by James Swain
“Sorry.”
The detective grunted and resumed looking at his computer screen.
“I don’t want to be a jerk, but you haven’t let me call a lawyer,” Gerry said.
“That’s because there ain’t no lawyers working on Saturday night,” the detective said, spitting in the trash. “First thing tomorrow morning, you can call as many lawyers as you want.”
Gerry had not seen the detective take the tobacco out of his mouth before eating his candy bar. He felt like he was going to get sick again. He needed some fresh air and something cold to drink. But most of all, he needed to stop feeling scared.
“Can I call a friend in town?” Gerry asked.
“Who’s that?”
“Lamar Biggs.”
The detective turned from the computer. The look in his eyes was pure disbelief. Gerry sensed that he had crossed some imaginary line, and hurried to explain. “I did a job for him today. The Dixie Magic is having a problem with some employees stealing chips. I explained to his crew how the scam is working. That’s what I do.” He pointed at his wallet sitting on the detective’s desk. “My card’s in there.”
The detective took out his business card and read it. “You did a job for Lamar?”
“That’s right.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so?”
Valentine awoke from a deep sleep to hear his cell phone ringing in the kitchen. The luminous clock beside his bed said 3:00 A.M. The only reason people called at night was because something awful had happened. He pushed himself out of bed.
Walking was a struggle. With age came certain dependencies. Eight hours of sleep a night was one of them. He sat down at the kitchen table and picked up his cell phone. His head felt like a balloon, and he stared at the phone’s face. The caller ID said UNKNOWN. Gerry, he decided. His son called whenever he felt like it.
“What’s up,” he said by way of greeting.
“Tony? Is that you? Oh God, I’m so happy you finally answered your phone.”
It was Lucy Price. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Are you still there? Please don’t tell me you hung up.”
“If I hung up, I couldn’t tell you,” he said.
Lucy laughed shrilly, and he realized she’d been drinking. The cold metal of the phone seeped into his hand. He could not talk to Lucy without seeing her face. She bore a strong resemblance to his late wife, who he missed more than anyone in the world. So he’d allowed himself to get to know her. A stupider mistake he’d never made.
“I had to call you. I’m sorry if I’ve bothered you,” she said.
His eyes went wide. Now she was laying on the guilt.
“What do you want? What’s wrong?”
“How did you know something was wrong?”
“Because it’s three in the morning,” he said, his voice rising.
“Oh God, you’re right. I always get the time change mixed up. A terrible thing happened today, and I just needed someone to talk to. You have been so…supportive.”
More guilt. Raised Catholic, he could ferret out the guilt in every sentence. He leaned back in the chair. “I’m listening.”
Lucy loudly blew her nose. “I went to the Holsum Bread building today to buy bread, and there’s this cashier I’ve gotten friendly with named Ashli. Real nice girl. Ashli says, ‘Well, it’s been nice knowing you, Lucy. We’re closing down.’ I went and got the manager and he confirmed it. The building is being converted into upscale condos called Holsum Lofts. I went out to my car and started crying.”
“Because they’re closing down the bread company?”
“Yes.”
“So buy your bread someplace else.”
“This is different. This is the Holsum Bread company.”
Then Valentine remembered. During a trip Valentine took to Las Vegas, a Nevada Gaming Control Board agent had taken him by the Holsum Bread building on West Charleston. The agent had explained that this was where every down-and-out Las Vegas gambler bought day-old bread to feed themselves and their families. If they were really desperate, the agent said, they got free two-day-old bread from the Dumpster in back.
“I know it sounds pathetic,” she went on, “but Holsum was a last resort. No matter how bad things got, you could always go there and get bread. And now they’re going to replace it with a chichi high-rise.”
She blew her nose again. He realized that was all she wanted to tell him. He stood up and cleared his throat. She’d lost everything in the past month—her money, her car, and probably her freedom—and he wondered if she’d finally hit bottom. Was Lucy finally ready to come to grips with her life?
“Maybe it’s a sign,” he said.
“What is?”
“The Holsum Bread building being torn down.”
“A sign from who?”
He thought about it and said, “From God.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“No,” he said. “You’ve hit the end of the line, Lucy. You need help. You always thought you could still buy bread and feed yourself, but that option is gone. God is telling you this is it. Take his advice and get some help.”
“But—”
“No buts. Just do it. And don’t call me until you do.”
“But I’m going to court in a few days. I’m afraid.”
Valentine felt something as big as a baseball catch in his throat. He wanted to help her; only, helping people didn’t work when they refused to help themselves. Sometimes, it actually made things worse.
“Good-bye, Lucy,” he heard himself say.
23
At eight forty-five Valentine drove to Slippery Rock High School and parked by the front entrance. He had never gotten back to sleep and felt stiff climbing out of the car. It took only a few bad nights for his body to start feeling old.
At a minute before nine he went inside. Schools were empty places without kids, and he listened to his own footsteps as he walked down a tiled hallway to the library. The note had said to go to end of the hall. He stopped at the last door and rapped with his knuckles.
