?”

“Of course.”

“What’s your time table?” Higgins asked.

Valentine glanced at the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. The date was January 5th. In three months, Atlantic City’s second casino would open on the spot where the Marlborough-Blenheim hotel had stood, and he had a feeling that every hustler on the east coast was going to be there.

“As soon as you can.”

“I’m in a bind right now,” Higgins said. “There’s a gang of blackjack cheaters that’s taking us to the cleaners.”

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know. I’ve watched the tape a dozen times. My gut tells me they’re using a computer, only there’s no evidence of one. They’ve taken five different casinos for two hundred grand apiece.”

Valentine whistled through his teeth. “You want me to look at the tape? Maybe a fresh pair of eyes would do some good.”

A few months ago, Bill would have probably laughed at him. He didn’t now.

“That would be great,” his friend said.

Valentine climbed into bed with Lois at ten o’clock. It had been a long day and he was dead-tired, yet he felt better than he had in weeks. Ever since the shooting at the Rainbow Arms, his life had seemed off-kilter. Now, finally, things were getting back on track. He kissed his wife goodnight and turned out the lights.

He was drifting off to sleep when a low, mournful wail got his attention. Cracking an eye, he stared at the luminous clock on the bedside table. 10:35 The wind was blowing hard outside, and it magnified the unhappy sounds coming from his backyard.

“Is that Max?” his wife asked sleepily.

“Yeah, he sounds hungry. Think I’d better go feed him.”

“Scratch his head for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

He put on his bathrobe and slippers and padded downstairs to his kitchen, stopping on the way to glance out the front window at the police cruiser sitting across the street. In it were two uniforms named Robinson and Schiffmiller. They patrolled Margate, and often parked on his street to drink coffee. Going to the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator, and removed a package of ground chuck. It was the cheapest grade of meat the grocery carried, and he removed a handful and shaped it into a ball, then threw the deadbolt on the back door and went outside.

The cold knifed through his bathrobe as he crossed his snow-covered backyard. There was a gibbous moon, and he spotted Max, his neighbor’s hundred-pound German Shepherd, sitting by his dog house. The dog protected every house on the street, and Valentine showed his appreciation by occasionally tossing meat over the fence.

A wicket fence separated their backyards. He tossed the burger ball over, and saw Max leap on it. His tail wagged ferociously as he devoured the meat.

“If it isn’t Tony Valentine, my hero.”

Valentine momentarily stopped feeling the cold. The voice had come from behind him, and he spun around to stare at his moon-lit backyard. It was empty save for him, Gerry’s toys, and the bird bath. He ducked into the alley that ran behind the house, and looked up and down it. Empty as well.

“I’ll bet you still haven’t figured out why I hate you.”

Valentine walked into the center of his yard. There was no one but himself there.

“Answer me, fuck face!”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

A menacing laugh filled the air. “I’m right behind you.”

He slowly spun around, his breath fogging the air. There was no one in the yard.

“Over here.”

The voice was coming at him from different directions.

“No, here.”

A low, mournful wail filled the air. It was the sound that had woken him from his sleep. He looked over the fence at Max, and saw him eating the hamburger. The wailing wasn’t coming from the dog. A feeling he was not used to swept over him. Cold hard fear. Standing outside in his bathrobe, no gun, his wife and son asleep inside, could he have possibly planned it any worse than this? He didn’t think so.

He took off at a dead run for his house.

Valentine stood inside his kitchen, shivering from the cold. He wanted to run out the front door, and see if Robinson and Schiffmiller were still parked in front of his house. He wanted to ask them to take the car down his alley, and see if they could find the person that was scaring the living daylights out of him. Only he didn’t. He didn’t want to leave his house, even if it was just for a minute.

He was afraid.

Then his prayers were answered, and he saw a cruiser drive down the alley behind his property. The interior light was on, Robinson and Schiffmiller sat in the front seats. They were having a look around, just like they did every night, keeping the neighborhood safe.

The cruiser passed his house and kept on going. Valentine felt a rock drop in the pit of his stomach. There was no one hiding in the alley. He had imagined the voice. His mind was playing tricks on him.

Sitting down at the kitchen table, he buried his head in his hands.

Chapter 39

Early the next morning, Vinny Acosta drove his black Cadillac Seville through Ventnor. It was the ritziest neighborhood on the island, the blocks choked with towering mansions, and as he maneuvered down the well-kept streets, he imagined himself living in one of these majestic houses one day.

His lieutenant rode shotgun beside him. His name was Frankie “BB” Lorenzo. BB had the address of where they were going on a slip of paper, but knew not to say anything unless Vinny asked him. BB was good that way. He always knew his place.

“So what’s the fucking address?” Vinny barked.

“Number 224.” BB pointed a hairy finger at a mansion on the corner. “That one.”

“Did I ask you which house? Did I?”

“No, sir.”

“I can read fucking mailboxes, ass hole.”

Vinny slowed the Caddy to a crawl. 224 was a white three-story Dutch Colonial with crisp orange canvas awnings with white fringe, and a garage big enough for a small airplane. He parked in the gravel driveway and killed the engine.

“Stay here,” Vinny said.

“What if he wakes up?” BB asked.

Vinny glanced over his shoulder into the backseat. Dominic Valentine lay sprawled across the upholstery. His eyes were swollen, his lips puffy and red. For an old drunk, he was a tough son-of-a-bitch, and Vinny had taken the skin off his knuckles beating him up.

“Read a nursery rhyme to him,” Vinny said.

Vinny saw the curtains on a window rustle as he walked up the path. The front door opened, and Nucky Balducci filled the space. He was dressed in black, like he was going to a funeral. Vinny said, “We need to talk.”

Nucky ushered him into the foyer, then hung up Vinny’s overcoat. Vinny took the opportunity to have a look around. He’d heard stories about Nucky’s house — twenty rooms, seven bathrooms, everything done up in orange, brown and camel-colored fabrics — and they were all true. It was like being on the set of a bad Hollywood movie.

“In here,” Nucky said.

Vinny followed him into a den. The ceiling and walls were covered in brown and orange paisley fabric which matched the heavy drapes. Nucky pointed at a pair of tufted leather barrel chairs. Vinny sat in one, his host the other.

“So what can I do for you?” Nucky asked.

Nucky was being humble. Vinny liked that. He started to reply, but was interrupted by a gut-stabbing sound. Upstairs, a woman was singing Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes, only she sounded like she had something wrong with her neck. A strained look spread across Nucky’s face.

“That’s my daughter Zelda,” he explained.

“She auditioning for something?” Vinny asked. “I can get her a job in one of the clubs on the island, no problem.”

“I don’t think so,” Nucky said.

“She bashful?”

Nucky brought his finger to his head and twirled it around. “She’s off her rocker.”

Vinny hunched forward in his chair and looked the old gangster in the eye. Nucky had said it without asking for sympathy or showing any bitterness. That was the thing Vinny liked about the old-timers. They understood life’s limitations.

“Maybe I should get to the point,” Vinny said.

“Maybe you should,” Nucky said.

“There was a meeting of the five families in New York last night to discuss the operation in Atlantic City. They’ve asked me to express their concerns to you about this situation with Tony Valentine.”

“What situation is that?”

“Those ass holes with the Casino Control Commission have given Valentine the green light to start new security procedures at Resorts’ casino,” Vinny said. “Mickey Wright is worried as hell, and so are the families.”

“I thought the CCC was in our back pocket.”

“Just two of them,” Vinny said. “They usually can persuade at least one other member to vote their way. Not this time.”

Nucky scratched his chin. “Does Valentine know how the casino’s being ripped off?”

“No, but Mickey says Valentine is sniffing around.”

“That’s what cops do. They sniff around. No different than dogs.”

Nucky had run the Atlantic City operation for forty years until Vinny had moved down from New York and taken over. Nucky had done a good job, so much so that Vinny tried to show him some respect. In a measured voice, he said, “Valentine is doing background checks on every high roller staying in the hotel. We can’t come and go as we please anymore. The family knows you’re tight with this guy. They want you to talk to him.”

“And say what?”

“Tell him to back off.”

“From what? A scam he doesn’t know about?”

Vinny didn’t like being answered with a question, and rose from his chair. Had they been somewhere else — like a bar — he would have done something to impress upon Nucky the gravity of the situation, like smash a bottle over his head. Upstairs, his crazy daughter launched into A Little Less Conversation while wildly stomping her foot on the floor.

“A little less conversation,

a little more action, please.

Come on baby, I’m tired of talking,

Grab your bag, and let’s start walking!

Satisfy me! Satisfy me!

Vinny found himself laughing, and saw the pain it caused Nucky. When the song was over, he said, “Everything with the AC operation is running like clockwork, except Tony Valentine. He’s a wild card. The families don’t like that.”

“What don’t they like? He’s clueless.”

“Valentine was the last person to talk to the Prince,” Vinny said, raising his voice. “Now, he’s got the commission dancing to his tune. He’s going to hurt us.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Threaten him, bribe him, kidnap his kid, whatever it takes, just shut him down.”

“What if he balks?”

“Kill him.”

“Right,” Nucky said.

Vinny didn’t like the look in Nucky’s face. Nucky had a reputation of being dependable; maybe getting old had sapped his resolve. Or maybe his nutty daughter had turned him soft in the head. Whatever the case, he wasn’t cooperating.

“Let’s go outside,” Vinny said. “I want to show you something.”

Nucky got Vinny’s coat from the closet and the two men went outside. As they approached the Cadillac parked in the driveway, Vinny pointed to the back seat. Nucky stuck his hands into his pockets and peered through the window. His old friend Dominic Valentine lay across the back, his face a bloody mess.

“Is that who I think it is?” Nucky asked.

“Sure is. I hear he once saved your life,” Vinny said.

Nucky pulled away from the window. “Guy came after me with a shovel. Dom threw himself in front of me. Why did you beat him up?”

“I was pumping him about his son. You know, does he like little girls, is he into drugs? Something I could use to get to him. The old guy got belligerent, so I kicked him around.”

“You shouldn’t a done that,” Nucky said.

“Says who?”

“Me.”

Vinny jabbed him in the chest. “Fuck you.”

Nucky punched Vinny in the stomach. Vinny took the blow with a smile on his face, then groaned and crumpled to the ground. As he fell, Nucky kneed him in the face.

“That’s for Dominic,” Nucky said.

Vinny lay motionless on the gravel driveway. His lieutenant climbed out of the front seat of the Cadillac, and came around the car.

“What’s your name?” Nucky asked.

The lieutenant stared at the tarnished brass knuckles on Nucky’s hand.

“BB,” the lieutenant said.

“As in BB gun?”

“Big Balls,” he said.

Nucky pointed at Vinny. “You need help with him?”

“I think I can manage,” BB said.

“I’ll take the old guy, if you don’t mind.”

“Be my guest.”

Nucky pulled Dominic out of the back, and they did a three-legged walk to the house. He hated to see Dominic all bashed up. His life had been tough enough.

“Where am I,” Dominic whispered.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” Nucky said.

“That you, Nuck?”

“Yeah, Dom. You’re at my place. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m always okay with you, Nuck.”

Reaching the front stoop, Nucky looked up, and saw Zelda standing at her bedroom window on the second floor. She was dressed like a teeny bopper, her long hair in pig tails. Normally, he tried to protect her from seeing things like this, but sometimes it wasn’t possible. Opening the bedroom window, she stuck her head out.

“Way to go, daddy-o!” she hollered.

Chapter 40

Bernard’s grandfather had chosen to die at home. He lay on a hospital bed in the apartment’s living room with a TV propped on a stand in front of him. The living room was tiny, and the bed and TV stand took up most of the floor space. A bag of morphine hung behind the bed, and dripped the precious fluid into his arm. He appeared comfortable, and his voice was sharp.

“How are you feeling?” Valentine asked.

“I’m managing,” Sampson said.

Valentine sat on a folding chair. Bernard’s mother had left within moments of his arrival, and seemed uncomfortable around him. Worse, she was dressed like a prostitute. “She working the street?” Valentine asked the old man.

“Is that what they call it these days?”

“Tell me she’s not bringing them back here.”

“Only when they can’t afford a motel room. How about some coffee?”

“Sure.”

Valentine went to the kitchen, and fixed a fresh pot. The pantry wall was scuffed where Sampson had kicked it before he’d become paralyzed. He called it his kicking wall. Valentine gave the wall a good kick himself. Then he poured two steaming mugs and took them back to the living room.

“She has the decency to put a towel against the door sill, if that helps soften the image,” Sampson said, sipping from the mug Valentine held to his lips.

“Is she on drugs?”

Sampson frowned. “I thought this was a social visit, Tony.”

“I didn’t stop being a policeman when I stepped through your front door. If I think Bernard’s health is in jeopardy — either by his mother or because of something his mother is doing — I’ll take him out of here.”

Sampson acted wounded by his comments. “But you care for the boy,” he said.

“Of course I care for him.”

“Then how can you suggest putting him in an orphanage, or some rotten foster care situation? His mother loves him. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Valentine realized his hand was trembling. Fearful of spilling the hot drink, he took the mug away, and placed it on the floor. Sitting on the folding chair, he put his hands on the metal arm of the bed, and looked Sampson square in the eye. “If your daughter keeps whoring and doing drugs, Bernard will end up a criminal, maybe worse.”

“What’s worse than being a criminal?”

“Plenty of things.”

“Name one.”

“A drug addict, or a sociopath.”

“And you’re saying people like that come from environments like this?”

“They sure do.”

Sampson looked out the window, his jaw tightening. “The boy needs love. Take his mother away from him, and he loses that.”

“Can’t she straighten up?”

“I doubt it.”

Valentine shook his head in resignation. Bernard’s mother loved her son when she wasn’t doing drugs. But when she was doing drugs, she didn’t love Bernard at all.

“You’re not giving me any other choice,” Valentine said.

“Can’t you just leave things the way they are?”

He shook his head. “Not when a kid’s involved.”

“I see. I could use some more of that coffee.”

Valentine picked the mug up and brought it to the old man’s lips. Sampson drank until the cup was empty, and Valentine went into the kitchen and placed both cups into the sink, then stared out the window at the fire escape where he’d shot the Prince. His life had changed so much since that night, and for a few moments he found himself wishing there was some way to set the clock back, and return to his old life.

When he returned to the living room, Sampson had closed his eyes and was feigning sleep. He made sure the apartment door was locked as he went out.

“So what seems to be the problem,” the psychologist said.

“I have a friend who’s having mental problems,” Valentine replied.

He was sitting in the office of Dr. Stacy Crinklaw. She looked about thirty-five, with short blond hair, a square chin, and eyes that held your face, and didn’t let go. Her desk was filled with photographs of panting canines, which was usually a good sign. He had found her name in the phonebook. She was new to the island, which was why he’d chosen her. That, and the fact that she’d been willing to see him right away.

“Why didn’t your friend come here himself?” Crinklaw asked.

Valentine sat in a stiff chair that faced her desk, his hands folded in his lap. Her office faced due east, and was very sunny. It also smelled heavily of lavender.

“My friend is in law enforcement. He’s afraid of the stigma.”

“You mean he’s a policeman.”

“A detective.”

“Can you describe your friend’s problems?” She had picked up a pencil and was chewing on the eraser. Sensing that it bothered him, she put the pencil on her desk.

“Sorry,” he said.

“There’s nothing to apologize for. It’s a bad habit. Please go on.”

“My friend is involved in a multiple homicide case,” Valentine said. “He’s seeing connections in the case that his superiors don’t see.”

“What kind of connections?”

“To his childhood.”

“Is there one?”

“Not that he’s been able to find,” Valentine said.

Crinklaw began taking notes on a legal pad. “Please go on.”

“He’s also hearing voices.”

She looked up, her expression one of deep concern. “When did this start?”

“Two days ago.”

“How many times has he heard these voices?”

“Twice.”

“Were you present when your friend had these episodes?”

Episodes. That was an interesting way to describe them.

“Yes,” he said.

“Is it always the same voice?”

Valentine hesitated. “I think so.”

Crinklaw resumed writing. “You said your friend is involved in a multiple homicide investigation. Is it safe to assume that he’s under a lot of pressure?”

“Yes.”

“Are his superiors aware of these problems?”

“Yes. His boss told him to stay off the case.”

She glanced up, and waited for an explanation. Lying had never been his strong suit, and he finally said, “It’s not his case. But the killer is contacting him, so he’s gotten himself involved. His boss is worried about him. So am I.”

“Does your friend have any family members who’ve had mental health issues?”

He stared over her shoulder at a college certificate hanging from the wall. He’d always wanted to go to college but there had been no money. His eyes shifted to her face.

“Yes.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“My friend’s father was a drunk who suffered a mental breakdown many years ago. My friend came downstairs one night, and found his father sitting in an armchair, having a conversation with someone who wasn’t in the room.”

“So your friend is fearful that this is now happening to him.”

“Yes.”

Crinklaw finished writing, then put her pen down and rose from her chair. Coming around the desk, she proceeded to sit on the edge of it. It gave her a vantage point of looking look straight down on him. It was a technique Valentine had used during interrogations for years, and now made him uncomfortable.

“Based upon what you’ve told me, you...” She coughed into her hand. “Excuse me, your friend is either suffering from a bi-polar disorder, and is going through a manic phase, or is a paranoid schizophrenic. Either condition lends itself to delusions, and hearing voices.”

Valentine felt himself growing warm. Crinklaw had seen right through his ruse.

“You mean he’s sick,” he said.

“Very sick. If not treated, your friend could plunge further into psychosis, and get much worse. I’d suggest he seek immediate help.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and gave him a long, thoughtful look. “He could come here and see me, or go directly to the psychiatric ward at the local hospital, and check himself in. Either way, your friend would get the proper attention that he needs.”

“My friend is stubborn. That’s why he sent me.”

“You mean, he may not take my advice.”

“Probably not,” he conceded.

Crinklaw unfolded her arms and let out an exasperated breath. “Then, I’d say your friend is in for real trouble.”

Chapter 41

Leaving Crinklaw’s office, Valentine got into his Pinto, and drove around the north end of the island. The doctor hadn’t called him crazy, but she’d come damn close. He was glad he hadn’t told her about his epiphanies. Hearing that, she probably would have called for the men with the butterfly nets to come and get him.

There were only so many places you could go in Atlantic City, and after a while he parked in the employee parking lot next to the casino, and let the heater run. Last night, sitting in his kitchen, he had told himself he wasn’t going crazy. A little frightened and bewildered, but not crazy. The voice he’d heard in his backyard had a real life person behind it, and the connection to his past was real as well. He was being tricked. That was what his gut was telling him, and his gut had never been wrong before.

