Wild Card (Tony Valentine Series)

by James Swain

  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 superior
s 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.