Wild Card (Tony Valentine Series)

by James Swain

  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.