But what if Crinklaw was right, and a fuse had blown in his head, and he was imagining things like his father had done years ago? What if something was wrong upstairs, and needed to be fixed?

He rubbed his face with his hands. If he started getting psychiatric treatment, he would have to tell Banko. And if he did that, he’d be finished as a detective, and put behind a desk, or forced into retirement on a disability.

Washed-up at thirty-eight. He could not think of anything worse.

At noon he went inside, took the employee elevator to the third floor, and went to his office in the surveillance control room. A large envelope sat on his desk. It had been delivered by courier, the sender Bill Higgins. He shredded it, and a video cassette dropped into his hand. Taped to it was a handwritten note. Here’s the tape of the BJ cheats I told you about. Let me know if you spot anything.’

Valentine stared at the note. He reminded himself that he’d been catching cheaters without any problems during his “episodes”. If he was going crazy, then why hadn’t it affected his work inside the casino? He walked into the next room, and handed the tape to Fossil. “Run this on monitors 1 through 12,” he told him.

Monitors 1 through 12 made up a quadrant of the video wall. The tape began a few moments later. Valentine stood in front of the twelve screens, his face bathed in artificial light. Fossil came over and stood beside him.

The tape showed a blackjack table with two male players. Both were in their early thirties, and had sandy brown hair, expensive clothes and jewelry, and carefree attitudes. They were betting the table maximum, five thousand dollars a hand. And winning every hand. Soon they had all of the dealer’s black chips in their possession.

“Christmas!” Fossil exclaimed.

Valentine had never seen a table lose money so quickly. The two players were not touching the cards, nor doing anything strange, and he found himself studying other things. Like the vivacious woman standing behind the table, sipping from a Coke bottle. Was she part of it? And what about the dealer? His back was to the camera, and his shoulders were hunched. Anxious? Or was that his normal posture? The tape ended. He played it again, and Fossil called a tech named Romaine over to watch.

“That’s scary,” Romaine said when it was over.

Valentine watched the tape a third time, and got no closer to a solution. It was the most amazing cheating he’d ever seen. Returning to his office, he removed a saran-wrapped Swiss cheese sandwich Lois had fixed him from the jacket of his overcoat. He ate it while sitting at his desk, and called Bill Higgins.

“I don’t have a clue what they’re doing,” Valentine said, “but the woman with the Coke bottle bothers me.”

“How so?” his friend asked.

“She’s nursing it.”

“So?”

“Cokes are free in a casino.”

Higgins made a clucking sound with his tongue. “You think she’s part of a gang?”

“Yes. But don’t ask me what her role is, because I don’t know.”

Higgins put him on hold. When he returned, he said, “I appreciate you taking a look. I’m sending you a present for helping me nail those slot cheats. You know what a dauber is?”

Valentine pulled open his desk drawer, and removed the cocktail napkins containing Izzie’s Hirsch’s pearls of wisdom. Searching through them, he found the one devoted to daubers. “You mean a juice player, or a paint player or a painter?”

“I’m impressed,”Higgins said. “You know how to catch a dauber?”

“Sure. You put the suspected cards under an ultra-violet light, and if they light up, you’ve got a bust. It’s a bad system, because you have to stop the game, and take cards out of play to see if they’ve been daubed.”

“That’s right,”Higgins said, “so, here’s what I’ve come up with. I got a company to manufacture a special discard tray for our blackjack tables. The tray is made of a luminous-detecting plastic. By looking through the plastic, you can spot a card that’s been daubed. That will let a pit boss stand beside the dealer, and stare through the discard tray. If a card lights up, they stop the game.”

“How many trays are you sending?” Valentine asked.

“One,” Higgins said. “And the phone number of the guy who made it for me.”

Valentine drove home that night thinking about the tape of the blackjack cheats Bill had sent him. He had enough problems in his life right now, but this one seemed solvable. The two players had somehow rigged the game so they wouldn’t lose a hand. They’d done it without anything suspicious taking place, which meant collusion was involved, possibly by the dealer, or possibly another player. It was the only logical explanation.

Pulling into the driveway, he spied Gerry’s bike with the banana seat lying in the grass. Ever since he’d had gotten in trouble at school, his son had started doing little things to annoy his parents, like leaving his belongings around the house, and riding his bike around the neighborhood at odd hours. Lois said it was just part of growing up. Slamming the car door, Valentine got the mail, and went inside.

The house was unusually quiet. Lois always put music on when she came home. She liked to play big band or Sinatra and sometimes Peggy Lee. The good stuff.

“Anybody home?” he called out.

Someone was crying in the kitchen. As a cop, it was the worst sound you could hear. It always meant you were too late. He dropped the mail on the dining room table and hurried through the house. Gerry’s school books were scattered all over the floor, his son having dropped everything as he’d come inside. It made Valentine’s blood boil to see his boy act so disrespectfully. Pushing open the kitchen door, he was ready to say something scolding, when he saw Gerry standing with Lois by the sink, his head buried in his mother’s bosom. He was sobbing, and the sound stopped Valentine dead in his tracks.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

Lois looked up, her face awash with tears.

“Something terrible happened at school today,” she said.

Chapter 42

Every class at Atlantic City High School has a sacrifice. Valentine had learned this from a pimply kid named Horace Gold his first day in the seventh grade, and it had scared the living daylights out of him. They’d been standing on the worn parquet floor in the gymnasium with three hundred other seventh graders, awaiting orientation.

“My older brother told me,” Gold had whispered fearfully. “Look around the gym. One of these kids won’t make it out.”

“You mean one’s going to die?” Valentine whispered back.

“Yeah,” Gold said emphatically. “Sometime during the school year a kid will die. It happens to every class.”

“But why?”

“Beats me. It just does.”

Gold had been right. Several months later, a seventh-grader named Wayne Horchuck had gotten run over by a milk truck while riding his bicycle home during a bad thunder storm. And kids from every other class had died as well. Some in cars that got into bad accidents, others from cancer or strange, childhood diseases. Every class lost at least one. There was no getting around it.

From Gerry’s class, the sacrifice was Marcus Mink, the son of the black detective who’d survived the shootout at the Rainbow Arms.

Marcus’s funeral was held at St. Michael’s church, and brought out of most of his high school class, and every cop in town. He was a young man that everyone admired; star football player, strikingly handsome, a straight-A student, and as the hearse carrying his coffin turned the corner onto Mississippi Avenue, the motorcycle cops stationed in front of the church had to push back the sea of mourners standing along the sidewalk.

St. Michael’s had filled up fast, with the overflow standing behind the organ, where the choir normally stood. It was a mixture of street-wise cops and pubescent kids, of those who had loved Marcus and those who hardly knew him, all sharing in his loss.

Valentine sat with Lois and Gerry in the back of the church. It was a long service, and many of Marcus’s classmates had openly cried while giving their eulogies. Then Father Riley had taken the pulpit. It was hard to make sense of a death so young, the priest said, but God worked in ways that no human being could ever comprehend. Marcus’s death was a loss to us all, but a welcome addition in heaven.

The service ended with Father Riley reading a prayer by St. Francis. It was the same prayer he’d used at Valentine’s mother’s funeral, and Valentine shut his eyes, and silently recited the last lines along with him.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled... as to console

To be understood... as to understand

To be loved... as to love

for

It is in giving... that we receive

It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned,

It is in dying... that we are born to eternal life.

Marcus’s closed coffin sat in the front of the church. He had been driving an illegal motorbike in front of the high school when he’d lost control, wrapped himself around a tree, and broken his neck. Like every other parent on the island, Valentine wondered what his parents had been thinking to let him have such a dangerous toy.

One by one, the rows of mourners filed past the coffin to say goodbye. When their turn came, Gerry went to the coffin with his head bowed, while Valentine and Lois paid their condolences to Mink and his wife Gloria, who stood bravely nearby.

“We’re so sorry for your loss,” Lois said.

Gloria Mink nodded stiffly. She’d been beautiful once, but the light had gone out of her eyes, and reduced her to something less than whole. Leaning against his cane, her husband put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, and somehow found the strength to smile.

“My son is with the Lord,” Mink said.

Sitting across the street from the church, the Dresser watched the mourners file out the front doors, and pile into the black limousines that would take them to the cemetery. He’d read about the boy’s death in the paper, and immediately noted that his father was a cop. The police were a brotherhood, and he’d realized that all the other cops in town would attend the funeral out of respect.

Taking the orange juice container off the seat, he took a long swallow. A police cruiser led the funeral procession away from the church, and he listened to its siren fade into the afternoon, then started up his car’s engine, and pulled away from the curb.

He drove north. He had learned that the key to killing was being an opportunist. If an opportunity presented itself, then he needed to take advantage of it. Marcus Mink’s death was such an opportunity.

He parked a few blocks from the beach and walked to the Boardwalk. It was a cold day, yet there were tourists everywhere. Blending in was easy with so many people around. He didn’t have to change his appearance much — a pair of sunglasses, or a floppy hat usually did the trick. That, and a group of people he could walk with. It didn’t matter that there were flyers everywhere now with his composite. With the right crowd, he was still invisible.

Reaching the Boardwalk, he went into a confectionary store, and bought an ice cream cone. He made the girl put chocolate sprinkles on top, and a cherry. Then he stood outside the store, and watched the tourists. The Boardwalk’s narrow wood planks were laid in a hypnotic, herringbone pattern, and people seemed to float as they walked past.

He saw a hooker strolling toward him, doing the walk. She was past her prime, and wore too much make-up. She was taller than he liked, but she would do in a pinch. He needed a girl. He flashed a smile, and she came over to where he stood.

“Hey, handsome,” the hooker said.

“Well, hello.”

“How’s it going?”

“Great. How about you?”

“Having the time of my life.”

He licked his cone, and came away with an ice cream moustache. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

She laughed. “Always talk with your mouth full?”

“Depends what it’s filled with. What’s your name?”

“Mona. You in town for the convention?”

He’d seen several Shriners walk by, wearing their silly purple hats, and nodded his head. Mona eyed the cone, and he handed it to her. She licked at the cherry sitting atop the whipped cream. Her tongue was pointed like a serpent’s. She saw the effect it had on him, and went for the kill.

“Want to go on a date?”

“Depends. How much do you charge?”

“Two hundred bucks.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as you can last, handsome.”

He removed a wad of cash from his pocket along with a handful of black casino chips. Carrying the chips was a little touch, but sometimes they were the most important things. He peeled away a brand new hundred, and handed it to her.

“Half now, half when we get there.”

Mona made the C-note disappear in her leather jacket.

“I like your style,” she said.

She consummated the deal by kissing him on the lips. The ebb and flow of human traffic continued past. He felt himself becoming aroused. Soon, she would be his.

“You got wheels?” Mona asked.

“I’m parked down the street.”

He offered his arm, acting like a gentleman. Mona took it and smiled. Whenever possible, he tried to get his victims to smile. Even if it meant buying them a gift, or saying something stupid. It always brought their guards down, and made everything easier later on. As they started to walk away, he glanced into the confectionary store window. His own reflection looked back at him. In it, he saw a strange object perched on a pole across the Boardwalk. He jerked his head and stared.

It was a surveillance camera, similar to the ones inside the casino. It had not been there a few days ago, when he’d come to the Boardwalk, and scoped things out. It was new, and he guessed, had been put there to find him. He imagined Tony Valentine sitting in a darkened room somewhere, watching him.

“Come on, handsome, time’s a wasting.”

The Dresser stuck his tongue out at the camera as Mona dragged him away.

Chapter 43

The phone call from Nucky Balducci came early the next morning.

“We need to talk,” the old gangster said.

Valentine was sitting at his kitchen table, finishing his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. The funeral of Marcus Mink had drained him, and he’d slept poorly. Talking to Nucky was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

“About what?” he asked.

“Your health,” Nucky replied.

Thirty minutes later, Valentine parked in front of Nucky’s house and killed the Pinto’s sputtering engine. Any day now, he expected the car to catch on fire and die, and found himself hoping it would be soon. Walking up the brick path, he stared at Nucky’s palatial digs. He remembered how impressed he’d been twenty years ago while picking Zelda up for the school dance. She lives in a mansion, he remembered thinking. The fact that Nucky was a mobster hadn’t bothered him at the time. He’d been sixteen, and the size of the house was all that had mattered.

Knocking on the front door, he heard a noise and glanced up. Zelda was watching from a second-story window and clasped her hands together in joy.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said under his breath.

The front door opened, and Nucky ushered him in. The old gangster wore black pants and a black sweater, his traditional colors. It made his bald head look bigger, not that anyone in town had the courage to tell him. Hearing the pounding of feet, Valentine saw Zelda coming down the staircase wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe and pink slippers.

“Tony!” she exclaimed.

He had always felt sorry for Zelda. Deep down, she was a sweet kid, but bore the horrible misfortune of looking exactly like her father. As she bounded across the foyer, he realized she was going to hug him. He let her.

“Hey, Zelda,” he said, kissing the top of her forehead.

“It’s not time for our twentieth high school reunion, is it?” she asked.

Valentine wasn’t sure what time zone Zelda occupied since she’d flipped her wig. The reunion had happened last summer, but he saw no reason to tell her.

“Not yet,” he replied.

“Good. I’m holding you to the first dance.”

I’ll wear steel-toed shoes, he thought. “Great,” he said.

“What’s your favorite Elvis Presley song?”

“Why?”

“Come on, just tell me.”

“A Big Hunk ‘O Love,” he said.

“Oh, you’re such a boy! A Big Hunk ‘O Love it is.”

She flew back upstairs. Nucky escorted him into the den, and shut the slider behind them. “You should really come around more often,” he said.

Valentine let the remark pass. From upstairs he heard horrendously loud music being played on a stereo, accompanied by Zelda’s awful rendition of A Big Hunk of Love. “I got something I thought you’d want to see,” Nucky said.

Nucky crossed the den to the bar, and opened a small refrigerator in the corner. From the freezer section he removed a large plastic bag, which brought around the bar and handed to his guest. It contained a gaping, frozen mackerel.

“That showed up on my doorstep this morning, wrapped in newspaper,” Nucky explained. “Then I got a phone call. Guy says, ‘You need to take a walk on the beach.’ He gives me an address. So I sent a couple of my men.”

“What did they find?”

“Luther. About a hundred yards from Resorts.”

“Drowned?”

“Uh-huh. Luther was strong — you ever see him play for the Giants? Guy was a monster in his prime. Must of taken four, five men to hold him down.” Nucky stared into space. “He was always good with Zelda, you know? Used to bring her little gifts and food.”

“You tell her?”

“No. Can’t risk it. She’s too fragile.”

Luther had been like family to Nucky, and Valentine realized how upset the old gangster was. “Who do you think killed him?”

Nucky filled his chest with air, then exhaled slowly. “The family.”

“Why? You piss them off?”

“Yeah. They told me to pressure you.”

“This is about me?”

“Sure is. They don’t like all the things you’re doing at the casino. It’s making them nervous, so they told me to put the squeeze on you.”

“And you said no, and they killed Luther.”

“That’s right.”

Upstairs, Zelda had launched into Hound Dog, and was rocking the house. Valentine tried to make sense of what Nucky was telling him. If his work at Resorts was scaring the family, then the family had a stake in the casino. Only he and Doyle scrutinized the casino’s financials every day: Resorts was making more money than the three largest casinos in Las Vegas combined, and every penny could be accounted for.

“Who are they?” Valentine asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” Nucky replied.

The dead mackerel had started to melt, and he followed Nucky into the kitchen and tossed it into the rubbish. Nucky offered him a glass of lemonade. Valentine took a glass of water instead, and drank it in one long swallow. Then he put his hand on Nucky’s shoulder. The old gangster was pushing seventy and was still hard as a rock.

“Vinny Acosta is running things, isn’t he?” he said.

“That’s right,” Nucky said.

“Can’t have two bosses in town, can we?”

“I’d worry about your own problems, I was you.”

“Your problems and my problems are the same.”

Nucky was working on a pink lemonade. He held the glass to his lips and stared out the window onto his spacious back yard. There was a swimming pool and a bocce court and a big piece of cement from the old 50 °Club that contained hand prints and signatures from all the famous celebrities who’d ever worked there. The club had been Atlantic City’s last good time until burning to the ground six years ago.

“You got something in mind?” Nucky asked.

“Yes.”

“Spit it out.”

“Tell me how Vinny Acosta is ripping off Resorts’ casino. I want to nail this son-of-a-bitch, and I think you do as well.”

Nucky put his glass down and laughed under his breath.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just because things go bad doesn’t mean I turn into a giant rat. I took an oath when I joined the mob. Sealed it in my blood. I’ll never go back on my word.”

“Then send me down the right path. Come on, Nucky. For both our sakes.”

Nucky poured the rest of his lemonade into the sink. “You want to talk to someone who knows about the scam? Go talk to your father.”

“My father?”

“That’s right. He knows what’s going on.”

“You told him?”

“He figured it out himself. He’s a smart guy, Tony. You need to make peace with him.”

Every time he got together with Nucky, his old man came up. The problems between them were none of Nucky’s business, not that he could convince Nucky of that. Upstairs, the stereo had gotten stuck on Elvis singing Don’t be Cruel, and so had Zelda, her voice husky and raw. Living with her had to be hell, yet it was obvious that Nucky loved her. It made Valentine think of his relationship with his father. Did he still love him? Somewhere, deep down in his soul, he imagined that he did.

They went to the foyer. The old gangster offered his hand, and Valentine shook it.

“I protected you for as long as I could,” Nucky said.

“Thank you. Say goodbye to Zelda for me.”

Nucky patted him on the shoulder and opened the door. Buttoning up his coat, Valentine ventured outside into the cold.

Chapter 44

Valentine drove until he found a gas station with a payphone, dropped a dime and called the surveillance control room at Resorts. Fossil answered, and Valentine asked him to find Doyle. Thirty seconds later, Doyle picked up the line.

“I’m out for the morning,” Valentine said. “Cover for me.”

“Sure thing. Something wrong?”

“I need to find my father, and have a talk.”

“Good luck,” his best friend said.

Valentine got back in the Pinto and drove north on Pacific Avenue. The island’s proximity to the ocean made it a magnet for storms, and a freezing rain began to pelt his windshield. The storm was intense, and soon water was flowing on the curbs. Fearful of stalling out, he straddled the double line.

