Mr. Lucky

by James Swain

  The peek was the oldest con known to card cheaters. A hidden accomplice would peek at a player’s cards and secretly communicate them to the table. Sometimes the peek was a hole drilled into the wall, or someone staring through a window with a pair of binoculars. Before the mob had been run out of Las Vegas, it had taken place at every card room at one time or another. And it was still a favorite among people who ran private games.

  Tex came out of the bathroom tucking in his shirt.

  “Got your battery fixed?” Gerry asked.

  “Not so loud. How much you got left?”

  “Twenty-five grand.”

  “Good. Keep it up.”

  Gerry glanced at the doorway leading into the room where they were playing. Kingman was on the other side, talking with Phil. He was slurring his words and had spilled ketchup on his pants. All the money in the world couldn’t stop him from making a jackass of himself.

  “Why don’t you just play him straight?” Gerry said under his breath.

  “Think that would work?”

  “The guy’s a loser.”

  “Sometimes losers get lucky,” Tex said, walking away.

  Gerry went into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. Putting the toilet seat down, he powered up his cell phone and had a seat. He felt a tug at his conscience and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Tex was one of the best card players in the world. He didn’t have to be cheating Kingman; he could beat him ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But it was that one freak time he was afraid of. It just didn’t seem right.

  He’d been working on the excuse he was going to tell Yolanda for not calling. They had a pact about him calling, and she would be angry that he’d broken it. He started to dial the number at his house when his phone let out a chirp, indicating he had a message.

  He went into voice mail and retrieved it. The message had come in at two o’clock and was from Yolanda. He felt his face burn, feeling like he’d already been caught. They hadn’t had a fight since the baby had been born. It had been the best two months of his life.

  “Hey, Gerry, where are you?” he heard his wife say. “I’m sure you’re busy and everything, but I missed hearing from you.”

  Gerry felt the tension leave his body. Yolanda wasn’t mad.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “there’s someone here who misses you and wants to talk to you. Hold on for a second, okay?”

  He listened as she juggled the phone while saying something that he couldn’t quite hear. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of his daughter’s laughter. His wife was holding Lois up to the phone and was tickling the soles of her little feet. That was the spot that always got her laughing. Gerry stared at the bathroom floor, envisioning his daughter on the other end.

  It lasted for a few more seconds, and then Yolanda pulled his daughter away and came back on. “Well, isn’t that something. She was crying her head off a moment ago. Then I told her I was calling her daddy, and she brightened up. I just wanted you to know that we’re thinking about you and hope you come home soon. Don’t we, honey?”

  His daughter let out a peal of laughter, and Gerry guessed Yolanda was tickling her stomach, another weak spot. He heard his wife say good-bye, and then the connection went dead.

  A knock at the door brought him back to the real world. He cracked it and saw Tex staring anxiously at him. “You fall in?” the old poker player asked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We started. It’s time to take Kingman to the cleaners.”

  “I need to talk to you,” Gerry said.

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “No.”

  Gerry shut the door. He’d put the cell phone on the sink, and he ran the cold water and splashed a handful into his face. Then he took a hard look at his reflection in the mirror. He’d flown to Atlantic City last month to see his family priest, Father Tom. Spent four hours in a confessional spilling his guts and trying to cleanse his soul. He’d been fucking up since he was a teenager, and hearing everything he’d done come out of his mouth had been the most excruciating thing he’d ever put himself through. But it had been worth it.

  He slipped the cell phone into his pocket and went out. Tex was standing nervously beside the door. There was spittle at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were dilated.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked under his breath.

  “I’m backing out of our deal,” Gerry said.

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “You heard me. Get Phil or Bob or Bill to do it.”

  “But they’re pencil dicks. They’ll freeze up.”

  “I can’t help you there.”

  “But we had a deal.”

  Gerry took the money Tex had staked him out of his jacket pocket and shoved it into the older man’s wrinkled hands. “Kingman is a chump. Beat him fair and square.”

  “So what if Kingman can’t play? Why does that bother you, boy?”

  “It’s like stealing from a little kid.”

  “So?”

  Gerry shuddered. Thank God he hadn’t gone through with this. It would have been a road from which there would have been no turning back. He started to walk away. Tex grabbed him by the arm. “You running out on me?”

  “Call it what you want.”

  “Boys get whipped in Texas for doing that.”

  “We’re not in Texas.”

  Tex clenched his teeth. They were crooked and badly discolored from years of tobacco stains. Through them he said, “You’re making a huge mistake, Gerry. I’m giving you a chance to reconsider. Go into that room and help me take Kingman’s money. I’ll give you the fifty grand when we’re done, and you can go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine. What do you say?”

  He was smiling, like the world would be a better place if Gerry just saw things his way. He was a phony through and through, and Gerry realized how much he disliked him.

  “I’d rather be a dog in Korea,” Gerry said.

  Riding in the elevator to his floor, the enormity of what he’d done hit Gerry in the head like a shovel. He could use that fifty grand to get the wolves away from his door. He owed a lot of money and didn’t have much coming in. Fifty grand would have wiped the slate clean. The elevator stopped and opened its doors. As he stepped out, he considered going back upstairs. Kingman would never miss the money. How could that be a crime?