“It’s open,” a woman’s voice said from within.
He pushed the door open and stuck his head in. Five kids looked up at him. They ranged in age from about fifteen to about nine, and had books open in front of them.
“Over here,” the voice said.
He followed the voice across the room. A handsome white-haired woman sat at a desk in the corner. “Sorry,” he said. “I must have the wrong room.”
“This is the right room,” she said. “Please come in.”
Valentine stepped into the library and shut the door behind him. The kids had stopped looking at him and gone back to their studying. Crossing the room, he realized that he recognized her. It was Mary Alice Stoker, the blind librarian he’d met at the Ping-Pong drawing the day before. She had sent the note.
“Please sit down,” she said.
He pulled up a chair. An item on her desk caught his eye. It was a picture of her skiing, taken before she’d lost her vision. She couldn’t see it anymore, but others could.
“I had hoped to meet with you alone,” she said, “but the children’s parents called and asked me to open up. Finals are in a few weeks, and they need to use the reference library. I’m sure you understand.”
He nodded, then felt his face burn with embarrassment.
“Of course,” he said.
“Good. If we keep our voices low, I’m sure they won’t hear a thing.”
He pulled his chair up a little closer.
“My hearing isn’t what it used to be,” he admitted.
Surprise registered on her face. “If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”
“Soon to be sixty-three.”
“Really. With all that’s happened, well, I just assumed—”
“I was young and strapping?”
Her hand came up to her mouth. It was too late, and her laughter escaped. The five kids jerked their heads
in her direction.
“Now you’ve really got them confused,” Valentine said.
“Are they staring?”
“Afraid so.”
“The town drums will be beating this afternoon.”
Valentine leaned back in his chair and laughed softly. She was an easy person to be around and seemed at peace with her situation. Maybe if he was good, she’d explain her secret.
“I’d like to tell you a story,” she said. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
“I used to have a favorite little boy. By the time he’d reached the sixth grade he’d read every book in this library. He could also recite Shakespeare by heart and the Preamble to the Constitution and anything else he put his mind to. He was brilliant; only, he came from a terrible family situation. Parents always drinking and fighting and getting thrown in jail. He came to the library to escape. I used to open up on Sundays for him, too.
“One day, right after he turned thirteen, he disappeared. The police thought he’d been kidnapped, and there was a frantic manhunt around the state. All the women in town cried when he wasn’t found. I think I cried the hardest.
“Eleven months later, he was found in a sleepy town in the Florida Panhandle. He hadn’t been kidnapped as everyone thought. He’d gone and run away with a carnival.
“The carnival people were gypsies. They’d adopted him and had him working for them. They’d dyed his hair dark and given him a new name. When he came back to Slippery Rock, he was a different person. They hadn’t molested him or abused him or anything like that. But they’d changed him.”
She folded her hands and put them in her lap. Tears welled at the corners of her sightless eyes. The memory was so painful that her chest heaved up and down. Valentine felt like he’d sat down in the middle of a movie and didn’t know what was going on.
“You don’t understand, do you?” she said.
“No,” he said.
“That little boy was Ricky Smith.”
One of Valentine’s first jobs as a cop in Atlantic City had been to drive a carnival out of town. It hadn’t been an easy assignment. The same carnival had been coming to town ever since he could remember. They would rent an empty lot for the summer and set up their colorful tents and old-fashioned midways. They offered games where people could win prizes, and sometimes they had entertainment, as well. Right after Labor Day they would pack up and head down south. Watching them leave had always made him feel sad.
At first he had wondered why the carnival had to be run out. The Atlantic City Boardwalk also featured games and entertainment, and no one gave their owners a hard time. It didn’t seem right, so he’d gone to his superior and asked him.
His superior was a hard-ass named Banko. Normally, Banko would have chewed him out for not following orders. But he’d seen something in Valentine’s eyes that told him an explanation was warranted. So Banko had sat him down and explained.
“The carny people that come to Atlantic City are coldhearted thieves. Their games look the same as the Boardwalk games, but they ain’t. They’re crooked. Know why?”
Valentine shook his head. The carnival people had always been nice to him, and he was having a hard time believing Banko.
“Because they have to make a living, that’s why,” Banko snapped. “The carny people are here for two months. They’re only open at night. It’s not like the Boardwalk, which is always filled with customers. People go to the carnival once or twice. If one-tenth of them won prizes—like those big stuffed animals—the carny people would go broke. So they rig the games so nobody can win.”
“But I’ve seen people win,” Valentine blurted out.
“You’ve seen pretty girls win,” Banko replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Only pretty girls win.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s good for business. A pretty girl walking around a carnival carrying a giant stuffed panda? It’s gonna make everyone smile.” He put his hand on Valentine’s shoulder. “These people are rotten to the core. They offer acts on the midway. Sword swallowers, the world’s tallest man, Hilda the Bearded Lady. Some of them are pretty good. And the carnival people only charge you twenty-five cents admission. Bargain of the century, right?”
“Right,” Valentine said.