The island had three flop houses, all situated on its north end. They were all the same: Unwashed men, many drunks or drug addicts or simply insane, slept on narrow cots in large, dormitory-style rooms. It was ugly, yet he’d come to understand the comfort the houses offered, the men having nowhere else to go.

By ten o’clock, he’d visited each of the flop houses, and come up empty. There were only so many places his father could be. Driving to the Boardwalk, he parked on the south end. The streets were deserted, the rain keeping everyone indoors. Getting out, he popped the trunk, and removed his police-issue rain slicker. He fitted the slicker on, then walked to the Boardwalk and headed north, the Resorts’ sign in the distance illuminating the otherwise dreary day.

Chained pushcarts sat outside the casino’s back doors. Valentine stuck his head into each one. In the last, an old man was snoring beneath a blanket. Lifting the blanket, Valentine found his father sleeping soundly with an empty bottle of Old Grand Dad cradled in his arms. He remembered taking a sip as a kid. It had been like licking a six-volt battery.

“Hey, Pop,” he said.

His father didn’t respond. Valentine took the bottle away, then pulled him out of the pushcart. His father didn’t weigh much anymore, and Valentine threw him over his shoulder like a fireman, and headed down the Boardwalk to his car. His father continued to snore, his sleeping undeterred.

He took his father to a flophouse named The Majesty. It was no better than the others, except the owner went to AA, and did not allow alcohol or bad language. He gave the owner ten bucks, then found an empty cot in the back of the room, and gently laid his father on it. There was a furnace here, and it was warm.

He touched his father’s shoulder. His father’s eyelids flickered, and then he was awake. A look of recognition spread across his weather-beaten face.

“You go to hell,” his father said.

After his father stopped cursing him, Valentine talked him into drinking a cup of coffee with him. They sat at a pocked table in the empty dining room. Instead of pictures hanging on the walls, there were food stains. A naked bulb dangled above their heads. In the kitchen, a radio played.

“I want us to come to an understanding,” Valentine said.

“Apologize for beating me up on New Year’s,” his father rasped.

“You were hurting Mom. You got what was coming to you.”

His father’s eyes narrowed like a caged animal’s. He’d been handsome once, only years of alcohol abuse had ravaged his face, and now he looked like the torture victims Valentine sometimes saw in the newspaper. It was hard to believe this was the same man who’d bounced him on his knee, and told him bedtime stories.

“You were out there in the garage, pumping weights, building yourself up,” his father said accusingly. “You picked the one night you knew I’d be soused. You planned it.”

“Peace, Pop. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Then say you’re sorry. Say it!”

Valentine rose from the table. His pant legs were soaking wet, and he heard his shoes squish. “I should apologize for saving my mother from another beating? That’s not going to happen.”

His father scrunched his face up. “Nucky sent you, didn’t he? He told you how Vinny Acosta beat me up, and now you feel guilty.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t? Well, I’ll spell it out for you. Vinny Acosta wanted to get to you. Either with a bribe, or a girl. So he tried to squeeze me. Know what I told him?”

“No.”

“Nothing,” his father declared hoarsely.

Valentine looked into his father’s eyes and realized he was telling the truth. He sank into his seat and saw his father smile.

He had won this round.

“Vinny Acosta is after you,” his father said, leaning over the table. His breath reeked of whiskey, and reminded Valentine of every bad night they’d ever spent together. “You better arrest him before he hurts you, or your family. He’s a fucking animal.”

“I wish I could,” Valentine said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing.”

His father slapped the table with his palm. “Well, I do! Vinny’s running a skim. I saw them on every construction job I ever worked on. The contract called for six inches of cement, we poured three. The contract said brass pipes, we used steel. What we promised and what the customer got was always different.”

“And the boss pocketed the difference.”

“That’s right. Vinny’s skim ain’t no different.”

“You’re positive about this, Pop.”

“I’d bet the clothes on my body.” His father’s smile grew waxy. He’d drunk a fifth a day for as long as Valentine could remember, and sometimes looked drunk even when he wasn’t. His father said, “A month ago, I snuck into Resorts and spotted Charley Polite, the bellman. I said, ‘Charley, it’s freezing outside, gimme one of those free rooms I keep hearing about.’ Charley says, ‘Sorry, Dom, but there ain’t no free rooms here.’ So I say, ‘What about for high-rollers?’ And Charley says, ‘High-rollers pay too. Nothing’s free.’”

His father smiled triumphantly and again slapped the table. “Nothing’s free. That’s Vinny’s skim. You get it?”

Valentine looked at him sadly. Vinny Acosta wasn’t murdering people over free rooms at Resorts’ casino. His father didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.

“That’s not what he’s doing,” he said.

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t, Pop. Trust me.”

His father’s lips curled into a confrontational snarl. “Yes, it is, you stupid shit.”

“Don’t swear at me, Pop.”

His father angrily balled his hands into fists. “You strut around town like a rooster, and you’re still dumb as dirt. Aren’t you ever going to smarten up?”

Valentine heard the challenge in his voice. Next, his father would be standing and swinging his arms, challenging him to a fist-fight. Rising from the table, he removed a wool cap from his pocket, and stuck it on his head.

“Good bye, Pop.”

“You go to hell,” his father said.

It was the way all their conversations ended. Valentine decided to take a stab at changing the pattern. “I’ve got to get back to work. How about you coming over for dinner sometime? Lois still makes a mean pot roast.”

“Not until you apologize to me.”

“I’m sorry, Pop, but I’m not going to do that.”

“Then why did you come? What the hell do you want?”

Valentine stood with his hands in his pockets, and struggled with the words. They shared twenty years of hatred, yet it hadn’t always been that way. His old man had taught him so many things that he could never deny that he would always be his son.

“I wanted to tell you that I still love you. I always have, and I always will.”

His father didn’t move, his eyes simmering with rage. Maybe someday it will sink in, Valentine thought. He walked out of the dining room, and did not look back.

Chapter 45

He drove away from the flophouse shaking his head. His old man thought the mafia was stealing free rooms. So much for the power of alcohol.

The storm had not let up. Sitting at a light, he listened to the oddly soothing sound of the windshield wipers beating back the rain. A car in his rearview mirror caught his eye. A white Ford Fairlane, idling a block behind him. As the light changed and he pulled away, so did the Fairlane. The image of Luther lying dead on the beach flashed through his mind. He drew his .38 and lay it across his lap.

The Fairlane followed him into the casino’s employee parking. The Pinto didn’t have much pep left in it, and he had to floor it to put any room between himself and the other car. He circled the lot and came to an open area. He slammed his foot on the break, and felt the rear wheels lock. As he turned the wheel, he released the brake, and the Pinto did a smooth one-eighty. He punched the gas, and headed straight toward the Fairlane. The driver of the Fairlane bailed, and hit his brakes hard. As the car came to a screeching stop, Valentine jumped out of the Pinto holding the .38 with both hands.

The Fairlane flashed its lights, and the driver’s window lowered. Valentine walked over to the vehicle. Sitting behind the wheel was Mike Hatch, a detective on the force, and a guy he’d known since grade school. Hatch was shaking in fear.

“Why are you following me?” Valentine asked.

“Who said I was following you?”

“I did.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“You’re a lousy liar. Out with it.”

“Banko’s orders,” Hatch said.

Valentine put his gun away, knowing he was screwed.

Banko’s office seemed unusually cold. Sitting in a chair that faced his superior’s desk, Valentine saw why: The window behind the desk was cracked open, and winter had invaded the room.

“You’re damn right I had you followed,” Banko said, standing behind his desk. Hatch stood against the wall, avoiding Valentine’s stare. “You’re an officer of the law. You start acting weird, its casts a bad light on the entire department.”

Weird. It was a better description than crazy, and Valentine felt himself relax. Picking up the pad on his desk, Banko read aloud. “Three mornings ago, you walked out of the station house with a prostitute, went to her car, and were seen handcuffing her. You drove with her to another prostitute’s apartment, where you spent—” He glanced at Hatch, and the detective held up three fingers “—thirty minutes inside. You got to work around noon. Two days ago, you went to the Rainbow Arms, then went and visited a psychiatrist. Again, you got to work about noon. Today, you visited Nucky Balducci, then were seen taking a homeless man to a flop house.” Banko looked at the clock on his desk. It was nearly noon, and his eyes fell on Valentine’s face. “Your job is to police Resorts’ casino. How can you be doing that when you’re on the street?”

“I can explain,” Valentine said.

Banko dropped the pad, and leaned on the desk with his fists. “You can explain disobeying my orders? That’s not an explanation I care to hear. You’re acting weird, Tony, and I don’t like it one bit. It’s making me nervous.”

Valentine struggled for something intelligent to say. Banko pointed at the door, and Hatch walked out. “I’m suspending you, with pay,” Banko said when Hatch was gone. “I want you to see a shrink, and get these issues ironed out. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have let you return to the force so quickly after the shooting at the Rainbow Arms.”

“You think I’m crazy?”

“No, just someone who needs help.”

Banko went to the door, and held it open. Valentine pushed himself out of his chair, thinking of Vinny Acosta and the person behind the voice and all the other people in town who wanted him out of the way. They’d gotten their wish, and he realized he had no one to blame but himself.

That night, sitting on the couch in Valentine’s living room, Doyle tried to make light of what had happened. “It’s no big deal. You see a shrink, talk about how your mother had you in diapers until you were eighteen, and get a clean bill of health in a couple of weeks. People expect cops to have emotional problems. It comes with the territory.”

“You think I have emotional issues?”

“No, no. It’s just what people expect, that’s all.”

Doyle and Liddy had brought dinner over to cheer him up. Liddy’s famous Irish stew, mashed potatoes, mixed green salad, and vanilla ice cream. By the time they’d started eating dessert, Valentine had started feeling like his old self.

In the kitchen, Liddy and Lois were dividing up the leftovers; then it would be their turn to clean the dishes. Valentine glanced at his partner. The job affected everyone differently. For Doyle, it showed in his face. His boyish exuberance was still there, only now it was masked by flecks of gray hair and worry lines.

Valentine felt his body melt into the cushions. The meal was taking its time settling in his stomach. The phone rang. Upstairs, he heard Gerry bound down the hall to answer it. “Hey Pop it’s for you,” his son called out.

He glanced at his watch. A quarter of ten. No one called this late except pesky salesmen. He pushed himself off the couch, went to the head of the stairs.

“Tell whoever it is to call back,” he said.

Gerry appeared at the head of the stairs. He’d stopped sleeping in his PJs a few weeks ago, and wore his skivvies. “It’s Mrs. Mink. She wants to talk to you.”

“Did she say what she wanted?”

“No, but she sounds upset. I just think she’s crying.”

Valentine glance at Doyle, and saw his partner bounce off the couch. “I’ll take it in the kitchen,” he told his son.

In the kitchen he found Liddy and Lois standing at the counter, popping lids on Tupperware containers. The phone hung from the wall, and had a long extension cord. Picking it up, he heard Gerry hang up, then said, “Gloria, this is Tony. Is everything okay?”

Gloria Mink sobbed into phone. “No!”

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s got a gun.”

“Who’s got a gun?”

Lois and Liddy’s heads snapped.

“My husband,” Gloria said, her voice cracking. “He started drinking whiskey this afternoon. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. Then he started breaking dishes and pictures and other things. Then he went and got the gun.”

“Where is he now?”

“In his study. He told me to leave the house. He’s going to hurt himself. He blames himself for what happened. Please help me. Please.”

“Did you call 911?”

“No.”

“Gloria—”

“I can’t,” she sobbed. “Please come over and talk to him. You’re the only one who will understand. Please, Tony. Before he shoots himself.”

The Minks lived on the south end in a split-level ranch house. The area had an unusual reputation; it was predominantly lower income, yet had consistently produced the island’s best athletes. Gloria was at the door when they arrived, and had pulled herself together. As they went in, she grabbed Valentine’s sleeve and looked into his eyes.

“I tried,” she whispered.

At the funeral Valentine remembered thinking how the loss of her son had robbed her of her beauty. Now, something else was being taken away.

“Where is he?”

“In the study. Please bring him back.”

“I’ll try,” Valentine said.

Doyle remained with Gloria in the living room while Valentine crossed the house. He’d been to the Mink’s house several times for Sunday afternoon football parties, and remembered the study being right off the kitchen, the rooms separated by a swinging wooden door. He found the door, and tapped on it with his knuckles.

“Go away,” a voice said drunkenly from the other side.

“It’s Tony Valentine. Can I come in?”

“Get out of my god damn house,” Mink shouted through the door.

Valentine decided to take a chance, and pushed the door open with his toe, and stuck his head through. Mink sat behind a desk on the other side of the room, and looked drunker than a sailor on a Saturday night.

“Hey, buddy,” Valentine said.

“Don’t buddy me,” Mink snapped.

“You mad at me?”

“Go away. Now.”

“Come on. Let me in.”

Mink grunted drunkenly. Valentine took it as a yes, and entered the study. He saw Mink put his hands onto the desk, and ball them into fists. Both of his hands were caked in dried blood. An empty whiskey bottle sat on the blotter; beside it, an automatic pistol. Valentine held his palms out so Mink could see he was not carrying a weapon.

“I need to talk to you,” Valentine said.

“Really? And for the past few months, I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Can I sit down?”

“Go ahead.”

Valentine took a chair from the wall and pulled it up to the desk. Next to the chair were the display cases Mink had built to house Marcus’s impressive collection of football trophies. Mink had smashed the glass in each case.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Valentine said.

“You said that at the funeral. Do you have any idea why my son is dead?”

Mink’s head sagged forward, and he looked like he might pass out. Valentine reached across the desk, took the revolver, and placed it on the floor between his feet. Mink stared at the spot where the revolver had been.

“No. Why don’t you tell me?”

Mink continued to stare at the spot. “Marcus knew,” he whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“A few weeks ago, I told Gloria what really happened at the Rainbow Arms that night. Marcus was supposed to be at basketball practice, but he came home early, and overhead us talking. My son knew I was dirty. Do you know what that means?”

Valentine swallowed the rising lump in his throat. “No.”

“I had no traction with the boy. I couldn’t control him.”

“What did Marcus hear?”

Mink banged his blood-stained hand on the desk. “That his father went along for the ride. That his father wanted to be one of the boys. That his father was weak.”

“Is that what happened?”

Mink took a deep breath and nodded.

“You didn’t take any money?”

“That was to come later on.”

Mink’s eyes shifted to a high school portrait of Marcus hanging behind the gridiron trophies inside the shattered display case. Marcus had been blessed with his mother’s good looks and his father’s winning smile. Tears welled up in Mink’s face and he wiped them away with his palm.

“Last week, I came home from work, and there was a motorbike sitting in the driveway. Gloria and I tried to take it away from him. Marcus said if we took the bike, he’d tell his friends at school he knew I was dirty. So I let him keep it.” Mink shook his head and began to cry. “I made a mistake, and the Lord has taken away my most precious thing.”

Valentine let a long moment pass. “What happened at the Rainbow Arms? I’ve never fully understood it.”

Mink stared at his hands. The dried blood had turned them a color that no man should have to bear. “The Prince knew the mob was inside Resorts, and that Crowe, Brown and Mickey Wright were on the take. The Prince tried to get a piece of the action, and was turned away. He had one of his whores sleep with a hood named Vinny Acosta. She rolled him, and took his address book. Crowe and Brown were sent to get it back.”

“Why is the address book so important?”

“Acosta is skimming the casino,” Mink said. “He’s got casino employees converting free rooms and comps into cash, then using runners to take the cash out. The address book contains the names of the runners.”

Valentine could not believe what Mink was saying. His father had been right.

“How much cash?” he heard himself ask.

“A hundred grand a day.”

“Vinny Acosta is stealing three point six million dollars a year?”

Mink laughed hoarsely. “Try thirty-six million.”

The number was so large, it didn’t seem possible.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Mink said.

“How are they getting the cash out?”

“Each runner gets a hundred thousand dollar line of credit from the casino. The runner gambles for a few hours, but only bets a little money. Then the runner converts the chips into cash, and walks out the door with it. The people on the inside show the money going towards comps.”

Valentine thought of the dozens of cheaters he’d busted in the past few months. All combined, he didn’t think they’d stolen as much as Vinny Acosta was stealing every day.

“Guess what my take was,” Mink said.

“I don’t have any idea.”

“Five hundred bucks a week. And look what it bought me. A life of penance, and shame.”

The rage had seeped out of Mink’s voice, his spirit shattered by what he’d done. The moment of horror had passed, and Valentine came around the desk and offered Mink his hand. “Come on,” he said.

Mink rose on wobbly legs. He put his hand on Valentine’s arm for balance, then said, “Are you going to arrest me?”

Valentine shook his head. Mink had suffered enough for what he’d done.

They walked into the kitchen. It was the kind of kitchen you hardly saw anymore — an expanse of rubbed down linoleum, an old gas range, and a refrigerator with rounded corners. The sink was on porcelain legs, and Valentine stood beside it while Mink washed the blood from his hands. Gloria and Doyle appeared, and Gloria went to her husband and embraced him. Mink rested his head against his wife’s bosom. Gloria whispered in his ear, and Mink said, ‘I’m sorry,’ several times in reply.

Valentine looked at Doyle and saw his partner nod. They had done what they could, and walked out of the house to their car.

Chapter 46

The next morning, Valentine met with the two auditors assigned to keep tabs on Resorts’ gambling revenues. They worked in a brick building several miles away from the casino, and Valentine felt safe in assuming they hadn’t heard about his suspension yet.

The auditor’s names were Finkel and Carp. Not smart enough to become CPAs, they’d taken this beat instead. As a rule, they didn’t deal directly with anyone who worked at the casino, and they reacted cooly to Valentine’s bribe of fresh bagels and coffee.

“What do you want?” Carp growled at him.

Valentine had known Carp since junior high. Back then, Carp had worn his hair shellacked like James Dean, and smoked cigarettes behind the school with the greasers. These days, he didn’t have any hair, and wore cheap suits from Men’s Warehouse.

“I’m meeting with Resorts’ management next week,” Valentine said. “I’m supposed to show the impact Doyle and I are having on the casino’s profits.”

Carp snorted. “You lose.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re surveillance, and surveillance is the enemy of the bottom line.”

“It is?”

“Surveillance is the second-to-worst non-revenue generating department in Resorts,” Carp explained. “You only exist because the law says you have to.”

“Who brings up the rear?”

“Payroll.”

“I still think we’re making a difference,” Valentine said. “I want to examine the profits of the different games before, and after, Doyle and I entered the picture. If profits are up, it means there’s less cheating, and we’re improving the bottom line.”

