Wild Card (Tony Valentine Series)

by James Swain

  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 500 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.”

&nb
sp; 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.�
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  “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.