by James Swain
“Helen Ledbetter was my aunt. I…loved her dearly.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ricky pointed behind his back at the twenty-four members of his gang, who he no longer could find the courage to look in the eye. “Will you let them go if I play ball?”
“You ready to do that?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Will you help me nail Stanley Kessel?”
Ricky nodded his head vigorously.
“Will you come clean with me?”
“I just said I would.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, kid. This wasn’t just about ripping off the Mint. You and Stanley had something bigger in mind. A lot of time and a lot of money went into this. I want to know everything, or no deal.”
Ricky’s answer got caught in his throat. He began to shake, and cried while looking at the floor. He still hadn’t looked at the others. Maybe he never would.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Just let them go. Too many people have died over this.”
Valentine glanced at the rest of the gang. They looked ready to hit the floor running. He’d gotten what he wanted; only, it no longer seemed enough. He wanted his pound of flesh from these people. The cat had returned and was sashaying through his legs. He picked her up and said, “You folks want to get out of here, don’t you? You want to go home and get back to your kids and your jobs and forget this ever happened. Am I right?”
The twenty-four people crowded into the living room nodded as one. It was exactly what they wanted.
“Well, it’s not going to work that way,” he said, “because what happened isn’t going to stay in this room. Sergeant Gaylord will know, and so will his deputies. And they’re going to tell the rest of the people in this community how you scammed a casino while people in a burning hotel across the street were jumping out of windows. You used that tragedy to your advantage, and you know it. And now your neighbors are going to know it, too.”
It was like he’d invisibly punched every single one of them in the stomach. He supposed it was the next best thing to throwing them all in jail. He watched them file dejectedly out of the house, then gave Ricky a hard look. “You’d better not be lying to me, kid.”
Ricky couldn’t answer him. He looked like a man who’d just come home to find his house carried away by a tornado. He was melting down, his life a total loss. Polly stepped forward and put her arms around him. Ricky whispered something in her ear.
“He’ll do whatever you want,” she said.
Valentine continued to stare at Ricky. He trusted him about as far as he could kick him. “Why the sudden change of heart? You decide you want to go to heaven?”
Polly answered for him. “Stanley called Ricky this morning. He threatened to hurt me if Ricky went to the police.”
“You believe him?”
Ricky nodded. Shame affected people in different ways. For Ricky, it was a bucket of cold reality poured over his head. “Stanley’s always had a mean streak,” he whispered.
“He’s the brains behind this, isn’t he?” Valentine said.
“Yeah. Always was.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was a kid, I ran away from home to be with a carnival,” Ricky said. “I was their sign painter. It was great. One day Stanley shows up. He’d run away from home, too. Only, he didn’t want to paint signs or clean up after the elephants. He wanted to learn how to scam people. He talked me into learning with him.”
“So he corrupted you.”
“Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Stanley liked to say that it isn’t stealing if you don’t get caught.”
“And it’s been one big joyride ever since,” Valentine said.
Ricky found the strength to look him in the eye. “I tried to back out a bunch of times, but Stanley always pulled me back in. Out in Las Vegas, I told him no, but then the fricking hotel had to burn down.”
“What did the fire have to do with it?”
“Stanley ran across the street when the hotel started to burn. He saw me jump from the balcony and pulled me out of the pool. Then he laid a guilt trip on me and said everyone from Slippery Rock was depending on me.”
“So you caved in and went through with it.”
Ricky nodded, then swallowed hard. “You really despise me, don’t you?”
“I killed three people because of you,” Valentine said. “You’re goddamn right I hate you.”
“What can I do to make things right?”
Valentine looked into his face and sensed that Ricky was finally going to come clean with him. He grabbed three chairs and made Ricky and Polly sit down, then sat backward in one so he was facing them. “For starters, tell me what you and Stanley were up to. Why didn’t you stop after you scammed the Mint? Why rig the lottery and the horse race? And why did you hire a public relations firm to broadcast all this crap to the newspapers?”
“Publicity,” Ricky said. “Stanley was going to make me into a household name.”
“Why? So he could put your face on a box of Wheaties?”
“He wanted to take me public.”
Valentine had lost his appetite for stupid jokes and nearly smacked Ricky in the side of the head. He saw Polly nod, and realized Ricky wasn’t joking.
“How much money did Stanley think he could raise?”
“A hundred million dollars,” Ricky said. “It would go into a hedge fund, which I’d control. I’d pick winners, and the investors would reap the rewards.”
“But the winners would actually be stocks that Stanley was feeding you.”
Ricky put his hand into Polly’s lap. “That’s right. Stanley would buy the stocks early, then sell high. The fund would eventually crash, but by then, we’d all be rich.”
“The classic pump and dump.”
“Yeah.”
“The gang that was just here knew about this, didn’t they?”
Ricky nodded. “That was their payoff. Each of them was going to be allowed to buy ten thousand shares when the stocks opened, then dump their shares when the stock peaked. There were other people in town that knew about it as well.”