Finkel tore apart one of the bagels. They had also gone to school together, yet somehow their paths had never crossed. When Carp had introduced them as classmates, Valentine had thought he was kidding.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Finkel said.

Carp shrugged indifferently. “Tony, it doesn’t matter what you say to upper management. It still won’t change their opinion of you.”

“Which is what?”

“You take up space, and don’t make money.”

“I still want to know,” Valentine said.

Finkel finished his bagel, then rose from his chair and went into the adjacent office. When he returned, he was carrying the casino’s financials for the past twelve months. They were huge reports, and he dropped them loudly on the floor.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

Lying had never been Valentine’s strong suit. Telling the auditors that he had a meeting with the top brass was dumb. A single phone call to Resorts, and his goose was cooked. He took a deep breath and said, “Okay.”

Finkel pulled up a chair. Then he picked up the top report, opened it, and started to read. “Resorts’ casino generates twenty million dollars a month in net revenue. Sixty percent from slots, the rest from the table games.” He flipped open to the section that showed the hold, which was the amount of money collected for each game, minus the number of chips sold. “The hold for blackjack was 13 % before you started; for craps, 14 %; for roulette, 15 %.”

Finkel removed the bottom report from the stack, and flipped it open. “Let’s see. The hold for blackjack after you started jumped to 15 %; for craps, 16 %, and for roulette, 17 %.” He looked up. “I think you’ve got a case, Tony.”

“They’re still going to hate you,” Carp chimed in. He’d thrown his feet onto his desk, and was blowing perfect smoke rings from his cigarette. “Expect less, and you’ll be disappointed.”

“How about the other games?” Valentine asked.

Finkel read the holds for the Asian domino game called pai gow and for baccarat. They had also increased.

“This is impressive,” Finkel said.

“Hate, hate, hate,” Carp said.

Valentine had already known what the numbers said. One of the first scams he’d uncovered at Resorts was a group of pit bosses letting family members and friends take down large credit lines, which they later paid back, interest free. By stopping this practice, the holds at all games had improved overnight.

“I need to write this down,” Valentine said.

Finkel crossed the office and opened a desk drawer in search of a pen. Valentine glanced at Carp, and saw that he wasn’t paying any attention. Taking the most recent report off Finkel’s chair, he flipped it open at the tab marked COMPS. There was a six-month summary, and he stared at the numbers.

ROOMS         $7,874,096

DRINKS         $2,360525

FOOD         $2,935,198

ENTERTAINMENT     $1,952,437

AIR TRANSPORTATION  $2,001,887

GIFTS         $1,438,296

“Makes you sick to your stomach, doesn’t it,” Finkel said.

Valentine looked up to see Finkel standing over him, pen in hand. He hadn’t heard him return, and sheepishly said, “I don’t mean to be poking my nose where it doesn’t belong, but I’ve always wondered how much free stuff Resorts gives away.”

“Too much,” Carp said.

“Eighteen million, five hundred and sixty-two thousand, four hundred and thirty-nine bucks in six months, ” Finkel said.

“Is that how much this is?” Valentine asked.

“To the penny,” Finkel replied. He handed Valentine the pen, then took his seat. “The state of New Jersey considers comps to be legitimate ways to encourage business. We have to be competitive with Las Vegas in every arena.”

“Is this how much Vegas casinos give away?”

The auditor nodded. “It’s how they keep the high-rollers coming back. Percentage wise, we’re right in line with Vegas.”

Valentine shook his head, pretending to be astonished by the number. But what he was astonished by was the audacity of Vinny Acosta’s skim. Resorts’ casino had been packed with gamblers since the very first day it had opened. Resorts didn’t need to give away all this free stuff, and it wasn’t. Only Carp and Finkel didn’t know this.

“Holy shit,” Carp exclaimed, looking at his watch.

“What’s wrong?” Finkel said worriedly.

“We have work to do!”

Valentine got the hint. He scribbled some numbers on a piece of paper, then tore it off a pad and shoved it into his pocket. Standing, he shook the auditors’ hands. Carp gave him the limp fish, and Valentine was reminded why he’d always disliked him.

“Thanks for the hospitality,” Valentine said.

Carp brayed like a donkey.

“That’s a good one,” he replied.

Chapter 47

Valentine drove home with dollar signs swimming in his head. When Mink had said a hundred thousand dollars a day was being stolen from Resorts, he had assumed it was a bullshit number, used to suck Mink in. Only the audit backed Mink up. Six months divided into eighteen million dollars was a hundred thousand dollars a day. He made thirty-six grand a year. He would have to work for a thousand years to make that much money.

Pulling up his driveway, he tried to guess how many employees were involved in the skim outside of Vinny Acosta and his runners. He put the number at a dozen people in the casino and hotel’s accounting departments. Hard-working people who’d decided thirty-six grand a year didn’t cut it, and had decided to go to work for the mob.

You’re all going down, he thought.

A young woman stood on the stoop of his house. Early twenties, dirty brown hair, wearing a fake fur coat. Definitely not a ‘I’d like to talk to you about Jesus’ nut. As he pulled up the driveway, she turned around. It was Sissy, the Visine Queen. Parking, he jumped out of the car. If he was seen with another hooker, Banko would have his scalp. Approaching her, he said, “What are you doing here?”

“Selling girl scout cookies.”

“Who gave you my address?”

She eyed him cooly. “I date a cop on the side. He told me.”

“What do you want?”

Sissy shot him a nasty look. “You’re not very hospitable.”

“I’m on suspension. What do you want?”

“It’s about Mona.”

“What about her?”

“She’s missing. I think she’s in trouble.”

He looked up and down the street for Hatch or any other detectives that might be watching his house. The street was empty, and he escorted Sissy inside. She slipped out of her fake fur, and threw it over a chair in the dining room. She wasn’t wearing trashy clothes, or anything particularly alluring; little make-up, and no perfume. She refused to sit down, and stood next to his dining room table. She was all business.

Sitting on the table was a box of family photographs that Lois planned to hang around the house to replace those destroyed by the burglars. The top photograph caught Sissy’s eye, and she picked it up. It was of Lois modeling a bathing suit when she was younger.

“This your wife?”

“That’s her,” he said.

“She’s a beauty.”

Valentine took a deep breath. Sissy was trying to be nice, but it didn’t matter. He wanted her to say what was on her mind, and get out of his house.

“What happened to Mona?” he asked.

Sissy continued to admire the photograph. “She’s disappeared. Went to the beach yesterday and never came home. We do buddy checks. When she didn’t answer her phone this morning, I went looking for her.”

“Any luck?”

“Just her car. It was parked in the lot of the Catholic church near the casino. I talked to the priest. He said it had been there overnight.”

“You file a missing person’s report?”

“No. Do you mind?”

Before he could object, Sissy removed Lois’s photograph, and picked up the one beneath it. It was of Gerry at his fifth birthday. He was dressed in a Batman costume and was blowing out the candles on a sagging ice cream cake. Sissy rubbed his face with her thumb, then seemed embarrassed and put the photograph down.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I’m leaving town. I did what I could.”

“I thought Mona was your friend.”

“You think a missing person report is going to make a difference?”

“It’s a start,” he said, growing angry with her.

She took her fake fur off the chair, and slipped it on. “I told Mona to stay off the streets until this sicko was caught. She didn’t listen. You know why?”

He shook his head.

“There’s an old expression. Quit the business, before the business quits you. Mona didn’t know when to quit.” Sissy walked to the front door, opened it, then turned and looked him square in the eye. “I do.”

He followed her outside to the curb. Sissy drove a baby-blue Mustang, and it was packed with everything she owned, the clothes and kitchen utensils thrown across the seats like she’d robbed a rummage sale.

“If you see her again, tell her I’m sorry,” Sissy said.

Valentine watched her drive away, then went back inside his house.

He sat at his kitchen table, and tried to decide what to do with the information Sissy had given him. The rules for being suspended were clear: No involvement in any active investigations. He couldn’t call Banko without getting himself in more hot water, only sitting on the information wasn’t an option, either. Not if he wanted to sleep at night, and live with his conscience. He picked up the phone and called Lois at work. His wife was on break, and he told her everything that Sissy had said.

“You have to call Banko, and tell him,” Lois said when he was finished.

“Even if I end up getting fired?”

“Yes,” she said firmly.

He’d thought of a dozen surreptitious ways of getting the information about Mona to Banko without getting involved. As if reading his thoughts, Lois said, “He may not be happy with you Tony, but he will believe you, and that’s what counts.”

It made him feel better, knowing his wife was behind him. He told her that he loved her, then hung up and called his superior.

“Let me get this straight. A hooker drove to your house, and gave you this information?” Banko said incredulously a few minutes later. His tone was severe, and Valentine could feel an invisible noose tightening around his neck.

“That’s right,” he said.

“You entertain hookers at your house often?”

“She dates a cop. Said he gave her my address.”

Banko swore like he’d banged his thumb with a hammer. “Did she tell you this cop’s name?”

“No, sir.”

“Why—”

“I didn’t ask her.”

“If there’s a bad apple on the force, I want to know about it.”

Valentine was standing at his sink, looking at his postage stamp of a backyard filled with cheap kid’s playthings. It was what thirty-six grand a year bought you, and he said, “I was more concerned about Mona, if you want to know the truth.”

There was a long pause on the other end.

“All right, here’s what I’ll do,” Banko said. “I’ll file a Missing Person report on Mona, and distribute it to the force, along with her mug shot. In return, I want you to promise me you’ll stay off this case. If you get a lead, you’ll call me. No more rogue police work, understand?”

Valentine gripped the receiver and felt his vision blur. Banko had called him a rogue cop. He was finished as a detective, and they both knew it.

“Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

The phone went dead in his hand.

Putting his overcoat on, Valentine went outside, and got a shovel from the garage. Crossing his backyard, he stopped at the birdbath, and used his muscle to move it a few inches. It was ugly as sin, and had only stayed because he couldn’t afford to replace it.

Then he began to dig. Two feet down, he put the shovel aside, and used his fingers. The address book and video tape were buried in plastic zip-lock bags, and he removed them from the hole, then refilled it and went back inside.

He found a pencil and a legal pad in a kitchen drawer, and spent the next hour writing down everything he knew about the skim at Resorts. In language anyone could understand, he explained how the skim was being reported on the books, and included how Resorts’ hotel routinely over-charged customers, a practice which he’d known about, and now guessed let the hotel off-set giving away an occasional free room to a high-roller.

Finished, he wrote up the cast of characters, which included Crowe, Brown, Freed, Mickey Wright, Vinny Acosta, the names of the runners in the address book, and the names of hotel and casino employees who did the books, and who he believed were involved. Only one name didn’t make the list, and that was Mink. Losing Marcus was punishment enough for what he’d done.

Then he reread the report. It was four pages long. The crime he was painting would be easy for anyone to understand, including any of the local reporters he knew. But, there was also a problem. It contained a lot of insider information, and if the papers did publish it, people would know he’d written it, and he would be labeled a disgraced cop with an axe to grind. If that’s what it takes to get the truth out, so be it, he thought.

He found an envelope in the kitchen cabinet, and sealed the report inside of it. He knew the address of the Camden Union Register by heart, and was writing it on the envelope when the phone rang. Lifting the receiver to his ear, he heard Lois’s voice.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” he told her.

“So, how did your talk with Banko go?”

Valentine stared down at the envelope in his hands.

“I think it’s time for a career-change,” he said.

Chapter 48

“I’ve got a cat in the hat,” Romaine called out.

It was midnight, and Fossil was running the surveillance control room. It didn’t happen very often, and usually for no more than an hour or two, but it was time that Fossil cherished. He’d worked for thirty years as a department store detective, and had always reported to some asshole upstairs.

Fossil came over to where Romaine was standing by the wall of video monitors. A cat in the hat was someone who looked out-of-place. Sometimes, the person was simply eccentric, or oddly dressed. Other times, it was a cheater hiding something illegal in their clothes, like a computer or a miniature camera or a hold-out device in their sleeve. Romaine pointed an accusing finger at a player at a craps table.

“Him,” he said.

Fossil stared at the suspect. Late thirties, wearing a cheap wig and tinted glasses. The high resolution black and white cameras saw through hair pieces, and Fossil could see that the man had all his hair. Which meant the wig was purely a disguise. Going to the bulletin board, he pulled down a sheet. Back at the wall, he compared the face on the sheet to the one on the screen. The guy in the wig was Izzie Hirsch.

“Didn’t Tony bust this guy?” Romaine asked.

“He sure did,” Fossil said. He remembered Valentine telling him about the bust. The Hirsch brothers had given up without a fight. Perfect, he thought. “I think we should take these guys in ourselves. You up for it?”

Romaine’s face lit up. He was twenty-five years old, and still lived with his parents. They were domineering people, and Romaine yearned to break free of their grasp. It was all he talked about, besides catching cheaters.

“You bet I am.”

Fossil jerked his desk drawer open, and removed two pairs of handcuffs. He showed Romaine how to clip the cuffs onto his belt. Then he pulled a blackjack out of the drawer, and slapped it loudly against his palm.

“Let’s go knock some heads,” Fossil said.

Fossil knew what the Hirsch brothers were up to. Valentine had explained how they pulled sheep off the floor, and took them back to a rented house for a shearing. He crossed the casino with Romaine glued to his side. Taking out his money, Fossil put the biggest bill on top, and sifted through the crowd until he found Izzie Hirsch. He grabbed Izzie by the arm and in a loud voice said, “Louie, how you been?”

Izzie gave him a funny look. Then he saw the wad of cash in Fossil’s hand.

“Terrific,” Izzie said. “How about you?”

“Great! This is my pal Romaine. He and I just won five grand playing craps.”

Izzie’s’s eyes popped. “You won five big ones? Can I shake your hand?”

“Ha, ha,” Fossil said.

Izzie’s brothers appeared, and soon they were all bosom buddies. Izzie suggested they go back to their house, and get some food. Fossil agreed, and he and Romaine followed them in his car to a neighborhood in Chelsea Heights.

Fossil had seen some cute set-ups, but the Hirsch’s house was something special. The downstairs was like a college frat house, with a cooler filled with ice-cold beer, a pool table, and two felt-lined card tables. He helped himself to two bottles of Budweiser from the cooler, while Romaine racked up balls on the pool table.

“Look what I found,” Fossil said, handing Romaine a beer.

“Boy, what swell guys,” Romaine said.

They started playing eightball. The Hirsch brothers were in the living room, playing poker. Occasionally, one would stick his head, and eye the pile of bills sitting on the table. It looked like they were playing for big money, and soon Izzie and Seymour were standing in the den, watching the balls fly across the felt.

“Who’s up for craps?” Izzie asked when their game was done.

“Sure,” Fossil said.

Izzie tossed a pair of dice onto the table. “You shoot first.”

Fossil picked the dice up, and shook them. They didn’t feel right, and without thinking, he turned them over in his palm to see where they’d been manufactured. It was something a sucker would never do. Realizing his mistake, he looked up, and caught Izzie’s fearful stare.

“Something the matter?” Izzie asked.

Fossil tossed the dice onto the felt, then slipped the blackjack out of his pocket, and came around the pool table to where Izzie and Seymour were standing. “Put your hands where I can see them. And tell your brother to get out here.”

“You a cop?” Izzie asked.

“Casino security.”

“You can’t arrest us,” Seymour said indignantly.

“Like hell I can’t!” Fossil exclaimed. “Arms in the air.”

Izzie hollered at the top of his lungs. “JOSH!”

The den’s lights flickered. Fossil stared at the dice sitting on the pool table. They were rolling backward and forward like a pair of dying fish. He reached for the handcuffs clipped to his belt, then left his feet, and flew through the air like Peter Pan.

Forty minutes later, Valentine pulled up to the address in Chelsea Heights and let his headlights illuminate the shadowy figures standing on the lawn. It was midnight, and the sound of the phone that had awoken him was still ringing in his ears. From the seat he picked up a baseball cap along with a pair of glasses. Putting both on, he appraised himself in the mirror. Not a great disguise, but it would do.

He got his flashlight from the trunk and flicked it on. The street lights were out, and he walked up the from path and then around the house. He found Doyle in the back yard, talking to a uniform. His partner broke free and pulled him aside.

“Sorry to wake you up,” Doyle said.

“No problem.”

“I know your coming over here is a risk, but I figured you’d better see this.”

“Is Banko here?”

“Naw, he’s home sleeping.”

Doyle entered through the back of the house with Valentine behind him. The interior was lit up by Coleman lanterns. They found Fossil in the kitchen, walking off whatever had knocked him silly.

“Tony, that you?” the older man asked.

Valentine put a finger to his lips. “Keep it down. How you feeling?”

Fossil was favoring his right side, and grimaced every time he took a step. He stopped and put his hand on the kitchen counter, breathing deeply. “I’ll live.”

“You should have called me,” Valentine said. “I would have told you how to handle them.”

“I didn’t think they were dangerous.”

“Think again.”

Fossil looked away, embarrassed as hell. “Guess I blew it, huh?”

“Happens to the best of us,” Doyle said.

Valentine went into the living room, and found Romaine sitting on a bar stool. Romaine looked like he’d just gone ten rounds with George Foreman, and pressed a bulging ice pack to his misshapen skull. Talking under his breath, Valentine said, “Romaine, it’s me. What the hell happened?”

“Tony?”

“Don’t use my name.”

“Sorry. I tried to grab one of them, and he smacked me over the head with a bottle.”

“Let me see where he hit you.”

Romaine lowered the ice pack, and showed Valentine the tiny purple map of the United States now imprinted across his forehead. It was funny how bad bruises always resembled something familiar.

“You ought to get a photograph of it,” Valentine suggested.

“A keeper, huh?” Romaine asked.

“Yeah. Did Fossil really fly through the air?”

“Yup. I didn’t know he had a steel plate in his leg.”

“Neither did I. He get it in Vietnam?”

“That’s what he said.”

Valentine went into the den, and saw two vice detectives dismantling the pool table. It was a Brunswick model, and he remembered Izzie begging to let them take the table when Valentine had run him out of town. Izzie had claimed it was his father’s.

Valentine watched the detectives strip away the table’s felt to reveal coiled, rectangular masses of copper wire hiding underneath. It took a few moments before he realized what he was looking at. The pool table was a giant electro-magnet.