“Well, it’s a ploy, a con. The reason they charge you any admission is because they want to see inside a guy’s wallet. Guys always bring money with them to the carnival, especially if they’re on a date or have kids. The guy selling the tickets sits on a high chair and rips tickets off a spool. But what he really does is stare into wallets. If a guy has a lot of dough, he signals to another carny guy in the crowd.
“That guy walks up behind the pigeon and draws a mark down his back with a piece of chalk. He does this as he bumps into him. The pigeon never feels it.
“The pigeon is now a target for a pickpocket. He gets cleaned out, and his wallet gets returned without him knowing it. That way, if he goes to the police with a beef, they’ll see he still has his wallet and figure he just blew the money.”
Valentine tapped his fingers on Mary Alice Stoker’s desk. He could remember the conversation with Banko like it was yesterday. It had been like learning there was no Santa Claus. And now the librarian was telling him that Ricky Smith had spent nearly an entire year with bad carnival people.
“How was Ricky different when he came back?” he asked.
“He wasn’t a little boy anymore. I guess you could say he’d lost his innocence.”
“Did he get back with his parents?”
“They split up, and then Ricky moved in with his aunt.”
“Did you have much contact with him?”
She shook her head. Behind her desk was a window that faced the forest. A deer stepped into the picture, watching him out of the corner of its eye as it munched on the grass.
“Ricky stopped coming to the library,” she said. “He started cutting classes and never carried books in school. Somehow he still managed to get straight A’s.”
“Think he was cheating?”
“A lot of the teachers suspected it, but they couldn’t prove it.”
“What do you think?”
“He was cheating.”
Valentine stared over her shoulder at the deer. It was eating nervously, and he guessed it had gotten used to coming by and not getting any response out of Mary Alice.
“Any other suspicious behavior?”
The blind librarian nodded. “Ricky had a friend named Stanley Kessel who also came from a broken home. Stanley was a gambler. Got caught several times in school running card and dice games. Got expelled in his senior year and never returned.”
“And they hung out together.”
“Bosom buddies.”
“Are they still friends now?”
“Stanley went to New York five years ago, became a stockbroker, and made a killing in the market. I’m told he and Ricky are still friends.”
“Did you know Stanley personally?”
“Yes. Stanley was slime. My blindness is caused by a degenerative eye disease that started twenty years ago. The week I lost my vision, Stanley came into this room and stole forty dollars from my purse. I was here.”
There was a harshness in her voice that he hadn’t heard before. Stanley Kessel had stuck an invisible knife in her and probably hadn’t even realized it. Valentine reached across the desk and placed his hand onto hers. She smiled thinly, and he left his hand there.
“Ms. Stoker, we’re done,” a little voice said.
Valentine glanced over his shoulder. The five kids who’d been buried in their books a moment ago were now standing behind them in a row. They had funny smiles on their faces, and he slowly withdrew his hand.
Mary Alice introduced the children to him. “This is Kristen, David, and Annie Buchholz, and Sara and Terry Williams,” she said. “Children, say hello to Mr. Valentine. And, David, if you’re wearing your baseball cap, please take
it off.”
The kids stuck out their hands and said hello. They stared at him like he had two heads, and Valentine made them repeat their names as he shook their hands. Each one carried a book, and he recalled how difficult it had been to get Gerry to study back when he was in school. Terry Williams, who looked about thirteen and had a mop of dark hair, stepped forward. “Ms. Stoker, we were wondering if Mr. Valentine could show us something.”
“And what might that be, Terry?” the librarian asked.
“Well, we all went on Mr. Valentine’s Web site yesterday, and there’s all this cool stuff about casino cheating and crooks. On the Web site, it says that Mr. Valentine goes to casinos and gives demonstrations.”
“Yeah,” Annie piped up. “And we want to see some.”
“Cheating?” the librarian said.
“Yeah!” the five kids replied in unison.
“I have a deck of cards,” Terry said brightly, producing a dog-eared deck of Bicycles from his pocket. Handing them to Valentine, he said, “They’re all there. I counted.”
Valentine saw Mary Alice Stoker shift uncomfortably in her chair and guessed she was having visions of five more children being corrupted. He considered showing the kids a simple trick or two, but realized she wouldn’t be able to see. Then he had another idea.
He made the kids pull up chairs so they sat around him in a semicircle. He took the deck from Terry and removed the rubber band encasing the cards. Then he held the cards on his outstretched palm. The five children stared at them.
“I’m not going to show you any cheating. Do you know why?”
Disappointment appeared on their faces, and they shook their heads.
“Because cheating is a crime. It’s no different than stealing. But I know something about these playing cards that few people know. Want to hear it?”
They slowly nodded.
“Okay. No one knows who invented playing cards. Some people believe they were invented by medieval magicians who concealed all sorts of occult symbolism into the different pictures.” Valentine turned the cards faceup and spread them between his hands. “The cards are evenly divided, with twenty-six red cards and twenty-six black. This symbolizes day and night. Then there are the four suits: clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds. What do you think these stand for?”