Valentine drummed his fingers on the back of his chair. Another piece of the puzzle had slipped into place. “The guys I shot in the bank. They were pushed out, weren’t they?”
Ricky nodded again. “They blabbed about it, so they got voted off the island.”
Valentine saw the cat enter the room and climb into Ricky’s lap. “Do you have evidence of what Stanley was going to do? Did he write up this company he was going to form?”
“Yes. I have everything,” Ricky said.
Valentine pushed himself out of the chair. It was the strangest damn thing. He’d never met Stanley Kessel and had no idea what he looked like, yet still wanted to put him in prison for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was because Valentine had run across so many guys just like Stanley. Grand schemers who sucked innocent folks in, then systematically ruined their lives.
“Go pack yourself a suitcase,” he told Ricky.
“Where are we going?”
“New York City. We’re going to go see the guys who police the stock market.”
Ricky and Polly rose from their chairs. They were still holding hands, and Valentine guessed that Polly had talked Ricky into coming clean. It was too bad they’d gotten divorced. He had a feeling Ricky would have never gone down this road had they been together.
“You can come, too,” Valentine told her.
49
Valentine went out onto the front porch to wait while Ricky packed his clothes. The cat, which had been preening around Ricky, followed him outside and did its little dance. He scooped it up in his arms.
“Traitor,” he said, rubbing its head.
The lawn was empty of cars, and the police cruisers were also gone. He would have to call Gaylord and explain what had happened. The sergeant would be happy to hear that he wasn’t going to have to arrest the gang. Valentine wasn’t sure it was the r
ight thing to do, but he didn’t live here. He started to unclip the badge from his shirt, when he heard a voice call his name. He walked around the side of the house and found Mary Alice Stoker sitting on a swing.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“The whole time,” she said. “I was on the porch. I heard your speech.” She patted the spot beside her on the swing. He sat beside her and made the chains sing. “I once lived in this house. I can still walk the grounds without getting lost.”
“Who brought you here?”
“A neighbor. She was involved.” She pushed the ground with her feet, and the swing went backward. “You were very kind with them, considering what they did.”
“I was more than kind,” he said.
“How so?”
He took her fingers and placed them on the badge still clipped to his shirt.
“When did that happen?”
“Last night. It’s only temporary.”
She patted him on the knee. “You are a good man, Tony Valentine. But there is something that’s bothering me.”
“What’s that?”
“Your friend in Las Vegas, Lucy Price. Why did you abandon her?”
He felt like an invisible dagger had been plunged into his heart. His dream from an hour ago was still rumbling around in his head. He’d been in a car with Lucy but still couldn’t prevent her from crashing. The moral had been clear: He couldn’t alter the course of Lucy’s life, or the misfortune she might cause others. No one could do that but Lucy. He started to get up from the swing and saw the blind librarian stiffen.
“Please don’t run away from me as well.”
He sat back down and waited for her to resume. The swing had stopped moving.
“As a cop, you know how to help people. But as a person, you’re misguided.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So straighten me out.”
A secret smile crossed her face. She placed her hand on his sleeve and left it there. “You told me a story yesterday about two cops who were summoned to a domestic disturbance. Instead of arresting the young man causing the problem, one of the cops tried to talk some sense into him. The young man hit the cop in the face with a hammer, and the cop’s partner shot him dead. You told me that the cops had made a mistake. Had they arrested the young man, neither of those terrible things would have happened.”
“That’s right.”
“But you left out an important part,” she said. “You didn’t factor in all the other times that those two cops were able to talk sense into someone and keep them from venturing down the wrong path. How many times do you think those two cops did that?”
Valentine shrugged. “Hard to say.”
“A lot?”
“Sure. It comes with the job. You get to play Solomon all the time.”
“Exactly. Cops have to make life-altering decisions every single day. And what I’m telling you is this: That one tragedy you described to me doesn’t cancel out all the good things those two cops did. Evil never cancels out good. It only eclipses it and makes us not see it. But the good remains. It’s always there. It is the thing that makes the human experience worth having.”
The front door of the house opened, and Ricky and Polly stepped outside. Mary Alice heard the sound, and her grip on his sleeve intensified. “The bad deed that Lucy Price committed does not negate the good deed that you did for her. Nor should it stop you from continuing to help her. In the end, you will prevail, just like you did today.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” she said.
It was something one of the little kids he’d met in her library might say. Ricky and Polly were standing on the porch, looking for him. Valentine got their attention and pointed at Ricky’s Lexus sitting in the carport. Ricky and Polly walked across the yard and climbed into it.
“I need to go. Can I give you a lift home?”
“My neighbor is picking me up at noon and taking me back to school,” she said. “May I ask where you’re going?”
“New York. I’m going to put Stanley Kessel in jail.”
“I’d like to ask you for a favor. I hope you won’t be offended.”
“What’s that?”
“I have a picture in my mind of what you look like. May I touch your face and find out if my picture is anything like the real thing?”
“First tell me what your picture looks like.”