Kneeling, he shone his flashlight beneath the table, and saw a suspicious black cable running down one of the legs. With a little bit of searching, he found the cable’s outline in the cheap carpet. It led to a wall, then vanished. He went into the next room, found a closet, and opened it. The closet was empty, except for a green power box hugging the wall. With his flashlight, he saw where the black cable came through the wall, and entered the box. He flipped the box open. It contained a single switch for 220 volts. With one quick surge, the steel coils in the pool table became electro-magnets, and made loaded dice flip. Left on for too long, and men with metal plates flew through the air, and power boxes on the street blew up.

He didn’t want to hang around too long, and went outside and stood on the front lawn. It was cold, and his breath clouded the air each time he exhaled. He stared at the full moon, which looked like a hole in the sky, and imagined the Hirsch brothers sitting in an all-night diner somewhere, laughing their heads off at Fossil and Romaine’s expense.

Thinking about them made him angry. He’d been soft on the Hirsch’s because it seemed the right thing to do — Izzie had spilled his guts out to him, and they’d known each other as kids — but in reality, it was the wrong thing to do. He’d shown weakness to men who preyed on weakness, and so they’d come back, and struck again.

He thought about going back inside, and apologizing to Fossil and Romaine. Neither man was at fault for what had happened. He was. He had screwed up. No wonder Banko wanted him off the force.

Climbing into his Pinto, he pulled off his disguise, and drove away.

Chapter 49

Valentine’s house was as still as a church when he got home. He entered through the back door, took off his coat, and poured himself a tall glass of cold milk in the kitchen. The clock over the fridge said it was two A.M. He drank the milk slowly, knowing it would be several hours before he felt like going to bed.

He tried to relax by watching television. Nothing on was worth his time, and he killed the power and stared at the blank screen. He’d suffered from insomnia over the years, but it had always been over a case he was working on. Never had he feared what he was suddenly fearing now.

He was a cop; it was the only thing he’d ever been really good at. His mind had been made to solve puzzles, and piece things together. And now, that privilege was going to be taken away from him. He could go out on his own, and become a private eye, only that didn’t appeal to him. He’d known several cops who’d become P.I.’s, and overnight they’d turned into reptiles.

Which left him what?

He shook his head. He was starting to feel sorry for himself. Next, he’d be wallowing in self-pity like his old man. Or, he’d accept what had happened, and move on with his life. Losing his badge wasn’t the end of the world. He could always get another job, and support his family. It was that simple.

Pushing himself off the couch, he went into the dining room. Earlier, Lois had laid the family photographs she’d retrieved from the attic across the dining room table. She planned to look at them for a few days, and decide which ones to hang in the house.

“Pick out your favorites,” she’d told him.

Valentine looked the photographs over. There were three that he really liked. His mother at their wedding, where all she’d done was smile; Gerry’s baptism, where all he’d done was cry; and Lois riding a moped during their honeymoon in Bermuda. He stacked them together, then noticed a dusty photo album sitting on the table edge. He flipped the album open, then realized what he’d found. Highlights of Lois’s modeling career.

He picked up the album and returned to the living room. Sitting on the couch, he leafed through the album’s plastic pages. As a teenager, his wife had never wanted for work. Every exhibit and attraction on the Boardwalk had wanted her to be “their girl” each summer. Her stunning looks had always drawn a crowd.

The pictures made him laugh, and he felt his mood lifting. One was of Lois wearing a rubber lobster outfit. That was the job for the fresh Maine lobster exhibit. Another showed her dressed in a giant bagel. Goldfarb’s bagels. No matter how ridiculous the costume, her smile always looked genuine.

Halfway through the album, he came to pictures of Lois in bathing suits. There were over a dozen, both one-pieces and bikinis. He remembered the job vividly: A company called Candy Swimsuits out of California. Lois had done five shows a day, and been hit on by every hot-blooded male on the Boardwalk. It had been an unbearable summer.

The bathing suits ended, and he stared at a photograph of her coming down a runway in a mini-skirt, her hair ironed straight. The photograph had a date stenciled in the right hand corner. 7-15-65. He vaguely remembered the job. Booked by an agent out of New York. Great pay, only Lois had hated it, and quit after the first day.

He flipped the page. The next photograph was from the same job. This time, Lois wore wide bell bottoms, a denim shirt with flower embroidery, and love beads. He felt himself shudder. His wife was dressed like a 1960’s hippie.

He shut his eyes, and from memory dredged up the slides Fuller and Romero had shown of the Dresser’s victims, the pictures as fresh as the day he’d seen them. Each victim had been dressed in hippie clothes. He saw each outfit clearly, then opened his eyes, and stared at the outfits Lois was wearing in the album. They were the same.

He took a deep breath. Was he seeing too much into this, like Banko had claimed, his mind making connections that weren’t there? Or was there a link between Lois’s modeling job that summer and the Dresser’s victims? There was only one way to find out, and he jumped off the couch, the album clutched to his chest.

He hated waking his wife so late at night, but saw no other choice. Sitting on her side of the bed, he turned on the bedside table lamp, and gently shook her.

“Hi...” she said sleepily.

“Wake up.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I need to talk to you.”

Her head had sunk deep into her pillow, and she murmured “Of course.” and drifted back into dreamworld. Valentine shook her a little harder, and his wife’s eyes snapped open. She sat bolt upright, stared at the bedside clock, then at him.

“It’s two-thirty. What’s wrong?”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“You’re scaring me, Tony. What’s the matter?”

The album was sitting on his lap. He opened it to the section of her doing the modeling job in the hippie clothes, and began flipping the pages.

“Do you remember this job?”

Lois stared at the photographs. “Sure. Summer of Love. That crummy agent out New York talked me into taking it. I hated every minute of it.”

“Why?”

Lois was wide awake now, and gave him a strange look. “Tony, what’s wrong?”

“Please, answer me.”

“Oh, God, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t like the clothes. They were supposed to be hippie clothes, but they were just garbage.”

“Was there anything else? Did anyone hit on you?”

“There were always people hitting on me. And you were always telling them to shove off.”

“Was there anyone in particular on this job? Someone who bothered you? Think hard.”

His wife gave him an exasperated look. “Come to mention it, there was. A weird guy who worked backstage wouldn’t stop bothering me. He barged into the dressing room when I was half-naked, and I threw him out.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“No. Now, please tell me why you woke me up at this godawful hour.”

Valentine took his wife’s hands, and held them. “The Dresser is dressing up prostitutes in hippie clothes, and then killing them. While I was looking through this album, I realized how much each of his victims looked like you. Same height, same weight, same hair color, and all of them had dark complexions, and were very pretty. Whoever that guy was, I think he’s the same killer.”

The words were slow to sink in. When they did, his wife’s face turned to horror, and she grabbed the bedcovers, and pulled them up around her.

“Oh, my god, Tony. Oh, my god.”

Chapter 50

Valentine and Lois were sitting in the waiting area outside Banko’s office when the sergeant arrived at work the next morning. Banko scowled, and Valentine guessed that his superior thought they were there to beg for his job back.

Banko ushered them into his office. Sabina had fixed coffee, and Banko acted surprised when they both declined his offer of a cup.

“So what do I owe the pleasure?” Banko asked.

Valentine had the photo album under his arm. Placing it on the desk, he flipped it open it to the Summer of Love pictures. Banko flashed a benevolent smile.

“I didn’t know your wife modeled,” he said pleasantly.

Lois’s eyes welled up with tears. Valentine pointed at the first picture of the set and said, “Look at the clothes my wife is wearing.”

Banko took out his bifocals, and fitted them on his nose. Valentine turned the page to another photograph of his wife on a runway. Then, a third page was shown.

“So?” the sergeant said.

“The Dresser is dressing his victims up in hippie clothes, and killing them. His victims all look like my wife. My wife remembers a guy at this job who was stalking her. I think he’s our killer.”

Banko pulled the album closer and ran through the pages. Picking up his phone, he called Sabina in the next room. “Get me the murder book on our serial killer.” Hanging up, he continued to look at the photographs while gulping down his cup of coffee. After ten seconds had elapsed, he rose from his desk, went to his door and opened it.

“Hurry,” he told his secretary.

It was a painful coincidence that the murder book was the same color as the photo album. Painful because Lois Valentine was suffering through this experience of having to see the victims dressed like her, and nothing Banko could do would make it any easier for her. The victims’ clothes in the murder book matched her clothes in the album, right down to the jewelry. The killer had recreated her for his own sick pleasure.

Banko closed the two books. Then he stood up, and came around the desk. His face had a look that Valentine didn’t recognize; soft, and full of compassion. Banko stopped in front of his wife, and gently took her hands with both his own.

“May I call you Lois?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“Lois, I’m going to ask you to do something that’s probably going to be painful.”

“What’s that?”

“We have the victims’ clothes downstairs in the evidence room in the basement. I’d like to have you look at them.”

Her voice broke. “Is that... necessary?”

“You said you don’t remember much about the modeling job. Or the man who was stalking you.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I understand. Maybe seeing the clothes will jog your memory, and you’ll remember this guy’s name, or something he said to you.”

“And then you can catch him,” Lois said.

“That’s what I’m hoping,” Banko said.

“Okay. I’ll take a look at them.”

The cop on duty in the evidence room was named Dave Gordon, although everyone called him The Kid. The Kid was wearing on his shirt a jelly doughnut he’d just eaten, and looked embarrassed as hell when the three of them came through the door.

The evidence was kept behind a giant cage inside metal drawers that were stacked to the ceiling. The Kid unlocked the cage, then busied himself pulling out the plastic bags that contained the victims’ clothes. When he had the four bags, he came out of the cage, and carefully laid them on a rectangular table that served as his desk.

“Open the bags up, and lay the clothes out,” Banko said.

The Kid unzipped the bags. He handled the clothes gingerly, like the dead women’s’ spirits might still be in them. Soon, the clothes covered the table. Lois took a step forward and reached for a blouse.

“Is it okay if I pick them up?” she asked.

“Of course,” Banko said. “They’ve already been dusted for fingerprints.”

Lois picked up a sky-blue blouse with peace symbols stitched into the fabric. Around the symbols flowed the words Peace Love & Understanding. She looked at the blouse for a long moment, then opened up the neck to glance at the label.

“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

Valentine was standing beside her, and stared at the blouse’s label. Summer of Love. He saw his wife pick up the bell bottoms that went with the blouse. She turned them inside out, and stared at the inseam.

“No,” she said sharply.

Then, quite suddenly, his wife burst into tears.

“You’re absolutely sure about this,” Banko said.

They were back in Banko’s office. This time, they’d accepted Banko’s offer of a cup of coffee. Sipping her drink, Lois nodded while staring at the floor.

“Positive. Those are the clothes I wore that day,” she said. “I remember getting to the job, and none of the bell bottoms fit. A seamstress had to let the inseams out.”

“You’re sure they’re the same clothes,” Banko said.

“Yes. I quit the job after the first day. The agent in New York was furious, and screamed at me over the phone. I didn’t care.”

“Why?” Banko asked.

“I don’t know.”

Banko pulled his chair up closer to her. His tone was gentle. “ I know this is difficult, but I’d like you to close your eyes, and try to think back.”

“Tony tried to hypnotize me last night. It didn’t work.”

“Please let me try,” the sergeant said.

Lois looked at her husband, and saw him nod.

“All right.”

Lois folded her hands in her lap, and shut her eyes. The pose made her look like a young girl. A minute slipped away while Banko talked to her, and helped her slip back in time. His wife frowned, struggling with the memory. Valentine remembered something she’d told him on their first date. It’s great to be pretty, but sometimes it can also be scary. Now, twenty years later, he finally understood what those words meant.

“The exhibit was called Summer of Love,” she said. “We worked out of a tent on the Boardwalk. Besides me modeling clothes, there were performers keeping the crowd entertained. A singer, a juggler, and another variety act. All guys. Their dressing room was next to mine. One of the guys gave me the creeps. He kept staring at me like I was something he wanted to eat. I remember thinking that this was the kind of guy my mother told me to be afraid of.”

“Do you remember his name?” Banko asked.

“It was something strange.”

“What did he look like?”

“A few inches taller than me, not handsome, kind of shy.”

“How old was he?”

“My age, I think.”

“You remember his face?”

“Not really.”

“Which one of the acts was he?” Banko asked.

“I didn’t see any of them perform. Too busy getting dressed and undressed.”

“What happened to make you quit?”

She took a deep breath. “I worked for ten hours the first day, and was exhausted. After the show was over, I went to my dressing room, and discovered that my underwear had been violated. I didn’t know which one of them did it, so I quit.”

“But you thought it was him.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“Could he have stolen the outfits you were wearing?”

“They were hanging in my dressing room. He must have.”

“Did he ever have contact with you again?”

She strained to remember. “Yes, he called me at home.”

“When was this?”

“A few months later. He told me his parents were out of town, asked me to come to his house. I said no, I already had a boyfriend.”

“Were you seeing Tony then?”

“Yes. We’d been going steady for a while.”

Banko glanced at Valentine. There was an apology in his eyes, and Valentine acknowledged it with a slight nod. Then Banko brought his wife up from her trance.

Valentine extended his hand to his wife. “It’s time to go home,” he said.

“Did I tell you anything helpful?” Lois asked.

The color had returned to his wife’s face, and she looked just as beautiful as the day he’d met her. “Yes. You did good,” he said.

She rose from her chair, and Banko walked them to the door. “I’d like a word with your husband, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Lois said.

She stepped into the waiting room, and Banko shut the door, and put his hand on Valentine’s shoulder. “I guess we know now why the killer contacted you the other day. I’m sorry I’ve been so harsh with you, but I didn’t have much choice.”

“I understand,” Valentine said.

“No hard feelings?”

“No, sir.”

His superior lowered his arm. “I’m calling the FBI, and bringing them back in. I’m also assigning several extra detectives to work this case. Knowing this guy was an entertainer should make him easy to track down. Oh, and one other thing.”

Valentine waited expectantly.

“I’m lifting your suspension, effective immediately. However, what I said before still applies. I want you to stay away from this investigation. This killer has designs on your wife. You can’t be chasing him down.”

“But—”

“Another word and I’ll suspend you again,” Banko said.

Valentine clamped his mouth shut.

“I’m assigning two detectives to guard your wife until this sicko is caught. I want you back at the casino immediately.”

“What’s going on at the casino?”

“Bill Higgins called last night. A gang of blackjack cheats that stole a million bucks in Las Vegas are now in Atlantic City. Bill said you drew a bead on them.”

Valentine remembered the tape Bill had sent him, and the suspicious woman with the Coke bottle. “That’s right,” he said.

“Bill took the red eye out of Las Vegas last night, and is flying in this morning. I want you to help him nail these people. Think you’re up to it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Welcome back.”

He shook his superior’s hand, and saw him smile. It had been years since he’d seen Banko do that, and he left the office feeling better than he had in a long time.

Chapter 51

“Here we go,” Bill Higgins said a few hours later.

They were standing before the wall of video monitors in Resorts’ surveillance control room. A block of twelve cameras were isolated on a blackjack table with a five thousand dollar limit. Higgins hadn’t slept on the plane and looked like death warmed over.

Valentine studied the blurry images on the monitors. At the blackjack table sat the same two players from the tape Higgins had sent him. Both were in their mid-thirties with sandy brown hair and easy smiles. Cameras were recording them from every conceivable angle. So far, everything looked clean.

“You’re sure they’re cheating,” Valentine asked.

“Trust me,” Higgins said. “It’s a scam.”

Valentine wasn’t convinced the two players could be cheating. They were playing carelessly while flirting with four stewardesses playing at the adjacent table, which had a five hundred dollar limit. Everything looked on the square.

Then, after a few minutes, he saw something he didn’t like. The stewardesses had locked up their table, and were playing all seven hands. That wasn’t normal.

“I smell a rat.”

“You think the stewardesses are involved?” Higgins asked.

“Yes. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many women I’ve seen play multiple hands at blackjack. It’s strictly a guy thing.”

The two players had increased their bets to a thousand dollars a hand, and drawn the pit boss’s attention. At the same time, the dealer at the stewardess’s table began to shuffle, and Valentine saw the dealer’s muscles grow taut beneath his ruffled tuxedo shirt.

“You see that?” he asked.

Higgins stared blankly at the monitor. “See what?”

“The tell. The dealer at the stewardess’s table is doing sleight-of-hand. That shuffle isn’t real.”

“I’m not seeing it.”

“There’s nothing to see. He’s a mechanic. But look how tensed up his shoulders are. His adrenalin is racing. He’s working.”

“You sure?”

Valentine nodded. Izzie Hirsch had taught him this trick. Mechanics often gave away their moves through awkward body language. They watched the dealer finish his false shuffle, then offer the cards to be cut. One of the stewardesses picked up the laminated plastic cut card. She stuck it into the deck.

“I saw that,” Higgins said.

So did Valentine. The stewardess had stuck the cut card in a brief in the deck caused by a piece of rubber band placed there by the dealer. Hustlers called it a “lug.” The dealer finished the cut, and fitted the cards into the plastic shoe used for dealing. Then the stewardesses began to stall. One threw a wad of small bills on the table, and requested more chips. The dealer slowly counted the money, then killed more time converting the money into chips.

“What are they doing?” Higgins said.

Valentine wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t stop staring at the woman with the Coke bottle standing behind the table. He crossed the room to a raised platform where Doyle sat at the master console into which all the casino’s surveillance cameras sent their pictures. “I need you to rewind this tape we’re watching,” he said.

“How far back?” Doyle asked.

“Five minutes.”

Doyle sent the film back in time, then hit play. Valentine went to the wall and brought his face up close enough to kiss the image of the woman with the Coke bottle. Her lips were moving, and he found himself smiling.

“She’s talking into the bottle,” Valentine said.

“Must have a mini-transmitter,” Higgins said.

The wall had dozens of different feeds. Valentine found the monitor which watched the parking lot. Parked in a handicap spot next to the building was a white van with large, moose ear antenna on the roof. The woman with the Coke bottle was talking to someone inside the van.

“Put us back to real time,” he told Doyle.

The monitors returned to real time. The four stewardesses were still stalling. Then, one of the women looked at her watch, and made a Can you believe the time? face, and left the table. Two of her friends quickly followed. The one remaining stewardess looked lonely. Seeing her dilemma, the two players at the adjacent table got out of their seats, and joined her at the lower limit table.

“Here it comes,” Valentine said.

“Here what comes?” Higgins asked.

“They’re going to ask the pit boss to raise the table limit.”

The two players did just that. The pit boss agreed, and the limit was raised to five thousand dollars a hand. A cocktail waitress appeared with a tray of drinks. As she served the gamblers, Valentine saw her hand one his drink, then his napkin, instead of handing the two together.

“Waitress is involved,” he said.