  He heard his cell phone beep and removed it from his pocket. Yolanda’s message was still in voice mail. He hit play, then stuck the phone to his ear and listened to his daughter’s laughter. Someday, he was going to have the same influence on her that she was already having on him. It was scary to think about, and he went to his room, knowing he’d made the right decision.

  19

  Sergeant Rodney Gaylord didn’t like the answers Tony Valentine was giving him. Call it a good cop’s sixth sense. But since he couldn’t figure out what it was he didn’t like, he kept his feelings hidden, fearful of looking stupid.

  That was Gaylord’s greatest fear—looking stupid. Because he’d once taken steroids to build muscles and had developed a hair-trigger temper, his co-workers had stuck him with a mean nickname. They called him Time Bomb. Gaylord had been a cop his whole life, and took pride in the way he ran Slippery Rock’s finest. He deserved better, or so he thought.

  It was almost five. He stood at his desk, typing up his report of the bank robbery. Tony Valentine sat in the seat next to his desk, blowing on a cup of coffee. The guy could sure down the caffeine. Gaylord reread the report still in his typewriter, trying to put a finger on his suspicions. Something didn’t sit right. Valentine wasn’t telling him the whole truth. Slippery Rock did some tourism business, but generally it was folks from Atlanta and Charleston that came here, mostly to antique shop or hike in the hills. Visitors from Florida were rare, and he had a hard time believing Valentine had come here to write his memoirs.

  “Talk to me about Hi Moss,” Gaylord said, turning off his typewriter.

  V
alentine sipped his coffee. “I told you everything that happened.”

  “I know, but something’s got me stumped. You said Hi Moss told you that Beasley said he’d gotten voted off the island. Hi said he thought this was why Beasley was robbing the bank. What do you think that meant, voted off the island?”

  “It’s from a TV show,” Valentine said.

  “Did Hi tell you that?”

  “No, I remembered it a little while ago.”

  “Which show?”

  “Survivor.”

  Gaylord felt his face burn. He religiously watched the tube every night and had seen Survivor more times than he cared to remember. Usually it was with a beer clutched in his hand, his eyes glued to the attractive women in bathing suits who were always contestants. “What do you think Beasley was talking about?” he asked.

  “Well, I’d imagine he got thrown out of some group and he was sore about it.”

  Sore. A real Yankee expression. Gaylord consulted his notes lying on his desk. He’d asked Ricky Smith the same question earlier and gotten the same response. He wondered if it was one of those things he’d never get to the bottom of. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Valentine shift uncomfortably in his chair.

  “We’ll be done in just a second,” the sergeant said. “One other thing’s got me scratching my head.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Both Larry and Beasley had their weapons drawn, yet neither got a shot off. You were kneeling on the floor, they were standing, yet you managed to shoot both men in the face. What are you, a trick-shot artist?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you explain it?”

  “I was desperate.”

  “That’s it?”

  “And I got lucky.”

  Gaylord gave him a hard stare. It just wasn’t ringing true. Killing one bank robber he could accept, not two. The odds of that happening were simply out of this universe. He went to the door and said, “You want another cup of coffee?”

  “I thought you said I could leave,” Valentine said.

  “I just need to check something out,” Gaylord replied.

  Gaylord shut the door behind him on the way out. Standing for long stretches made his back sore, and he paced the hall outside his office. He could tell that Valentine was starting to get annoyed. He was definitely acting uncomfortable. If he started leaning on him too hard, it might blow up in Gaylord’s face.

  Maybe Valentine had gotten lucky. Gaylord was starting to slide in that direction, for no better reason than he had nothing to go on but a hunch. The fact was, Valentine had foiled a bank robbery. He had done a heroic thing, and as a result Roland’s baby would have a daddy and Claude would get free lap dances for the rest of his life and Ricky Smith would solidify his reputation as the luckiest man in Slippery Rock. A happy ending if Gaylord had ever heard one.

  At the hallway’s end was a conference room with a coffee machine. He fished two quarters out of his pocket and went inside. Two of his deputies were in the room, chowing down on hoagies while staring at a TV set sitting on the desk. Gaylord stared at the black-and-white picture on the screen. “What are you watching?” he asked.

  “The videotape of the bank robbery,” one of the deputies replied.

  Gaylord pulled up a chair without saying a word to either man. On the screen he saw the two masked bank robbers pointing guns at Ricky, Roland, Valentine, and the guard, who were kneeling on the bank floor. The film was grainy and had no audio. The camera was also at a bad angle, and Valentine was partially out of the picture.

  It was an incredibly tense scene. The bank robbers yelled at their hostages, then they yelled at each other. Then, out of the blue, the two bank robbers were lying on the floor with bullets in their heads.

  “Play it again,” Gaylord said.

  One of the deputies rewound the tape and started it over. It happened amazingly fast. First there were two bank robbers, then there were none.

  “You should sign him up, Sergeant,” the other deputy quipped. “That guy’s the Nolan Ryan of pistol-shooting.”