“I most certainly will not.”
He found himself staring at her. He’d avoided doing that, as if staring at a blind person was somehow cheating. What he saw was a woman of great character and moral courage. Taking her hand from his sleeve, he brought it to his face and allowed her fingers to run across the contours of his life. Done, she lowered her hand.
“Good luck in New York,” she said.
The Lexus had a phone in the dashboard that let Ricky make plane reservations from Charlotte to New York for later that night. The drive to the airport was about two and a half hours, and Valentine got settled in for the ride, then called Gerry on his cell phone.
“I’m in the Hattiesburg airport, boarding my flight,” his son said. “I said my good-byes and got the hell out of there. Lamar wants to hire us, but I don’t know.”
“Had enough of Gulfport?”
“That’s an understatement. They’re calling my section. Got to run.”
“Wait a second,” Valentine said, having remembered what had been bugging him since that morning. “Did they catch Huck’s retarded brother?”
“Not since I last talked to Lamar.”
“When was that?”
“About fifteen minutes ago. He asked me to call him from the airport and let him know I’d gotten there safe and sound.”
“And the north Florida cops haven’t caught him.”
“No. Look, Pop, the poor guy’s retarded. If he’s running around in the woods, he’ll probably end up dying from exposure.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” Valentine said.
“You know what I mean. What’s bugging you?”
“When I was a cop in Atlantic City, several guys on the psycho ward at the hospital took off one night. They weren’t very hard to find.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m dead serious, Gerry. Think about it.”
“I’m going to lose my seat, Pop. I’ll call you when I’m back home.”
The connection went dead. His son sounded pissed off. Valentine didn’t like to scare him, but something wasn’t adding up. If Florida cops were good at anything, it was tracking people. They knew how to hunt and used their skill as well as anyone.
He leaned back in his seat and felt his eyes start to droop. The memory of that night in Atlantic City flashed through his head. He and his partner Doyle had gotten one of the psychos in their car, and the guy kept climbing out. He was as slippery as an eel, and every time he got away, he’d laugh hysterically at them. It had been a long night.
The Lexus swerved to avoid something in the highway. Valentine’s eyes snapped awake. People with mental conditions were difficult to take out in public. So why had Huck brought his retarded brother along? He flipped open his cell phone and called Gerry back.
“Pop, we’re starting to taxi.”
“Did it ever occur to you that the Florida cops don’t know what Huck Dubb looks like?”
“But they identified him.”
“What if the retarded brother was told to say ‘I’m Huck’?” Valentine said. “What if he has some credit cards in his pocket with his brother’s name on them? What if the retarded brother is a plant? Just because Huck’s a redneck doesn’t mean he’s stupid, Gerry.”
“Pop, you’re scaring me.”
Valentine looked at his watch. Nearly noon. Nine hours had passed since Huck had gotten pulled off the road. Plenty of time to find another set of wheels and make it down to Palm Harbor. He said good-bye to his son, hung up, and punched in Yolanda’s number.
<
br /> “Please be home,” he prayed as the call went through.
50
Huck Dubb sat in a pizza delivery car and stared at Gerry Valentine’s house in Palm Harbor a block away. It was noon, the street deserted. He’d commandeered the car a half hour ago from a shopping center where the pizza maker was located. The driver had been sitting in the car, counting his money, when Huck had stuck a gun through his open window. The driver had given Huck the keys and even thrown in his stupid hat for good measure.
Huck had stolen cars every hundred miles during his trip down from the Florida Panhandle. It had made the trip longer, but also safer. Changing cars every couple of hours made it impossible for the law to get a bead on him.
He stared at the address on the card he’d stolen from the registration desk at the Holiday Inn in Gulfport. The address on the card and the one on the mailbox were the same, but something didn’t feel right about the place. It was a quaint New England–style clapboard house and not what he’d expect an Eye-talian to be living in. Taking the driver’s cell phone off the seat, he called information and got the operator to verify the address for him.
A Palm Harbor sheriff’s car materialized in his mirror. Huck felt his heartbeat kick into high gear. It had taken him nine hours to get here after leaving Arlen behind. For every minute of that nine hours, he’d thought about how he was going to punish Gerry Valentine’s family. Cut and strangle and shoot was how he’d decided to kill them. Thinking about it had put a fire in his belly as powerful as any he’d ever felt.
Digging into his pocket, Huck removed his cash and pretended to be counting it while the sheriff trolled past. On the backseat of the car were boxes of pizzas in insulated bags. The food made the interior of the car smell real good. Huck lifted his eyes and saw the sheriff idling beside him. He smiled at the man behind the wheel.
“Hey, Officer, how’s it going?”
“Can’t complain,” the sheriff replied.
“Nobody listens. Want a free slice? I got a pie that went undelivered.”
The sheriff smiled and said no and drove to the next block. Huck watched him park in front of Gerry Valentine’s house and climb out of his vehicle. The sheriff walked around the house and then got back in his car and drove away.