“She is?” Higgins said.

“She didn’t want the napkin to get wet.”

“Why not?”

“Something’s written on it.”

They watched the players place five thousand dollar bets in each of the seven betting circles. Valentine went to the console, picked up the house phone and called the floor. The head of security picked up. “Get ready to arrest these two jokers.”

“My pleasure,” the head of security said.

Valentine hung up. “It’s a cooler, Bill.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. The woman with the Coke bottle reads the cards coming out of the shoe to a guy sitting in a van who inputs them into a computer. The computer crunches the numbers, and spits out how to play the cards in the same order so the dealer always loses. Meanwhile, the dealer false-shuffles the cards, insuring they’ll come out in that order. The guy in the van writes down the computer’s instructions on a napkin, and hands the napkin to a runner. The runner brings the napkin into the casino, hands it to the cocktail waitress, who passes it off to the players. The gamblers draw cards based upon what the instructions on the napkin says.”

“You figured all that out just now?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he admitted.

The head of security called back. “Ready when you are.”

The two players were already up seventy grand. The napkin was positioned between them. Valentine didn’t want a drink poured on it. He told the head of security what he wanted done.

“They won’t know what hit them,” the head of security said.

A half-hour later, Valentine, Doyle and Higgins were in Valentine’s office, toasting their good fortune. Not a single member of the gang had managed to get off the property. Handcuffed, they now sat in a holding room in the basement, waiting for a police van to take them to the station. The cocktail waitress was already showing signs of cracking.

“You boys learned the business fast,” Higgins said.

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” Valentine replied.

There was a return flight to Las Vegas that afternoon that Higgins wanted to catch, and when their drinks were gone, Higgins said he needed to run, and shook Valentine and Doyle’s hands, then departed. Doyle followed him out, and Valentine shut the door behind them, then sat at his desk and removed an Incident Activity Report from the drawer. Fitting the report into his typewriter, he started to write up what had happened, when his phone rang. It was Higgins, calling from the lobby.

“I need to discuss something with you in private,” Higgins said.

Valentine sensed something was up. “I’ll be right down.”

He met up with Higgins by the front entrance, and they went outside. Resorts’ valet was notoriously slow, and while they waited for Higgins’ rental to come out, his friend from Las Vegas explained what was on his mind.

“You’ve got grift sense, Tony. I saw it the first time I met you. You see things that nobody else sees. We could use you out in Las Vegas. I’ve got an opening in my department for a senior agent that I’d like you to consider. We’ll pay for you to relocate.”

Valentine was dumbstruck. It hadn’t been that long ago that Higgins had been teaching him the ropes, and it didn’t seem real that he’d now be offering him a job.

“What kind of money are you talking about?”

Higgins told him. The salary was twice what he was making, plus benefits. It was enough for he and Lois to stop skimping, and start saving for retirement. He’d been poor his entire life, which was why the words that came out of his mouth shocked even him.

“No thanks.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. It’s a generous offer, but I’m going to stay put.”

“Mind my asking why?”

Some answers were hard to put into words. Valentine guessed it had to do with his upbringing. He could still remember when Atlantic City had been the greatest place in the world to live, and he secretly longed for the day when the magic would return. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but sometimes those were the things that kept people going.

“This is home,” he explained.

Higgins smiled like he understood. His rental came up, and they shook hands. A few moments later he was gone, and Valentine went back to work.

Chapter 52

Back in his office, Valentine called Lois. Normally, catching a gang of cheaters left him feeling elated, only he couldn’t stop thinking about the anguish she’d experienced that morning. He caught her in the kitchen, fixing a casserole, and learned that a pair of detectives were parked on the couch in their living room, watching TV. Everything sounded fine, only there was an edge to his wife’s tone that didn’t sound right.

“You sure everything’s okay?” he asked.

Lois dropped her voice. “I got a call from Dick Henry at Gerry’s school. He needs to speak with you. I told him you were at the casino. He said he was going to drive over.”

“When was this?”

“Fifteen minutes ago.”

“Where’s Gerry?”

“In the basement. I pulled him out of school this morning, just to be safe.”

“Do you think Gerry’s in trouble?”

His wife’s voice dropped even lower. “God, Tony, I hope not.”

He started to hang up, then said, “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

Lois took a few moments to find the words. “I keep wondering why the killer didn’t come after me, instead of prostitutes. He’s fixated on me, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t he just kidnap me, and be done with it?”

Valentine had wrestled with that question himself. He had a feeling that all the times he’d told guys to stop staring at Lois had something to do with it. That, and the fact that he was a cop.

“Maybe he was afraid to,” he said.

“Because of you?”

“That would my guess.”

“So you’ve been protecting me all this time, and we didn’t even know it.”

“Probably.”

“My hero,” she said softly.

He told his wife he loved her, and hung up. On his desk sat a video monitor, and he punched a command into the keyboard that was wired to it. On the monitor’s screen appeared the hotel’s valet stand, with a long line of cars waiting outside. He searched the drivers’ faces, and Dick Henry’s blow-dried hair popped up. He grabbed his overcoat and headed for the door.

Dick Henry’s car was at the front of the line when he walked out the front doors a minute later. Dick drove a souped-up red Corvette with a rag top, and Valentine jerked open the passenger door. “Looking for me?”

The principal of Gerry’s high school nodded, and Valentine hopped in. The car’s interior was in immaculate condition, and he said, “What year?”

“Nineteen sixty-six.”

“All original parts?”

Dick nodded and pulled away from the curb. He drove a few blocks south of the casino, then slowed down to avoid the gaping pot holes in the street. With all the money the state was making off the casino they still couldn’t fill the damn pot holes.

“I need your help,” Dick said.

“Doing what?”

“There’s a grocery bag in the back seat. Open it up.”

Valentine took the paper shopping bag off the back seat and peeked inside. It was filled with decks of playing cards and dice. He took the items out of the bag, and gave them a cursory examination. The cards were amateurishly marked, the dice either loaded or shaved. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve got gambling rings at your school again.”

Dick let out an exasperated breath. “We can’t seem to stop these kids. This stuff we confiscated this morning, along with a thousand dollars cash.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“I know it is. It has me worried. I feel like I’m dealing with real criminals.”

“Was my son involved?”

“With this? No.”

Valentine felt relieved and stared at the road. “What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve been told there is a magic shop in town which is selling this stuff to the kids. I don’t want to cause the owner trouble, but this has to stop.”

“Uncle Al’s.”

“You know him?”

“Yeah. He’s a decent guy, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“So you’ll talk to him.”

“Consider it done. Now, let me ask you a question. You said Gerry wasn’t involved with this. What is my son doing?”

Dick braked at a red light. The Corvette’s engine sounded powerful, and the car vibrated when it wasn’t moving, like an animal shaking its cage. He tapped his fingers on the wheel, as if contemplating his answer. “Your son is hanging out with a gang of older boys who are bookies.”

“What?”

“I can’t prove he’s doing anything wrong—”

“Real bookies?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

Dick stared at a drunk crossing the street in front of them. “The boys patterned their operation after the teacher’s football pool.” The light changed, and he put the Corvette into drive, and the car jumped forward as it let out of its cage.

“And you were afraid that if you nailed them, the kids would rat on the teachers.”

“Something like that.”

Valentine wanted to drag Dick out of the car, and mess up his blow dried hair. Gerry was thirteen years stupid; it was easy to imagine the negative influence kids who were running a bookmaking operation would have on him. By doing nothing, Dick had harmed his son. They were five blocks from the casino. Valentine didn’t want to be around this creep for another minute, and at the next light he hopped out, taking the bag of crooked cards and dice with him. Before he shut the door, he stuck his head into the car.

“Look at me,” he said.

Dick was staring straight ahead. He turned slowly, and their eyes met. The corners of his eyes were pinched, and he looked more than a little frightened. Valentine had heard that Dick’s wife had run off to Arizona with a plastic surgeon, which he guessed explained the car, but not the other stupid things Dick had done.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Valentine said.

Then he walked away.

Chapter 53

Valentine quit work at six, and drove straight to Uncle Al’s magic shop. Through the garish front window he spied the old magician sitting behind the counter, eating a giant pastrami sandwich while slugging down a cream soda. Seeing him, Uncle Al hopped off his stool, and unlocked the front door.

“How’s the cops and robbers business?” the old magician asked.

Valentine shut the door behind him. He saw no reason to beat around the bush, and took the paper bag he was carrying, and dumped its contents onto the counter.

“Recognize these?”

Uncle Al got behind the counter and climbed onto his stool. On the plate next to his sandwich were two enormous dill pickles. He stuck one in his mouth and bit into it, causing water to spit out the other end.

“Want the other?” he asked.

Valentine stuck the second pickle into his mouth. Once, as part of a promotion, giant pickles had been given away for free on the Boardwalk for an entire summer. Everyone in Atlantic City had been eating pickles ever since.

“Those cards and dice mine?” Uncle Al asked.

“Afraid so.”

“Where did they turn up?”

“Over at the high school, along with a thousand bucks.”

Uncle Al’s eyes grew wide behind his thick glasses. “That’s a lot of money. I guess I should have stopped selling this stuff when you asked me before.”

“Yes, you should have.”

“You going to throw me in the pokey?”

Valentine gave him a hard look. No judge in town was going to do anything but give Uncle Al a slap on the wrist. “I don’t know. Are you going to pull these items off your shelves?”

“Yeah, I’ll pull them,” Uncle Al said. “I’m sorry I didn’t before. There’s a lot of neat magic tricks you can do with this stuff.”

“I’m sure there are. I want you to explain something to me.”

The old magician said sure, and Valentine removed a deck of cards from pile, took them out of their box, and spread them faceup on the counter. “This deck was sealed in a box. When I unwrapped the box and took the cards out, I discovered they weren’t in new deck order. They were all mixed up.”

“This the order you found them in?”

“Yes.”

Uncle Al looked through the cards. “Were there advertising cards and jokers in the box?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“It’s called a cold deck,” Uncle Al said. “The cheater takes a brand new deck and slits the plastic with a knife. The plastic is removed, and then the seal is steamed off the box. The deck is removed and stacked for a game of poker. The cheater picks a game where there’s a lot of betting, like seven card stud. The cheater puts the cards back in the box along with the advertising cards and jokers. He glues the seal, slips on the plastic wrap, and tapes the tear. Viola! A cold deck.”

“How is it brought into play?”

“That’s the clever part. It’s used when the players aren’t paying attention. The cheater’s partner spills a drink, and ruins the cards. That’s when the cheater brings in the cold deck. He false-shuffles them, then let’s his partner false cut them.”

“Isn’t that risky?”

“If it’s late in the game, it’s not such a big deal.”

“These are pretty sophisticated kids, huh?” Valentine asked.

“Pros.”

Uncle Al picked up his pastrami sandwich and bit into it. Valentine dropped the marked cards and crooked dice into the bag, and realized what the old magician had just told him. These kids were real criminals, just like the bookies his son was hanging around with. The kids were being influenced by all the gambling at the casino. He needed to sit down with Gerry, and get his son straightened out, or risk real problems later on. Looking around the store, he said, “Do you have any new tricks? I need something to show my son.”

Uncle Al put down his sandwich. It was held together with toothpicks and looked like it weighed a pound. “Did I ever show you the vanishing cigarette?”

“No.”

“Greatest trick ever invented.”

“Is it hard to learn?”

“A five year old can do it, with ten years of practice.” Uncle Al took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his pocket, removed one, and fired it up. He handed the cigarette to Valentine.

“Look normal?”

Valentine examined the burning cigarette. “Yes.”

Reaching above his head, Uncle Al plucked a beautiful red scarf out of thin air. He held it by the corners, and displayed both sides. “Watch the professor,” he said. Draping the scarf over his left fist, he made a well in the material with his right thumb. Taking the lit cigarette, he placed it into the well, lit end first. Smoke poured out of the scarf.

“You’ll ruin it,” Valentine said.

“A common misconception,” Uncle Al said. “Sim... Sala... Bim!”

Grasping a corner, Uncle Al shook the scarf out with a flourish. The material was undamaged, the cigarette gone. He smiled triumphantly.

“How did you do that?” Valentine asked.

“Ten bucks and the secret is yours.”

Valentine pulled out his wallet and discovered he had nine bucks to his name. Going outside, he found a dollar in change in the glove compartment of his car, and returned to the store and paid up. Uncle Al rang up the sale, then made Valentine stick out his hands. He examined his thumbs and said, “You’re right-handed, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Valentine said.

“Good. Now watch.”

Uncle Al grasped his own right thumb with his left fingers, and pulled it clean off. Then he dropped his thumb onto the counter. Valentine stared in disbelief. The thumb lying on the counter was hollow and made from flesh-colored plastic. It looked so real that it first glance, it was a little scary. Stuck inside of it was the vanished cigarette. Uncle Al removed the vanished cigarette, then stuck the device onto Valentine’s thumb. It fit perfectly.

“Get it?” he said.

Chapter 54

It was called a thumb tip, and had been used by magicians for centuries. The key to wearing one, Uncle Al said, was for the magician to forget he had it on.

Valentine sat behind the wheel of his car and played with the thumb tip he’d just bought, wondering if this was what Sissy had seen in the glove compartment of the Dresser’s car. It was not far-fetched to think that the Dresser might have used magic tricks to get his victims to drop their guard. He had read in the newspaper about a serial killer named John Wayne Gacy who was a magician. Gacy liked to pick up runaway boys, and show them how he could escape from a pair of handcuffs. When the boy would try the cuff on, Gacy would strangle him. He had killed thirty kids that way.

But maybe Sissy had seen something else in the Dresser’s glove compartment. Now that she’d left town, there was no way of knowing, and in frustration he backed out of his parking space. Driving away, it suddenly occurred to him that he was wrong. There was a way of finding out, and it was a phone call away.

He returned to the lot and searched for some change. He’d tapped himself out, and finally found a dime under the floor mat. He called his house from a payphone.

“Better hurry. Dinner’s in the oven,” Lois said.

“I need to ask you a question about the Summer of Love,” he said.

“Tony, I’m trying to forget about that.”

“I’m sorry, but this is important.”

“Can it wait until you’re home, after dinner?”

“No.” The line went silent, and he said, “I think I’m onto something.”

“Oh, all right, go ahead.”

“The three guys whose dressing room was next to yours. You said one was a juggler, the other a comedian. You said the third had a funny name, but you couldn’t remember what his act was.”

“That’s right,” Lois said.

“Could he have been a magician?”

There was a short silence as his wife gave it some thought.

“You know, I think he was,” Lois said.

Valentine broke the speed limit driving to the station house, and did double-time up the two flights of stairs to Banko’s office on the third floor. It got his heart going in a way that reminded him why he liked his job. Sabina was still at her desk, and informed him that Special Agents Fuller and Romero were in the next room, plus four homicide detectives who Banko had brought in to work the case.

“They’re not to be disturbed,” Sabina cautioned him.

“Did they find the killer?”

“No, but I think they’re getting closer.”

There was a look of hope in her eyes. He was about to make their job a lot easier, and he said, “Why don’t you go to the cafeteria and get a drink. That way, it will look like I barged in when you weren’t here.”

“You’re going to disturb them?” she said disbelievingly.

“Afraid so.”

“But Banko will fire you.”

“I’m willing to take my chances.”

“Tony, please don’t do that.”

It sounded like something his wife would say. Sabina looked into his eyes and saw she was dealing with a lost cause. She grabbed her purse off the desk.

“Good luck.”

He waited until she was gone, then entered Banko’s office without bothering to knock. The room was choking with cigarette smoke and foul body odor. Seven men were huddled over Banko’s desk, reviewing a map of the island and a long suspect list. Next to the list was a picture of Mona. Romero and Fuller glanced up from the map, and looked embarrassed to see him. Banko came around the desk, looking mad as hell.

“What are you doing here, Valentine?”

“I need to talk to you,” Valentine said.

Banko was surprisingly fast for a large man. He pushed Valentine toward the door, then put his hand on the knob, and jerked it open. “Go home.”

“No.”

“Tony, for once in your life, listen to me. You’ll be in trouble if you don’t.”

“Give me a chance.”

Banko grimaced.

“I deserve a chance.”

Banko pointed at the open doorway.

“Sir,” he added.

“Jesus Christ,” Banko said under his breath. “Say it.”

Valentine produced a sheet of paper from his pocket, and unfolded it. Uncle Al had given him the names of twelve magicians who lived in the Atlantic City area who’d been performing for over twenty years. He handed the list to his superior.

“The Dresser is one of the guys on this list,” he said.

Banko snatched the sheet out of his hand, his eyes racing down the page.

“You’re absolutely positive about this?”

“He’s a magician. I called Lois, and she confirmed it.”

The rage melted from Banko’s face. He grabbed Valentine by the sleeve, and pulled him over to the desk where the others were huddled.

“You guys need to hear this,” Banko said.

Chapter 55

All twelve magicians on Uncle Al’s list were listed in the Yellow Pages. The list was copied down and Xeroxed, then divided into three groups, which were split between Fuller and Romero, and the other two pairs of detectives. The men left, and Banko gave Valentine a fatherly slap on the shoulder.

“This is a nice piece of detective work. Good going.”

“Guess I haven’t lost my street smarts,” Valentine said.

Banko gave him the slow burn. “Giving you the casino job still stings, doesn’t it?”

“Did I say that?”

“I was born late, but not late last night.”

“Yes, it still stings,” Valentine admitted.

“Do you know why I put you in the casino?”

“Because I got shot, and you didn’t think I was fit for the street.”

“You’ve always been fit for the street.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t be corrupted by all that money,” Banko said. “I needed the squarest guy in Atlantic City to run that place, and you were the best choice.”

Sabina popped her head in. “Still got a job?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” Valentine said.

Sabina looked to her boss for assurance.

“Yes,” Banko said.

She said goodnight and left. Banko picked up one of the Xeroxed lists, and handed it to Valentine. “Make yourself useful, and run a background check on these suspects.”

“Does that mean I’m now working the case?”

“Don’t be a wise ass,” Banko said.

Valentine then went downstairs to the records room, and began looking through the files of men who’d been arrested in Atlantic City over the past twenty years. There were several thousand names, with many not in proper alphabetical order. He had heard that one day, all of the department’s records would be computerized, whatever the hell that meant. In the meantime, every search had to be painstakingly done by hand.

It took an hour and a half to see if any of the twelve suspects had ever been arrested. Of the group, three of the men had criminal records.