  Gaylord made the deputy replay the tape a third time while staring at his wristwatch. Based upon his less-than-scientific calculations, Valentine had drawn from an ankle holster and shot the two robbers in slightly less than two seconds. It sent a chill through him. He was willing to bet his paycheck that no retired cop in America could handle a gun like that.

  Back in his office, he found Valentine reading a newspaper he’d fished out of the trash. Gaylord tapped him on the shoulder, and Valentine dumped the paper into the basket and rose expectantly.

  “You’re free to go,” Gaylord said. “I may want to question you some more, so I’m requesting that you stay in town until our investigation is finished.”

  Valentine headed for the door. Gaylord could not help himself and said, “Take my advice, and stay out of trouble.”

  Valentine stopped at the door, a look of concern on his face. “Is that advice, or a warning?”

  “It’s whatever you want it to be,” Gaylord said.

  20

  Valentine went downstairs to the reception area, expecting to find Ricky Smith waiting for him. Ricky had promised to give him a ride back to the house he was renting. Instead he found a handwritten note awaiting him on the receptionist’s desk.

  Hey Mr. Valentine,

  Sorry to leave you high and dry, but I had to go home.

  A deputy will give you a lift, if you want.

  Thanks for saving my life.

  Ricky

  Valentine crumpled the note and tossed it into a trash basket. He’d saved Ricky’s life and the kid couldn’t hang around and take him home. That was gratitude for you. Through the front doors he spied rays of sunlight peeking through the clouds. It was the first decent weather he’d seen in days, and he asked the receptionist how far his house was from the police station.

  “About two miles as the crow flies,” she replied.

  “What if the crow’s walking?”

  She gave him directions, and he headed out the door. The late afternoon air was crisp and clean, and he crossed the street and found a footpath beside the main road that led into town. The path was well-worn, and he settled into a comfortable pace. It had become a beautiful day to be outdoors, and with each step, he felt himself start to calm down.

  He walked with his hands stuck in his pockets, thinking about Beasley and the scarecrow. He’d killed seven people in his life, including them. Each time, it had punched an invisible hole in him that had been slow to heal. Most cops he knew could walk away from a killing without any regrets. He couldn’t. He would think about Beasley and the scarecrow for a long time, wondering if he could have handled it any differently.

  A mile into his walk, a pickup truck pulled up alongside him. He heard it slow down and stopped walking. Then he glanced at the driver. It was a middle-aged woman with her hair tied in a bun. She stared at him anxiously, and he realized he recognized her. She’d served Ricky soft drinks in the cafeteria and known that Ricky liked to drink Orange Crush.

  The truck braked to a halt. The road had four lanes, and no other vehicles were in sight. Valentine took his hands from his pockets and waited expectantly. The woman stared at him while clutching the wheel. She looked scared out of her wits.

  “Hello,” he said.

  She continued to stare, as if frozen in space.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Her breath fogged the side window. She shook her head.

  “Do you want to tell me something?”

  She glanced in her mirror to see if anyone was coming, then rolled down her window. “This is a small town,” she said, making it sound like a curse.

  “Am I in danger?”

  She hesitated. “You should leave. For your own good.”

  “Am I in danger?”

  “I’ve told you all I can.”

  “Look, we’re going the same way. How about you give me a ride?”

  She hesitated. S
he had a kind face, and he remembered the easy repartee she’d shared with Ricky that morning. He stepped into the road, thinking that if he got in the truck, she might open up and tell him what was on her mind. She shook her head, and the truck quickly sped away. Standing still had gotten him chilled, and he started walking again.

  One of the curses of the retired was dredging up childhood memories. Valentine had read this in a magazine published by AARP. According to the writer, the elderly spent too much time dwelling on stuff that had happened when they were kids. It was a hard trap to avoid, considering all the free time retired people had on their hands, and the writer had suggested that his readers take up a hobby, like collecting stamps.

  The article had annoyed the hell out of him. Since moving to Florida, he’d found himself thinking about his childhood often and had come to the conclusion that dredging up childhood memories was just another of life’s natural stages. You grow old, slow down, and look over your shoulder at where you’ve been. It wasn’t a trap, and nothing was wrong with it.

  He often thought about his father. Dominic Valentine was a drunk and had abused his wife. At age eighteen Valentine had thrown him out of the house, and they’d never gotten along after that. Yet what Valentine remembered about him now was his father’s honesty. His father believed it was wrong to steal or take anything that didn’t belong to him. It was a lesson that he’d instilled in his son, one that Valentine was grateful for.

  He stopped walking. He could see Slippery Rock up ahead, and slipped into the forest by the side of the road and stood beneath the shadow of a giant oak. Fishing a pack of Life Savers from his pocket, he popped one into his mouth.

  For a while, he watched the comings and goings in town. In the daylight it looked smaller than it had at night. He tried to guess how many people lived here. Nine thousand? Probably less. Atlantic City, the town he’d been born and raised in, was also small. His mother had liked to say that gossip was the local currency, with everyone in town knowing everyone else’s business. He guessed Slippery Rock wasn’t any different.