The first was Lester Clay, aka The Amazing Foodini. Lester had been arrested for carping checks, and done hard time in Rahway State Penitentiary. Valentine found his parole officer’s name on the sheet, and called him at home. From the officer he learned that Lester lived alone, and had few friends. The parole officer had called Lester a social misanthrope. Valentine hated labels, and said, “What does that mean?”

“He’s a real prick,” the parole officer said.

The second suspect was Martin Hollis — stage name Farky — who’d been arrested for sticking a frozen pepperoni pizza down his pants in the A&P supermarket. Farky had been in his magic costume — top hat, tails, and a walking cane — and acted like he didn’t know where the stolen food had come from when the arresting officer had pulled it from his pants. The arresting officer had not been amused. Hollis’s crime was not considered serious, and he’d been released with a warning.

Johnny Martin — Martin the Magic Man — was the third suspect to run afoul of the law. Johnny had pulled his car up to a street corner one night, and solicited a policewoman posing as a prostitute. The Magic Man had also been wearing his magic costume — a pink bunny outfit with a Styrofoam tail and floppy ears — and had been legally drunk. Martin had wisely thrown himself upon the mercy of the court, and was currently on parole. Valentine called his parole officer as well, and got no answer.

Going upstairs to Banko’s office, he handed his superior the three men’s files, and told him what he’d learned.

“Think it’s one of them?” Banko asked.

“I do.”

“Tell me why.”

“Most killers run afoul of the law at least once. You ought to haul them in.”

Picking up his phone, Banko called Marlene the dispatcher, who sat in a room on the first floor, and instructed her to contact the men in the field, and have them call in. Hanging up, he said, “I’m feeling good about this. How about you?”

“I just hope we’re not too late.”

“You mean to save Mona.”

Valentine nodded. He had not forgotten about Mona, even though he knew it was probably too late to save her. He imagined sharing a cup of coffee with her again, and hearing her rasp over a cigarette while trading one-liners.

“Keep the faith,” Banko said.

The office suddenly went dark. Valentine instinctively reached into his jacket, and drew his.snub-nosed 38 from his shoulder harness. He heard Banko get up and cross the room. The sergeant turned the lights on, then stared at his gun.

“You still using that old thing?” Banko asked.

“I like my .38,” Valentine said.

“You and Jack Webb on Dragnet. You know he upgraded to a .45.”

“You’re kidding. When?”

“Start of the fall season. Someone on the LAPD told him the department was changing, so he did to.”

“What’s with the lights?”

“President Carter’s orders,” Banko explained. “Buildings go dark every night. Don’t want to be too dependant on foreign oil.”

Valentine put his gun back into its harness They didn’t turn the lights off at the casino, he thought. A line on Banko’s phone lit up, and the sergeant snatched up the receiver, then put the caller on speaker phone. It was Romero, calling from a noisy bar. Banko told him about the three magicians with police records.

“We need to haul them in,” Banko said.

“We’ve already spoken to Hollis,” Romero said. “He’s definitely not the one.”

Of the three magician’s with records, Hollis was the only one who’d tried to talk his way out of it. That was what criminals always did.

“Why do you say that?” Valentine said to the box.

“Hollis invited us inside his house, and let us look around,” Romero replied. “He’s a little nutty, but harmless.”

“He let you look around?” Valentine said to the box.

“That’s right. Why?”

“That’s not normal.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s not a normal reaction from a person who’s been arrested before. He’s challenging you.”

“Look. We talked with him. The guy’s harmless.”

Valentine didn’t think so. Their killer knew how to appear harmless; that was why hookers felt so comfortable around him. That was his power. He grabbed Hollis’s record off the desk, and found his address in Chelsea Heights. To Banko, he said, “Hollis is the one.”

“You’re sure about this,” his superior said.

“One hundred percent.”

“We’re leaving right now,” Banko said to the box. “Meet us at Hollis’s house.”

Chapter 56

Banko drove with the siren screaming on the dashboard, then killed the siren two blocks from Hollis’s address, and crept up the street. It was a quiet neighborhood, and as they parked several houses away from Hollis’s, a dog started to bark.

They found Romero and Fuller standing on the sidewalk, shivering from the cold. Both men looked annoyed; Hollis had done a good job convincing them he wasn’t a killer. “You’re making a mistake,” Fuller said. “Hollis isn’t the Dresser.”

“Yes, he is,” Valentine said.

“How can you know? You haven’t even spoken to him.”

Valentine didn’t need to talk to Hollis to know he was right. His gut was telling him that Hollis was the Dresser, and his gut was never wrong. He was not about to back down.

“Bet you a hundred bucks,” Valentine said.

“You’re on,” Fuller said.

The four men started up the path toward Hollis’s residence. The house was a two-story square box that looked like a piece from a Monopoly game, with blinds drawn tightly on the windows, and old newspapers lying on the stoop. Fuller knocked on the screen door with his fist. The porch light came on, and they heard footsteps.

“Be careful. He’s got a grudge against Valentine,” Banko warned.

The front door swung in, and Hollis stood on the other side of the screen. In his late thirties, he was balding, with a pug face and deep, sunken eyes. Dressed in running shorts and a gray sweatshirt, he appeared to have been working out. Valentine stared at him through the FBI agents’ shoulders.

“Sorry to bother you again, Mister Hollis, but we forgot to ask you a couple of things,” Fuller said. “May we come in?”

“Can’t this wait until tomorrow? I’m going to bed,” Hollis said.

“Afraid not.”

“Who are those men standing behind you?”

“Two officers with the Atlantic City Police Department.”

“Do they have names?”

“Why is that important?”

“I just like to know who I’m letting into my home.”

Hollis was stalling. Inside the house, Iron Butterfly’s psychedelic rock song In-a-gadda-da-vida was playing loudly on a stereo, and sweet incense was burning. Every serial killer had a ritual, and Valentine guessed that Hollis’s ritual was to recreate The Summer of Love.

“Mona’s in the house,” he blurted out.

Hollis’s eyes grew wide. Fuller jerked the screen door open, and he and Romero rushed in. They pinned Hollis to a wall in the foyer, and ordered him not to move.

“You’re under arrest,” Fuller told him.

Fuller read Hollis his rights, while Romero cuffed their suspect. Valentine and Banko followed them inside. Seeing Valentine, Hollis suddenly looked afraid.

“Valentine,” he muttered.

“Where is she?” Valentine said.

Hollis said nothing. The interior of the house was chilly, yet Hollis was sweating. Most old houses on the island had faulty heating, and he guessed Mona was either in the basement, or the attic. He decided to give Hollis a chance to come clean.

“You left a thumb tip in the glove compartment of your car,” Valentine said. “A hooker you picked up last week saw it. The game’s over. We know who you are.”

Hollis looked baffled. Then, his shoulders sagged.

“Fuck me,” he muttered.

“Is Mona still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Take us to her.”

“Okay.”

Hollis stepped down into the living room with the two FBI agents behind him. Their suspect dropped his arms, and there was a harsh popping sound as he dislocated his wrists. The handcuffs slid free and hit the floor. Reaching into his shorts, he extracted a can of pepper spray, and spun around.

“Fuckers!”

The pepper spray hit Fuller first, then Romero and Banko. It gave Valentine enough time to raise his forearm, and partially protect his face. His eyes filled with tears, and he watched helplessly as Hollis kicked Banko viciously in the groin, then shoved the FBI agents into each other, and sent them to the floor.

Then, Hollis turned on Valentine.

“Ready to rumble, Tony?” he screamed.

Hollis had turned into a raving psychopath in the blink of an eye. He grabbed a metal lamp off a table and smacked Valentine in the side of the head, then hit him in the shoulders and arms. He was laughing now, and seemed to be enjoying himself.

Valentine hadn’t come here to die. He threw a lazy punch at his attacker’s face. Hollis ducked the blow, but not the elbow that came with it. Boxers called it throwing a chicken wing, and it was the dirtiest trick Valentine knew.

Hollis’s head snapped back, and he hit the floor. Valentine got on top of him, and started throwing punches of his own. He would have continued had Banko not stepped in. “Jesus, Tony, you’ll kill him.”

“Is that so bad?”

“How did he slip the cuffs?”

“It’s a magic trick.”

Valentine grabbed Hollis by the collar and lifted his head. With his other hand, he pulled back one of his eyelids. Hollis was out cold.

“Damn it,” Valentine said.

It took Fuller and Romero a few moments to pull themselves together. When they had, and Hollis was under their control, Valentine and Banko ran through the house, checking the rooms as well as the basement and attic. There was no sign of Mona.

“The garage,” Valentine said.

The garage was a separate structure that stood behind the house. Banko opened the sliding door, and Valentine found a light and turned it on. A florescent bulb lit up the interior, revealing a white AT&T van with a ladder perched on the roof. Valentine grabbed the handle on the van’s rear door and jerked it open. Empty.

“Jesus,” Banko swore. “Look at this.”

Banko faced a wall lined with dozens of apothecary jars. From each jar stared out a pair of helpless eyes. Squirrels and rabbits and cats were swimming lifelessly in formaldehyde. Some people collected stamps. Hollis collected dead animals.

They returned to the house. Every room had been ice cold. So why was Hollis sweating? Valentine took another walk through the downstairs. The rooms were laid out in a circular design. If it was a circle, then where was its center?

He checked the closets, and banged on the interior wall. The closet in the den sounded hollow, and appeared to be made of particle board.

“In here,” he shouted.

Banko joined him. With their combined weight, they took down the wall. If fell inward, and they entered a small, dimly lit space that was twenty degrees warmer than the rest of the house. Mona hung by her wrists from a meat hook in the ceiling, her mouth covered in duct tape, her face a deathly blue.

“Help me get her down,” Valentine said.

He gave her mouth to mouth until an ambulance arrived, and a pair of medics went to work on her. She’d always joked about them getting together one day. Not like this, he thought. He leaned against the wall and watched the medics try to jolt her heart back to life. It wasn’t working.

He shuddered. It was what passed for tears after he’d been a cop for a while. He realized he needed to sit down. There was a chair against the wall, and as he sat in it, he noticed a plate of hot dog and beans lying on the floor beside it. Had Hollis been eating his dinner as Mona had starved to death? He couldn’t think of anything more cruel.

A small desk sat in the room’s corner, on it an open shoe box. He thumbed through snapshots of Mary Ann Crawford, Melissa Edwards, Connie Howard and Maria Sanchez that showed them gradually starving to death. The last envelope contained snapshots of a naked man lying atop a naked woman tied to a bed. The woman did not look thrilled with the situation. The man in the photos was Special Agent Fuller. Now he knew why Fuller had run out of town; Hollis had the goods on him.

Valentine glanced at the medics. They were still working on Mona, and paying no attention to him. He shoved the incriminating photographs of Fuller into his pocket, then walked out of Hollis’s lair. In the living room he found Banko talking to a couple of uniforms. His superior took him aside and said, “How’s she doing?”

“Not good,” Valentine said.

“I’m sorry. I know you cared about her.”

“Thanks.”

Through the living room window appeared the blinking lights of several police cruisers, as well as the shadows of uniformed cops standing on the front lawn. Valentine went outside, and found Hollis sitting in the back of a cruiser, his wrists handcuffed behind him, his face stained by his own blood. Their eyes met, and Hollis gnashed his teeth, trying to make himself frightening. Only he wasn’t; he was just a pathetic little man. Valentine put his face to the window. “Will you tell me something?”

Hollis stopped gnashing. “What?”

“Why did you kill those girls? It was my wife you wanted.”

Hollis brought his face to the window. “I fell in love with your wife the first day I met her. You’ve always stood in my way, protecting her like a guard dog. I considered killing you, but never had the courage. So I killed those hookers instead.”

“But why? They didn’t hurt you.”

“I had to have your wife, even if it meant dressing those girls up, and imagining her. Do you understand? I had to have Lois Fabio for my own.”

“You’re sick.”

“I loved her!” Hollis screamed.

Valentine heard someone say his name, and glanced over his shoulder to see Fuller standing on the front path, smoking a cigarette. The FBI agent had a strange look on his face, and Valentine approached him wondering what was on his mind.

“Looks like I owe you a hundred bucks,” Fuller said.

“You owe me more than that.”

“How’s that?”

Valentine took the incriminating photographs from his pocket, and handed them to him. The cigarette fell from Fuller’s lips. He tried to speak, but could not find the words. Valentine said it for him.

“Deep down, I think you’re a good guy. But you’re going to have to prove it.”

Ashamed, Fuller stared at the ground.

“Not to me, but to your partner. You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“Good. It’s been nice knowing you.”

Valentine went back inside to Hollis’s lair. The medics were bringing Mona out on a stretcher, and had an oxygen mask over her face. He saw her look up at him through half-shut eyes, and grabbed her hand.

“Mona. You’re alive.”

Mona said something through her mask, and managed to smile. Valentine couldn’t believe it. She’d been dead five minutes ago, and he looked at the medics for help.

“What happened?”

“One of the cops came in, and started praying for her,” one of the medics explained. “After a couple of minutes, her heart started beating again. Don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t.”

Valentine didn’t need an explanation; seeing Mona alive was enough. She was trying to say something, and he leaned down, and put his ear next to her mask.

“I need a cigarette,” she rasped.

“Later,” he told her.

He watched them carry Mona out before going in. Romero stood at the desk looking at the photos of Hollis’s victims. He remembered Romero saying how he wanted to save a life someday, to atone for his lost girlfriend. God had been kind to him.

“You got your wish,” Valentine said.

Romero turned around. His eyes were filled with tears, and he nodded solemnly.

“God works in strange ways,” the FBI agent said.

Chapter 57

If anything good had come from the arrest, it was that Lois was finally safe. Going into the kitchen, Valentine found a phone, and dialed his house. “We got him,” he told his wife. “Guy named Farky Hollis. He had a big crush on you, if you can call it that.”

“You’re sure he’s the killer?” Lois asked. “I mean, there were a lot of boys — ”

“Trust me,” Valentine said. “He’s the one.”

“What about the prostitute he picked up?”

“We saved her. She’s going to be okay.”

“That’s so wonderful.” She paused, then said, “Is it okay if I tell the detectives watching me the news? I’m sure they’d like to go home, and be with their families tonight.”

“I don’t see why not,” Valentine said.

“Will you be home soon?”

“Another hour or two.”

“I’ll stay up. Thank you for keeping your promise to me. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Valentine said goodbye and hung up. He heard someone coming up from the basement. Banko appeared at the top of the steps looking shaken. His superior went to the sink and let cold water run, then splashed it repeatedly in his face.

“Something wrong?” Valentine asked.

Banko indicated the basement stairs. “Down there. He wasn’t just into women.”

The basement stairs were old and creaky, and Valentine descended while clutching the wood railing. At the bottom, he found himself in a large, finished room used to house Hollis’s vast collection of magic equipment. There was more stuff than Uncle Al’s store, and he saw several rows of folding chairs facing a makeshift plywood stage on the other side of the room, and guessed that Hollis had put on shows for the neighborhood kids.

A uniformed cop stood on the stage next to a large trunk. The trunk was covered with stickers from faraway places like Singapore and China. It looked like a prop, only the uniform’s ashen face said otherwise. Valentine climbed onto the stage.

“This is sick,” the uniform said.

“What’s sick?” Valentine asked.

“See for yourself.”

The uniform flipped back the trunk’s lid, and Valentine stared inside. His heart skipped a beat. A little boy lay face-down in the bottom of the trunk. The child was small, with bushy brown hair the texture of cotton candy, and wore a small tuxedo.

“God damn monster,” the uniform said.

Valentine looked at the empty chairs facing the stage. Had Hollis snatched a kid from the audience of one of his shows, and later killed him? It seemed the likely answer, only he couldn’t remember a young child having gone missing in a long time. As the uniform closed the trunk, Valentine noticed a name stenciled on the trunk’s lid. Woody.

“We need to let the medics handle this,” the uniform said.

Valentine flipped the trunk open, and touched the back of the boy’s head. The hair was fake. He grabbed the boy by the collar, and lifted him clean into the air.

Woody was a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Valentine raced up the creaky stairs holding Woody in his arms. The kitchen was empty, and he ran out the front door. The cruiser with Hollis had left. He found Banko standing in the driveway, and shoved Woody into his arms.

“It’s a dummy,” Valentine said.

The horror ebbed from Banko’s face. “Is this what I saw in the basement?”

“Yes. Hollis is a ventriloquist. That’s how I got tricked the other day at the Bijou, when the piano nearly fell on me. You need to alert whoever’s driving that cruiser that Hollis can throw his voice. Otherwise he’ll trick him, just like he tricked me.”

Banko climbed into the cruiser. Getting on the radio, he called Marlene, and told her to contact the cruiser, then call him back. Hanging up, he said, “I got fooled by a dummy. God, I thought I was going to have a stroke.”

The dispatcher called back a few moments later.

“He’s not picking up,” Marlene said.

“Try him again,” Banko said.

“I tried several times. He’s not answering.”

“Has the cruiser come in?”

“No, sir. There’s no sign of him.”

“Keep trying.”

“Yes, sir.”

Banko signed off. He turned to speak to Valentine, and saw that he was gone.

Lois sat at the dining room table grading a stack of history tests when she heard the rock come through the glass in the back door. The detectives assigned to guard her had gone home, and she froze in her chair. The nightmare was over. Tony had said as much. It’s over, she told herself.

Staring through the open doorway to the kitchen, she saw a man’s hand come through the broken pane of glass, and fumble as it tried to unlock the back door. She’d learned a lot of practical things from Tony over the years. The first, and most important, was never to panic. Rising, she went to the head of the stairs, and called to her son. “Gerry, I want you to go to your room, and lock the door. You hear me?”

Her son appeared at the head of the stairs. “What was that noise? What’s going on?”

“Go to your room.”

“But—”

“Now!”

She heard Gerry’s door slam. Then the back door banged open. She calmly crossed the room, and removed the Smith & Wesson Model 65 revolver from a shelf in the china cabinet. Tony had given the gun to her one Christmas, and taken her to a firing range and taught her how to shoot. It was a hefty, solid piece of steel. Equipped with a speed-loader, it was capable of popping all six rounds at once.

Two men entered the kitchen, and staggered towards her. The first was a baby-faced cop, the second a smaller man with a bloody face, who pressed a handgun to the cop’s side. Holding the Model 65 with both hands, Lois aimed at them.

“Stop,” she declared.

“Hello, Lois,” the man with the bloody face said.

“I said stop!”

The two men were inside the living room, and halted.

“Do you remember me?” the bloodied man asked. “My name’s Martin Hollis. Everyone calls me Farky. We met on the Boardwalk many years ago. I was in the Summer of Love show with you.”

Hollis wrapped his free arm around the cop’s neck, and pressed the handgun to his temple. “Put your gun down, or I’ll splatter his brains against your lovely dining room walls.”

“No,” Lois said.

“Do you want me to kill him?”

“He’s a cop. He knows the risks.”

The cop’s eyes went wide.

“I’m sorry,” Lois told him.

“God damn you, I said drop it,” Hollis screamed at her.

“No!”

“Very well.”

Raising his gun, Hollis pointed it at the ceiling, and let off a round.

Lois heard a loud thump on the second floor. She envisioned Gerry taking the bullet and nearly fainted. Hollis pressed the gun’s smoking barrel against the cop’s chin.

“Now, drop your gun,” Hollis said.

“Gerry,” she yelled upstairs, “are you all right?”

“What’s going on,” her son yelled back fearfully.

“What was that sound?”

“I heard a gunshot and dropped my guitar on the floor.”

“Stay in your room. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, mom.”

Hollis nodded at the ceiling. “He’s right above me. I can hear the pitter-patter of his little feet. I’ll shoot him through the floor. Do you want that?”

“No!” Lois exclaimed.

“Then do as I say, and put your gun away.”

Lois started to cry. Tony had told her to never put the gun down when faced with certain danger. But what choice did she have? She slipped the Model 65 back into the china cabinet. As she moved away from the weapon, her husband entered through the back door, gasping for breath. In his hand was his beloved snub-nosed .38.

“Drop the gun, and put your hands in the air,” Tony said.

Hollis glanced over his shoulder, then turned to look at her. “I love you. You realize that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Lois said quietly.

Hollis shoved the young cop into the dining room, then spun around like a gunslinger. Her husband emptied the .38 into him, the bullets tearing through his sweatshirt. Hollis staggered back and stopped a few feet from where Lois stood. He made a face like he was dying. Then, he burst out laughing.

“Fooled you!” Hollis shouted.

He lifted his sweatshirt, and showed Lois the bulletproof vest he’d stolen from the police cruiser. He was a magician, and had tricked them.

“Now, it’s my turn,” Hollis said.

Hollis walked toward the kitchen aiming the weapon at her husband. Tony had run out of bullets, and was helpless. Their eyes met. He mouthed the words I love you to his wife.

Lois did not remember moving toward the china cabinet, or snatching up the Model 65, or the sickening sound it made as she emptied it into the back of Hollis’s head. All she remembered was Tony holding her in his arms a few moments later, and telling her that everything would be all right. Feeling safe was all she’d ever wanted, and she prayed that maybe this time, he was right.

Chapter 58

The hookers eating breakfast at Harold’s House of Pancakes gave Valentine a hero’s welcome the next morning, with plenty of kisses and hugs. He was blushing by the time he slipped into a booth, and a gum-chewing waitress took his order.

Fuller and Romero came in a few minutes later, and sat across from him. Through Banko, he’d learned that the two FBI agents were facing an official reprimand from their bosses for leaving Atlantic City while Hollis was still on the loose. They were both in hot water, and facing uncertain futures.

Normally, Valentine wouldn’t have cared. They had made their beds, and now they had to sleep in them. Only there was unfinished business that needed attending to, and he had decided that Fuller and Romero were the perfect pair to make things right.

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” Valentine said.

Fuller put his elbows on the table. “In case you haven’t heard, we’re screwed.”

“Come to mention it, I did hear that. This could change things.”

Fuller glanced at his partner, then back at him. “Change things how?”

“Make you look good.”

“How the hell are you going to do that?”

“When I got the job to police Resorts’ casino, I thought I was supposed to keep cheaters out. But then I found out something worse was going on. A skim was happening right in front of my nose. A hundred grand a day out the door.”

“Mafia?” Fuller said.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“It’s their speciality.”

“This may be their crown jewel. Resorts makes twenty million a month profit. Fifteen percent of that money is used for comps to lure high rollers. It’s the same formula used in Las Vegas, only we’re not Las Vegas. Las Vegas is in the desert. Atlantic City is a two hour drive for fifty million people. We don’t need to give away anything. Only the auditors don’t realize that.”

“So the mob is stealing comp money,” Romero said.

“That’s right.”

Fuller acted skeptical. “Where’s your proof?”

Valentine removed the Prince’s address book from his pocket along with the write-up of the skim which he’d planned to send to the newspaper. He slid both across the table. “The address book contains the names of the runners. The ringleader is a New York mobster named Vinny Acosta. Every day, a runner goes into the casino, and draws a credit line at the cage for a hundred grand. He plays for a while, then cashes the chips, and leaves with the money. The loss is shown on the books as paying for comps.”

Fuller took his time reading through his notes. Holding the page which described how the loss was being hidden by Resorts’ bookkeeping department, he said, “This reads like a big job.”

“It is,” Valentine said.

Fuller put his elbows on the table, and lowered his voice. “Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. You want the FBI to set up a sting, tail these people, tap their phones, and put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”

“That’s right. Think you can handle it?”

“That’s what we do every day.”

“I know that.”

Fuller leaned closer. Romero leaned in as well.

“So what’s the catch,” Fuller said, sounding skeptical.

“I want you to do it my way,” Valentine said.

A couple of hookers took the table next to theirs, and the three men went outside to the parking lot to finish their conversation.

“My way,” Fuller said. “Isn’t that one of Sinatra’s songs?”

Fuller was trying to be funny, and maybe to an outsider it was funny. A bunch of Mafia goons had come to town, and stolen millions of dollars right in front of everyone’s noses. It sounded like a script for a movie, only the script included too many lives being destroyed. There was nothing funny about any of it.

“Here’s the deal,” Valentine said. “When you make your bust, you’re going to tell the media a story. You happened to be visiting the casino, and spotted Vinny Acosta. Knowing he was mafia, you put a tail on him, and discovered he was up to no good. Everything you learned from that point on came as a result of your own brilliant detective work. The Atlantic City police weren’t involved, and neither was I.”

Romero understood, and nodded his head. Fuller didn’t, and said, “You want to be left out of the picture?”

“Correct.”

“And all the credit goes to us?”

“Right again.”

“Why?”

“Because I live here, you idiot.”

Fuller got it. “That shouldn’t be too hard,” he said.

Valentine had said everything he wanted to say. Fuller and Romero started to thank him, and he waved them off. He hoped he never saw either of them again.

The FBI agents got into their Chevy. Valentine tapped the windshield with his knuckles, and the driver’s window came down.

“How long will the sting take to organize?” Valentine asked.

“These things take time. At least a few months,” Fuller said.

“Call me the day before you make the bust.”

“Will do.”

He stepped away from the car, and they drove away. The wind was blowing hard off the Atlantic and the tip of his nose had gone numb. He’d parked the Pinto next to the building, and he got in and stuck the key into the ignition. The engine rolled over once, then made a sound like a dying animal drawing its last gasp. Cursing, he got out and gave the car a good kick, then went inside the restaurant, and called his wife for a ride.

Chapter 59

“I don’t like it here,” Bernard said, his teeth chattering.

“Neither do I,” Valentine said.

“Can we go soon?”

“Sure. In a few minutes.”

Winter had hung on longer than it was supposed to. Two weeks into March, and there was still six inches of snow covering the ground. Valentine used the broom he’d brought to the cemetery to dust away the snow from the tombstone Bernard thought was his grandfather’s. It wasn’t, and Bernard asked him to try the next tombstone. Valentine did, and uncovered the grave of someone named Johnson.

“This is...” Bernard strained for the right word.

“Futile?”

“Yeah,” the boy said. “Futile.”

“But not a waste of time,” Valentine said.

“I didn’t say that,” Bernard said.

He’d turned eleven the week before and was growing like a weed. During the drive over, he’d told Valentine about the foster home he’d been living in for the past two months. The Polish couple that ran it took in lots of kids, and since he was the oldest, he didn’t get much attention. He hadn’t been complaining, just explaining how things were. Valentine tried another tombstone.

“Here he is,” he said.

Bernard edged up beside him. He stared down at his grandfather’s tombstone, then closed his eyes and stifled a tiny sob. Valentine put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and kept it there until Bernard opened his eyes and wiped his tears away.

“I miss him every day,” Bernard said.

“I know you do,” Valentine said.

“Will I ever stop missing him?”

“No.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. You always miss the people you love.”

They trudged back through the snow to the car. The day was dreary, the sun refusing to come out from behind the blanket of clouds. As they reached the gravel lot, Valentine handed Bernard the car keys. “Go start up the engine, and turn the heater on.”

“You going someplace?”

“Just for a minute,” Valentine assured him.

Bernard said okay and walked away. Valentine retraced his steps, and found the petrified oak tree in the cemetery that was his landmark. He walked carefully around the headstones, then found the spot, and put the broom to work. Soon he was staring at his mother’s tombstone. He shut his eyes and said a prayer. His mother had died when he was twenty-one. As he’d grown older, he’d come to understand the life she’d lived more and more, and he prayed that she would find in heaven the harmony that had escaped her on this earth. Opening his eyes, he took a handful of rose petals from his pocket, and sprinkled them on her grave.

He found Bernard sitting behind the wheel of the running car, pretending to drive. He made him slide over, then got in. The cemetery was located in an area called Pleasantville, and he drove east on the causeway back to Atlantic City. Soon they were on the island, and heading south.

“How far?” Bernard asked after a few minutes.

“A couple of more blocks and we’ll be there,” Valentine said.

“I’m scared.”

“You want me to pull over?”

“Yeah,” the boy said.

The car’s tires kissed the curb. Valentine had expected this, and he turned and faced his passenger. Bernard’s face was drawn, and he looked more frightened than an eleven-year-old kid needed to be.

“What if it doesn’t work out?” Bernard asked.

“It will work out,” Valentine said.

“Yeah, but what if it doesn’t? What if they hate me?”

“They won’t hate you.”

“It can happen. Or I can hate them.”

“You still have to try.”

“Why?”

Valentine looked through the windshield at the road in front of them. At the next block, it forked into two roads. Pointing, he said, “All you get in life are choices, Bernard. Which road should I go down? Which will get me where I want to go? You take the information you have, and make your choice.”

Bernard looked annoyed, like he was expecting something more profound.

“You’re saying that’s what life is all about? Just some choices?”

“If you’re lucky,” Valentine said.

Bernard took a deep breath. Then he rubbed his face. He was thinking really hard.

“Okay,” he said after a minute.

“Okay, what?”

“I’m ready to go down this road.”

Soon they were sitting in the driveway of a split-level ranch with white curtains in every window. As Valentine killed the engine, he saw movement behind one of the downstair’s windows. Bernard saw it too, and said, “She’s real nice, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is. And you should taste her cooking.”

“Real good?”

“Some of the best food I’ve ever eaten.”

That got the boy smiling. “But he’s kind of strict, isn’t he?”

Valentine wanted to tell Bernard that all fathers were strict, but realized it would be lost on him. “Not once you know him,” he said.

“You think we’ll get along?”

“Yes, I do.”

They got out of the car. Valentine opened the trunk, and removed Bernard’s suitcase. It was big and heavy, but it had to be. Inside of it was everything the boy owned.

The front path had been recently shoveled, and was covered with salt. It crunched under Bernard’s shoes as he marched up to the front door, and pressed the bell. A chime rang inside the house. Bernard stepped back, looking at Valentine out of the corner of his eye. “You live near here?” he asked.

“A mile away.”

“Good,” the boy said.

The front door swung in, and Gloria Mink and her husband came onto the stoop. For a second, Bernard looked like he was going to cave in, and start crying. But he didn’t. He made Valentine proud, and sucked in his feelings.

“Welcome to our home, Bernard,” Gloria Mink said.

Valentine drove straight to his house. Fuller had called the day before, and alerted him that the bust was about to go down. He’d been waiting months for this day.

He went inside. Lois had taken the day off, and was in the living room, watching the local TV channel. To be safe, they’d pulled Gerry out of school, and sent him to stay with her relatives in New York City.

“No news yet,” she said.

By noon, they were both bored silly, and decided to go to the Boardwalk and get some lunch. As they rose from the couch, a special news report came on.

“Maybe this is it,” she said expectantly.

Valentine turned up the volume, then sat on the couch and took his wife’s hand. A male newscaster appeared on the screen, and read awkwardly from a sheet of paper.

“This morning, in what law enforcement officials are calling a major blow to organized crime, the FBI issued arrest warrants for sixteen reputed members of the New York mafia, over twenty employees of Resorts’ casino, and two unnamed members of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. The sting — called Operation Candy Store — uncovered a scam that was costing Resorts a hundred thousand dollars a day.”

The reporter seemed amazed at the figure, and Valentine found himself shaking his head. So it had reached all the way up to the commission. The newscaster touched his ear piece and said, “My director informs me that we’re going to a live news conference at city hall. Please stand by.”

Fuller appeared on the screen wearing a dark suit and tie. Speaking into a bouquet of microphones, he explained how the FBI had discovered the scam while tracking the Dresser months ago, and immediately set up shop. He sang the bureau’s praises, and made himself and Romero and the rest of his team out to be the best law enforcement agents on the planet. Not once were the local police mentioned as being involved.

Fuller read the names of the employees at the casino that had been arrested that morning. They included Mickey Wright and several in-house accountants, and a guy on the floor assigned to watch the cage. They were all people Valentine knew and liked. But he didn’t feel sorry for them. They’d made their choices. Who he felt bad for were their families and friends. They’d suffer through this for a long time, while wondering how their loved ones could have behaved so stupidly. More victims, he thought.

The press conference ended. Valentine went to the TV, and killed the power.

“I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”

His wife jumped up, and threw her arms around him. “Is that all you’re going to say? Not hurrah, or whoopee, or yeah — we did it!?”

He shook his head. He’d taken no pleasure from doing this, and wanted to put it behind him.

“Kiss me,” she said.

He pressed the tip of her nose against his wife’s. Then their lips touched, and the warmth of her love enveloped him. Despite all the bad things that had happened, he still had her, and Gerry, and his job, and all the other rewards a man could expect for living a clean life. He’d come out on top, and he knew it.

Epilogue

In the end, Izzie followed his heart, and went back to Betty.

But not right away. For a few months, he and Josh and Seymour barnstormed the east coast. The schtick that worked so well for them in New York — three funny Jewish boys looking for a friendly game of cards — didn’t play in towns like Raleigh and Spartanburg and Atlanta, and it had been slim pickings until they hit Miami.

Miami was hustlers’ nirvana. There was the dog track, the horses, jai alai, cruises to nowhere, and plenty of private high-stakes poker games played in beautiful surroundings. There was action practically everywhere they went.

Most of the private card games they found were crooked. There was nothing wrong with that — a man had to make a living — only the people running the games wouldn’t cut them in. Up north, it was common for hustlers to cut other hustlers into games. Not in Miami.

The hustlers in Miami were rotten. Not only did they bar the Hirsch brothers from their games, but they also broadcast it around town that the Hirsch’s were cheaters. Soon, they couldn’t get a game, and had to leave town.

Driving north into Georgia, Izzie had been overwhelmed by a memory. He’d remembered Betty singing the song Georgia to him after making love. She had a voice like a cat being strangled, yet it had still moved him. Pulling into a gas station, he called her on a payphone. “It’s me,” he said sheepishly when she answered.

“What do you want?” Betty snapped.

“I called to apologize.”

Josh and Seymour were hanging out of the open car windows, listening to every word. Izzie put his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “I love you.” There had been a long pause on the other end. Then, Betty had knocked his socks off.

“I still love you, Izzie,” she said.

So they drove to Nyack. Izzie moved into Betty’s apartment above the butcher shop while his brothers rented a house in town. Not having Josh and Seymour around had been heaven; every day, he and Betty had made love, had breakfast, and made love some more. Delirious, Izzie had proposed to her on the fifth day.

“Wait,” she had cooed into his ear.

“But I want to marry you,” he insisted.

“I know you do. Make the proposal special.”

Betty was working at a bar called Finnegan’s slinging drinks. That night, she called him from work. “There’s a poker game in the back room. You interested?”

“Of course I’m interested,” Izzie said.

“Two regulars in the game fell out. I told them you and Josh were good guys. You want in?”

“We’ll be right over,” Izzie said.

The back room of Finnegan’s was choking with cigarette smoke, the smell of stale beer fouling the air. Six guys sat at the table, all lousy card players. Two hours into the game, Izzie went to the bar for cigarettes, and found Betty pouring a draft beer.

“How about going across the street, and getting us sandwiches?”

“Same scam as before?” Betty asked.

“Yeah. Seymour’s outside in the car. Tell him we’re using red and blue Tally-Ho’s. Don’t forget which pocket of your apron to put them in.”

“I won’t, honey bun.”

Izzie gave her the sandwich order and went back to the game.

This time, the switch went the way it was supposed to, the deck not changing color when it came out of Betty’s apron. As Izzie dealt the cards, he wondered what his life would have been like if he hadn’t dumped Betty, and gone to Atlantic City. Maybe they’d be living in a house by now, and expecting a kid.

Seymour had stacked the deck for draw poker, nothing wild. Three of the suckers would get pat hands — two pair, a straight and a flush — while Izzie would get an unbeatable full house. Josh started the betting, and threw in a hundred dollars.

The sucker holding the pair called him, and raised the pot two hundred dollars.

The sucker holding the straight called him, and raised it five hundred.

The sucker holding the flush dug into his pocket. His name was Mike, and he was into his sixth beer. He called the raise, then threw all his money onto the table.

Izzie stared at the monster wad before him.

“Raise you eight grand,” Mike said drunkenly.

“Where’d you get all that money?” Izzie asked.

“I sold my car. Guy gave me cash,” Mike said.

Mike’s raise made the call eighty-eight hundred dollars. Izzie pulled out his bankroll; he had nine grand to his name. He threw the money in, and said, “And I’ll raise you two hundred bucks.”

Everyone at the table folded their hands except for Mike. He threw in two hundred more and waxed a loser’s smile.

“Let’s see what you got,” Mike said.

Izzie triumphantly flipped over his full house. Mike stared, then showed him his hand. He had four threes.

“I win,” he said.

Izzie felt his stomach tighten as Mike began stuffing the bills into his pockets. He played it all back — from the day he’d arrived in Nyack to find Betty waiting for him, to the phone call a few hours ago — and realized he’d been set up. Turning, he saw Betty standing in the doorway with a triumphant look on her face.

“Now we’re even,” she said.

Content

James Swain
Wild Card

November, 1979

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Epilogue